Jesus is Better Than Moses - February 15, 2026

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast.

I have made the Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6.19, Pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me, so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

Today, the subject is heroes, and for many people, we have different ideas of

what heroes are. You know, I would definitely put some law enforcement in the hero category.

Those that run toward danger when everybody else is running away.

Those in the military who put their life on the line in hotbed areas of conflict, who know that,

boy, anything could happen at any moment, and yet to protect those of us back

here in the United States of America are willing to be sent there, are willing to go there.

Incredible heroism. We could continue down the line with regular everyday people

who would fit that category of hero.

And I know maybe even in our own families, there's superheroes that we like,

you know, some that are fictional.

But yet we've got our Superman logos on our T-shirts and, you know,

our Captain America or our Flash or you name the superhero. It's probably on

a character, a little action figure you played with when you were a little kid.

Heroes are important to us.

But there's one hero I want to talk about today, actually a few,

but I want to mention the name Desmond Doss to you. I don't know if that rings a bell with anyone.

Desmond Doss was a World War II army combat medic.

You may have seen his life portrayed on the big screen in a movie called Hacksaw Ridge.

Desmond Doss was a conscientious objector.

That means he did not carry a weapon with him. He did not believe in killing other people.

Well, what's this guy doing in the army, right? What's this guy doing?

Well, he felt still a call to serve his nation. And so he went.

And he went as this medic to help other people.

Well, there was an incredible battle, the battle in Okinawa.

And during this one particular battle, Desmond helped to save the lives without

firing one shot to save 75 lives of his fellow army men.

Not only that, he did this. Well, he was shot four times, or I should say wounded four times.

He had 17 pieces of shrapnel in him while this was going on,

and he still treated other people, other of his comrades that were there fighting alongside him.

We would say, I think that that's a story of heroism. I know Hollywood did,

and they made the movie out of him.

When we think about heroes and our need as just human beings to see heroes,

It kind of speaks to this deep desire within each of us to see a leader,

to see a leader that's worth imitating and a leader that's worth trusting with our lives.

And so sometimes when we don't see these heroes amongst us, we make ones up like Superman.

Like Iron Man, and you can go down the list. There's some new ones out that

I don't know where they came from. They were in the comic books.

I didn't read the right comic books, I guess, growing up.

But when we think about the need for heroes, we know that God has the answer

in the book of Hebrews gives us the answer that we have such a hero and his name is Jesus.

And I want you to know that Jesus is the greatest hero, even better than Moses,

who we're going to talk about this morning.

And we've got to fix our minds upon Jesus.

We've got to hold fast to the hope that we have in Jesus together.

And so I pray this morning that you'll be blessed in that way.

This morning, I want to read with you Hebrews chapter 3, starting in verse 1.

Hebrews 3 · chapter mention

We're going to go through verse 6, and I've got the NIV this morning.

That's not a virus, that's a translation of the Scripture, just so you know.

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.

He was faithful to the one who had appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God's house.

Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder

of a house has the greater honor than the house itself. For every house is built

by someone, but God is a builder of everything.

Moses was faithful as 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.

And the hope in which we glory. Father, I pray that you would just bless your

word to our hearts today.

God, would you just speak to us in a mighty way? Lord, we know we always long

for something greater. We long for a great leader, Lord.

We long for someone that we can trust and follow with all of our lives.

And Lord, we know we find that in Jesus Christ. Lord, thank you for the men

and women who have been heroes in our lives, whether it was someone that actually saved our life.

Lord, whether it was our grandmother or grandfather that prayed for our salvation

when we didn't care anything about God.

Lord, we are thankful for those kind of heroes today. And Lord,

today we want to focus our thoughts, fix our thoughts upon Jesus.

Help us to do so without distraction, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Thank you for honoring God's Word. Please be seated. I just want to give you

a few qualities of God's heroes this morning.

And I want to encourage you to be a hero for somebody by first trusting in Jesus.

You know, first and foremost, I just want to say from the scripture we read

that heroes are faithful.

As we look at verse 1 and 2 again, Therefore, holy brothers and sisters who

share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess.

Jesus was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God's house.

Now, just a reminder that the book of Hebrews is written to Hebrew Christians.

There, shortly after Christ ascended to heaven and the church began,

many Jews started coming to Christ.

And so this is written to these kind of people, these Hebrew Christians.

And so they had a great affinity still for Moses and Jesus.

And the author of Hebrews here is writing to remind them who is the better hero amongst all of them.

And so Hebrews honors both Jesus and Moses.

It says Moses was faithful in all of God's house. If you could even use the

word household there or family.

It says Moses was faithful in God's family.

Now think about this Moses. Moses was faithful to God.

Now, you think about the whole story of Moses. It's incredible, right?

I mean, as a baby, he was put into a basket and sent down the river because

there was a threat on his life, on all the children's lives.

And yet, God was faithful to Moses in sparing his life, even as an infant.

More than that, in orchestrating his raising by bringing his sister Miriam,

when the Pharaoh's daughter finds Moses in the basket and Miriam says,

well, I can help you out with that, Moses' sister.

How amazing and incredible is that? And then just the whole story of Moses'

growth and his privilege in the Egyptian empire.

It's a powerful story of God's provision, God's providence, God's protection upon him.

And then we know as the story goes that Moses saw a Hebrew being beaten by one

of the slave traders, the slave owners, I should say, one of the Egyptians there.

And so enraged, Moses goes and he kills the guy and then flees for his life.

He was fighting for the unjust treatment of the Hebrews there,

and he flees out into the wilderness.

And it's out there in the wilderness for so long that God appears to him later

in the burning bush and gives him the orders to, here's what I want you to do.

God spared him. And even after that, the incredible story of Moses,

how Moses goes back to Egypt, and how everything unfolds to set his people,

the Hebrews, free from their oppression there.

It's powerful. Each step of the way, Moses was faithful to God.

Faithful in answering the call that God put on him, in spite of Moses' own excuses

that he wasn't a very good speaker.

God provided for what Moses lacked in Aaron.

And as he went back to what used to be familiar to him, Moses faithfully pronounced

and proclaimed the word of God to Pharaoh, the ultimate power in the world at

that time, right where they were at.

And each time Moses was faithful to God until the point to where the Pharaoh

finally let the Hebrews go.

He said, fine, you guys get out of here. And then even when they came to the

edge, the very edge of the Red Sea with the Egyptian army coming right after him,

Moses was still faithful to follow what God had wanted him to do,

even to step into the water and to see the water's part.

How amazing and how incredible the story is. And we know it doesn't stop there.

And we're not going to cover everything.

But even through the wilderness, God was faithful.

Or Moses was faithful to God. God was faithful too.

Even when Moses got upset with the people bickering and grumbling and complaining.

He was still faithful to God, even if Moses made a few mistakes along the way.

So speaking to the rock, smacking it. Of course, that cost him because he didn't

follow God completely as that.

But we also know there was forgiveness in that. There was repentance in that,

and Moses continued to lead.

And so this scripture passage says Moses was faithful in everything God wanted

him to do as one who mediated between God's people and Pharaoh.

Between God and God's people. Moses understood what it was like to be that mediator, that go between.

As one sent with a message, we know that Moses did go and he faithfully proclaimed

the message God gave him.

Moses did all these incredible things.

And so if you had an all-star on a trading card of people of faith, it would be Moses.

He'd be like the most valuable one in the Old Testament.

But then comes along Jesus here. It says, Jesus was faithful to the one who appointed him.

The same God that called Moses is the same God that sent Jesus,

the Son, to earth, that sent Jesus to be the one who died for our sins.

This is the only place in Scripture where you'll see Jesus called an apostle.

Mark that down for your Bible trivia. That might come back at you someday.

What's an apostle one sent with a message, an ambassador?

Jesus was God's ambassador to humanity, to come and bring salvation,

to proclaim and to point the way to reconciliation with God.

Jesus, it says, was the high priest whom we confess. Jesus, the mediator between

humanity and God, the one who would go between and eventually the one who would

give his own life as a sacrifice.

We see that Jesus was faithful in every single way that he lived.

In every single temptation, we know Jesus overcame that.

Even up until the point to where he was betrayed.

And Jesus wrestled.

With wanting this cup of suffering, this cup, what was going to become him.

Jesus was struggling with that, but yet he was faithful to go through all of that.

The humiliation and many other things we'll talk about as we get closer to Resurrection Sunday.

You see, Moses really was the gold standard of obedience when you look back at the Old Testament.

He was the gold standard for what it meant to be the leader when it came to

looking at how people interacted with God. You go back to Moses.

But the writer here, the author of Hebrews, basically says this paraphrase,

hey, if you revere Moses so much, why don't you take a look at Jesus?

And that's where we begin when we're talking about these heroes,

because Jesus matches and then exceeds our highest standard of what we consider

faithfulness, being full of faith,

not wavering in our relationship with God.

Folks, if you're going to be a hero, you got to be faithful. Heroes are faithful.

We know that Jesus is faithful just like Moses was.

And so we go on a little bit further in verse 3, Jesus has been found worthy

of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself.

The second thing we see in the passage this morning is that heroes are honored.

You know, I don't know about you, but I got a little upset back during the COVID years.

Not so much with the sickness and all that, but kind of the hysteria that was out amongst people.

And they did crazy things like tearing down statues they didn't like.

And some of those statues were of men that I read stories about.

Even if they might have ended up on the wrong side of history,

I read stories of their faith in Christ.

I think of Robert E. Lee. Now, I know he was a Confederate general.

But I also know of his faith in Jesus and the stories that I read.

And yet, while he might not have been a hero to everyone, and like I said,

may have been on the wrong side of history in the Civil War,

he was still a hero that the nation honored with the statue.

I mean, you consider even his legacy still, not so much as the Confederacy, but his home.

His home is now Arlington Cemetery. Did you know that? What?

Who's buried in Arlington Cemetery?

Soldiers. Soldiers that serve this nation well.

I mean, we honor heroes. At least we try to, even if later on people don't consider

them heroes. We look at heroes and we say, these people are worthy to be honored.

We know that Moses was a hero.

We know that Moses was a hero to the Hebrews. There's a passage all the way

back in the book of Numbers, chapter 12.

Numbers 12 · chapter mention

Moses' older sister and brother, they kind of had some sibling rivalry going

on, but maybe a little bit more serious here because they started to kind of complain about Moses.

And kind of what they were doing was nitpicking him. More than that,

they were nitpicking Moses' wife.

And they started to kind of say, hey, well, why is Moses getting all this attention?

After all, he married a Cushite woman.

You know, maybe a little racial thing's going on there. I'm not exactly for

sure here, but they got a little something stuck in their craw here and they

just couldn't get it out. But God noticed.

God noticed. Because see, here's what they said. Well, has the Lord spoken only through Moses?

Hasn't he also spoken through us?

You know, as an associate pastor, Jevin, this isn't directed towards you because

I experienced this, but it's always a danger.

When the enemy wants to stir up trouble, he'll stir it up however he can.

If he can't get to the people, then he goes to the staff and he begins to say,

well, hey, aren't I as good as the pastor?

I had people come to me when I was just an associate, when I was a youth pastor

starting out. And hey, what do you think?

Isn't the pastor doing this wrong? Isn't he doing that wrong?

Shouldn't you do this? Shouldn't you do that? And I'm like, a new,

fresh out of Bible college pastor, I'm like, this ain't supposed to happen.

So what do I do? I go with my pastor. I said, hey, you got to hear what these

people are saying about you, man.

Cut the fat and go to the person and take care of it, right?

That's what scripture kind of teaches us.

I'm like, this can't happen. But in every church I was an associate,

I noticed that there was this pattern that the enemy would try to work in this

angle to split the leadership of the church,

to divide and conquer, so to speak. That's what was going on here.

The enemy was trying to get in with even Abraham's own family to say,

hey, what's up with this?

So God gets wind of this. check this out.

And here, Numbers 12, verse 4 through 8, or 3 through 8. I'll start at 3.

Numbers 12:4–8

Now, Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.

At once, the Lord said to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, come out to the tent of

meeting, all three of you.

Boy, you talk about getting called into your parents' room, getting called into

a principal's office, something is going down.

The scripture continues, so the three of them went out.

Then the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud.

He stood at the entrance to the tent and summoned Aaron and Miriam.

When the two of them stepped forward, he said, listen to my words.

When there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, reveal myself to them in visions.

I speak to them in dreams.

But this is not true of my servant Moses.

He is faithful in all my house. With him, I speak face to face clearly, not in riddles.

He sees the form of the Lord.

Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?

After this, we see that Miriam is afflicted with a type of leprosy.

Man, her face turns white.

You know, kind of when you get a callous on your foot, you know,

kind of this instant kind of thing that happens.

She's told then to go to the edge of the city. And there's a judgment here.

There's a punishment here for speaking against the Lord's anointed,

for speaking against her brother even, Moses.

So she goes out for seven days and all of Israel knows what's going on by now.

All this to say that Moses has a special place in the heart of God.

He said, hey, the prophets, I speak to them in dreams and visions,

but sometimes it's only riddles.

They got to figure it out. But with Moses, he's faithful in my household.

He's faithful in my house. I speak to him face to face.

He sees the form of me, the outline of me. Well, you're talking about closeness.

You're talking about an intimacy with God.

I mean, even when he goes to get the Ten Commandments, he's in the presence

of God there, receives a tablet written by the hand of God.

And when he comes down, he's glowing so much. They say, Moses,

put a veil over your face.

We can't stand to look at you. Not because he was ugly, but because he was holy.

The holiness of God on this man. So do you kind of get the idea of why he was

so revered by the Hebrews?

A man who could stand face to face with God and not be struck down?

Wow. It kind of goes back to what was said in verse 3, that Moses was a very humble man.

That humility of a hero. Heroes are honored because of their humility.

But also, when we look here, God spoke to Moses face to face,

gave him the law directly.

Now, remember again, to Israel, Moses and the law were inseparable.

When you thought about the law, you thought about Moses. You couldn't separate the two.

And so Hebrews, even some of the rabbis, ranked Moses above the angels in their favoritism with God.

It's because of how precious he was. I mean, he was the hero,

Moses, the hero of the Hebrews. us.

Everything that he accomplished, it's amazing. Now, I know we idolize or we

think about some of our sports people as heroes, and they're just people like us,

people like you and me that God has gifted them and God has privileged them

with some incredible opportunities, but they're just people.

Moses, he was just a person. He found favor with God. He obeyed God in every

instance where God called him to do something.

But here's the thing. If anyone seemed closest to God, it was Moses.

But that makes the claim that Jesus is greater than Moses absolutely staggering.

That here was this perfect one, this Moses.

The author of Hebrews says he's a great hero, but there's a better one.

Jesus is better, better than Moses.

Yeah, you're talking about one that was face to face with God.

But how about one that is God?

How about one who gave up his place to come and experience what we experience

and then to give up that pure and that holy life?

The greatest human hero that we have still falls short of the honor that is due Jesus.

And that's what the author of Hebrews is saying here.

Moses was great, but man is Jesus better.

Moses deserves honor, but how much greater should the honor be to Jesus?

And boy, we've got to get our head wrapped around that.

Jesus is deserving of our honor. And I just want to pause here,

take a time out for a moment and say, thank you for honoring Jesus today by gathering together,

by taking your time out on this beautiful day to say, I'm going to commit to

coming and hearing the word of God, to sharing Jesus with my friends and family,

with my brothers and sisters, even with complete strangers.

I'm glad that you're here today to honor Christ on the first day of this week.

You see, Jesus, he is the better hero. When we finish out the passage here mostly, it says again,

Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder

of a house is greater than the house itself.

And it goes on to explain that a little bit more.

For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything.

Dave, did you ever think about that when you were building houses?

You know, God had gifted you, given you the headaches that go along with it too.

But ultimately, I know you're a man that gave the honor back to God for every house that you made.

See, God is the one who enables all of us to do these kinds of things.

But God is the builder of everything, it says. In verse five,

Moses was faithful as a servant in all God's house, testifying to what would be said in the future.

But Christ as son, Christ is faithful as a son over God's house.

So there's two things going on at once here, two comparisons.

There's the builder versus the house, and there's the son versus the servant.

These two reasons why the author of Hebrews says, Jesus is the better hero.

Jesus is better than Moses.

And so builder versus house. Moses is part of God's house, part of God's family,

part of God's household.

But Jesus is the builder of that house, the creator of all things.

Now, think about it. We have an ethic in the United States of America called

the Judeo-Christian ethic, right?

It goes back to scripture, the scripture, the Judeo part. That's the Old Testament part, right?

That's the law of Moses, the code of Moses, everything that Moses set out to

build a great nation that he got from God.

And then Christ comes along to complete that, to say, that's great,

but I'm the fulfillment of that.

I'm going to take this, what you've started, you've got a great foundation,

you've got some great walls started, it's a sound structure,

but Jesus had to come in and do the finish work so that it could be inhabited

by all people, not just the Hebrews.

The incredible statement here that the author of Hebrews gives is,

that Jesus is greater. Moses is good. Jesus is better.

Moses is part of the house of God, but Jesus is the one who ultimately has all

the blueprints because then it transitions to the son-servant argument.

And it says Moses was great.

He served faithfully in the house of God.

He faithfully served the family of God. But Jesus rules faithfully over the house as a son.

Jesus rules the house that Moses serves in. You get the comparison there?

Now, there's a show that I would watch with my wife, Never Alone.

It was called, it's not Downtown Abbey, it's called Downton Abbey.

I don't know how many years I called it Downtown Abbey, you know.

But Downton Abbey. And in that household, it was portrayed, there was the owner

of the house, if you will, the Lord of the house, who kind of owned everything.

And then there were the servants that served the house, like the butler.

The butler who would make sure every need was met, everything was put into place

that needed to be for the family that lived there.

Now, Moses was the butler, if you will. He was the servant. He didn't own anything,

but he was a steward of everything.

Now, Jesus, he was the one that ruled the house. He was the son that the father

said, you're the one in charge here.

Remember what Jesus said to the disciples before he ascended to heaven?

He said, all authority on heaven and on earth has been given to me.

It means Jesus was in charge. I got the keys here.

And he tells us, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the

name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, teaching them all things, to observe all things.

And lo, I am with you always, Jesus says, even to the end of the age.

Moses served faithfully. He was a faithful servant, but he wasn't the son.

He wasn't the one who had the authority. That was Jesus.

Now, don't misunderstand me here. I'm not putting Moses down by any means.

Moses knew God. Moses served God faithfully, even in the midst of mistakes that he made along the way.

But Jesus is God's Son in the flesh.

Jesus is our apostle. Jesus, remember, is greater than the angels.

And he brought the greatest message to humanity that could ever be delivered.

Greatest message of salvation in him and him alone. And we said last week that

Jesus is our high priest.

He's our bridge between God and humanity. Jesus is the bridge.

When he stretched his hands out on the cross, that bridge became complete when

he gave up his life for us.

The bridge that Jesus is our high priest, the mediator between God and human beings.

You know, heroes that we admire, they should serve God's purposes.

And Jesus is that hero. He is God's son. He is the architect,

Jesus is, of those purposes.

So remember, Jesus is the better hero. Moses is great.

Hey, man, your grandma that prayed for you to be saved for like 20 years before

you're even born, she's a hero, but even she would say, Jesus is greater than her.

Billy Graham was a great hero of the faith, I do believe. In all the crusades

that he preached and how many people came to Jesus on account of his faithful

preaching of the Word, he was a hero, but I think even he would agree that Jesus is greater.

Think of the greatest Christian you've ever met or that you ever have known,

living or passed on to glory, and I can guarantee you that person would have

the humility of Moses enough to say, no, Jesus is greater.

Jesus is the greater hero.

Even in those heroes I just mentioned, those heroes maybe that you pictured

in your mind, you've got to understand that heroes will hold fast to Jesus. True heroes now.

Heroes, they will hold on. In verse 6 again, it says,

but Christ is faithful as a son over God's house, and we are in his house or

in his family, in his household, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.

Courage not in ourself, a hope not found in ourself, but a courage and hope that is found in Jesus.

We are God's house. We are God's family.

If we hold firmly to our confidence and hope in Christ?

Are you hanging on to it firmly today?

Even when someone else comes and shows you a better way, what they would consider

a better way, an easier way, a not so anti or countercultural way?

Are you still holding firm to the courage and the hope that Jesus gives you?

A question, you don't answer this out loud, but rhetorically,

of course, if every believer in this assembly here this morning,

in this church, walk with Jesus like you do, what kind of church would we be?

Remember, I had asked myself this question before I presented it to you this morning.

There's some days where I would have said, man, there wouldn't be a soul in that church.

Sometimes in my life, I would say, man, people just pass by this church and

know what happened there and they wouldn't want any part of it.

But there's other times where I say, man, no, this church would be filled with

ecstatic and excited worshipers, with people who've laid down their lives and

who went out to the highways and byways and are trying to bring everyone they can to Jesus.

I mean, what's the reflection we see when we look in Scripture and it reflects back at us who we are?

Well, we can correct those things that are a little bit awry.

We can see our sin and ask forgiveness for it, be cleansed from that and move on.

We can get our motivation, our courage, and our hope from the pages of Scripture

as we reflect on Jesus' life.

Because you might not feel like a hero, but I got to tell you,

you're a hero for someone in this world.

Your faith is heroic to some people in this world.

I remember as a kid, we had all kinds of evangelists coming to our church, right?

And that was always a cool time for a church kid, because you got someone else

to hear than the preacher that always put you to sleep every Sunday.

Those were always exciting times. And you always knew when evangelists came, they had great stories.

And some of them, man, they were punks before they got saved.

And they would share with you these incredible stories of what their life used to be like.

And of course, growing up hearing this, it was amazing how God would take a

dirty old rotten sinner's life and transform them.

And now they're this clean cut preacher proclaiming the word of God and loving the people.

And so eventually as time went on and it was testimony time,

I gave my testimony and it was the most boring testimony I thought that I could ever give.

And it was, you know, kind of like, yeah, I'm Mike.

I was born on the way to church. My parents took me to church every Sunday,

Sunday, Sunday night, Wednesday night, Thursday door knocking, Saturday bus ministry.

And yeah, Jesus saved me from my sin. And yeah, praise God. It was boring, right?

I thought it was boring until later on after Bible college, when I was a pastor

and given a similar testimony, because I didn't have a flashy,

I used to be this dirty, rotten sinner.

I mean, I was a sinner, maybe not dirty, rotten, but ask my siblings about that

when you meet them. They could tell you the truth.

But I really didn't think, okay, I don't have a testimony.

But no, I did have a testimony. And my testimony was different because I had

a man come up to me with tears in his eyes after a plain old testimony that I gave.

And this man gave me a hug and he held me by the shoulder right there as he

poured out his heart and saying, you are what I want for my son.

You are what I want for my grandchildren.

I've been through sin. I've been through the consequences of it.

I've been through the pain of it. And I don't want my grandsons,

I don't want my sons to suffer this.

I don't want them to be taken captive by sin, but I want them to have a testimony like you have.

I want them to be raised up in church. I want them to be raised up and taught the Word.

I want them to live the Word, and I want them to love the Word.

And I want to see the evidence of that by how they treat other people.

Well, I was blown away by that. What do you say after that? You see,

you may not think that you're a hero to somebody just by living the life that

God's called you to live, but you are.

People see that. People see that you're different. People hear that you're different.

People witness that you're different in the way that you respond to stress,

the way that you respond to job stress, family stress, stress in the world.

And so if we're going to be considered heroes because of our faith in Jesus,

we've got to make sure we're holding fast to Jesus, that we're holding tight to him.

The way we treat this hero Jesus, either by clinging to him or drifting away

from him, it really reveals if we're part of his house or not.

I mean, I don't want you to imagine this, but imagine a scenario to where it's

you and your loved ones and you're out on a boat and something tragic happens.

The boat begins to sink and there's a storm raging coming up and there's only

one little piece of debris and you're hanging on to this boat.

That's part of the boat that's still floating and it's pretty stable and the

wind is blowing you towards shore, but your loved ones are drifting out into the melee there.

When you do all you can to reach out and to grab your loved one,

to hang on tightly to them as you're hanging on to your anchor here,

to save them, to not see them swept out into deeper water in the midst of a raging storm.

We've got to hold on to Jesus while we're holding on and reaching out to those

that we love around us, while we're reaching out to those who are in need of

salvation, to have the courage to do that,

and not just to let go and say, oh, my life is over.

Oh, me, I tried Jesus, but he didn't work. And we just drift off to our own peril.

We've got to trust Jesus. We've got to hang on to him.

Fix your eyes, fix your mind on Jesus.

And that's the first point. How do we follow the better hero really quickly? Fix your mind on Jesus.

Heroes capture our attention. Hopefully Jesus has captured your attention.

Hopefully more than that, Jesus has captured your life. He's the centerpiece

of everything we believe, the focus of our faith and calling.

Fix your mind, your thoughts upon him.

Secondly, look at his faithfulness. Look at how Jesus was faithful to the Father and emulate that.

Heroes prove themselves over time. Time and time again, like Moses,

their humility comes forth.

Like Moses, the obedience comes forth. Like Jesus, Jesus was committed to the very end.

Look at Jesus' faithfulness. Emulate that. Next is to see His greatest honor.

When we come in on Sunday morning, we sing these praise songs, right?

They're not just songs. They're gifts of our heart through our mouth and praise to the ears of God.

It's our gratitude coming out in worship of God. Like my brother Chris says

over here, it's our sacrifice to God.

The praise is that we bring, thanking and honoring God.

Heroes deserve increasing admiration. And I think Jesus should get that increasing

admiration every time we meet together.

No matter if we've got the great praise teams that we do leading the worship,

or if it's Pastor Mike trying to bust out a song, we've got to praise the Lord, increasing number.

I've got to tell you really quickly, I had a great Valentine's date last night with my wife.

Well, yeah. I was waiting to see if anyone would pick up on that.

No, we went out and we saw a movie, a preview of a movie coming out. I can only imagine two.

Boy, that was a powerful movie. I want to encourage you.

I don't usually do this from the pulpit, but I feel confident in this.

Go see that when it comes out, if you're so inclined, if you do movies like that.

But at the end of the movie, the very end of the movie, it ended like this.

Bart Millard, who is the lead singer of Mercy Me, the story,

he's in the story, right?

And he's on the big screen there, and he tells everyone in the theater,

you know, you've just seen this great movie, and it's great,

you know, everything that's happened on the screen, but how are you going to

make it your own? I'm paraphrasing here.

But he says, one of the things I'd love you to do is to sing along with me as

we sing It Is Well. Thank you.

Man, I had three hymns come into my mind at that time.

Yeah, It Is Well. And so right there in the movie theater, everybody starts

singing. I start singing.

Melanie starts singing. I think Adam and Abby, they were with us.

I think they started singing, but we started singing, it is well with my soul.

I mean, we sang the whole hymn in the movie theater. It was awesome.

Now, Melanie said, I sang loud, but I think it was a joyful noise.

But luckily the acoustics in a movie theater dampen, you know, the harsh noises there.

But no matter where you're at, you can lift up praise to God.

You can point the way, you can give God honor.

Last but not least, and we'll conclude with this, we've got to trust the Son.

Jesus is the true hero, and he's got to be not just admired, but we've got to obey.

And luckily, when we obey, it's not the kind of obedience we don't like.

It's the kind of obedience we might be uncomfortable with, but it's the kind

of obedience that once you do it, you find out, man, I can do this.

Once God calls you to something and he says, I want you to do this,

boy, it builds you up rather than tears you down.

That's the obedience with Christ. Yeah, it's hard sometimes, hard to get started.

But once you begin, it's easier to take the next step of obedience.

It's easier to take the next one and the next one and so forth.

So you want to follow Jesus, the better hero. Fix your mind on him.

Look at his faithfulness. See his greater honor and trust the Son.

Boy, if you're here this morning, I just pray that you've made the choice to

follow Jesus because Jesus has been pursuing you.

If you find yourself in a state where you've kind of drifted away from him a little bit.

Hey, just turn around. Jesus is following you, not like a crazed stalker,

but as a brother that loves you and is seeking you out and is trying to get

you to come back to what he wants.

We're going to sing a great hymn as we close out our time together.

As we sing this, I pray that this would be your prayer, that this would be a

prayer of an action you want to take this week of fixing your eyes upon Jesus.

Because when you fix your eyes upon Jesus, that's where your thoughts are going

to go. That's where your focus is going to go.

And I pray that this morning, if you're here and you don't know Jesus Christ,

you've heard this guy up here talking about Jesus is better than Moses.

Jesus is a great hero. You want to find out more, man, you got to talk to me.

Not just me, look around. There's plenty of people to talk to.

And so I pray that you'll do that this morning.

Would you give your life to Christ if you've not done that yet?

Would you stand with me as the praise team comes? And let's close out our worship

time today with singing this song.

I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast. You can find a copy

of today's sermon, as well as other sermons, and the sermon outline from today

on our church's website,

www.mvcnaz.org.

It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that recognizes the authority of the Bible.