Introduction to Hebrews (Part B)

Satan is after the fresh produce of your faith.

He wants it to be stale and rotten and not something that is any longer. Yeah, and you're going to have to fight for it. It is not going to come natural because you're spiritual and it is war. God is going to let him take his shots at you and God is going to arm you if you want to be armed. But you better, to do it, continue steadfast in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship and communion and prayer.

We have this today. Personally, there are those that have taken some of the sermons that I've been privileged to preach and they have transcribed them. Now, when you speak, you preach, it doesn't always make it well into written form. It needs to be edited.

That requires a lot of work and time. Why I don't have them produced is because I'm too busy doing my next sermon and I can't go back very easily to work on them. But my point is, it's not at all out of line with how we do things.

We produce them in speech, but then we have to edit them if we're going to publish them in print. And so, clearly, to have someone edit the sermon and put it into high Greek is not a stretch at all. And finally, about my view of Paul being the author, and you don't have to agree. The Bible doesn't say, I'm not saying.

That's fine. But when you study the Word of God, your mind can't help but say, we've got a mystery here. Let's see if we can resolve this. Paul, I think, is looking at this and saying, I'm laying it all out here for the Jews.

I'm holding back nothing. They need to hear it. This is going to be very difficult for them, and I'll come to that as we move forward.

We'll return to that. So what is the purpose? Well, the community of Jews he's writing to. They're likely in Rome. And knowing that it would circulate beyond Rome, because his other letters had already had a history of doing this, and so did as others wrote. But we believe that it was written to Jewish Christians in Rome because they were Jews ethnically, but spiritually they were Christians. Hebrews 13, he says, greet all those who rule over you and all the saints. Those from Italy greet you. So there were those from Italy with him when he wrote this. And when he sends the greeting with the letter, he wouldn't say, write it to Turkey, and he's in Jerusalem, and say, hey, those from Brooklyn greet you.

There has to be a link for him to add that, and so that's how this detective worked. It's quite exciting and draining at the same time. Well, again, unbeknownst to the audience and to the writer, the temple doesn't have many days before it will be destroyed by the Roman army. Now, again, ethnically the Jews will always be Jews, just as ethnically the Polish will always be Polish, the Irish, and on it goes. That's acceptable.

There's nothing wrong with that at all. Incidentally, all the foreign languages remind us of sin because they are linked to Babel, and at Babel, the sinful imagination of man caused God to split the languages. And it's just, you know, you say, you know, keychains, hospitals, cemeteries, sirens, the EMS workers, all of these doctors, especially lawyers, they are all reminders of sin. But there won't be an operation in heaven because there will be no sin there. And so language, we'll all have one language in heaven. Men have tried to reverse this.

Alexander the Great, for example, conquer the world, bring them under the Greek culture, and we'll all be happy after that, and of course it's not possible. Anyway, they were struggling to identify the lines of distinction between Christianity and Judaism. And this is a difficult thing for them.

And when you come to Christ, you had similar struggles. Okay, now what am I going to do with this? And now what am I going to do with that? I've got all these Lucky Charms in the box. Can I eat them still? Christians and Lucky Charms don't go together.

Cereal, of course, is fine. But you're always after me, Lucky Charms pastor. So here's some of the arguments that would have been thrown at them, either from their own hearts or from family members. They would say, after all, was not the law given to us by angels? Because the Jews, again, they held the angels way up high. And the Hebrew letter begins to chop that away, deals with that sacred cow mentality. How dare anyone question Moses and challenge his authority? Well, because the writer to this document is going to say, someone better than Moses has come.

And of course, he's going to name him Jesus Christ. What about the Aaronic priesthood? It was divinely ordained. Are you telling me that's all gone away now?

Yep, we are because a better than Aaron is here. A higher priesthood is here that predates the Levitical order. How dare anyone set aside the Passover and the Day of Atonement? Well, Christ, he abolished them because he fulfilled them. He abolished them in the same way Edison abolished kerosene lanterns. He did not take them and smash them with hammers.

He simply gave us the light bulb. It made them obsolete. And that's what has happened to the Old Testament. Not all of it. It doesn't all mean we do not hold the Old Testament equal with the New Testament as being God's word. It just means we filter out those things that were for that period of time. And the rituals I'm talking about.

The types and the images that were baked into them. The temple being one. But certainly the Ten Commandments, with the exception of the Sabbath, we honor all of it. Thou shalt not kill.

We believe that. We shall have no other gods before. The only true God. When it says no other gods, it doesn't mean in order.

It means in his presence. Well, some of the other arguments that would have come up is we're not the feast days of Israel ordained. Holidays, we've got to have them.

You can't take them from us. Christ abolished them. What about David and Solomon and the temple of God? I was just reading this morning before I came out when Solomon was dedicating the temple that the glory of the Lord just filled the place. And everybody had to stop and get just everything shut down because the glory of God was so great. This morning we were singing, let the glory of the Lord rise among us.

And the connection for me, of course, that scripture is quite powerful. And so they would say, the glory of the Lord gave David the resources and the blueprints to build the temple. Then Solomon comes and he builds the temple and the glory of the Lord is there. And you're now telling me the temple is no longer a player in my worship? Yeah, the temple was destroyed. But did not God raise Haggai and Zechariah to get the Jews to rebuild the temple?

Yes. But God has proven that there is still a development in Messiah. And he prophesied of these things throughout their own scripture. And they missed it. They missed it because worship to them became religion, became ritual.

They lost the life. You Christians, especially you who've been around a while, you better watch it. Satan is after the fresh produce of your faith.

He wants it to be stale and rotten and not something that is any longer, yeah. And you're going to have to fight for it. It is not going to come natural because you're spiritual. And it is war. And God is going to let him take his shots at you.

And God is going to arm you if you want to be armed. But you better, to do it, continue steadfast in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship and communion and prayer. And you say, well I've done those things and still my faith is old. Keep at it. It takes time. It will be there if you don't give up. How much time? I don't know.

You can go a few years struggling this way. But then when it comes back, it's yeah. Spiritual sunglasses because you're cool. And so the document of Hebrews shows that Christianity is the heir of Judaism. It is the heir of the Old Testament. That is significant because Christ is the heir. He gets it all. That's what the heir means. He is the one that receives all that the Father has. It's his.

He owns it. So the killing of the bull, of the lamb, it could never take away sins. He's going to point that out. And they're no longer needed because Christ has fulfilled them. Those sacrifices were intended only to cover and remove, cover but not remove sin. That's why when John the Baptist pointed at Jesus and said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin.

Before it was kophar, it was a covering. The sin was just covered up, out of sight but still there. But Christ removes it as far as east is from west.

He casts it away. And so those sacrifices were intended to cover, not remove sin. They spoke of a higher fulfillment. They were a type of the coming sacrifice of Messiah. And believers must look only to Christ to worship.

You cannot, you cannot worship Jesus Christ with something else. And that's what they were beginning to, that's what they were doing. Many were going back as persecution was increasing upon them from their Jewish family members and culture and society. After, you know, initially everyone, people didn't get a grip on what was happening with Christianity. So, let's put this over on the front page of Hebrews and our Bibles. Written to Hebrews to tell them to stop being Hebrews.

That's what it's about. What if you became a Christian, born in a house that was very religious and Christian, some Christian denomination for example, and you went through all the rituals but you didn't know Christ Jesus. You believe I'm a Christian and we do this, we burn these candles, we have this holiday, we use ashes sometimes or whatever it may be.

We get, you know, we go underwater and we come out, we do this stuff. But you don't know Christ. Do you know what Christ would say? You need to stop being a Christian and become a Christian.

See, you understand, you need to stop being that type and be this type. And this is what is said to the Hebrews. Now that's the introduction.

Now a little bit of the exposition which belongs to the introduction. Let's look at verse 1 of Hebrews chapter 1. Because again, the lesson is you can't serve two masters. It's a fundamental lesson of Christ.

You will love the one or hate the other. The demands of a master are too strong to be divided. And the Jews were doing that and now the writer is going to get them back on track. Verse 1, God, who at various times in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets.

We have to pause there. Now I would have liked it in the original Greek to have started out with that word God in the Greek theos, but it does not. It does in our most English translations, but in the Greek it does not. It's at various times and in different ways, God.

That's more how the writer came to express this. But the subject instantly taken up in Hebrews is not your salvation. You're being blessed. It's God. Because without him, there is no salvation.

There are no blessings. And so he gets right to it. It's the person in the place of God and he's going to focus this a little bit more. He's going to say God the Son.

This is where he's going with this. From the beginning, he's getting his audience's eyes on Christ. Because without that, then it's all just religion.

It's useless and damning of souls. So the entire document devoted to the superiority of Christ, the superiority of Messiah above all others, none like him. Again, when he goes and he starts naming names like Aaron and Moses and the angels, he's not saying they were evil. He's saying they're just inferior to Christ.

There's no competition. The Mormons have worked to reverse this and tell you that Christ was an angel and just all sorts of just absolute unbiblical foul blasphemous nonsense by good people, otherwise good people, some of them. And then of course the Jehovah Witnesses, often very good people, decent people, moral people. But spiritually blasphemous.

And we'll see a lot of that why they're not given any quarter on this. No mercy is given to their doctrine at all. Don't you think for one moment that you're supposed to be more kind and merciful than Christ and come across someone you love who is entangled in heresy and somehow want to make them feel comfortable in their heresy. Okay, I'll give you that one.

No, you better not give them anything in love, of course. And I don't mean that flippantly. Well anyway, Aaron and Moses, the angels, they would worship the Christ and denying the existence of God will not make God go away.

This is our message to man. Making up things about God will not make them true. And in the presence of a God of truth, they make them lies and that is something that you do not ever want to be guilty of. The word God stands for something other than what we have come to know as God on our own. Just like the word love. What does love mean? What is love but a secondhand emotion?

Ha ha, kidding. The Bible answers that. I'll tell you what love is, long suffering.

And I make sure that those who love me suffer long. Well anyway, because the Bible says. But anyway, the word God stands for something other than God and by that I mean it has to be explained because if you say, I believe in God, what is that? What do you mean you believe in God?

Satan believes in God. What does that mean? And the Bible is this thick explaining it because we're that thick in the head and heart and receiving it and that's what it takes.

It takes a lot of chisels to bust this rivet and this is not supposed to be a surprise. It is actually supposed to be something we preach out loud. So when you go to work and your coworkers are there, your coworkers. It's written coworkers, I'm sorry. But anyhow, when they say, well I believe in God, what God?

Tell me about him. Where did you get that from? Well where did he get that from?

Trace it back if you can, if the opportunity presents itself. Well who are we going to leave with this revelation of God? How about the universities? That's laughable. They think they know everything so they should have, you know, they should be able to approve or disapprove everything. Granted, they have a lot of knowledge about a lot of things. I mean there are things you, about in the medical world, you can't learn without the universities. Who's got the equipment, the machines? I mean the microscopes and such, the pipettes.

It's just all sorts of things. We need the universities. The problem is they overstep. They begin to go against God and they take up the role that they're not anointed to take. It belongs to the church. And how often our students go and our young ones go to the universities and they sit under the teachings of a professor and they become enamored by them and then all of a sudden the professor knows more than mom and dad ever knew and especially the pastor.

And then they come back to the church and they become renegades. Well, we're not going to leave it with the university. Science, science is untrustworthy because sinners do science and they won't be honest. They have theories that they present, their theories are religion that they present as fact and they know they're not fact but they don't like the alternative. How about the entertainment industry?

I don't even know why that's on the list. Who would get their theology from the entertainment world, from watching sports? I believe in God.

I was just watching, you know, the New York Mets play the Yankees in the subway series. But anyway, the government, well, that's spooky. God, that's who. That's who tells us about God, God. And he does it through men and if he is God, he can do that. That's a prerogative of being God. God himself takes the time through his word to unfold the meaning of deity, of God, to all who will submit but not to those who resist. So he says, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past. Well, God used different methods. Direct speech, miracles, visitations, dreams, signs, parables and events. A progressive revelation of God from Genesis to Revelation.

Why progressive? Why not an instant, boom, here you go, here's who I am? Well, because of sin, people live, they die and it needs to constantly be circulated. You can't just show yourself to one generation and that's it. There has to be some way to show it to the next generation.

You cannot keep showing it to each one. With the cross, for example, Christ is not to come and die for each generation. He did it once and through revelation, he shows succeeding generations. It would have been too much to understand, too much to live out. God still speaks but he speaks through what he has spoken.

Whenever you find someone departing from that, you've got big trouble. That's why Peter said, no scriptures of private interpretation. Don't be coming up with this, you know, you got it and we can't get it unless we listen to you. So fact, God speaks to men. Fact, men do listen. Fact, some men don't. In fact, most don't. God has a long history of speaking because he wants us to know.

Here's a couple of them. 2 Samuel 23, David wrote, the spirit of Yahweh spoke by me and his word was on my tongue. Man has, again, a long history of denying and dismissing what God has spoken because he doesn't want to be held accountable to it. He doesn't want his natural urges to submit to the spiritual God. Zechariah said, yes, they made their hearts like flint, refusing to hear the law and the words which Yahweh of hosts had sent by his spirit through the former prophets, thus great wrath came from the Lord of hosts. God repeatedly says in scripture that you may know, that you may know. Here's why I had 8,000 original notes. It's because of copying the scripture verses into the notes of how many times God said that.

That's why I've narrowed it down to two. Isaiah 43, you are my witnesses, says Yahweh, and my servant whom I have chosen that you may know and believe me. I know I get excited.

Should I be bored by that? He continues, and understand that I am he. Before me there was no God formed nor shall there be after me. Isaiah 45 verse 3, I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places that you may know that I, Yahweh, who called you by your name, am the God of Israel. See, God wants his people to know him. So, God who at various times and in various ways spoken times past to the prophets has spoken to us through his son. Isaiah chapter 1, we love this, come let us reason together.

Though your sins, reason together says Yahweh, though your sins are like scarlet, blood red that is, they shall be white as snow, though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. God has spoken to the atheists. The atheists know it. Another word for atheist is the bitter one. I believe every atheist believes in God, but it's just too bitter to submit. So, I don't believe atheists exist.

That's based on my experience with them. Proverbs 10, the wicked in his proud countenance does not seek God. God is in none of his thoughts.

That, you know, celebrities and intellectuals, they're just so right for this. Psalm 14, the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt. They have done abominable works.

There is none who does good. The world considers it honorable to say, well, you know, I can't tell if God exists, and you can't either. Well, yeah, that's you, that's not me. And that's how we should answer them. Our intellectual response is, yeah, that's you, not me. Proverbs 14, there is a way that seems right to man, but its end is the way of death.

So, what's the way of life? Well, Christ, and that's where it all gets complicated. And so, the atheist denies God existing. He doesn't exist, but the deist, the deist says he doesn't speak. That allows them to dismiss any idea that God is correcting or guiding, and these are the things we are to fight against as Christians. He says, to the fathers by the prophets, the Jewish people who received the word of God, them were committed the oracles of God, Romans 3, verse 2. Once upon a time in history, with very few exceptions, if God had anything to say to anyone, he said it to the Jew first, and therefore through the Jew. The first Christians were Jews. Christianity was first Jewish. Acts chapter 10, verse 36, Peter speaking the word which God sent to the children of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ.

He is Lord of all. The word which God sent to the children of Israel. Jesus was a Jew, according to the flesh. When he was born of a virgin, he decided to come as a Jew. The first disciples were Jews. The church was born in the Jewish temple. The first converts were Jews. The first meetings took place in Jewish synagogues. The first controversies in the church concerned Jewish, the Jewish laws, the adherence to the laws. And so the church would say, well, don't eat that which is strangled, and don't, you know, stay away from the sexual immorality. And they would, you know, because of the Jewish sensitivities in the church, not only because of that, but that was a big part of it.

The first critics of the Christians were Jews, and the first ones criticized in the church were Jews. You've been listening to Cross Reference Radio, the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. As we mentioned at the beginning of today's broadcast, today's teaching is available free of charge at our website. Simply log on to crossreferenceradio.com. That's crossreferenceradio.com. We'd also like to encourage you to subscribe to the Cross Reference Radio podcast. Subscribing ensures that you stay current with all the latest teachings from Pastor Rick. You can subscribe at crossreferenceradio.com, or simply search for Cross Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app. Tune in next time as Pastor Rick continues teaching through the book of Hebrews, right here on Cross Reference Radio.