Hebrews 3:1-6- The Household of God

Hebrews 3:1-6

Numbers 12:1-9

        The Household of God

Households come in all different shapes and sizes- don’t they?

I live in the smith household……. but what does that mean?

Well for the smith household it means this:

We are part of the millions of other smiths across the world, that live in other independent smith households.  Apparently the smith household name came from a family line of Blacksmiths.

A blacksmith heats metal and shapes and manipulates it to any shape they so desire, they would make things like metal gates, and the like.

However, the smith household that I belong to, here in Wingham, 32 Moon street, we don’t heat and forge metal.

Our forefathers may have done that- but we no don’t do that in our smith household.

Our smith household consists of 7 members, Kari, myself, Esther, Hannah, Amos, Abigail and Chloe. However, Esther no longer lives under the same roof as the rest of us, hence, she is not living in the same house…under the same roof, but she is still considered part of the smith household.

Which in our case, I don’t think matters that much anyway, since we smith’s live in a house that doesn’t belong to the smith’s, but belongs to the NSW Presbyterian Church property trust.

You don’t have to own or build the house, to belong to the smith household.

Different households operate different ways don’t they?

By the grace of God, the smith household lives according to the living word of God, some households, perhaps majority of households… the majority of Aussie households don’t live according to the word of God.

By the grace of God we “smiths” live by the household structure that the husband and father is the head of the household and both father and mother have authority over their children to bring them up in the ways of God.

Where do we get this crazy household structure from?

Well, the word of God

In Ephesians 5:23 it says:

For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.

And so both Kari and I interpret that to mean that the husband is head of the wife, since it says the husband is head of the wife.

A little later on in Ephesians 6:1, it says:

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

Both Kari and I and all our children interpret that to mean that Children should obey their parents, because it says, children obey your parents in the Lord.

And so the smith household by the grace of God live by this structure, Jesus is Lord over all, he rules through his word, the husband is head of the family, as he submits to the rule of Jesus and the children obey their parents.

Now obviously, we sinful human beings don’t always live according to this structure, and when we don’t, that failure is my shoulders as the head.

Another thing I want to tell you about our smith household, is that we don’t have any servants or butlers who live in a separate part of the house. You will never be greeted at the door by a butler, who will take your shoes and coat.

No, the smith household is just full of smith’s, we are all family, there are no servants that live separately in our house.

Now, in this short passage of just six verses that we are looking at today from Hebrews chapter 3, there are 4 truths I want to let you know about, not the smith household, but the household of God.

Here are the 4 truths I want to go through.

1.        Moses was a servant in the house of God

2.        Jesus is not only a servant in the house of God, but He is also the builder of God’s house

3.        God only has one household

4.        We are God’s house

So let us look at this first truth- Moses was a servant in the household of God.

Look at verse 5 with me:

Now Moses was faithful in all God's house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later

Now it is important for us to know that being a servant in the household of God is a huge privilege and honour. The apostle Paul often boasted that he was a slave of Christ. And so, it is not like we have separate quarters in the household of God just for servants, NO, If you are a member of God’s household you are a servant of Christ.

Moses was a member of God’s family, and Moses was a servant of God.

Now, if we observe the life of Moses and all that he did, we would be tempted to put Moses above the status of just being a servant in God’s house. After all, it was Moses who led the people out of slavery from Egypt, it was Moses who went head to head with Pharoah, it was Moses who led the people to the mountain to worship God, it was Moses who gave the ten commandments to God’s people, it was Moses who led his people to the very edge of the promised land.

And not only did Moses do all these great things in the household of God, but he also as many people would say today, was a fantastic human being.

Just listen to how God described Moses from Numbers 12:3

Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth.

God described Moses as the meekest person on the planet. Moses was the most humble person on the planet and yet if ever there was a man who could have been the most proud and arrogant person on the planet, it would have been Moses and why?

Because God chose to speak to Moses directly, as he was speaking to a friend.

And when Moses brother in law- Aaron and sister Miriam, who were also godly people challenged the authority of Moses, God brought all three of them together and said this about Moses, (this is from Numbers 12:6-9)

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. ⁷ Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. ⁸ 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?” ⁹ And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them, and he departed.

God had Moses’ back.

Moses was a faithful and mighty prophet of God and yet here is Hebrews the writer wants us to know that yes, Moses was great, but Jesus is even better.

Because even though Moses was a great servant in God’s household, Jesus is better, because Jesus is not only a servant in the house, but He is the builder of the house, and this brings me to the second truth:

Jesus is not only a servant in the house of God, but He is also the builder of God’s house

Look at verses 3 and 4 with me:

For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses—as much more glory as the builder of a house has more Honor than the house itself.⁴ (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.)

As it tells us in verse 5 and 6, Moses was faithful in all of God’s house during that time, in Egypt, during that time in the desert and yet what Moses was doing at that time in God’s house was testifying, pointing towards, the greater work that Jesus the builder was going to do, when He came to this earth at just the right time, not just as someone who is faithful in God’s house, but as someone who is OVER God’s house, as God’s son, the rightful owner of the house.

And so that earthly temple structure that Moses set up, was a shadow of the heavenly temple that Jesus entered as our high priest and offered himself as a sacrifice for all our sins.

What the faithful servant Moses did was to point people ultimately to Jesus, to point to a better temple, point to a better place of rest, point to a better high priest, point to a better sacrifice. If Moses hadn’t been a faithful servant in God’s house, we would have no idea why God had to send the builder to do all the hard yards of the servants, that builder being Jesus.

And this brings me to the third truth and one which is crucial for us to know today….

God has only one household

God doesn’t have a two separate houses, one house for the Jew, and house for the gentile. No God’s house is both for Jews and gentiles.

God doesn’t have two separate houses, one for the prophets of old like Moses, David and Elijah and another one for the apostles, Peter, John and James. No God has one house that has both prophets and apostles in it.

God doesn’t have two separate foundations of his house, one house isn’t built on the Jewish nation and one house isn’t built on Jesus, NO, all of his house is built upon Jesus.

God doesn’t have two separate ways of belonging to his household, one way of having a blood line to Abraham and another through faith in Jesus. No, all members of God’s household are their because of faith in Jesus.

God doesn’t have two separate destinations for his household members, there is not one destination to a plot of land in the middle east and one destination for a heavenly city. No, all of the members of God’s household have a heaven calling, we look forward to the same heavenly city that Abraham himself was looking forward to, as it says in Hebrews 11:10, a city whose designer and builder is God.

This one household of God is explicitly explained in Ephesians 2:15-16, which says:

by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he (Jesus) might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace,¹⁶ and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 

In Ephesians, Paul is particularly talking about the Jesus bringing both Jew and Gentile into God’s house through the cross. At one time, long ago, before Jesus came to this earth, God worked his salvation mainly through the nation of Isreal, but now in these last days God works his salvation through the true Israel- Jesus. The one whom the nation of Israel pointed towards.

There is only one house of God, there has always been only one house of God, and it has always been built upon God by God, but now in these last days, the builder had not just worked through his servants, but the builder came to this earth and showed us exactly who He is in the person of Jesus.

Which brings me to the last truth:

We are God’s house

Now, I don’t need to make the obvious point that we, the people, are God’s house, we should know that. God’s house is not a material structure, it is not a physical temple, it is not a physical place, but we the people are God’s house, or as Peter describes us in 1 Peter 2, we are the living stones and Jesus is our foundation and what also the cement which joins us altogether.

In fact the writer of Hebrews tells us this in verse 6b, look at the end of verse 6 with me:

And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope

We are his house….

Great, and yet as Hebrews does so often, it gives us our identity, it tells us who we are – the house of God, and yet it comes with a word of caution, that we need to hear again and again.

We are his house if………

If we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.

Friends we are the house of God is we continue to cling, to hold, to grab onto Jesus.

If we have confidence and hope in ourselves, which is what perhaps the majority of the world believed and confesses, we are not God’s house.

We don’t boast in the servants of the house, but we boast in the builder of the house and we are thankful that we can be part of his house through and only through God’s son- Jesus.

Perhaps many households today are unstable, many maybe destructive rather than provide a place of rest and comfort, because many households just don’t know what they are building upon.

Friends, the foundation of our house is Jesus.

Jesus is not only the foundation stone, the capstone, the builder, but he is also the owner of the house. This is where our confidence lies and so we can be confident with Jesus as the architect and builder of the house,

that when storms come, the house will stand,

when all earthy kingdoms fall, God’s house will stand,

when the mountains crumble into the sea, God’s house will stand

when the earthly cities perish, His people will reach their heavenly city.

Let us pray