Hebrews 3:3-6 For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who has built the house has more honor than the house.… 1. "He that built all things is God." He began in the undated past, and He keeps on in sundry ways and with diverse materials from generation to generation. To-day is built up out of yesterday and all its predecessors, and the vast and prolific morrow will be constructed out of the incomprehensible and mighty to-day. 2. "Know ye that the Lord, He is God. It is He who hath made us and not we ourselves." "We are His workmanship," created of old, with a body that is a finely built machine, opulent in resources, and apt for our uses; with a mind of surprising capacities; perception and reason, memory and conscience, hope and trust, reverence and love, and above all with a spirit that links us with the Infinite, makes us susceptible of being "created anew in Christ Jesus," after the type of His holy life. The home is His work, built as the primary institution for choking in the germ the destructive self-seeking of the human race, and developing that love which forgets self, considers all, and creates an atmosphere of domestic and social ozone that refreshes and exhilarates everybody who breathes it. 3. But God's supreme building work goes very far beyond that unit of civilisation, the home, and seeks to construct out of the individuals of which the world is composed one vast moral commonwealth, a spiritual republic, a divine " house," in which selfishness shall be killed outright, and God and freedom, righteousness and love, reign for ever and ever; a "house" with servants like Moses, sons like Jesus, faithful in all things; a free, aggressive, and holy spiritual community; a perfect form of society, into which nothing enters that defiles, or makes a lie. This is the Divine ideal, the sum and crown of the long and patient labours of God upon men, the image and pattern of the things, towards the realisation of which all the pulling down and plucking up of nations, and states, and churches, and all the reconstructing of systems and societies, stedfastly and assuredly tend. 4. "Whose house are we" — we Hebrews recently become followers of Jesus, but not the less belonging to God's building; for He goes forward amid the wreck of systems, the sacking of Jerusalem, with unbroken persistence, calm and sure, though not swift, towards the eternally pre-ordained top-stone. The fires of God (Hebrews 12:29) sweep through the structure with a fierce and cleansing blast, not a grain of gold is lost; but lo! here I an ampler edifice, on a wider foundation, richer in its architectural beauty, rises into sight as the dwelling-place of the sons of men. 5. Whence it follows, if you are able to hear it, that in the truest sense God is the first Socialist. the Author of that gospel which has done more to create motive and inspire practical enthusiasm for the real welfare of men, than all other systems and agencies and persons put together. 6. Two workers of unapproachable greatness stand out with decisive significance as social creators and organisers. Many builders have done excellently, hut Moses, a faithful servant in the house of the Father, and Jesus, a faithful Son, have excelled them all. The making of Israel was in the hands of Moses. The making "of all things new" is the work of Christ. 7. Moses, indeed, was faithful in all His house as a servant, and built up, as Ewald says, "for the first time in all human history a whole nation, prepared to put itself under obligation to live hereafter only in accordance with true religion and her requirements, and to look for salvation in all time to come only from loyalty in its religious life, and the love of the true God, which this loyalty pre-supposes." Better foundation than that can no man lay — God, freedom, righteousness, love; and on every part of it is prophetically written the name of the coming Christ. 8. But the chief purpose of the writer of the letter to the Hebrews is to show that Christ is a greater Builder than Moses. In what, then, was Jesus greater than Moses? In the basis on which He built? No: for both built on the same. In the spirit in which He did His work? No; for both could say, '" It is my meat to do the will of my Father, and to finish His work." In fidelity to His trust? Yes; but this is not in the writer's mind: but rather the fact that Christ proves Himself to be nearer the founts and sources of spiritual power. (1) Did Moses speak of a "definite Deity"? Christ's view of God as the Father and Saviour of all men, and of all alike, is the fullest gospel men have yet seen, and makes the amplest provision for all the needs of the individual and social life of mankind. (2) Did Moses build on the heights of freedom? Christ much more! It is to His incarnation and sacrifice we owe the knowledge of the unutterable worth of one soul, the marvellous possibilities of one corrupted and lost human being! From him comes the impulse to liberty. (3) Is Moses a legislator? so also is Christ. He did not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fill out and realise their plan; not to demolish their often-dropped ideal, but to take it up and embody it in the life of men. He leads to higher ways of action; to patience, forbearance, forgiveness and self-devotion, for the sake of the weakest and worst; and what men could not do or suffer under "the law" they accomplish with ease and grace under the gospel. (4) Since Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, is greater than Moses the servant of God, in that He furnishes the one thing that was lacking, viz., motive-power; and furnishes it on a scale of limitless magnitude, and with a fitness for human need that leaves nothing to desire, "let us hold fast our boldness and the glorying of our hope to the end," and so prove that we are of this Divine house. God's commonwealth is as sure to be established as the heavens and earth are built. Only let us give His gospel free play; treat it as containing the key to all our social problems as well as to our individual uses, and it will prove itself as victorious over the difficulties of humanity as it has signally triumphed in the experience of numberless individuals. (5) But recollect, we only belong to that "house" in so far as "we hold fast our boldness" and do not fail in bravo deeds, in bold initiative, in courageous persistence, in the speech and work that vindicate and back our confidence. God has no room for cowards and idlers. (6) Partnership in that "house" requires another quality, viz., that of holding fast "the glorying of our hope," i.e., our exulting hopefulness. "In social things," says John Morley, "we may be sure undying hope is the secret of vision," and it is also the secret of patient work. "We are saved ' socially ' by hope." Amid all this conflict of human passion and opinion, God's work of salvation and regeneration goes on, "without haste and without rest," towards its long since predicted consummation. (John Clifford, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who hath builded the house hath more honour than the house. |
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