Hebrews 3:1-19 | 4 Oct 2026 PM | Richard Wardman
Notes
Transcript
What’s the worst decision you could ever make. For Ron Wayne, he might say it was the day he decided to sell his 10% stake in a small company in 1976. The company became Apple Computers, and had Ron Wayne kept his 10% share, today he would be worth more than $2.6billion!
What’s the worst decision you and I could ever make? What’s the worst thing any of us could ever do? Some kind of moral outrage – like murder or benefit fraud? A terrorist atrocity – murdering large number of people? A really bad decision – selling shares that could make you a billionaire?
In fact, none of these come even remotely close to the very worst thing we could ever do. You might think that you’re not capable of doing some of those terrible things. But we’re all capable of doing the thing that the writer to Hebrews is warning against.
That’s why he’s writing this part of his letter: to warn us against making the worst decision and doing the worst thing any of us could ever do.
Just like Ron Wayne, we’re in a highly privileged position of sharing in something that is extremely valuable…
Notice how believers are addressed in v1…
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.
We are made holy in Christ, who’s not ashamed to call us brothers, and we are heading for heaven to be with him forever. And it’s all because of him.
That’s why we are to fix our thoughts on Jesus. That’s why we are to pay more careful attention to what we have heard about Jesus. We’re to give particularly careful thought to the faithfulness of Jesus…
Consider Faithful Jesus
Consider Faithful Jesus
(vv1-6)
…because Jesus was faithful as one sent from heaven to bring us to heaven.
Faithful apostle and high priest
Faithful apostle and high priest
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.
Apostle = ‘sent one,’ while a high priest acts as the mediator between those on earth and God in heaven. Writer says: Jesus has been perfectly faithful in both of these callings.
He was faithful to the one who appointed him
Jesus is the perfect word from God, and he is the perfect way to God. So fix your thoughts on faithful Jesus; meditate carefully on his faithfulness. Why? Because for those who trust in him, Christ’s faithfulness guarantees his holiness and his inheritance for us. We can trust him for these because he has proven himself trustworthy.
Jesus remained faithful because we aren’t. Our faithfulness will always be found lacking, which is why Jesus was sent and why he made the perfect sacrifice as high priest.
Our only hope now is to trust in his faithfulness for us – not trying harder, or willing ourselves to do better. That will never work. Jesus was faithful for us; we must keep trusting in the power of his faithfulness to make us holy brothers and sisters sharing in his heavenly calling.
Jesus was a faithful apostle and high priest. And he was also…
Faithful like Moses
Faithful like Moses
He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house.
Moses stuck with faithless Israel for over 40 years, through the Exodus and in the wilderness. Interceded when they sinned. Spoke the word of the Lord faithfully. Zealous for their affections toward God.
Moses was faithful. But Jesus’ faithfulness has a different, better quality. Faithful Moses testified to the future perfect faithfulness found only in Jesus.
‘Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house,’ bearing witness to what would be spoken by God in the future.
Moses was faithful, as a servant, IN God’s house. But Jesus is…
The builder of God’s house
The builder of God’s house
Jesus has been found worthy of greater honour than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honour than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything.
The Son over God’s house
The Son over God’s house
‘Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house,’ bearing witness to what would be spoken by God in the future. 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.
The present tense ‘is’ in v6 means that Jesus is also…
Eternal in God’s house
Eternal in God’s house
That’s why Jesus has been found worthy of greater honour and glory than even Moses.
So, consider faithful Jesus, the one sent from God to build his eternal house. Think carefully about how Jesus was faithful in spite of the opposition he faced. His faithfulness for us can produce faithfulness in us, because the result of his faithfulness is our eternal place in God’s eternal house, sharing in the inheritance as his eternal sons with Jesus.
Faithful Jesus is entirely trustworthy to bring us to our eternal home, so keep trusting him. It’s imperative that we keep trusting him…
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.
If we lose all confidence in Christ, if we let go of our hope in Christ and put our trust in other things, if we fail to persevere in our faith in faithful Jesus, we run a serious risk of being locked out of the house. Not because we’ve been evicted, but because we were never part of the family in the first place.
So how do we ensure that we don’t get locked out, that we’re a member of the family of God? Simple warning from Israel’s history.
Don’t Harden your Hearts
Don’t Harden your Hearts
(vv7-12)
So, as the Holy Spirit says: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested and tried me, though for forty years they saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation; I said, “Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.” So I declared on oath in my anger, “They shall never enter my rest.” ’
It’s not enough to ‘hear his voice;’ we must have soft hearts that beat with trusting obedience.
Soft hearts rejoice, trust, believe and obey; hard hearts grumble, are unbelieving, and therefore disobedient. With hard hearts we’re in danger of…
Grumbling
Grumbling
Quoting Ps 95, referring to the quarrelling in the desert of Ex 17. No water, so grumbled.
Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt?
Even though they had just come out of Egypt through the Red Sea, after 10 plagues against Egypt! Should have been easy for them to trust, follow and obey him, but they rebelled and grumbled against him. So, today, if you hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts.
Hearing the Word doesn’t guarantee a faithful and obedient life. We might hear the word on a regular basis and yet still grumble in our hearts against the Lord. There is a kind of grumbling that lurks in our hearts aimed specifically at God. You might not realise it.
It comes out whenever our experience of life clashes with our understanding of God. God is almighty, powerful, holding everything in his hands, and yet someone is struggling to feed their family, someone else is dying of cancer etc. How can that be good?
Very easy to harden our hearts when trials come. But it is beautiful when believers trust implicitly in the Lord through the most painful experiences.
This is true in general experience of life. It can be especially true in the life of our church: Jesus promised to build his church and yet it’s so hard to make disciples. People don’t want to hear, we’re so weak and ineffective. Why doesn’t he do something?
There’s a grumbling that rises from our hearts because ultimately we don’t take God at his word, and we fail to trust in his power.
So therefore, our grumbling is really a symptom of…
Unbelief
Unbelief
We understand something about God but don’t necessarily believe that it’s true. We don’t believe that God is all that good or powerful when we or others are suffering. We don’t trust that Christ will build his church in his own way, using weak vessels like us who suffer for the gospel to do it.
Danger is that unbelief will lead to all-out disobedience, a refusal to follow Jesus because of a lack of confident trust in his power and goodness. Hence the warning…
See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.
This is the worst thing we could do: ‘there’s no point in carrying on with Jesus. It’s pointless, useless and doesn’t make a difference. Better off doing what makes me happy now.’
That’s the sound of a hardened, sinful, unbelieving heart talking. Do you recognise it? You hear it talking to you every time you grumble, every time you’re tempted to disobey, every time you’re tempted to fall away.
Warning: don’t harden your hearts. Remember: you are holy brothers and sisters with Jesus, sharers in the heavenly calling. You’re in the house and in the family if you hold on to your confidence in Jesus.
And if you hold on your confidence in Christ then you will ultimately…
Enter His Rest
Enter His Rest
(vv13-19)
There’s an alternative to grumbling unbelief with hard hearts. It’s found in vv13-14. We’re to do two things…
Encourage one another daily
Encourage one another daily
But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today’, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.
Critical to remaining immune to sin’s deceitfulness is the encouragement we receive from one another. Encourage, exhort each other – how? By helping one another to consider faithful Jesus! Remember his work, meditate on it, be reassured every day by his faithful service on our behalf, so that our hearts don’t become hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.
We’re told to encourage each other every day with these things. You may know what it’s like to watch someone slowly drifting, or struggling in their faith.
As a very new believer I was being tempted. A brother could see it, and could see the consequences. He took me aside and gently exhorted me to stay faithful to Christ. And when I ignored him he didn’t give up! He went to great lengths to encourage me and to keep me from abandoning the faith. I’m thankful to God for my brother.
Who can you encourage daily? Who do you know that needs this kind of loving and patient help? Doesn’t need to be complicated or time consuming. Just a quick phone call, text, email or note. Feed them the word and encourage them, pointing them to faithful Jesus. Help them to see how his faithfulness to us and for us means that we can remain faithfulness to and for him.
Maybe you need help yourself, but you’ve kept quiet about it because you’re afraid. Is there someone you can ask to pray for you, to check in on you, and keep you looking to Jesus?
We all need this kind of encouragement so that we can…
Hold firm in gospel confidence to the end
Hold firm in gospel confidence to the end
We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.
This is the only way of knowing whether a believer is genuine or not – if they hold firm all the way to the end! Perseverance is an important Christian doctrine – a practical Christian doctrine that deserves our attention. All true believers will persevere to the end. Sure, there may be times when their devotion to the Lord wanes or disappears! But he brings them back to himself, and he keeps them till the end.
We will power on through till the end, not in our strength but in His, when we keep considering the faithfulness of Jesus for us. Keep remembering his sacrifice, his payment for sin, the wrath he bore for us.
Let me encourage you now to keep your thoughts on the faithfulness of Christ who could have blown it all by bowing to Satan, or tearing himself from the cross, but remained faithful to his Father because he trusted him and knew the joy that awaited him in the end…
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
Lord Jesus, we thank you for staying faithful for us. Thank you that your faithfulness then means that we don’t have to trust in ourselves now, but can fix our eyes on you and the hope we have in you. Keep us from grumbling, from unbelief, give us soft hearts to your word, so that we will not stumble, but endure to the end. Amen.
