All right. We are starting into, as you know, a study of Hebrews and just getting started with some introductory matters, such as who wrote this letter to the Hebrews, to whom he wrote, when he wrote it, for what reason. And so we’re going to get into that more tonight, four points in total. So two last week and two more for tonight. I’m going to, just going to review very quickly the two we covered last week, starting with number one: The genre of Hebrews.
What kind of a writing is it? What kind of a work is it? We pointed this out last time in Hebrews 13:22. The author refers to his own work in this way, he says, “But I urge you, brothers, bear with this word of exhortation, for I have written to you briefly.” And that sentence, in conjunction with several observations, tells us what kind of a work this is, what the genre is.
We can observe throughout the letter or throughout this work, from start to finish, this repeated pattern in which the author’s exhortation, which is sometimes bold, sometimes rather pointed, his exhortation follows a really a brilliant exposition of Scripture. It’s a perfect application than, the exhortation is of that exposition. So he moves like Paul does.
You can see in, in Paul’s epistles, you see a doctrinal section and a practical section. Implications come out of that. See the same thing here. But this author goes back and forth all the way through this work, all the way through the letter. We also observe a repeated use throughout Hebrews of the first-person plural.
The author is identifying himself and including himself with his readers in what he says, not because he, himself, he thinks of himself as in danger of violating whatever correction he provides in the exhortation, but because he’s really softening the corrective with the first-person plural, but also recognizing that he himself is a sheep who needs the attention of a shepherd, and he includes himself. He sees himself as first among those who need to grow and heed exhortation, heed teaching.
We also observe in Hebrews; I’m calling it a letter. It’s hard to know what to call it exactly, but we don’t have any epistolary qualities, no qualities of a letter, which as I mentioned last time, it prompted one scholar to observe this. He said, “Hebrews begins like an essay, proceeds like a sermon, and ends as a letter.” So it doesn’t seem to have the qualities or the characteristics of a letter from start to finish.
There is something resembling a letter in Hebrews 13:18 to 25. There’s some personal instruction in that section; there’s a closing benediction. The author names a friend, a friend of himself, but also of the congregation. There’s some personal greetings, greetings from those from Italy. We’ll talk about those people in a bit and then another final benediction.
So based on that evidence, we last time concluded that Hebrews is really a sermon. It’s a sermon in written form, delivered by a true pastor to a true congregation. So the genre then, we could say, is homiletic. A homily is another word for a sermon. This is not like a manuscript of a sermon that he preached, that he just used in a sermon and preached and then sent it off to people. This is clearly for his congregation.
It’s prompted by an occasion and it addresses their particular need, but it does have all the marks of a sermon put into written form. If you’ve read any sermons by famous preachers, if you are a reader of Charles Spurgeon, you can get the same feel when you read the, this letter to the Hebrews from start to finish in one setting. You get the same feel as you would reading a Spurgeon sermon, and especially when you read it aloud.
We next considered the authorship of Hebrews, surveyed the various views of who was proposed for authorship. I’m going to talk number two about the author of Hebrews and also the Providence, Provenance, PROVENANCE having to do with the place from which it was written. I’ll get to that at the very end here. But the author of Hebrews; the Apostle Paul, is the oldest candidate for the authorship of Hebrews, but that proposal is not without its doubts and challenges from very early on.
So it wasn’t a universal view that Paul wrote Hebrews. Many believed, the thought was, the Apostle Paul’s, but the language and the expression were from somebody else. Someone, like Clement of Alexandria, proposed that this was quote, “written by Paul to the Hebrews in the Hebrew tongue, but that it was carefully translated by Luke and published among the Greeks.”
There’s another suggestion that Clement of Rome, not Luke, but Clement of Rome, was Paul’s translator. But when we examine writings from Clement of Rome or from Luke, which we have Luke’s writing in abundance, when we compare their writings, neither of them, as authors, rise to the beauty and the excellence and the sophistication of the expression in Hebrews. They don’t have the same vocabulary that’s demonstrated by the author of Hebrews.
So we could say that in addition to these matters of style for rejecting the authorship of Paul, of Hebrews, the main reason to reject Pauline authorship comes from the very first exhortation section, which we mentioned last time. If you’d like to turn to it, let’s go to Hebrews chapter 2.
He’s fantastic. Like when I think about, as a preacher, how to start a sermon, I love the way this starts. Chapter 1, verse 1, “God”. Isn’t that a great word to start with in your sermon? I’m going to try that next time. “God, having spoken long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and many ways, in these last days,” he’s “spoken to us by His Son.” It’s like, yeah, tell me more. Bring it on.
So that’s how it starts, but then he gets to the first section where he’s going to kind of press the implications into the people reading in chapter 2 verses 1 through 4. He says, so for this reason that God spoke through his Son through whom he created the world and he is far superior to any of the angels. “For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away.”
That notice the first-person plural there, he’s inserting himself into his own exhortation. “For if the word spoken through angels,” he’s referring to the Old Testament there; “if that word proved unalterable,” it’s another way to say, don’t mess with Scripture, don’t add to it, take away from it, “should prove unalterable. Every trespass and disobedience received a just penalty; how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?
“That salvation, first spoken by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard, God also testifying with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will.” Now the reason that that is clearly not the voice of Paul the Apostle is because the Apostle Paul would never refer to himself like that. I had a couple of good questions come up last time and ask this very thing, which is why I’m kind of unpacking it here.
I just kind of mentioned it, but I didn’t go into the counter examples in Paul’s language. Listen now, he describes himself. The Apostle Paul does in Galatians 1, 1:11 and 12 says, “For I make known to you, brothers, that the gospel which I am proclaiming as good news is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it.” Direct contradiction to Hebrews 2:3, right.
“I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” And he’s talking about direct prophetic revelation personally to him. We see that, in Acts Chapter 9, the road to Damascus, but we also see it throughout his ministry. We see the testimony to it in Galatians 1 and 2, where he defends his Apostolic authority and ministry, personal revelation from Christ.
Some say, well, maybe the reason, assuming the authorship of Hebrews is Paul, they still try to argue and they say, well, maybe, maybe it’s that Paul was just being really careful with the Jews. He knew that by attaching his name to that letter to the Hebrews, I mean, he’s such a controversial, polarizing figure anyway, he would have detracted from the gospel and its message, if he attached his name to it. It’s a clever suggestion, but it’s wrong.
Everything we know about Paul from his epistles, everything Luke records about Paul in the book of Acts, there’s no hint whatsoever is there, that Paul backed off ever from identifying himself as the Jewish man whom Christ chose and sent as the apostle to the Gentiles, Romans 9:1-4, Romans 10:1.
Philippians 3:5, where he calls himself a Hebrew of Hebrews. He’s in Gentile territory writing to the Philippians. He was not concerned about what trouble his Jewishness would cause or his name would cause. Christ chose him, that’s good enough. And if Christ chose him, he’s going to tell them so. You might say, well, how proud of him? No, that’s not proud, that’s humble.
He would be proud to hide his name as if his own name would somehow, because Christ chose him, his own name would mess up the message, detract from the message. Christ chose him as an apostle, no matter what trouble that caused, from his arrest in Jerusalem in Acts 21 and 22 to the Inquisition that he went through before the Sanhedrin in Acts 23; landing him in prison in Caesarea in Acts 24 to 26, and all the way to Rome in Acts 28. Paul was never bashful to be Christ’s chosen Jewish apostle, reserved, sent to the Gentiles.
So it’s not Paul who wrote Hebrews. That’s what you’re meant to get out all that. Another early candidate for authorship is Barnabas, but his candidacy is kind of torpedoed for a few reasons. There’s no evidence that he ever wrote any epistles. There is a spurious epistle of Barnabas that’s attributed to him, but is not him. It’s been proved to be, not Barnabas.
Another reason that this couldn’t be written by Barnabas is his easy familiarity among the apostles in Jerusalem and his susceptibility to the Judaizers meant he was more Hebraic in his thinking, in his relationships and all that, than Hellenistic. This is clearly a Hellenistic Jew who wrote this. There are other reasons Barnabas doesn’t fit, but other candidates for authorship are Silas, Philip, Priscilla along with Aquila, her husband, Epaphras is another one, the servant of Paul or Deacon of Paul in Christ to Colossae.
Luther in the 16th century suggested Apollos. Others more maybe 18th century and beyond and liberal Christianity suggest Mary, the mother of Jesus wrote the book, book of Hebrews. She’s responsible for a lot of stuff, I find. Some say it was John; some say it was some anonymous monk. Some say it was a pseudo-Paul, you know, a fake Paul.
We have to be content, don’t we, with whatever we can discern from the internal evidence, from the work itself, from Hebrews itself, that we don’t know. It’s intentionally anonymous. We do know from the letter that the author is Jewish. Okay. He’s very familiar with Scripture. He shares in the religious life and practice of the Jews of old.
Chapter 2, verse 16, Chapter 13, verse 10 indicate he’s Jewish. Shares a Jewishness with his audience. The author is a man, mentioned this last time. That’s why Priscilla can’t be the author or Mary the mother of Jesus. There’s a masculine participle in Hebrews 11:32, that kind of tips his cards and shows that it’s a man writing, not a woman.
The author is a, as we just said, a second-generation Christian. The author is a Hellenized Jew. Whenever he quotes from the Old Testament, which you see in Hebrews, he does extensively, he’s using the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament written about 250 years before the time of Christ.
These Christians, they’re of Jewish ethnicity and a shared religious background with the author.” Travis Allen
So Hellenized Jews, that is Greek speaking, inculturated into Greek culture, Jews; they’re the ones who use the Septuagint exclusively and in fact many Jews in what we call Palestine or Judea, the Roman province of Judea, they did not out of purity reasons, want to touch the Septuagint, thinking it was a corrupted text. So they had King James only-ists, back there, as well.
The author is educated, intelligent, eloquent. The author is within Paul’s circle of ministry friends, and partners. Chapter 13:23, shows that, perhaps this author is a convert of Paul’s or a disciple of his. We don’t know that, but certainly there is clear Pauline influence in this author’s thinking and the author we see from Hebrews 13:7, the end of the book as well, the author is the pastor of this congregation.
So that’s just a summary of what we talked about last time with regard to the genre and authorship. But I’m just going to slip one more introductory matter in here, the provenance, I mentioned that, where the pastor wrote Hebrews from. So what post office did he use to send this letter? We don’t know. Again, we don’t know. We can speculate, and I’m going to give you some content here in a little bit to do some speculation with, but we really don’t know.
Can’t know where the pastor was when he wrote this, where he had travelled to. In Hebrews 13:24, what group of battalions he’s talking about there, where they are; anything else that reveals his location is kind of hidden from us. We see that his focus though, from start to finish, is less about himself, his own circumstances, and really has all to do with his congregation. Ministering to his congregation, concern over them, love for them. Okay.
So let’s get in new ground here. What congregation and who are these people? Who are these Hebrews? Moving on to a third point: The recipients of Hebrews. These Christians, they’re of Jewish ethnicity and a shared religious background with the author. Okay. We can see that concourse between author and audience, writer, recipients. And this explains why the earliest title for the work is to the Hebrews. Everybody reading this letter can recognize that. And so we need to say with regard to the recipients that some of what is true about the author is also true about the recipients.
So we could say that the recipients are Christians who mostly share Jewish ethnicity and a background of Jewish practice with the author. Hebrews 13:10. The recipients, like the author, are second-generation Christians. Hebrews 2:1 through 3, where he uses those, we, first person plurals. The recipients are Hellenized Jews, or at least familiar enough with the Septuagint to be conversant in it; that it seems to be that Bible is written in their heart language.
The recipients are also, like the author, within Paul’s circle of ministry friends, such as Timothy. So if we deduce further from those facts, as Hellenized Jews, they’re not likely to have lived in Jerusalem or Judea, but outside of Judea, outside of that province where the Septuagint was their primary biblical text. Further, as those who are not only acquainted with Timothy, but affectionate toward Timothy, Hebrews 13:23, “know that our brother Timothy.”
So again, first-person plural, author and recipients called Timothy, our brother and they have a term of familial affection, brother. Then it says, “he’s been released, with whom, if he comes soon, I shall see you.” We know that Paul met Timothy in Derby and Lystra, which is in the Galatian region. Paul met him, circumcised him, took him away with him to Asia Minor, and further west.
There is no indication that Timothy ever went back east, so we tend to associate Timothy with the cities of Asia Minor, Ephesus, cities of Macedonia like Philippi and Thessaloniki, Greece, the city of Corinth, finally Rome, Italy. We could surmise, then, that the recipients lived outside of Judea at the very least, and in one of these cities where Paul and Timothy ministered, where they spent so much time.
Which connects us to another clue in this sermon, this brief word of exhortation, that these recipients, more likely than not, were those who lived in a city, those who lived in a rather large city. They had possessions, according to Hebrews 10:32, that had been seized in an earlier persecution, and they were comforted by knowing that they had, instead of those possessions, they had a better and a lasting possession according to Hebrews 10:34.
The pastor encourages them to remember those who did not live in cities in Hebrews 11, because they were walking by faith, cities being a place of comfort and ease and prosperity and luxury and attraction and distraction. So he starts in Hebrews 11 with Noah, who turned away from the luxuries of city life to prepare an ark for the salvation of his family, Hebrews 11:7.
Talks of Abraham, who is content to live in tents, wandering around, living in tents, because he looked for the city that has foundations, whose architect, and builder is God, Hebrews 11:9 and 10. Moses left the halls of power and wealth in Egypt, and he refused to use his connections with the palace, choosing instead to be mistreated with God’s people, counting the reproach of Christ to be greater riches than Egyptian treasures, Hebrews 11:23 to 26.
We go up the end of the book, and we see that Jesus in Hebrews 13:12, he himself was cast outside the city, his own city, Jerusalem, where he is the rightful king, and yet he’s cast outside the city, and he suffers outside the gate of Jerusalem. So verse 13 says, “Let us go out to Him outside the camp bearing his reproach, for here we do not have a lasting city, but we’re seeking the city which is to come.”
Lot of talk about cities in Hebrews, so maybe let’s add some important evidence that comes to us from Hebrews 13:24 where it says, “Those from Italy greet you.” Those from Italy. Preposition there apo, is the word, from; it indicates that the people who are sending the greeting, they are not in Italy when they send the greeting. They’re not in Italy at the moment, but they are away from Italy.
So apo, shows separation from. So those from Italy who are away from Italy, but they’re from there, they greet you. Think about this. Remember Priscilla and Aquila? They’re a Jewish couple that Paul met in Corinth. Paul had left Athens, gone to Corinth. Acts 18:2 says, that “he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, having recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome.”
The Roman historian Suetonius says that, the AD 49 edict of Claudius had come because the Jews at Rome caused contentious disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus. Chrestus. And at that disturbance and at that instigation of Chrestus, it says he expelled them from the city. So Claudius banished these Chrestus promoting, Chrestus preaching, Jews from Rome.
Rome’s a huge city, so it’s probably taking place in some Jewish quarter of the city, causing troubled disturbance. And no doubt wealthy Jews who didn’t like the message about this Chrestus, who all scholars know this as referring to Christ. But the Jews who were wealthy, they had political connections and they went to their civic leaders and their community leaders and their politicians and said, you got to get these guys out of here.
This is the typical response of the preaching of the gospel, as Luke shows throughout Acts, that the Jews become jealous and they become troubled and they’d make trouble for the Christians and persecute them. Many Christians living in Rome were of Jewish ethnicity and background. They were expelled. Many of them were expelled and they had to close their businesses, lost their homes, forfeited property. They had to leave it behind.
Travel wasn’t like today. Just order a pod and pack it up with your stuff and have someone haul it or put it on a plane. Wasn’t like that at all. They had to leave a lot behind, any who were not caught up in this controversy over Chrestus, maybe they avoided the banishment, but they remain behind. What do they do? They encourage one another. They visited those who are imprisoned for the faith, those Roman Christians, many of whom were Jews like Priscilla and Aquila. They became useful in building churches elsewhere.
When they were banished, they took Christianity with them. They took the gospel with them. Paul met Priscilla and Aquila in Corinth, and he took them with him, you remember that, to Ephesus, and they served for many years there before returning to Rome in AD 54, after the death of Claudius, whose edict was not reinstated.
So the edict of Claudius to banish the Jews died with him. According to Romans 16:3, Paul says he was writing to the churches in Rome, and he says, “Greet” Prisca and Aquila or “Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who for my life risk their own necks, to whom not only do I give thanks, but also all the churches,” plural “of the Gentiles; and also greet the church in their house.”
So we have a situation in Rome that’s different than other places in the empire where we have different pockets of Christians, different congregations of Christians, some of them Jewish, some of them Gentile, some of them a mixed Jew and Gentile. In fact, when Paul writes the letter to the Romans, part of his task in writing that letter is to break down the wall of division between Jew and Gentile, so that the Jews and their pride don’t look down on the Gentiles, and the Gentiles and their pride don’t exclude the Jews.
They’re in different congregations, different churches, assemblies in the city of Rome. One of them meets in the house of Priscilla and Aquila, Christians who are Jews. Paul is greeting just one of the several churches that was meeting in that city, the one in the house of Priska and Aquila. So these Italians he refers to in Hebrews 13:24, they’re away from their native Italy, and they send greetings to the recipients.
So might this help narrow down which city the pastor is sending this word of exhortation to? What’s your guess? I’ve led you to it, right? From what we can piece together, the recipients of the pastor’s sermon, they seem to be Christians living in Rome. They are of Jewish ethnicity, Jewish background. They knew Paul and Timothy. They’re fluent Greek speakers, educated, knowledgeable, many of them middle class, some of them even wealthy. And they’re living in the city. They’re in a house church or a congregation.
Now let’s talk about the occasion for this sermon and why the pastor felt the need to send this to them while he’s away. Why not just wait till he gets back? Preach the sermon he wants to preach. Anyone know who became emperor after Claudius died in AD 54? Nero. Anybody hear good things about Nero? I can’t remember who said it, but they made this quip that, you know, Nero’s the one who beheaded the Apostle Paul. And yet someone quipped that we name our sons Paul, but our dogs Nero.
Nero is one of the dogs of history. He started persecuting Christians about 10 years after becoming emperor, so starting in AD 64, in the burning of Rome, lasted to about AD 68. So pretty significant severe persecution. Peter and Paul were both martyred under Nero. Peter being crucified, but not like his Lord. He wanted to be crucified upside down and that’s why we have Saint Peter’s cross, which is an upside down cross.
Paul being beheaded, both of them, toward the end of that time of persecution in AD 67 is what tradition tells us. From Paul’s greeting in 2 Timothy 4:19, we discovered that Prisca and Aquila, or Priscilla and Aquila had returned to Ephesus by the time that Paul is there in prison in AD 67. And it probably wasn’t on their part to escape persecution, but to assist Timothy as he faced very difficult work at that Ephesian church.
The recipients, like the author, are second-generation Christians.” Travis Allen
1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, both make it very clear that Timothy was having a difficult time, and Paul was trying to help him, to strengthen him, turning him away from a spirit of timidity to power and love and sound mind, so that he could address, correct, rebuke, and depose even some of these false leaders in that church. So it’s possible that Priscilla and Aquila return to Ephesus with the express purpose of helping Timothy. We don’t know that for sure, but they were there according to 2 Timothy 4:19 and not in Rome.
But when we get to AD 67, Paul is in prison again in 2 Timothy, that’s his second Roman imprisonment, which would then eventuate in his death. He asked Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:9 to visit him. At the end of that chapter, in verse 21, he asked Timothy to make every effort to get there before winter. So could it be that Timothy, loyal and faithful, visited Paul and was caught up in the persecution of Nero, snatched, arrested, cast into prison.
If so, that’d be a very good match for the mention of his release from imprisonment, that this pastor writes of in Hebrews 13:23. As for the dating of Hebrews, many make mention that the writer of Hebrews, he doesn’t talk about, doesn’t refer to the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. That’s true, there’s no real indication that he acknowledges that, which leads people to think that this had to be written before AD 70.
I agree, but for different reasons. Seem to make the writer’s case even easier, especially about the abrogation of the Levitical priesthood. If Jerusalem had fallen, he could point to that. Where are you going to go? Where are you going to sacrifice? What priesthood is there? And no doubt that’s true, that he could have pointed to that. But I think that the writer of Hebrews never mentions, he never mentions the temple, by the way, it’s always the Tabernacle.
He always refers to the Tabernacle in the wilderness and the kind of its original installation. He talks about the worship at the Tabernacle, never the temple, but the Tabernacle. And it’s because his point is really less historical than it is theological and biblical and practical. He’s not making, as Jesus did, contemporary judgments against the temple in Jerusalem. That’s not his point. He’s trying to go back and show, Jesus is the fulfilment of the temple and its services, and all that it pointed to and its types, shadows, practices, everything.
But it is true that he doesn’t mention AD 70, the destruction of Jerusalem, which could point to, hint at, the date of the letter being before AD 70. But I think a stronger case for the dating of Hebrews; I think it seems to be the circumstances of the recipients here, their location in Rome, if we can assume that, and the occasion for writing, which we’re going to come to in a moment.
Since these are second-generation Christians, this had to be dated well after the 50s. Okay. So Jesus died 33 AD, give it 20 years for another generation of Christians to rise up. So this had to be in the 60s, but definitely before the 70s because the fall of Jerusalem has not happened. So if we assume the Neronian persecution is in effect here, AD 64 to 68, Timothy’s imprisonment was connected to Paul’s imprisonment. We could be looking at a date of somewhere around AD 67 to 69, somewhere in there.
Now let’s focus on the occasion. What gave rise for the need to write and send this sermon. From what we’ve covered so far last week and this week, for what reason do you think the pastor had to exhort them? Why did he need to exhort them? What was the nature of the problem he’s addressing? Hold that thought.
Go to Hebrews chapter 10, starting in verse 32, and see how this passage, I mean, there are others we could point to, but for the sake of time we’re going to focus on one. See how Hebrews 10:32 to 39 really suggests a reason for writing? “But remember the former days, when after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings, partly by being made a public spectacle through approaches and afflictions, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated. For you also showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted with joy the seizure of your possessions, knowing that you have for yourselves a better and a lasting possession.
“Therefore do not throw away that confidence of yours which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise. For in yet a very little while, He was coming 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 to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.” Another persecution in Rome against Christians.
Last time, what he refers to in verse 32, as “remember the former days” that persecution against Christians was by Claudius. This time it’s coming at the hand of Nero. And there was more in store. Some of these Christians were peeling away and no longer wanted to associate with the Christians. And so they found connection with their former Jewish synagogues in order to avoid a loss of property, having to move again, fearing banishment, or maybe even much worse consequences. We know from history things would get worse this time. The last time under Claudius, Hebrews 12:4, acknowledges this: that no blood was shed, but that was about to change; as I said, Peter crucified, Paul beheaded.
Want to wrap up what we’re doing tonight by reading a section from a commentator named Gareth Cockerel; wrote a commentary in Hebrews, in the New International commentary, in the New Testament, which is, I think, the best summary of the recipients, the circumstances, the occasion for the pastor writing and sending the sermons. Just listen to this as I read this section. He says, “The hearers must have been followers of Christ who could appreciate the elegance of the pastor’s Greek. And thus we’re at home, both linguistically and culturally, within the Hellenistic world.
“The pastor’s sending the greetings of those from Italy. Hebrews 13:24 confirms the fact that both he and his hearers moved in a circle that included people living outside of Palestine. The pastor is obviously addressing a specific group of people, yet he does not call them a church or even designate the city in which they live. These features suggest he’s addressing a house church rather than all the believers of a particular locality.
“This possibility is substantiated by the way he exhorts his hearers to greet all their leaders, 13:24, to be concerned for all the Saints, 10:25. The mention of our brother Timothy, along with other features of the letter closing 13:22 to 25, suggested the community addressed by Hebrews was closely connected with the Pauline circle and perhaps with other groups of first century believers as well.
“Members of the congregation to which Hebrews is addressed were obviously well versed in the Old Testament and had been followers of Jesus for some time. Yet they were also in danger of compromising their commitment to Christ. They appear to have suffered from lassitude.” Lassitude means weariness. Weariness being worn down. “They appear to have suffered from lassitude and from a tendency to neglect the gospel they had received.
“They had become spiritually dull, thus slow to grasp the full significance of what Christ had done and of his continuing relevance as all sufficient Savior. In fact, they were in danger of reverting to a spiritual immaturity totally inappropriate for experienced believers. The pastor fears that this lassitude, neglect, and regression might lead to apostasy from Christ. This lassitude and resulting danger of apostasy were clearly exacerbated by the resistance of the unbelieving world.
“Many, at least in this congregation, appeared to have been intimidated by the disdain and marginalization that they suffered as a result of the loyalty to Christ. They’d received the gospel from those who had heard, Christ and had been believers long enough to have successfully braved an earlier time of persecution. That persecution had included public harassment, imprisonment, and the confiscation of property, but had fallen short of martyrdom.
“Now, however, in their discouraged state, they shrink back from their Christian commitment due to present marginalization and to fear that more, perhaps life threatening, persecution may soon come. Their anxiety at present marginalization, anticipated suffering, and perhaps impending martyrdom may have been exacerbated by disappointment that Christ had not yet returned or by their failure to realize and appropriate His full sufficiency as Savior. Thus, some at least were neglecting to attend the community’s times of worship.
“Under these circumstances, it was only natural for them to be attracted by the privileges and respect that would be theirs by abandoning their commitment to Christ and identifying with the unbelieving world. The pastor is concerned that they persevere in the life of faith and obedience. He wants them to continue to live as if God’s promise for the future is certain and His power for the present is real.
“Thus he would have them avail themselves of the cleansing from sin and access to God provided by the Son, their all sufficient high priest. This high priest is also the pioneer through whom they can be certain of entering God’s future promised rest, the eternal city that has always been the destiny of the people of God.” End Quote.
That’s the introduction to Hebrews. I know it’s been brief, but I just wanted to make sure we don’t spend too long on an introduction, couple weeks. When we come back next time, we’ll get into this brief word of exhortation in earnest. So pray with me and then we’ll sing a song.
Father, thank you for this little reflection on the, the book of Hebrews and what is in store for us. We so desire to get into it. Look, we look forward to it, the study, but we look forward to what it’s going to accomplish in our lives, in our church, to exalt Christ to us and show us how he is perfect, sufficient, supreme over all things. And we love Him dearly. And we love him because you’ve loved us.
And you’ve reconciled us to yourself through Jesus Christ, who paid the perfect penalty for our sin on the cross, shedding his blood to purchase us from death and damnation. He is the perfect atoning sacrifice. And you covered us with his righteousness and brought us to yourself. We’re reconciled to you, and there is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And we thank you for this in his name, Amen.