SEPTEMBER
7, 2014
HEBREWS
1:1-4
1
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions
and in many ways,
2
in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all
things, through whom also He made the world.
3
And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature,
and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification
of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
4
having become as much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more
excellent name than they. NASB
FIRST THOUGHTS
·
Author
unknown
UNDERSTAND THE CONTEXT
·
Written
about 63 AD.
o
AD
60-62 Paul is imprisoned in Rome
o
AD
64 Nero is persecuting Christians
o
AD
67 Peter and Paul are executed
o
AD
70 Temple in Jerusalem is destroyed
·
It
appears to be a joining of several sermons with a typical conclusion of a
letter without the typical beginning or salutation of a letter.
·
The
original recipients were primarily to converted Jews.
·
It
has many references to Jewish customs.
·
This
book is linked to Leviticus, and an understanding of Leviticus is useful in
understanding the book of Hebrews.
“This Epistle to the Hebrews was not
accepted by the western church for a long time, and the reason is found at this
particular juncture: the church wanted to usurp the place of Israel. They
adopted all the promises God had made to Israel and spiritualized them,
applying them to themselves and rejecting God's purposes in the nation Israel.
As a result, you'll find that the church in those early days became actually
anti-Semitic and persecuted the Jew!”
Thru
the Bible with J. Vernon McGee
·
Written
to persecuted Christians thinking about giving up and returning to Judaism.
·
Possibly
some had been attracted to the gospel and had not yet made a commitment to it.
"They may have considered demoting
Christ from God's Son to a mere angel. Such a precedent had already been set in
the Qumran community of messianic Jews living near the Dead Sea. They had
dropped out of society, established a religious commune, and included the
worship of angels in their brand of reformed Judaism. The Qumran community had
even gone so far as to claim that the angel Michael was higher in status than
the coming Messiah.”
MacArthur
Bible Commentary (John MacArthur)
·
The
original recipients had been Christians for some time, but had not yet reached
maturity because the writer told them that “by this time you ought to be
teachers.”
·
The
central message is about our need for a perfect priest and sacrifice which was
provided in Christ.
·
There
is a continual contrast between the incomplete and imperfect OT with the better
provision in the NT through Jesus Christ.
“The Book of Hebrews may briefly be summarized in
this way: Believers in Jesus Christ, as God's perfect sacrifice for sin, have
the perfect High Priest through whose ministry everything is new and better
than under the covenant of law.”
MacArthur Bible
Commentary (John MacArthur)
“A proper interpretation of this epistle
requires the recognition that it addresses three distinct groups of Jews: (1)
believers; (2) unbelievers who were intellectually convinced of the gospel; and
(3) unbelievers who were attracted by the gospel and the person of Christ, but
who had reached no final conviction about Him. Failure to acknowledge these groups
leads to interpretations inconsistent with the rest of Scripture.”
MacArthur
Bible Commentary (John MacArthur)
“Now it is no simple and easy thing to
waltz into the deep waters into which the author of this epistle leads his
hearers. But we are not forever, he says, to drink milk. We are to
come to the place in our Christian lives when we desire the strong meat of the
Word, and this is the deepness and the knowledge and the wisdom into which this
author brings his hearers. So it is our purpose to go with him, not
forever to stay in the rudimentary, elementary, primeval things of the gospel.”
W.
A. Criswell
EXPLORE THE TEXT
VERSE
1:
“…both before and after the giving of
the law, from the beginning of the world, or the giving forth of the first promise,
and in the times of the patriarchs, of: Moses, David, Isaiah, and other
prophets: and this was delivered in various manners; sometimes by angels;
sometimes in a dream; at other times by a vision; and sometimes by Urim and
Thummim:”
John
Gill’s Exposition of the Bible
VERSE
2:
- "these last days”: The time of Christ and after.
9 For this reason also, God highly exalted Him,
and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL
BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and
that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God
the Father. NASB
Colossians 1:17-18
17 He is before all things,
and in Him all things hold together.
18 He is
also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from
the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. NASB
VERSE
3:
2 Corinthians 4:6
For God, who said, "Light shall
shine out of darkness," is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the
Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. NASB
15 He is the image of the
invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
16 For by Him all things were
created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether
thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through
Him and for Him. NASB
25 to the only God our
Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and
authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
VERSE
4:
· Some sects had
demoted Jesus to be lower than angels in order to reduce persecution; this
could be why the texts emphasizes Christ’s supremacy over the angels.
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