Consider Jesus (Hebrews 3:1)

Kootenai Church

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Turn now to Hebrews chapter three. And read together the first six verses.

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Hebrews chapter three, beginning of verse one. Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider

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Jesus the apostle and high priest of our confession. He was faithful to him who appointed him as Moses was also in his house.

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For he has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, by just so much as the builder of the house has more honor than the house.

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For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God. Now, Moses was faithful in all his house as a servant for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later.

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But Christ was faithful as a son over his house, whose house we are if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end.

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Let's pray together before we begin. Father, you have been so merciful to us and good to us to give us your word.

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And as your people, we hunger for the truth of scripture and to see Christ in the pages of scripture.

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We pray that as we study your word this morning, that you would fix our hearts and our minds and our attention on the

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Lord Jesus Christ for the good of your people and for the glory of your great name we ask, amen.

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It's always good to remind ourselves that our entire Christian life is a matter of keeping our eyes and our focus on the

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Lord Jesus Christ and to keep our gaze upon him. You would think that this would be something that is instinctive for us as Christians, that having been saved by recognizing that Jesus Christ is our only and sole hope of eternal life and our only and sole hope of righteousness and a right standing before God and the only way that we could be saved with that sort of singularity at the moment of our salvation when we place our faith in Christ, you would think that it would be instinctive for us as Christians to keep our focus and him as our focus all the way through our

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Christian life. But that sadly is not the case. Oftentimes it seems as if no sooner has the shine worn off of our professional faith and the moment of our salvation, no sooner does the shine wear off of that but that we begin to think that we need something different for the day -to -day grind of our

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Christian life than that which saved us in the beginning. And that is not the case. We don't need anything different.

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Having believed upon Christ, we don't need anything different to live the day -to -day grind than that which saved us at the very start.

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I would suggest to you that that which maintains our Christian faith through the day -to -day of our living as Christians in this sinful and fallen world is the same thing that saved us in the beginning.

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It's the same thing that will ultimately bring us through to eternal glory. And that is that we fix our hearts, our minds, our focus, our attention with a singularity of focus upon the person of Jesus Christ, that we fix them there.

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That is what scripture calls us to do. But because we as Christians always seem to long for something more, the

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Christian subculture around us offers up an endless parade of fads and novelties that blow through the

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Christian church like tumbleweeds through a deserted desert town. And there's a ton of them. You can open up your average

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Christian magazine or the CBD catalog, Christian Book Distributor catalog, and you'll see them on every page.

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Mark Batterson wrote a book called The Circle Maker in case you would like to pray circles around your biggest dreams.

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And if praying circles makes you feel like you're running in circles, then there's the prayer of Jabez if you just prefer to walk in a straight line while praying.

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And so the prayer of Jabez is yet another way to gain a little bit more territory. If you want more territory than praying in circles, you have the

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Jabez prayer. Sarah Young offers us modern words for Jesus in Jesus Calling, because the words we have from Jesus 2 ,000 years ago are not quite enough.

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There's a parade of people who offer us insight and understanding on how to hear the voice of God as if what

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God has spoken already is not enough. Neal T. Anderson tells us how we can be delivered from our bondage to Satan, when in fact, we've already been delivered from the kingdom of darkness, scripture says.

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The Daniel diet is there if you wanna lose some weight, just in case you weren't able to pick out the diet plan outlined in the book of Daniel, they have the

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Daniel diet for you. So you can read through there and then you can see what should have been obvious to you on the pages of the book of Daniel all along.

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And if you wanna learn how to live on purpose instead of on accident, then you can do the 40 days of purpose. Now, if you're even mildly familiar with the

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Christian subculture that dominates modern Christianity, then you know that I could go on and on with the list of fads and novelties that transfix us in our modern

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Christian subculture. One wonders how it is that the early church, the reformers and the

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Puritans were able to live God honoring holy and victorious lives without all of the trappings of the industry of the modern

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Christian subculture. What does scripture call us to do? Fix your eyes on Christ.

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And the apostles that dealt with people who were suffering from all kinds of afflictions and persecution, they dealt with churches who were walking in the flesh and they were carnal.

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They dealt with churches who were misguided as to what the gospel was. They dealt with believers who had come out of paganism and sexual cults and idolatry and all kinds of bondages to all kinds of occult practices.

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They dealt with all of those Christians, all those types of Christians in the New Testament, the pattern over and over and over again is fix your focus on the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Set your mind on things above. Look to Jesus. Consider him.

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That is the demand of scripture. So if you follow the writing of the apostles through the New Testament, you know what you'll find?

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You'll find that when Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, a church that was entirely messed up, he gave to them correction, yes.

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But after watching them get saved, Paul didn't say, now that you have trusted Christ for salvation, you can set the

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Jesus for a bit. Now here is a program. Here is a pattern. Here are some principles. Here is a something prayer that you need to pray in order to have what you do not have in Jesus.

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He does just the opposite. In writing to the Corinthians, that messed up church, he fixes their attention on Christ.

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And he says, in Christ is all the wisdom of God. You need wisdom, you find it in Christ. You wanna understand what your calling is?

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Consider the calling that you have in Christ. You wanna know what it means to walk in a manner worthy of your calling? Walk as you should be in Christ.

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And he just directs their attention and their focus back to who they are in Christ, what they have been called to, and what

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Christ is to them. Writing to the Galatians, a church that was on the cusp of denying the gospel of grace, Paul reproved them for thinking that they could continue in the flesh that which they begun in the spirit.

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So what does he say? He say, you who have begun in the power of the spirit, you embrace this gospel. Now you want something more to live your

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Christian life and be sanctified. And he doesn't give them something more. He points them back to Christ. He says, what you had back then, what began you in your

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Christian walk is the very thing that is going to carry you through. And he shows them that sanctification in a walk of holiness is to be attained and acquired by walking in the very gospel that they had embraced at the very beginning.

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What continues us through our Christian life is the same thing that started it. Writing to the Philippians, the most joy -filled letter in all of the

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New Testament, the apostle Paul says in chapter one, to live as Christ. He says in chapter two, if there's any consolation or encouragement in Christ, let it be this, that you fix your mind on Jesus, right?

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Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who though he exists in the form of God, did not consider his equality with God something to be held onto at all costs.

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But instead, he stepped aside from that and came down here and lived among us and died among us, even the death on the cross.

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He focuses our attention on Christ. Then in chapter three, when he's describing the prize of Christian living, he says, I pursue the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

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And in chapter four, again, it's back to Christ. You want peace in your Christian life? Peace doesn't come through a peacemaker book.

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It doesn't come through some understanding of some certain Christian or biblical ritual. You want peace? You have the peace of God which surpasses all understanding in where?

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In Christ. Everything goes back to him. The beginning of the Christian life, the continuing of the Christian life, eventually our graduation to glory, all of it is in Christ.

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We simply walk day to day in that which saved us in the beginning by fixing our heart and our mind and our focus upon Christ.

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So when Paul in Colossians writes to a church that was teetering on the edge of false doctrine and had seen an infiltration of Gnostic and New Age teaching in the church there, he points them back to Christ in chapter three, which we read at the beginning of our service when he says, therefore, if you have been raised with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, set your mind on things above.

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That's the mentality of the Christian, not on the things of this earth, but on the things which are above. And Paul's not the only one to do this.

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We find it in Peter and Peter writing to persecuted churches and first Peter, what does he say to those persecuted Christians? Yeah, you have

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Christ at the beginning, but now you need something more. Peter doesn't say that. Writing to persecuted Christians, he reminds them in every chapter of the sufferings of Christ.

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The sufferings of Christ, that phrase and the reality of Christ's suffering are mentioned in every chapter of a book addressed to persecuted

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Christians. So he says in chapter one, you're suffering unjustly for your Christian profession of faith. You're suffering unjustly for righteousness.

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Look to Christ. In chapter two, look to Christ. Three, four, five, all the way through the epistle. That's what Peter points them to. Set your mind on Christ.

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Look to Christ. Keep him in your mind. Keep him in your mind's eye. That is what we are encouraged to do. We'll find it here again in Hebrews chapter three.

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So what was all that about? It was all to point you back to Christ, but in Hebrews chapter three, verse one.

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So that's what we're looking at today. Therefore, holy brethren, read the passage with me again. And partakers of a heavenly calling, consider

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Jesus the apostle and high priest of our confession. Now, in that verse, verse one, there is a description there of Christians, holy brethren and partakers of a heavenly calling.

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Two things that describe Christians. At the end of the verse, there are two things there that describe Christ. He is the apostle and the high priest of our confession.

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Do you see it there? Now, if you take out the two descriptions of Christians and you take out the two descriptions of Christ, what you are left with in the middle is one singular command composed of three words.

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Therefore, consider Jesus. See what he's doing? Therefore, consider Jesus. Now, the reality of the therefore points us back to something that has come before.

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And we spent last week kind of summarizing chapter two, but also preparing the way and laying some groundwork for chapters three and four.

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Verse one of chapter three does two things. It sort of summarizes, therefore, consider

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Jesus. It summarizes what has come in the first two chapters, but it also begins to transition and lay the groundwork for the next great comparison in the book of Hebrews, which is the comparison between Jesus and Moses.

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So that's what chapter three, verse one does. Today, we're gonna notice this command. We're gonna look at this command in chapter three, verse one.

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Therefore, consider Jesus. We're gonna see what that means. But before we do that, we're going to look at the calling of the

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Christian and then the credentials of the Christ. So we're gonna look at those two things that are used to describe believers and our calling.

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And then we're gonna look at the two things that are used to describe Christ. And then once we have looked at both of those, we're gonna step back and say, then what does it mean to consider

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Jesus? So that's our outline for this morning. The calling of the Christian, the credentials of the Christ, and then a command to consider.

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If you love alliteration, which I don't, except when I do, then that's a great outline. The calling of the

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Christian, the credentials of the Christ, and then the command to consider. All right, let's look first of all at the calling of the

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Christian in chapter three, verse one. He uses two things to designate what is true of us. We are holy brethren, and we have been called with a heavenly calling.

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We are partakers of a heavenly calling. Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, those two things are what are used here to describe

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Christians. The word, therefore, there points us back to, as I said, back in chapter two, verse one. And there are a lot of things here in this one opening few phrases of chapter three that remind us that the chapter division there in the text is an artificial one, right?

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The word, therefore, is a conclusion. He has laid some groundwork in chapter two. What has he said? This one who as God took upon himself human flesh was made lower than the angels so that he might come and suffer and die and restore to you the dominion that you and I lost in the garden.

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He's going to give that back to us. And then having done that, he does this by incorporating this into his family.

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So we are called brethren and God is our father and we are the sanctified and holy ones. He's referenced all of that.

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And this Jesus who has done all of this has made satisfaction for our sins before the father in offering a propitiatory sacrifice to satisfy the wrath of God on our behalf so that we can be called brethren.

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And this one who has done all of this is at the same time, our faithful and merciful high priest who stands even now interceding to God and is able to come to the help of those who need him.

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Having been tempted himself and yet remained without sin, he is able to come to our aid. Therefore, look to this

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Jesus. Which Jesus? The one who was made lower than the angels, right? He restored our dominion, defeated death, defeated the devil, removed the fear of death, taken all that out of the way, made a propitiation for us and now sits at the father's right hand making intercession.

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Fix your eyes on this one. All he has done for two chapters is point us to this one who is greater than all of the angels, who himself is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his nature.

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That has been his focus. And that is what he has told us about. And now getting to the end of that, he says, therefore, since all of this is true regarding the

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Lord Jesus Christ, consider him. Fix your attention on him. That is what the

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Christian is called to do. Look to him. There are other connections here with the previous context. You'll notice the reference to the word holy.

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We saw that up in chapter two, verse 11, when we talked about what it means to be sanctified and who are the ones who are sanctified and who is the one who does the sanctifying, that word sanctify there being the root word of the word for holiness or to make holy.

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There's a reference there to the word brethren in chapter three, verse one, we're holy brethren. And we saw all the way through the end of chapter two, this continual reference to brethren and the family of God and being of one father and Christ is not ashamed to call us brothers and what that means.

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That is, again, familial language. And then we saw the reference to, in chapter three, verse one, to the high priest.

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We saw that mentioned in chapter two, verse 17. So holy and brethren and high priest, this is all language that he has used at the end of chapter two.

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And so he is obviously summing all of that up in chapter three, verse one. Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider

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Jesus who was two things, the apostle and the high priest of our confession. So all of this now is coming together.

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And what does he want us to do with all of the information we have in the first two chapters? To consider or to think carefully and to fix our attention and our focus on the

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Lord Jesus Christ. So believers are called two things, holy brethren and partakers of heavenly calling. What does it mean to be holy brethren?

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This is a unique combination of terms used nowhere else in scripture. What's interesting is that continually in scripture, we are called brethren.

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That word is used all the time, frequently in the New Testament. And in scripture, we are called sanctified or holy.

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We are set apart ones. That language is used frequently in scripture, but only here in this passage are the terms holy and brethren put together in one place and used in that way.

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We are called holy brethren. We're called holy everywhere. We're called brethren everywhere. Here we are actually, these are brought together and we're called holy brethren.

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There's one possible other exception and it is a textual variant. And I'm not gonna get into this. In 1

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Thessalonians 5, verse 27, where depending on your translation, you'll notice it's either rendered holy brethren or just brethren.

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And that's a textual variant. But other than that rare possible exception, this is the only place in the New Testament where this language is used of us.

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And yet it seems the most natural way to refer to Christians. Is not holy brethren the most natural and fundamental description that you could give of the church of Christ?

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Yeah, I don't know. I've been to some churches that I'm not sure they're my brethren and I'm not sure that they're all that holy. Well, that's not as it should be.

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But if we understand what the church is and what the church was designed to be, and if we understand what our relationship to Christ is and our relationship to each other is, and we are living in biblical harmony and fellowship and unity with one another, doesn't the term holy brethren perfectly capture exactly what it is that God has made us a part of?

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We are holy in the sense that we are the people of God who have been marked out, set apart and made holy. Chapter 2, verse 11 says that he,

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Christ, is sanctifying us, his bride, and making us holy so that he might seat us spotless before his throne with exceeding joy on that day in Christ Jesus.

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That is the goal of our salvation, is ultimately holiness. We've been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be what?

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Holy and blameless before him in love, first Ephesians 1 says. So that is the goal of our salvation is that holiness.

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And then having been saved and redeemed, Christ has welcomed us into his family and he's not ashamed to call us brethren. So he brings us into his family.

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And so these two things characterize us. We are holy and we are brethren. Is that the way that you think of the other people around you on a

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Sunday morning? I sure hope it is. This ought to inform how we think about our worship service. We're coming here to worship with whom?

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A bunch of strangers? No, we are the family. No, admittedly, we are not the only part of the family of God.

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This family of God is spread out around the globe, but we are a small local representation and manifestation of that family of God.

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And so we've been brought into that relationship. So on Sunday mornings, when I'm getting ready for church, I come here thinking to myself,

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I'm coming to worship the great triune God who is holy and I'm to do this with my brethren.

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And I am to pursue with you holiness and you are to pursue with me holiness. This is the goal.

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This is the goal of what we ought to be doing as a church. As we progress in our own sanctification, in the preaching of the word, the reading of the word, in our worship, in our fellowship, in our service, we are here to express the holiness that God has put in us by setting us apart and making us holy.

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As he sanctifies us, we pursue a loving and holy relationship as the family of God. This ought to also reflect our obedience.

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That is to say that when I am tempted to sin, this is what should pop into my mind. How can

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I sin against my great elder brother, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has promised to me the inheritance in glory and thus defame and deface the name of Christ with my brethren who are also pursuing that holiness.

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See, my sin and your sin doesn't just affect me and you, it affects all of us. There's a corporateness to what sin does to us.

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And so I resist temptation and I resist sin, recognizing that I'm part of a holy family.

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I have a responsibility to you, and you have a responsibility to me, and you have a responsibility to each other to pursue holiness as the family of God.

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It should inform how we think about our worship, it should inform how we think about our service, it should inform how we think about our obedience, right?

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I'm part of a holy family. And I don't mean that in a Catholic sense. I mean that in a literal sense.

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We are part of the family of God. So all of my allegiances as a believer have changed. All of them have changed.

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This is not my family. Look around you, this is your family. This is the local expression of your family. It's not all of your family.

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Just like when you go to a family reunion once a year, you don't see all of your family there, but you see a pretty good representation of it, a pretty measured representation of your family.

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This is our family. And we are called to pursue holiness because we are holy brethren. The second thing he uses to describe us there is the phrase partakers of a heavenly calling, partakers of a heavenly calling.

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We're gonna walk backwards through that phrase, right? Partakers of a heavenly calling, we're gonna start with a calling. What is a calling?

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That word calling is the Greek word kleisis, and it comes from a family of words that has to do with calling or summoning something.

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If you've ever heard the term elect or ecclesiology, it kind of comes from that family, that the idea of election itself is to call somebody out of something, to choose them, and thus with that choosing, there was a calling.

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The word that we use for the study of church, ecclesiology, ecclesiology, ecclesis, ecc meaning out of, and kleisis meaning to call.

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So the church, even when you say, I'm going to church, or this represents the church, you can't even use the term church without acknowledging the doctrine of sovereign election.

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Can't do it. You can try to do it, but the very word church itself refers to people who are called out of darkness and into light and summoned together.

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So the ecclesia, the church, the ecclesia, as us gather here together, we are the group of the called out ones who have been called out of darkness and into light, out of the kingdom of Satan, into the kingdom of God.

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God has summoned us and we have come to him. That is what the calling is. And that is the way that the word calling is used in scripture.

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Ephesians four, verse one, I implore you as the prisoner of the Lord to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called.

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The Christians have been called with a calling. I'm gonna give you a couple of references to this calling in scripture. I'm not gonna read all of them.

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There are 10 of them. I'm gonna give you five. Ephesians four, verse four says, there's one body and one spirit just as you were called in one hope of your calling.

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Second Thessalonians 1 .11, to this end also we pray for you always that our God will count you worthy of your calling and fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power.

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Second Timothy 1 .9, he has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was granted to us in Christ Jesus from all eternity.

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Second Peter 1 .10, therefore brethren be all the more diligent to make certain about his calling and choosing of you.

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For as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble. Did you hear how calling and choosing is connected there? Make certain of his calling and his choosing of you.

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In six out of the 10 times in that word calling is used, it is used in the immediate context of describing the doctrine of God's sovereign election.

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These two things go together. God's electing purposes, his choosing purposes, and his calling of his people.

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These two things can never be divorced from one another in our mind's eye or in doctrinal theology. God does not choose a people and then not call them to his son.

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Neither does he call a bunch of people into his kingdom whom he has first not chosen. These two things are two sides of the same coin and they must and always do go together.

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So we have been called with a holy calling, six out of those 10 references, it is explicitly referring to God's sovereign choice and his good choice in choosing to save sinners for himself.

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You are called out of darkness because God has summoned you out of darkness. You're called into light because God has summoned you out of light.

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There was in you at some point in your conversion experience, a time in which

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God drew you to himself and called you out of that darkness and that light and you came to the son, the

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Lord Jesus Christ. That was the expression of God's calling of you and you were called to the holy calling. And it is a heavenly calling with which we have been called.

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Notice the word heavenly here, it describes working backwards again from calling. And we're talking about our heavenly calling.

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The heavenly, the word heavenly there describes both the origin of this call and the destiny of this call. In other words, it is a call that comes from heaven.

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It's not a call that is issued necessarily from me. It's not a call that is issued from other people. The calling that results in one salvation is a calling of God that originates in heaven.

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Specifically, it originates in his plan and his purpose and his grace, which was granted to us in Christ from all eternity.

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You and I are not called because of our effort or our ability or our intellect or spiritual discernment.

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You and I are not called because of anything virtuous or good or meritorious in us. You and I are called because God by his grace in his sovereignty, according to his purposes before time began, issued that call.

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And you and I in time are drawn to the son and it accomplishes God's purposes in calling us to himself.

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First Peter one, two through nine says that you are chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

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You once were not a people, now you are a people. You once had not received mercy and now you have received mercy. Why? Because God has called you out of darkness and into his light by his grace.

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A calling is a heavenly calling. It comes from heaven and it originates in the plan of purposes of God, which is why

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Paul says in second Timothy one, nine, that he has called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was granted to us in Christ Jesus.

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The calling that is being described by the author of Hebrews is a calling that originates in the purpose and the grace of God, a grace that was granted to his people from all eternity.

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That is what the text says. You go back as far as you can into eternity past before the moment of creation, there was a grace that was granted to God's people, those whom he has chosen.

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And he calls them to himself and it originates in his purpose. So it is a call that originates from heaven.

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It is also a call that directs us toward heaven. Romans three, eight verse 30 says, those whom he has predestined, he called.

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Those whom he has called, he also justified. And those whom he has justified, he also glorified. There's a chain there. All of these things are true of these people whom we are saying are called.

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They are predestined according to the foreknowledge and the foreloving of God, Romans eight verse 29, okay?

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Those whom are predestined, he calls. Those whom he calls, he justifies. He declares them righteous. And those whom he justifies, he eventually will glorify, right?

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There's no break in this chain. There's no group of people that make it partway down this chain and never fulfill that calling.

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We have been called from heaven, from his purposes and his grace, granted to us in eternity past.

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We have been called from heaven and we have been called to heaven. And there is no point in this chain of redemption that God has laid out in Romans eight.

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There's no point at which he drops, lets go of the chain or the links break and he doesn't fulfill his purpose or he messes it up or he changes his mind or he decides to do something else.

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There's no point in that, where that happens. Those whom he's predestined, he calls. Those whom he calls, he justifies.

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Those whom he justifies, he glorifies. Those who are the called in this sense are those who have been summoned out of heaven, by heaven itself, out of darkness and into light.

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First Thessalonians 2 .12, so that you would walk in a manner worthy of God who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

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This is what we're called to, his kingdom and his glory. Second Thessalonians 2 .14, it was for this, he called you through our gospel that you may gain the glory of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. We are called to gain a glory. Aren't you glad that everybody whom God calls, that he justifies and then glorifies?

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Aren't you glad for that? Why? Because this calling is not to just sort of change your lifestyle or modify your behavior in some way.

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The calling that God has called us with is a calling unto glory. God has said to you individually, if you're in Christ, he has said to you, come out of darkness and into light.

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And the calling of God is sufficient to make that happen. And he has brought you out of that and made you one with himself. 1

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Peter 5 .10 says, after you've suffered a little while, the God of all grace who called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

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In other words, those who he called, he justified, those who he justified, he also glorified. This process, this steps in which this takes place, our salvation, calling is essential to it.

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So we have been called by heaven, we have been called to heaven, and our calling is both individual and corporate at the same time.

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Because you are in Jesus Christ, it can be said that all of those who are in Christ Jesus have been called, that is the church, we have been called in this sense unto eternal glory, and he will glorify himself with us.

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It is also true that we have been called to Christ in an individual sense. In July of 1985, the

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Lord Jesus Christ called my name. And as one who was his sheep by his choosing, because the father gave me to him, my eyes came up from the mud, and I beheld the glory of Christ, and I saw it as irresistibly precious, and I had to have it,

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July of 1985. Now, I had heard the gospel a number of times before that, but never once did it strike my heart like it did in July of 1985.

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But in July of 1985, I heard the shepherd's voice. And I came to him, this was his promise, my sheep hear my voice, and they come to me, and I give them eternal life.

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What is the active voice of the shepherd? It's the shepherd saying, hey, Jim, hey, Dave, hey,

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Jess, hey, John, calling them to himself. And we come, why? Because we are irresistibly drawn to the

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Savior's voice because of our nature that we are his sheep, and that we are not goats like the Pharisees who did not hear him, did not heed his voice.

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So we are to share this both corporately and individuals because we are companions in his eternal kingdom.

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And this is what the word partakers means. We are partakers of a heavenly calling. The word partakers there is not the word that you might think is used oftentimes in New Testament for fellowshipping or enjoying something together.

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It's a word that is used to describe a partnership or a companionship in something. It's used six times in the New Testament, five of the six times it's used in the book of Hebrews.

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It's only used one time in all of the New Testament outside of the book of Hebrews, and that's in Luke chapter five, verse seven, where it says that the disciples who were their partners or their companions in their fishing industry, in the other boat, they called to their companions or partners in the other boat to come and help them because their boat was full.

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Remember that story from Luke chapter five? So they were partners or companions in a fishing ministry. Now that means that they shared in this.

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So all of the other times that this word is used in the New Testament, it's used in the book of Hebrews, it is translated companions once.

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We saw it back in chapter one, verse nine, where it speaks of Christ's companions or those who share something with him. And all of the other times it's translated as partakers.

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We are partakers of this heavenly calling, meaning that we share something together corporately as a body. We share something together.

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And we share this by the way, with saints from all the ages. And we share it with saints from all the ages, from all around the world.

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We all partake and we are companions and partners in something. And that is the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. We all share this calling together.

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You and I share the same calling, right? What is it a calling to? It's a calling to his glory. We get the inheritance that is promised to the son.

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He's giving us that inheritance and it becomes ours as we are called to that. So what are we done to do in terms of considering Jesus in light of this?

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We are to consider or fix our minds and our hearts upon him who has called us with this holy calling, this heavenly calling out of darkness, out of impurity and into holiness.

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That is what we are called to do. For persecuted believers, this would be a recognition or a reminder to them of where they were headed.

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It helps in the midst of suffering to keep your mind on something other than the suffering. It helps in the midst of suffering to be able to say, look, here in this world, we are in a hostile world.

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But really my citizenship is in heaven. And that's where I'm headed. My time here is only temporary.

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And I ought to be willing and I am called to let everything around me go for King and country, a heavenly

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King and a heavenly country who has called me with a heavenly calling to a heavenly inheritance in heaven forever.

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That's ultimately where we are headed. So if I keep that in mind and I'm progressing toward that, then suffering and trial and temptations and tribulations that assault me in this life, that they can only affect me in a certain sense and to a certain degree, because ultimately my mind is not fixed on those things which are here.

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They're fixed on things that are heaven. And so we have been called not to think in terms of this world being our home and this world being our arena or our area of all of our activity and our destiny, but ultimately our destiny is somewhere else.

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So we are holy brethren. We are partakers of a heavenly calling. That's how he describes us.

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Now let's look before our time is up at two more points. All right, first, how is

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Jesus described? He's called the apostle and the high priest of our confession. There are two titles here, apostle and high priest.

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This is, I love this passage for this reason. There's so much unique stuff here at the beginning of chapter three. This is the only place in all the

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New Testament where Jesus is called an apostle. And what does it mean that he is an apostle? Is he just like Paul and Peter and James and John and Andrew, just like that?

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What does it mean by apostle? The word apostle means one who is sent to represent another. And it's used in the

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New Testament of people who were apostles of Christ. And we would put a capital A, apostle of Christ, meaning they were sent and directly commissioned by Christ.

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Paul speaks of himself in that way as being an apostle, not merely sent from men, not just a messenger of the church as a small a apostle, but an apostle of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, who himself was called by that heavenly vision. And then there is the small a apostles, the little apostles that you were.

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Barnabas is called an apostle, but never in the sense that Paul is called an apostle. Barnabas was one who was sent by Paul or one who was sent by the churches.

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So the word apostle just means one who was sent. And it's odd in here that it is applied to the Lord Jesus Christ, but you can see that it is entirely appropriate that it should be applied to the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Because if there is anybody whom we would describe as one who is sent with a heavenly commission to represent another, it would be the

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Lord Jesus Christ. 41 times in the gospel of John, Jesus refers to the fact that the father sent him.

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He refers to himself as one who was sent. 41 times in the gospel of John. This is one of the main themes of the gospel of John.

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So that the Pharisees could reject him and his own people could reject him, but Jesus continually affirmed, look, I have been sent from God with a message from God.

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And even in the context here of the book of Hebrews, in chapter one, we find out that Jesus is the perfect revelation of the father.

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Why? Because he is sent from heaven to reveal the father to us. And so he speaks in a way that no other prophet, no vision, no dream from the

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Old Testament could ever do. He speaks in a way as one who is himself God in human flesh, revealing to us perfectly the will of God.

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So Jesus was sent to reveal the father, to preach the good news, to save his sheep, to redeem sinners. He was sent to be the light of the world.

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Those are all the ways in which the word sent is used in the gospel of John. And Jesus is one who is sent in a sense greater than even

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Moses was sent. So it is appropriate, ultimately so, to refer to the Lord Jesus as one who was sent, but it is also appropriate, though the scripture never uses the term, to speak of Moses as one who was sent.

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Because in Exodus chapter three, verse 10, God, when he called Moses, said, therefore come now and I will send you to Pharaoh.

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He said later in chapter seven, I think it's verse one, I will make you as a God to Pharaoh. God appointed

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Moses and sent Moses to do what? To deliver the people of Israel, to reveal the will of God to them, and to lead them out of their bondage in Egypt.

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And he performed signs and wonders in the midst of the land of Egypt, to authenticate his message. Does that sound familiar?

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What did the Lord Jesus do? He was sent from another place, to where God's people were at, to deliver his people from sin and from their bondage.

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He revealed to them the person and the nature of God, and he did signs and wonders to authenticate his message.

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The Lord Jesus Christ is sent just as Moses is sent. So he's setting up the comparison in the rest of this chapter in chapter four, this comparison between Jesus and Moses.

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He's setting it up here by establishing, we think of Moses as being one who was sent, but listen, there is one who is the apostle, the apostle of apostles.

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He's the king of kings, the Lord of lords, and the apostle of apostles. Of all the people sent, he has been sent with a higher commission, a higher calling, a higher mission, and a higher representation of God than anybody who was an apostle before him.

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He's setting up that comparison there. So there are similarities here between Jesus and Moses, but there are also distinct differences between Jesus and Moses.

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You see, Moses was in the house. This is what the passage goes on to speak. Jesus built the house.

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There's the difference. So yeah, there's similarities. Both of them are sent. But Moses was sent as a servant of the house.

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Jesus is sent as the son who is over the house and himself the builder of the house. And that's the analogy that's given in verses two, three, and through verse six.

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So the second way that Jesus described here is not just as an apostle or the apostle, but as the high priest of our confession. And I mentioned a couple of weeks ago when we talked about the high priesthood and Jesus being a high priest, that we are going to have a chance to examine that and explore that thoroughly as we get into chapter five, six, seven, eight, nine, and 10 that little short section there in the middle of the book of Hebrews, where that is the main subject of the high priesthood of Jesus.

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So we will deal with that later on. And I'm gonna pass over exactly what a high priest is. It is sufficient to say that a priest was one who represented men before God in offering a sacrifice on their behalf.

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And we're gonna work that out as we get later on in the book of Hebrews. But I want you to focus in on that word confession. What is a confession?

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The word confession in the Greek, it's homologia, and it refers to homo meaning the same and logia meaning to speak or that which is spoken a word.

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So it means literally confession means to speak the same. So there is a Christian confession. There's something that Christians confess and that all

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Christians confess. All Christians confess that God is a triune God, that the second person in the Trinity stepped down out of heaven to come here and dwell among us.

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He was fully God and fully man, that he died on a cross, made propitiation for sins. He was buried on the third day, he rose again, and he is returning again to judge the living and the dead.

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That is the common confession of all Christian. If you deny some element of that confession, you're not a

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Christian. And the degree to which you deviate from that confession is the degree to which you deviate from Christian truth.

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And so there is one thing that all Christians speak the same. Now, do we all speak the same on the nature and the purpose of baptism?

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No. Do we all speak the same on what's gonna happen in the end times? No, we don't. Do we all speak the same on what the church should be, the structure of the church should be?

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No, we don't. There's a lot of things that Christians do not speak the same on, but there is a collection of things upon which, if we do not speak the same thing, then we do not share any common inheritance.

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We're not partakers of the same thing. So we share the same heavenly calling. We also share a common or a same confession.

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Ultimately, our confession is that he who is God was made lower than the angels so that he might die on a cross, atone for sins, rise again, and give to us the dominion that we lost in Adam, in the garden.

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That's Hebrews chapter two. That's what we confess commonly together. That is the common Christian confession. Those are the things that we hold together as believers, and the degree to which we deviate from that is the degree to which we are not confessing

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Christian truth, the truth that makes one a Christian by confessing it and understanding it and believing it.

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There's an ecumenical movement in our day that seeks to establish a common confession or speak the same thing on almost anything but Christ, whether it's racial reconciliation or social justice or a political movement or environmental concerns or political concerns or whatever they are.

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Those are things that people are trying to unite Christians around. We need to all be opposed to abortion.

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It's good to be opposed to abortion. You ain't gotta find anybody who would pray more fervently or want more earnestly to see abortion abolished from our land than me, but I cannot stand with a

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Roman Catholic priest in one arm and a Mormon in another arm to oppose abortion because my common confession is not that I want abortion opposed.

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My common confession is that Jesus Christ is Lord and salvation is by grace through faith and faith alone.

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That's what makes me a Christian. Now, those who confess those things, I'm glad to stand arm in arm and oppose all the evils of our world on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, whatever it is, but I cannot lay aside my common

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Christian profession and in the name of a Christian profession, agree on something entirely that has nothing at all to do with the gospel and the

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Lord Jesus Christ. I can work as an individual apart from them, as a

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Christian apart from them in working in all those activities, but I cannot pretend that what binds us together are economic, environmental, social, racial issues.

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Those things are all secondary to the common Christian confession that we have, which is the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And we cannot deviate from that because our confession is not a set of abstract doctrines.

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Our confession is not a set of environmental or economic or ecological concerns.

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That's not our common confession. All those are worldly concerns. We've been called to the heavenly calling. This world and all that it contains offers us nothing, nothing.

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And the sooner we get ready to let all of this go for king and country, the better off we will be because we are focused on our heavenly calling and our common confession.

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So the third thing, we've looked at the calling of the Christian, the credentials of the Christ, and now let's look third at this command to consider.

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So now that we've studied what it means to be a holy brethren or holy brother, you can't be brethren, but you can be a brother, and a partaker of a heavenly calling, and we've looked at who

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Christ is, the apostle, the one sent from God to represent God to us, and a high priest, one who represents us to God.

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He's the perfect apostle, he's the perfect high priest. Now, what are we to do with that information? Therefore, he says, consider

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Jesus. The word consider there is a word that means to think or to consider or to think carefully about.

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It doesn't just mean say, okay, yeah, I thought of Jesus today, good, I'm good to go. No, it means to fix your mind and to think methodically, carefully, diligently, and systematically about this one who is revealed in Hebrews one and two.

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That is what we are to do. To think upon Christ and to think carefully about him. And it is an exercise of the mind, and it means that I intentionally put him and his kingdom, and his interests, and his glory, his name, his commands, and my love and affection for him above everything else, if I am to put him at the center of it.

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I am, as one who has been called to the heavenly calling, and one who belongs to a holy family, to fix my focus and my attention on he who is the great apostle and the great high priest of our common confession.

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That's the command. And in doing that, I am meditating upon him and setting my mind on him.

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Imagine what you would have to meditate and fix your attention on if all you had was

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Hebrews one and two. Imagine for a moment you had no other scripture, all you had preserved for you was

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Hebrews one and two. What would you be called to fix your mind on? This glorious truth that the one who is the radiance of God's glory took upon himself human flesh to live a perfect sinless life, to give to me his righteousness.

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He died on a cross and suffered to make satisfaction for all my sin. And now he has ascended to heaven where he sits at God's right hand and makes intercession for me and is able to come to my help and my aid in my time of need.

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That is magnificent truth, is it not? And if all we had was Hebrews one and two, that in itself would occupy my mind for the rest of my life if I had nothing else.

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Just that alone could get me through any trial, any temptation, any tribulation. Just that true.

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So in my time of trial, in your time of tribulation, fellow partakers of a heavenly blessing and a heavenly calling, those who are belong to this holy family, what are we called to do?

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Find that perfect pattern, that quick fix to our sinful trials and temptations. Supposed to find that next program, that next prayer to pray that will get us through the next day, the next study that we need to go to to give us that little nudge to get us through to the next week or the next conference.

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What are we supposed to do? Consider Jesus. Fix your mind and your heart upon him who was

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God, who is God, who lived a perfect life, died in your place, rose again, seated at God's right hand.

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You are able to do that. If you and I could discipline ourselves to do that one thing, everything else will fade away.

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Everything else will pale by comparison. Let's pray together. Our gracious God, we pray that you would fix our hearts and our minds upon Christ and Christ alone.

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We have been saved by him and him alone. We are sanctified by him and his word alone. Your spirit does all of this work in us and we are sustained each and every day because of what

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Christ and Christ alone has done. Our faith is sure because of what Christ and Christ alone has done and our salvation is secure because of what

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Christ and Christ alone has done. So you have perfectly given us everything that we need and we pray that you would take our minds and our hearts and our attention off of everything and anything else which distracts us from the

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Lord Jesus Christ so that we may consider him and fix our minds upon him, that we may run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes upon Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

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Be glorified in your church and through our obedience as we seek to do this for the honor of Christ in whose great name we pray, amen.