Hebrews - Part 1

So, the book of Hebrews is a really, really neat book for a number of reasons. And so, before we even get into it, I wanted to talk about it, sort of introduce it. One of the reasons it's really neat is that there is no author that is known to us. We don't know who wrote the book of Hebrews. Now, people have postulated that it was Luke, Paul, Apollos, someone else.

And I remember years ago reading arguments for all these different potential authors of Hebrews. And it was one of those deals where whichever person I read, like, you know, I read an article where a guy said, yeah, Paul wrote Hebrews. And then he outlined why. And when I was all done, I was like, oh, yeah, no doubt. And then the next day I read another guy's article.

It was Apollos. And when he was all done, I'm like, oh, yeah, no doubt. It's like a mystery, which is kind of fun for us. And I think it was Paul. And I'm like an untrained scholar about these things. I just read it and I just think, wow, it sounds like Paul.

And I've heard a few things. One of them is that Hebrews was actually a sermon that was given and that it was, you know, written down. No doubt could be a sermon, but there is a part in the end of the book where he talks about having written these things. and so it's like but you know people write their sermons too so that you know but when you when you read Hebrews you can think to yourself what it would what it would have sounded like to have been preached you know this book to you and and so but it doesn't really matter what we know is that it's written now in our Bibles and the fact that it's anonymous is remarkable because it does remind us that the human authorship, even of God's word, is entirely irrelevant to its veracity, its power, its inerrancy, its infallibility, and its sufficiency.

Hebrews is true, and Hebrews is powerful, and Hebrews is a great book we have to study and need to study and have the joy to study because it was inspired by God. And so we don't have to, I guess what I'm trying to say is don't spend too much time arguing about who wrote Hebrews. Spend more time worshiping the one who inspired the writer. And be excited to know that in God's purpose of things, and we'll get to this in verses one through three a little, that we don't need to know who wrote Hebrews.

You know, God wanted us to know who wrote Acts. God wanted us to know who wrote Galatians. God wanted us to know who wrote Revelation. We don't need to know who wrote Hebrews, and speculating about it a little bit too much, I think, would be unhealthy for us. So second of all, Hebrews is written to the Jewish people of the first century. and what we have in the first century is Jesus Christ dying, being raised again on the third day, and then he ascends into heaven, and now you have this new religion that has come along, the way, you know, it's going to be called Christianity one day. and you also have Judaism that's active at the time.

And so the book of Hebrews, if I was going to sum it up in just one sentence, the book of Hebrews was written with a thesis. Jesus is greater than everything, but maybe more specifically, Jesus is greater than the old Testament, the old covenant. and everything contained therein. Now, I have this really neat book that I recommend to anybody. It's called 50 World-Changing Events in Christian History by Earl M.

Blackburn. And it's written in, so there's 50 events in here. The book's only 330 pages long or so. So it's only six pages per event, maybe. And Earl Blackburn, a Reformed Baptist, he said that after the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, a looming obstacle fought the progress of Christianity, the religion of the Jews. and his point was in this in these first few pages of this book this was his first event in christian history of everything that happened since the ascension this is what the one of the 50 he listed that was important his point in in this chapter about the destruction of jerusalem was that God was going to destroy the Old Testament religion of the Jews in its practice as they were practicing it.

There was a period of time from Malachi to when Jesus came where there was no prophets speaking to the people I think people call that the intertestamental period and there was this sense that God was silent There were people who were not receiving revelation from God any longer who at one time had been through the prophets. And if you were a Jew in the first century, even had you followed Jesus, you would have practiced the forms and the ceremonies of the old covenant faithful jews would have been observant of ceremonial laws until jesus made his once and for all atoning sacrifice for sins people would have had to bring their sacrifice to the priest and after Jesus died and rose again there was a tension here because it's not like Jesus came and said I'm going to do away with the law and I'm going to abolish it he said I came to fulfill it right and there would have been confusion for people who were faithful Jews they had obeyed the scriptures they they understood the priesthood the importance of the priesthood how to deal with your sacrifices. You remember when Jesus was born, his parents even knew to take the little sacrifice to the priest.

And for Jesus to resurrect, validated what they knew from the old covenant. And so it wasn't like Jesus came and said, hey, don't be Jews anymore, be Christians. Jesus just came and fulfilled the Jewish scriptures. and people did not understand exactly what he had done in the way that we now do because the author of Hebrews explains it to us. So what I'm trying to say is that there was a period of time where there were arguments about whether we had to continue to do some of the things in the Old Covenant.

And so Hebrews attempts to explain that to us in a lot of ways, what the purpose of a lot of these old covenant signs and symbols were. And so it gets really exciting for us because for us here, it frees us from it in a way where I remember when I got saved, it was one of the questions was, well, do I have to do all this Old Testament stuff? And Hebrews helps explain that.

But most of all, it exalts the Lord Jesus Christ by giving us a picture of him that we would not otherwise get if God didn't reveal him to us. So those are some thoughts about Hebrews. You know, there's a lot more that could be said about it. But that's the kind of I'll call that the introduction. And then the book as one of the reasons I think it's Paul is that this book, like most of Paul's writing, it just sort of teaches itself. you just start going through it and you just see it commenting on itself over and over and it's very logical it's not scattered so that'll be pretty easy so does anybody have any questions or comments about the book of Hebrews we'll take your silence as a no something you got to learn on zoom is how to how to react to that stuff Okay, so let's go to Hebrews 1, and we will just start talking about it, and we'll see how long people want to last and things like that.

And we will get better week by week together. Really grateful for you guys. That was one more thing I wanted to say. I am super excited about this. I think Hebrews is really great. and I, it is 6 a.m. and I'm just sitting in my chair. And so if I don't seem excited, like I apologize, but this, this is really exciting.

I think this is a great book. And, and I heard a sermon, a guy in the sermon once said he visited the Grand Canyon or something. I don't remember. And his point was, he said, if his tour guide wasn't excited about what they were doing, he's not sure he would have been. And so I thought, I want to make sure that I express how excited I am and how important the book of Hebrews is.

So anyway, Hebrews 1, ESV, long ago, and at many times, and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. So those are the first four verses. And so a couple of things to note. Number one is in the ESV Bible, when you look at the book of Hebrews, when you look at any book, the ESV provides subheadings.

I'll try to put this here and see if people can see it. Yeah, that's not helpful at all. But anyway, the ESV has subheadings, which are not inspired text. but in in my bible it says right before hebrews one the supremacy of god's son and what i found is when i've looked at the book of hebrews myself the subheadings are very very helpful and they help remind me what i'm talking about that jesus is greater than moses at the beginning of chapter three jesus is the great high priest a little bit before chapter five And so the subheadings are helpful tools for us to study the Bible Just remember they not inspired Although the little instructions at the beginning of each psalm those are inspired So you have to know the difference Secondly, when you read the book of Hebrews, and we'll do this together, but I'm going to expect you to do it as well.

And that is that looking up the cross-references is really, really important. And I'm sure there's more cross-references than are in the margin of all of our Bibles. And maybe there are things that you have studied or heard about Hebrews that, you know, maybe we don't already have here. So you need to bring those. But when you're reading a New Testament book, and it's especially in the book of Hebrews, constantly referring back to the Old Testament. that's that's like um i hate to use this phrase but i think you know what i mean it's like a decoder ring you know it's like you have the holy spirit inspiring a new testament author to tell you about what the old testament was saying uh and there is no better interpreter of scripture than the scripture itself because no one knows the mind of god but a man himself God himself knows his own mind.

And so the Holy Spirit is able to perfectly interpret anything that was written in the Old Testament for us. And so that's one of the reasons we stopped at verse four is we're going to start in verse five next week. And some of these will take a long time. You're going to you're going to look at a verse where God says, you are my son. Today I have begotten you in verse five, for example.

And off the top of my head, I think that's Psalm 110. Oh, no, it's Psalm 2. That's right. Psalm 2. And Psalm 2 is 12 verses. Well, you have to go back and you have to read more than just Psalm 2, 7, which is what that was quoted from, to understand the context of what Psalm 2 was about.

The other neat thing that some of you, this may be mind-blowing to you, I'll admit it, and it's not because I'm saying it, but somebody had to teach me this, is one of the things we'll learn when we study this book is we will start to see what some of us believe and teach, which is that the whole scripture is about Jesus Christ. even some of these Old Testament passages that, you know, when you read them the first time, you never thought that. It's all about him. It's all pointing to him.

It's all revealing him. It's all teaching about him. And so we'll see how the author of Hebrews clearly believes that as well. But so in Hebrews 1.1, we have a couple things going on here. The author says, long ago, at many times and in many ways God spoke to our fathers by the prophets but in the last days he has spoken to us by his son and he describes the son and so first let's talk about this talking to people through the prophets when God wanted to speak to men God had any number of ways he could have done it right he could have given lots of different people the same dream he you know he could have made stars align in certain ways and then people notice that and write it down and create horoscopes there's there's a million ways god could have actually spoken to people because he's god and he could have done what he wanted but god god chose that what he would do is he would speak through other men and even women at times and that and that those people would be responsible to basically say thus saith the lord and the people would hear it and they were to believe it.

And then God accompanied all of those prophecies with validations that were beyond a doubt, which showed that it was God who was speaking and not just a man. And God actually had ways in the Old Testament for men who spoke on his behalf falsely to be punished. And in fact, that was punishable by death. So, you know, sometimes you think about living in the new covenant is good for us as believers.

It's good for the non-believers too, because as a false teacher, you've got a few more years you get to hang out and enjoy the goodness of this world before you get sent to hell. And I guess a chance to repent too. But God spoke to our father. So this is a Jew writing to Jews. He is talking to Jews, and he's using a phrase that they would have understood as meaning their ancestors, their predecessors in the Jewish religion.

And he tells them, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. And so there is an understanding that Genesis to Malachi, all the books of the Old Testament were written by prophets. So there were people who prophesied in ways where they didn't write a book. There were people who just wrote a book. So Moses was a prophet simply for writing God's revelation.

There were also prophets that stood in the street and shouted things. And there were prophets who went to kings and princes and would just say things to them. Joseph was a prophet when he was interpreting dreams for Pharaoh. So anytime you speak for God or to men for God, you are a prophet in the Old Testament if God's the one giving you the words to speak.

And so God spoke to us through these prophets. We have them now and we trust that these prophets are in fact from God and they been validated by their works and God has validated them But now this is a really important verse for us But in these last days he has spoken to us by his son And this is a verse that I will use to teach people a doctrine called cessationism. And there's more than to cessationism than the prophecy.

There's the healings. and uh but for the purpose of what i'm describing today the point is this that god used lots of different prophets in the old testament he spoke through different ones because there was more to tell when when first samuel was written there was still a lot more to be written and so although first Samuel was a great book and it was sufficient for the people who had it God had more he wanted to tell us what God's saying here is that in these last days he has spoken this is past tense he's finished God is done with the um addition of speaking we'll say And now Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all the things that have been written. And so what the apostles would write about Jesus by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the first century would be enough. there would come a time when all of these prophets and the tongues and the healings that accompanied prophecy would cease to be necessary because the Bible was finally put together in such a way that it had everything God wanted it to have. And so in, you know, the late 50s or early 60s A.D., these Hebrews would have still been seeking after gifts like that.

There still would have been people who were expecting another prophet to come and reveal something. There would have been people who remembered actual prophets who God had appointed to prophesy in the first century about Jesus Christ. There would have been people who remembered hearing tongues or maybe having spoken in themselves. And there would have been people who remembered, you know, a guy like Paul who walked around healing people and his word being validated by the power God gave him to do that.

And so this author comes right out and wants to let people know, hey, the word of God is sufficient. So remind you of that. It's always been. But the word of God is pretty much complete. Now, these Hebrews wouldn't have had all the books of the Bible yet. They probably wouldn't have had most of the letters that had circulated in Asia Minor.

They didn't have, you know, first, second, third, dawn and revelation. Those were written later. Well, at least I think so. But some people think Revelation was a little earlier. But anyway, the point is that for us today, the Bible's been written and we know that God has spoken to us by his son. So when somebody comes to me or you and says, hey, I was sitting in my room last night, I was playing Pokemon and Jesus showed up and he said, hey, I want you to go to Togo, West Africa. we can look at that person quite comfortably and say, no, he didn't.

The hardest one is when people say, God told me to buy your groceries. And I'm like, well, no, he didn't. But, you know, if you feel so led, I still will let you, right? But no, God doesn't do that. God has spoken through his son. And so this is one of my go-to verses for those people to remind them that there's no revelation that you need today that hasn't already been given.

And so we go to the word of God. The challenge is this. Have you mastered the word of God? Have you mastered the doctrines of Christ? Do you know God's word so well that if somebody came up and asked you about it, you understand it? And, of course, for all of us, the answer is no.

It's too big. But that's supposed to motivate you. we need to study it more. We need to know it better. And maybe the guys in this chat, maybe we're not continuationists and we're not really even tempted by all that stuff. But part of the point is that we often seek wisdom through other means still. So I might not be looking for the stars to change their alignment and then the sun to have a picture on it.

And then I'm going to decide some important thing or, you know, I might not be playing like weird horoscope games or Enneagram games or all these different things people use to get revelation. But am I really still seeking God's wisdom regularly? Am I really trusting that the scripture is sufficient for me and it has all the wisdoms and treasures of knowledge hidden in it because the scripture reveals Christ?

That's a challenge for all of us to remember. so it's one thing to say I don't look other places for for revelation from God I don't believe in prophecy I don't think anyone's speaking in tongues today like that's easy to say those things but positively speaking are you actually living like you think everything you need is found in this scripture and I think we all fail to do that at times One of the important phrases in here to help us is in Hebrews 1-2, referring to the son whom he's spoken through, it says, whom he appointed the heir of all things. All things come through Jesus Christ. He is over all things.

He's the one in charge. You have nothing without him. So let me go. This quote from John Calvin, then we'll really increase the quality here. Listen to this from John Calvin. We hence only then begin to enjoy by right the good things of God when Christ, the universal heir, admits to a union with himself, you or me. for he is an heir that may endow us with his riches but the apostle now adorns him with this title that we may know that without him we are destitute of all good things and so i want to challenge you that you don't read the bible enough you don't study the bible enough you don't trust the bible enough and i'm saying that to myself as well that every single one of us has failed to really seek wisdom where it can be found.

If, you know, the analogy I heard, I think it was Dan Phillips gave this. If you knew there was a million dollars worth of gold and silver buried in your backyard, like you knew for sure somebody told you it's there, it's all yours, you just got to find it. Like how many days do you think it would take you to dig and find it? Like how many sleepless nights would you have?

You know, making sure you found it, right? And yet we have an infinite store of riches in the scripture. And as Spurgeon said, you know, some of you could write damned on your Bible and the dust that's collected on it. And so I don't mean that to you guys. That's a Spurgeon quote. But so let's all together, let's commit that, hey, Jesus Christ is worth learning about.

And no, we don't know him as well as we ought. So let's keep studying. So secondly, this is exciting because God's appointed Jesus the heir of all things through whom he also created the world. So we're reminded that Jesus is the creator. He is eternal. He is the exact imprint of the nature of God.

Jesus Christ is God himself. There is no doubt about it. The Bible says it explicitly and it says it implicitly. I remember Andrew Rappaport made a list of verses that referenced that Jesus is God. And it was like 85% of the entire New Testament. every 85% of the verses in the New Testament make an explicit or implicit reference to Jesus Christ being God.

It is so clear that that is who he is. But if it wasn't clear, the author of Hebrews, who wants people to understand that Jesus Christ the Messiah is God, says he is the radiance of the glory of God in verse 3, and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. He says he's the radiance of the glory of God. Some versions, he's the brightness of his glory.

And I've heard people try to explain this, and they've tried to explain how light works. And Jesus Christ as God is invisible, and he doesn't have physical properties the way we understand them. And so Calvin says this, and I'll agree with Calvin, This is just God once again condescending to use language that we can understand in the creaturely sense so that we can just get an idea that like yeah Jesus is great Jesus is God glory Jesus has fellowship with the Father in the Godhead and is co with the Father and it says uh calvin says there's no need to refinedly to discuss the question how the son who has the same essence with the father is a brightness emanating from his light he says we must allow that there's a degree of impropriety in the language when what is borrowed from created things is transferred to the hidden majesty of god and so his point is that look don't try to dig too into what all these creaturely terms could mean Jesus Christ is God he's one in being with the father there's one God three persons those persons all have a relationship together and he is the same substance as the Father.

For the same essence, simply one. Let me see what... Yeah, I said... Yeah, there was another quote I was going to read, but it was that same concept, that Jesus Christ, when you see him, you're seeing God. Jesus said, if you've seen me, you see the Father. And so there's a joy there in knowing that Jesus Christ is God.

If Jesus Christ was just an angel, he wouldn't be greater than the angels, which is what we're about to see. If Jesus Christ was only a man, he wouldn't be greater than men or angels in that sense. And so we have this phrase, he is the radiance of the glory of God. And I think one of the things that's trying to be taught here is that the only way for you to know God is through Jesus Christ.

So I don't think it's trying to teach you about physics of light and things like that. Maybe some ideas there help us, but you only know God through Jesus Christ. This was true of Adam and Eve. This was true of all the Old Testament saints. this was true of the people who walked around in Jesus's day you know God through Jesus Christ if you know Jesus Christ and are known by him you know God he is the exact imprint of God's nature it says here he's his essence and so you you lack nothing if you know Jesus Christ so this would refute people who would teach that Jesus was merely a man like the Arians.

This would refute people who somehow thought that the Old Testament God was this big God who was angry and holy, but then the New Testament God, that Jesus was like, come to show us some different thing. No, Jesus was that Old Testament God, and he is that Old Testament God, and he is still God now, and he's still reigning on the throne. And so what we see here is that there's a sense that people have where Jesus isn't enough for them.

They know whether it's because they seek things outside the word, which we already dealt with, or people who they see Jesus having come into the world, he suffered and died and rose again. And they think that's great. And they might think it's important. They might believe it happened, but they still think there's something more to God. And what people need to understand is what God reveals through Jesus Christ is all you have and it all you need And that actually really exciting It's really exciting to realize he's the heir of all things.

And so if he's made me a joint heir, I'm an heir of all things. All the good things that are Jesus Christ are mine because of my union with him. And all the good things that he has, he shares with me. And so we have a lot of benefits because we know Christ, the first of which being knowing God himself. We cannot know God. He is altogether different from us.

He is not a creature. He doesn't have our properties or our qualities. We're made in his image, but we're so different from him. We can't even explain it. We have way more in common with a grasshopper in some sense than we do with him because we're both creatures. He's in a different category.

And for God to communicate to us his truth is in and of itself an act of mercy. For God to give us his son is just amazing grace. and there's no way you can even speak about it highly enough. And so we are made one with Christ in our union with Christ. And then we are basically, you know, made to know God. He upholds the universe by the word of his power.

Just a reminder how supreme he is. So remember this section is about how he is supreme. Jesus Christ is supreme. A case is going to be made. Okay, so several chapters down the way, the whole case is being made that these really good God-given rituals that the Jews were doing in their synagogues were to be done away with because of Jesus Christ's supremacy.

That's the case that he's making. And so this is not just in a vacuum. Hey, Jesus is great. You know, verse three. And then, you know, this is all building up to something. So there's a logical argument being built.

It's heading in a direction so that people would eventually be told, basically, hey, you're free from the old covenant rituals, the old covenant ceremonial law. You're free from all these things and you're free to go live for God. and so Jesus after making purification for sins sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high there's a reference to his atonement made the purification for sins and he sat down at the right hand he sat down one thing I've heard I think it may have been R.C. Sproul but people say there was no chair in the temple for the priest The priests were never done with their work.

And we'll see later in Hebrews 9, Jesus Christ finished his work. This is why the Roman Catholic Church is so blasphemous. One of the reasons is they deny that Jesus finished what needed to be done by the priesthood. And he sat down. He's resting. He's Sabbathing.

He's done. He ceased from his work. and he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, God himself. And so there's this mystery that's called the Trinity that I'll never be able to explain perfectly either. So we remember that God's three in one. One God, one, three persons with the relations to one another. We can read about that in the 1689 Confession And he became as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited inherited is more excellent than theirs And so Jesus Christ had a name bestowed on him that is above every name so that at that name of Jesus every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth to the glory of God the Father He is supreme. and he became a man to do the work that no man could do.

So we're starting out with Hebrews 1, 1 through 4, just straight out of the gate. Jesus is all you have. Jesus is all you need. And the reason why is because he's not a mere man. He's not just an angel. He is God himself.

He came in the flesh, became a man, made purification for sins, sat down. He finished his work. He did what no man could ever do. And let's just start out with get your focus on him because your focus in Hebrews, okay, your focus, he's telling the Jews, is still on these Old Testament forms of religion, the point of all of which were to point to him. and you're not recognizing, hey, he's here.

So it'd be like you have a picture of your girlfriend. You know, most of you guys are married. So before your wife, if you had a picture of her, because you live far away and you'd look at the picture and you'd say, oh, I love her, she's so pretty. And then you'd write her a letter and back and forth. And then one day you finally meet her and you marry her and you're living with her.

It would be like waking up every day and looking at this picture. Like you quit looking at the picture. You have the real thing now. And that's what God's telling these Hebrews. Like you have Jesus Christ. You have what the Old Testament sacrifices were pointing to.

You have what the temple was representing. You have what all of the elements in the temple were directing you toward. You have what all of the Old Testament ceremonial laws were leading you toward. You have it. You don't need those anymore. And so put them away.

And God's going to, as the first chapter of this book I was showing you, was talking about God's about to destroy the temple. He's going to utterly destroy the center of their religious worship and put an exclamation point on the end of the book of Hebrews, basically. And so here's the beginning to help people be prepared for that. So that when the temple gets torn down, the true believers will just stand there and say, well, I guess that's sad, but I still have Jesus.

And Jesus is what I needed. And Jesus is all I had in the first place. and those who were really putting their faith in their own self-righteousness through their work at the temple or the work being done for them by the priest, those people would then have their faith completely shaken and maybe be led to the Lord by then. So we'll stop there for today.

So any questions or comments about these first four verses? thank you for listening to be a Berean with your host Michael Coughlin I am a writer at thingsabove.us and I also have a personal website michaelcoughlin.net you can contact me by emailing me, michael at thingsabove.us. I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures.