"But not so with My servant Moses;
he is entrusted and faithful in all My house."
Numbers 12:7
Moses
Jacques Joseph Tissot
(1836-1902)
THE BOOK OF HEBREWS
CHAPTER THREE
So then brethren, consecrated and set apart for God,
who share in the heavenly calling, thoughtfully and attentively
consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest Whom
we confessed as ours when we embraced the Christian faith.
See how faithful He was to him Who appointed Him,
Apostle and High Priest, as Moses was also faithful in
the whole house of God.
Yet Jesus has been considered worthy of much greater honor
and glory than Moses, just as the builder of the house
has more honor than the house itself.
For of course every house is built and furnished by someone,
but the Builder of all things and the Furnisher of the entire
equipment of all things is God.
And Moses certainly was faithful in the administration of
all God's house, but it was only as a ministering servant.
In his entire ministry he was but a testimony to the things
which were to be spoken, the revelation to be given
afterward in Christ.
But Christ the Messiah was faithful over His own Father's house
as Son and Master of it. And it is we who are now members of this house,
if we hold fast and firm to the end our joyful and exultant confidence
and sense of triumph in our hope in Christ.
Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, Today if you will hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts, as happened in the rebellion of Israel and
their provocation and embitterment of Me in the day of
testing in the wilderness,
Where your fathers tried My patience and tested My forbearance
and I found I stood their test, and they saw My works for forty years.
And so I was provoked, displeased and sorely grieved with that
generation, and said, "They always err and are led astray in their hearts,
and they have not perceived or recognized My ways and become
progressively better and more experimentally and intimately
acquainted with them.
Accordingly, I swore in My wrath and indignation,
They shall not enter into My rest.
Therefore beware brethren, take care, lest there be in any one
of you a wicked, unbelieving heart which refuses to cleave to,
trust in, and rely on Him, leading you to turn away and desert
or stand aloof from the living God.
But instead warn, admonish, urge, and encourage one another
every day, as long as it is called Today, that none of you may be hardened
into settled rebellion by the deceitfulness of sin, by fraudulence,
the stratagem, the trickery which the delusive glamor of
their sins may play on them.
For we have become fellows with Christ the Messiah and share in
all He has for us, if only we hold our first newborn confidence and
original assured expectation in virtue of which we are believers,
firm and unshaken to the end.
Then while it is still called Today, if you would hear His voice
and when you hear it, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion
in the desert, when the people provoked and irritated and
embittered God against them.
For who were they who heard and yet were rebellious and
provoked Him? Was it not all those who came out of Egypt
led by Moses?
And with whom was He irritated and provoked and grieved
for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose
dismembered bodies were strewn and left in the desert?
And to whom did he swear that they should not enter His rest,
but to those who disobeyed, who had not listened to His word
and who refused to be compliant or be persuaded?
The Golden Calf
Jacques Joseph Tissot
(1896)
So we see they were not able to enter into His rest, because
of their unwillingness to adhere to and trust in and rely on God,
unbelief had shut them out.
No comments:
Post a Comment