This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to our second day of looking through Hebrews chapter 3. We're going to
look at verses 2 to 6 today. We're talking all this week about how to live out a
life of faithfulness before God, the kind of life He wants us to live.

And yesterday we talked about the truth that to do that you have to fix your
thoughts on Jesus. Jesus, who is our apostle, the one who was sent from God to
us, and He who is our high priest, the one who represents God for us, represents
us before God. And here, as we go into verse 2, round about the end of verse 6,
we're going to see the truth about who Jesus is in light of who Moses is.

Now we're going to see that the writer of Hebrews does not make light of Moses.
He lifts him up as a great example, but then he shows Jesus is an even better
example, an example of faithfulness. Listen to what happens in the beginning of
verse 2.

He was faithful, Jesus was faithful to the one who appointed Him, just as Moses
was faithful in all of God's house. Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor
than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house
itself. For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of
everything.

Moses was faithful as a servant in all God's house, testifying to what would be
said in the future. But Christ is faithful as a son over God's house, and we are
His house if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast. There's a
third truth about faithfulness that you see in these verses, and it's very
simple.

Faithfulness means following. Faithfulness means following Him who is faithful.
And in talking about this, he talks about Moses in these verses.

In chapter 1 and 2, we saw the writer of Hebrews talking to us about the truth
that Jesus is better than the angels, and here in chapter 3, we're reminded that
Jesus is better than Moses. You've got to get your focus in the right place. If
you focus only on angels, the warning in chapter 1 and 2 is you begin to feel
like you can get close to the angels, but you can't really get close to God,
because if you've gotten your focus on the wrong thing, fix your eyes on Jesus.

Believe in angels. Believe that they're messengers from God, they do work for
God, but don't fix your eyes on the angels, fix your eyes on Jesus. Same is true
of Moses.

Jesus is better than Moses. If you focus on Moses only, then you begin to put
your trust in the law of Moses, because he's the one who brought the law. But
the law was made, was designed to point to grace, to point to the fact that we
needed Jesus Christ to come and be our Savior.

If you focus on Moses, you're going to miss the truth of grace. And that's why
these verses say Jesus is worthy of greater honor, greater glory than even
Moses. And he gives us a couple of pictures of that.

He's worthy of greater glory than Moses because he is builder of the house. He
says there's this great house of God. We'll talk about what that means in a
moment.

The people of God. This great house of God. And Moses was very faithful as a
servant in that house.

But guess what? God built that house. He is the builder.

Moses was faithful, but God is the builder. He's greater. He gives us another
picture.

Moses was a servant in the house. Jesus is a son in the house. He is the owner.

He is the inheritor of everything. That's how Jesus is greater than Moses. And
in talking about this, he uses again and again in these verses the word house.

In fact, six times in this short section of scripture, the word house, the house
of God appears. And there's a deep, great reminder in these verses. The reminder
is to never refer to a church building as the house of God.

It is not. In fact, a church building is the place where the house of God meets.
Because the house of God in these verses is the people of God.

Beginning back in the Old Testament, he refers to them as the house of God. And
now in the New Testament, it's the church. It's the called out ones.

We're the house of God. A building is never called a house of God in the New
Testament. As a matter of fact, the early church had no buildings for two or
three hundred years.

They just met in people's homes. They met outside wherever they could. So when
we talk about the house of God here, it means people.

A church is not a building. A building is a place where a church meets. A church
is people.

It's God's people. And faithfulness. What is faithfulness all about?

Faithfulness is evidenced here in the life of Jesus and the life of Moses. They
were both faithful. If I want to be faithful, I've got to find a faithful person
and follow them.

And Jesus is the one to follow. Moses can give me some examples too, but only in
light of fixing my eyes on Jesus. Faithfulness comes from following.

If you figure, I've got to figure out life on my own, make it work on my own,
you're never going to be faithful. The way to be faithful is to follow him. Now
at the end of what we just read, there is a fourth truth about faithfulness, and
this is one that challenges us.

The fourth truth is faithfulness is evidenced by endurance. You might have
noticed that verse six as I read through those verses just a minute ago, but if
you didn't, let me read it again. But Christ is faithful as a son over God's
house, and we are his house if we hold onto our courage and the hope of which we
boast.

It's as if we're being built up here. We are God's house. We are God's family.

We are God's children. But then there's this word that it's like a cloud passes
over the sun when you see this word, the word if. If we hold on.

There's this possibility of us being self-deceived in the matter of belonging to
Christ, of being his house. And it all hangs on the uncertainty of this one
word, if. So what does this mean?

What does the word mean? Does this mean that if I don't hold onto God, somehow
he'll stop holding onto me, that I'll lose my salvation? I don't believe so.

Because in this deep study of the New Testament, you see, you'd have to ignore
too many verses that clearly talk about the security of our salvation. Verses
like John 3. 16 or what you see Jesus saying in John chapter 10 or what we see
in Romans chapter 8.

So many verses. So what's he talking about here? Because it clearly says if
here.

What does it mean? Well, we're going to see this more clearly when we get to
verse 14. But it's clear that he's talking here about whether we have a
relationship with Christ at all.

He's not talking about whether you can lose what you have, but about whether you
have it at all. If you hope in God, he says, you're a Christian. It shows who
you are.

There's an if clause here that shows who you are. And he's saying that
perseverance, being faithful, it doesn't gain salvation. That would make it a
work.

That would make it something I do. Perseverance, being faithful, demonstrates
that salvation has been truly gained. We're talking about security in our lives
here.

The kind of security that we have. And you may have heard the term eternal
security. I believe in that.

I believe we're eternally secure because the scripture says that God has changed
our essential nature when we become believers. But I also believe there's such a
thing as false security, and that's what he's talking about here. In fact,
there's three kinds of security to be aware of.

False security, conditional security, and eternal security. False security is
believing you're a Christian when you're not. Believing you're a Christian
because you got baptized once or you went to a church once and you're putting no
hope in God.

There's no life of God in you. There's no fruitfulness in you. That's false
security.

Jesus said, there's going to be people who called out my name, but I never knew
them. Watch out for false security. He's warning us.

He's deeply warning us of it here. A second type of security is what I call
conditional security. That's believing that somehow my security of salvation
rests on what I do.

It's conditioned on what I do. Because I don't believe that our salvation can be
maintained by works any more than it can be gained by works, I don't believe in
conditional security. If you get caught up in conditional security, some who
wouldn't say, "I believe it," get caught up in it.

You think somehow you're maintaining your salvation by what you do, you're going
to live a life of deep guilt and worryness before God. That's how you know if
you're living conditional security. You know you were saved, but you're weary
all the time because you're trying to do all these good things for God to keep
yourself saved, even though you know He's the only one who can keep you saved.

We get caught in that trap by Satan sometimes. And then there's the eternal
security, the confidence that we have before Him and that we're His. And the
writer of Hebrews is telling us here, the only way you can have that confidence
is if you're acting like you're His.

If you're not acting like you're His, then how can you have that confidence? How
can you know that that's who you are? You're going to live out who you are, who
God's made you to be.

So he's saying here, if you're born again, you have courage, you have hope. Not
perfect courage and hope, but growing courage and hope. You're going to have ups
and downs in your life, but overall you see that your life is in Him.

And if you don't have these things, you're honestly, you just have to be honest
with yourself, your own self-evaluation, not anybody else here, just you and
God. You honestly are not being faithful to all that God has given. If there is
no hope that you have in God, if you don't think about Him, not just for days or
weeks, but for months or years, if it's all about you.

Now, the truth is, if you have no hope in God at all, you're probably not even
listening to this because you don't have time for Bible study. But if somehow
God has brought you to this and you realize in your own self-evaluation that
somehow He put this message before you because you've been pretending you're a
Christian for a long, long time, but there's no evidence, there's no fruit of it
in your life, there's a deep warning here. Don't take the grace of God for
granted.

Put your hope in Him. Put your trust in Him. Watch the evidence of faithfulness
begin to unfold in your life.

Stop lying to yourself and return to following Him who is faithful. Let's pray
together. Lord, I pray particularly for someone listening to this right now who
wonders, "Am I a believer?

Am I a follower? " I know sometimes Satan puts those doubts in our mind, even
though we have been faithful to you. And I pray for those who are struggling
with those doubts that you would dispel those doubts.

You'd help them to see the fruit of faithfulness in their life that they've been
praying to you. They've been reading your word. They've been reading your hope
in you.

They've been spending time around other believers. They've been seeing growth in
their life and change, not perfection, but growth and change. Give assurance
based on your word, but give assurance, Lord, also based on what your Spirit's
been doing in our lives.

I pray for those who see no assurance that the truth of the matter is, this is
the first message from the Bible they've heard for a long, long time. And I ask
Jesus that right now you'd help there to be a moment of just honesty before you.
Instead of somehow relying on something that happened a long time ago and
thinking, "Well, I'm okay with Jesus," that instead, Lord, we'd for the first
time in a long time take it deeply seriously.

We come to you and say before you, "Lord, we need your grace. We need your
strength. I want to see the fruit of faithfulness in my life.

I want to live the life you've given me to live, not just think about it or
remember it. " And so right now I recommit my life, or I commit my life to you
for the first time. In Jesus' name, amen.

Tomorrow we're going to look together at the greatest enemy of faithfulness and
the greatest friend of faithfulness in our daily lives.