Introduction to Hebrews
Hebrews 1:1-2
Coming tonight to our first in the first in the series of the book of Hebrews, I have titled the book the Superiority or the Preeminence of Jesus Christ, The Preeminence of Jesus Christ. For in the book of Hebrews that is the message. It is the message of Jesus Christ, superior to every thing and everybody. Now tonight we're going to come to an introduction to Hebrews and the introduction to Hebrews is really the first three verses. But before we look at those verses, I want to make a few remarks that we need to make as a foundation for what we're going to study.
Tonight, I believe we're going to come to one of the most unusual adventures that you've ever been through. And that's adventuring through the book of Hebrews. This is a tremendous book. It is a difficult book. It is a book that has many, many deep truths, difficult to understand. Lest we really be diligent and faithful in our study.
There are things here that are beyond the understanding apart from a deep knowledge of the spirit of God and a commitment to understand the word of God in total. My former Old Testament professor Dr. Feinburg who also taught the book of Hebrews, and I took his course, said that you cannot understand the book of Hebrews unless you understand the book of Leviticus, because the book of Hebrews is based upon the principles of the Levitical priesthood.
Now don't get panicky and worry about your lack of understanding of Leviticus. By the time we get through Hebrews in a few years you will...you will have a pretty good grasp on Leviticus along with it. We'll try to give a little as we go. But it might be well if you just familiarize yourself with Leviticus to some degree.
Now, this particular Epistle was written by an unknown author, some say, some say Apollos, some say Peter, some say this, that, and the other thing. I stand with one of the great teachers of the early church by the name of origin who said nobody knows. And so all the way through we will make reference to the fact that it was written by the Holy Spirit, that we do know. I do not believe it was written by Paul. It was written by this unknown author to a suffering, persecuted group of Jews somewhere in the east. Not in Israel, but outside of Israel.
There are no references to Gentiles in the book. The problem of Gentile and Jew together in the church is not here indicating that the little congregation to which he's writing was strictly Jewish or there was no Gentile conflict. And to this persecuted suffering group of Jewish believers and unbelievers, he writes to reveal the merits of Jesus Christ and the new covenant as opposed to the old covenant.
Now we do not know the exactly location of these Hebrews, somewhere near Greece perhaps, but we do know that this Jewish community had been evangelized by the apostles and the prophets. And it had been evangelized evidently fairly early after Christ had lived and died and risen again. And by the time the letter to the Hebrews is written, there already exists a little group, a little local congregation of believers. And included in the same view of the letter are unbelievers who evidently are also a part of this little Jewish community.
Now unlike Jerusalem Jews or Galilee Jews, they had never met Jesus. Everything they knew about him they got secondhand. They really didn't even have any New Testament writings as such, for it hadn't been put together. Obviously, the book of Hebrews wasn't even a part of yet. And so whatever they knew, they knew directly from the mouths of the apostles and the prophets And by prophets, I mean New Testament prophets.
So they were kind of second generation Christians as a result of apostolic missionaries. You say well when was the letter written. Well, it had to be written sometime after Christ's ascension, which would have been about 30 A.D., and sometime before the destruction of Jerusalem, which would have been 70 A.D., because Jerusalem is still standing at this point in the letter. So it's got to be between 30 and 70. Now I believe it's probably pretty close to the 70's, somewhere between 60 and 69, likely about 65.
Because there had to be time for the apostolic missionaries to get going and we know that there weren't really any apostolic missionaries from Jerusalem until at least seven years after the church had been founded there. And likely it was sometime later that they would have reached this little Jewish community. And also after they had been reached, they had to have a certain amount of time to grow spiritually, because in Chapter 5, verse 12, the Holy Spirit says to them, and I'll read you the statement. "For when for the time as long as it's been you ought to be teachers. You have need that one teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God."
In other words, he's says you've had enough time to be mature, but instead you're not. So it had to sometime after the apostolic missionaries would go out, establish the little congregation and then they would have sufficient to have matured spiritually. So very likely it would be close to 70 as I say, perhaps about 65. So it was still in that first century. They were still close to the fire in terms of the life of Jesus Christ, though they had never met Him.
Now here is the very critical basis for understanding the book, and this is where people get all messed up, especially interpreting Hebrews Chapter 6. We must understand that there were three basic types of people in view throughout this Epistle. Three basic types of people. If you do not understand these three basic types of people then it becomes very confusing. If for example as some have said it was all written to Christians, the entire thing was written to Christians, then you have monstrous problems.
It cannot be written to unbelievers because it talks about the believers too much. So it must be written to a combination and indeed there are evidently three basic types in this little Jewish community to which the writer of the Epistle writes, group 1, Hebrew Christians. There was in this little community and a legitimate congregation of true believers in Jesus Christ. They had come out of Judaism. They had been founded and raised in it. They were born again. They had received Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. They had become followers of Jesus Christ and naturally the result of that was a tremendous hostility from their own people. Ostracized from their family, persecuted and suffering though they never died. Hebrews points that out. They still suffered greatly.
Persecuted not only by their own countrymen, the Jews, the evidently also perhaps by Gentiles. They should have known better. They should have been mature, they weren't. They had no confidence. They were in danger of going back into the patterns of Judaism. Not in danger of losing their salvation, but in danger of confusing their salvation with legalism, you see. They couldn't make a clear cut break between the New Testament and the new covenant in Christ and all the forms and ceremonies and patterns and methods of their old life in Judaism. And they were having a hard time with this problem. They were still hung up for example in the temple ritual and temple worship. And that's why Jesus keeps talking to them about a new priesthood and a new kind of temple and a new kind of sacrifice and a new kind of sanctuary that's better than the old one, because they were still hung up on that old one.
They had gone beyond Judaism in receiving Jesus Christ, but they were still hanging on to many of the Judaistic habits that had been so much a part of their life, and it's understandable. And especially when their own friends and their own countrymen begin to really persecute them and let them have it. They tend to feel the pressure of this and to hold even tighter to some of the old Jewish traditions to at least have a foothold on their relationships to their own people. It was a very hard thing to make a clean break.
And so with all of that pressure and their weak faith and their spiritual ignorance, they were in great danger of mixing the new with the old. They were in great danger of coming up with a ritualistic, ceremonial, legalistic Christianity. They were a whole a congregation of Romans 14 weaker brothers. So the Holy Spirit then directs this letter to them to strengthen their faith in the new covenant. To show them that they did not need the old temple, they did not need, which incidentally in a matter of a few years would be wiped out by Titus vespasian anyway showing that God brought an end to that whole economy.
They did not need the old ironic priest and levitical priest. They did not need the old day in day out, day in day out sacrifices. They had a new and better covenant with a new and better priesthood, a new and better sanctuary, a new and better sacrifice all the way down the line. And so it is written then to give confidence to these floundering believers that he is speaking to Christians and telling them to hang on to the better covenant, the better priesthood and not go back into the patterns of Judaism. Either to that priesthood or to that assemblage. But to maintain that new relationship.
So the first group in view then are Hebrew Christians. Second group Hebrew non-Christians who are intellectually convinced. Do you know those kind? People who know the truth, but have never committed themselves to it. You've met many people like that haven't you. Who've heard the truth of Jesus Christ, they believe it, they're intellectually convinced that Christ is indeed who he claimed to be but they're not willing to make a commitment of faith to him.
And so in this little particular group there are some of those. Hebrew non-Christians as there are in every group. These are common through every kind of group. There are those people who are here tonight. People who are convinced that Jesus is the Christ, but have never committed themselves to Him. And so these Hebrew non-Christians intellectually convinced are the object of some of the things that the writer has to say.
They believe that Jesus was the Messiah, but they had not been willing to receive Him personally. Why? Just like those in the gospel of John. It says they believed on Him, but they loved the praise of men, what, more than the praise of God. They weren't willing to make the sacrifice. And so these particular ones are exhorted by the Holy Spirit in the book of Hebrews to go all the way to saving faith. To go all the way to commitment. Let me show, Chapter 2, verse 1 is one of these particular statements to this group of intellectually convinced uncommitted.
2:1, "Therefore we ought to give them more earnest head to the things which we have heard, less that any time we should let them slip," right? Verse 2, "For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast and every transgression and disobedience receive the just recompensive reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation. See, they were at the point of believing it but not committing to it. And the great sin of neglecting to do what they had been intellectually convinced was right. He says, you ought to know better. It's all be confirmed by the apostles with all the miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit, verse 4.
Look at Chapter 6, here it comes again. "For it is impossible for those," verse 4, "For it is impossible for those who are once enlightened." You know what the word enlightened means? It doesn't mean saved, it means intellectually convinced. For those who were once intellectually convinced tasted the heavenly gift partakers of the Holy Spirit "tasted the good word of God, the powers of the age to come if they shall fall away it's impossible to renew them again in a repentance, seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh and put Him to an open same."
Now there's a warning to the intellectually convinced not to stop, because if he stops for the total revelation, if he stops when he's convinced he has only one way to go, if when a man is totally convinced that Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be, he refused to believe the man is hopeless. Because he's convinced that it's true and he still won't do it. Nothing else God can do. So He warns.
The same thing appears...well, let's just look at 10:26, we'll skip one of them. Look at 10:26, now what is the greatest sin that a man can commit? What is it? The sin of rejecting Christ isn't it? Look at verse 26. "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins." If a man has the truth, receives it, understands it, is intellectually convinced and willfully rejects Christ, what can God do? Nothing. This is another warning to the Hebrew non-Christian intellectually convinced.
Verse 27, "But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries." That's what you're going to look for. Now look at verse 29. "Of how much sorer punishment suppose ye shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden under foot the Son of God and hath counted the blood of the covenant with which he was sanctified an unholy thing and hath done despite unto the spirit of grace."
In other words, when you know the truth and you reject it, the sorer punishment will be yours. Chapter 12, verse 15 we see another one. Chapter 12:15, "Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God. Lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you and by it many be defiled. Lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau who for one morsel of food sold his birthright. For ye know how afterward when he would have inherited the blessing he was rejected for he found no place of repentance though he sought it with tears." The tragedy of too little too late. This is again a warning to the convinced individual who has never made a commitment to Christ.
The third group in view in the book of Hebrews and you can look at Chapter 9 for the illustration as long as you're at the end of the book are Hebrew non-Christians who weren't convinced. Just the nation Israel in general. The Holy Spirit also in this book, not only does He want to speak to the Christians and strengthen their faith, but He wants to speak to intellectually convinced and push them over the line to faith, but He also wants to speak to those who haven't believed at all yet who aren't convinced of anything and give them enough information to show them that Jesus is in fact who He claimed to be, and that's what happens in Chapter 9.
In Chapter 9 he speaks directly to those. For example, in verse 11 he says, "But Christ being come and high priest of good things to come by a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands." That is to say not of this building. And he goes on down to explain Christ's new priesthood. Verse 14, "How much more shall the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God purge your conscious from dead works to serve the living God. And for this cause He is the mediator of the New Testament that by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they who were called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance."
Verse 27, "And as it is appointed after...unto men once to die, but after this the judgment so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many and unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation."
Now those are messages given to one who is an unbeliever, not to a Christian and not to one who is necessarily convinced intellectually, but to that one who needs to know who Christ really is. And there are many other such illustrations. So there are three groups then in view in the Epistle. And the key to interpreting Hebrews my friend is to understand to which group he is speaking. And if we don't understand that then we mess everything up because we confuse the issue. He is not saying to believers it is appointed unto men once to die and after that the judgment, is he?
We must understand what group it is to whom he speaks. Now all the way through as we study the book of Hebrews we will be relating each text to particular groups. The flow of the text is to the believers. Periodically there are warnings to these unbelieving groups. These two groups of unbelievers, the intellectually convinced and the unconvinced. And in a masterful, in a way that could only be done by a divine mind, the Holy Spirit pulls these three groups together and meets everyone of their particular needs and their particular questions and the particular issue in the very same letter.
In the book of Hebrews there is confidence and assurance to the Christian. In the book of Hebrews there is warning to the intellectually convinced that He must receive Christ or his knowledge will damn him. And finally there is a convincing presentation to the unbelieving Jew who is not intellectually convinced that he indeed should and should believe in Jesus Christ.
And thus to do this was Hebrews written. It is simply then, mark it, a presentation of Christ, the Messiah, the author of a new covenant, greater than the old one that God had made in the Old Testament. Not that the old one was wrong, it was only incomplete. Now the theme of the book then is the superiority or the preeminence of Christ. That He is better than anything they've got. That He is better than anything that is. He's better than the Old Testament persons. He's better than the Old Testament institutions. He's better than the Old Testament rituals. He's better than the Old Testament sacrifices. He's better than everything.
A general outline of the book of Hebrews which shows you the pattern of presenting the superiority of Jesus Christ and I'm just going to go down the pattern. We'll follow it loosely as we study the book. It begins with the superiority of Christ to everyone and everything. And that's a kind of a summary of the whole book in the first three verses, which we'll get to in a minute. Secondly, the superiority of Christ to angels. The superiority of Christ to Moses, the superiority of Christ to Joshua, the superiority of Christ to Aaron and his priesthood. The superiority of Christ to the old covenant. The superiority of Christ's sacrifice to old sacrifices. The superiority of Christ's faithful to all faithless. The superiority of Christ's testimony to the testimony of any other.
Now that little outline gives you the flow of the book which teaches the superiority of Jesus Christ. Now, let me just give you a couple of footnotes and then we'll look at the verses. To the Jew it had always been a dangerous thing to approach God. No man shall see my face and live. And on the great day of atonement, Yom Kippur, which Jews still keep to one degree or another, the great day of atonement which occurred one time a year, at that time and that time alone could the high priest enter into the holy of holies where the Shekinah glory dwelt where God's presence was. They could not see God. They could not behold God. They could not get near God except for one day a year and only one guy could do it and he had to get in there and get it done and get out of there. He didn't stay around a long time.
In fact, the Bible says "He could not linger there lest he put Israel in terror." But in this kind of a situation where there was no nearness to God, there had to be, stay with me, there had to be a basis for some relationship between God and Israel. So God established a covenant. And a covenant meant that God in His grace and in His sovereign initiative began the nation Israel and then offered to Israel a special relationship with himself. In a very unique way he would their God and they would be his people.
They would have a special access to him if they were obedient to his laws. And to break the law was sin and sin interrupted the access to God and since there was always sin, the access was always interrupted. And so God instituted a system of sacrifices. The whole Levitical priesthood, all the priests that ministered in Israel and all the sacrifices were to atone for sin that the barrier might be taken down and there might be access to God. It kind of worked like this, God gave His covenant, He gave His law. He said you could have access. Man sinned, so he broke the covenant, the barrier went up, the sacrifice was made for sin that dropped the barrier so that that relationship could be consummated.
You say, well, how many times did they have to make the sacrifice? They had to do it in incisively, hour after hour after hour after hour, day after day, month after month, year after year, they never stopped. And to make things worse, the priest were all sinners too and they had to go through a whole rigmarole of making sacrifices for their own sins to get themselves in shape to make sacrifices for the sins of the people. And so the barrier went up and down, up and down, up and down.
And of course, this is proof of the ineffectiveness of the whole system. It was a losing battle to preserve the barrier or to remove the barrier. And what man needed was a perfect priest and a perfect sacrifice who could open the way once and for all. Some kind of a sacrifice that didn't just deal with one sin, one sin, one sin, but something that just took it all away at once.
They needed a perfect priest to bear that perfect sacrifice. And that says the writer of Hebrews is exactly what Jesus was and what He did. And so He comes the mediator of a better covenant, because its one that doesn't have to be repeated every hour. He comes as the mediator of a better covenant, because His sacrifice covers every sin ever committed once and for all. He comes as the mediator of a better covenant, because He's a priest who doesn't need to make any sacrifices for himself. He's totally perfect. The perfect priest and the perfect sacrifice.
And Jesus Christ, in His own sacrifice, showed the perfection that eliminated sin. In Hebrews 10, verse 10, "By which will we are sanctified," that is made pure, "through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ," what's the next word, "once." And that italics doesn't need to be there. "Through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once." Now friends that's something new in the sacrificial system. One sacrifice did it. That's a better covenant.
Verse 12, "But this man after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down." Now that's something no priest could ever do. There weren't even any seats. They had to keep making sacrifice. Jesus made one and sat down and that meant it's done. Verse 14, "For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified." There is a better priest making a better sacrifice.
And you see this is the message of the book of Hebrews to the Jewish people. To the believer he's saying have confidence in it. To the intellectually convinced, receive it. You're right on the borderline, don't fall into perdition when you're only a step away. And to the unbeliever he says look at it, how much better it is to receive Christ.
The writer is saying all your lives you Jews have been looking for the perfect priest. You've been looking for the perfect final sacrifice. I present Him to you, Jesus Christ. And so the preeminence or the superiority of Christ over all others is the theme of the book of Hebrews. Now keep in mind that this is not easy for the Jews to accept. It's extremely difficult for them to accept the superiority of the new covenant. And it's especially hard for them to make a clean break with the old. Now the Gentiles didn't have that kind of a problem because for long centuries the Gentiles hadn't believed in much of anything consistent anyway.
They had long ago lost the knowledge of the true God and in consequence for worshiping idols and so forth and so on, but keep this mind, the Jews always had a divine religion. They always had a divinely appointed place of worship. God had established their religion. It wasn't like going to a Gentile and saying here's the truth. When you went to a Jew and said hear the truth, he said well I already know the truth, but this is from God. But so is that. And it was not an easy thing to make that transition.
Keep that in mind, to be called on to forsake completely all the heritage that it was God authored was not easy. And even among those who were saved it was difficult. It was a natural desire for a Christian Jew to retain some of the forms and some of the ceremonies that were a part of his life when he was brought up and that is part of the problem of the book of Hebrews, trying to confront that born again Jew with the fact that he can let go of all of that stuff.
And it was especially hard for them since the temple still stood and the priests still ministered. It got easier after the temple was destroyed in 70 A. D. And then in add to that the intense persecution that they were going through it and it was really rough. In fact, the high priest Ananias really let them have it. They were all banished. Any Christian Jew was automatically banished from the holy places. That's tough. That's in their own country.
All their lives they had access, they couldn't even take part in God appointed services. They were unclean. They couldn't go to the temple. They couldn't go to the altar. They couldn't go to the sacrifices, they couldn't communicate with the priests, and they had nothing to do with their own people. They were cut off from their society. They were unsynagogued. And by clinging to the Messiah, they had been banished from everything they'd ever known. And they were considered worst than Gentiles. Though they were the only true Jews at all. For a Jew is not a Jew who is one outwardly, but one who is one inwardly.
And so they were beginning to say themselves, boy this is rough. I mean, we heard this from these guys who'd never seen Christ and I mean, we received Him, we believe this deal, but boy it's tough to make this break in the persecution and all of the traditions that they've always held and is this really the Messiah and doubts would come into their minds and it was a problem. And they were so spiritually infantile in their own concepts that they really didn't have any resources to fall back on.
So throughout the book of Hebrews he speaks to these beloved Christians and tells them to put their confidence in the new covenant. Put your confidence in Christ, the mediator of a better covenant, the new, great high priest. And he reminds them that they weren't losing something, they were just getting something better, that's all. They had been deprived of an earthly temple, but they were going to get a heavenly one. They had been deprived of a earthly priesthood, but they had a heavenly priest. They had been deprived of the pattern of sacrifices, but they had one final sacrifice.
And so in the book everything presented is presented as a better thing and you'll find these phrases in the book of Hebrews. A better hope, a better testament, a better promise, better sacrifice, better substance, better country, better resurrection, and the better thing. And Jesus Christ is presented there and we are presented as being in him dwelling in a new kind of dimension, the heavenlys. And so we reading Hebrews a heavenly Christ, a heavenly calling, the heavenly gift, the heavenly country, the heavenly Jerusalem, and our names are written in the heavenlys.
Everything is new. Everything is better. We don't need the old. And if you want to get a summary of the book of Hebrews, it's Chapter 8, verse 1. And it even tells us it's a summary. It says this, "Now of the things which we have spoken, this is the sum." Here is the whole summary of Hebrews in one verse, in one sentence for that matter. "We have such an high priest who is seated on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens." There's the wrap up on Hebrews right there. We have some kind of high priest. Who needs that old economy at all. And the significance of it is a high priest whose seated means his work is what? Is done. It's done.
All right, now those are some scattered footnotes to introduce you to the book. Just keep in mind the three groups and that the point is to show all three groups that Christ is better than anything in the Old Testament, that the new covenant is better than the old and that they can let the rest go because of everything they have in Christ is infinitely sufficient. Now this writer doesn't fool around getting to his point. He hits it bang in the first chapter and the first verse. And we'll look at these three verses and they're very simple, we'll consider them.
They tell us that Christ is superior to everyone and everything. He starts out at the top. He doesn't build up to it. He just bangs away right at the beginning. And this is kind of a...really gathers the theme of the whole Epistle. Now I want you to see three features here. The preparation for Christ, the presentation of Christ, and the preeminence of Christ.
The preparation for Christ, the presentation of Christ, and the preeminence of Christ. Now keep in mind all through the book he's presentin