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Sermon: The Faithfulness Of The Son Date: February 25, 2024, Morning Text: Hebrews 3:5–6 Series: Hebrews Preacher: Conley Owens Audio: https://storage.googleapis.com/pbc-ca-sermons/2024/240225-TheFaithfulnessOfTheSon.aac
If you have that, please stand for the reading of God's word. Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, who is faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also is 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 the 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.
You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for Jesus Christ. We thank you for this revelation of him that we have here in Hebrews, and we ask that you would impress the importance of these verses on our hearts, that we might hold Christ highly as we ought, and that we might receive all the blessings that come from knowing him as we ought, knowing you, in Jesus' name, amen.
So true happiness, true happiness being the state where mankind has everything he needs, is perfectly blessed. What that is, is to know God. That's what Jesus himself said, is that knowing the Father is eternal life.
So to know him, to know him both intellectually and experientially, and this is what this book is about. It is about knowing God. It is about the way that he has revealed himself. The book starts off with this phrase, long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son.
He has spoken to us by his Son. So he's spoken before by the prophets, now he has spoken by his Son. And Hebrews 1 and 2 address that by speaking of angels, about the angels who are messengers from God and the difference between them and Jesus Christ.
And now here, in Hebrews chapter 3, it speaks of, it illustrates this truth again by looking to Moses, the prophet Moses, compared to Jesus Christ, who as we saw before in verse 1, is called an apostle, one sent by God.
And so the way to truly know God, to know God deeply and intimately, to know him both intellectually and experientially, is to know him through his Son, is to know him through Jesus Christ. And that has many, it has many implications for the life of a Christian.
And so in speaking of this revelation that we have through Jesus Christ, this passage speaks of faithfulness. Now as we've seen before, because we've looked at the first four verses of this chapter, faithfulness has a deep relationship to God's revelation, to the clarity of revelation that he provides.
And so once again, I would like us to look at Numbers 12 that this passage alludes to. Please go ahead and turn to Numbers chapter 12. In Numbers chapter 12, Miriam and Aaron question whether or not Moses should have the prominent position that he has, and whether or not maybe they should share that position with him.
And the Lord responds in this way in verse 6, and he said, "'Hear my words. If there is 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.'". There's that phrase that's used in Hebrews 3, 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.
Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them, and he departed.'". So you see, there is a relationship between faithfulness and clarity of revelation.
Moses was faithful in all God's house, and thus when he spoke with God, when he communed with God, and he relayed this information to the people, it was not fuzzy ideas that he had received in dreams.
It was not revelation that, while being perfectly true, was not very specific or was unclear or vague. Rather, it is very clear revelation. He's given all the dimensions of the tabernacle, all kinds of specifics, as God speaks to him face to face.
And because he is faithful in all God's house, he has this clarity of revelation. And so Jesus Christ being faithful in all God's house, in a greater way, there's an even greater clarity in revelation.
And what is needed here is not just to intellectually know the truth, not merely to acquire facts from God as we read his word and we see what Jesus Christ has said, either directly or through his apostles.
But we need to have that truth in our hearts, understanding it fully and spiritually, experiencing the goodness of it in a way that only God can accomplish in our hearts. First Corinthians 2 .14 says,.
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. So by our own senses, by our own brains, you might understand the things that are spoken. You might even assent to some of these things, intellectually speaking.
But do you really know them? Do you really have them in your heart the way you ought? It is impossible without the work of the Spirit. They are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. So what is needed is not just to know some truths from Scripture.
What is needed is not even just the truth of Jesus Christ, factually speaking. What is needed is to have his own mind. We can only have his mind by knowing him, by knowing him directly and not knowing him just as something pointing to him, just as Moses points to Christ.
We need to know Christ himself. Now, there are many ways that people mistake this, and they are guilty of what the author of Hebrews is writing against. You know, this original audience, they're wrapped up in the temple ceremonies, etc., and they think that these are the, you know, they're entertaining the idea that these are sufficient way of life, that Christ may not be that special, maybe he's just another prophet.
But there are various ways that people do this with God's Word where they don't understand that the purpose is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and that the way to truly understand it is to have the mind of Christ.
So one of those ways is they see the Bible as something given by, as something that's sort of a vessel for human teachers, right? As human teachers teach wise things, they might grab different passages of Scripture as an illustration, and people can be very enamored with the teachers themselves, these either celebrity pastors or even those outside the faith, and they become enamored with those.
And at that point, the Scripture is not pointing to Christ so much as it is pointing to some mere human being. It is not something where the human is a vessel for God's revelation, but rather God's revelation is a vessel for that human.
Now, another way that people transgress what Hebrews is talking about is they think of the Bible as a, as a rule book. You know, it's this list of rules that I've got to do, and this is what makes me right before God.
Of course, you have that with modern-day Judaizers, you know, those who would look back to, you know, these cleanliness gnolls that we just read a moment ago and think, by keeping these, I am clean before the Lord, I am right before the Lord.
Even apart from going that direct, from so directly going against what the author of Hebrews is talking about, one can treat the Bible in a similar way, thinking that this is the means by which I make myself right before the Lord through my own, through my own diligence, through my own works, and they, and they may not be following the exact laws of Moses, but they're following other statements in Scripture in a way where their trust is ultimately in themselves and not in the Lord, and the trust is in themselves for salvation as they are following these rules.
Another way that people violate this is they read the book in a very, in a very flat way where they do not understand the context of Scripture, the full context of Scripture being one that is fulfilled in Christ, where all things are pointing to Christ, all things are to help us know Him better, and they read passages in the Old Testament that don't seem related to Jesus at all because maybe they're new in the faith and they haven't seen how much the New Testament interprets the Old Testament to be about Christ, and so they aren't able to glean from the Old Testament all the things it says about who Jesus is that you might know Him more fully, and so they're not taking full advantage of the Word of God, and they see, and in this way, they're pitting Moses and Jesus as equals in a sense.
Maybe one is higher than the other, but they're of the same species. You know, they're not ultimately radically different, one transcending the other in the kind of faithfulness that we're talking about, in the kind of revelation, in the kind of truth and the disclosure of who God is.
You know, Moses talks about who God is. Jesus talks about who God is. Maybe Jesus' revelation is better than Moses, but, you know, just being better is not what we're going for here. There is a radical difference between the self-disclosure God is giving through Moses and the self-disclosure God is giving through Jesus Christ because it is through Jesus Christ that one sees the Father Himself.
It is through knowing Jesus Christ that one knows the Father. You can know Moses all you want, but knowing Moses will not allow you to know the Father. And as Miriam and Aaron are guilty of this way of looking at faithfulness and seeing their faithfulness as similar to His, and considering how we might compare faithfulness, either of Moses and Jesus or of Jesus and someone else, what is God's response to them as they do not recognize the faithfulness of Moses?
You know, it's said there in that passage, said there in Hebrews 12, when the cloud removed from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous like snow. And Aaron turned toward Miriam, and behold, she was leprous.
So leprosy came upon them both for not recognizing the faithfulness of Moses and for questioning God's purposes in His special revelation that He's giving through Moses. Now how much worse is it for the one who does not recognize the faithfulness of Jesus Christ and does not fully appreciate the revelation of Jesus Christ?
There is a fate far worse than leprosy that is coming to those who do not recognize the gospel that is being given through Jesus Christ and do not fully embrace it and know the goodness of that salvation.
And this is precisely what it said at the beginning of Hebrews 2. So the author of Hebrews, talking about how Jesus is greater than the angels, says in Hebrews 2, for since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable and every transgression and disobedience received just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?
So in other words, okay, the law came by angels. This is something that's not explicitly stated in the New Testament, but it's said a couple of times in the—or not explicitly stated in the Old Testament, but it is said explicitly a couple of times in the New Testament that the law was given to Moses by angels.
Okay, and it said if the law is given to him by angels and people reject the law and meet a terrible fate, how much worse is it for the one who receives the gospel from Jesus and then rejects it? How much worse is that faith?
And then we have a very similar line of logic here. If what Moses gave is being rejected and his faithfulness is rejected and that leads to leprosy, how much worse is it for the one who hears the revelation that's coming from Jesus Christ, the goodness of the gospel, and it rejects it?
So much worse. And so these faithfulnesses, this faithfulness between the one and the other, are not comparable in that way, but it is a completely different kind of faithfulness that is spoken of here.
It says in verse 5, now Moses was faithful in all God's house as a servant. So it's describing his mode of faithfulness. How is he, in what way is he faithful? He's faithful as a servant. So he is faithful in all God's house, you know, all the things that have to do with the house of God, the house of God being interpreted here as his people, not talking about the tabernacle, though Moses is associated with the tabernacle.
It talks about the house in verse 6 as being the people of God. Moses was faithful over the people. He was leading the people. He gave the people the commands that God had told him to. He'd done the things that God had told him.
He is faithful in all God's house, and he is faithful as a servant. But Christ is faithful in a different way. It says, but Christ is faithful over God's house as a son. This is a different mode of faithfulness.
This is not one is a better servant than the other, but rather one is a servant, and one is the heir of the house itself. One is serving the other, stewarding for the sake of the other, while the other, his purposes ultimately terminate in himself.
And so, consider this. Consider, you know, the differences between a servant and a master, or a magister and a minister. You know those terms, a magister means master. Minister, you're probably used to hearing about ministers in terms of pastors, but if you also think, you know, different countries have things like the Ministry of Finance, stuff like that, right?
They're administering something where they don't exactly have full authority to just change whatever they want, right? The pastor does not, as a minister of God, he doesn't have authority to just make up, you know, whatever he wants in this religion, come up with new ceremonies, come up with new revelations.
No, he's just doing what God has said. He's just stewarding what God has given, and so he is a minister. But that is very different from a magister. You know, a servant is very different from a master.
The other analogy that was given was a builder. Moses is part of the people. Moses is part of the house, but Jesus is the builder over the house. It's the difference between an author and the pen that he is writing with.
This is the difference. The faithfulness of one is transcending the faithfulness of the other, because the one owes everything to God and is doing it as a servant, and at the end of the day, he can't say that he's anything special, but rather he has only done what is required of him, as it says in Luke.
But the one who is the master and faithful over God's house, the one who is the heir and faithful over God's house, well he has, Jesus Christ has indeed gone above and beyond anything that was required of him.
He has voluntarily offered his whole life in behalf of the church, and so this faithfulness is not something that was owed as Moses was, but something that is freely given. It's something that's far beyond the faithfulness of Moses, and so recognizing that there's a different mode between these faithfulnesses, there's a difference between being faithful as a servant and being faithful as a son, being faithful as the heir over the house.
Recognizing the difference in this, we have to recognize also that there is a difference between that these are not the same. You cannot just say that Jesus is one among many prophets, and that is what a lot of people believe.
If you look at Islam, Islam teaches, they say lots of high things about Jesus, and they'll, you know, and trying to demonstrate common ground with Christians, they'll say, oh yeah, we really love Jesus.
We believe, we believe in Jesus. We think Jesus was a great prophet. Jesus is more than a great prophet. He is not to be compared as, he is not faithful as a servant as these others, other prophets are faithful as servants.
Rather, he is faithful as a son. You look at Baha 'ism, they do the same thing. Baha 'ism, if you're not familiar with it, they believe that God has had different manifestations of himself throughout time, and so Muhammad was one, and Jesus was another, and Moses was another, and Baha 'u'llah was another, and so they make Jesus just one of the prophets, but that is not, that's not who Jesus is, and even, even religions that, that make him a bit higher, you know, are willing to say that he is God, like Roman Catholicism, for example.
Ultimately, they are guilty of the same thing, where they have made Christ lesser and on the, on the equal with Moses, because what's, what's the difference between them? Oh, they're just giving, you know, they're just giving these sets of rules by which you make yourself right with God.
You know, if you're on that treadmill of works and it's not the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ that is, that is saving you, but rather it is your own works in addition to that, there's really not a, there's not a serious difference between these two, but Christ has come and he is faithful as a son, not just faithful as a servant, and so you have to be, you have to be ready to respond to people who are eager, you know, people are very eager to, people don't like to offend, they want to, they want to build bridges, and sometimes that is good, there are ways that that is good, but a lot of times they'll do that by saying nice things about Jesus, nice things about religion that sound nice, but ultimately are actually lowering him from where he truly belongs, and when someone does that to talk about how, you know, they love Jesus because he said a lot of good things, or that there are many religions that are the right way to God, and Christianity is one of them, you have to be ready to stand for the exclusivity of the Christian faith in a loving way, but in a way that that does not, by silence, act complicitly with that act that ultimately lowers him, that poses as raising him up, but is ultimately lowering him.
This is how the enemy works. The enemy rarely, directly attacks things, sometimes he occasionally does, sometimes he will occasionally directly attack, you know, you see things like Satanism and weird things like that, but those things are, those things are rare, right?
Typically the enemy is undermining Jesus Christ, he is trying to, in subtle ways, deceive people so that they would, that they would lower him while pretending like he's, he's raising him high. So as an illustration of this, consider how is it that mosquitoes are, are often, when people try to extinguish mosquitoes, you know, on a large scale, how is that often done?
You know, occasionally, occasionally they'll, you know, throw larvae aside over an area, but the more advanced techniques these days, does anyone know what they typically do? So they typically take a bunch of, typically take a bunch of, I believe it's the male mosquitoes, and they either radiate them or by some chemical means sterilize them so that they can't have offspring, and then release them in huge quantities into the environment so that the females will mate with the males, but then they won't actually have any eggs, right?
And so this is, this is how people extinguish mosquitoes, not by directly killing them, but by rather competing with them and just making the, the good mosquitoes just one of, of many of these others, and this is what, this is what the enemy is doing.
The enemy is pointing to Jesus and saying, yes, he's one good prophet, one among many. No, this is, this is a devious tactic, and you have to be able to recognize it for what it is. It's a devious tactic.
It's not a, it's not well-meant. It is not, it is not good and kind, and so what is this testimony of faithfulness? So if, if there's a relationship between faithfulness and revelation, right, if the one who is faithful receives revelation from God and is able to give it with clarity, and we have this, this faithfulness of Moses as a servant, this faithful Christ as a son, what kind of testimonies are they giving?
What, what kind of revelation are they giving? It says here in verse 5, now Moses was faithful in all God's house as a servant to testify to the things that were to be spoken later. So he is, he is testifying of the things that were to be spoken later.
What are these things to be spoken later? Hebrews 1 made this comparison a lot about the things spoken before, the things spoken now, and these last days. The things to be spoken later are the gospel.
So what is, what is Moses ultimately testifying to? What is he pointing to? He's pointing to Jesus Christ. This is, this is his whole point, is to point to Jesus Christ. But then what is, what is, and this is once again similar to what was said before about the angels.
Jesus is saving, and what is the purpose of the angels? Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who inherit salvation? So they are assisting in this salvation that Christ is producing, pointing to Christ, assisting him.
What is Moses doing? Well, Moses is pointing to Christ, assisting him in this revelation that he's giving by illustrating these things. But ultimately, these things serve to point to Christ. But this is different than Christ, who is pointing to himself, and by pointing to himself, is showing people the Father.
Yeah, John 14, 9. John 14, 9 says, have I been with you so long, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever's seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? You know, how can you say, show us the Father, if you've seen Jesus Christ?
It is through Jesus Christ that people know the Father. You know, the way Moses shows people the Father is by, by pointing elsewhere. The way Jesus Christ shows people who God is, the way that you can have a true knowledge of, of God through Jesus Christ is by looking to him himself.
And then, you know, in John also, it says that, in John also, it says that no one has ever seen God, the only one who is at the Father's side. He has made him known. You know, how has God been made known?
He's, he can't be seen. He's not made known through making himself visible to people, except in Jesus Christ. It is in Jesus Christ that one can truly know him and know who he is. You know, it's the difference between a card catalog and, and the book itself.
You can go look at the card catalog. It might say a few things about the book, but it's, it's not the book itself. To, to read Jesus, to, to look to his revelation, to understand and know him, is to have the Father himself, is to know the Father through Jesus Christ.
For those of you who are too young for card catalogs, what that was, was a long time ago when you went to a library, there were no computers. You would just look up in a little, in a little bin to find a card that would tell you where that book is.
And so, what is the, what is the content of this, of this revelation? The content of this revelation that is pointing to Jesus Christ. First, there are prophecies that are not from Moses directly, but recorded by him.
Remember, he is writing the first five books of the Bible. So, for example, the one we covered in Sunday school today, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.
He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. This is a prophecy about, about Jesus Christ, that from the woman would come one who would crush the serpent's head, that would give all men life.
And Galatians 3, 8 says that the gospel is preached beforehand to Abraham. Who's recording that? Moses is recording that. So, one way that he's recording these statements about Jesus is by recording prophecies that were given to others.
And then, he has prophecies that he is giving directly. So, Deuteronomy 18, 15 says, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers. It is to him you shall listen, just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more lest I die.
So, he prophesies that the Lord will raise up a great prophet. Who is this great prophet who will be raised up? This prophet like Moses, the one that is compared repeatedly to Moses throughout the New Testament in Hebrews, it is Jesus Christ.
And so, what is the point of his revelation? The point of his revelation is to point to Jesus Christ. And he does that even by the pattern of his own life. What does the exodus represent? If you look through scripture in the New Testament, it understands the exodus to be a picture, while it is a true narrative of people coming out of the bondage in the land of Egypt, it is also a picture of the individual as he is brought out of bondage to sin, out of bondage to death, and is saved into life through Jesus Christ.
And then you have everything about the temple, everything about the the tabernacle, the sacrifices. What are those designed to do? They're designed to show truths about Jesus Christ. They're designed to show his holiness.
Every little aspect of the design, even the ones that are hard to discern, and maybe we have to be a bit speculative to try to understand those, each one is designed to point to Jesus Christ. And the sacrifices, the spilled blood of the lamb, what do those things do?
They point to Jesus Christ. They're not Moses pointing to himself, they're Moses giving revelation from God in order to point to Jesus Christ. And how is this different than Christ's revelation, the content of his revelation?
He is pointing to himself. He's not sacrificing a lamb to tell of one to come, rather he is himself voluntarily going to the cross to reveal himself and his own mercy to others. And just the whole law points to him.
Luke 24, 44 talks about all the law, all the books of Moses pointing to Jesus Christ. So to fully understand the scripture, we must fully understand who Jesus Christ is, and to be able to see how all scripture points to him, how everything centers around him, you know, all of history centers around him.
There are a number of theologians now who feel that the, you know, they would call it the evangelical obsession with the cross is misguided. And really, if you look at the Bible, the focus is on, you know, the coming resurrection or something like that.
But that, I believe that greatly misunderstands what God is accomplishing and making there this great period of time before Christ, illustrating everything about him, pointing forward to him, and then everything in the New Testament speaking of what he has accomplished on the cross, his own death, burial, and resurrection that saves us.
This is the true center of human history. The New Testament speaks of him. The Old Testament speaks of him. You know, in order to understand the Old Testament, you have to be able to understand how it is all designed to, how it's all designed to speak of him.
Now, there is, yeah, and there are a lot of people who would accept this in some ways. They would be willing to say, well, scripture is Christotelic. You know, it all has a purpose of, you know, eventually getting to him.
But he's not necessarily there in every, you know, in every book. Like, for example, Song of Solomon, I don't think he's really there. But I think a true view of scripture, if you understand what passages like these are saying about how the prophets of old are faithful as servants to point to the son, to point to the master, then every scripture, even if it's more difficult to understand, like the Song of Solomon, everyone points to him.
Who is the great, who is the great bridegroom who rescues the bride and lavishes her in his love? It is Jesus Christ. That is how Song of Solomon points to Jesus Christ. And there are those who also misunderstand this because, because scripture all points to Jesus Christ.
And in fact, all things, having been made by him and for him and to him, point to him in a secondary way, a not-inspired way by the Holy Spirit. People are very eager to read Jesus into other things.
I don't know if you've seen this, but there are a lot of, there are a lot of churches that do sermon series called At the Movies, right, where they, where they go through various movies and talk about how we can see Jesus and redemption in various movies.
Or lots of blog posts will talk about, you know, the gospel in Frozen, things like that. And yeah, of course, anything that has, it has redemption, etc., God has structured this world in such a way that we have an appreciation for these truths that are, that are ultimately realized in Jesus Christ.
But that does not mean that those were given as ways to, to know him. And so I think this is another violation of what's being said here, that to know the Son, to understand the way that God is pointing to him, Son, and through his Son, revealing the Father, that means like that are not sober, are not sober ways of knowing who he is.
Because they are not the ways that the Spirit has given that are especially blessed to know who Jesus is. And so what is the, what is the response for us as we, as we consider these things? As we consider how our eyes need to be on Christ, we should not consider him just one of the prophets, but we should consider him as faithful as a Son, revealing himself, pointing to himself, uh, even sending his Spirit that we might have the mind of Christ and truly, fully know him, not just, uh, know facts about him.
What are the implications for us? It says here, and we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting and our hope. What is the house of God? The house of God is where his presence is, it is where his blessing dwells, it is where his favor is, this is where you want to be, this is where people are happy, this is where people are blessed.
You are his house if indeed you hold fast to your confidence and your boasting and hope. What is that hope? Later on in Hebrews, it says that Jesus Christ is the hope. What does it mean to hold fast to the hope?
It's not just to, you know, anticipate good times in some ethereal realm or anything like that, that a lot of people imagine religion to be about. Rather, holding fast to the hope is holding fast to Christ himself, the one who is our hope.
It is, um, it is proclaiming him, it is, um, enjoying him, it is, uh, eagerly awaiting his return. This is how we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope, uh, all the way till death. Uh, you know, let us, let us hold fast, even through the the most trying times, even through other times.
This is where God's blessing is, is in knowing Jesus Christ, is in knowing him that you can have eternal life. And, uh, if you do not, um, if you do not know who he is, if you do not know who he is, you must turn and consider him.
You must, uh, rush to him for mercy. Do not look to the Bible as a, as a, uh, list of rules to make yourself right before God, the way many, uh, wrongly interpret Moses, not realizing that he points to Christ, the one who can save.
Uh, do not read the Bible, um, flatly, not understanding its purposes in Jesus Christ, but rather, uh, eagerly embrace this great salvation that God has given, uh, offering his son, his son voluntarily, offering his own life in place of all those who believe that you might fully know him.
And this is illustrated, uh, most in depth in 2 Corinthians 3. I'd like you to, uh, turn there as well, if you don't mind. Please turn to 2 Corinthians 3, and I'll begin verse, reading in verse 7. It compares Moses and Jesus once again.
It says, now if the ministry of death, carved in letters of stone, this is talking about the Ten Commandments, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses's face because of its glory, which is being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory?
For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, and the ministry of righteousness, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all because of the glory that surpasses it.
For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more what is permanent have glory. So this administration of the law, this administration of this old covenant, which points to Christ, but ultimately itself cannot save, and so is called a ministry of death, this is something that is ending.
This is something that is, uh, and has ended at this point, uh, but in the time of the New Testament was ending. It is designed to point to Christ, but it is not, it is not Christ itself. It is something that has glory, but it has the, the glory of the moon rather than the glory of the sun, you know, a reflected glory.
It is not, it is not the glory of Jesus Christ, and the law is, or excuse me, the gospel is the end of the law for righteousness to all who believe, according to Romans 10 .4. In verse 12, it says, since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end, but their minds were hardened, for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ it is taken away.
Yes, to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts, but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom, and we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
So Moses, as he would talk with God, he would put a veil over his face so that people could not, would not see that glory, and when it describes this, it says, now when people read Moses, they are the ones with the veils over their faces, right?
They cannot see the glory of God, because as they are looking to Moses just as Moses, and not Moses as the one who points to Jesus Christ, their hearts remain hard. They cannot truly know who God is, they cannot commune with him face to face as Moses did with the veil up, because they are only reading this ministry of death as, not as something that points to our need for Jesus Christ, that points to who he is.
But those who turn to Christ, those who trust in him, those who understand the purpose of Moses and Moses's glorious ministry, have lifted the veil, and the veil is removed, and they know God, and they know him by the work of the Spirit in them, changing their hearts so that they might fully know him, both intellectually and experientially, that they might have that mind of Christ that Hebrews 12 14, excuse me, 2 14 describes, that mind of Christ, know Jesus fully.
John 1 17 says that the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Now, part of that I think makes a lot of sense to people. The law, okay, Moses gave the law, Jesus brings grace, right?
Moses explains all the things that God requires, yet people cannot fulfill them on their own, and so Jesus brings grace. He brings salvation for these people who are not able to live up to the standards of God, but how does truth fit in there?
He brings grace and truth. Did not Moses have truth? Did Moses say any words in here that were lies? No, this is not saying that that Moses had, uh, through Moses came the law and lies. No, through Moses came law, through Christ came grace and truth.
How does truth compare to Moses? How is it different from what Moses offered? The answer is right here in this passage in Hebrews. It is not that Moses didn't have a kind of truth, but the truth that he has is of a different category.
It is, it is true things, but it is not the revelation of God himself through the Son so that Christ may be called truth itself. There is a, there's a radical difference in the kind of truth that Moses is giving and the kind of truth that Christ is giving through his Spirit so that the veil is removed and so that we might fully know God with a full happiness that can be only provided through the Spirit and not through our own works, not through some human teacher, not through, uh, not through some gathering of facts, but only through communion with God that can be had in his Son and in his Spirit.
And as you read the Word of God, I hope that more and more you can see this and fully appreciate it. And if you, if you do not have this, if you realize that you, uh, like Aaron and Miriam, have, uh, have either explicitly or implicitly, uh, questioned the faithfulness of Christ by lowering him and making him just one of the prophets, uh, what was the cure for their leprosy?
What did they do? They spoke to Moses and they asked for him to pray for them in order that they might be saved from their leprosy. And if you find yourself in such a state where you don't know God as you ought because you have not been looking to Christ as you ought, and you have been implicitly questioning his faithfulness by treating his revelation that way, what is the answer for you?
The answer for you is the same as Aaron, for Aaron and Miriam. You go to Jesus Christ and you ask him, you ask him for forgiveness of sins that you might be made pure and that you might be able to commune with God through him who speaks to God face to face.
Amen. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that we would be able to fully know who you are through Jesus Christ. I pray that for those here who do not know him, that they would know him and thereby know you.
And I pray for those of us who already know him but do not know him as well as we ought, that you would give us more of your Spirit, that we might know him even greater, might know more factual truths about him, but even experientially to know his goodness in our life as we experience his grace and mercy to us.
And we pray for this, knowing that this is the core center of all our needs, that all our needs are wrapped into this, is to know Christ more. In Jesus' name, amen.