LETTER TO THE HEBREWS - Chapter 3
HEBREWS – CHAPTER 3
Taught by: Pastor Carolyn Sissom
Tuesday Morning Bible Study
October 24, 2011
“3:1: “So then, holy brothers, who now share in the heavenly call, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus; Who was faithful to Him that appointed Him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house. For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as He who built the house has more honor than the house.”
The author makes his appeal to holy brothers, who share in the heavenly call. The word holy has the same root as sanctify and refers to those set apart by God and for God. These Christians whose call or invitation is from heaven…and to heaven, are now addressed for the first time.
In chapters 1 and 2 , the writer showed the Jewish Christians that Jesus was superior to the prophets and the angels. Now he means to show that Jesus is superior to Moses. To us this might seem a needless comparison. We know Jesus is God in the flesh, superior to everyone. However, the writer is also presenting Jesus as a man. As men go, the Jews regard Moses as the greatest in the world---surpassing the prophets and the angels. He was the one who spoke directly to God as “a man speaks to his friend’. While angels were used to transmit the 10 Commandments, Moses and the Law were one and the same thing to the Jewish people.
He begins by observing that both Jesus and Moses were faithful in the roles assigned to them. Both were uniquely called as God’s Apostles. The word, Apostle, means, “One sent with a message from God.” Moses was sent on the occasion of the burning bush (Ex. 3:14; 4:120. Jesus said, “As the Father has sent Me, even so send I you.” Both were spokesmen for God declaring only what he had revealed to them. Both served in the capacity of high priest. It is true that Aaron, Moses’ brother was the official high priest of Israel, but it was Moses who served as the true advocate with God. It was Moses who offered his life for the people after Aaron’s sin with the golden calf.
Kelly Varner wrote a book titled, “Moses, the Master, and the Manchild”.
He writes that every 2000 years, the dynamic of God’s Passover is revealed, releasing God’s people from fleshly bondage and satanic tyranny into the abundance of an unlimited provision, a massive transfer of health and wealth. Also every 2000 years all hell breaks loose in the earth.
3:5: “And Moses verily was faithful in all His house, as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after; but Christ as a son over His own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end.”
Varner describes Moses as a “son of destiny”. This would be accurate, however, the writer of the Hebrews clearly states Jesus is the Son of God and the founder and builder of God’s household. Moses was merely a servant in that house.
“Centuries before the birth of Jesus, Jehovah raised up the stuttering shepherd Moses, the adopted prince of Mizraim, the mediator of the Law, to rescue His people from Egyptian bondage and Pharaoh’s cruel oppression.
Nearly two thousand years later, the heavenly Father sent the Prophet like unto Moses, humankind’s only Savior, the Word made flesh, the One Mediator between God and men and women---the Lord Jesus Christ. His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and coronation set us all free from the power of sin and satan.” (quote from Moses, the Master and the Manchild by: Kelly Varner)
In the year 2000, two prophetic days since Christ, we began to hear the prophets speak of God bringing forth a glorious, overcoming Church---His corporate Heir---commissioned with the same anointed word and ministry of reconciliation. The time of the revealing of the sons-of-God, the Bride-of-Christ, sons and daughters roaring out of Zion bearing witness to Jesus’ once-for-all-triumph riding the earth of the influence of satan and the residuals of the curse.
Like many other prophets, I thought that through this glorious man-child company, the glory of the Lord would soon cover the whole earth. But after the initial glorious visions and visitations, we found ourselves in the pressure of intense battles nationally, internationally and spiritually in conflict with God’s adversary.
It was no different for Moses and Jesus after their calling and commission. The battle became very intense. “Pharaoh tried to kill Moses. Eventually the Red Sea swallowed up Egypt’s king and his army. In that same Passover season of deliverance, Moses’ “church in the wilderness” (Acts 7:38) bankrupted the land of the Nile. The descendants of Abraham received over four hundred years of back wages as a nation was born in a day.
Herod attempted in vain to destroy the Son of God, the Pattern Son, and consequently died under the judgment of God. Jesus Christ finished the work the Father had given Him to do. His death on Calvary’s cross rent the veil from the top to the bottom, releasing everything that had been hidden for ages and generations. Jesus, the Seed of both Abraham and David, became the heir of all things in heaven, in earth, and under the earth. All spiritual blessings are His to own and dispense, supplying every human need. He inherited the “land” and the “throne”, the earth and the right to rule it!
The “man-child”, the mature church, the many-membered Body of Christ, is presently staring down the global demonic strategy of “the great red dragon” whose devilish intent is to assassinate and abort the Godly Seed (Rev. 12: 1-5). His best efforts have been futile! He has been defeated! The forces of the Gentiles, the wealth of the nations, the glory and honor of the kings of the earth, will flow into His glorious Church, the House of the Lord.
Hebrews 3:4: “For every house is built by some man; but He that built all things is God.
Now just what is God’s house? We are---if we cling to our confidence and display the joy that our hope inspires, right to the very end.
Like Israel, because of unbelief, we can miss this time of the unveiling of the sons of God, a company of people who have been conformed to the image and likeness of Jesus. We have been apprehended by His mercy and grace. We are living in the time of the “birth pangs”. Our journey has been marked by great travail, which is intensifying.
Heb. 11:28: “Through faith he (Moses) kept the Passover, and the sprinkling of blood lest he that destroyed the firstborn should trust them.”
Moses, the servant of God, by faith inaugurated and kept the Passover…When God got ready to bring a nation out of bondage, He put a lamb in ever house.
Our Master, the Son of God is the Passover Lamb that took away the sin of the world by faith. Jesus delivered the whole creation from futility and corruption, then ascended up into heaven so that He might fill all things with Himself.
The manchild, the mature Church, the corporate Son is to enjoy the full benefits of the Passover of the Kingdom as we pass into the glory of the Lord’s Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven. The mature Church will ‘sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb” (Rev. 15:3)
3:7-10: “”Come then” says the Holy Ghost. Today if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness; when your fathers tempted Me, proved Me, and saw My works forty years. And so I was grieved with that generation, and said, they do always err in their heart; and they have not known my ways.
3:11: So I swear in My wrath, they shall not enter into My rest.” Psalm 95:11 is here quoted as the voice of the Holy Spirit still speaking to Christians today.
This is the second warning in the Letter to the Hebrews. He first warned his readers against drifting from the truth of the gospel message. Now he is warning them against refusing to trust the Lord when the going gets rough.
To make his warning convincing, he draws a parallel between the history of the Israelites in the wilderness and the Christians of this world. Moses was faithful to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, but the Israelites steadily lost confidence in God’s promises.
We all know we are living in unprecedented times as we see the birth pangs preceding the Second Coming of the Lord. The apostle Paul called this ‘the dispensation of the fullness of times” during which God would “gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in Him” (Eph. 1:10)
Since the year 2000, my calling and commission has been to prepare a corporate body of believers into a mature church that they may enter the “Rest”. I entered the “rest of the Lord’ around the year 1989. Stanley Rankin called me out of a meeting in Baton Rouge, La. and told me I had entered into the “Rest”. I knew I had come into something, but until the prophet spoke this to me, I had not identified what it was. The struggle, fight, pain, hurt, shame, etc. had all gone out of me. I had entered into the joy unspeakable and full of glory and the peace of God that passes all understanding. My faith had become a fact. My hope was a certainty. Love was a reality, not dependent on whether I was loved, or unloved by others. Either way Love does not change. Rejection had no power over me.
3: 12-13: “Take heed, brethren, less there be any of you with an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the Living God. Exhort one another daily, while it is called Today; less any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.”
The great sin of ancient Israel, was she turned from following the true God to worship idols made of wood and stone which could neither hear nor speak. Yet Israel had heard the true God speak and on numerous occasions had seen His great power. Through fear, doubt and unbelief they refused to enter the Promised Land. There is a parallel to observed between the 40 years wandering by the Israelites and the approximate 40 year interval between Jesus’ ministry and the destruction of Jerusalem.
Both generations of Jews had rejected the Word of the Lord and both were ripe for judgment. Because the Jews rejected Jesus, he foretold of the destruction of the temple (Luke 21:20-24). Later He will say that the whole system of Judaism is about to “vanish away” (Heb. 8:13). For me, the year 2000 was the year the Lord set me on this course to “declare the Glory of God wherever I go”. I pray the year 2040 will not be a parallel of the Lord’s past dealings with those who reject His message and messengers, “with an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the Living God.” We are exhorted to strengthen one another against this sin of unbelief.
3:14-15: “We are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end; While it is said, Today if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.”
Perseverance is indeed the proof of faith. The Christian’s life is a walk of faith. The Cross is our starting point. Along the journey are rich rewards. We become heirs as deliverers, mediators and reconcilers.
“Right now in many hidden places around the world an immeasurable company is being trained in the school of the Spirit. The nature of Christ is being woven into the fabric of their beings.”
The past eleven years has been a journey of faith believing in what I have heard, but have not yet seen. The process of watching the growth, falling and failings of the church can be tiring, but the results will one day be stunning and spectacular. I can’t say that over the past eleven years, I have ever been discouraged or dismayed to the point that I wanted to quit. No! I have loved every moment of it. I thought the gathering in of all things unto Christ was going to be a faster work. However, the passion and vision have never left my heart. The corporate manchild will come forth amidst great pain and suffering. But out of that suffering a song is created whose melody will fill the earth. It is the song of the redeemed.
3:16-18: Paraphrased: “Now just who was it that heard God’s voice in the desert and turned right around and provoked Him? Was it not all those whom Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was God angry during those forty years? Was it not those who preferred their own way over His way, even though they knew what He expected of them, whose corpses He left scattered in the wilderness? And when He vowed in his anger---“they shall never enter into my rest”---to whom was He referring? Very clearly it was those who refused to believe His promises.
3:19: “So we see that they could not enter because of unbelief.”
“When the soul rids itself completely of what is hostile and contrary to the divine will, it then rests transformed in God through love.”
With this the author concludes his lengthy warning and comes to the subject which is closest to his heart and which he has already touched upon twice before, namely the priesthood of Jesus.
Taught by: Pastor Carolyn Sissom
Eastgate Ministries, Inc.
Scripture from K.J.V.; Bibliography: Moses, the Master and the Manchild by: Kelly Varner; C. S. Lovett’s Lights on Hebrews. Comments and conclusions are my own and not meant to reflect the views of those from whom I have gleaned.