Hebrews "The Bible in 5" [47of 49] Tim Mackie (The Bible Project)

hey welcome to the bible in five you are going to be reading hebrews and uh the letter to the hebrews is i think one of the more challenging but also one of the most profound letters in in the new testament the author of the letter is anonymous there's been lots of guesses throughout history as to who was it paul was it a companion of paul's barnabas or apollos but the reality is no but he knows and the reason why it was clearly became part of the bible why it spread in popularity through the early church was because of the power of its message and because right at the beginning the author says that he was the first hand person connected to the circle of apostles and disciples right around jesus and it's called the letter to the hebrews because of its content the audience of the letter is never named specifically but it's very clear by the arguments the contents of the letter that it was written to audience of christians followers of jesus but who were very familiar steeped in jewish traditions and in the old testament scriptures they were probably a community of jewish christians and you pick up from different points throughout the letter what's going wrong in the community whatever wherever this church community is they've been a community facing persecution some have been put into jail some have been robbed or had their possessions taken from them because they are followers of jesus as the jewish messiah and so what the author of the hebrews is trying to do is he's trying to do a couple things he's trying to warn and challenge the audience to not fall away from christ to not abandon their faith as some had in the community but he's also trying to encourage them to give them faith encourage their faith in christ and give them confidence that god is for them that jesus is for them and that his death and resurrection is going to give them grace to endure whatever persecutions or challenges they have the argument or the kind of development of thought that the author goes through is actually pretty clear his main goal is to show them that jesus as the messiah is superior to all forms of god revealing himself in israel's past and so he goes through it's many ways you learn as much about the old testament as you do about jesus in this book so he begins by talking about how jesus is superior to angels which might strike us as weird but in the old testament in deuteronomy chapter 33 it's stated that the torah from sinai right where god revealed himself to the people of israel at mount sinai that the torah was delivered by god's messengers to moses by angels and so by making this large argument here at the beginning he's essentially saying that jesus is superior to all previous messengers of god's word angels mediated the torah to moses but jesus mediated the good news of the gospel to god's people he then goes on to show that jesus is superior to moses as the revealer of god's god's will but also the the the rest and the future hope that jesus invites us into is superior even to the israelite sabbath and he says actually the sabbath rest people going into the promised land and experiencing rest the rest that the sabbath every seven day rest and so on he says all of those were just pointers to the new heavens and the new earth the salvation that jesus promises and invites us into is superior to the sabbath talked about in the old testament he then moves on to talk about the priests how about the priests that worked in the tabernacle and in the temple and so on that they had a role to offer sacrifices to atone for the sins of the people and so on but he explores how the priests were deeply flawed they were morally compromised themselves and they constantly had to offer sacrifices for the people but also for themselves and so he says jesus is the superior priest because he didn't need to offer sacrifice for himself he lived a blameless fully human life on our behalf he was the the ultimate the ultimate priest and which moves him onto his last kind of climactic argument which is that jesus's death on the cross is superior to the animal sacrifices offered in the temple because they had to be offered time and time again every day of atonement once a year and so on but jesus offered his life once which was sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world and so because jesus is superior to all of these previous kind of stages in god revealing himself to israel he challenges the listeners in these last chapters to fully put their faith in christ to to sell out for following jesus to give up everything even if it means their lives because jesus laid down his life for them he's the priest mediating for them he promises them future rest and it's through jesus that god's word is truly communicated so he offers warnings and challenges to them throughout the letter not to fall away to keep enduring and they can keep enduring because they can have confidence and faith that jesus's death his resurrection is sufficient to bring them into the rest that god has for his people so it's a very powerful letter very dense you'll probably have to really reread it a few times to really begin to grasp a lot of the significance of what he's saying but it's uh it's uh it's very powerful so i hope it's a good read for you i hope this is helpful to lay it out like this and we'll see you next time you

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Keywords: Tim Mackie, Bible Project, Hebrews

Id: jTFtugx6qVI

Length: 6min 9sec (369 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020