Hebrews 3 – Studies

For those who may wish to ‘study’ this chapter, the following simple resources are provided for you. Each chapter is divided into a number of studies and each study or passage has a simple four-Part, verse-by-verse approach, to help you take in and think further about what you have read.

Passage: Hebrews 3:1-6

1 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. 2 He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house. 3 Jesus has been found worthy of greater honour than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honour than the house itself. 4 For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. 5 ‘Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house, bearing witness to what would be spoken by God in the future. 6 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.

A. Find Out:

1. What are we to do? v.1
2. What were both Jesus and Moses? v.2
3. What is the “house” referred to? v.6b
4. Who is the builder? v.4
5. What was Moses? v.5
6. But what was Christ? v.6a

B. Think:

1. What is the primary aim of the writer?
2. How does he do this referring to Moses?
3. What is his point in using Moses?

C. Comment:

     Religion so often gets caught up in ritual or activity and the writer to the Hebrews constantly calls us back to the originator of our faith, Jesus himself. Having just said that Jesus has brought many sons to glory (v.10), making us children of God (v.13,14), acting as a great high priest (v.17) the writer exhorts us again to focus on the one who has done all this.

     Having declared that Jesus is greater than angels, he now compares Him to Moses, who was also very highly esteemed by Jewish believers, for he too had delivered many people in the Exodus. Continuing the household idea, the writer points out that Moses was merely a servant in the household of God, whereas Jesus is both the one who originated or built this new house (the Christian church), and is the Son who rules over the household. In this he is vastly superior to Moses and therefore demands our full attention.

     The descriptions of Jesus here also need noting. He is the apostle we confess or acknowledge, He is the sent-one to establish and build the church, He is its cause for being. He is also the high priest, the One who continues to intercede on behalf of the people, a picture that will be repeated in this book again and again.

D. Application:

1. Do we focus more on the doing of church or on the head of it?
2. Jesus is the builder and the ruler over the church. Worship Him.

Passage: Hebrews 3:7-13

7 So, as the Holy Spirit says:

‘Today, if you hear his voice,
8     do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion,
    during the time of testing in the wilderness,
9 where your ancestors tested and tried me,
    though for forty years they saw what I did.
10 That is why I was angry with that generation;
    I said, “Their hearts are always going astray,
    and they have not known my ways.”
11 So I declared on oath in my anger,
    “They shall never enter my rest.”’ 12 See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today’, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.

A. Find Out:

1. What was the quoted Scripture warning against? v.8
2. What had the people done? v.9
3. What had God felt? v.10
4. So what had he declared? v.11
5. So what does the writer warn against? v.12
6. What does he exhort them to do? v.13

B. Think:

1. What does this passage say about our hearts?
2. What is the main point being made in this passage?
3. How can the past be an example for us?

C. Comment:

     The writer moves into a straight forward exhortation to hold fast to God and be obedient to Him. He has been extolling Jesus and had challenged us to take note of what we have heard because it came from the very Son of God (2:1-4). The potential for unbelief is in every one of us, tainted by sin as we were (but now dead to it – Romans 6) and every good pastor or teacher has to be constantly exhorting against it, and that is what the writer is doing here.

     He uses the Old Testament to illustrate, remind and warn. Israel had failed to believe in the wilderness and had incurred God’s anger and judgement, the lesson was very plain. Very well, says the writer, make sure that you don’t have a sinful, unbelieving heart that leads you to turn away from God.

      Our heart condition is always the crucial issue, that inner state of being that is either all out for God, halfhearted or all out for self. It would be the half-hearted believers that would need this exhortation, for if the heart is not totally directed to God, it is easy for unbelief to prevail with a gradual drifting away from God. What you need to do, the writer continues, is to encourage one another daily, while we still have the opportunity, so that sin isn’t allowed to harden us. Resist it together, he says. We must!

D. Application:

1. Unbelief is the first step to moving away from God.
2. Unbelief needs resisting by mutual encouragement.

Passage: Hebrews 3:14-19

14 We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. 15 As has just been said:

‘Today, if you hear his voice,
    do not harden your hearts
    as you did in the rebellion.’

16 Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? 17 And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? 19 So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.

A. Find Out:

1. What condition is there on sharing in Christ? v.14
2. What warning and illustration is repeated? v.15
3. Who had that referred to? v.16
4. What happened to them? v.17
5. Who did God promise would not enter His rest? v.18
6. So what conclusion is drawn? v.19

B. Think:

1. Check the number of expressions of what the Israelites did.
2. How does that follow on from the previous passage?
3. What is the warning for us today?

C. Comment:

     The writer has been warning against having an unbelieving heart (v.12) that results in us turning away from God. He applies this to us holding on to out inheritance in Christ and says that a condition of us having that inheritance is that we hold on in faith. If unbelief comes in then that inheritance in Christ will be lost.

     To confirm this he uses the illustration of the people of Israel who had been chosen by God, delivered out of Egypt and called into relationship with Him at Sinai. You might have thought that this made them totally secure but history shows otherwise. Unbelief crept in and almost from the word go they turned to idolatry, then complaining and then refusal to believe God’s promise of a land of plenty. In today’s passage they are described as rebelling, being disobedient and full of unbelief. As a result of that God refused to let them enter the land and kept them wandering in the wilderness until all but two died there. Such was the anger of God on them.

     The warning and application is strong and should create the fear of the Lord, that awesome respect of God, in us. Unbelief produces the anger of God which in turn prevents us from receiving the things previously promised.

D. Application:

1. Beware unbelief and disobedience.
2. The Cross covers our sin – when we confess and repent.