Jesus: The Faithful Son (Hebrews 3:5-6)

Hebrews 3:5-6 and the Faithfulness of Jesus

Hebrews chapter 3, read these first six verses together. Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession. He was faithful to him who appointed him as Moses was in all his house.

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. 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. 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.

Let's pray together. Our father, we do thank you that you have made us who were your enemies, enemies with you through our wicked works and through the thoughts of our minds and through our open hostility to you and to your word and to your law.

We thank you that you have turned our hearts and made us your children. And you have seated us with Christ in the heavenly places. You've given us the righteousness that we do not deserve. You've given us the truth of your word, which without which we would be lost and in darkness and we do not deserve that.

All of these are rich graces that you have bestowed upon your people and we thank you for them. And we ask your blessing upon our time of fellowship and our time of meditation here upon your word. May you give to us the illumination that your Holy Spirit can bring to the hearts of those who are yours.

Grant that we may see in your word and behold in your word wonderful things, wonderful things concerning Christ, our God, our Savior, our King and our Lord. We ask this in his name, amen. You're here in Hebrews chapter three, looking at the faithfulness of Jesus.

One of the most, I think, beautiful and comforting aspects of our Savior's character is his faithfulness. This is a glorious truth that is illuminated here in Hebrews chapter three. And it is something that was predicted even in the Old Testament concerning the Messiah who was to come.

You read through the Old Testament, one of the things that you will see that everybody was to look forward to and anticipate was this Messiah who would come, who would faithfully do what Yahweh, what God had given him to do.

He would be faithful, he would be truthful, he would be wise, he would be faithful, he would be righteous. Those faithfulness is among those attributes that they were to expect in a Lord who was their Messiah.

And I ran across one of these Old Testament prophecies just as I was reading through my Bible this last week. It was in Isaiah chapter 11. I'm working through the book of Isaiah and I came across this passage, which I had read and I was familiar with it in Isaiah chapter 11.

Isaiah promises to the nation of Israel, or God promises through Isaiah, to the nation of Israel, a righteous branch, one who would come from the root of David, who would be a branch. And that imagery of a branch is one that is used commonly in the Old Testament for the Lord Jesus.

We see it in Ezekiel, we see it in, sorry, in Jeremiah, we see it in Isaiah and in Zephaniah or Zechariah, I think one of those Z prophets, it's in there as well, where a righteous branch is promised to the nation of Israel.

And the imagery of a branch was supposed to, picture in your mind someone who would come who would come off of the line of David, and he would spring up, one of the prophecies says, out of dry ground, as it were, in a time when Israel was in a spiritual desert, this branch would come up.

And this branch was promised to rule and to reign over the house of David. I'm reading in Isaiah chapter 11, and here's what it says, the first five verses. Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit.

The spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.

And he will not judge by what his eyes see nor make a decision by what his ears hear, but with righteousness, he will judge the poor and decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth. And he will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips, he will slay the wicked.

You can see all these different attributes of the Messiah are kind of combined there. He will judge with righteousness and fairness and equity and rule with wisdom, and he will be kind, and the spirit of the Lord will rest upon him.

And with his mouth, he will slay the wicked. With the word of his mouth, he will destroy evildoers. It's a magnificent description of the Messiah. And then the very next verse, verse five says this, also righteousness will be the belt about his loins and faithfulness, the belt about his waist.

That's beautiful.

The Messiah would wear faithfulness like a belt about his waist. As belt encircles a man and encompasses a man and girds up a man, as a belt adorns the dress of a man, so it would be for the Messiah that faithfulness would be the belt about his waist.

And there are other Old Testament passages that speak of the faithfulness of the Messiah. In fact, every one of his offices, we are told in the Old Testament to expect a Messiah who would be faithful, who would do what Yahweh had given him to do.

He was to be the faithful prophet. Do you remember Moses in Deuteronomy 18, promised that the Lord will raise up from amongst you a prophet like me, but greater. And to him, you shall give heed. He will not lead you astray.

He will teach you of Yahweh. You are to pay attention to him. Jesus was that final prophet. And Jesus was that faithful prophet who never spoke ill. He never spoke a wrong word. He never gave a false prophecy.

He was not a prophecy, but he was the perfect and a consummate truth teller who always spoke Yahweh's word, always spoke God's word. He was also gonna be a faithful priest. We saw that in Psalm 110, when we were there in a few weeks ago, that there would come this one who was a priest king, one who would reign and rule, but who was a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.

And Jesus, as the faithful priest, has done exactly what it is Yahweh has given him to do, offered himself as a sacrifice, and he faithfully intercedes for his people. So he's faithful, he's a faithful, merciful and faithful high priest, Hebrews 2 says.

And he's also a faithful king. Where David and all David's descendants, Solomon included, where they failed to obey God fully and perfectly, Jesus will not fail. He is the king who will come, and he will faithfully bring all the nations into subjection to himself.

He will faithfully rule over the house of David. He will faithfully accomplish all of God's works in every aspect of his character, whether prophet, whether priest, or whether king, he is utterly and completely faithful.

And if you ever stop to consider just how dependent your salvation is upon his faithfulness. You'll stop for a moment to consider that. How dependent your salvation is on his faithfulness. If he is not faithful, then you and I can have no assurance whatsoever that having once believed upon Christ that we shall actually reach eternal glory, if he is not faithful.

Because he might wake up tomorrow and decide that concerning you and I, his mind has changed. He's doing something different now. But because he is faithful, he must and will save and redeem and glorify all whom the father has given to him.

Every last one. Because he is faithful, he cannot stop interceding for me and you, even right now. He can't abandon that. He can't step down from the right hand of the father and say, I'm done praying for those folks.

They don't deserve it. They don't deserve it in the beginning. They're not gonna deserve it in the end. So I'm done. Because he is faithful, he cannot stop working all things for the good of his people and the glory of his great name.

Because he is faithful, he cannot cast me away from his presence. He cannot cast me into hell. He cannot fail to glorify me. Because he is faithful, he cannot fail to accomplish every promise that he has made concerning you and I and our salvation.

He cannot fail to do that. Because he is faithful, he will do all of the good work that he has promised to accomplish. He will not set aside the good work that he has begun in us, but he will see it through all the way to completion and all the way to the eternal glory.

He's not gonna stop it. Having once begun the work of our salvation, he will not set that aside and stop it. Now, ultimately, we're gonna get here next week into the warning passage of Hebrews, where many people turn to show that you can lose your salvation.

I'm emphasizing the faithfulness at the beginning because the author of Hebrews emphasizes the faithfulness of Jesus at the beginning. And what I want you to see is that our salvation is not dependent upon our faithfulness.

The author of Hebrews is emphasizing the faithfulness of the Savior for a reason. Because he is about to warn them, look, if you do not hold fast, and if you turn away, you will perish. But ultimately my salvation does not hinge upon my faithfulness to him.

It depends upon his faithfulness to me. And because he is faithful, he will not let us go. He cannot let us go. Because to do so would be to fail to do what the Father gave him to do. It would be to give up on his work of redemption in our lives.

But because he is faithful, he will see it through. So how much of your salvation depends on his faithfulness? All of it, from first to last, from his will in eternity past before a single Adam was spoken into existence, his will determines something.

And his will will see that through all the way until it reaches its culmination in eternal glory. And he cannot stop that and he cannot set that aside because he is faithful. That's what marks our Savior, he's faithful.

And so rightly we sing, great is thy faithfulness. That is an appropriate declaration of who God is and what God has done. He is faithful, he's faithful to his word, he's faithful to his promises, he's faithful to his purposes, he's faithful to what he has decreed and purposed even from eternity past.

So all of our salvation hinges upon that. And because he is faithful, we are not consumed. Because he is faithful, we are not cast off. Because he is faithful, we are saved. And he is perfectly able to save forever and to the uttermost all those who come to God through him.

Because he is faithful, he cannot fail to do what he has started to do. All of my salvation rests upon the faithfulness of Christ. And so it is appropriate that the author of Hebrews should emphasize his faithfulness here in Hebrews chapter three.

And today we're looking at verses five and six specifically. We've been looking at this extended passage kind of goes back into Hebrews chapter two and that the division there is kind of an artificial one because he says therefore in verse one, and he's not changing subjects, he's not really starting something new as it were, he's transitioning into this comparison of Jesus with Moses.

And so we see at the end of chapter two and the beginning of chapter three, that he is starting to compare Jesus with Moses. And that's a good comparison, as you're gonna see here in just a moment. But in doing so, he compares Jesus with Moses in three respects, in his office, in his work and in his status.

Those are the three things that we've been looking at. Jesus is the merciful and faithful high priest. And I want you to notice that the term faithful is applied to Jesus in connection with all three of these offices.

He is a merciful and faithful high priest, chapter two, verses 17 and 18. And so in his office as high priest, he is greater than Moses was, he is the apostle and high priest of our confession, and he has suffered so as to become faithful and merciful as a high priest.

And then in terms of his work, the work that he has done is greater than Moses because he is the builder of the house and Moses is the house. So Moses was a servant and part of this house and he served God and he did so faithfully.

But Moses was just part of the spiritual people of God. Jesus oversees the spiritual people of God. So though Moses and Jesus were both faithful, Jesus was faithful in a greater thing. Jesus was faithful as a builder, Moses was faithful as part of the building.

And now this third comparison in verses five and six, we see Jesus and Moses compared in terms of their status. Moses and Jesus were both faithful, but Moses was faithful as a servant, Jesus is faithful as a son.

And that is the heart of the comparison. Jesus is the son over God's house, Moses was a servant in God's house. And no matter how great of a servant you are, you never have the status of a son. The son is always greater than the servant, no matter who that servant is.

And so that is the heart of this comparison. Jesus was a faithful and merciful high priest, Jesus is a faithful and merciful builder, and Jesus is a faithful and merciful son. And he is greater than Moses in every one of those categories.

He's greater in terms of his office, he's greater in terms of the work that he has done, and he is greater in terms of his status in the house. He is a son over the house. And so that's the comparison.

Let's read together verses five and six of chapter three. Verse five, now Moses was faithful in all his house as a servant for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later, 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.

So we're gonna look at two things. First, Moses as a faithful servant, and then Jesus as a faithful son. Moses is a faithful servant. And you'll notice that the author of Hebrews does not disparage Moses in order to show that Jesus is greater.

He doesn't do that. He could have done that. We talked last week about even though Moses was faithful as a servant in God's house, there were things about Moses that, there were things about Moses that weren't quite as unblemished as we might have wanted them to be, right?

We talked about some of Moses' moral failings, some of his personal failings. And I ran across a statement by Homer Kent, one of the commentaries that I consult throughout the week. And he made, I think, a good observation concerning Moses' failings.

He said this, whatever lapses we may find in the life of Moses were more personal than official. They were more personal than official. I think that's a good observation. When we look at Moses in terms of his person, his own character, we do see failings there.

But in terms of Moses doing what God called him to do, was he in any way unfaithful?

No.

So I think that's an appropriate distinction. The lapses that we see in Moses were personal failings, not official failings in terms of he failed to bring the children of Israel into land or he failed to deliver to the children of Israel everything that God gave him or he failed to be a spokesman.

In all that God gave Moses to do in terms of his role in the nation of Israel and the plan of God and building the spiritual people of God. Sorry, I thought I had more oxygen in my lungs to finish that sentence, but apparently I didn't.

So in all of that God gave Moses and set him out to do, he was faithful and obedient in all of that. But personally, Moses had his issues. That I think is a good distinction. And Moses was the greatest of all the Old Testament leaders, arguably.

I think he's even greater than David. That David was a great leader and God made a covenant with David, but David's accomplishments as the leader in the nation of Israel, they don't quite measure up to Moses' accomplishments as a leader and a prophet in the nation of Israel.

And you can see why it is that the Jews revered Moses. Moses was a man whom God called at 80 years of age. That's when he started. How many 80 year olds here are willing to do even a fraction of what Moses did?

That's a daunting task. But at 80 years of age, God called Moses to go into the land of Egypt and to deliver by conservative estimates, probably 1 .5 million people from one of the world's superpowers at the time.

Now, granted, God did for Moses things that you and I probably would never see in our lives, with the plagues and all of the miracles that he did in the life of Moses. But still, to bring 1 .5 million people out of the land of Egypt, out into the desert to worship and to sacrifice to God, and then to bring them to the edge of the promised land, and for 40 years to put up with their grumblings and their complainings and their whining and their bickering and all of that for 40 years, and to deal with all of the assaults on his own character from men like Korah, who rebelled against his authority, and his own brother Aaron and his sister Miriam, and their rebellion against Moses, and all the people complaining at every turn after seeing all the miracles happen, how frustrating that would have been.

And he is dealing with a stiff-necked, hard-hearted, obstinate people who are prone to idolatry and will worship almost anything, so long as it is a rock or a piece of wood. And he deals with all of that for 40 years and prepares them militarily to enter into the promised land.

And he did that over the course of 40 years. That is a magnificent accomplishment. So it is easy to see why the Jews would revere Moses. Moses, and not only that, but he ended up instituting all of the civil life for the entire nation.

He gave them a moral code. He gave them a legal code. He gave them a civil code. He instituted the religious worship of the nation and formed the sacrificial system for them and formed the festivals and gave all of that that God had given to him and oversaw the construction of the tabernacle all the while he was doing all of those other things.

It's magnificent, is it not? Leadership of a man like Moses. It's easy to see why the nation of Israel would revere him in the way that they did. And yet Jesus is greater. To you and I, that's grade one Sunday school material.

Jesus is greater than Moses.

We know that.

But the reverence that the Jews had for Moses, and the author doesn't bring Moses down a few notches, as great as he was, Jesus is greater still. Now in the Jewish mind, the highest, the greatest, the most honorable and exalted Jew who had ever lived, second probably only to Abraham, and in some cases, maybe even more so was Moses.

And the author is willing to allow Moses to have that pedestal in the minds of the people, and then to say, yes, but Jesus was greater still than Moses. Now, if you compare Jesus to the greatest person who has ever lived in your mind, Jesus comes out on top of even that individual, that Moses is less than even Jesus the Christ.

They're both faithful,.

But Jesus faithful in a greater thing and faithful in a greater status as a son. And Moses is described here as a servant.

It's interesting word,.

Because it's not the word that is used for a bond servant. It's not the word doulos in the Greek, which we typically hear when Paul talks about being a bond servant, the Lord Jesus Christ. Doulos was the word that was used, described the lowest, most menial form of service that the person in the household, his job was to scrape the manure out of the barn.

He had the lowliest and the dirtiest and the most worthless task. He was nothing but a slave, completely owned, having no rights of his own. He doesn't use that term doulos. Instead, he uses the term tharapon, tharapon.

Tharapon is the word. And it was the word for a servant, which actually, it actually kind of connotes a dignity, a freedom, and it was the word that would be used for somebody who was a personal attendant.

So say in the house of a king, and I'll just use the backdrop here. In the house of a king, the king puts on in the castle, a big, this is the closest the sermon's gonna come to the backdrop that's behind me.

But the king puts on in the castle, a big feast. And that you might have at that feast, the person whose job it was to clean all the dishes and to slop the hogs. That would be the doulos. But the tharapon would be the one who was the personal attendant to the king, who was dressed up in his nicest getup, who stood by the king and attended to the needs of the king.

So this is the highest and most honorable word for a servant that could be used. And he is acknowledging that that's what Moses was. And yet he says, Jesus is still greater. That type of a servant, the word that is used here describes one who is the personal attendant of the king, but it's used of his honor and his dignity, his virtue, his value, his nobility.

And then notice what he is saying. As great as Moses was, Moses can be the highest and the greatest servant, he is still only a servant. There is one who is faithful as a son. And even though Moses is highest and most honorable amongst all of God's servants, he is still just a servant.

And notice how Moses served or what Moses served to do. This is in verse five. Moses was a servant as a testimony, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later. What is that referring to?

Moses served in the house of God, but he served as a testimony of something that was to come later on. This is the author's way of saying, Moses in his role as a servant in the house of God was anticipating one who would come, who was greater than himself, who would be the fulfillment of what Moses was anticipating and looking forward to.

That is to say that what Moses did in all of his revelation, all of his activities as a servant was anticipating one who would come later on. And Moses wasn't the zenith of God's revelation. Moses belonged to that period of time.

We talked about at the beginning of the book of Hebrews where God spoke in various ways and through various means through the prophets and visions and dreams and all of that. Moses belonged to that era of revelation.

And just like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the others, Moses looked forward to one who was going to come and Moses wrote about him. In fact, this is Jesus's argument himself. Moses was writing about him.

It is difficult. In fact, it would take more than one sermon just to list the number of things that happened in the life of Moses and that Moses wrote about that pointed forward to Jesus. Just the tabernacle itself.

The tabernacle itself was the tent where God met in the middle of the nation of Israel. All the people would come there to worship. That was the place where God met with men, where God dwelt among his people.

And then in the gospel of John chapter one, verse 14, it says, we beheld his glory as of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth. And the word was made flesh and what? Tabernacle, that's the word, tabernacled among us.

He dwelt among us. The tabernacle in the wilderness anticipated and looked forward to a time when God would be with his people and dwell in the midst of them. He is Emmanuel, God with us. The Passover lamb.

The Passover lamb was intended to point forward to Christ. That's why the New Testament calls Christ our Passover, was crucified for us. So that lamb, which was slain and the blood was put over the door posts and anybody who had the faith to kill that lamb, the Passover lamb in their stead and to apply that blood and anybody found underneath that blood, the death angel would pass over that individual.

And so it is in Christ in the New Testament. If you are under his blood and by faith, you will belong to him, the death angel passes over you. The entire Passover sacrifice and all of the elements of it, it would take messages to get into.

All of the connections there, all of that anticipates and looks forward to Christ. All the feasts and the festivals in the Old Testament. Celebrations of what? The glories that we enjoy in the new covenant and eventually the glories that we will enjoy in the kingdom in our eternal state with him.

And the sacrifices, all of the sacrifices of the Old Testament anticipate and look forward to in some way, Christ. Yom Kippur on the day of atonement, when one animal was sacrificed and the high priest went in once a year behind the veil and the curtain and offered that blood on the ark as an atonement for the sins of the people.

What did that anticipate? It looked forward to Christ. All the sacrifice, the feasts, everything, it all anticipated Christ. Moses is a prophet, looked forward to and promised another prophet who was to come.

Moses as a ruler, looked forward to and anticipated that great ruler who was to come. Everything about what Moses did anticipated Jesus. And this was Jesus's point in John chapter five, when after healing the man at the pool of Bethesda, Jesus had that confrontation with the Pharisees in John chapter five.

And at the end of it,.

After speaking to them of his equality with the father, Jesus said in John five, verses 45 to 47, do not think that I will accuse you, that is the Pharisees. Do not think that I will accuse you before the father.

The one who accuses you is Moses in whom you have set your hope. For if you believe Moses,.

You would believe me.

For he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words? You understand how the Jew would hear that? Jesus saying to a group of Pharisees, everything that you have set your heart on in Moses, it is all fulfilled in me.

What Moses wrote about is standing right in your midst. And here I am. And if you obeyed Moses and you listened to Moses, you would come to me, but you think you've set your heart upon Moses. And Moses is gonna be the one who stands up on the day of judgment and says, those fools were blinded to what I was writing about because I was writing about the son.

Magnificent.

Luke chapter 24, verse 27, Jesus in meeting with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus after the resurrection, while their eyes were still blinded, it says, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them the things concerning himself and all the scriptures.

Wouldn't you like to have been part of that conversation? To sit there and listen to the Lord, say beginning of Moses, probably Genesis chapter three, verse 15, and start working through the passage and say, see this, this is me.

He's the Passover lamb. The Messiah is this. The Messiah is the redeemer. To work through Moses.

Why?

When Jesus was acknowledging that what Moses wrote about was himself. He was serving as a testimony of those things which were spoken later. Hebrews chapter 10, verse one says, the law is only a shadow of good things to come and not the very substance of the form of the things.

Everything in Moses was a shadow of what was to come. Christ is the one who cast the shadow. So Moses is writing about Jesus, but he is casting a shadow for the people to see. And they should have been able to look at what Moses wrote about and say, there has to be something that fulfills this.

There has to be something that casts this shadow. All the feasts and the festivals, something has to fulfill this. These things are not the end in themselves. These things are the shadow. There has to be a substance that is to come and which is to come.

And that substance is Jesus. The law is just a shadow of the things to come. Moses was giving a testimony of greater things to come. And that greater thing is Jesus. So see, even here in comparing Moses with Jesus, the author is showing that there is no conflict between embracing Moses and embracing Christ.

And this is essential to the argument of the book of Hebrews. If you are to embrace Moses, you must embrace Christ. One has to follow the other because Moses wrote about him. So at no point can you turn your back on Jesus and say, you know, I don't want any of this.

I don't want Jesus and his demands. I wanna go back to what Moses wrote about. No Jew could honestly do that in light of what the author is here saying because Moses was pointing to Jesus. So if you walk away from Jesus, you're walking away from whom?

From Moses because Moses was a servant of Jesus. Periodically, I shouldn't say periodically, all the time I listened to podcasts and once in a while, one of the podcasts I listened to recently was an interview between Ben Shapiro and Michael Schirmer.

Now, if you're familiar with who Ben Shapiro is, he is a Jew, conservative Jew, and he practices Judaism. Dennis Prager is another Jew who practices Judaism. And I've listened to these men, Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro on different occasions, explain why it is that they do not accept Jesus as the Messiah.

Why did they not believe that Jesus Christ was the Messiah? And in listening to how Ben Shapiro presented this in one particular podcast, and Dennis Prager does the same thing. He basically says, I don't believe what the New Testament says about Jesus.

Instead, I prefer to look forward to the Messiah and embrace the Old Testament, Moses and the law and the Torah. That's foolish and impossible because if Ben Shapiro really embraced what Moses said, he would embrace Jesus the Messiah.

He has to, but in rejecting Jesus the Messiah, he is in fact rejecting what Moses said.

Why?

Because Moses was a servant of a testimony of things which were to be spoken later. And what was to be spoken later? The truth concerning Jesus in that revelation. So if you honor Moses, you wanna honor Moses, now fine, honor Moses.

But if you're gonna honor Moses, you're gonna have to embrace Jesus. That's the point of it. Because Jesus is greater and Moses was only serving what was to come. So we have to choose between the two.

So that's Moses as a faithful servant. Now look at Christ as a faithful son, beginning in verse six. But Christ was faithful as a son over his house, whose house we are if we hold fast our confidence and our boast of our hope firm until the end.

The son is always greater than a servant, no matter how great the servant is, the son always holds a position or a status that is greater than even the highest servant. Because even the highest servant is still a servant, but the son is an heir.

And we've talked about how Jesus is the heir of all things. And that is his status as the divine son. That all things, the entire universe and everything consistent in it, is all going to be given over to him because it all belongs to him, because he is the creator and the sustainer of it.

And so having been granted the kingdom by the father, the father gives to him the kingdom, he is the heir of all things. He gets all things because he is the son. So even the highest servant is still not a son, Jesus being the son is faithful, even faithful as a son, Moses being only faithful as a servant.

Now, if you're kind of a discerning or a critical thinking person at this point, you're gonna say, hold on a second though, doesn't the New Testament present Jesus as a servant? Right? Don't we look to Jesus as an example of our own service?

And don't we marvel over Jesus and his humility in being a servant? Doesn't the New Testament present him as a servant? And now it seems that he is saying that Jesus was not a servant, that he was a son.

And so as the son, he's greater than Moses, who was only a servant. And yet I also wanna honor Jesus as being a servant to God's purposes. And it's true in the Old Testament, Jesus is the coming Messiah, you should say, is portrayed or pictured as a servant, particularly in the book of Isaiah.

I was gonna say the gospel of Isaiah, but Isaiah is not a gospel. Particularly in the book of Isaiah, in that middle section, beginning in chapter 40 of Isaiah, you see God saying of Israel, you are my servant.

But then we look at the nation of Israel and realize that Israel failed as a servant of Yahweh. And then through Isaiah 40 through about 55 or so, there are those passages that describe the coming one who would be my servant.

My servant will do all my will, my servant will obey me, my servant will hear me, my servant will serve me. And that was anticipating and looking forward to the Messiah. That servant who would come and do what Israel could never do and never did and failed in, and that servant was the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

And then in the gospel of Mark, chapter 10, verse 45, son of man did not come to be served, but to what? To serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Doesn't Philippians chapter two say that he came in the form of a bond servant?

Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Do we not marvel over the servant nature and the servanthood of the Lord Jesus Christ?

In fact, that is how Mark portrays Jesus all the way through his gospel, as the ready servant who immediately does his master's will. And he does it faithfully and fully and obediently all the way to the very end.

That's how the gospel of Matthew portrays the Lord Jesus Christ. So is he a son or is he a servant? And he is both. In fact, the fact that he is this exalted son shows just how magnificent his service really is.

Shows just how magnificent it really is. Because of his status, and let's not confuse his status with his service. His status is that of a son. Moses didn't have that. Moses was a servant, that was his status.

So Moses served as a servant, Jesus serves as a son. So to go back to the kingdom analogy, and I guess I'll use the backdrop here behind me again. The king throws a big banquet in his palace, in his king, in his castle.

And all of the attendants are there. And then imagine the son, the king's heir, the heir apparent to the throne, who is sitting on the king's throne for part of this banquet. Imagine that that son steps down and walks downstairs and starts to wash dishes and sweep off the grunge of the floors and mop the floors in the castle.