Hebrews 3

Hebrews 3:1-6

Section 3. (Hebrews 3:1-6.)His glory as Son over the house of God. The third section carries us from the scene of His humiliation to that of His glory. He is over the house of God as the Son of God; and as His being the Son of God is the foundation of His priesthood, and that is the direct connection here, we are still in the line of the Day of Atonement; although, as ever, the substance goes beyond the shadow. The high priest in Israel (though, of course, with well-known restrictions) was over the house of God; and in the tenth chapter here we have, in confirmation of this, the very thing expressed: “Having a great High Priest over the house of God” (Hebrews 10:21). This makes it evident that the comparison with Moses, which exists no longer here, is not the sole one; and to take it as such is to hinder a clear conception of what is before us. Moses is the apostle, rather, as Aaron the high priest; and we are exhorted to consider both “the Apostle and High Priest of our confession.” Moses and Aaron appear together thus, in the history, as the double type of the Lord; and as Moses was in a sense the builder of the tabernacle, receiving the pattern of it in the mount, so, having built it, he put it under the charge of Aaron. Moses and Aaron are thus together before us here. The apostle addresses us here distinctly as “holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling.” He thus, therefore, even while addressing Hebrews, does not fail to remember that these are Christian Hebrews, and what is implied in that. Israel when fully blessed will never have this character; and if they had received the Lord, as in fact they rejected Him, still would not have had it. Those who believe, in the midst of the sorrow of national rejection, have the joy of higher privileges which the perfect grace of God has brought in in the lapse of the old earthly ones. It is in this way, then, that we are to “consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Jesus,” one Person now, who fills the double type of Moses and of Aaron, one “who is faithful (this is not past, but present) to Him that hath appointed Him, as Moses also was in all the house of God.” This is, of course, the tabernacle. It is with reference to this, that the apostle is speaking; but he has before him One who is not a servant in the house as Moses was, but a Son over it. He does not belong properly, as the servant does, to the house Himself; His glory is above it all; even though the house represents, as doubtless the tabernacle represented as a whole, the universe of God. The house itself included, in the general thought of it, the court around, as well as the actual building, and in that court stood the altar, the altar of burnt offering, as the cross of Christ and the offering upon it therefore were on earth. The house proper, the sanctuary, was typically heaven, as the apostle says that these things were the patterns of things in the heavens. By faith we enter into them here, but that does not, of course, alter their character; rather, their character as heavenly gives our entrance in its proper blessing. But thus the tabernacle, looked at as a whole, is the picture of the universe of God, which, in that sense, is the created house in which God dwells. The apostle refers to this here, where he says that while every house is established by some one, he that hath established all things is God. This establishment of all things he applies to Christ.

And Christ, as we have seen, is the Creator and Upholder. “Without Him was not anything made that was made,” and He “upholdeth all things by the word of His power.” He is divine, therefore, in the fullest sense. But He is the Son of God, as we know. He is the One who has been pleased thus to come forward in representative character to make known the Father, and in all the work of His hands is doing this. Thus the difference between Moses and the One whom he typically represented is vast indeed. Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a ministering servant, for a testimony to the things to be spoken afterwards. He has had his place in an important dispensation which had its purpose in the mind of God, but which was to be done away. Christ, on the other hand, is a Son over, not “His own” house, (that is not the meaning here,) but the house of God. He is the One to whom all things belong, for whom they are, as by whom they are; and this connects His work from the beginning with His work now for fallen man, and in view of all that sin has wrought in the creation of God. Thus, then, although Aaron does not come into view in the chapter before us by any plain statement, yet in fact we find how we have to take him into account in order to reach the full truth of what is here. If the Son of God be in supreme charge over the universe of God, and now if sin come in as a breach upon its glorious order, then we can see that He is immediately concerned in this. He will not give up His place. Sin will not make Him renounce His office, but, on the contrary, only display the more His competence for it. In view of sin it is that the Son becomes the Priest, the Mediator and Reconciler; and the moment it is added, as in the passage before us, “whose house are we,” all becomes clear. Aaron is now before us. It is now the Priest in charge, assuredly, if we are His house. It is simple to refer to the board structure of the tabernacle in typical explanation of how, in fact, the redeemed come in here, and a wonderful thing it is to realize the connection of this with that larger aspect of the tabernacle which we have been called to remember as the pattern of the universe at large. Here, at the heart of it, in the boards set up on the silver sockets made from the atonement-money (see Exodus 26:1-37, notes), we find a “spiritual house,” of sinners redeemed and standing upon the basis of the work accomplished for them; and being the fruit of a mightier work than creation itself, we can understand, also, how this should be in fact the very sanctuary of God. Here is the display of His holiness, His grace, His manifold wisdom, as nowhere else. Here the very principalities and powers of heaven find their sweetest theme of praise. But it does not seem as if the board structure is sufficient by itself to give us the thought of this house of God which we are. Here, as in so many other places, different types are needed, in order to give us the full thought of God. The house is a living house, nay, human; and thus not display alone, but living activities abide in it. That the Holy One would inhabit the praises of Israel is the Lord’s own answer, in the twenty-second psalm, to the question of the cross; and the connection with the Day of Atonement is obvious: for the main purpose of it is that the dwelling of the Lord in the midst may be continued among them. Here we are in direct connection with all this, though beyond it, as the substance is beyond the shadow. The house is a spiritual house, and the praises are those of a people brought near to Him, a priestly house, therefore.

For these the largest offering of the Day of Atonement, the bullock, is offered; and for us the High Priest is One who could not offer for Himself; so that it is the priestly house alone for which, in fact, the bullock is offered. It is not strange, then, that they should appear here. It would be strange, rather, if they did not appear; and Peter joins thus together, also, what might seem at first too diverse to be identified in such a manner, the “living stones” built on the “Living Stone” with “a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.” “Whose house are we,” as it certainly shows the Son over the house to be now the “Great Priest over the house of God,” so does it identify, also, the tabernacle with the priestly worshipers. But we are the house of God, the apostle reminds us, if indeed we “hold fast the boldness and the boast of our hope firm unto the end.”

Hebrews 3:7-4

Section 4. (Hebrews 3:7-19; Hebrews 4:1-13.)And leading on through the wilderness to final rest. The fourth section is of a very different character. It is the shadow following the light, and in Hebrews we find how the brightest lights can cast the deepest shadows. As a fourth section it reminds us of that wilderness through which the Lord led Israel of old into their rest, and that for us too there is a wilderness, a scene of trial through which we are called to pass on to the rest which for us also still and ever lies beyond us. We are called, therefore, to persevere, to hold on our way, to “hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm to the end.” This, in fact, is the test of the reality of things with us. Continuance is the proof of divine work.

1. The first subsection insists upon the spirit of obedience as always the condition of blessing. Grace does not alter this for a moment. It produces in us such a spirit. It meets the conditions; and faith is the very principle of fruitfulness, working, as it does, by love. The exhortation to God’s people of old abides, then, for us, as much as it did for them: “Today if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” The truth speaks with authority, which those who are true will recognize; and the more precious the truth is, the sadder the consequences of practical refusal.

To trifle with any truth is perilous, and hardening of heart is the necessary result. How many will one find with consciences, if one may so say, locally paralyzed through refusal of that in which the voice of God was once recognized by them? or, perhaps, the refusal to listen to that in which it was feared God might be speaking; for it is a wrong thought that responsibility only comes with the conviction of God having spoken. There is accountability easily to be detected by the question, Were you willing to have Him speak? What hearts we have, to which such a question could ever need to be put! How sad, above all, that unbelief should in believers produce a disregard, like this, of the one supreme Voice, like which there is no other! Thus the “ifs” come in here.

All these are the tests of profession, under which the true and the false alike come necessarily, just because they are needed to distinguish between the false and the true; and also because God uses them to exercise those that are really His people; for we have in us the flesh still, and therefore those tendencies to departure from God which make His constant grace so needful. But then they are not warnings to the believer against having too much faith, or too simple faith, but they are the very reverse. They are warnings to persevere in joyful confidence to the end. All through this epistle, where the substance which is replacing the shadows is yet invisible, it is faith that is, as it were, the one necessity, and which is as much emphasized, though from another side, as it is in the epistles to the Romans and Galatians. 2. And this is what is dwelt upon in the second subsection, in which the word is seen as needing to be mixed with faith, unbelief being the very root and principle of disobedience; and if we are become the “companions” of Christ, (better not “partakers” here, which would give another thought from what is intended, but what is in the first chapter translated “fellows,”) Christ is the complete Example of faith from first to last. We, therefore, must hold “the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end.” Difficulties are supposed, for how could faith show itself if there were no difficulties? Difficulties are, therefore, not strictly a hindrance to faith, but even the reverse. They are the conditions of its manifestation; they are a means of its exercise, and so actually of its growth. Those whose “carcases fell in the wilderness” are not types of believers in any sense, but of those who fail of final entrance into the rest of God; for that is what Canaan here typifies, as is obvious. It is important to distinguish between this final entrance and that under Joshua, which, as we know, was not final, and is for us the type of present entrance into our heavenly portion by faith. In this way we must remember that Joshua is not typically a continuation of Numbers or Deuteronomy, but a new beginning, parallel with these.

It is while we are in the wilderness that, in fact, we enter also by faith into our heavenly inheritance. The experience of the wilderness and the laying hold of the inheritance, in this way, go together. The searching of the land by the spies (Numbers 13:1-33) answers, however, but partially to this, while Deuteronomy ends typically our whole earthly history with that review of the wilderness-course throughout, which is only fulfilled for us at the judgment-seat of Christ. Joshua added to the books of Moses would make them a hexateuch, which the higher critics would have them to be, but which they are not; Joshua being, in fact, a new beginning, the Genesis of a new pentateuch, the historical books. We must have God’s truth in God’s order, or we shall not find it even God’s truth. 3. The third subsection shows us what the actual rest is. We are entering into rest, we who have believed; but we have not entered. From the nature of it, as described presently, no one could enter into it in this life. We are going on to it, and God has been always speaking of it, as in the Sabbath type, keeping it before men from the beginning. God rested on the seventh day from all His works.

That was at the beginning; but man violated that rest, and it remains for us only a shadow of what is yet to come. The apostle quotes, also, David’s words, long after Joshua’s day, as showing that Israel’s coming into the land was still not rest. After they had come in, it was still said: Today, if ye will hear His voice." The rest remains, then, a true “keeping of Sabbath” for the people of God, -a rest which will be God’s rest also, or what good could be in it? A rest, too, in which he who rests ceases from all the labor which sin has imposed. Such a rest has not come for us. This carries us, in fact, on to eternity, the eternal rest, of which we have seen long since that the Sabbath is the type, and not of any millennial anticipation of it.

The thousand years are a time in which the earth has indeed come to its regeneration. Sin does not reign any more. Righteousness reigns, but still sin exists; and it is after the thousand years that death, “the last enemy,” is put under Christ’s feet, and the judgment of the dead comes with that. As a consequence, what we speak of sometimes as millennial rest, is not strictly correct. God cannot rest except with the perfect accomplishment of perfect blessing. He cannot rest while there are enemies yet to be put under the feet, -before sin and death are cast alike into the lake of fire. 4. In the fourth subsection the apostle exhorts all, therefore, to use diligence to enter into the rest before us, and again brings forward, as a warning, Israel’s unbelief in the wilderness. Good tidings had come to them of the land to which God was bringing them, but they had not faith to receive them. The word, full of promise and blessing as it was, yet only exposed the unbelief which goes too surely in company with a rebellious spirit. Though good, it brought out but evil, and thus it is characteristic of the word of God to search us out and make manifest to us what we are. If we submit ourselves to this searching, how great will be the blessing in it! It will bathe us in the very light of God, and thus purge from our eyes the film that hinders the perception of other things. “For the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword; piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, both of joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there a creature that is not manifest in His sight, but all things are naked and laid bare unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” Thus the word of God acts in the power of Him whose word it is. It brings the soul into His presence. The aroused conscience brings everything before God for judgment. Mists roll off as before the sun; and if the light shine as when at first, at God’s bidding, it broke out upon the darkness and the yeasty waves of the shoreless and barren sea, still we have the word which says: “God saw the light, that it was good.” The beginning of communion with God, whatever may be the matter of it, is the reception of the truth. “Soul and spirit” as thus named together can only be the two parts of the immaterial nature of man; which Scripture, spite of what many think, everywhere clearly distinguishes from one another. The soul is the lower, sensitive, instinctive, emotional part, which, where not, as in man, penetrated with the light of the spirit, is simply animal; and which also, where man is not in the power of the Spirit of God, will still gravitate towards this.

The spirit is intelligent and moral, that which knows human things (1 Corinthians 2:11). In the “natural man,” which is really the psychic man, the man soul-led (1 Corinthians 2:14), conscience, with its recognition of God, is in abeyance, and the mind itself becomes earthly.

Important enough it is, therefore, to divide between “soul and spirit.” Joints and marrow" convey to us the difference between the external and the internal, the outward form and the essence hidden in it. Not at all that even the form is unimportant. Everything in nature forbids such a thought. But its beauty and effectiveness depend upon its appropriateness to the idea which rules in it. The word of God must thus be in the highest sense the book of science. All the highest and deepest knowledge is in it, and that of things naturally inaccessible to man; while everything, also, is in right relation and proportion, nothing overbalanced.

It has, indeed, none of the pedantry or technical knowledge in which science is apt to shroud its wisdom, but a sweet, homely simplicity and familiarity of greeting, welcoming all comers to it, which deceives the would-be wise, who cannot understand how God’s light should shine for babe and for philosopher, and how God’s learning can have so little savor of the schools. Yet, is it true wisdom to make nought of it for this?

Rather, does it not show us God’s real desire for the education of the masses, about which men are beginning to show such very tardy earnestness? All the highest, deepest, and most practical knowledge made the possession of all that will with a Divine Teacher also for the lowly but inquiring soul!