Hebrews: The GOAT and the Son

Elder Michael Villalobos preaches from Hebrews 3:1-6. Discussion points: Moses was the greatest servant of God from the Old Testament, Jesus was infinitely more faithful and has infinitely more glory than Moses, through Christ we have greater intimacy with God than Moses did who spoke directly to God.

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  Scripture reader: [Hebrews 3:1-6] Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, who was faithful to him who appointed him just as Moses also was faithful in all God's house. For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.

  Now, Moses was faithful in all God's house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later. But Christ is faithful over God's house as a son. And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.

  This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

  Preacher: All right, good morning, church. Good to see you all today. Good to be with you on this, wonderful first day of Advent. I don't know about you guys, but I didn't really grow up in a very church calendar centric household. So I'm kinda getting used to it, but, I'm also enjoying it, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm growing to like the candles and the Advent stuff. It's it's kinda nice. Anyway, so in our ongoing series today of Jesus versus, we have a new challenger, and that is God's greatest servant of all time, Moses.

  Now if you Google greatest servant of all time, you'll mainly get a bunch of links to Matthew 23 where Jesus talks about, you know, the greatest among you will be your servant and that sort of thing. And while that's true and beautiful, it doesn't really make for a very good illustration here. So, instead, I tried Googling greatest butler of all time. And wouldn't you know it, but you have, one of my favorite fictional characters, Alfred Pennyworth, the butler to none other than Bruce Wayne, AKA Batman for you non-nerds in the audience.

  And in the Batman trilogy, for those of you who've at least dabbled in in that, he's played by Sir Michael Caine, so you know he's good, alright? Being the greatest butler of all time, is pretty involved. After Bruce's parents were murdered, Alfred was there to comfort Bruce. When Bruce leaves to find himself, Alfred is largely in charge of keeping track of Wayne Enterprises and keeping the company running. When Bruce is physically banged up, Alfred stitches him up, and when Bruce isn't sure what to do and is kind of spiraling, with the existential crises of being a vigilante, Alfred is the one who gives him wisdom and encourages him to endure. It's not a stretch at all to say that Alfred was faithful in all the house of Wayne.

  And for his service and loyalty, Alfred is loved, protected, respected, kept in close confidence by Bruce. And though they often have this level of in their relationship of feeling kind of like father and son, Alfred certainly never adopted Bruce, and so there is that employer-employee tension that exists throughout the rest of their relationship and can sometimes be an object in the comics. We're gonna come back to this, but similarly, today's challenger was a mighty servant, was loyal, was faithful, was kept in close confidence, and was loved, protected and honored by God.

  To his original audience, Moses was the GOAT, or greatest of all time. He wasn't just a prophet, he was their rescuer from slavery, the political founder of their nation, and perhaps what he's best known for is being the one who brought the law of God to them, so that they could understand what good was and how it was defined. I know most of you in here know who Moses was, but I wanna take a little bit of time to go over his life, so that we can have that firmly in our mind as we go into this comparison. And as we go through this mini biography, I want you to think about what it would be like to have the kind of relationship with God that Moses had. So consider that as we, you know, walk through his life and contrast that with your own life.

  For starters, Moses was born a crime. He was born into the land in a time when it was illegal for him to exist just because he was a Hebrew boy. He was placed into an engineered basket, set adrift in the river, and then miraculously drawn out of that basket, which is where he got his name from, by the very daughter of the king who was seeking his life. He was then brought up and educated in the house of the king for around 40 years, and we're told that during that time he was already considered mighty in word and deed. It does seem that ninja training was part of the wisdom of the Egyptians, because we're told that around the time he's 40, he comes down to visit his brothers and sisters in Israel, and he sees an Egyptian beating an Israelite, and he just looks around and then just ends the Egyptian's life and buries him in the sand, silently. Yeah, as I was reviewing this, I was like, that's a really great detail.

  Anyway, so Pharaoh isn't very excited about Moses' skills. So Moses ends up fleeing to the desert, to the land of Midian, and ends up finding a wife and settling down there. He has a stable job as a shepherd, and we don't really know a ton about this next part, other than around 40 years later, when he's around 80, is when the angel of the Lord appears to him in the burning bush. From there God sends him, therefore making him an apostle, that means "sent one," back to be his voice in Egypt to declare freedom for his people who were enslaved there. And then God tells Moses to use the staff in his hand to perform reality bending plagues, summoning flies and gnats and locusts, and frogs, and sickness and flaming hail and darkness and the angel of death. And in all of these things, Moses isn't just a witness to it, he's the conduit of it. Moses is the edge of the blade that God is using to cut Egypt open to draw his people out.

  Eventually Pharaoh relents, and they depart for the desert where Moses again uses the staff in his hand to split the Red Sea in half for the people to walk across, and then uses it again to close the waters crashing down on the Egyptians. He then uses it to make water appear from a rock or to summon manna or in one case where he just keeps his hands up and Israel wins against who they're fighting against. Apart from all the miracles he performed, like I mentioned earlier, Moses also created a system of middle managers to govern the people. He established the priesthood, and brought the law of God to the people. When the people rebelled, he interceded for them to God. And shockingly, God would listen. There's one instance where God is saying, I'm gonna end these people, and Moses says, please don't, more or less. And God's like, alright, which is just baffling to me.

  Moses alone can say that he saw the glory of God, he saw God's backside as he walked by, and the effect of seeing the glory of God directly was so great that his face shone so brightly that people couldn't look at it without a veil on. At the end of his life, while he didn't go up in a chariot of flames, we're told that he was mysteriously buried by God. And in what I'll say is the greatest posthumous release of all time, he then thousands of years later appears with Jesus at the transfiguration. To say that Moses was an incredible figure and led an amazing life would be a wild understatement.

  So now that you have our challenger's bio firmly planted in your mind, let's go back to the passage. Verse one. Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus the apostle and high priest of our confession. As we've discussed throughout this series, the author is writing to believers, those who would confess the name of Jesus as Lord. Who are more than likely Hebrews as the title of the book indicates. And then we get two titles for Jesus here, apostle and high priest. We're gonna spend a lot of time talking about high priest things later. I'm mildly grateful that that's not the passage I was assigned this morning. But we're going to spend more of our time today talking about the apostle side of what the author mentions here.

  So that word apostle from the Greek word apostolos means "one who is sent," in the same way that Moses was sent out of his cushy, you know, stable, shepherding job with his wife and kids in Midian to liberate the enslaved people in Egypt. And Jesus left his ultimate comfort by his father's side. And went down to liberate his beloved people from slavery to sin. As we continue on in the passage, let's look at verse 2 to see how the author tees up this comparison. Who was faithful to him, who appointed him just as Moses also was faithful in all God's house.

  So Moses operated as the intermediary between God's unwavering holiness on one side and the people's infuriating folly on the other. Time and time again, Moses operated almost as an extension of God's will in keeping the people in line. In story after story, we see the people fail to listen, disobey, pursue foreign gods. And each time Moses gets the not so fun job of being the one to call them back, dole out the punishment, or even, like I said earlier, fight to save their lives with God directly. In the face of all those challenges, when his people and even sometimes his own family members were rebelling, Moses remained faithful.

  I want to talk about faithfulness for a second here. When life is good, being faithful is easy. But when sin enters the picture, being faithful gets hard. The greater the sin, the greater the price of faithfulness. Moses was faithful through the many sins of his people. And the cost was quite high, both personally to him, as well as in the number of lives lost to pay for that sin. And Jesus, of course, friends though, was faithful over the totality of the sin of all of aggregated humanity for all time. And he gave his life, his infinite life. To cover the cost of that debt. This comparison is, is so important, but it's also just staggering whenever I think about putting infinity on one side of the scale. Obviously Jesus wins all these battles, as we know, unlike Shaq versus, but. It's, it's still just something that's, that's beautiful every time I consider it.

  As we continue on here, we have this idea of God's house, which is central to the two arguments that the author uses, to talk about Jesus being greater. One, Moses is the house, and Jesus is the builder. And second, Moses is the servant, and Jesus is the son. First, the author says that Jesus is better by describing Moses as a house and Jesus as the builder. Verse 3. For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. This is an important distinction. Moses in all his glory was the greatest part of what God was building. God's house, his people. The nation of Israel. The author is of course intentionally employing some wordplay here, floating back and forth between the house meaning a physical structure and being an aggregation of people. Or family.

  This is similar to the, the wordplay used in 2 Samuel 7, where David tells God that he wants to build him a house of cedar, and God says in response, I'm gonna make you a house. I love those kind of jokes. But I don't think that's what God was doing here. I will raise up offspring after you and you and who shall come from your body. In the same way in our passage, we're going to see, some fluidity in the definition of house used back and forth as the author, leverages it for this analogy.

  So we're talking about builders here in verse 3. We're in this physical house metaphor, and Moses. In this physical house structure isn't exactly like a brick, he's more like the caretaker of the house, or the butler, if you will. In this building, which also at this time was really more of a mobile home, during Moses' time cause it was careening across the desert. So he's driving God's RV, OK? And he's responsible for protecting it, cleaning it, fueling it, taking out the garbage, and following God's GPS to the promised land. This is certainly an enormous task, something that's incredibly important and something that's deserving of great honor.

  But then the author calls out that Jesus isn't part of the RV. Jesus is the maker of it. He's the one who designed the chassis, picked out the wheels and constructed those and put those on, you know, designed the engine system, the fuel for it, all of that, to make it run. And so ultimately, yes, it's cool that Moses made the journey with the people across the desert. But how could that have been possible if he didn't have a vehicle to do it in? And so Jesus is the one who actually made the thing that got them there.

  As I think about making things, I can't help but think about some of my own journeys in, in making things at my house here in Somerville. Of all the things that I've gotten to make over the years, one of the ones that I'm most proud of is this Murphy bed slash desk, which I think, do we have a picture of this? Yeah, that guy. So this is probably the most impressive thing I've made actually. My wife and I put the, the, the fun, latticework that you see there on the front in over COVID, yeah, 20 like, yeah, well, 5 years ago, November, yeah, Thanksgiving 2020. Anyway, it's got integrated monitors that slide up and down so you can do sitting or standing mode and the desk stays level when you close it. It's very impressive stuff, if I say so myself. And you know when people see it they're like, oh my gosh, you're quitting your day job? Like, have you sold it to any catalogs like this is where'd you buy it from whatever. Well, they don't know that I that I should quit my day job yet, but then I tell them that I made it and they immediately are less interested in exactly how this functions and they're like then they're asking me the questions about how I made it and all these other sort of things.

  So you see this idea that when the builder is present, while the product is still impressive, you're a lot more interested in what the builder has to say about what they made rather than the product itself. Said another way, you don't consult the manual when the author, when the maker of the thing is present. You simply ask them. The author then doubles down on this in verse 4, making a divine claim. For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God. This might sound a bit like an unnecessary math equation at first. Every house has a builder and through the transit of property, the builder of everything is God. Feels a little bit trite, but the author is doing something deeper than a trivial math equation here. He's showing us that Christ's work isn't a new project disconnected from the old covenant. The same God who built Israel, who called Moses out of the wilderness and into Egypt, who designed every piece of the tabernacle, is the God working through Christ.

  Moses served faithfully inside the house that God was building, but Jesus stands over the entire structure as a son. That's part of the maker, the heir of everything God has made. The point isn't merely that Jesus is divine, although that is an important one and something that the author made clear in chapter one. It's that the whole plan has the same builder. And if God built it all, then Jesus, the son who rules over everything God built, deserves more glory than Moses, the servant within it.

  So, we just walked through this first argument that the author makes about Moses being part of the house, and Jesus being the builder. We're next gonna look at the next argument that the author makes about Jesus being better because Moses is the servant, and Jesus is the son. We're gonna just do verses 5 and 6 together. Moses was faithful in all God's house as a servant to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ is faithful over God's house as a son, and we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting and our hope. Here, God's house transitions to the other side of things where it means the family of God. In the Old Testament, God did call the people of Israel his son, such as in Exodus 4, where God says, then say to Pharaoh, this is what the Lord says, Israel is my firstborn son. And I told you, let my son go, so he may worship me.

  But I think that we can really think about this in more of a collective sense that the entire nation of Israel is being referred to as the son of God. Now if anyone within that nation deserved to be called a son of God, would it not be Moses? But what does God Himself call him in Numbers 12, the very verse this passage is quoting? God calls him a servant. In Numbers 12, when God is defending Moses against his siblings, he says, hear my words. If there's a prophet among you, I, the Lord, make myself known to him in a vision. I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord.

  This is of course important. Moses was part of God's house. He was, you know, this chief butler character. But he was not a son. There's actually a story related back to my favorite butler, in one of the Batman comics called City of Bane. Yeah, no one knows what I'm talking about. That's fine. I just had to double check. Where Alfred is actually murdered by Bane. When Bruce finds out, he doesn't erupt in rage, instead he buckles under the grief. He weeps, he blames himself, he feels like the loss, like he did when he became an orphan all over again. It nearly destroys him and he goes missing for a while, surrendering his duties as guardian over Gotham. But ultimately he mourns this loss and strengthens his resolve and through the memory of Alfred continues to fight on, and ultimately continues in the battle for Gotham. Alfred's loss is certainly deeply felt, it's honored, mourned, and remembered well.

  However, there's a different story that I wanna talk about for a minute here, called Robin Rises from the comics. And in this one, and I bet you guys don't know this one, this is a, this is a deep cut, Batman has a son named Damien Wayne. It's his only biological son. And when Damien dies, you guys, Batman loses his mind, OK, he is absolutely enraged with grief and is trying anything he can to bring his son back. All the members of the Justice League are like, you can't do that. You're just a dude. Like, what are you doing? And he won't listen to any of it. He starts engaging in mystic rituals and combining it with apocalyptic magic, and ultimately his son's body ends up being stolen, by Darkseid, who's like one of the biggest bads in all the comics, I think Thanos like that, but like a corollary, but even better, he's like referred to as a new god in, in. I don't want in the scriptures, and that's not right. In DC canon. And he's someone who fights very, very aggressively against Superman usually.

  So anyway, Apocalypse steals him back to or Darkseid steals him back to Apocalypse. And it seems like all hope is lost. Instead, Batman chooses the nuclear option, which is to put on this armor called the Hellbat armor, which was forged by every member of the Justice League and empowers Bruce to have the powers of a god, at the cost, of course, of killing him pretty quickly, and it runs off his metabolism. I don't know why they made such a ridiculous device, but anyway. So he puts on this stuff and then goes in and starts tearing apart the entire planet, being like, where is he? And it's a comic book, but that's obviously the voice that's in your head. So he goes through and like rips the whole planet apart, trying to find where his son has been stolen away to, and then ends up confronting Darkseid and punches him in the face and like takes the coffin back. And then there's some real sketchily written stuff about how it ultimately ends up resolving involving like some redirection of power where I'm like how is there an API for that. But he anyway, he ends up being successful and, and of course the meanwhile the suit is telling him every 5 seconds you're killing yourself, you're killing yourself, you're about to die, and he's like shut up, let me have more time. So he does all of this to bring his son back and ends up ultimately successfully resurrecting him using again a MacGuffin.

  But he does all of this because this is what he does for his son. He marches into functional hell, risks his own life, has said goodbye to his family before he left on this mission, knowing that it was likely a suicide mission going up against a god. And he does it anyway to try to win his son back. And I say this because, this is the difference between a servant and a son. This is the difference in your position before God through Christ. It isn't just the case that you have a a goodbye party with some sheet cake and a single pizza when your time is over. It's the case that God would do anything to save you. And would and did come down, put on a suit of flesh that under normal circumstances dies slowly. And hung on a cross. Going down into hell to punch Satan in the face, to rescue from his grasp. And bring you back to life.

  God will not relent in his love for you. God will never give up on you. God won't just say, well. You didn't listen to the employee handbook, so I'm gonna have to fire you. You have a perfect record through Jesus. And that is really hard for me to accept, because I'm a prideful person. And my sense of justice is often based in my own understanding of what I think is right, but what I think is right. Is based on my own pride, and I need to look to what God says to understand what right is, what justice is. Friends, we are justified through Christ. And it doesn't matter that you didn't live up to the handbook. We're not in that system. That's the system that Moses had.

  So when we think about comparing Jesus to Moses. I think that we can fall into two different troughs, one that says. That I need to follow all the rules that God said in the handbook, and if I don't, then I'm gonna be cast out and fired, and thankfully that's not true. The other one we look at Moses is we can get, I think, distracted by the miracles and the, the dazzling things, the gestures. And I want to talk a little bit about that second part as well.

  I think early on in a relationship, there's a lot more gestures for those of you who've been dating, or you know, maybe those of you who've moved past dating into to marriage or things like that. If you think back, there's a little bit more fanfare, you might dress up more, you might even do something crazy like, you know, play a, pay a pilot to write someone's name in the sky. But if I were to ask my wife of 11 years, whether she'd rather have a plane write her name in the sky that says I love you Alexa from Michael. Or if she'd rather have, you know, a little sticky note in her lunch that says the same thing, but her lunch is packed with, you know, it's a nice pescatarian Mediterranean lunch with 23 different plants in it, that I made for her. I love how many of you guys know what she eats, yeah, you do now. You do now. Right. It's good for you. She would obviously choose the latter.

  So, I think that in the same way. With Moses, there's a lot of gestures, there's a lot of these big grandiose things that are dazzling to look at. But through Christ, we have intimacy, true intimacy with God. We have greater intimacy with God through Christ than Moses had. I think that's, that's wild when I, when I came across that point as I was preparing this. I, I don't know if, if I am going to be able to understand that or communicate that well, but I believe that it is true, so I'll say that one more time. Through Christ, you have greater intimacy with God than Moses had. And that is a wonderful, wonderful thing. It's what Christ died for. It's such a better thing than to operate in the old system, where you couldn't approach the throne of grace boldly, where you had to have intermediaries for you. To approach the throne of grace in an unclean state would result in your death, versus right now, you can come before God.

  It doesn't matter what you've done or what the state of your heart is, you can still come before him through Christ. This is, this is a wonderful thing, and this is why again, we're, I'm, I'm urging you this week to choose the way of the son and not the servant.

  As we conclude our time here, we're going to enter into a time of communion. On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus took a loaf of bread and broke it, saying, this is my body broken for you. And then he took a cup and said this is my blood shed for you, do this in remembrance of me. Each week we participate in the sacred meal to be reminded of that new covenant in Christ's blood, that is different and better than that that Moses had. So now I'm going to pray and I'm gonna ask the band to come up as we continue our time of worship together. Please pray with me.

  Father in heaven, thank you. Thank you so much for liberating us from slavery to death. Thank you for coming down from your throne and putting on a suit of flesh, to live in this unpleasant place. And die a very unpleasant death. So that each of us here could know you, could be made part of your family. Could be called son and daughter. God help us to understand that truth. Help us to believe that we are really yours through your son, that all we have to do is accept that gift. And then we can walk forward in newness of life. I pray that that would be made real to each and everyone here. Thank you, Lord. It's in your son's precious name we pray, Amen.