Book of Common Prayer

He calls upon us to hear and honour the word of Christ, who is more worthy than Moses. The punishment of persons who stubbornly harden their hearts.

3 Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of the celestial calling, consider the ambassador and high priest of our profession, Christ Jesus, ² who was faithful to him who appointed him, even as Moses was in all his house. ³ And yet this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who has prepared the house has more honour in the house.

  ⁴ Every house is built by some man. But he who ordained all things is God. ⁵ And Moses truly was faithful in all his house, as a servant, to bear witness of those things that were to be spoken afterward. ⁶ But Christ as a son has rule over the house – whose house we are, if so be that we hold fast the confidence and the assurance of that hope to the end.

⁷ Therefore as the Holy Spirit says: Today if you hear his voice, ⁸ harden not your hearts, as in the rebellion in the day of trial in the wilderness, ⁹ where your fathers tried me, proved me, and saw my works forty years long. ¹⁰ Therefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do ever err in their hearts; they have not acknowledged my ways. ¹¹ So I swore in my wrath that they would not enter into my rest.

¹³ And the Jews’ Passover was near at hand. And Jesus went up to Jerusalem, ¹⁴ and found sitting in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money-changers. ¹⁵ And he made a scourge of small cords and drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and oxen, and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables, ¹⁶ and said to those who sold doves, Take these things away from here, and do not make my Father’s house a house of merchandise! ¹⁷ And his disciples remembered that it was written: The zeal of your house has consumed me.

¹⁸ Then the Jews said to him, What sign can you show to us, seeing that you do these things? ¹⁹ Jesus answered and said to them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will rear it up again.

²⁰ Then the Jews said, This temple was forty-six years in building, and will you rear it up in three days?

²¹ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. ²² As soon therefore as he was risen up again from death, his disciples remembered that he had said this. And they believed the scripture, and the words that Jesus had spoken.