Dear friends in Christ.
How many times hasn’t it happened to you that as
soon as you have arranged the covers just right and you are ready to drift off
to sleep, you think of something that you absolutely have to remember to do
first thing in the morning? You think of
something that the rest of your day simply hinges on to the point that if you
forget this one thing, nothing is going to go right. So what do you do? Do you get up and write it down? Do you worry about it and toss and turn all
night? Or do you do what most people do
and repeat that thought over and over in your mind so that it is fixed there as
the last thought you have as you fall asleep and the first thought you have
when you wake up in the morning? Well in
our text today, the writer to the Hebrews is calling on us to do the very same
thing. Now that doesn’t mean we have to
go to bed thinking only about our Savior so that he is our last thought and our
first thought every day, although that is a very good idea. But it does mean that the writer wants us to
fix our thoughts on Jesus, so that no matter what temptation or hardship we
face, he is always first and foremost in our minds.
This, in fact, is the very thing that the writer to
the Hebrews was calling on the Jewish Christians to do in text today. In fact, I invite you to open your Bibles
with me to Hebrews 3:1-6 and see how the Author is urging us to fix our
thoughts on Jesus. Now, when the writer
to the Hebrews wrote these words in Chapter 3, Jewish Christians were
undergoing a great deal of persecution.
They were being mocked and ridiculed.
They were dealing with raiding parties who came into their homes to haul
some of them away to prison, or simply to wreck up the place. They were being black listed to the point
that if you were a Christian, no one was allowed to hire you and you would have
no real way to provide for your family.
Because of all of this, there were many who were beginning to wonder if
they had made a big mistake by leaving their Jewish religion for the new
Christian religion. There were many who
had simply begun to slide back into their old worship lives of sacrifice,
offering, and patient waiting for the Messiah to come. There were even many Jewish Christians who
had reverted to their lives of Judaism who were now seeking to lead their
fellow Jewish Christians out of Christianity and back into the religion of
Moses. It was because of this that the
writer wrote as he did in our text. Take
a look at Chapter 3:1-6: “Therefore,
holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus,
the apostle and high priest whom we confess. He was faithful to the one who
appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house. Jesus has been
found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has
greater honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but
God is the builder of everything. Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s
house, testifying to what would be said in the future. But Christ is faithful
as a son over God’s house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage
and the hope of which we boast.” (Hebrews 3:1-6)
With these words the writer to the Hebrews lays it
all on the line as he tells them to fix their thoughts on Jesus their
Savior. He tells them that if they
should revert to their former religion of Judaism, they will completely miss
out on all that Christ has done for them.
If they should turn back to their Jewish system of offerings and
worship, they would lose out on the salvation that Christ one for them, and the
comfort of the forgiveness of sins. If
they should fail to keep their eyes fixed on Jesus and instead, turn them
toward Moses, they might well avoid the hardship of persecution, but they
would, in fact, be taking their eyes from the one to whom Moses pointed, and
placing them on Moses himself. This
would not be a good thing for them, as the writers tells them, because even
though the Lord gave Moses an important job as leader of the Israelites, Moses’
main job was to point people to Jesus, the prophet who was to come. Moses’ job was to tell people about the
Savior who was to come and encourage them to place their trust in him. Now that Christ had come, going back to Moses
and believing that a Savior was coming would be to no avail.
In fact, as the writer tells the Hebrews to fix
their thoughts on Jesus, he gives them three very clear reasons why Jesus is
far superior to Moses.
The first comes in verse 2: “He [Jesus] was faithful to the one who
appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house.” Though Moses was indeed a faithful servant in
God’s house, his job, as we said, was to point to Jesus. Jesus’ job was to come and live a perfect,
sinless life for all of God’s people, suffer and die an innocent death on
behalf of his people, and rise again from the dead to assure us that his death
had indeed paid the price God demanded for our sins.
The second comes in verse 3 – 4: “Jesus has been
found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has
greater honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but
God is the builder of everything.”
Though Moses was indeed part of the construction crew that has been at
work on God’s house of believers, it was God who planned his house of
believers, who sketched out the plans, who ordered the materials needed, and
who hired his workers who do their work of proclaiming Jesus, the author and
architect of God’s house.
The final reason comes in verse 5 – 6: “Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s
house, testifying to what would be said in the future. But Christ is faithful
as a son over God’s house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage
and the hope of which we boast.” This is
the final and the greatest difference between Moses and Christ. Moses, though he was a faithful servant in God’s
house, was still a servant. He was not
the son, he was not the heir, he, was not even able to distribute inheritance
to anyone because he was a servant.
Christ, on the other hand, is the Son and heir of God’s kingdom. He is the one who adopted Moses and all
believers into his family. He is the one
who has distributed the inheritance of eternal life through faith in himself to
all who believe. He is the one who has
taken his believers and built them up as living stones in a house for his
glory.
Just as the writer to the Hebrews gave these three
reasons for the Hebrew Christians to fix their thoughts on Jesus, he gives them
to you and me today. For today, we seek
to keep our thoughts fixed on Jesus because it is through faith in him that we
have the forgiveness of sins and the assurance of eternal life. Though we can learn a great deal from Moses,
we do not look to Moses for salvation, but the one about whom he
prophesied. Though each week I stand
before you and proclaim God’s Word to you, your faith does not rest in me or
what I have done. Rather, your faith
rests in Jesus Christ your Savior.
Yet how often don’t we fall into the same trap into
which the Hebrew Christians fell? How
often don’t we allow ourselves to fix our thoughts on something that seems to
be so much more important than our Savior?
How often doesn’t it happen that we avoid persecution by keeping quite
when the subject of religion comes up?
How often doesn’t it happen that we ignore sin just so that we can keep
peace within our congregation? How often
doesn’t it happen that we allow sleeping in on a Sunday morning or some other
activity to come as of first importance rather than gathering together for
Bible Study or worshiping the Lord? How
often doesn’t it happen that we sit and complain about anyone and everything
and therefore cast sinful judgment upon each other, the church, and our pastor,
and yet we avoid God pleasing judgment by not going to the person with whom we
are frustrated or by telling ourselves that we have no right to judge a fellow
Christians sins according to the Bible?
How often don’t we get all bent out of shape by the way in which the
church spends its money and how far in debt she is, but at the same time we
hold back our offerings because we are so over extended our selves, or worse
yet, are so greedy that we simply cannot or will not give any more to the
Lord? How often hasn’t it happened that
each and every one of us has focused our thoughts and our minds on anything but
Jesus Christ our Savior?
If we are honest with ourselves, we have to say that
it has happened far too often. Yet even
though we have allowed one thing or another to distract us from our Savior, it
is our Savior who calling on us today to refocus on him our alone. He is the one who is reminding us that there
is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved, other than his and his
alone. He is reminding us that he is the
one who forgives our sins and remembers our offences any more. He is the one who assures us of that forgiveness
by building us as living stones into his house, the Church.
So then let us all keep our thoughts fix on Jesus
Christ our Savior, for he is the foundation of our faith, and he is our
salvation. Let us change our thoughts so
that Jesus is the last thing we think about every night and the first thing we
think about when we wake up. Let us do
all that we can to give our Savior the first place in our thoughts so that we
are focused on him throughout our day.
Let us keep our thoughts focused on Jesus Christ our Savior, for he is
the one who has freed us from our sins and given us the gift and the blessing
of life and salvation through faith in him.
Amen.
Pastor
David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church--Le Sueur, MN
