Hebrews 3:1-6

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Holy brothers and sisters who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest. He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God's house. Jesus has been found worthy of greater honour than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honour 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, bearing witness to what would be spoken by God in the future.

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. This is the word of the Lord. Thank you so much, Johnny, for reading that. Thank you, everyone, for being here. Let me add my welcome to that of Sam's earlier.

If we've not met, I'm Ben, and I can't wait to get to know you a bit better over proper coffee and nice biscuits later on as well. But it might be that if this is your first time with us or first time back at church for a while, you're thinking, okay, I'm here, but I don't really understand very much of what we've just heard. Okay, yeah, it's great that we're hearing from the Bible, but what on earth does that mean? So I'm going to ask God to help me and help us, and then we're going to think a little bit about what that passage has to say, because I think it says something really important about what church is all about. So, should we pray together?

Father God, thank you so much that you speak and speak to us. Thank you. That what we've been hearing already is true. That Jesus is the king, that Jesus is better than anything else we can imagine. Help us today to hear from you and father, would that help us understand what church is all about?

I pray. Amen. Fantastic. Well, if you're here and you're thinking, what is church all about? This passage, it tells us that church, church.

Well, it's like one of these. Church is like a house. A bit of a bigger house than this, and probably not made of plastic, but like a house. A house that's got all sorts of different things going on in it. And so to help us with that, I'm going to ask you a few things about houses that you might be in.

Every house is different, and I'd love to learn a bit about your house. So let me grab a microphone and I want to know if you were in your house and you lost something. Let's say you lost your favourite toy. Who would you go to to ask where is my toy? Stick your hand up.

Who would you go to and ask where is my toy? Go on. The bee. Sophie. In case she stole it.

Your sister, in case she stole it. Okay. Yes. Perhaps not exactly the answer that I would ask anybody else. Who might you go to to ask where is my favourite toy in your house?

Don't all shout at once. Maybe think back to your house growing up. If you lost your toys, who would you speak to? Go on. Right.

Shout out. You'd ask your dad. Okay, maybe a parent. Okay, let me ask a next question then. You are looking for something to make your walkman cd player, battery operated toy work.

And you need to know where the batteries are. Who are you going to ask? Where are the batteries in our house?

Mum or dad. Mum or dad? Yeah, go on Jage, yourself. You'd ask yourself, where did I put those batteries? Great question.

Great, great answer. Okay, so we'd ask maybe a parent, maybe a sister. We'd ask apparent about batteries. Okay, how about this one? There's a water leak in the house.

Who are you going to ask where the stopcock is to turn off the water in the house? Who are you going to ask that question of? This one's one for the grown ups as well. My husband. Your husband, you might ask your husband or your wife?

Yes, that's right. You might have a plumber that you would ask. Okay, what about this one? If I want to know how far under the ground the walls around my house go. How far under the ground they go?

Who might I ask about that? He might ask about that. How far under the ground? I'm looking for anybody who's not said something yet. I'm sneaking those people behind the pillar.

Go on then. Safe. You might ask the builder who builded the house. You might ask the builder. Yes, you might ask the builder, because they probably dug the hole.

They probably know quite well. What about this one? Our house has got a really funny window that kind of sticks out a bit, but not enough that you could stand in it. And it's very small and I don't know why that's there. Who would I ask why they put that window there?

What that window's for? Who could I ask, Dan? A builder. I could ask a builder. Yeah, that's right.

But the builder would say, well, I put it there because it said it on the plans. Who might I ask why it's there?

Structural engineer. A structural engineer. Yes. Architect. Or an architect.

Yeah, that's right. Somebody who designed the building, they hopefully would know. Now, why am I so interested in buildings? Well, I'm interested in buildings because if the church is like a building, we're going to meet two people today, and they're going to tell us a little bit about what the church is all about. And the first person we're going to meet is somebody who would be great at answering lots of those kind of questions.

Where's my toy? What did I do with the batteries? Where's the stopcock in this place? And he's a dude called Moses. I'm going to introduce you to Moses, and I'm going to use Joel.

Come on out, Joel. Now, Moses is somebody who would be well known to God's people. He got quite old. So let's set you up here, Joel. There we go.

Wow. It's like Moses is really, truly here. So we've got Moses, who is here. Now, Moses is somebody, we're told he's faithful in God's house. He leads God's people.

In fact, he leads God's people. And there's a story about him leading God's people. Do you know where he leads God's people? Does anyone know? Anyone seen the prince of Egypt?

Where does Moses lead God's people?

To the promised land. Excellent. And he has to go through something. What does he have to go through? The Red Sea.

That's right. Which is full of water. So Moses leads God's people through the sea. Fantastic. And so he's a great person to listen to.

He's God's leader. He leads people through the sea. One of the biggest rescues ever. He also spoke to God. And when he spoke to God, there's a reason I've done this in this order.

His face shined. Sam, can you help me here?

Wonderful. Let's just get. I want you guys to get the full picture. So if I can put that there. That's great.

And stick that in there. There we go. Wow. It's like Moses is really here, isn't it? God's leader.

Still a little bit damp from the Red Sea. Sorry, Sam. Sorry, Joel. And shining with God's glory. This is a really good person to listen to.

So the first thing that we see from thinking about what the church is like is that, yes, we listen to Moses. Yes, we listen to Moses in the Bible. He wrote lots of bits of the Bible. But Moses is like somebody who lives in the house. He knows where the batteries are.

He knows where the stopcock is. But there's somebody who's even greater. Can anyone guess who I'm talking about? Go on, Ezra. Jesus.

Yeah, that's right. Jesus is even better. Because although Moses is in the house, Jesus is like the architect who designed the house. Now, why is that important? Because church, we.

Yes, we listen to Moses in the Bible, but church is designed by Jesus. So, yes, listen to Moses, but Jesus designs the church and so he's an even better person to listen to. We're going to think a bit more about that in a moment, but before we do that, we're going to sing a song and we've heard about.

We've heard about Moses and we saw that Moses is faithful in God's house. He knows where the batteries are. Yes, we listen to him. He shines with God's glory. Reflected.

But Jesus is the one who designs the house. But why does Jesus design the house? We're going to play a game, and this game is called now for alliteration. I've called it son or servant, but it's actually child or servant. And what's going to happen is, up on the screen, there are going to be some different people that you might recognise from different stories, and I'd love you to tell me if you think that they are a servant or a child.

A servant or a child. Okay, that's where we're going. So if we can have the first one up. Next one.

So Zazu from the lion king, and he's the one who goes, if this is where the monarchy is headed, count me out. Out of service, out of Africa. I wouldn't hang about. So, servant or I might have given it away there. Servant or servant.

Or for hems. Son. Servant or son? What are we thinking? Go on.

Servant. Yeah, that's right. In the story, he's a servant. That's great. Let's have the next one.

What about Bluey? Off of Bluey. Is Bluey a child or a servant? Let's come over here. A child, that's right.

It's Bluey. There's mummy, there's daddy. There's Bluey. There's the other one. Bingo.

There we go. Bingo. Got it. So, yeah, a child. Okay.

Fantastic difference between Zazu and Bluey. Let's go for the next one. Okay, here's one for maybe the grown ups. Jeeves. Off of Jeeves and Worcester.

Servant. Yeah, yeah. I'm getting a good clamouring of servant. Yeah, that's right. He's a servant.

He's probably someone's son as well. But in the story, he's mostly a servant. Fantastic. Let's go with the next one. What about Peter Rabbit?

I'm going to come to this side. Go on. A child. Yes, absolutely right. First and foremost in the story, he's a child.

Absolutely. And you might know his dad was caught by the farmer, wasn't he? So, yes. Okay, let's go on with the next one. The little princess off of a little princess gone.

A child. That's right. She's a princess. She's a child. Fantastic.

Next one, Mary Poppins story. All about Mary Poppins. Is she a servant or is she a child? First of all, servant. Yeah, that's right.

Is that what you're going to say as awesome, great, yes, servant. Okay. And I think last one is it. Ah, Christopher Robin. This is off of Winnie the pooh and along comes Christopher Robin.

Is he a servant or a child? Simi?

He's a child. That's right. And that's really important because although Christopher Robin doesn't have a big part to play in the stories, he's always the one who's able to come in and to sort things out. Now, why am I talking about servants and sons? Well, Moses is in God's house, and we're told in the Bible passage it says that he is faithful over God's a faithful servant in God's house.

He's a servant in God's house. And so we listen to Moses. Yeah, absolutely right. Because he's a great servant in the house. Think of it a bit like Downton Abbey if you're a grown up.

Well, you can think about it like Downton Abbey if you're not. But you might understand it more if you're a grown up in Downton Abbey. You've got that big distinction, haven't you? You've got servants in the house and then you've got the little lords and ladies, haven't you? And there's a complete difference between even the children of the Lord and lady and the servants.

Moses is a great servant in God's house. But do we see what it says about Jesus? It says, little number five. Moses was faithful as a servant in God's house, bearing witness to what would be spoken in the future. But Christ, that's Jesus, is faithful as a son over God's house, and we're his house.

It says if the church is like a house, then Jesus is like a son who rules over that house. They're great servants. We get to be a servant like Moses. We get to listen to Moses, but Jesus is a son. Why am I telling you all this?

Well, only really for two big reasons. And these, I think, are challenging for all of us. The first is, if Jesus is the designer of the house, then if this is your first time here at church, church should look a little bit like Jesus. It should be that we don't just see Jesus in these pages, but we see Jesus in the way in which the church treats each other, the way we love one another, the way that we love the area. So if this is your first time in church, don't just look at what kind of happens in the service.

Look at what the church family are like to one another. And that's also a challenge, isn't it? Because it might be that people haven't been in church for a while, because frankly, sometimes the church family haven't done that very well. And we have to hold up our hands and say, like builders that don't follow the blueprint, sometimes we don't get that right. But it's a bit of a challenge to those of us who are part of the church family here.

When people look at your relationships with the rest of the church family, do they look like Jesus? Is he the master over our house? So that's the first thing. And then the second thing, which is a big one, is if you're here and you're checking out church for the first time, church is a place where we listen to Jesus. That's what we do.

He's even better than Moses. We listen to Moses, who's a legend, but we listen to Jesus because although Moses is a great servant, Jesus is a son, although Moses is. Is a great person to help us know where the batteries and stock blocks are, Jesus designed the building. So I'm going to leave us with a prayer. I'll let you sit down, Moses, actually, thank you so much.

I'm going to lead us in a prayer, and then I'm going to hand back to Sam to take us on in our service. Father God, thank you so much. Thank you so much that Jesus is a son in your house. Help us to listen to him, help your house, the church, to look more and more like how he's designed it to be, and help us to enjoy him. For I ask it in Jesus name.

Amen.