NKJ Isaiah 40:8
The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands
forever."
This is a book that many
people love to study. It is also a book
that many people don’t understand. This
is one of the most difficult books in the New Testament to interpret. One of
the reasons is because it is so heavily based on Old Testament theology. If you do not have an adequate understanding
of Old Testament theology, then it becomes very difficult to interpret the book
of Hebrews. It was written to an
audience that obviously was well versed in Old Testament ritual. They
understood the Levitical offerings, the Levitical priesthood, the operations of
the tabernacle, and the doctrinal import of those things from an Old Testament
vantage point. So the writer in an extremely skillful and logical way builds an
intricate web of arguments to support the doctrines of the deity and the
humanity of Christ which in turn lead to the doctrine of His high priesthood,
His unique Melchizedekian priesthood.
And of course as soon as you mention Melchizedek, people come out of the
woodwork with their various views and ideas and theories of who Melchizekek
was. We will have to travel down that
road a little bit. And then you come to
those final concluding chapters that focus so heavily on Jesus Christ, keeping
the author and perfecter of our faith before our eyes.
This is a book that will
thrill us and challenge us in many ways because of its intricate logic. To understand the thought flow of the author
challenges many people to read. We have
to take time to look at the context of the passage not only of Hebrews but also
the context of these Old Testament citations that we are going find. One of the challenging things about Hebrews
is that it is basically an enigma. This
challenges so many people. Some people
love a puzzle and they love a mystery.
They are looking for new solutions to the enigmas in Hebrews. One of the reasons there are so many enigmas
is that it isn’t really an epistle. We
do not know who wrote it or to whom he wrote or the reason or the occasion for
his writing. We don’t know where he was
when he wrote or where they were when he wrote to them. There is a lot of mystery. There is a lot of guesswork. There is a lot of speculation in terms of
answering these questions. But these are
not simply questions that are designed to stimulate our thinking. They are important questions. In the answering of these questions, we are
forced to get into the text and analyze the author’s thought flow. What do these things and the way he says them
say about him? What does it say about
the people to whom he is writing? Even
though we can’t say with certainty that he was writing to a particular group at
this or that location, we can come up with some parameters. As we start our study of Hebrews, we need to
answer some basic questions. If we can’t
answer them, we can at least discuss the issues. Who wrote the book? When did he write? Why did he write? What is the occasion? All of this helps us to analyze the over all
thought flow of this epistle.
We have to understand the
overall book before we can understand the parts. We can’t see what he is trying to communicate
before we can understand some of the things that are said within this unique
work of the New Testament. Sometimes it
is a back and forth issue. You have to
do an overall summation of the book to see what it is all about. Then you go through do a detail analysis and
then go back to the big picture to see if it changes our thinking. Our understanding a part is always related to
the understanding of the whole. If you
have one piece of a 5,000-piece puzzle you can’t say a lot about that
piece. If you have 10 pieces of a
5,000-piece jigsaw puzzle you can’t say a whole lot about those pieces, even if
they all fit together. How do we know
what is there? How do you know what it
means? The part only has meaning in
relationship to the whole. The whole in
turn gives meaning to the individual part.
This analogy is very important as we work our way through the enigma of
Hebrews.
This book has a message to
believers in our generation just as much as it did in that generation. Essentially what the author has to deal with
is a group of believers who are tempted because of pressure and adversity in
their lives to chuck their Christianity.
Why do we need to continue being faithful to what we have learned about
Christianity when if we get rid of it, life would apparently go a lot
easier? And so they are being tempted to
walk away from their Christian faith.
Now of course this generates a number of questions and problems within
the book of Hebrews. You always have one
group of people who think that these people were in danger of losing their
salvation. Others think that they might
not have been saved to begin with. That
they are tempted to walk away means they weren’t ever saved in the first
place. Then a third group says that they
were genuinely saved and this points out that believers can screw up just as
much as any unbeliever. In their
backsliding they are in danger of losing reward, losing the position and
privileges that God has reserved for them in the millennial kingdom and in the
future. If you have been around very
long, you know that the third view is the one we will hone in on.
The first view is called the
Arminian view. It is named for late 16th
century theologian named Jacobus Arminius.
He was originally a staunched Calvinist and then decided he had a lot of
problems with Calvinistic theology so he moved away from that. One of his students Derek Van Hornberg took
it further. They ended up with a system
of theology that put the ultimate reality of the universe in the hands pure
human volition even to the degree that man is not born totally depraved and
ultimately could lose his salvation once he had it. It was a threat to the sovereignty of God and
the power of God and salvation. The
Arminian viewpoint is that they thought people were in danger of losing their
salvation and so you can lose your salvation.
That preaches well for a lot of preachers who love to threaten those in
the pews.
Then the other extreme is the
Calvinist lordship view. That is the
second view is the idea that they are being threatened with hell, fire, and
damnation. They think that it means that
if they were really saved they would not go through that kind of punishment.
Therefore they must not have been saved in the first place. A Calvinist believes in eternal
security. If you are going to go through
this kind of punishment or loss, then you must not be saved. That also preaches. Fear preaches. If you don’t straighten up and
fly right you were never saved. How do
you know you are saved? Not by grace,
but you know by your moral good deeds.
That is the problem with lordship salvation.
The three crux books in the
New Testament that are the debated severely are the books of James, I John and
Hebrews. Those are the battleground
books. How you interpret them as a whole
affects how you interpret individual passages inside of those books. Hebrews is perhaps the most difficult of the
three books to deal with and to interpret.
They have one other thing in common.
That is that they are not what I would call true epistles in the same
sense as Colossians or Romans or Galatians or even II and III John. They have certain characteristics that I
believe mark them as having been sermons.
I John doesn’t have a salutation which is typical of an epistle. It was probably given at some point as a
sermon. Sermons back then were not given
like they are today. If someone got up
in the pulpit today and read I John most people would walk out the back
door. Then you read Hebrews in the
evening service and you now have a congregation of one. This is tough stuff. James has three basic divisions in the book,
a perfect introduction, and a perfect conclusion. I believe it was also a message. These books challenge believers in their
spiritual lives. You may be saved, but
how you live your spiritual life today is going to affect what you do in
eternity. What you decide today affects
your eternal destiny. And so these are
books that deal with the issues of rewards and blessings and preparation for
our roles and responsibilities as priests and kings to God in the millennial
kingdom and in eternity future. Last
summer we started but did not finish a series on rewards and crowns. It will be developed in our studies in
Hebrews and Revelation. We get into some
advanced understanding of rewards and blessing and where the Lord is taking us
in all of these contingent blessings. It
will be a challenge for all of us.
Hebrews is a book that
challenges us to hold onto certain truths.
If I were to poll everyone here tonight we would all say that we all
believe in the deity of Christ. We
believe in the humanity of Christ. We
believe in the hypostatic union. We
believe that Christ is our great high priest.
But what do they mean to us? What
are the implications of that? So what if
you believe that Jesus is God? You merge
that in the hypostatic union that He is truly human and fully God united
together in one person inseparably united without mixture of attributes without
shading of His character from one side to the other yet it is one person
united. What is the significance of that?
What is the significance of Jesus Christ being at the right hand of God
the Father? We believe in the session of
Christ. We usually reduce that to an
intercessory ministry. Why is His priestly
role important? What we will see is that
as the author builds a point, he ends it with an exhortation that warns us that
if we do not pay attention to what he is saying that you will be a failure
spiritually and forfeit these rewards and privileges forever.
There are five warnings in
this book and each one gets progressively dire.
By the time we get down to chapter 10 it is downright sobering to read
what the writer of Hebrews says about what may happen if we do not continue to
advance in the spiritual life. Today
there are too many Christians who think that only salvation matters. They think that grace means they can do
whatever they want to. They do not think
they have to take the study of the Bible very seriously. As long as they are saved, that is all that
matters. They sing a few songs that they
like to sing and get some warm fuzzies as they walk around and hug each
other. There is nothing wrong with
warmth in a congregation, but so often that is all that there is. It supplants the teaching of the Word so that
there is no understanding of what this spiritual life is about.
Introductory Problems
The book is an enigma. Why is it such an enigma? It is because the structure of the book
itself is unusual. It doesn’t really fit
the pattern of an epistle. It has no
opening salutation. You don’t know who
the writer is. It has some elements
similar an epistle at the end, but its structure doesn’t really fit an
epistle. It doesn’t identify the
author. It doesn’t identify the
recipients. What happened on the part of
the recipients that caused the writer to write this epistle? We do not know. So we have to answer some of these
questions.
What is this book? Is it an epistle or what? One of the first things you should do when
you tackle a piece of Scripture to interpret it is to find what kind of
literature you are dealing with. Are
you dealing with law? Or are you dealing
with a proverb? You don’t interpret a
passage in the law that is a contractual agreement in the same way you would
interpret something in the Song of Solomon which is highly poetic
literature. They are not interpreted in
quite the same way you would a parable.
These are different kinds of literature.
You still utilize a literal, historical, and grammatical methodology;
but because you are dealing with different literature, you handle the statement
differently. When you pick up a credit
card statement, you read it differently than they way you would read a
Shakespearean sonnet. Why? Because you intuitively know from your
background in reading that these are different kinds of literature. When you go to a movie if you know it is a
science fiction you interact with it differently than if it was a romantic
comedy or a historical documentary.
Literature has different forms.
You have to analyze the form when you begin to study. Is this a letter like Romans? Or is it a sermon like Deuteronomy? Is it a gospel like Luke or a parable like we
find in Matthew 13? If we compare
Hebrews 1:1 with the Pauline epistles we will see a difference.
NKJ Philemon 1:1 Paul,
a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, To Philemon our
beloved friend and fellow laborer, 2 to the beloved Apphia,
Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church in your house: 3 Grace
to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
These are words that for the
most part are familiar to us. This is how Paul begins his epistle. It identifies who the writer is and who the
recipients are. There is some form of
salutation.
NKJ Hebrews 1:1 God,
who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by
the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son,
whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;
3 who being the brightness of His glory and the express image
of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had
by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4
having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance
obtained a more excellent name than they.
This is all one sentence in
the original. Notice the difference?
There is no salutation. There is no
identification of authorship. There is
no identification of readers. So there
is something different going on here. It
is not an epistle in the same sense as some of the others are epistles. Some people say that in the course of time
the salutation got dropped off or got lost somehow. That brings up a number of questions what about
the sovereignty of God in the preservation of the Scripture. It doesn’t look like something got dropped
off. That is an inadequate solution.
The book gives us clues to what it is. For that we go to Hebrews 13:22.
NKJ Hebrews
What has always impressed me
about the book of Hebrews is that the writer thinks that what he is saying is
elementary.
NKJ Hebrews 6:1 Therefore,
leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go
on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works
and of faith toward God,
Wait a minute. 99% of the seminary-trained pastors in this
country don’t understand the Book of Hebrews.
He thinks it is basic stuff. He
raises the bar doesn’t he? We think we
are getting into advanced stuff, but he calls this pabulum. He encourages us to get out of nursery
school. Most of us have difficulty
understanding this book. It is not just
a few words. This is a profound
discourse on the significance of the person of Christ.
The verb parakaleo
means to call alongside, to come along side, to encourage, or to exhort. The noun form parakletos is the word
for the Holy Spirit as our comforter and encourager. He encourages us in terms of
application. The writer challenges
us. The word “brethren” indicates that
he is writing to fellow believers. For
now we understand that he is not using it here in an ethnic sense. Here it is not necessarily to fellow
Jews. It is used that way in some
passages but not in Hebrews. It is clear
that he is writing to believers.
Tou logou tes paraklesios The word logos should be translated message.
It is used for a title of Jesus in John 1.
It can mean a number of different things. Here it has the idea of a message of related
to exhortation. To bear is the present
active imperative of aneko and means that this should be a
characteristic of your life. It is an
ongoing standard operating procedure for the Christian life to put up with, to
endure and to apply this message of exhortation. When we look at this particular phrase we
need to ask exactly what it means. Does
it have a particular meaning that his readers would understand? We can’t just say it means preaching. We have to go to the Scripture to understand
what a message of exhortation is. In our
modern culture there is an artificial distinction made between preaching and
teaching. So often what you discover is
that preaching has to do with a certain oratorical style. If you get up and teach then that is not
preaching. Actually the Bible does not
recognize such a distinction. The word
of exhortation does have the idea of a sermon or teaching, but not in the sense
that we find it in modern churches.
In Acts 13 we find the
apostle Paul speaking to a synagogue in
NKJ Acts
They are invited to give a
message of exhortation. So if this is a
message of exhortation, let’s analyze what its characteristics are.
NKJ Acts 13:16 Then Paul stood up, and motioning with his hand
said, "Men of Israel, and you who fear God, listen: 17 "The
God of this people Israel chose our fathers, and exalted the people when they
dwelt as strangers in the land of Egypt, and with an uplifted arm He brought
them out of it.
They understand that the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the Creator of heavens and earth and all that
is in them.
Now who is the subject of
this verse? It is God. He did these three things. He chose our fathers and He exalted the
people and with an uplifted arm He brought them out of
NKJ Acts
In verse 17 he started with
Abraham. Then in four verses Paul
summarizes Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges,
Ruth and I Samuel. Isn’t that great? He is not just jumping into the Gospel. He gives it a context. He synthesizes the Old Testament to give the
gospel meaning and context.
NKJ Acts 13:20"After
that He gave them judges for about four hundred and fifty years, until
Samuel the prophet. 21 "And afterward they asked for a king; so
God gave them Saul the son of
In six verses he has gone
from the Abrahamic Covenant to the Davidic Covenant
NKJ Acts
Look at that leap. He jumps from the Davidic Covenant to John
the Baptist in one phrase. He is
synthesizing the Old Testament to give the gospel message meaning and content.
Did you notice that there are
two verses on John the Baptist? He takes
off with the Abrahamic Covenant. In
about 5 verses he takes you through 7 or 8 books in the Old Testament and ends
with the Davidic Covenant. He jumps over the rest of the Old Testament and
lands on the river
NKJ Acts
Now he addresses the
congregation. This is a word of
encouragement. What is his message?
Number one, he emphasizes the gospel. But he emphasizes the practical
application on the part of the reader, the message from the Scripture. He challenges them to apply what is written.
NKJ Acts
He slows down to the gospel
but he didn’t go there first. It is not emotional. There is no appeal to come forward. There is no singing of emotional songs to set
the context. It is just content filled
rehearsal of what God had done in history.
If God has not done these things in history then when it gets down to
the gospel, it doesn’t really matter.
What is unique about Biblical Christianity is that it is grounded in
history. And we have to understand that.
We can’t debate whether or not these things happened the way the Bible says
that they happened. They happened the
way they happened for a theological purpose that God had in history. If you don’t have the Exodus, if you don’t
have the Davidic covenant, if you don’t have John the Baptist, then it doesn’t
matter what happened at the cross. The cross is grounded in a series of
historical interventions by God in history.
If they didn’t happen then the cross is irrelevant. The meaning of the cross in salvation is
grounded in history. This is where liberalism always attacks the Bible. Television shows always challenge the
historicity and canonicity of the Bible.
That is why The DaVinci Code is so hot. It challenges the historicity and canonicity
of the Scripture. If they aren’t true, then people have a rationale to justify
dumping their Christianity. Right now we
are fighting a major battle out there.
It has to do with canonicity and understanding who Christ is and what He
did. That is what Hebrews is about.
NKJ Acts 13:38
"Therefore let it be known to
you, brethren, that athrough 1Him forgiveness of sins is
proclaimed to you, 39 and through Him aeveryone who
believes is 12freed from all things, from which you could not be 1freed
through the Law of Moses.
He establishes the
credentials of Jesus Christ. It is a
doctrinal exposition of the person and work of Christ with quotes from Ps 2:7,
Is 55:3, and Ps 16:6. He weaves together
Old Testament principles and then brings home a message. If you want a clear statement of the gospel
from the Scripture, this is it. He does not say he who repents or he who walks
the aisle or he who changes his life. He
says the ones who believe are justified.
This is a message of exhortation.
Definition: An exhortation
is the development of a doctrinal principle with an exposition of its
application and a challenge to the life of the believer. It is a challenge from God to each individual
to live your life consistently with the things you say you believe.
You say you believe in the
humanity of Christ. You say you believe
in the deity of Christ. You say you
believe in the hypostatic union. Therefore
do this. It is a challenge to go
forward. That is the challenge of the
Book of Hebrews.
NKJ 1 Timothy 4:3
forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God
created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the
truth.
Itching ears always find
scratching teachers. And they will always pay for scratching teachers. Look at the enormous churches that are all
around the country. They all teach some
form of tithing and many are into the health and wealth gospel. These preachers are preaching heresy. They tell people that if you give so much God
will return it a 100 fold. Some have put
their life savings into these churches.
So many of these churches have incredible wealth and pay their pastors
an incredible amount of money to tell them what they want to hear. The sad thing is that when we get into
doctrinal churches where people want the truth and are grace oriented, we find
pastors scratching along to make a living.
That is the irony of the whole situation.
NKJ Hebrews 9:5 and
above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these
things we cannot now speak in detail.
The writer thinks that he
isn’t giving much doctrine. He wants to
say more but he knows that the readers can’t handle it right now because they
are on the verge of carnality and reversionism. There is a lot more. He thought that what he was teaching was very
fundamental theology. This was probably
originally preached and later written down by someone. That is one of many theories.
When was it written? It has a sermonic style even though there are
greetings at the end. Timothy is
mentioned. So the author knew who this
group was. Timothy is still alive. It gives us some parameters for the
date. It is after Timothy has been put
in prison.
In AD 95, about the same time
John was on the Isle of Patmos getting The Revelation, there was a pastor in
Rome by the name of Clement of Rome.
(There was also a Clement of Alexandria.
They lived about 150 years apart.) Clement of Rome wrote an epistle to
the Corinthians that is the earliest non-canonical Christian literature. It is
loaded with quotes from Hebrews. He is
obviously familiar with Hebrews and treats Hebrews as authoritative. He also quoted other New Testament works as
well. He quotes from Mathew, Mark and
Luke. He quotes from two or three
Pauline epistles. So it is obvious that
they are already circulating as authoritative works. The churches were recognizing the internal
authority of the Holy Spirit in these works.
It also had to be written by
70 AD when the temple was destroyed. One
of the major arguments that the writer presents is that the Levitical system of
sacrifices is now outmoded. If the
temple had been destroyed that would be a great argument to use. He treats the sacrifices as if they were
still going on. He never mentions the
temple or the sacrifices at the temple.
So it is before 70 AD.
I think it is before 66 AD
also because I think that the community to which he writes is Christian Jews
living in Israel. There does not seem to
be a threat to the temple in Jerusalem at this point. They are tempted to go
back to Judaism. Paul dies somewhere
around 59 to 60 AD. So the best we can
come up with is 61-65 AD. It seems to
have been written before there was any threat to the destruction of the temple
and before Rome’s invasion of Judea.
Who is the author? He is not mentioned. We don’t know. He is unknown to us but he is clearly known
to his audience. They knew who this was
from and that he had the authority to teach them the Word. There are a number of views on who the author
was. Some people have spent a lifetime
studying to figure out who wrote it. Nobody knows.
There are various guesses.
The first guess is that Paul
was the author. Many assume his
authorship. However there are
fundamental problems with Pauline authorship.
First of all, the style and the vocabulary are very different from Paul’s
style. He wrote in a more common form of
Greek. In some cases he gets
emotional. He is very fast in his
writing. He uses ellipsis and figures of
speech. In Romans, you feel his passion and excitement as he writes the
doctrine. You don’t have any of that
within Hebrews. The author of Hebrews
has very tight structure to his thinking.
He marches you down as he goes through his argument and presents his
five great challenges to his audience.
Clement of Alexandria taught that Paul was the writer. He got that view from his teacher Pantaenus
who died in AD 190. That is the earliest attestation to Pauline
authorship. Another church father Origen
lived from 185-254. He didn’t think that
Paul wrote it, but he didn’t argue with the tradition that he did write
it. That was on the eastern side of the
Mediterranean. It was Jerome and
Augustin who popularized that view in the west that Paul was the author. Very few if any in modern scholarship accept
Pauline authorship.
Another view that has a lot
of ancient status is the view that Barnabas wrote it. That may be legitimate. He was from Cyprus and may have learned a
higher form of Greek. Paul wrote in a
very common form of the Koine. Hebrews
is written in the most eloquent Greek in the New Testament. It was written by someone well trained in
rhetoric. Barnabas was a Levite. That means he would be intimately acquainted
with all of the ritual of the Levitical priesthood.
Later on Luther put forth the
idea that it was Apollos. Apollos was
from Alexandria and was an orator. It is
a valid suggestion. Others suggested
Clement of Rome because he was so familiar with it. Silas who was Paul’s traveling companion is
mentioned. Some say Luke. Some say Luke translated Paul or Barnabas. Priscilla is mentioned. All kinds of people have all kinds of ideas
about who wrote the book of Hebrews.
We do know that the writer
had a mind that was intensely logical and had a tremendous grasp of the Old
Testament and the Christology in the Levitical sacrifices. He is able to take various sources and weave
together very intricate arguments for the deity, humanity and superiority of
Jesus Christ. He builds a fascinating
challenge to the Church Age believer.
We need to look at the whole
so that we do not lose the punch of the book.
There are 88 quotes or allusions to the Old Testament in the book. We can’t assume that people know their Old
Testaments so we will have to review many passages. When this was first given, it was given all
in one morning. We will find that
Hebrews is loaded with content.