Sunday School | Hebrews Part I

Introduction

Alright. Alright. You guys ready? Settle on in. Good to be with you guys. Good morning. If you didn't get one of these, you're gonna want this especially this week. So this is the session on Hebrews. Bob is running around with a stack of them. If you don't have one, raise your hand. Hebrews, Hebrews, Hebrews. There you go. Thank you. Chad, good to see you. Appreciate it. Hebrews here.

Okay, you guys, we're so close. What we've been doing here, if you're just kinda just stumbling into the room, for the last several months, we have been looking at each book in the New Testament one at a time. And we're doing it in a... It might look a little haphazard, but there's a method to the order. What I've been trying to model for you guys as we walk through the New Testament is a way to read the New Testament.

My suggestion to you, if you've never read through the New Testament or if you're not sure if you've read it all, or if you just want to begin the process of building a daily habit to get five or ten or twenty or thirty or whatever minutes of time in the scriptures every day, you might start like this. You read Luke and then Acts and then Romans. Luke because it gives you a fantastic historical kind of framework of Jesus' life. Acts because it's the sequel to Luke. And then Romans because it really lays the theological foundation for the message of Christianity.

So you read Luke, Acts, Romans, and then honestly read anything you want. Read a couple of books. Read some of the letters. You can get some from Paul or Peter. Read a handful of those. And then after you've read, you know, two, three, four, whatever, go back and pick another gospel. I don't care which one — Matthew or Mark or John — and then read a handful of letters, another five, say, and then go back and do another gospel, do a bunch of letters, back to another gospel, do a bunch of letters. And do it in that way until you're all done except the only other addition I would say is you want to save Hebrews and Revelation to the end. Because Hebrews and Revelation are the most complex books in the New Testament.

And I have a very distinct memory from college when I first started reading my Bible — I read Hebrews and it was like walking through wet cement the entire time, like I had no idea what was happening. And when I was done, I had no idea what I had read. I just didn't have any of the prerequisite knowledge to really make sense of it, so I was lost the entire time. Okay? So for that reason, I would really say you want to save, and then Revelation is even worse. We'll get to that in a couple weeks. But save Hebrews and Revelation to the end.

Although, here's the dirty little secret. Even if you do this and you start Luke, Acts, Romans, bunch of letters, gospel, bunch of letters, gospel, of letters, gospel — and save Hebrews and Revelation to the end — it probably won't even help you that much. Okay? Because Hebrews is not a complex interaction with the New Testament that you will just have read; it's a very complex interaction with the Old Testament, which you still might not yet have read.

So properly speaking, we might say, save Hebrews till you've read the Old Testament, but we're not going to do that. Just know that as you go through it, it's going to be difficult. My job today, however, is to make it less difficult. And so what I want to do today, we're going to spread Hebrews out over a couple of weeks because it's just a big one. We're going to spend a couple of weeks looking at Hebrews so that when you read it, you will not be as lost as I was when I read it. It really — it's very well organized. There's an awful lot of stuff. And if you know what you're looking for, then I think it'll be a great assist. I just waded into it in a state of profound and utter ignorance, and that didn't work as well for me. So we're going to try to roll that back a little bit for you.

What Do You Know About Hebrews?

Okay? So as we often do, what do you know about Hebrews? You guys get first dibs. Gil?

His faith was good or Abraham's faith was good into salvation. Okay. So faith. So faith is a major theme in Hebrews. In particular, do you guys know what chapter of Hebrews is known as the hall of faith or the faith hall of fame? Chapter 11.

If you go through and you look at Hebrews 11, like every verse is like by faith, by faith, by faith, by faith. Massive theme as the author of Hebrews looks back into this really extensive cast of characters and talks about all that is done by faith. Not just here, by us, but also by that — by that prior, by the folks who live before Christ. And that's a little bit important because we have a tendency, perhaps, to think, I became a Christian by faith and I walk by faith because I know Jesus and I believe in Jesus.

But prior to Jesus, you couldn't have faith in Jesus because he didn't exist, and so they did things by works. So under Hebrew, Old Testament, Jewish, whatever — it's a works righteousness — the message is basically be good, and then Christianity comes along and says, well, it's no longer about what you do, it's about what you believe, and so this whole faith thing is a new concept. And everything I just said is false. Right?

What the author of Hebrews is saying is, no, no, no, no, no, no. We live by faith. They lived by faith. It has always been by faith, from first to last. That's one of the things that he's arguing: that Christ is — he is better than, for sure, we'll get to that, but he is fulfilling what has always been. Right? So it's not a deviation. This is not some new idea that God wants us to trust him. That has always been the plan — that we live by faith.

Right? The difference here for us who are in Christ now, at this side of the cross, is that we have faith in what God has already done. Whereas the folks that the book of Hebrews is talking about, they were required to have faith in what God would do. So you can think of it like this: if the cross is the payment for our sins, and it is, in the Old Testament, people were saved by credit, right? They were believing that a payment would come. And those of us who live in the New Testament were saved more by debit, by an application of a payment that was already made, right?

So we look in faith back to the cross — the debit payment — they looked in faith up to the cross — this credit payment. Make sense? Okay, Hebrews faith. What else do you know about Hebrews?

Jesus is dead. Better. Better, better, better, better, better. If there's one summary statement for the book of Hebrews, it's that. Jesus is better. We'll walk through, maybe today, maybe next time, we'll talk through in what sense he is better, but if there's any one phrase for Hebrews, it's that: Jesus is better.

Okay? He's better. Well Bob, what's he better than? We'll just do a real quick list. What's he better than? He's better than the angels. He's better than Moses. It's a better covenant, better everything's better. Yeah, better than angels, better than Moses, a better covenant, make a better sacrifice and a better sanctuary. He speaks a better word. He's better, better, better, better, better.

The supremacy of Christ is the driving message of Hebrews. I'll show you where that fits into his overall argument in a few minutes. Okay, Jesus is better, faith, anything else? Big things out of Hebrews, Chris?

I'm interested in hearing the difference between, you know, Sinai and Zion with with what you were talking about, that it's a continuation of I can see in Hebrews where he was talking about the faith being the same from Abel or Enoch all the way to Christ. But I guess I'm still wondering the contrast between Sinai and Zion.

Contrasts: Sinai and Zion

Excellent. Okay. So Chris is pointing out that we can do or, or Hebrew — the author of Hebrews — does a comparison and a contrast. So comparing life under the old covenant to life under the new covenant, there's a lot of stuff that's the same. Right? Faith being maybe the primary girder that runs from the old covenant to the new covenant, so we can compare those.

But Chris is also pointing out, but aren't there contrasts? And there are. And Chris is representing, as Hebrews does, there's Mount Sinai, and what's Mount Sinai famous for? Law. The law, which we get the law. And Mount Zion, kind of this promised land they were moving to and all the Christ accomplished — how do these things differ? And Hebrews is gonna make a very explicit statement. Well, in fact, can look at it briefly — I think I have — I'll explain where this fits, but just for the sake of getting to the text.

Go to the back. It's chapter 12. You can look at chapter 12, verse 18, or you can just stay right here on the bottom of this — below this little dotted line. Here's how he compares. Here's how he no, rather, here's how he contrasts these mountains. He says, you have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire, to darkness, gloom and storm — that is Mount Sinai. Right? To trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking — words of those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them because they could not bear what was commanded. If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death. That sight was so terrifying that Moses said, I'm trembling with fear.

He's casting the law in these very fearsome terms. Mount Sinai was a land — look at it — of fire, darkness, gloom, and storm. Because we stand guilty. And Mount Sinai is for us a mountain of death. He says, you haven't come to that mountain. Instead, you come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn whose names are written in heaven. You come to God, the judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

Remember Abel's blood cried out judgment on Cain who had murdered him. And Jesus, who was also murdered — his blood cries out mercy. And so what the author of Hebrews is doing, this we're kind of getting to the meta argument here, is Jesus is better. It's a better mountain and the blood speaks a better word because it's a word of mercy and grace to people who are guilty under judgment. Right?

So there's a great deal of continuity, but absolutely because the betterness is necessarily discontinuity. It's not that... We don't like that. Don't — I had a friend who observed that sometimes Jewish tombstones will sometimes be shaped like the Ten Commandments. And my friend, when he saw this — when he saw this like gravestone shaped like the Ten Commandments and a dead body buried underneath it — his comment to that was, man, do not bury me under the law. Right? Like, that is not — that's not what I'm looking for. Bury me under a cross where somebody else has paid my penalty. Right? We've come to a better mountain.

Kelly Sue?

Another contrast is Jesus being the better sacrifice. Is he kinda does a treatment. Absolutely. Yeah, so — and we'll get here, maybe today or maybe, maybe next time. In Hebrews 9, 8, 9, and 10, when we walk through the Hebrews 8, 9, 10, is all about Jesus making a better sacrifice and a better sanctuary that leads to a better covenant. And one of the things, one of the one of the facets of its betterness is exactly as Kelly said, it's access. That we who once were barred from his presence are now invited in. And that's even in, even in Hebrews 12, it's the same language when he says, you haven't come to a mountain that cannot be, that — that is burning with fire — to this thing that blocks you away, but rather you come to one where there's people in joyful assembly. You once were barred, but now you are welcomed in. And that is entirely purchased by the cross, by Christ on his cross.

Yeah, Judy?

Maybe you already said this, and I missed it. But the whole — the whole book itself is an argument for keepers who were very familiar with the Old Testament, who knew all the laws, who knew how impossible it was to keep it, who knew the predictions of the future.

And it's — it's a very logical argument comparing the fulfillment of all the prophecies with this within what it what Jesus is. Yeah. And it covers everything they believe, and then does the comparing and contrasting. Yes. The reader is a reasonable watch. Yes.

Okay. So what Judy is saying is that as you walk through this book, you're gonna see — and this is why it's so hard for us — it's written to a Jewish audience. It's written to a people that are very apparently very fluent with the Hebrew scriptures. And if you are, then you're like, yeah, of course. Makes total sense. And if you're not, then you're gonna think, what in the world are you talking about? Like, don't even know what you're — he's just absolutely peppered with Old Testament, direct citations, constant quotations, but also just innumerable allusions to the Old Testament, to Old Testament characters. And like, if I were to say to you, I were to say blah blah blah David, blah blah blah, you'd be able to double click on David in your mind and pull up, like, that's the guy — was the king, or, you know, killed Goliath, or, you know, Amnon, Absalom, whatever. You have different files in your brain about David which makes it accessible to you.

But if you didn't know who David was, and I say David, it's just a word — it means it's empty. Right? There's a lot of characters, or a lot of events that might be — you're like, I just don't even know what you're talking about, and it makes it harder. But he knows all about it, he assumes his audience knows all about it. That's why for us to really mind this thing, we're gonna have to kinda get up to speed on some of those things.

Okay. One more thing and then I will try to start to kinda glue together a high view of this thing.

About the Author and Warnings

Hebrews — everybody got some?

Brother. Okay.

This is the most anonymous thing in the New Testament. People have speculated, was it Paul, was it Apollos, was it a disciple of Paul, who was it? Nobody knows. I don't know, I don't know. I don't really care. But nobody knows. And if they think they know, they probably don't know.

So Kelly?

One last big thing about Hebrews, because it's a scary book — there's warnings that are often misunderstood because they're about Israel and its history — but they're present in Hebrews, it rattles archaic — but then they're followed by reassurance. Yes, okay.

So probably for most people, the scariest warning passage in the New Testament is in Hebrews 6. Hebrews 6 is famous for telling people that you can lose your salvation, and not only that, but you can't get it back. Right? It's impossible for those who have once tasted to then be brought back to repentance. They'd have to crucify Jesus all over again.

It's a very terrifying passage, Hebrews 6. But what's funny about Hebrews 6, in my opinion, is that it's not at all unique to the book of Hebrews. Hebrews is riddled with warnings. The whole thing, over and over again, are very stern, very stark warnings. I want to show you where they fit in the whole argument. That's going to be really important to understand what he is saying, what he is not saying, so that we won't — the problem is some of us are like, well, I believe that you can't lose your salvation, therefore, the warning passages don't mean anything at all, and we can just ignore them. Others would say, well, maybe I'm not sure if you can or can't lose your salvation, but it sure seems like you can, so I guess we need to live in a state of constant dread and uncertainty. And I think both of those are erroneous approaches, but they're understandable approaches.

So we're going to try to see what Hebrews offers — very stern warnings. It is not meaningless. Alright? We have to look and see what it means and where it fits in this argument.

The Nature of the Text and Its Audience

Alright. So let's do this. We'll sort of roll it back up to the top. Hebrews is almost certainly a transcription of a sermon. When you read it, you may notice it feels more audible than visual. Things like he'll repeat things over and over again that wouldn't be necessary if you could just look up the page, but are very necessary if you're just listening to me talk. Right?

So it is written down. It refers to itself as a letter, a brief word. I've written you briefly this word of exhortation. I think that it was initially a sermon, and then this was transcribed into a letter and mailed out. So when you read it, you'll notice some things that feel, again, feel audible. It was a sermon, transcribed and sent out to a particular community. Probably based on the things we've said here, a Jewish community.

Believers, followers of Christ, they're Jewish based on the fact that they are supposed to have a very rich understanding of the Old Testament scripture, and they are people that have suffered. They have suffered faithfully, they have suffered obediently, they have persevered walking with Christ, but they might not do that anymore. It's written to a group of people who, if you imagine, when you were a new believer, it was costly, but you endured it and you got through it and you are faithful to Christ. But as the years have gone on, the cost just has accrued.

Do you know this event, do you know this phenomenon? It's been a while. Yeah, I mean, you had a high point here and you really endured a lot of stuff, but now we're out here and it's been a while and it's just not that much. I've had enough persecution, thank you very much, and I don't want to play anymore. Do you know this phenomenon? Sometimes, like, life is an endurance game. Right now, you guys know our son Max was in a motorcycle accident — and the initial days were pretty terrible and miserable and excruciating. And he got through that and he persevered through that. But he's been, you know, unable to do anything at all for like a month.

And now he's at the point where it's just not fun, not having fun. You know, you've been there, right? It's been a long time, and now your friends that are all super supportive in the beginning, they're off doing fun things. And they're awesome, but they've got fun things to go do, and you're just stuck on, you know, this? Right? This is where the Hebrews are. And the author or the preacher is communicating to them, hey, you did it. You stayed faithful.

But I'm noticing your grip's getting a little light. You're beginning to delaminate, and it looks like not only might you — you might be walking away from Jesus, or you might be actually just moving back to Judaism. I'm just gonna worship God like we used to. There was a little — it was a little less costly. And so he's saying, no, no, no, don't do that. Don't do that. What Jesus is — is better, better, better than what you've come out of. He is better than anything you might think about moving so called forward to. He is the apex of the whole thing. Don't abandon him.

In fact, you come from a people, you come from a Jewish nation that knows all about abandoning God. Do you remember the wilderness? Do you remember what it was like? You remember that in our own people we were brought out of slavery, went into the promised land, but before we got there, we spent forty years in the wilderness. Right? You're in the wilderness. You live, if you're in this room right now at Church of the Holy Spirit, you live between Egypt and the promised land. This is the wilderness. Right? We have left slavery, but we're not home yet.

And he points out that, in him — he uses Psalm 95, I'll show you — Psalm 95 is a primary lens to really look at the era of the wilderness and the book of Numbers. And he says, don't you remember? There were a whole bunch of people that left Egypt, but they never made it to the promised land. Their bodies fell in the desert. Don't be like them. Don't be those that leave Egypt and then give up on the way and die in the desert. Stay the course, finish the game, cross the river, come all the way in.

That's what he's saying. And he's making the case that if Jesus is better, and what he offers is so dramatically superior, and if disobedience in the desert led to death, how much more severely do you think we would be at risk if we who have tasted Christ himself abandoned him? That went badly for them. We would be abandoning something so much greater, so much grander, and therefore, how much worse would our fall be? Finish the game, do not abandon him, go all the way in.

That's essentially the book of Hebrews. On the way, he's going to say, listen, Jesus is better than the angels — which is to say he speaks a better word. Angels are messengers. Jesus' message is better than the angel's message, and the angel's message was the law. The law was put into effect through angels, and he's saying he's better than the angels because the grace that he offers is better than the law. He's better than Moses — Moses brought the law. What Jesus brought was himself. He is better here than the angels of Moses, speaking a better word. He is a better king.

We'll talk about that; it's a little bit hidden. I'll show you how that works. He's not only a better king, he's a better priest, and that priest offers a better sacrifice and a better sanctuary that leads to a better covenant. And then finally, the third main movement is that he is our forerunner. He's the one — it's a big, great big "follow the leader" game. He is the leader. We follow him, and we follow him all the way.

Okay? He's a better king, he's a better priest, he's a better forerunner. Never abandon him. That, in a nutshell, is the book of Hebrews. Okay? But he says it with a lot of words. All right?

How to Read Hebrews

So here's what you're gonna look for. First thing, if you go to the front, I think this is comprehensive in terms of the actual direct citations. I know that it is not anywhere close to comprehensive in terms of the total allusions to Old Testament. Okay? But even just with the direct citations, can we agree that's a ton of scripture he's quoting? He's all over the place. He's from Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Psalms, Psalms, Proverbs, 2 Samuel, 1 Chronicles, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, and Haggai. That's a lot.

All over the place. But his favorite passage without any question is Psalm 110. Psalm 110 is the New Testament's favorite Old Testament chapter, cited probably about 25 times across the New Testament. It gets quoted over and over and over, so we're gonna take a minute — oh gosh, yeah, we're gonna take a minute. We do three weeks on Hebrews. We're gonna pause and look at Psalm 110 because it's probably the most important passage in the Old Testament for the argument he's making.

I want you to see what he's doing with it. It's incredibly crucial, and it's not just in Hebrews. Only about a third of the usages of Psalm 110 show up in Hebrews. The rest are scattered across the New Testament. All the New Testament writers love this Psalm, and we don't tend to be very familiar with it. So here it is. Here's how it goes.

The Lord says to my Lord — Psalm 110:1

Psalm 110 is of David. The Lord says to my Lord —

Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. — Psalm 110:1

The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying, rule in the midst of your enemies. Your troops will be willing on your day of battle, arrayed in holy splendor, your young men will come to you like dew from the morning's dawn.

What office is that describing? Those first several verses of Psalm 110?

King. King. It is a king who has a scepter, it is the king who sits at the right hand of the Father, it is a king who rules in the midst of his enemies, it is the king who leads his troops. Psalm 110 is about a person who is the undisputed king.

This is the same king of Psalm 2, which is the coronation of Messiah. Psalm 110 is a messianic psalm extolling the kingship of Messiah. But that's not all.

Second part says to this person who is king, you are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. The Lord is at your right hand. He will crush kings on the day of his wrath, he will judge nations, heaping up the dead, crushing the rulers of the whole earth. He will drink from a brook along the way, and so he will lift his head high.

What Psalm 110 is explaining in language that might not be immediately accessible to us is that someone will come someday who will be both king and priest. Okay?

Now we looked at this a little bit in Zechariah, you know, somebody might be like, can you stop talking about this, please? Sure, sure, sure — in just a second. Adam was king. He was given the garden, he was given the cosmos to rule. Adam was priest. Adam was both king and priest. Garden of Eden was a temple, he was supposed to be a priestly king and a kingly priest, but he blew it, and everything went just all to hell. And he was no longer a king — he lost the kingship — and he really lost the priesthood. He was banished from the temple.

And then God decides to split it up, some will be kings and some will be priests, but someday somebody is going to come who will be both king and priest. Psalm 110 is talking about this character. He is the king of Psalm 2, and he is the priest. He's not a Levitical priest, he's a different sort of priest. He's a priest on the order of Melchizedek. We'll chase that guy down a little bit. All you need to know for the moment is that there is some other higher order of priests than the priests of Levi, and this guy is gonna be that. The author of Hebrews is gonna make hay out of this.

Okay? If you really want to understand Hebrews, you'd have to read and understand Psalm 110. Probably helpful to go back to Genesis 14 where the whole Melchizedek story comes from — to get all that really pretty central stuff. Psalm 110 is massive.

Okay? The second psalm that he loves is Psalm 95. Psalm 95, if you have any memory of this, would be — it's the psalm we preached. I preached on it maybe a year ago, and I tried to trick you all by interrupting a worship song in the midst of it and coming out and rebuking everybody. Do you remember that moment? That was Psalm 95. Okay?

So Psalm 95 begins all lovey-dovey, hey, we love Jesus, or we love God; he's great, what are the — and then it just comes in with this big harsh rebuke right in the middle of it. That's when I walked on stage to say, you know, like, stop it. Do you believe what you're singing? That passage, the second half only, is what he's quoting from.

So if you look at Psalm 95, down at the bottom there — verses 7 to 11 — it says this:

Today, if you would only hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested me. They tried me though they had seen what I did. For forty years I was angry with that generation, and I said, these are people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways. So I declared on oath in my anger, they shall never enter my rest. — Psalm 95:7–11

What is Psalm 95 about? What era is that about? Wilderness. It is the wilderness. Okay? Meribah, Massah — that's cities, or a city really, it's a double name city in the wilderness. That forty years, that they are angry — that's that; that's talking about the forty years in the wilderness. When he says they shall never enter my rest, what does that mean in the Psalm 95 context?

Won't go to the promised land, Lily.

All of that, he's going to go to that over and over and over again. And remember when I said, if Jesus is so great and he's so better, if we abandon him, that's going to be worse than what they did when they abandoned him in the wilderness. When he's talking about them abandoning him in the wilderness, he's almost always drawing that out of Psalm 95. He's going to quote Psalm 95 multiple times, pulling this argument out.

So when you read it, you have to understand, okay, there was this moment in the people's history that they would remember where God had delivered them greatly — freeing them from slavery, bringing them out, promising them all these good things between Egypt and the promised land. They blew it. And he's going to say, don't be like them. Don't Psalm 95 your way through life. Okay? That's what he's doing.

So if you understand Psalm 110, that's going to be hugely helpful. Okay? Psalm 110 — that's going to the king and the priest. I know who Melchizedek is. That's going to help you.

If you understand that we are at risk, we are always at risk of leaving Egypt, getting distracted on the way, and not crossing the river into the promised land, you're going to understand the world that he's talking to, the framework. Okay?

And then the third passage that you've got to know — before you read Hebrews, these are the three you've got to have — Psalm 110, Psalm 95, and then finally, Jeremiah 31. What's Jeremiah 31? Do you have that one in your brain at all?

New covenant. Okay. There's basically three passages in the Old Testament: Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 36, and then Deuteronomy 30. But chiefly, people look at Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36. These are new covenant passages.

And he is — what Jeremiah was saying in Jeremiah 31, 31 and following, so chapter 31, verse 31, and following, is like, hey, we're gonna clear the decks on this. This isn't working. You are not the sort of creature capable of following the rules. You just can't do it. My rules are amazing, and you are really bad at this. So we're going to clear the decks; it's not going to be the way we used to do it. We're gonna find a new way to make this work.

What I'm going to do is, instead of writing those laws on stone that you'd be able to read, and then we would just live happily ever after — that's clearly not working — so instead, I'm going to write the law on your heart. I'm going to remove your heart of stone, replace it with a heart of flesh, I'm going to write my law on your heart. Here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to move into you. I'm going to inhabit you. I will put my Spirit in you. I will move you to follow my decrees, and I think that's going to work better.

So that's what we're going to do. There'll be a new covenant. Just forget everything. Forget everything I said. Just new covenant, new way to do this. I will move in. I will be the hand in the sock puppet that is you because you suck at all of this. That's essentially what the new covenant message is.

Okay? Jeremiah 31 — this is the single longest quotation of the Old Testament in the New Testament. It's a big chunk of Jeremiah 31. So if you want to read Hebrews and you first get into it, I'm going to go understand Psalm 110, I'm going to understand Psalm 95, I'm going to understand Jeremiah 31. If you do those three things and then start wading into Hebrews 1, 2, 3, 4, you're going to do pretty well. That's what you're looking for.

That was a lot. Let me pause. You want to interact with any of that? You want to rebuke me for saying the S-word, you can do that too. That'll be okay. Psalm 110, Psalm 95, Jeremiah 31. Got it? Okay. Good. Good. All right, take a look. That's all here on the front. You can go through it. You can literally go through and look at every one of these passages, there's a million of them, and see and understand what they say. You can look at this cast of characters. He is broadly drawing just across time. Right?

We go Adam, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Melchizedek, Isaac, Jacob, Esau, Judah, Levi, Joseph and his sons, Moses, Aaron, Pharaoh and his daughter, Joshua, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, and Samuel — by direct name — each one of them. Right? He's got a lot he's gonna go on to. Now, I'm gonna try to decide — and they're in order, too. Like, they're not random. I'm just like, oh, he's just randomly grabbing the cast. No. They're in the order of the historical, productive history. The whole chronology of things? Yeah, I mean, certainly when you go through Hebrews 11, which has a bunch of these, that's absolutely in order. Some of them he'll pull in different parts of the book as he needs, but Hebrews 11 is definitely in order. We'll — we're gonna look a little bit more at Hebrews 11, probably not today.

Inside the Argument: Structure of Hebrews

So let's do this. Let's go inside. We'll go to the — what time is it? I'll give you this high-level view. I'll give you this and try to do it in this colorful page. This took forever, you guys. Okay? Trying to figure out — I printed the entire book of Hebrews up in one big thing so I could see it all at once and circled all the sections. I kept all my notes if you want to see the genesis of this thing. But here's my best crack at taking a very long, complex argument and making it visually graspable.

Here's what you're gonna look for as you go through it. Hebrews breaks into three main chunks, divided at these hinge points by these summary statements. So chunk one is: Jesus is better because he is the king. He's not merely the angel messenger boy. He is not merely Moses who brings the law — he is king. He's better because he's king.

And then we get this thing that I got in green there, which is a summary statement of the whole book of Hebrews. Then we've got, let's talk about Jesus being a better priest. This is by far the largest and most complex section. It has false starts and defies tidy summary. It was a beast. But the pre-stuff is the big main middle section where he really spends most of his time. And then you get another green section, another summary that if you walk through the chapter four, one and the two, the these two summaries are very — you can walk through and be like, correspond, correspond, correspond. These are absolutely summary statements.

And then, after that last one, you get into the — the forerunner. Okay? So as you read it, you can pay attention and think, okay, I'm in the first section where he's talking about Jesus being a king, but you're gonna be surprised because he doesn't really use the word king, but I promise you it's true, and I'll tell you why in a minute. He's a better king — summary statement, okay?

Get that. Priest — that's where you're gonna get lost, that's where you're gonna get confused, that's where you're to give up, and the whole priest section — he even gets lost and gets confused and almost gives up. Literally. There's a point in the book where he's like — he launches into the priestly stuff, and he starts talking about Melchizedek, and then he's like, I forgot how stupid you guys are. Hang on a minute. And he backtracked, literally, he's like — man, I want to take you guys some places, but you're just kind of dumb. And so he circles around and then he goes after it.

Watch it happen. It's literally what happens in the middle of this thing. He wants to talk about the priest, but he knows — he knows this is a calculus class, and some of us are trying to memorize our multiplication tables. And then you get that summary, and watch the second summary, and then all the application, all the forerunner stuff.

So at least, very least, as you watch through, you can use this color map to see what you're looking at. And then what I skipped in that little summary is this other color — the red stuff.

During and after each section where Jesus is better than angels, or Jesus is better than Moses, or he's a better king, he's better priest, he's a better forerunner — there's a warning. So, hey, Susan, don't abandon him. Okay? He's king. And then summary. And then he's like, he's a better priest — and so, my goodness, he's a better priest; he's an exceptional priest; he's fantastic. How much more severely do you think we would be judged to abandon this guy who is better than anything the world has ever seen? So don't. And then he's a better forerunner, and so, my goodness, you guys, don't walk away from him. And there's more warning.

So as you go through, you're gonna have the blue sections about Jesus being better, interspersed with red warnings. You're going to have the green sections of these summaries as we argue that Jesus is the better king, better priest, better forerunner. Got it?

Watch for those things. You can keep this thing open as you read through it. And I really hope — well, I hope that every week you've been reading, either reading ahead to be familiar with the text before we talk about it, or just as good, after we talk about it, going back and reading it. Right? It's never my intention to be your cheat sheet so you don't have to read it, but to be your guide — your helper — so that when you do read it, you're going to get more of it. You'll discover that it's filled with treasure and you can find it. This would be a very good one to really do that.

So even if you haven't been doing that, consider right now, this week, read the book of Hebrews, read through it a couple of times, and see if you can find this argument that might have otherwise been a little bit elusive because it's genuinely hard.

Summary and Final Encouragement

Okay. Now, how are we doing? Good, good, good? Questions about this? The first section, Jesus is better — what? Second section, better — what? Third section, better — what? Forerunner. Okay? If you get that, that's gonna help you. We'll look at the summaries in a minute.

Here's what I want to do in our remaining time. Let's talk about the king thing because it'll be confusing to you. If you're reading that first section, you're like, I don't see any mention of king. What is the code word for king in the book of Hebrews? Son.

Why, on what possible basis could I argue that son means king in the book of Hebrews? What do you mean by that? Oh, inheritance. Yes. And what else? Son means king. I promise this is true. Here's what might be useful to know before you even get into Hebrews about that.

When we say that Jesus is the Son of God, there are three very different and somewhat confusing ways that the New Testament describes Christ as the Son of God. He is absolutely the Son of God, He is also the Son of God, and He is the Son of God. And those are three completely different claims. Okay?

Number one, what is the first earliest, most fundamental sense in which Jesus is the Son of God? Conceived by the Holy Spirit. That's number two. That's good. What's prior to that? What is it? Prior to that, Jesus is uncreated. What's that? Begotten. Okay. Yes, provided that you mean eternally begotten, which is of course what you mean. Okay. So Jesus is the second person of the Trinity. In eternity past, there was God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. He is ontologically — meaning in the very nature of his being — the Son of God.

In some sense, it's really hard for us to get our head around. The Spirit, in the same way that the Spirit proceeds from — bear with me — is in some manner derivative of the Father and the Son. The Son himself is begotten of or derivative of the father. The father is the prime, the original — and in some regard, and do not burn me as a witch because this is not heresy, it just seems like it, in some regard, Jesus the son, the second person of the Trinity, is descendant of the father. We use the language he is eternally begotten of the father. And in that sense, he is the son of God.

Number two, Gary? What comes next? Conceived by the Holy Spirit. Joseph was not Jesus' father. Okay? To put it slightly more crassly, there was no human sperm donor when Jesus was conceived. He is the Son of God. He is so he is ontologically the Son of God. He is also incarnationally the Son of God, and that is not the same thing. These are different claims. That Mary was a virgin, conceived in her womb of the Holy Spirit, was Jesus of Nazareth. He's the Son of God ontologically, the second person of the Trinity. He's the Son of God in that he was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in a virgin's womb. Right?

Third one is what we are talking about here. Third sense, in which he is the Son of God, what is that? This is a little bit weirder. Ontologically? Incarnationally? But the book of Hebrews is not talking about either of those. It is talking about royally. He is the heir to the throne of God. That in Psalm 2 — this is what he's quoting — in Psalm 2 it says, you are my son. Today, I have become your father.

Is this — this is Psalm 2. This is what he's quoting. And Psalm 2 is about the coronation of the king. There is this moment where the king grants to his son the kingdom and says, it's your kingdom now. You are the heir to the throne. The inheritance is yours. You are my son. You are the royal prince who has become the king. And that always is what the book of Hebrews is talking about when it calls Jesus the son of God. The New Testament might sometimes refer to the ontological, third — second person, it might sometimes refer to the incarnational, human, born deity — but in Hebrews, he's using Son of God in royal language.

I'll show you who else does, just so you know we're not making this up completely. Go to Romans one. And in Romans one, this may have troubled you. This used to trouble me. Let's start in Romans 1:1.

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God — Romans 1:1

Listen to this: regarding his Son, so now your ears perk up —

who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead — Romans 1:3–4

And when you see Lord there, read king. So what does it mean that Jesus was declared to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead? Think about this. You get three options:

Was it the resurrection from the dead that caused Jesus to be the ontological second person of the Trinity? No.

Was it the resurrection from the dead that caused Jesus to be incarnationally human, conceived in her womb? No.

Was it the resurrection from the dead that caused Jesus to be exalted as king over the cosmos? Yes. That's what he's saying. When he says he was declared with power to be the Son of God, what they're saying is he was declared with power to be king, lord, Kurios, ruler. That is the point that Hebrews is making.

He is one of those — and it's not just one of those — he's the best one of those that the world has ever seen or ever shall see. He is the better king. That's what it means. Okay? So Son of God, king — that's what we want to see.

Lily?

I feel like a simple framework to look at is to look at David, who was anointed king as Jesus was kind of anointed and powered at his own baptism. But then it didn't come to fruition until all power and authority had been made his.

Yes. That's absolutely true. And David is the primary archetype of Christ in the Old Testament. So it wouldn't be surprising to us to see that there's this run-up to David's kingship, just as there's a run-up to Christ's kingship. Absolutely. There's a pattern matching happening there for sure.

Okay? So here's yours. Oh, Fetz?

Shima had a question.

Yeah. Think you couldn't see me. Quick question: So, you know, John 1 talks about becoming, you know, giving the right to become someone of God. And so, obviously, I don't think the first two pertain to us at all. But in some way, are we participating in the third — he is the Son of God — and we're now also become, you know, heirs of the throne?

In some way? Not to the same — oh, yeah.

We're not — we're not the second to come and the second person of the Trinity. We're not being born, you know, we're all born with the mother and father, but we are in some way becoming heirs to the throne.

Yes. And, well, I would — okay. Okay, we gotta stop, but I'll say briefly: we will never be — we will never — it's funny. We actually will — we'll start there next time because there are aspects of each of those three that we actually become. We are invited into the dance. In John 17, it says, I in them and you in me, may they also be in us. It is an invitation into this — the ontology of God, which feels heretical but we are invited into that. And we become — he's adopted us as children. We become his sons. Right?

John 1:12. Right? Where he's invited us to become adopted as sons, and then finally, we are absolutely invited to co-reign with him. So every aspect of that — to a lesser degree — we are invited to participate in, which is crazy.

Okay? We gotta stop there. Read Hebrews this week. We'll talk about it again. That is all. Thank you.