August 24, 2003
This morning we will begin a series of sermons from the book of Hebrews
in the New Testament.
Commonly we begin a book like this by identifying two things very clearly:
who wrote the book, and to whom the book was written.
Unfortunately we don't know either of these basics with the certainty that
we know about most of the other New Testament books.
As far as the author is concerned, we flat out do not know. A number of
people have been proposed over the centuries but none of them convincingly. Unless new information is uncovered, we will never
know who wrote the book of Hebrews.
As far as to whom it is written we know a number of things.
The title "To the Hebrews" would settle the issue, except that it does not
appear in the earliest manuscripts. However, this
does not mean that it is not the original title. And
in fact, I believe that the evidence favors it.
But we do know many things from the book itself about the people whom it
was written to, which helps us a great deal.
We know that they were a group of Christians the writer knew and whom he
looked forward to visiting. He has a good opinion of them. He asks for their
prayers and gives them news of their mutual friend Timothy.
We also know that these Christians were no wimps. They had paid a price
for their faith in Christ. They had been publicly persecuted, threatened,
and insulted. They had stood by their fellow Christians who were persecuted
and imprisoned. They had even endured the confiscation of their own property
because they refused to recant their faith in Jesus Christ.
The best indication is that this was a group of strong Jewish Christians.
Now, what about the purpose of writing? In view
of what we have just said about these people, it may surprise you that the
writer seems most concerned that these Christians were seriously thinking
about abandoning their faith.
For people who had shown such courage, and who had endured such trials,
it seems odd that they would be contemplating this.
Let me explain why I think this was.
First of all, I have never had my life threatened for my faith in Christ
or been imprisoned or beaten, but I would still be bold enough to say that
persecution brings about two kinds of pressure.
The first kind of pressure that we usually think about is the sudden impulse
to deny Christ in order to save our skin. This
is the kind of pressure that these Jewish Christians had successfully and
bravely withstood.
The second kind of pressure is the kind that accumulates over time. Think
of it in terms of physical pain. There is the kind of physical pain that
is excruciating and comes suddenly but subsides in a few days or weeks.
That kind of pain takes one kind of strength and courage.
But then there is the kind of physical pain that is less intense than excruciating,
and it would be tolerable for a few days, bearable for a few weeks. However,
when this kind of pain stretches into years and years, with no end in sight,
it takes a toll on the human spirit that is usually far more devastating than
pain that is intense but short-lived.
This is the kind of persecution these Jewish Christians had been suffering. The initial intense persecution had tapered off, but
now they had endured a lesser persecution for a long, long time. And it was taking its toll.
It was wearing them down.
Now add to this that there is some evidence to indicate that these Jewish
Christians were living in Rome.
Rome tolerated Jewish practice but did not tolerate Christianity.
This helps us to get a better picture of what these beleaguered Jewish Christians
were being tempted to do.
Was the temptation to completely deny Christ and denigrate Him? Not exactly.
Rather it was the temptation to return to some of their Jewish practices
which Jesus had fulfilled, and for which there was no longer a need since
Jesus had fulfilled them. And this was particularly
appealing because to do so would identify themselves enough with the Jews
to get the Romans off their backs about being Christians. And it would identify
themselves enough with their Jewish friends to get them off their backs.
In other words, what harm would there be in participating again in some
of the sacrifices or some of the priestly pronouncements?
They wouldn't stop believing in Jesus, maybe just not put so much emphasis
on Him. And in so doing it would get some of
the pressure off. It would give them some breathing
room. It would stop the pain they had endured
so long. I think if we understand the situation
of these people in this way, we will understand how the warnings and the
encouragements of the book make sense.
So what is the theme of the book?
In other words, how does the writer motivate these worn down Christians?
What can he say to inject them with new strength?
To understand how the writer approaches this, let me tell you about some
of my favorite meals.
There are certain meals that we have at our house, and usually they are
reserved for special occasions such as holidays or birthdays, which I relish
the thought of with great anticipation. Barbecued
ribs, which I enjoy preparing as well as eating. Homemade
perogies, smothered with sour cream, sauteed onions, and burnt butter, and
another Slovakian delight called pagach. That's
just to name a few.
All of these meals I anticipate and savor with enthusiasm. Such meals are not just eaten but celebrated.
But as I am eating one of these meals, a phrase always comes to my mind
that captures the enjoyment of that meal more than any other.
That phrase also captures the theme of the writer of Hebrews.
The phrase is simply this: The anticipation is only exceeded by the actual
event!
No matter how much I anticipate the ribs or the pagach or the perogies,
it’s always better than I anticipated.
And the writer finds a myriad of ways to make the same point to these weary
Jewish Christians.
You see, the Old Testament is one long period of tantalizing anticipation.
To put it in the language of the gourmet, the Old Testament was a long series
of appetizers.
And the writer reminds this group that they are now in a position to enjoy
what had been anticipated for so long.
When the main course arrives, you dig in, you don't go back to eating the
appetizers.
And in the same way, the writer of Hebrews encourages us all by painting
a series of pictures of Jesus, so beautifully, so appetizingly, that we will
simply want to pull up a chair, pick up our utensils, and begin to partake
of Him. In so many ways, the anticipation has been greatly exceeded by the
actual event.
With that background and orientation firmly in mind, we launch into the
book of Hebrews by reading the first two verses.
Hebrews 1:1 -2: In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the
prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has
spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through
whom he made the universe.
Right off the bat, the writer of Hebrews makes a tremendous claim that has
always been at the heart of both the OT and the NT.
It is also paradoxical that we often see the same claim on the covers of
the tabloids that we see while waiting in the grocery line.
The claim is simply this: God has spoken to
us!
How often I hear someone say something to this effect if not in so many
words: “If God loves us so much and cares for us so much, why doesn't He
split the heavens and come down and talk to us and tell us Himself.”
The next time you hear someone throw down the gauntlet like that give them
the Bible's reply: He did. He has. He does.
We have a lot of people today seemingly very concerned about hearing from
the supernatural world. They believe there is
a supernatural world out there, and they want to contact it. Go to Dalton's or Borders, and you will find large
sections on the spiritual and supernatural. People
walk past the Bible to reach for almost anything about the supernatural.
Actress Shirley MacLaine is one of those people who has written about her
spiritual journeys.
A few years ago she was in regular consultation with a “channeler.” A channeler is one who claims to be in contact with
some sort of ancient supernatural being. This
being sort of takes over the channeler's faculties, and a person can get wisdom
and answers to questions.
Shirley MacLaine thought she was getting a lot of great wisdom this way,
until she asked the channeler about the purchase of a race horse she was
considering buying. The channeler's answer was
to go ahead, the race horse was a good investment. So
she did.
A few weeks after she bought the horse, it dropped dead.
It really did. Shirley ended up filing
a lawsuit against the channeler.
Or consider the people who perished in the blaze in Waco, Texas as followers
of David Koresh. They thought they were hearing
God speak to them through David Koresh.
On the other hand, consider the experience of a young American coed named
Barbara, who was vacationing in Europe.
She had enjoyed her European travel, but as she dropped into the courtyard
of a lovely old English country church one day, she realized that these experiences
hadn't helped her find any answers. Her prayer
there echoed the cry of her heart: "If you are there, God, may I find you."
As Barbara left the church, her eyes caught a notice on the porch. She decided that the prayer meeting it announced in
an English home would be much more interesting than an evening alone at the
hotel.
That night one of the people at the prayer meeting gave her a book about
what had happened to an ordinary family which had trusted in God. It was amazing.
Back in London, she rang up someone who was connected to the ministry that
had published the book. There she spent a few
hours getting some of her questions answered about the Bible. She left there armed with the new discovery that she
could test God's communication in the Bible to see if it was true.
As she boarded the plane the next day to return to the states, Barbara wished
she had had more time to spend with the people who were helping her.
As the plane took off, she struck up a conversation with a man sitting next
to her. To her amazement, he turned out to be
a Christian pastor. They talked all the way across
the Atlantic Ocean to Chicago, and he answered more of her questions. The minister seemed to have been “placed” next to
her at the right time, just as the prayer meeting notice and the book had
been. You could call all that coincidence, or
you might see it as God’s speaking to her through the Bible.
Barbara believed that was exactly what was happening.
Think about the experiences of Shirley MacLaine and the followers of David
Koresh and Barbara. They all thought God had spoken
to them, yet the messages were so different. And
the results in their lives were so different. How
could they know whether the real God was speaking to them or guiding their
lives?
Could what have happened been chance? Or the
work of some power other than.God? You can see the problem.
Our culture encourages us to seek unusual experiences.
People watch TV shows such as the X-Files, fiddle with ouija boards
or attend seances. People claim to have had visions
of God, or even to have died and gone to heaven and returned. Yet an experience alone can never tell you if the
God behind it is good or right or true.
But the Bible's claim that God is speaking to us is unique among all claims.
One of the unique aspects of that claim is seen right here in this opening
sentence of Hebrews.
The claim here is that God has spoken, not just in some isolated moment,
but He has spoken again and again, over a period of centuries, and He has
spoken progressively. In other words, He has told
us more and more about Himself. And each thing
He has told us has built on what He has already told us.
Also very much in view is the fact that God has spoken into history! He has demonstrated His reality in history. And so His speaking to us is something we can understand
with our minds and evaluate and have confidence in.
What this means is that we don't have to throw our minds out in order to
believe that God has spoken in the Bible. God
has spoken in such a way that it can be evaluated and understood. We come to God by faith, but not a blind faith. Biblical faith is not a leap in the dark. It is faith based on what God has revealed about Himself.
God hasn't said, "Trust me blindly."
He has said, "I have spoken again and again, and I have demonstrated that
My words are true because I have confirmed My word in history.
Shirley MacLaine's faith in a channeler is a leap in the dark. Believing in David Koresh is a leap in the dark.
And yet people walk by the Bible and will take Shirley MacLaine’s books
off the shelf as if they were something meaningful.
One of the reasons is that people don't understand the accumulating mountain
of evidence that supports what the writer of Hebrews tells us that God has
spoken through the prophets over many centuries. And
that now He has spoken through His Son.
Many people say they think it’s harder to have faith in the Bible today
than it was 100 years ago. That is because they
have never investigated the Bible very carefully.
There is a real sense in which it is easier to believe the Bible today than
it was for my great-grandfather. But unfortunately
many people have no idea this is true.
In the last century alone, the Bible's text has increasingly been found
to be historically reliable. There have been
huge amounts of archaeological finds in the lands where the Old Testament
took place, which match what the Bible says.
The finds alone can't prove that all of the Bible's claims are true, but
they do confirm that the Bible is accurate.
In the Reader's Digest book, Great People of the Bible and How They Lived,
the author states, “By the end of the nineteenth century many people, including
some prominent Bible scholars, felt that much of the history related in the
Bible was probably myth. It was the discovery of the remains of the ancient
civilizations mentioned in the Bible - the cities and monuments of the Babylonians,
Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, and Greeks, that eventually began to turn
the tide of skepticism.”
Throughout the nineteenth century, linguists in many countries worked to
decipher the mysterious languages of these civilizations ... and scholars
began to piece together the history of the Ancient Near East. It soon became apparent that many of the events mentioned
in the Old Testament were, in fact, confirmed by the evidence that was uncovered.
For example, the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem is the pool where Jesus healed
a blind man. It is also the lower end of a long
and remarkable tunnel, which the Bible says that King Hezekiah built to protect
Jerusalem's water supply from enemy siege. It’s
mentioned in I Kings 20.
In 1880, an Arab boy who was playing in the pool of Siloam, discovered an
ancient inscription written in ancient Hebrew script, describing in detail
how the tunnel was made. The description confirmed
that the tunnel had been built during King Hezekiah's reign just as the Bible
says. Many of the Bible's historical details have been confirmed this way
in the last few decades.
So we have real reason to trust what the Bible says when we are told that
God spoke to us in many ways and in many times through the prophets of the
Old Testament.
There is another aspect of the reliability of God's speaking through the
Bible that is alluded to by the writer of Hebrews here.
And that is the continuity between what He has spoken in the OT and
what He has spoken to us through Jesus Christ.
Consider this. The Bible was written by dozens
of people, from many different cultures, and all kinds of backgrounds. Some
of them were common people, some royalty, some educated, some not, and they
were separated by hundreds of years.
The shepherd David did not have the same education as Paul, who lived in
the Roman empire. Job was associated with the very ancient world, but Moses
lived in the midst of a sophisticated Egyptian culture.
These men were writing about the most complicated and deepest questions
there are. Some only told little bits of the
whole, whereas others filled in the blanks that were left by others.
There was no time machine to consult with one another over the barriers
of time and culture.
Is it likely that a tightly woven book could emerge from such a process? Yet that is what happened.
In fact, that is the theme of the book of Hebrews.
The writer will delve into the details to show that the way God has
spoken to us in these last days, through His son, does not contradict what
He has said through the centuries before, does not take off in a new direction,
but instead can only be completely appreciated and understood by looking
at all that went before it.
In other words, Jesus Christ didn't just drop out of the sky 2000 years
ago and leave us saying, "Who is this guy?"
No, all that God said before was preparation so that when Jesus came on
the scene, we would know who He was.
We would understand a richness and depth of the life and death of this man
Jesus because what God had spoken before, at many times and in various ways,
was neatly tied up and fulfilled in every aspect of what Jesus did and said.
How can you possibly explain the continuity of a book that was written by
so many people over such a long time, unless it really is what it claims to
be: God’s speaking to man!
This is the theme and the understanding that the writer of Hebrews will
take us to again and again.
The prophets told us throughout the Old Testament that God's intent was
to dwell in the midst of His people. But only
in Jesus Christ did we come to fully understand how deeply God meant this. Only then did we understand that God would dwell in
our midst by His becoming a man. The book of
Hebrews examines the implications of Jesus’ taking on human flesh more deeply
than any other book in the Bible. We will see
that the anticipation of the Old Testament is only exceeded by the actual
event in the New.
Most of us understand that Jesus died for our sins.
But as we see how the details of the OT sacrificial system with its
priests and altars and sacrifices gives substance to how that death ministers
to our deepest needs, we will be led to proclaim, "The anticipation is exceeded
only by the actual event!"
Let me conclude this way. What we are talking
about here in the book of Hebrews is a bunch of pretty amazing Christians,
who have suffered a lot for their faith over a long period of time. They have
been worn down by that suffering. What they have really began asking themselves
in their heart of hearts is this:
Is it really worth it to live this way?
Is it worth it to always have your Jewish friends telling you that you have
betrayed the Jewish faith and that God is angry with you? That you have rejected
the law and you are part of something that God is against?
Is it worth it to undergo persecution from the Roman government? Your Jewish
friends don’t have this problem.
This is no different than what happens to us anytime we are trying to do
something worthwhile, but when we get into the middle of it and the going
gets tough, we are inevitably left with the question of “Is this worth it?
You decide to get into shape. You begin an exercise regimen. After a few
days, the routine, the pain, the hassle of the whole thing begins to pull
down your enthusiam. You begin to ask yourself the question. Is it worth it?
The only way you will keep going on your exercise regimen, is if you bring
before your mind the vision of what will be achieved if you stick to it. You
picture the benefits of being in shape. The increased energy. You picture
what it will be like to look and feel better than you do right now. And if
that vision of what will be yours is strong enough, enticing enough, then
you will persevere.
The writer of the book of Hebrews understood this.
What is the best way to encourage these weary Christians?
The author chooses to set forth the vision of Jesus Christ. He will paint
picture after picture of the beauty, the majesty, the compelling nature of
Jesus Christ, so that the nagging question, “Is it worth it?” will be answered
profoundly and deeply in the affirmative.
It’s not only worth it, but you will find that your anticipation will only
be exceeded by the actual event.