Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-march-11-2025
Hebrews 3:1-11
Jesus Greater Than Moses
Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest. 2 He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house. 3 Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. 4 For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. 5 “Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house,” bearing witness to what would be spoken by God in the future. 6 But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.
Warning Against Unbelief
7 So, as the Holy Spirit says:
“Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion,
during the time of testing in the wilderness,
9 where your ancestors tested and tried me,
though for forty years they saw what I did.
10 That is why I was angry with that generation;
I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray,
and they have not known my ways.’
11 So I declared on oath in my anger,
‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ”
You might remember that a few days ago, we based one of our Reflections on the New Testament book that’s customarily entitled ‘the Letter to the Hebrews.’ We said at that time that nobody knows for sure who wrote the book, but that a number of scholars believe it was a man named Apollos, who is described in the Acts of the Apostles as an expert on the Hebrew scriptures who later became one of the leaders of the early church.
We also said that, although some Christian readers say the book of Hebrews is about how flawed the Hebrew religious tradition was, the real central message of the book is that the Hebrew tradition was simply unable to put people in right relationship with God once and for all, and that Jesus was able to do that through his self-sacrifice on the cross. So in an important sense, Hebrews presents Jesus as the fulfillment of the history of his people and of their relationship with God.
You might also remember that we said that the author of Hebrews demonstrates a detailed knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures, what we call “the Old Testament,” telling us how the life and ministry of Jesus fits within the history and tradition of his people.
In our passage for today, the author makes the point that Jesus had a role in the life of his people that could be compared to the role of Moses in earlier times. That obviously would be a very important role, as Christians from the Hebrew tradition understood the history of their people. Moses not only led his people out of slavery in Egypt, but also served as the conduit through which God provided the law that literally made the covenant people what they were. So in the letter to the Hebrews — as well as in the gospel according to Matthew – Jesus is portrayed in a sense as a ‘second Moses.’
But there’s an important difference, according to the author of the book of Hebrews. He writes that Jesus was and is the son and heir in the household of God, whereas Moses
was just a servant of that household. The significance for us, as followers of Jesus, is that we are adopted members of that very same household of God.
In the second part of our reading for today, the author points backward to an episode in the history of the Hebrew people — an occasion during the exodus, when Moses was leading the people through the desert. This episode, which was originally described in Exodus 17, is also discussed in Psalm 95, and this passage quotes from that psalm.
The story tells us about an occasion on which the Hebrew people bitterly complained because they had no water. Their complaints are regarded as expressing such a lack of faith in God’s care that they amounted to the people “testing” him. In the story in Exodus 17, God is so offended by these bitter complaints and the lack of faith they reveal that he decrees that those who voiced them would not be allowed to enter the promised land.
The interesting thing about this passage, it seems to me, is the thought that the responses of human beings could represent a “test” for God. It’s not at all uncommon to hear people who are going through hard times say that they are being “tested by God.”
That might be true, maybe not. (That’s probably a discussion for another Reflection.) But the question today’s reading raises is that of whether our responses to the struggles in our own lives might actually test the patience of God, and might grieve his heart because of our lack of faith.
Those of us who are parents might have a clue to God’s feelings on an issue like that, because for a parent, there’s little more discouraging than seeing your child respond badly to hardship. When they react with anger or impatience to difficult circumstances, it’s hard not to feel that we’ve failed somehow in the task of parenting. And for the God who invites us to see him as Abba, “Papa,” the people’s lack of faith in him was apparently so painful that he withdrew an important promise of the covenant from that generation.
It’s a fact of human life that all of us encounter hardship. And when that happens, we may well conclude that we’re being tested. But this passage also challenges us to remember that our responses to those tests — to those times of trouble — might bring joy or grief to the heart of God. That’s because our responses demonstrate the amount of trust we have in God’s promise that ultimately, in this world or the next, God will bring us through every trial we face.
It seems wise to do what we can to foster that trust in ourselves, because as the Book of Hebrews stresses, the God we love and serve — the God who came into this world in the form of Jesus and died on the cross for us — has a 4,000-year track record of keeping his promises.
Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you for the great faithfulness you have shown to your people throughout your long relationship with them, and with us. In times of trouble and hardship, remind us of that great faithfulness, and of your promise that nothing can separate us from your love. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Grace and peace,
Henry
Recent Comments