The Book of Hebrews in 5 minutes

what is the book of Hebrews about well the book of Hebrews was written to a group of people that we call the Hebrews hence the title of the book and these Hebrews were Jewish Christians they were probably living in and around the temple area in the city of Jerusalem the temple was still functioning at this time it hadn't been destroyed yet we know historically that the temple was destroyed by Titus of Rome in AD 70 so these were Jews who came out of Judaism to embrace Jesus Christ as their Messiah and of course a move like that wasn't well appreciated by the unbelieving Jews the unbelieving Jews began to wear these people down through persecution and that shouldn't surprise us because as you go through the book of Acts one of the biggest instigators of trouble and persecution against the new church was unbelieving Jews and so they reasoned to themselves you know here's how we what we can do to get these unbelieving Jews from persecuting us we'll just go back into Judaism we'll show up at the temple will show up at a few feasts will participate in a few of the rituals of Judaism and that will pacify our aggressors and we won't be persecuted and so that's the great temptation of the Hebrew Christians and so the writer of the book we not sure exactly who the author is but the writer of the book basically says don't go back into Judaism you as a Christian have the highest form of Revelation in Jesus Christ and he skillfully puts together a case to show his readers how foolish it is to shrink back into Judaism since they have Jesus the highest form of Revelation so very quickly in chapters 1 and 2 he explains that Jesus is higher than the angels now the Jews revered angels because angels were messengers of the Old Testament all of the major messages came through angels so if he can show that Jesus is higher than angels he can show that Jesus is a higher form of Revelation than the Old Testament then in chapters 3 and 4 he says Jesus is even higher than Moses now Moses to a Jew is a big deal because he was a lawgiver the lawgiver so if he can show that Jesus is higher than Moses he could show that Jesus is even higher than the Mosaic law something Jews revered and respected for the last 1500 years and then in chapters 5 through 10 he says Jesus is even higher than Aaron now Aaron is a big deal because through Aaron came the whole Levitical system and sacrifices and so if he can show that Jesus is higher than Aaron he can show that Jesus is higher than the rituals of religion that these Hebrew Christians are thinking about retreating back to and Jesus is a higher priest than Aaron he's actually a priest after the order of Melchizedek and then you get to chapter 10 about verse 19 and there's the word therefore and when we see the word therefore in writings like this we have to ask ourselves what is the word therefore therefore and it transitions the readers out of doctrine which is what he's explained in the first 10 chapters and into application and so he gives many strong applications why they shouldn't regress backward and one of the key applications he gives is chapter 11 which we sometimes called the hall of faith it's a record of the great stars of the Old Testament who did not lapse backward when they were tempted to do so and believed in God against all odds people like and abraham and many many others that week Moses many others we could cite so he's using examples from their own Old Testament as positive examples of not lapsing backwards so you put the whole book together and it's a book about not shrinking backward because they already have the highest revelation in Jesus Christ why exchange the best for a revelation which at the time was good but it's inferior now in comparison to what they have in Christ so get into the book of Hebrews I think you'll enjoy it particularly if you're thinking about lapsing backward to avoid persecution

Channel: Andy Woods

Views: 41,541

Rating: 4.9065819 out of 5

Keywords: bible study, Andy Woods, hebrews, epistle

Id: aFnsiHd7BKE

Length: 5min 8sec (308 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 30 2016