Hebrews chapter three, and we're going to begin at the first verse. Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the apostle and high priest of our confession, Christ Jesus, who was faithful to him who appointed him, as Moses also was faithful in all his house. For this one has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses in as much as he who built the house has more honor than the house. For every house is built by someone, but he who built all things is God. And Moses indeed was faithful in all his house as a servant for a testimony of those things which would be spoken afterward. but Christ as a son over his own house, whose house we are if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end. We'll finish the reading there at verse six, and trust the Lord will seal his word to our hearts this day. Let's take a minute now and seek the Lord's face together. Let's ask him. Ask corporately, but please ask for your own soul, that the Lord will speak to you today, encourage your heart, and give you a sight of Christ. So let's bow in prayer. Oh, Father, we do praise you and bless you today. How we thank you that you have given us your son as our savior. Lord, we rejoice and bless you that this is so and all that we have in him. But Father, we know there is so much more for us to know and to understand. So much more, Father, that if it gripped us as it ought and as we should be gripped, Lord, we know it would make a powerful impact upon our lives and upon everything we do and say. So we are asking to grow in grace today. We are asking, oh God, for greater and more powerful understanding. We are asking, Lord, that the Holy Spirit would write in the most powerful way upon our souls the truth of who Christ is and who we are in him. So Father, pour out your spirit upon us this day. Lord, we need a supernatural work, nothing less will do. Father, work in each of us, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen, amen. Well, we've had a few weeks off from the studies that we began a while back in the book of Hebrews. And so I want to take a minute and just kind of remind us of the big picture of this book. This is a book that is written to Jewish believers, hence the name Hebrews. It is written to Jewish believers in Jesus. However, these particular Jewish believers were under attack. And as a result, they were doubting, they were struggling. They were tempted, in a sense, and for a number of reasons to maybe keep the Jewish and jettison or get rid of the Jesus. So as we have seen, the theme of the book and the title of the series, the author shows mostly from the Old Testament. that Jesus is better, Jesus is better. And we summarize the message this way, Jesus and all that his work in the new covenant involves is better than the old covenant. He is better than dead Christianity of mere doctrines and practices because the letter kills but the spirit gives life. And when you're under attack and in temptation and the devil's telling you of many things you really need, The Holy Spirit says in this book, Jesus is better than anything and everything. So the book begins by telling us That God has spoken. He is a communicating God. He ministers. He speaks truth to us. And again, don't take that corporately. He intends for you to hear his voice. He speaks to you personally, individually. One who knows your situation inside out has a message for you, has a word for you. In the grand scheme of things, he's going to be pointing you constantly to the Lord Jesus Christ. But in the minute, in the particular, in the current battle that you are facing, he wants to take and apply what is true of Jesus Christ to whatever it is you are going through, to show you how he is your deliverer at this time, in this case, with this difficulty. in this particular trial. So he is a communicating, speaking God. And as we began the book, we saw that whereas under the Old Covenant, he spoke by the fathers and the prophets, in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son, Jesus Christ. But since he's speaking to the Hebrews, who are obviously gonna be placing a great value on the fathers and the prophets, and may be placing more value on them than they do on the word of Jesus Christ, he's going to show, and we've seen part of this already from the Old Testament, that the superiority of Jesus is the very message and emphasis of those fathers and prophets. It's what they stood for. And so we saw, and you remember, I recounted to you and we looked at all the different places in scripture that those Old Testament quotations came from. That, you know, here is the author of this book, the Holy Spirit above all. Saying to you, look, the message all across the face of the Old Testament from many different authors, that message was always to point to the one who was coming. It was always a message of a messiah. That is the message. That is the emphasis. Jesus Christ is better. than all. So that's how he has spoken. And so that's the emphasis of these early chapters. Now, like most epistles, Paul's especially, most epistles, this one is structured like this. You deal with doctrine first. You say, what is the truth that God has spoken? What is the fruit of God's redeeming work upon his people? And having given us that doctrine, then you go to practice. So in other words, you say what the truth is and what it is we must believe. And when you've done that, then you say, this is what that means for our lives. These are the implications of that great message and that great doctrine. So that's what we have here. So the doctrine, the superiority of Christ and of Christianity begins by saying, teaching us the superiority of a Christ who is worthy of your faith, who if you see who he is, if you see what he has done, then you're going to have something to lean on for absolutely everything you will ever face and everything you will want for time and for eternity, because he is God the son and he is God's means and he is God's message. So that we see now. As a revealer, the first two chapters we saw this, as a revealer, he is greater than the prophets and he's greater than angels. He's better than them. They pointed to him. We come now to chapter three, we will see that as a mediator, he's greater than Moses. And we'll start into that today. We get to chapter four as a rest provider, as a completer of God's work. And you remember Joshua was the one who led God's people into the promised land to a place where they could finally be settled. And we're not strangers and pilgrims, as it were. Well, as a rest provider, Jesus Christ is the ultimate. He is the greater than Joshua. And then from chapter 4 and verse 14 all the way to chapter 10 and verse 18, he's going to zero in on this. As a high priest, Jesus Christ is greater than Aaron, greater than his whole order of priesthood. Now, there's so much there, but oddly enough, if you'll remember, we've said a lot about the priesthood already, because he's been setting that up. He's been saying, look, here is one who, you want a priest who knows you, and no one knows you like the Lord Jesus Christ. So he's emphasizing that. And then the last part of the book, chapter 10, verse 19, through chapter 13 in the very end, is this message. So if Jesus is all this, fix your eyes on him, fix your heart on him, have your faith grounded in him, and don't give up. Don't fall away. He's worthy to be loved. He's worthy to be worshiped. He's worthy to be trusted. So believe in him because he's better than everything. That's the message, and that's the thrust when we get to the application. Now, today we come to chapter three, so we transition into the second area in which Christ is superior, and that is as a mediator, a go-between, a mediator, he is greater than Moses. Now, that's huge for the Jews. You know, the ones to whom this epistle was written, Moses would be top shelf. Moses would be a big, big deal. In their mind, he's one of the greatest of the Old Testament fathers, but much more significantly, especially with the issues being dealt with in this book, he's the one who defined their faith. He's the one who taught them how to approach God, how to worship God, what to think about God. And so that is huge for them. They have been living by the law of Moses. Of the law of Moses that's that's how they've lived that's how they were taught to worship and to serve God. You may remember that the Lord Jesus Christ. That the Jews said to him when he's walking upon the earth, we are Moses disciples. We are Moses' disciples. They claim to be followers of Moses. That's how they viewed themselves. And so when you come to this book of Hebrews, the author here is gonna show the superiority of Jesus. If he's gonna lift him up, he's gonna have to deal with this man counted incredibly great, and that is this man, Moses. That's what he has to do. But as we're going to see Moses' message and Moses' ministry, were about Christ, and he's gonna reveal that to them, that his existence was about the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, Moses did have an important role in the Old Testament. He's the Old Covenant mediator, but he was also one of the redeemed. See, he doesn't lose sight of that. You go to the portion in Luke chapter 2, where Mary is magnifying. Remember, she goes and visits Elizabeth and she is magnifying the Lord for this miraculous work that he did, even the virgin birth. And yet one of the things that she stresses and what she says is. He's my savior. He's my savior. So here's this thing. She's his mother. He has no existence apart from her, but she knows. He's her Savior. Well, it's the same with Moses. Moses is this mediator. Moses had a certain greatness, but Moses was constantly pointing to someone greater still. And Moses knew that this one was his Savior. This one was the one who had the greatest superiority. So Moses is among the redeemed, and he's glad to be so. Well, so we have then and what we're looking at today is the first paragraph of chapter three. And in this paragraph, we have across these words three portraits. And that's how I want to look at it today. We have the two being compared, Moses and Jesus Christ. But we also have the redeemed, those who are redeemed in and by Christ, which includes ourselves. So there's a portrait in the very beginning and the very end of who we are as well. And once again, the Holy Ghost does not waste words. These are carefully chosen words, and so they're going to tell us something of who we are in Him as well. So what we want to look at today, and I invite you to consider with me portraits of the Redeemer and the redeemed. And we begin with this, who Moses was. All right, if he was great, well, let's take a look at him. Let's see him in his context. And the preeminent comparison here is Moses and Christ. Moses is a servant in a house. All right, we've seen that from what we've read. He's a servant in the house, but he's part of the house, whereas Jesus Christ is founder of the house, builder of the house. It's his house. It's called by his name, and it's interesting. The word house here is used in the same way. You know, we can talk about, you know, I need to sell my house, you know, kind of thing. And house can have a pretty common menial meaning. But some occasions we can talk about the house of Windsor. You know, or we can talk about some famous dynasty or some line historically that was just defining in the history of some nation. And we're saying something more than, well, that's the way this is spoken of. That's the kind of term that is used here. This is the house of Jesus Christ. And I'm telling you, when you come down and you read whose house we are, You know, whose house we are. That's something. That's powerful. So as it's pictured here, Jesus Christ is the son and heir of this house, the father's house. And we are part of that house. But our attention is on Moses here. Moses is said to be a servant. Now, in the grand scheme of things, that's a lowly place, right? It's a place of servitude. Now, the particular word here, there are lower still words, by the way, and Moses is, a term is used here that accords Moses some real dignity. The people who used to be the stewards of the house, and you remember the picture of Joseph in Egypt. He was the steward of Potiphar's house. And Joseph said this about him. He says, nothing that this man owns does he pay any attention to because he's given it all to me. He just lets me handle it. And that's an esteemed, honored position. Well, that's the position Moses had in this house. He was given this responsibility by God. He was made a minister of God, of the old covenant form of God's redeeming work. So it was a powerful, honorable place, but it's still a place of servitude. He doesn't own anything. And the more you learn about this house and the more you learn about how Christ treats his servants and what he intends for their future, you understand that, yeah, there's a lot of honor here. There's blessedness and happiness and, you know, a glorious future. but it's still, there's a specific function. Now, Moses was the mediator of the old covenant, and he was one who spoke to men for God, and he spoke to God for men, all right? So both of those were part of it. And you read Moses' history in the first five books of the Bible, you see him functioning that way. You see what he's doing. And he was unique and he was privileged in this regard. If you will put your finger here in Hebrews 3. Turn back with me to Numbers for a minute. Numbers chapter 12. Numbers 12 at verse 1. Numbers 12 and verse one, now follow the story closely here. Then Miriam and Aaron, okay, sister and brother to Moses, spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married. Families have been meddling in that from that day to this, in all these things. Everybody's got an opinion. Try to name your child. We learned very early to stop sharing that until the child was born, you know, when it was too late. But anyway, everybody's got an opinion. He had married an Ethiopian woman, verse one, verse two. So they said, has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also? And the Lord heard it. All right, so what started out as a complaint because he'd married an Ethiopian woman, married someone that they did not approve of, now all of a sudden strays in their envy or their ill feelings here, strays into his calling, which he received from God and not man. And it's pretty ominous at the end of verse two when it says, and the Lord heard it. Verse three, now the man Moses, here's the Holy Ghost interjecting this comment. Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth. Suddenly, the Lord said to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, come out, you three, to the tabernacle of meeting. So the three came out. Then the Lord came down in the pillar of cloud and stood in the door of the tabernacle and called Aaron and Miriam. This is the uh-oh moment. And they both went forward. Then he said, hear now my words. If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, make myself known to him in a vision. I speak to him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. And by the way, this is what is quoted. in our passage, he is faithful in all my house. I speak with him face to face, even plainly and not in dark sayings. And he sees the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? Next word, so the anger of the Lord was aroused against them. Now, we'll stop right there. Miriam gets leprosy as a result, but Moses intercedes. And so she's delivered from the leprosy, though she has to be shunned outside the camp for seven days. But you see how God himself gives this honored place to Moses, how he exalts him. He had a unique and privileged place. And this description that he spoke with God face to face, and you remember that after his meetings with God, he had to veil his face whenever he spoke to the people because the light of the glory of God shone upon his face. But not just that. See, in a sense, here we are talking about Moses and how God viewed him. But what did he do? What did it mean to be this mediator? Well, what it meant was he was the instrument through which the whole of the Old Testament faith Until the coming of Jesus Christ, the whole substance of that faith was revealed through Moses. Now, I'm not saying there was not more progressive revelation after Moses time, especially during David's time, but it did not alter. substantially and did not alter the basic foundational way of approaching and worshiping God. That was established through Moses. So much so that you see when they question the Lord Jesus Christ again and again, they're saying Moses said this and Moses commanded that and Christ is interacting with them about that. He's not disputing that at all because that was the case. So he did this. So Moses, the whole of this is set up through Moses. Now notice that he is designated here in Hebrews as faithful. He's said to be faithful. Now that means two things. Number one, he's believing. And, you know, even you see the growth of this in Moses' life. At the point where God says, meets him on the backside of the desert, at the point where he, you know, has the burning bush experience and he's before God, and God says, I'm sending you back to Egypt and you're gonna lead my people out. You know, there's a lot of fear and trepidation at that point. You know, Lord, send Aaron, send anybody, you know. I just, I'm not equal to this. And of course, the Lord says, certainly I will be with you. You didn't think I was going to send you to do anything by yourself, did you? And what a truth for us. Never ever is he asking us to do anything apart from his grace. We are a people who live by faith. You see, we walk in this dependence upon his grace. And the more we grow in Christ, it's not the more we become independent, but more dependent. So we've talked about that before. So he's believing, and so he starts in that kind of fear and trepidation way, but boy, by the time he has gone through and watched the 10 plagues before his eyes, and watched God's people go through the Red Sea, by the time they are singing praise to the living God because they see the bodies of the Egyptians having been covered in the water as they tried to follow, And they are magnifying God. And then he watches him provide manna in the wilderness. And just every step of the way he has seen God's greatness. So that faith grows. That confidence by the time he's preaching his last sermon to the people in the book of Deuteronomy, that confidence is great. He said, What nation is there so great who is God so close to them as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for? He believes that now. There's no no fear at that point. So he's a believing man and in that he grows. But faithfulness also means steadfastness. It also has the idea of the one who is worthy of trust. And you want to see this. You remember that at one point the children of Israel had sinned. They made a golden calf. They did a number of foolish things. They refused to go into the promised land out of their fear. There were a lot of bad that they did. But at one point God says, Moses, would you stand aside? I'm going to wipe these people out and I'm going to make of you a great nation. And here's where Moses shows his faithfulness. He comes and he says, Lord, your name is at stake. You can't do that. These are the people you love. These are the people you promised. The Egyptians are going to hear and say, well, he brought them into the wilderness to kill them. He, you know, couldn't handle them. But not at all. Not at all. Instead, he stands before God. And you remember what he says, because it's pretty serious. He says, Lord, I want you to forgive this people, to bless this people, to guide this people. And he says, if not, blot me out of the book that you have written. You see, he's a mediator, he's an intercessor, he is going before and he says, Lord, I'll give my life. Rather than see your name tarnished, your glory go down and your people harmed. Now, what was he doing? Was that not the heart of God? Oh, yes, that was the heart of God. And God was proving his servant and showing that he was indeed faithful in all his house. So all that, and all that he did was, was worthy of a great deal of honor. He was a servant, but with a message of something, and more importantly, someone far greater. Look at verse five. Moses indeed was faithful. in all his house as a servant for a testimony of those things which would be spoken afterward. He was a testimony of the message that was coming, you see. And so this was Moses. So Moses does this amazing work. And here he takes all of the old covenant way of worshiping God and he presents it to God's people and he interprets it. So Moses is the speaking voice and you understand Moses wrote Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. He was the instrument of writing all of that. Most of it ultimately came from God dictating that truth to him. But as time unfolded in the history of the people of God, he's presenting those things. By the time you get to Deuteronomy, the people of Israel have wandered in the wilderness. They are now in the plains of Moab on the east side of Jordan, ready to cross over into the promised land. And Deuteronomy are these last messages of Moses where he reasons with them to keep God in sight. to follow him no matter what, to remember that everything he does is for your good, that his laws are not harsh, they are love, they are the laws by which he protects you from what will destroy you and by which he shows you the good and the right way. All of this, Moses, sets before God's people. And so Moses had this great message that would point forward. I think it's Deuteronomy chapter 18 where Moses says the Lord's going to raise up a prophet like myself. a greater one and him you will follow. You will trust in him. So he speaks of Christ in a very plain way there. But he was not the one that they were to put their faith in. He was not the object of the faith. He was the one to be heard, his testimony example to be followed. But he was not the one to trust in. Now, why do I mention that is because that was a problem with the Jews of that day. Let me read you two verses from John chapter five. Do not think that I shall accuse you, Christ says to the father. There is already one who accuses you, Moses, in whom you trust. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. He wrote about me. So the Lord Jesus Christ says all of Moses' ministry was about him. It was all pointing to him. What is amazing, you remember the men on the road to Emmaus and how they said, they're telling this stranger walking with them, who is the Lord Jesus, but hidden from their eyes, they're telling this stranger, we thought he was the one. You know, we thought he was the Messiah that all the Old Testament was pointing to. And then the scriptures say, Jesus answers after he's heard them out, and he says, oh, fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory? And then the word, these are the next words, and beginning at Moses. and all the prophets, he rehearsed for them all the things concerning himself." Probably best sermon ever, you know. Man, I would love to hear that, you know, and I'm looking forward to it in heaven, you know, but beginning at Moses and all the prophets, you know, just taking those things from that portion of scripture that are the types and the shadows and just preaching the wonder of who he is and what he was doing. You know, that that's what he did for them beginning at Moses. And so the Old Covenant and this we need to remember because it's the very heart of this book, Hebrews, the Old Covenant never meant a thing apart from Jesus Christ and the New Covenant. It was always pointing. I was reading a A commentary this week on this passage and he says you gotta look at the Old Testament is a great big arrow pointing to Jesus Christ. A great big arrow pointing forward to his coming, his person and his work. It all pointed to him. To summarize, Moses was a servant, he was part of the house, redeemed himself by Christ, but a faithful witness to the coming Savior as well. Now that brings us secondly to who Christ is. He's the son over his own house. Look at verse 6. But Christ as a son over his own house. You see, he's the heir of that house. He's the one who inherits it. It's named after him. Whose house we are, it goes on. And so he's the sun over that house, the air, everything comes to him. And yet this is the amazing thing. He has no desire to possess it alone. No desire to possess it alone. He wants a people with him. He wants us to possess it with him. And so he who would build his own house, And he would be great, but he would build it with people of every kindred and tongue and tribe and nation and would glorify himself by it. Look at verse three. Well, let's start at verse two. Verse two, it says, he was faithful to him who appointed him, as Moses also was faithful in all his house. But then verse three, for this one, Jesus Christ, has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who built the house has more honor than the house. So Jesus Christ gets the glory. But folks, there's a rub to that, you know, I mean, it looks looks great. Easy on paper, but we know it was far from that because you see the people that the father prepared to share that house with him were a people hopelessly lost in sin. So in order for him to build his house and to be faithful, as we read, In order for that to happen, he must engage in the mighty, incredibly difficult work of redemption, whereby a God who is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His holiness and in His justice is completely satisfied. No sins winked at, no sins swept under the carpet, no sins taken lightly. all of them receiving their just due. So the Father appoints Jesus Christ in his covenant of redemption and enters in an agreement between the Father and the Son. And this is huge. Someday I need to preach on this specifically so that we put all the parts together because I've talked about various aspects of it. For instance, you read John's Gospel and you read that Jesus Christ had no work of his own, no will of his own, and no words of his own. Well, what? He's God the Son. Why would he not? Well, let me tell you why. Because he was in a representative capacity. In that covenant of redemption, he was representing you and me. And he came to fulfill all righteousness. He came to stand in our place and to do what we failed to do in obeying the Lord our God with heart, soul, mind, and strength, in worshiping and serving and loving him as we were bidden to do. Jesus came to do all of that. So what did he do? He fulfilled the father's will in standing in our place. But what was included in that covenant? Well, he had to fulfill the covenant of works, the terms that God gave to Adam in the garden. He had to assume human nature. We saw that in the last chapter. He had to fulfill all the moral law of God. And again, not in letter. He had to do it in heart. He couldn't do it if he couldn't, you know, if you could say, well, he couldn't be convicted of any crimes here, but internally, we're not so sure. Yes, we are. In Christ's case, he loved the Lord his God, as I say, with heart, soul, mind, and strength. And in every case, every circumstance, under every provocation, he loved his neighbor as himself. I mean, that's amazing. That's stunning. Can you imagine when they're whipping him? Can you imagine when they're mocking him? And he knows the life story of every person who is mocking and whipping him. I mean, if he just used words, he could have cut them to shreds. But he doesn't do it. He hangs from the cross and he says, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. You see? He loved his neighbor as himself from start to finish, to the very end, under an array of provocation that would destroy each of us. He was God's son. Also then, he must pay the outstanding penalty for his people of the broken covenant. And then finally, his work is to apply the fruit of that covenant, of that victorious work. And where do we see that in Acts chapter two? He, having risen into the presence of the Father, he has shed forth this which you see in here. He pours out God with us. He pours out the Spirit being the very presence and power of Jesus Christ unto all of us to be our constant grace and guidance. So he's faithful. He believes his father as Moses did, and he relies on him for us. He does that in our place. So he is steadfast and he is worthy of our trust. He fulfills everything perfectly. And in that sense, he's our apostle. He's God sent one. to give us the greatest message ever. He's God's delegate sent forth with orders to say, tell this people there's a redemption for him. And while you're there, accomplish it for them. Do for them what they cannot and will not do for themselves. And so he does, he's worthy of our trust. And that's why these words at the beginning of verse three, consider the apostle and high priest of our confession, Christ Jesus, why that's rich. He's the substance of our faith and our hope. The word consider here, by the way, means this, to consider attentively, to fix one's eyes or mind upon. And here the Holy Spirit is saying live that way, walk by faith, keep him in view, keep looking at him. If your circumstances or your relationships or the trial you're going through or your doubts or unbeliefs or trials of whatever description are screaming at you, look stronger, look more intently, fix your eyes on Him, remember who He is and what He has promised. Well that brings us then to the final consideration and that is who we are. Because you see this paragraph begins with and ends with descriptions of us. holy brethren, there's one, partakers of the heavenly calling, there's another, and then verse six, but Christ as a son over his own house, whose house we are, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end. Let me give you a little parenthesis there. Here in verse 14, whose house we are if, Verse six, excuse me, look at verse 14. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end. Those are pretty serious solemn verses and they open up a whole subject as far as how we view the reality of our faith in Jesus Christ, to what extent we have assurance. And so I'm going to look at those exclusively. You know, we said as we study this book, we're going to take some occasions and we're going to look really at the whole sweep of Old Testament and the New Testament, kind of talk about the perseverance of the saints, what's really true of us. So don't think I'm skipping over that this morning. But here we are, these descriptive words about who we are. So we're running out of time, so let me go fairly quickly, but please catch on here to all that is said. We are called holy, meaning we are set apart by God. He views us in a different way. Then he would view all of humanity. He views us in a way that is set apart, purchased by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. That word also has the idea of sanctified or made holy. And, you know, once again, it's hard to shake sometimes the idea that made holy means, you know, kind of purified in a sense that's austere. You know, we're just kept from this and that. I'll tell you, when you look at the sweep of all God says about holiness and the word of God, it's the very beauty of God. Holiness is our happiness. The growing holiness in the people of God is breaking the chains of temptations and onslaughts, the world and the devil against us. It's bringing us into a glorious liberty where we live for the things that are worth living for because we've set our affections on things above and not on things on the earth. Holiness is growing happiness. Holiness is growing satisfaction. Holiness is the sense of growing into him being everything to us with no rivals. Him being our all in all. He uses this word brethren. And by the way, this is a generic kind of term so that it includes male and female. A lot of different terms do that, where if you're going to talk about one, you're going to use one gender. But it means, in a sense, the body, all the body, including male and female. In fact there are a lot of translations that actually translate instead of brethren they'll say brothers and sisters or something to that effect. But look at this expression here, therefore holy brethren, brothers and sisters, those who are a part of the body of Christ, they're part of the house. This glorious house, which is going to go on forever and ever, and that is going to include the most body satisfying and soul satisfying things that the living God could devise. That's all ours because we're brothers and sisters in him. But then this expression partakers of the heavenly calling. It's a call from heaven. It's a call to heaven. It's a calling that's heavily heavenly in its nature and in its fruit. It's going to include everything. And by the way, folks, it it doesn't. You don't have to wait to get to heaven to have heaven begin in you. And one of the great statements, I think it was about Robert Murray McShane, that others would say of him, heaven was in that man before he was in heaven. You know, he just, why? Because there was this welling up of the glory of his Lord that you just couldn't keep down. We may begin that, you see. Jesus Christ says, I've come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly. It is less quantity than it is quality, than it is this glorious transforming work inside us to make joy to be our portion. But then we are his house. Christ is a son over his own house, whose house we are. So we're told in scripture that we're citizens or we're already in heaven. We're his flock that he loves and would die for and did. His brothers and sisters in the sense that the strongest family connection you can conceive, it's stronger with him. We're his bride. His bride, that He wants nothing more than for us to be lifted up with His glory, presented as His glorious bride. And we're His body. We're His body. He that touches us touches the apple of His eye. We're connected to Him. Folks, we're somebody because of Him. Yeah, Moses, Moses is rejoicing in His presence today. It's all about Christ for Moses. He doesn't think about anything else. It's all about him. He's rejoicing this day. And it won't be long for us. It won't be long for us. May God give us grace not to lose perspective, not to forget what it's all about, what we're in this life for. You know, Paul says, and let me read two verses from 2 Corinthians 4 to you. And what he was going through is probably so much worse than the worst we've ever gone through. But he says this, for our light affliction, which is but for a moment is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. While we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. God is working that weight of glory in us right now. He's giving it to us now. And then there's going to be a day when we will enter in and sin will be gone out of us so that we will love and enjoy and worship in a way we can't imagine now. That's all before us. But I will say to you, the devil today wants you distracted with any one of a thousand things. So that your focus stays right here, so that your focus is troubled, so that he robs you of joy, so that he undermines your confidence in God, your faith in him, so that you walk around miserable. That's what he wants to do. He wants you to lose that perspective. He works hard that you would forget those things so that he might put you to sleep and cause you to live for this life and not the next one. Oh, may God give us grace to keep him in view and to live for him who is waiting to receive us. Let's bow in prayer. Let's all pray. Oh, Father, we bless you for your goodness and your grace. Oh, thank you for giving us your son. Lord, thank you for the ministry of Moses and how we rejoice at the thought, Lord, that he, an imperfect man, was nonetheless your glorious instrument for wonderful things and we learn much from him. But we bless you that he's redeemed by the same blood we are and that he's rejoicing in your presence today. But Father, we thank you for our Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, as we remember Colossians, as we have received Christ Jesus, the Lord, we may walk in him. Enable us to do that, we pray. Move us to do that. Make him more precious to us every hour of every day. Father, work in us, we ask. Thank you for your faithfulness and your goodness. Lord, thank you for all that you are providing. Thank you that you've told us that our afflictions are in the grand scheme light and they are doing us good. Thank you so much so that we ought to count it all joy when we fall into these trials. Thank you that you're the God who delivers us out of them all, that they all have an end. We bless you for that. Father, we pray now that you'll enable us to walk with you to your glory. Lord, move us to worship. Make this be a wonderful day in our hearts and in our homes. We ask it all in Jesus' name, amen.