A new foil of sorts enters: Moses. It’s really the same conversation, though. The Hebrews need to understand Jesus rightly and to set the framework the author continues to use things they already understand (Moses) to point them to things they don’t completely understand. One of the risks that remains today is to assume that things we don’t quite get probably aren’t true (as if either something being difficult to get or the fact that we don’t understand it are good evaluators of truth.) The Hebrews are facing a difficult thing, trying understand Jesus in context of the Law and the identity they had been living under. Jesus is new and proclaiming that things are changing and that’s kind of a hard shift. Except…all the disciples were Jews and after seeing what Jesus says and does, they’re in. And, messengers of God even hundreds of years prior had foretold this action. The Jews were ready for a change, they just hadn’t put everything on the table to be changed. Jesus changes that.
The comparison here with Moses is that Moses is good (just like angels are good), and Moses served faithfully as a servant to God. But Jesus is a son, the heir of the kingdom, and he gets more honor than the servant. (It doesn’t hurt that Jesus created the Kingdom, even as Moses tended to it.) And the promise for us in this is that we are where God resides, the church (body of believers) is where he makes his home. We get to be part of that if we keep our trust and faith (in word and deed) in Him.
There is still more to learn in this Moses motif, however. Just as in Moses’ day, people have the freedom to harden their hearts (think reject) the identity God gives and the things He provides. When Moses led the folk out of Egypt, some rebelled and thus God causes them to not be able to enter the promised land until that generation died off. Similarly, we have the option to reject God, to refuse to be part of His Kingdom, to not be the house. But that isn’t what the Hebrews want, they are Christians after all. The author is warning them here that you can follow God’s messenger out of slavery but if you don’t submit to the identity God gives you, accept His provision and trust his way of doing things, you were basically just leeching on the operation and you will not get to spend forever with him in the Kingdom. (Why would he want you to? You don’t even want to be there, you were just faking it to get out of something else.)
So, they are advised caution, to be mindful of an evil heart that seeks sin and causes you to fall away from God. It’s not that you won’t be tempted, the description in chapter 2 anticipates temptation and the need for Jesus’ help in that, but it is likely to be taken in by the deceitfulness of sin, convinced it’s not a problem when it is really destroying you. Be encouraged! And encourage one another! As long as there is breath in your lungs and today’s on the calendar, encourage one another to reject sin and its lies. This Kingdom, you see, is run by our brother Jesus, and we will share in its blessings if we can hold firm, be confident in God and His faithfulness that he has demonstrated through Jesus.
All that said, it’s not always so easy. The author reminds us that those who were deceived by sin were the very ones who saw God deliver them from Egypt. They saw it. They flippin’ saw it, and still hardened their hearts against God. That fight, to remember that which God has done and not to pursue your own selfish stuff, is not always easy but it is necessary.
V. 16-18 are basically the author’s exegesis of Psalm 95, a description of in what way that Psalm applied to those people. This is in preparation for a “therefore” that begins chapter 4. Whenever you see a “therefore”, you should ask yourself: what is it there for? What argument is this tying back to and how am I to apply what came before it to what comes after? We’ll see once we get to chapter 4.