We started our first Hebrews Bible Study and I’m super
excited about where it is going to lead. My prayer is that we will find the
same encouragement that I’ve found in my half marathon training—keep on going
because the end is SO WORTH IT! Every Monday morning, I’m going to try and
recap our Hebrews discussion and teaching time. I’m not going to go into extravagant
detail, but I want it for my records if nothing else!
Tonight, we did an intro and history lesson about Hebrews. We learned that Hebrews is all about sprinting toward Jesus! We can really boil down the 13 chapters into two key concepts: the superiority and the accessibility of Jesus. These two things are so juxtaposed! A sweet friend shared the timely idea, though, of the Russian Ice Skater who was just a normal girl…but Putin came to watch her skate. How superior is he to her? She has no access to him, no ability to speak—let alone hug him or talk to him. However; what if she wins gold? What if she perfect scores? Or even a farther stretch, what if Putin decides to adopt this sweet girl? Then, she has the ultimate access. Y’all—that and so much greater is how God is to us! Our superior king came to see us, fell in love, chose us, and adopted us—giving us the ultimate access to his Throne (through his son Jesus!).
We learned some
history:
Hebrews was written between 60 and 70 AD—which is three to
four decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus. And we don’t know who
wrote Hebrews. We know that the author uses sermonic exhortations and
conversational Greek. Basically, what this writing tells us is that this author
was a pastor of these people who spoke their language. It was probably
preached, transcribed, and then passed around. How cool! Have you ever heard a
sermon and passed it along to a friend? I know I have!
We do know about the people group it is written to. Hebrews
was written to a small group of Jewish Christians, who were living in either
Rome or Jerusalem. They clearly did not fit in their culture, which was during
the time that Nero was the emperor of Rome. Nero ruled Rome from 54-68 AD and
he clearly hated Christians. He hated that they would not bow to him. Nero
confused the sacraments. He thought they were literally drinking Christ’s blood
and eating his body, so he thought they were cannibals. The straw that broke
the camels back—there was a great fire that almost destroyed Rome. Many people
think that Nero was the crazy arsonist. His political power was waning and his
goal was to come in and “save the day!” The problem was that Nero was
blamed…and needed a scapegoat! So, he
blamed the Christians.
He had soldiers arrest and impale Christians, set them on
fire, and entertain himself in this way. These believers were in a society
where Christians were clearly hated and persecuted. Its understanding, humanly
speaking, that many would question whether they wanted to go the whole way with
Jesus. Maybe we should just pretend we aren’t Christians, and go back to the official
Jewish culture.
This is where the writing of Hebrews comes in. Their pastor comes along and says, hey guys—let’s talk. He tells us that God used to speak to his people in many ways. Four of the many ways are as follows:
1.
Prophets (can you remember any of these? How did
God do this?)
2.
Signs and Dreams (what are some examples?)
3.
Theophany (this is a fancy word that means a
physical manifestation of God. For bonus points, can anyone remember one of
these? –Moses, wilderness)
4.
Urim and Thummin (this is not quite as common as
the other three! But, what the heck this means…they are like holy dice. Don’t
think Vegas, but they were crucial stones from the high priest of Israel. It
was also called casting lots. They defined the will of God in this way)
But now, the pastor of Hebrews says, but now, in these Last
Days he has spoken to us by his son. When is this? It’s now! We are living in
that time—so this letter is completely to us, as well! We know that Christ has
already come once; He was born, lived and taught on the earth, died, and rose
again. We are witnesses to this; but Christ has not come back a second time.
So, the same season that the Hebrew people were living in is the season we are
living in at this moment. We are in the “Already but Not Yet!” We have already
been redeemed, but not yet eternalized. We are in the last days, but we are not
there yet.
The writer/speaker says, now that we have Christ…why in the
world would we go back to trying to understand our dreams and Holy Dice when we
have Christ! When we have the exact words of Christ, why would these people go
back to being “Jews”? There’s a long long way to go! We are going and we hurt
and we are exhausted and we want to stop…so their pastor gathers them and says
you have to keep going because you have Jesus. Jesus is everything you will
ever need. Keep walking! Jesus loves you.
Even after just this simple introduction, I’m very excited
to see what is in store for the week. We will be doing some homework over the
week, but one question that was asked was this:
What battle/hill are you climbing right now? What do you
hope to get from this study? I encouraged the group to actually write something
down for this question so that at the end of the time, we can look back and see
how God has moved. I’m excited for this tangible picture of God’s work in our
lives.
If you haven’t, I would encourage you to buy the workbook
Hebrews, by Lisa Harper and study along with us as we do this study. If not,
don’t worry—I will only be recapping on Monday mornings and doing “normal” blog
things on the other days!
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