As we saw last week, we’re into the second part of Hebrews’ argument for the uniqueness and supremacy of Jesus Christ. In the first part of this section, which we read last week, the author argued powerfully that Christ has authority over all creation, having been given that authority by God the Father. The world raises an objection to that, what’s usually called the problem of evil: if all the world is really subject to Jesus, why don’t we see it? Why do we still see suffering?
The author of Hebrews acknowledges that indeed we don’t see all things subject to Jesus, at least not in the obvious way; we don’t see a worldwide political regime that acknowledges his authority and seeks to rule according to his will, nor do we see a world free of senseless tragedy, devastating illness, or natural disaster. Rather, we see a world where sin often seems to have the upper hand. Hebrews doesn’t try to pretend otherwise; rather, the author contends that while we don’t see obvious signs of Jesus controlling things from on high, instead, we see Jesus suffering with us, and at work in and through our suffering for our good, and the good of others. We don’t see him reigning as king, but we do see him exercising his authority as high priest to bring about our redemption, and to set us free from our slavery to sin.
Now, as I noted, the author’s ultimate aim in this section is to establish that Jesus is a higher authority than the law. Many Jewish Christians still kept the whole Jewish law, and often they tried to force other Christians to do the same; they believed that even if you worshiped Jesus as Lord, you still needed to keep the whole law in order to be saved. The goal of the author of Hebrews is to convince his audience that this isn’t true, that they are saved through faith in Jesus Christ alone—and indeed, not only did they not need the Jewish law, but that if they put any of their faith at all in the law, they would be turning away from Jesus. As C. S. Lewis would later put it, Christ plus nothing equals everything—but Christ plus anything equals nothing. Hebrews wants to make sure we hold fast to Christ alone and so end up with everything instead of nothing.
To that end, having asserted the absolute authority of Christ over everything, the author turns to apply that by showing that Jesus is superior to Moses, through whom God gave the Old Testament law. He doesn’t in any way disparage Moses, but affirms him as a servant of God who was faithful in all God’s house, someone who is worthy of glory for doing the work God gave him to do, and doing it faithfully; Moses deserves the honor he receives, and there’s no need to diminish him. Actually, that Moses was indeed a great man of God is part of Hebrews’ point: even as great as Moses was, Jesus is greater. Come up with the greatest, most admirable, most important person you can find—it doesn’t matter who, Jesus is greater.
The argument here is simple: like Moses, Jesus was faithful to God, but Moses was only God’s servant, Jesus is God’s Son. Moses was faithful in God’s house, which is worthy of glory and honor, but Jesus is faithful over God’s house, which is worthy of far more. Moses is a servant in the house; Jesus is its builder and the one who has all authority over it, and he has been completely faithful in all that the Father has given him to do.
Then in the second half of verse 6, we get this interesting transition: Christ is faithful over God’s house, and we are his house. We’re moving away from the cosmic reality of Christ as the one who is above all the angels, who made the whole world and has authority over all of it, to focus on Christ as the one who has authority as high priest over the household of God, which is his people. There are several reasons for this shift, some of which we’ll get into as we go further into the book; in part, though, it’s part of the comparison of Jesus to Moses. Hebrews isn’t just saying that Jesus is greater than Moses because he made the world and Moses just lived in it; that wouldn’t really be to the point. Rather, Hebrews is saying something much more relevant: yes, Moses was a great leader of God’s people, but in this way, too, Jesus is greater. He’s worthy of more glory than Moses not just because of his work as creator and sustainer of the world, but because of his work here on earth.
Now, the interesting thing here is that the author actually goes on to make that argument in his warning section. You may remember, if you were here two weeks ago, my talking about the three-part sections of this book—first, the author presents an argument for the supremacy of Christ, then he applies it, and then he warns you what will happen if you turn away from Christ—and beginning in verse 7, we get the second warning of the book. Once again, he starts by quoting one of the Psalms, Psalm 95, which is a telling choice, I think. It starts by giving praise to God as Savior, then as the creator of all things and the God and King above all other powers; then it makes the transition and says, “Let us worship him specifically as our God, for we are his people.” This is the same shift we see in Hebrews. And having made it, we get this passage which the author of Hebrews quotes, which references the Exodus in warning us not to harden our hearts against God.
At first glance, it seems like a jarring change—but when you stop and think about what the psalmist is saying, it really isn’t. Israel affirmed God as the rock of its salvation—why? Because of the Exodus. The Exodus was the defining event of Israel’s history and identity; it was during the Exodus that he gave his people the Law, and it was through the Exodus that he established the corporate relationship with his people that would set the terms for their national existence from then on. And here’s the key: the Exodus was God saving his people as a people from slavery to a power which they could never have overcome, then leading them out of exile in a far country and back to the home which he had promised them and prepared for them.
Underlying this warning in Hebrews, though the author doesn’t explicitly come out and say it, is the understanding that Jesus came to lead the people of God in a new and greater Exodus. That was something God had promised through his prophets, as a consequence of the exile: though God had punished them by sending foreigners to conquer them and drag them far from home, he would raise up a leader who would bring their exile to an end and return them to Jerusalem. Those promises were fulfilled at the most basic level when Cyrus of Persia decreed that the Jews were free to go back to their own land, but there was much in them that was not fulfilled; even though they were back in Israel, the Jews were still a conquered people, and the throne of David was still vacant. Over time, they came to the conclusion that in some ways, they were still in exile, and still needed God to send his Messiah to bring about the new Exodus which he had promised long before. This, says Hebrews, is exactly what God did in Jesus.
Of course, as we’ve noted before, the problem was that it didn’t look like what people expected; it wasn’t a political victory, and it didn’t result even in political freedom for Israel, let alone a politically and militarily powerful Israel that could bring the Gentiles under the rule of God’s law. It certainly didn’t produce anything that looked like the promised messianic kingdom. So if we do not see everything subject to Jesus, then what is it we see? Hebrews answers that by saying, what we see is Jesus leading a new Exodus, not out of earthly slavery to an earthly government, but out of the far more oppressive and far deadlier spiritual slavery of all human beings to the power of sin and death.
This is a profound thing: Jesus has inaugurated God’s ultimate work of deliverance, that of all his people—now expanded to include all the peoples of the world, not just Israel—from all that has been set wrong in his creation, and all the effects of that blight. This is no mere partial solution, quick fix, or treatment of symptoms; this is the healing of the whole disease, right from the root. However, as the language of Hebrews acknowledges, it is a deliverance which is still in process. God through Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt, but they didn’t simply cross the border into their own land—he led them out into, and through, the wilderness. He took them into a period in which they had already been delivered, but their deliverance was not yet complete; they were already out of slavery, but not yet experiencing everything he had promised them. They were living in between. God had promised them a new home, he had begun the process of getting them there, but they had not yet seen it.
It’s out of that reality that the warning comes, both from the psalmist and from the author of Hebrews. God took his people out into the wilderness, and they promptly started complaining, and finally rebelled; as a consequence, he kept them there for an extra forty years, until that rebellious generation had died off. His people wouldn’t put their whole faith in him to take care of them, because they didn’t really believe that they would see the rest which he had promised them; and so God judged them, and they didn’t. Instead of focusing on God and his promises, they focused on their circumstances and difficulties, and when push came to shove, they believed in their circumstances more than in God. God said, “Go into the land, and I will give you the victory,” but their eyes said, “Those enemies are too powerful for us, we’ll lose”; they trusted their eyes over God, and refused the gift. They refused their promised salvation, out of unbelief and fear.
The concern driving the author of Hebrews is that some of his readers are being tempted to make the same mistake. We are in the wilderness, and so we do not see all things subject to Jesus; we are halfway home, in between the land of slavery and the land of promise, and all the promises Jesus has made to us are already assured, but most of them are not yet fulfilled, though we have started to see the fulfillment of many of them. The road through the wilderness is not an easy one—that’s why the Israelites kept thinking that maybe they’d be better off going back to Egypt, forgetting that slavery was even worse than the challenges of freedom; it’s easy to start to wonder sometimes if we’re really getting anywhere, and if it’s all really worth it. It’s easy to start to think that maybe that glimmer off to the left there is actually an oasis, not just another mirage.
In response, Hebrews tells us to learn from history. To those who held fast to God, he was faithful; those who trusted that God would do as he promised saw his promises fulfilled. Those who did not, did not. If we’re faithful, we can be absolutely certain that God will be faithful; but unbelief is its own punishment, because however difficult the road may be to which God calls us, it’s the only road that will get us where we need to be, and the only road he’ll help us walk.
Of course, “just have faith” and “just keep going” are both easier said than done, and sometimes by a long way; which is why we have this interesting statement in verse 13, “Encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘today,’ so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” We need one another. We need people to walk alongside us, to listen to us, to encourage us, to tell us we can make it; we need people we aren’t willing to disappoint, people we really don’t want to see us fail. It’s one of the key things that makes Alcoholics Anonymous work. If we try to go out there and just be strong, if we try to be Nike and “just do it,” we probably won’t; we’ll probably fall for lack of support, and there will be no one to help us up. But if we go together, we have the support of others to keep us from falling, and to help us get up and keep going if we fall anyway. We need each other.
And we need to encourage each other while it’s still called “today.” It’s easy for us not to do that; it’s easy for us to figure we have time, we can do it tomorrow. But you know, it’s always “today” when you actually do what needs to be done or say what needs to be said; we don’t live in “tomorrow,” we only live in “today.” If we try to hand things off to the future, when the future becomes the present, will we do them then? Or will we just kick them down the road again? And what if the future we imagine never comes? What if we actually don’t have time—what then? We don’t have tomorrow, we can’t count on it or control it; we just live in “today,” one day at a time, never knowing when this might be the last “today” we have. We only know what we can do now, and we have no assurance of any kind that we’ll ever be able to do it again; we need to take the opportunities we have while it is still called “today” to give others the encouragement they need from us, because we may never have those opportunities again—and who knows what may be lost? There are those who are gifted in this way, to whom seeing and seizing those opportunities comes naturally, and there are those of us who are much more likely to miss them; but gifted or not, this is something we’re all called to do, to actively look for chances to encourage those around us to follow Jesus, to trust him, to hold fast in their faith, in the assurance that however rough the road may be, he will bring us through the wilderness safe and sound, and into the promised land at last.