Consider Jesus

There’s a saying that the carpenter’s house never gets built. There are many unfinished building projects. Jesus warned us that our spiritual life can become like that. Every household has a culture. What was yours like growing up? What kind of culture have you shaped in your own? If Jesus was going to build a house, what kind of people would live there, and what kind of culture would He shape? Does our community look like that? How can we grow?

Brothers, Consider Jesus

Since Jesus chose to share our flesh and blood, to partake in our humanity, to die to overcome the fear of death, we share a heavenly calling, to be children of Abraham, sharing His faith and covenant. How should we respond to such a calling? Consider Jesus...

1 - apostle and high priest of our confession

2 - faithful to him who appointed Him, like Moses

3 - worthy of more glory than Moses, because Moses is a part of the house, but Jesus is the builder

4 - God is building a house. God is a community, Trinity.

5-6 - Moses was a servant in the house, but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son.

We are the house, if we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in hope. Not just any Our hope is in the faithfulness of Jesus. Jesus is the architect.

The tallest building I’ve ever entered is the John Hancock Tower in Boston, 60-story, 790-feet tall. When you take the elevator to the observation deck, you are putting all your faith and hope in the builder of that building. Let’s say I get to the top, and a storm or an earthquake hits Boston. Am I able to keep a building like that standing? I trust in the builder to have done the work on my behalf.

The writer here fully expects that if you and I consider Jesus, we will hold fast to Him in confidence and hope. Jesus was sent by God to be High Priest of our faith. We have a High Priest who has founded our faith through sacrificial love. The house Jesus has designed has a foundation which is the atonement He has made for us by His own blood. He has designed walls of justification before God for us by His resurrection from the dead. The doors and windows are left open because Jesus has ascended to share God’s throne to help us in our time of need. What caps it all off is His promised return to set the world right again. The requirement for us is to abide in Jesus.

But this is followed by a warning. The writer links the image of God’s house, built by Jesus, to the promise of rest (Sabbath) from Psalm 95, going back to Deuteronomy.

The Holy Spirit warns us not to harden our hearts to the voice of God. 7-8 - "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” (repeated v. 15) The obstacle to putting our confidence and hope in Jesus, and what keeps us from entering the Sabbath house of God, is a hard heart.

The place where God dwells is a place of rest. He is inviting people to dwell with Him there. But as the story goes, the people went astray from the LORD because of their hard hearts, and were not able to enter that rest. They tried to build something on their own. They thought they knew better. A lot of us have been trying to build our lives, our families, our careers, our retirement nest-egg, on our own. If we can just get those things in order, we’ll find our rest. Or we’ve been building our relationship with God out of our own spiritual achievements, our work for Him, rather than our time with Him. And we’re wearing ourselves out. How are we going to enter the promise of rest?

1. Consider who Jesus is. He is faithful when we are faithless. He is the Son we should be but aren’t.

2. Put all your hope in Him. When we stop building self-confidence, and build Christ-confidence, we find rest in God through Jesus.

Brothers, See to Your Heart

Where does a hard heart come from?

12 - Take care/see to your heart. Why is unbelief evil? It leads to falling away/depart from the living God. When we consider who Christ is, we stand with Him in confidence and hope. When we harden our hearts to God’s voice, we will not stand. We will wander off from our source of life and rest.

There are so many temptations to close off our hearts these days. It’s really hard to know who or what to believe. We close our hearts to faith in general, and especially believing in anyone that seems too good to be true, like a God of grace and mercy. But the writer doesn’t cut us much slack here.

13 - our hearts are hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. In verse 18, the writer links sin to disobedience, and in verse 19 with unbelief. When we are deceived by thinking that we know better than God, that we can live life our way, we justify ourselves to God, and end up departing from the faith that pleases God.

We are being lured outside the place of rest Jesus has provided for us. If we allow ourselves to be lured, we will drift away. You can’t go your own way without hardening your heart. Stay close, abide in Jesus.

So, the pattern is simple to understand. The one who hears God’s voice, believes Him, and obeys what they hear has rest, life, confidence, and can boast in hope. The one who hears God’s voice and does not believe Him, and disobeys, will fall away from the living God, will never find rest, and will die.

So, what are we to do with this message? Verse 13 tells us to exhort one another every day. The expectation is that members of the Jesus community will find daily opportunities to come together around our heavenly calling, written in God’s word. In this case, today is the day you are hearing the Word of God. But hearing is not enough. Don’t deceive yourself, that because you came to church and heard God’s word, you are somehow magically more spiritual, saintly, and a member of God’s household.

Jesus is the active builder of the house. Verse 14 is key and central to understanding everything we’ve been looking at. Building on verse 6, “we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope,” verse 14 tells us that we “come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original ‘confidence’ firm to the end (ESV).” The word translated “confidence, or assurance” literally means “undertaking, or project”. When you first come to Jesus in faith, your heart is tender toward Him. You only want to be with Him, abide in Him. As your life goes on, there are voices that lure you outside into the land of hard hearts. The writer is saying, hold fast to your undertaking with the same devotion you had at the beginning. Beginning to end, Jesus is our undertaking. We make abiding in Jesus our project. This is how Jesus will build a fully formed life in you. Don’t give up on the building project.

What is formed in our lives when we abide in Jesus like it’s our only project? The writer says we share in Christ. From this passage alone, we can see that we share in His faithfulness, His glory, the sonship He has. We share in the Sabbath rest He has prepared for those that put their hope in Him.

The writer ends by pointing back to the generation that had seen miracles, had heard God Himself speak in a voice like thunder, had been protected and cared for as they wandered through the wilderness to a land flowing with milk and honey, but in the end, had not believed God, had not obeyed God. When future generations look back on us, will they use us as a warning, or as a model?

Unfinished houses, or holding fast to our first undertaking to abide in Jesus until the end?

Discussion questions

What does this passage teach us about God?

If you were to live in a house built by Jesus, what would you expect it to be like?

What has Jesus done, and what is He doing, to build this house?

What does this passage teach about us?

What is the promise, and what is the warning?

What is one way you can respond to this message this week?

Is there someone you could share this message with this week?