Hebrews, Hebrews is our book. I think what I want to do throughout our weeks is to pray through Hebrews, okay? So tonight I'm going to pray through a portion of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter two, and I'm not asking you to turn to it, but I am asking you to pray with me. Could we pray together? Start our class. Lord our Father, we just heard that many of us come here already very tired from a long day and Lord, you know the motivation to study your word and to be trained and to draw a nearer to you that would inspire men and women to work a long day, perhaps a day that's already more than 12 hours old and then to begin span of time sitting and listening for some hours. Lord, we know that you understand our weakness because even as we have flesh and blood, you also took flesh and blood, so you might share in our humanity. Lord, you didn't just share that humanity, however you also took upon yourself a perfect body and a perfect mind and spirit, perfect nature and live the perfect life. And by that I began to destroy the power of the devil. Lord, you finished that work by submitting, although innocent, to the severest punishments that the law of Israel and the law of Rome and that the wicked deeds of the world could render upon you and Lord when you tasted death, you tasted death for us all. For this we thank you. This is why we're here to thank you to praise you to understand you better and to see that all that we say and do somehow flows out of knowing you in your mercy, in your goodness, in your power, in your majesty, in your gentle tender help that you render to us. Lord, we pray that as we meditate upon your word, your work, through the book of Hebrews, it would indeed taste of you tonight. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. We are now come to Hebrews, which is our first book that we're going to survey in this class. Hebrews chapters 1, 2, and maybe we'll possibly get to just a touch of Hebrews chapter 3 tonight. Let me introduce you to the book of Hebrews 1st if I may. Hebrews is perhaps a book like, well, it's like an eccentric millionaire. It is rich, but puzzling. Hebrews is puzzling because we don't know really who wrote it. When they wrote it, we don't know exactly why they wrote it or who received it. So there are some puzzles there. There's also the fact that what they experienced, what occasioned the book of Hebrews is something that's a long ways away from our daily experience. They were in the midst of, well, they were in the early stages of a persecution that was coming their way from the Roman Empire, and they were frightened. They were falling back. They were not up to the challenge of potentially shedding their own blood for the cause of Christ. Something that complicates the book of Hebrews is that it seems to be a written sermon. At the end of the book, chapter 13, verse 22, the author says, something like this, I exhort you brothers, permit me to permit a word of exhortation. In fact, I've written to you briefly, a little phrase, word of exhortation appears just one other time in the New Testament. It's when Paul preaches a sermon. He's actually invited to preach a sermon, Barnabas is with him, in Acts chapter 13, verse 15, to a synagogue in Pesidian Antioch. They say, give us a word of exhortation. What do you mean is give us a sermon? So this is a sermon written by a man who's some kind of a pastoral leader. Maybe he's the pastor, maybe one of the pastors, probably one of the house churches in Rome. He is not there. He's not able to be with them. And so he writes this book, the book of Hebrews, in order to be with him, although absent from them, to be with them by pen when he can't be there in person. And see a number of signs that this is a sermon. The words that he uses are verbal. They sound like he wanted to say it. For example, he constantly uses first and second person pronouns. He's always talking about I and we and us and you. It's not abstract language of day and the man who. It's very personal language. It's also personal, just he sounds like he wants to talk. Listen to chapter 2, verse 1, which is, therefore, he must pay closer attention to what we have heard. You hear spoken messages, less we drift away. He says in 5, 11, about this we have much to say, not right, about this we have much to say, which is hard to explain, but you have become dull of hearing. So he's almost imagining and listening to him. He says in 6, verse 9, although we speak this way, we have hopes of better things. And then it sounds like he's running out of time at the end of his sermon. Chapter 11, verse 32, he says time would fail to tell of the other heroes in the faith. Isn't that what preachers do when they're running out of time? They say, I wish I had time to tell you more, but I can just give you a few highlights here. So it sounds like he wishes he was preaching. We know that he knows them from not only the IU, we language us language, but from the fact that he shares some of their history. Chapter 10, verse 32 to 34, I'm asking you if you'd like to turn or you can simply listen, but this is an important passage for understanding Hebrews. It says in Hebrews 10, 32, remember those earlier days after you had received the light when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering. So he says, now you remember and he's implying, I remember it too. Now there was a time of persecution that came earlier on. Sometimes he goes on to remind them. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution. At other times, you stood side by side with those who were so treated. So he remembers, perhaps visiting fellow Christians who were thrown in jail or who were somehow victimized. You sympathize with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property joyfully because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possession. So he's reminding them in some detail of a prior persecution that they went through and that he knows about, presumably because he was a part of it. The book is also is a blend of warmth and intensity. It's a warm book he calls those who read it, his brothers and his friends. It's also an intense book. There are sharp warnings in the book that bespeak friendship. You remember Proverbs chapter 27 verse 9 which says, the pleasantness of one's friend springs from his earnest counsel. You know what that means? That means a friend knows how to get in your face. That's what it means. When I think of this passage, I think of a friend of mine who shares with me quite an array of allergies and one time we were together hadn't seen each other for a while. She said to me, you know, Dan, I found the way out of all my food allergies and what I've done is I've removed all attitudes from my diet and eating this rare bread with lots of ground up oat stems and wheat chaff and barley leaves and so forth. And ever since I've started eating that, my allergies have gone away. Well, the truth is that's not what she said. What she said to me was, I've gotten into a no additive diet and I said, you know, I've tried oat chaff and barley stems and so forth. And Carol, thank you very much, but it really doesn't work. And what she did to me was she said, don't you give me that oat chaff stuff. I know what you're doing to me. You're trying to evade my point by making little jokes. I know your ways. You need to try this, Dan and see I loved her for it because a friend knows how to get after you, don't they? They don't allow you to kind of get off the hook too easily. And as you will see, when you look at the book of Hebrews, the author will not let his friends get off the hook. He gives them some very mild and loving and gentle warnings, but he also takes them to task because he knows it is for their good, especially around chapters five and six and ten. So it is a book. It is a book written by someone who cares deeply about his friends, a pastoral work. And I might say that it is even for those of you who have pastoral roles in your churches. It is a book that is a wonderful model of blending the pastoral concern and interest with deep theology. See, Hebrews knew that theology is about the most relevant thing there is. A lot of people have the idea that theology is boring. What we need is to get to, you know, the ethical parts of the Bible and the stories and the examples of the Bible. But the truth is, there is nothing it does more to shape our mind and our heart than doctrine. And it gives us perspective on the world and so it is the, teaches us who we are and what the world is, where it is going and why. And the consequences is very, very practical. So it is intensely doctrinal book. Simultaneously it is an intensely practical book. It is a dense book that demands our attention because of its theology and yet very practical. Well, let us just talk a little bit about who wrote the book and the circumstances of the writing. Even though, again, we do not really know exactly who wrote it. We have an anonymous author. Never says in the book who wrote it. There is really not even any tradition or longstanding report from the early church as to who wrote the book of Hebrews. Lots of people guess it is one of the things scholars spend their time on, guessing who wrote the book of Hebrews. And I even have my guess that I may tell you some point or I may not. At some level though, it does not really matter whether it was Barnabas or Silas or Priscilla or Apollos or Luke or somebody else. Somebody wrote it and even if we do not know who they are by name, we know a fair amount about them just from what they wrote. So what do we know about them? Well, first of all, we know that he is someone who was in the circle of the apostles. He sounds like Paul at various times and we get the sense that he was in the Pauline circle among other things because he sends a greeting to Timothy at the end of the book in the last chapter, chapter 13. Second thing about the author is that he knows the people to whom he writes. So I've already alluded to that. He calls them his brothers in chapter 3 verses 1 and 12, chapter 10 verse 29, chapter 12, chapter 13 verse 22. As I said before, he often uses language of we. I could really give you quite a number of times and he talks about them as we. He knows their experience in the past, their suffering in the past, chapter 10 which we already read. And he apparently, somebody they know very well because he doesn't have to tell who what his credentials are. He doesn't have to identify himself which fits with somebody who is so well known. You write to your dear friends, you just say, dear, so on and so on. You maybe sign your name and that's about it. On email, we don't even always sign our names anymore due because it's got the return for us. We also know some things about, not only his relation to the church, what kind of a man he was. He was an educated man. We know that you will have to trust me on this unless you take Greek because his Greek, here's the Greek New Testament. I'll just wave it at you. I'm going to use it later. His Greek is probably the most sophisticated in the entire New Testament. He was a master of the Greek language. Huge vocabulary, very intricate structures, both sentenced by sentence and also paragraph by paragraph and allusions looping back from chapter to chapter, very sophisticated writer. He's also someone who knew the Old Testament well. You can see that just by scanning your own Bible and noticing as you just look through it, how many bits of poetry there are, poetic lines. Do you see it to scan through your pages? Those are all quotations of the poetic portions of the Old Testament. He was steeped in the Old Testament. He didn't just know it or quote it. He worked with it. He meditated upon it. He put it to use is that maybe hardly anybody had thought of before he was inspired by God to see how especially the Old Testament relates to Christ. We'll see that at length as well. And he's a preacher and a friend of Paul. Well, that's the man. What caused him to write? We've already said, I've already said briefly, that there was a matter of persecution. Well, we know a little bit more than simply the fact that there was persecution, though. We know it was a second round of persecution. The first time they suffered back to the key passage, 1032, the Hebrews gladly suffered confiscation of property, identified with those who were being abused, visited those who were in prison. They were doing very well that first time. Now here comes a second round and it started in and it's about to get intense. The sign of that is 12-4, which says, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood, which implies there's a very good chance that you will resist even to the point of shedding blood. And this time, this time they aren't doing so well. Chapter 10, verse 25, is a little indication of that. Now, before I read this verse and tell you what it's all about, maybe before I tell you, but it's all about, I'll read it and then I'll just give you a little caveat. Chapter 10, verse 24, he says, let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. That's good advice. Let us not give up meeting together. How can you encourage each other if you don't meet together? Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another all the more as you see the day approaching. Now, I want to say this just very plainly, I've been a Christian for 26 years. I think that once I got the importance of the church straight, which took me about six months, and once I got it straight, I think I've missed church two times in the last 25 years, 25 and a half years, okay? So I go when I'm sick, all right? I stay away from people. I tell them not to shake my hand, but I go to church, so that's just a background. I'm all in favor of going to church, but I don't think 10, 25 is about going to church. See, for many people, 10, 25 is their favorite verse about how important is to go to church. Let's not give up, let's not forsake assembly together. Go to church, but this is not about going to church. This is not about people who didn't go for a week or two. This is about people who have forsaken the assembly. This is for people, a warning to people who are saying, I don't want to be identified as a Christian anymore. I don't want anybody to know because I'm afraid of the consequences if they do. This is not missing once. This is saying, I no longer stand with my fellow Christians. I'm not one of them anymore. They're thinking of renouncing the faith. They're thinking of returning to Judaism. They're not able to stand the pressure. And looking around yet further, it's not too hard to see why. At some point or other, these folks stagnate as Christian. Turn to chapter 5, verses 11 and 12. Chapter 5. At this point, the author is about to launch into one of his dense theological sections. And he has the sense that his people may not quite be ready for it. Maybe like sometimes a teacher here at the seminary might get a feeling at about 820, you know? On a night school night when people didn't have proper supper. He says, I'd like to go on. We have much to say about this, but it's hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers. You need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food. What's their problem? Verse 14, solid food is for the mature who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. To what's happened is they've lost their ability to listen because they haven't been practicing what they already know. Here's how you become mature by practicing what you know, by you train to become more mature by using what you have. That's what verse 14 is saying. And they haven't been doing that. And so now they've been losing their ability theological, they're losing their ability to pay attention because they haven't been paying attention. And so he can't go on, he says. They should be teachers, but they're still on milk. Verse 13 says, anyone who lives on milk, still being an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. Now there are two things that the Bible uses milk or drinking or eating milk to signify. Do you know what they are? Two uses of milk in the Bible. One's good, one isn't people who eat or drink milk. What's the good part? Well, yes, calcium. I'm thinking theologically. I'm not sure, the answer to their, I'm supposed to repeat questions, was calcium. And calcium is good. I'm not sure they knew about calcium actually back then. I mean, I think they knew it was good to drink milk. I know you did. But you know, that's okay. We're having a good time here. Theologically speaking, what's the good use of milk? Yes. Okay, right. Sort of milk and honey, right? God blessing his people, right? And the idea that milk is pure and the milk is simple. You know, even if you've lost your teeth, it still works. And so that's the good part of milk. There's also a negative use of milk, and that means you're a baby. And that's what's an issue here. Isaiah, chapter 28, talks about it. I think you may have Isaiah 28 in mind here. Isaiah 28 talks about the drunken priests and prophets of Israel who refuse the instruction of Isaiah. Listen to what they say, Isaiah 28, seven through ten. It's beneath them. It's simple food. It is for those who have just been weaned. There's a pejorative word that I love for that. The word is weanlings. Isn't that a great word? They're weanlings. It just barely been weaned. You know, they're sickly and weak. They're weanlings. Who is he trying to teach? They ask Isaiah to whom is explaining his message to children weaned from their milk to those just taken from the breast? You know, this is just pitiful, thin. I want some steak. See? And Hebrews is saying you need some steak. You're still like infants not acquainted with righteousness. You're still stuck with milk. You need to be able to drink solid food, but you're not up to it. Another feature of these people besides their milky diet, their inability to eat real meat is that they are contemplating returning to Judaism. They're thinking about returning to Judaism. Now, why would they do that? Now, they would do that because Judaism was a religion that was protected by the Roman Empire. Now, there's probably somebody in here, a few people here who know a fair amount about Roman history. And if you do, you might know that the Romans divided up the religions within the Roman Empire into two groups. There were the recognized and the unrecognized religions. And a religion that was recognized was called a religio-licata. And I'll spell it for you and I'll give you a tiny little Latin lesson as well. It's spelled like this. And it's spelled, you'd say, well, it's Lysita. And we do get the word Lysita, and illicit from that. But you don't pronounce soft seas in Latin. So, for example, this man's name in Latin was Kikaro, because there are no soft seas. Okay? There's your Latin lesson for the day. I'm sure you're pleased with that. But some people say that Judaism was a religio-licata, a illicit, or recognized, or a legal religion. That's not exactly true. The truth is that it was religio-licata meant it was recognized, officially proved, officially protected. Their gods were in the Roman pantheon. Okay? One of the things the Romans liked to do, talked about this brief of the last time, was to sort of assimilate the religions of the people they conquered by getting their gods in. The Jews' gods were not in the pantheon. Okay? But they got treated almost the same way, because Judaism had all the features that they were inclined to admire. For example, it was ancient, they liked ancient things. And it was, it had rich traditions. And another very important reason was that the Judaism had lots of adherents. Some people think as many as four million of the 50 million people in the Roman Empire would have called themselves Jews. And even if it wasn't four million, maybe it was three million, or at least two and a half. It was one of the more prominent religions. And so you don't want to have all those people illegal. And Judaism was also got some pretty good treatment, because the Jews were feisty. And if you tried to put, you know, emperor's images in Jerusalem, they would do things like fight you and tear them down. And if the Roman, one time the Roman guards went to kill the Jews because they wouldn't stop a protest. They said, if you don't disperse at once, we're going to kill you. And the Jews all kneeled down and bowed their heads and pulled back their robes and said, go ahead, kill us. We're not leaving. The Jews had a reputation for that sort of thing. So they were, they were okay. And so these Christian Jews, now they're in trouble for being Christians. So why are you in trouble for being Christians, you may ask. Well, there's several reasons. One reason is that Christianity had almost all the features that they didn't like. It was new. They liked old things. I just told you that. It was growing rapidly. Judaism was big, but it wasn't growing rapidly. It was intolerant of other religions, which we of course understand is one of the virtues of Christianity, but they thought that it was terrible. They thought, you know, you could be a Christian, just please worship the emperor a little bit too. We talked about that last time. It causes dissension in the empire. And so they were suspicious. There were also reports that the Christians were cannibals, because of course they ate flesh and drank blood, right? And various other reports went out. They met in dark to do dark deeds. So it was thought. Initially, the Christians were regarded as a sect of the Jews, and so they were tolerated. But then eventually, after a number of decades passed, maybe three or four decades, people began to realize, they say, Roman people began to realize that not all Jews and Christians, not all Jews are Christians, not all Christians are Jews. So they thought initially that the Christians were just a kind of Jew. So they were okay. And they realized that the Christians and Jews didn't always agree with each other at all. And so the Christians were out of favor. The book was probably written to Christians who live in Rome. Your book tells you about that a little bit. Some people think maybe it was written to Jerusalem. Some Christians living in Jerusalem because of the many references to the tabernacle system and the sacrifices. And because of the idea of a crisis coming and they think, well, maybe that was the time when the Roman armies came and crushed the Jewish rebellion in the year 6667, 68 AD. But more likely, it was actually Christians at Rome. And for a couple reasons, for one thing, there is, well, let's see, what are the reasons why it would be in Rome? Probably the main reason is that there was a persecution in Rome around the right time for this book to be written. And also, there's not any reference to anything that happened in Jerusalem in detail. The references to the Old Testament are not to what actually took place in the temple, the way the temple actually was in the year 60 or 65 AD. It's more to the way things were in the ear of the tabernacle in the Old Testament law. Let's suppose with your book that it's written to Christians at Rome. And let's suppose that although we aren't exactly sure that there is, that the persecution we know about from Rome is indeed what is striking that church. We don't know it for sure, but we do know very definitely about a persecution from the right time against Christians in Rome. It is the persecution unleashed against the Christians by Nero. And some of you would know that the city of Rome burned in large measure about a 10 of the 14 precincts of Rome suffered extensive fire damage while Nero was emperor. The story goes, well, what do you know about Nero? If you know one thing about Nero, what did Nero do? He fiddled while Rome burned. Is that true or is it not true? Who knows if he fiddled while Rome burned? Well the truth is that nobody knows, but the rumors surfaced almost immediately that that's what he was doing. Because although Nero started off pretty well as an emperor, he became very unpopular and very erratic quite early. And the first reports of some of the best Roman historians say that orders were given not to quench the fire that started, or that sometimes even some people reported that soldiers were found throwing burning firebrands in the houses. And the idea was that Nero, who is a fabulously vain man at this point in his life, wanted to burn Rome in order to have the privilege of rebuilding and gaining glory for that. Now the truth is that's very dubious because among other things he just finished his palace a few months earlier and it was burned to the ground in the fire. He also did everything he could, building houses and bringing in food and giving people money to stop the rumors, but nothing would work. And so he decided to get a scapegoat. He blamed it on the Christians. And it worked for a while because Christians were new and rapidly growing and secretive and didn't go to emperor parties and were rumored to be cannibals and people didn't like them. But he became more and more vicious. In fact, working cruelties that I don't think it's even befitting to mention in class, but really just about unspeakable cruelties to the point that even some of the Romans said enough, enough the persecution should lay off. On the other hand, this persecution does tend to fit the attitudes of the Romans they're dispaced for the Christians. Let me give you something that's been around for a number of years from this period of time, vaguely from this period of time. It gives you a sense of what it would have been like to be a Christian back then. There's a man named Pliny, Pliny the Younger because there was an older one who was also a very famous Roman. And he was the governor of the Thinia during the period of emperor Trajan whose dates I always mean to look up but I think they're 98 to 117 AD. And this letter seems to have been written from late in the career of Trajan, say around the year 110, 112, 114 AD. And Pliny is writing, he's a governor, pretty important person. He's writing to the emperor for some advice. And the issue is he says, now you know Lord Emperor, I refer all questions wherever I'm in doubt to you. Here's my question. Let's see how we're going to start here. I've been investigating the Christians he says. And people who were accused of being Christians have been brought to me. I asked them if they were Christians. And if they confessed, I asked them a second and third time with threats of punishment. If they kept to it, that is to say, if they kept saying they're Christians. If they kept to it, I ordered them for execution. For I held no question that whatever it was that they admitted, in any case, obstinacy and unbending perversity deserved to be punished. They're saying something, this is a part I didn't read you. Some people are saying Christians are wicked and they're guilty of one thing and another. And so I hauled some of them in. I said, what have you done? They said, nothing, we're just Christians. You're a Christian? Yes, I am. And if they asked them three times and they said three times they're Christians, they were killed for that. Just because they should realize that the governor didn't like that. And if the governor doesn't like it, you shouldn't do it. That's the mentality of the time. He didn't caregate some. And what he found was this, that it was their habit on a fixed day to assemble your daylight and recite by turns a form of words to Christ as a God. They bound themselves with an oath, not to commit crime, not to commit theft or robbery or adultery, not to break their word, not to deny deposit when demanded. After this, it was their custom to take up food, ordinary and harmless. Although they had ceased that as a result of one of my edicts, he also says he took two maidservants into his chambers and tortured them for a while. They seemed to be leaders of the church to see if it was true. He said, I couldn't really get anything out of them except these same words that they promised not to commit crimes. It was an extravagant and perverse superstition, he says. And he asks the emperor, am I in the right track? I feel bad. He goes on to say killing old people and women, just for being Christians, it doesn't quite seem right. No problem killing young men or middle-aged men. But what do you think? My Lord emperor, am I doing what's right or not? We do not have the answer from Trajan. But it gives you a sense of the raw antipathy that was directed toward Christians during this period of time. They can allow them to be persecuted as they were by Nero. And of course, we're talking about persecution in the book of Revelation and the book of Peter as well. But this is the position that they're in. They're being persecuted for the second time and they become weak. They know the Old Testament well. These are some things we know. They know the Old Testament well. They've been progressing for a while, but now they're not progressing. And now the persecution is coming sharply the second time. And now they are not ready to face it. And what shall they do? That's the question. Did kind of put it to you this way. Will they adopt a rodent's perspective? You know, there's a chipmunk or a mouse crossing a field you've ever seen this and a shadow of a hawk goes over and they just try to hide as fast as they just hide. Just get out, get away. That's what some of them seem to be doing. Or is it perhaps the perspective of the fatalist? Now, this is coming our way. There's nothing we can do about it. We have to suffer. We have to suffer. Some people, when they see persecution, take the position of a skeptic. It proves there is no God. Just in a conversation with somebody this week over a mutual friend of ours who has just learned that he has cancer. Sadly, a couple of friends just learned recently who have cancer. Well, for my non-Christian friend, that really pretty much shows there is no God. How could a good God allow this to happen to a 38-year-old man? There's a nice man and he's a Christian. He's a Christian, which is good, of course. He's a Christian, he's a lovely wife and lovely children. There can't be a God if this sort of thing would happen. Maybe some of the Hebrews were wondering about that themselves. But most of them are probably thinking the way the rodent does, where is my whole? How can I hide? How can I preserve my life? That's the situation that Hebrews addresses. Now, what does Hebrews say? Hebrews says a different perspective is what we need and it's the perspective granted by the vision of God's Son, Jesus Christ. He took flesh and blood. The same flesh and blood that allows us to suffer, he took and he suffered. He was tempted as we are. He was tempted to find an easy way of escape, but he didn't do it. He endured to the end. He did not succumb. Nonetheless, he didn't really face these things, and so he sympathizes with us or empathizes with us in our weakness. And he gives us grace and time of need, Hebrews says, if we turn to him and ask him. Even if we fail, he sacrificed himself to cover our sins, to release us from the one who has the power over us. Like many others who face persecution, he finished the race, and now he awaits us, he awaits you, Hebrews. He awaits us at the finish line. That's the perspective that Hebrews would give to us, the perspective, see it through the eyes of Jesus Christ.