Hebrews: Don't Give In, Don't Give Up

Take your Bibles now and turn to Hebrews chapter 1. Hebrews chapter 1, you follow as I read these opening words of this book. Long ago 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. For to which of the angels did God ever say, You are my son, today I have begotten you? Or again, I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, Let all God's angels worship him.

Of the angels, he says, he makes his angels winds and his ministers a flame of fire. But of the sun, he says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. therefore God your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions and you Lord laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning and the heavens are the work of your hands they will perish but you remain they will all wear out like a garment like a robe you will roll them up like a garment they will be changed but you are the same and your years will have no end.

And to which of the angels has he ever said, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet? Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard lest we drift away from it For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

And so begins this book that we know as Hebrews. Let's pray. Father, once more we come to you in dependence, asking you that you would work in our hearts, that you would help us to understand, that we would grasp something of this book today. Help us as we take this overview. Lord, my prayer is that this would not just be academic and satisfy some curiosities we have, but that it would begin to open us to the glorious and magnificent Savior that is ours.

And so now we come to you asking you to work, And we ask this in his name. Amen. We possess a Bible which is composed of 66 books. But only one of those books has as its title an ethnic term. Hebrews is another name for Jews. This is a letter to Jewish people.

You might ask, what is that all about? what Jewish people and why write a letter about Jesus to Jews and what was going on that would cause such a communication well those are good questions and I want to start to answer them this morning some of you may be asking why should we spend time pursuing all that stuff why should we even get into the background and understanding what's going on with the book I think it's a good question and I want to give you a couple answers to that question here's the first the first is so we understand the text accurately have you ever heard someone say to you well you can make the Bible say anything you want if someone ever said that to you sure they have they say well say well you can make anything you want out of that verse Well you can do that if you seek to understand what the text meant to its original audience. If you understand what was going on with the original audience, what the terms meant to them, to the people to whom it was written, then you can't say that. Let me give you an example.

Look over at Hebrews chapter 2 verse 10. Hebrews chapter 2 verse 10. For it was fitting that he for whom and by whom all things exist in bringing many sons to glory should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. Someone says, ha ha, see? See, Jesus wasn't perfect like you say he was. He wasn't sinless because this verse right here says he had to be made perfect.

And you say, no, no, it doesn't mean that at all. And the person says to you, well, you can make that say whatever you want. It says that he's not perfect. Right? Well, what did that term mean? And he may even go on to say, besides, now you have a contradiction in the Bible. because if you turn over to chapter 4 here's what you read that Jesus can sympathize with us because he has in every respect been tempted as we are yet without sin.

So one verse says he's without sin and this one says he has to be made perfect. So you've got a contradiction there. What do you do with that? You've got to understand what that meant to the original audience. Now if we're right in understanding this is written to a Jewish audience then a Jewish person would have seen that word perfect in a different way.

A Jewish person reading that in the first century would immediately know that this word was used for the consecration of priests and to indicate that they are qualified for the office of priest. Not perfect in the sense of moral blamelessness, but perfect in the sense of has all the qualifications for. He's perfect for the job. You see? So, when we understand what the text meant to the original audience, it can't say whatever you want it to say.

And that's why whenever you go to the Bible, that's one of the questions you have to ask What did it mean to the original audience All right Here another reason why I think it important to pursue the backgrounds and understanding what's going on that caused the writing of this book, so that you would see that this was written to real, live, flesh-and-blood people living in a fallen world with real problems and real pressures. You know what? we have a tendency to make cardboard cut-out cartoon figures of the people in the Bible. David and Goliath is almost like a cartoon in our thinking.

When it was real live people, real flesh and blood people, this was written to people who were facing real pressures and real problems. Now, this book tells you that Jesus is a superior revelation. He is the ultimate sacrifice. He is the final mediator of a new covenant. But it wasn't intended to be a theology textbook on the finality of Jesus. they needed the the people to whom this was written needed to understand those facts so that they could face the pressures and the trials and the doubts that they were experiencing so all the magnificent truths revealed in this book are to equip you to face the same pressures and trials and doubts that these people did.

And so when we understand that, we see these are real-life people. And then, most importantly, when you pursue, and this is what I've found over years of ministry, when I start trying to pursue what's going on, what caused this, what's going on, you begin to see that it's actually written to you in the 21st century, not just to some Jews in the 1st century. You're going to see what you do when you start really looking into that, you will see that the same pressures and doubts and hardships that they face are exactly the same ones that you face.

You'll discover the same life situations that they experienced. You're going to find out that the adage is true. The more things change, the more they remain the same. And so even though this is written to people, in the first century. What you find is that all that was going on in their lives, in one degree or another, is what you are going through. And the text now becomes something that's addressed to you, not to some people who lived over 2,000 years ago.

Now, let's start thinking about this. You need to know the background of this book. you need to know the background of this book the first question is who are the recipients of this letter we're not exactly sure how's that for an answer we're not exactly sure when this book was written it didn't have a title on it and there's no greeting like in a normal letter for example Colossians starts out this way. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother, to the saints, and faithful brothers in Christ in Colossae.

Bingo. We know right away who is supposed to get this letter. The Christian, the church, the congregation in the city of Colossae. But there's nothing in this book like that. There isn't an opening greeting like that to tell us who the recipients are or where they were. So why is it called Hebrews then?

Well, within the first centuries of the church, within the first 200 years, people started referring to this as Hebrews. And the reason why they did that is because of the evidence from the book. The evidence from the book itself indicates that this is a Jewish audience who were Christians. Now, let me give you just a little, and I hate doing this on a Sunday morning, but I'm going to do it anyway.

Kind of give you a little bit of a lecture here. Now, the first thing to understand is there's outside evidence and there's internal evidence. Outside evidence is like others who say, yes, someone who lived close to the time might say, yes, this was written too. someone who might have been a disciple of the Apostle Paul would say yes he wrote that letter and we find that that outside evidence Well there not much outside evidence for this book but there lots of internal evidence When you read a book of the Bible when you read the book I want to be careful in saying this, but you can kind of read between the lines.

That is, you say, why is that there? Why is he saying that to them? And that gives you an evidence of what's going on. So, what is the evidence in this book that this was written to Jewish people? Well, first of all, there's tons of quotations from the Old Testament as if these people knew their Old Testament, as if they knew it very well. And that whoever got this communication was very familiar with Old Testament worship, with the rituals and the sacrifices and so forth. now in the first chapter alone which I read to you you find quotations from Psalm 2, 2 Samuel 7, Deuteronomy 32, Psalm 104, Psalm 45, Psalm 102 and Psalm 110 all of those in the very first chapter alone.

By the way, when you look in this book and you see all those texts that are it doesn't look like the normal text, they're kind of set apart, those are almost always, those are Old Testament quotations. They come straight out of the Old Testament. So if you're even looking at it, you see all those offset sections, those are quotations from the Old Testament.

Look at chapter 5 for a moment. Chapter five verse one for every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to god to other gifts and sacrifices for sins he can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward since he himself is beset with weakness because of this he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people and no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was. So he's writing here to people who are familiar with the Old Testament priesthood.

They obviously know something about the Old Testament priesthood. Look over at chapter 9 for a moment. In chapter 9, beginning in verse 1, now even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness For a tent was prepared the first section in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of the presence It is called the holy place Behind the second curtain was a second section called the most holy place, having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden urn holding the manna and air and staff that budded and the tablets of the covenant.

Above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat of these things we cannot now speak in detail these preparation having thus been made the priests go regularly into the first section performing their ritual duties but into the second only the high priest goes and he but once a year and not without taking blood which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people so here you find someone who's familiar obviously these folks are familiar with old testament sacrifices and there's many more such examples that would tell us this was written to Jewish people but were they Christians the answer is yes they were Christians because they're also familiar not only with that but with Jesus the the writer doesn't talk about Jesus as somebody that's new to them they know all about Jesus he's telling them about Jesus and besides that in chapter 2 we just read it a few minutes ago chapter 2 verse 3 he says how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation it was declared at first by the Lord and was attested to us by those who heard. So he's talking to people who've heard the message of the gospel. They're familiar with it.

They know it. So this was written to a group of Jewish Christians. Well, when was it written? Somebody asked, well, why do you want to know when it was written? Because if you can find that out, you can understand what's going on around them. Okay?

Again, this is hard to tell. and we have to look at the evidence in the book. We do know this, just what we read in chapter 2, verses 1 through 4. We won't read it again. But it's clear this is written by a second generation believer. That is to say, one who received the message from someone who'd heard the Lord. It's someone like a Timothy, not a Paul or a Peter.

It's someone who is like a Timothy, a second generation. and it was probably written before 70 AD. You say well what so important about 70 AD Everybody always get this down This is a watershed date in the New Testament Even though it not mentioned it a watershed date in terms of what goes on Here's why it's important. In AD 70, the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed when General Titus led the Roman legions into Jerusalem and leveled the place.

An absolutely destroyed the temple. Now with the destruction of the temple came the end of the sacrificial system. Do you realize that, and I don't know how, and I don't know how they get around this, but Jewish people since AD 70, 2,000 years ago, Jewish people have not been able to offer the sacrifices required by the law for over 2,000 years. Why? Because the temple where God prescribed that all the sacrifices would be made was absolutely destroyed in AD 70.

Now why is that important for us? Because the writer refers to the sacrificial system as if it's still operating as if as if it's still operating so if you look at chapter 10 he says verse 1 for since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of the realities it can never by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year make perfect those who draw near he's act he's talking as if the sacrifices are still going verse 11 and every priest stands daily at his service offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. Again, he says the priests are doing this.

So it most likely was written probably around 60, 65 A.D., somewhere in there. In other words, this book was written about 30 years after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. okay so it's about 30 years after Jesus has ascended to his throne in heaven who wrote it we don't know oh boy This is going to be fun, right? We don't know exactly who wrote this, because unlike the Apostle Paul, it doesn't start out normally like he would.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. So most likely it wasn't Paul. Most likely it wasn't Paul. Now, what's fun is if you delve into these studies, scholars are never satisfied with that. They want to come up with some kind of an answer. So a bunch of people have been suggested.

Luke is one suggestion. And the reason why some think it was Luke is because the style of this epistle, the Greek style, is a whole lot like the other stuff he wrote, Luke and Acts. Some have suggested that it's Stephen. Remember Stephen who was martyred, one of the early martyrs of the church? And some suggested it was Stephen because it sounds like the thing Stephen was saying in Acts chapter 7 in the message that got him killed.

Others have subjected Apollos, Barnabas, Clement of Rome, even Epaphras, but we just don't know. What we do know is this. Whoever it was, he had a deep, compassionate concern for his brothers and sisters in Christ. He may have been a pastor that they knew. In fact, look at chapter 13, verse 22. Notice what he says in chapter 13, verse 22.

He says this, I appeal to you, brothers, bear with my word of exhortation, for I have written you briefly. now that term word of exhortation is a term that Jewish people use essentially to mean the sermon the sermon for example in Acts chapter 13 Paul is in I'm trying to remember where it was now he was in a synagogue in Acts chapter 13 and you look it up and you can tell me later where it was. And as he's there, they invite him to preach and they say, come and give us a word of exhortation. It's a sermon.

So technically this book really isn a letter or an epistle It a written sermon It an exhortation to Jewish Christians to stay faithful to Christ Well, what was going on when all this was written? What was going on at the time? And here the book gives us a lot of information. Here's the first thing we know clearly. It was a time of persecution. Whoever got this letter, these Jewish Christians who got this letter, were suffering persecution.

Look over at chapter 10, verse 32. Chapter 10, verse 32. But recall the former days when after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.

Therefore do not throw away your confidence which has a great reward. What do we see here? You see that they had already faced persecution once before, and now they're entering another phase of persecution. Persecution that involved ridicule, jail time, the taking of their confiscation of their property, all those sorts of things. But chapter 12, verse 4, you have, where he says to them, in your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

So they're facing persecution, but not martyrdom. Their property is being confiscated, they're being thrown in jail, they're being ridiculed, but they haven't had to pay the ultimate price yet. They have not yet faced death in their persecution. It seems as well, as you read through the book, and this is clear in the book, that they had begun their pilgrimage of faith well, but were now contemplating renouncing their faith in Christ.

They were considering renouncing their faith in Christ And you can see that all over the book In chapter 2 verses 1 through 4 we read it a little bit ago How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? Then you come to chapter 3, verse 12. Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God, but exhort one another every day as long as it's called today that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

For we have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. Why does he say that? This is where reading between the lines comes. Why would he say that to them? Because they're tempted to leave. They're on the verge of falling away.

Look over at chapter 6. And boy, you're going to have to wait for a number of weeks before we get here because this is one of the most difficult passages in the whole Bible. Chapter 4, verse 6. Chapter 6, verse 4. I'm sorry, you guys, I am getting old. I can't read the verse numbers.

For it is impossible in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come and then have fallen away to restore them again to repentance since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. At least we can say this much. Some of them are leaving.

Some of them are falling away. Chapter 10. Look at chapter 10, verses 29 and 30. how much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who has said, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, and again the Lord will judge his people.

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. And then drop down to verse 35. Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward For you have need of endurance so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised For yet a little while and the coming one will come and will not delay but my righteous one shall live by faith and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.

But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls. So, it appears that they were considering renouncing their trust in Jesus and returning to Judaism. Now, why would they do that? Why would they return to Judaism? What's the big deal about that? Here's why.

Judaism, unlike Christianity, was a legal religion in the empire. And so, you could practice Judaism legally without fear of persecution. And so the temptation was great to say it cost too much to follow Jesus. Didn't God give us the Old Testament? Right? Isn't that from God?

Why not? We can just go back to that. Well, the problem with that, even though God had given us the Old Testament, the problem with that is that it would, in effect, deny everything that Jesus had done. It would deny that Jesus had come for any reason. It would be a blatant rejection of his sacrifice. to return to the old ways, would constitute a rejection of Jesus as Messiah and the Son of God.

It would say that Moses and Joshua were greater than Jesus. It would say that the animal sacrifices were worth more than the sacrifice of Jesus. Loyalty to the gospel was wearing thin, and so this book was written. That's what was going on. And it could be that they had doubts. They harbored doubts about the gospel.

You see, they were used to very tangible expressions of faith contained in the Old Testament rituals and priesthood and sacrifices. Now they were told that to become right with God, you could only do that through faith in Jesus, saved through a proclamation of someone they'd never seen and whom they had never heard. Believe in Him. Forgiven of their sins by merely believing in the death of Jesus, and so the writer pastor explains how jesus fulfills and supersedes the rituals the priesthood and the sacrifice sacrifices of judaism All right, you're getting an idea now of what the purpose of the book is.

You're starting to pick up on that. So let's talk about that. Why did God include this in Scripture? That's the most important question to ask whenever you're studying Scripture. All right? If you forget everything from today, don't forget this.

The most basic, most important question you can ask is, why is this here? What is the purpose? Though it's important and necessary to understand why this pastor wrote this book 2,000 years ago, The question really is, what does God intend for us with this book? Always ask that question. What is the purpose? Why is this here?

Why did God include this book, this passage, this verse? You're always asking that question. The most important question to ask when you're studying scripture. What is the purpose? Why is this here? Okay?

Why is this book here? Well, we need to understand, first of all, that God did not intend to give us a theological study on the superiority of Jesus and his work. It's not just a book about how great and final Jesus is. And that's the temptation we have, is to go to a book like this and use it as something to build our theology. But it goes beyond that.

He wanted to do more than that. Again, what did Hebrews 13.22 say? This colors the whole book. All right? I appeal to you, brothers, bear with my word of exhortation, for I have written to you briefly. This is a sermon intended to exhort you, to move you to action.

That's what this book is intended to do, to do something to you. Now, in order to get there, I also want to show you how the book lays out. How is it organized? All right? First of all, there's the prologue. Chapter 1, verses 1 through 4.

We read that. And I think the prologue sets the whole tone of the book. Jesus is it. He's the final word from God. Then he talks about that Christ is superior to angels Christ is superior to Moses Christ is superior to the Aaronic priesthood Christ is superior to the old covenant, its sanctuary, and its sacrifices. and then from there on he really digs in to really keep pounding the idea that we need to endure we can't give up we need to endure that especially by faith we're going to endure if we endure by faith and then the last chapter chapter 13 he just talks about all these really quick commandments that we need to obey.

So after serving the purpose of the book to really motivate us to action, at the very end, he covers these different commandments that just, hey, you're a Christian, you need to do this stuff too. If I could put it that way. And then finally, there's the benediction and the final greetings. Now here's the point. With all of that there, woven throughout all these grand and marvelous truths is the exhortation intended to motivate you.

God reveals all of these things about Christ being superior to angels, to Moses, to the old priesthood, to the old covenant and its sanctuary and its sacrifices. He tells us all about those things in order to motivate you. That's the point. It's not just to know a bunch of stuff about Jesus. It's to motivate you to some sort of action. You can see that as you read through the book.

Now look, God intends to motivate you to remain faithful to Jesus in the face of persecution. Remain faithful no matter what. It is possible that we will face persecution. It's possible. I don't know, I hope not. But it seems to me that the clouds of persecution are gathering to a certain degree.

If I can just give you a footnote years ago I said this to some folks years ago I said if I am ever going to go to jail in this country it going to be over sexual things It's going to be over someone coming to me and saying, I'm not satisfied with same-sex attraction. I want to change. And I can see that sort of thing really mounting up now in terms of the avenue of persecution for Christians. it looks to me like it could be all this sexual orientation, LGBTQ agenda.

And I hope I'm wrong. I may not be right. But at least let's say this. It's possible we can face persecution, and that our stand for truth will bring, at the very least, social ostracism, quite possibly the loss of livelihoods, and maybe the same kind of losses that these people experienced. but we need to endure hardship rather than abandoning jesus and taking the easy way out all this marvelous truth about jesus should move you to endure because you have everything to lose if you abandon him and everything to gain by clinging to him so god intends to motivate you to faithfulness to Christ.

God intends to motivate you to continue trusting in Jesus when you're tempted to move away from him. He explains all that Jesus accomplished in order to assure you that you have not misplaced your faith. You must know that to abandon Jesus, though, is to move away from your only hope. So what's the purpose of the book? Why is it here? I would say two things. to motivate you to remain faithful to Jesus no matter what comes your way.

No matter what it is, you're going to remain faithful to Jesus. You will not abandon Him. And secondly, to motivate you to an unwavering trust in Jesus as your only hope. By the way, whether or not we suffer for the faith, at least is to motivate us to an unwavering trust in Jesus as our only hope. There is no one else. Given the nature of Jesus there is no other hope Now lastly let just say this How should you change because of this book Let me give you four areas of change here okay In light of the purpose of the book well to increase your faithfulness to Christ in the face of persecution or hardship or whatever comes our way.

Okay? To increase your faithfulness to Jesus. To increase the assurance of forgiveness in Christ. okay when you read all these magnificent things about the superiority of Jesus it should get you give you great assurance again an unwavering faith in Jesus another thing it should do is increase your understanding of the old testament as pointing you to Christ when you when you get through this book you're going to see the old testament points to Jesus a great deal.

And that when you read the Old Testament, you have to always read it with Jesus in mind. And that's what I hope happens to you as we go through this book. And then lastly, and most importantly, I hope that this is how we are all changed, including me, that it will increase our love for Christ. It will increase our love for Him. so here we are I hope this kind of orients you to it but most of all I hope this is true don't give in and don't give up because Jesus is your only hope but he's not just your only hope he's the best hope and as we go through this book I hope that the stature of Jesus grows in your mind and that love for Him and affection for Him grows in your heart and that He makes you even more steadfast in faithfulness to Him.

Let's pray. Father, we're thankful for this book. We pray now that as we proceed through this book, you would help us to see the glory of Jesus and that seeing that glory we would be more faithful Him and that we would have an unwavering trust in Him. So help us. Help us, we pray. You've given this book in order to accomplish things in our hearts, in our lives.

So we pray that Your Spirit would accomplish that. And we pray this now in Jesus' name. Amen.