Clough Hebrews Lesson 1

Introduction

Tonight we begin a new section of the Word, the epistle to the Hebrews. This is one of the most difficult epistles, a real challenge to understand, and probably one of the hardest portions of Scripture that I’ve taught so far. It’s a very difficult one and a demanding epistle. But it was one that was circulated in the early church and believers were expected to know this epistle and expected to understand its arguments. If we have difficulty with this epistle it’s only because we’ve degenerated over the first century type of believer. The difficulty we experience is a difficulty because we are spiritually degenerated relative to their situation in history.

There are several things that I’d like to do as we begin; we’ll probably only exegete one verse as far as exegesis goes but I want to deal with a few, what we call, introductory problems in this epistle. I want to lay its groundwork because these problems are going to come up again and again so that rather than refer to these over and over as we go through the epistle I want you to copy these things down with the verses and then later on when we encounter the problems I’ll just refer you back to your notes. But this just is something that’s going to recur time and time again.

The first thing about the epistle is the form of the epistle. To help you take notes we’re just dealing with various topics about the epistle and you can make this the introduction. Some of you are new Christians and as such I would recommend that you learn to take notes. Notes are really a necessity and they’ll serve you in many, many different ways. I always encourage believers, and particularly in this epistle, to take your notes and if you take careful notes on what we teach it’ll take you the rest of the week to digest them. The best way of taking notes is to get a loose leaf notebook, small enough to carry around, that’s convenient, that can be divided into sections and then all you need is one notebook. Take your notes and if you want something to do at home, then go over these notes prayerfully, organize them, look up the cross-references, generate questions so that you can ask questions about something we’re covering. It’s that way you grow because that is the way you should study the Bible, not just taking what I say to be true but take what I say, go home, think about it, and see if it fits the Word of God. The Word of God is the standard of truth. This way you can grow.

Some of you are under counseling and if you are I really expect you to be digesting the contents of this epistle because this epistle will cover most of the problems you will work, and I’m getting too many people involved in counseling to have to go over and over the same stuff that I teach in the pulpit. That’s why I’m teaching in the pulpit, so I can hit 100, 200, 300 people at the same time without having to give 200 private lessons on the same thing. It gets rather frustrating because people do not listen; listen to the content of the Word of God and it will solve most of your problems and you won’t even have to come for counseling, in some cases. So if you are involved in a counseling situation, particularly if you’re a new believer, then take notes and digest them.

Let’s look at the first introductory problem; the problem of form. By “form” we mean that when you interpret Scripture you try to find its literary type, i.e. is it a letter, such as Romans; Romans is a letter. Is it a sermon? The book of Deuteronomy is a sermon; a sermon is not a letter, a letter is not a sermon, the two are different. Is it a book? The Gospel of Luke was written as a book, not as a letter and not as a sermon. Different styles are used depending on what it was for.

Just to show you the problem we’ve got right away, turn to Hebrews 1:1. Then turn back to Ephesians 1:1, notice how it starts, “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints who are at Ephesus.” Philippians 1:1, “Paul and Timothy, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi.” Colossians 1:1, “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, and Timothy, to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ at Colosse.” 1 Thessalonians 1:1, “Paul and Silvanus, and Timothy, unto the church of the Thessalonians which is in God, the Father, and in the Lord Jesus Christ.” 2 Thessalonians, “Paul and Silvanus, and Timothy, unto the church of the Thessalonians in God, our Father, and the Lord.” 1 Timothy 1:1, “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Savior… [2] Unto Timothy, my own son in the faith.” 2 Timothy 1:1; “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus, [2] To Timothy, my dearly beloved son.” Titus 1:1, “Paul, a servant of God, an apostle…” and so on, and it goes on to describe the fact he was writing to Titus in verse 4, “my own son after the common faith.” Philemon 1:1, “Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ, and Timothy, our brother, unto Philemon.”

And then you come to Hebrews 1:1 and there’s no salutation. So this is a problem. Is this a letter? If it’s a letter how come it doesn’t have any salutation on the front of it. So by observation we notice immediately there’s something different about this epistle. In fact, there’s only one other epistle in the entire New Testament that begins this way and it’s 1 John. All the other epistles have a salutation on the front of them. So we’ve got a problem here, this doesn’t seem to be started like a letter. You could argue maybe the salutation dropped off before it was put into the canon of sacred Scripture, but something happened to the salutation and it should be a mark to cause us to pause and ask ourselves what has happened here; what is the purpose of this document we have. If you have a King James translation probably somewhere in the title it says the epistle of Paul the apostle to the Hebrews and you’re wondering why we’re bothering with this, it says epistle, it says it’s by Paul. Unfortunately the epistle never came with a label on it; that’s a guess by the King James translators. In fact, the concept “to the Hebrews” wasn’t even on there originally. So this is a heading-less epistle, it has no title to it, it just starts with verse 1.

In Hebrews 13:22 we have a hint at the end, we’ve seen so far that it doesn’t have a salutation which is sort of strange, but at the end we have a verse that tells us quite a bit about this epistle, or whatever it is, whether it’s an epistle, a sermon or a book. “And I beseech you brethren, suffer [bear with] the word of exhortation; for I have written a letter unto you in a few words. [23] Know ye that our brother, Timothy, is set at liberty; with whom, if he come shortly, I will see you. [24] Salute [greet] all them that have the rule over you, and all the saints. They of Italy greet you.” So this ends, particularly verses 22-23, bear some study at the beginning. So actually we’re going to begin our exegesis at verse 22 and we’ll do 22-23 and then we’ll go back and discuss more problems.

We’re still dealing with a primary question, the form of the epistle, what form is it. “And I beseech you, brethren,” now those of you who have the Greek text notice in the word “I beseech you,” this word, ha parakaleo, two parts of this, this is a word you will commonly see in the Greek New Testament. It’s made up of a stem and a prefix and the prefix is actually a preposition, and in New Testament Greek as well as in Classical Greek the preposition, was combined with the stem to do something to the stem, either intensify it or modify it; the word “call,” and this means alongside. So originally it meant an invitation, I call someone alongside, I expect a response, not just I’m calling but I call alongside, it’s a more urgent version of simply the verb stem itself. And this is why in the New Testament this particular verb is used over and over. “I call you alongside,” and then from this literal meaning it came to be used in practice to the word exhort, or encourage. But it’s stronger than our English word encourage. The idea of calling alongside means that I demand some sort of a response. So “I beseech you,” or “I exhort you, brethren.”

The word adelphoi, or adelphos here, for brethren, does not mean these are believers. The word adelphoi in the Greek sometimes means brothers in the believer sense but other times it simply means that they are of the Jewish race. For example, turn to Acts 7:2, when Stephen gets up and gives his famous speech, he addresses the men surrounding the high priest, and they’re not all believers but he addresses them, “Men,” and “brethren and fathers,” so the usage of the word “brethren” in the New Testament, unfortunately is not a clue as to whether we’re talking about regenerate or unregenerate people. So we can’t use that; either it is talking about regenerate people or it’s talking about fellow Jews; those are the two usages. Generally it refers in Jewish discourse to fellow Jews, people of the Jewish nation.

“I beseech you, brethren, allow the word of exhortation,” or “suffer,” or “bear with the word of exhortation.” This again is an imperative, it’s imperative type instruction here, some texts have an infinitive but it acts as an imperative; it’s present tense and usually in the Greek New Testament when you have a present imperative it means a principle. When you have an aorist imperative it means do it, right now. For example, the Ten Commandments, “Thou shalt honor thy father and they mother” would be translated with a present imperative, as an enduring principle do this. An aorist generally refers to an instantaneous type thing, you do it now. Now we can’t be dogmatic because like all syntax there are exceptions to this rule, but generally that’s the way it flows.

The word “endure” immediately tells us something about what’s happening here. The implication is that some readers of this epistle aren’t going to like it and they’re going to have to endure and submit to it, and it’s urgent for them spiritually not to ignore what is said here or else they’re going to be in deep trouble. This word “endure” is used in a context where you can understand it; turn to 2 Timothy 4:3, here’s a usage of the word “endure.” “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.” You see the way the word “endure” is used there, it means to tolerate. It means that there will sometimes be things that are true that you can’t stand. This is a common thing that we have found, that people who have legalistic backgrounds cannot stand the Word of God. They haven’t been able to stand the Sunday evening series recently which is understandable because that’s a book that is written for all legalists; it’s written to destroy the concept of legalism, so we have people that stay home because they can’t stand it and this is a simple thing that they’re not enduring sound doctrine because to them 1 Samuel is wrong; God the Holy Spirit shouldn’t have written it that way. Now if they have trouble with 1 Samuel and David, Saul is caught in the cave, I don’t know what they’re ever going to do if I deal with the Song of Songs some day.

Back to Hebrews 13, “I beseech you, brethren, suffer,” or “endure with the word of exhortation,” you’re not going to like it but stick with it. Why do you suppose he had to add that little thing onto his letter? Because some weren’t’ going to stick with it. Now “the word of exhortation,” what’s that all about? Here again, one of the primary tools in Bible study, and part of our Wednesday night fellowship here is to learn how to study the Bible on your own, is to use something called a concordance. A concordance takes a little concentration to use but is one of the blessed tools that has been given and is available. A good one, Strong’s or Young’s for the English, if you know Greek you should get Moulton and Geden’s concordance, and you look up the phrases and find out where they’re used. Now here’s where it will pay off big dividends. It says “the word of exhortation.” Now if you’re used to reading the Bible like most Christians you just, oh, isn’t that sweet and waltz on. But if you have an inquisitive mind as to what God’s Spirit is trying to tell you through that word you’re going to say now what is the word of exhortation. I know what a word of exhortation is, I might think I know but is what I have in mind when I think of “the word of exhortation” what the Holy Spirit had in mind when He wrote the text. So you use your concordance and you look up “exhortation, word of,” look at that whole phrase.

You’ll suddenly discover it’s not used in any other place except one place and that’s Acts 13:15, to which if you’re an inquisitive student you’ll turn and you’ll find some insight as to what this word of exhortation was like in history at the first century. Acts 13:15, it tells you the context in which “the word of wisdom” occurred, it tells you a little big about who gave the word of wisdom, it tells you the situation under which the word of wisdom was given. The apostles are visiting a synagogue, the assembly point of Jewish people. “And after the reading of the Law and the Prophets,” that was part of their service on the Sabbath day, they read the Torah, the first five books of Scripture, and then they read the Prophets, then they “sent unto them,” now this is a synagogue outside of Palestine, it’s a synagogue that would be interested in the news of the Jewish community elsewhere, and so since these were traveling Jews, since they had come to the church meeting, since they didn’t have radios and newspapers, what do you suppose they asked the Jews that had just visited them? What is going on? And they would ask particularly new people coming in who had traveled from some other place, and they “sent unto them, saying, Ye men and brethren,” you see the word “brethren” again, see the way it’s used, it’s not used necessarily for believers, it’s just used for fellow Jews, “you men and fellow Jews, if you have any word of exhortation for the people, say on.”

This is a request for news that will help the Diaspora. The Diaspora means that these Jews are suffering from the fifth cycle of discipline and they want exhortation. Now watch the content of “the word of exhortation.” Those of you who think you have the gift of exhortation, if you are a Christian tonight, whether you realize it or not, you have at least one spiritual gift. Maybe some of you 40 years from now will find it, but you have at least one spiritual gift and one of these gifts could be the gift of exhortation. Here is a Biblical model on how to use it and how it was used in the first century. Let’s watch what Paul does.

Paul gets up and gives a word of exhortation, and from Acts 13:16-37 read through that quickly, see if you can summarize the content of that. [16, “[Then Paul stood up, and beckoning with his hand said, Men of Israel, and ye that fear God, give audience. [17] The God of this people of Israel chose our fathers, and exalted the people when they dwelt as strangers in the land of Egypt, and with an high arm brought he them out of it. [18] And about the time of forty years suffered he their manners in the wilderness. [19] And when he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, he divided their land to them by lot. [20] And after that he gave unto them judges about the space of four hundred and fifty years, until Samuel the prophet. [21] And afterward they desired a king: and God gave unto them Saul the son of Cis, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, by the space of forty years. [22] And when he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king; to whom also he gave testimony, and said, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfill all my will. [23] Of this man’s seed hath God according to his promise raised unto Israel a Savior, Jesus; [24] When John had first preached before his coming the baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. [25] And as John fulfilled his course, he said, Whom think ye that I am? I am not he. But, behold, there cometh one after me, whose shoes of his feet I am not worthy to loose. [26] Men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, and whosoever among you fear God, to you is the word of this salvation sent. [27] For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him. [28] And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain. [29] And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulcher. [30] But God raised him from the dead; [31] And he was seen many days of them which came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are his witnesses unto the people. [32] And we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, [33] God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. [34] And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption, he said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David. [35] Wherefore he saith also in another psalm, Thou shalt not suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. [36] For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption:

37 But he, whom God raised again, saw no corruption. [38] Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins.”]

Now in these verses, this is Paul getting up and verbally addressing the synagogue, and this is what his announcement is. Can any of you characterizes his emphasis? How I feel about Jesus? Oh, I’ve had this deep spiritual experience, brethren, I turned the water on in my bathtub at 70 degrees and spoke in tongues or something. Is that what he’s reporting? What’s he reporting, can anybody just characterize the emphasis of what he’s saying here. [Someone answers] It’s justification by faith but what format, what context? History, historical evidence after historical evidence after historical evidence. Do you see now why it’s the Jew who alone in history originated history, the study of it. Jews are the ones that started it, it’s not Herodotus, the Jewish people. And so the emphasis is always on history, because their God shows them history, and they pointed to specific historic events. And notice they linked, how when Paul presents Christ he just doesn’t say hey, here’s the man Jesus, everybody believe in Him. No matter what you think Jesus is like, no matter whatever vain imagination you have in your mind, just simply believe in the word Jesus and it’ll save you. Is that the way he addresses it? No.

Paul takes all of the Old Testament history first and then shows how Christ is the fulfillment of that history. It is all one continuous line of cause/effect, cause/effect, cause/effect, cause/effect. He does not begin talking about how I love Jesus. Why? Because it would be misunderstood; who’s Jesus. Where do you get your content for the word? You have to get it from Old Testament history. You can’t understand the New Testament unless you understand something at least about the Old Testament. So Paul does not preach Christ alone; he preaches Jesus Christ out of the Old Testament and this is the “word of exhortation” but it stops at verse 37 and shifts; now look at verses 38-41.

[38, “Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins; [39] And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses. [40] Beware therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets; [41] Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish: for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you.”]

Now he gives them a very positive thinking, gentlemanly, polite and courteous call to come down the aisle. Is that what you see in verse 38-41. He uses How to win Friends and Influence People? You see how ridiculous some of our concepts are; we just don’t get to Biblical categories. What is he saying? You clods, get with it or you’re going to get bombed, and that’s exactly what he says, there’s an urgency to what he says. You people have had revelation and you can’t be neutral. That’s the point, and that is the feature of the “word of exhortation.” The word of exhortation is you’d better get off your pseudo neutrality because you’re either for it or you’re against it and there is no middle ground; you cannot be exposed to the Word of God and not either be damned or blessed. The word of exhortation proceeds out of that mentality. The Word of God damns and the Word of God blesses but you can’t sit and hear the Word of God and not be different. It will drive you further away from God or will bring you closer to Him because when you hear the Word of God you are responding to it. You see, here’s where people who don’t think too carefully misunderstand.

Often you’ll hear it said around this city that at Lubbock Bible Church there’s no invitation. Now what they’re thinking of is there’s no trotting down the aisle, singing Just as I Am or something, but actually, if these people thought biblically, in some cases that’s too much to ask, but if they would think biblically they would recognize that whenever the Word of God is taught is the invitation. We’re not talking about Aristotle and Plato, this is the Word of God. And if it’s the Word of God you can’t be neutral. Right now you are either accepting the content of Scripture or you’re rebelling against it; there is no middle ground. Adam did not have middle ground in the Garden of Eden. In other words, Adam kind of halfway eat the apple and then don’t, it’s neutral; Adam is going to be between Christ and Satan. No! Adam is either for Christ or for Satan, there is no neutrality.

And so the “word of exhortation” is an urgent request to recognize there is no neutrality. Now that should set some of you into a different framework mentally when you discuss exhortation. When you exhort someone you are exhorting them to stop being damned by the Word and start being blessed by the Word because failure to believe, you go up and you exhort another believer to trust in the promises, it’s not the case that that believer isn’t trusting in the promises in a neutral sense; it’s the case that that believer has already heard the promises, has rebelled against them and is deliberately defying the God of grace, and he is being judged for it. The failure to believe a promise in the middle of a catastrophe is rebellion against the Father who gave the promise. And the word of exhortation reveals to the individual that there is no neutrality; you believe or you rebel but you’re not free to stay in middle ground; you go one way or the other at every point.

So that’s the content; needless to say, with such a gentlemanly type of invitation there was a considerable reaction and so we read in Acts 13:42 -45 of the reaction, and you read how Paul sent back to Jerusalem that tens of thousands had come forward as he mails his evangelistic report back in??? “And when the Jews were gone out of the synagogue, the Gentiles besought that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath. [43] Now when the congregation was broken up, many of the Jews and religious proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas: who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.” Immediately they started teaching them further in the word. [44] And the next Sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the word of God.” Now how’d this ever happen, Paul didn’t use the How to Win Friends and Influence People approach. He didn’t try to water down the Word of God, to kowtow to the interests of the populous. All he did was simply present the Word of God and say damned if reject, blessed if you don’t, and immediately the whole city comes out to hear the Word of God.

Do you know why they come out? People are not impressed unless you have the guts to take your position all the way. And you’re never going to impress anybody if you’re the compromising type. If you’re the person that wants to keep your Christianity under a barrel and you’re the kind who doesn’t want to apply it in all areas, regardless of if it threatens your job or not, you’re not going to impress anyone. No one is going to be impressed with you. They’re going to be impressed with you when they see you take your own message seriously enough to apply it in every area, whether it’s in the classroom, outside the classroom, whether it’s economics, philosophy, whether it’s science or any other field you can possibly think of, if you don’t take the Word of God seriously enough to comprehensively apply it, nobody is going to take the Word of God seriously that looks at you.

And so the whole city comes out, agitated, who are these characters that are coming around. In verse 45, “But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy” They had a building program, couldn’t get anybody to come to their church. Paul comes and teaches the Word and they need a new building, “and spoke against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming.” He got a reaction… he got a reaction. [46] “Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.” B’nai B’rith would have been very upset with this whole operation.

So that was the “word of exhortation” in the first century. Now back to Hebrews 13, and see if we can understand a few more things. This is kind of funny; at the end he says, “For I have written a letter unto you in a few words,” it only took 13 chapters, but I consider that a small epistle. Now this also tells you something about the mentality of this man. Just think for a moment; you say this is a word of exhortation, and yet it’s an epistle. How do we put these two together. This is only a guess but it apparently is this, that the man who wrote this epistle had often said this to various synagogues, and therefore it is written in the form that they usually went into a synagogue and raised Cain like Paul did in Acts 13. “I have written a letter unto you in a few words,” now I want you to see how this author who is so deep considers this just a trivial little thing.

First of all, he says yeah, I just spent a few words on this. Now there are two other verses; turn to Hebrews 5:11. When we go into the hard parts of this epistle, keep this in mind. When you strain your head trying to comprehend this, as we pray together that the Holy Spirit illuminate our hearts with the content of His Word, just remember what this man thinks about it. Verse 11, he speaks of Melchizedek and he says, “Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing you are dull of hearing.” And he veers off at this point and he doesn’t return; he returns later on to Melchizedek but he gives you the impression that he could tell you a lot more but the readers of this epistle aren’t up to it spiritually; it’s way over their head. And so he’s just going to give us what he can to immature believers.

In Hebrews 9:5, another reference in this epistle to the fact of how the author viewed his own writings. He speaks of “the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat; of which we cannot now speak particularly.” Of course he’s just gone on giving you a whole typological interpretation of the ark but he says I just can’t spend any more time, I’ve just given you a few details and moves on. Now do you see how rich the content was of the first century believers. Very few people even read the book of Hebrews today; less people understand it, and certainly one out of a thousand would ever call this just a “few words” on the highlights of the Christian faith, but that’s all the writer considered it. So don’t you see what a difference in thought level exited in the uneducated first century believer. This wasn’t written to college students, it was written to the peasant, the uneducated, middle and low class type people and the were considered to know this and recognize this was probably kindergarten, first grade type stuff. So if this is only the first or second grade level can you imagine what high school must have been like on this kind of a scale.

Now you see when people say oh, I wish we could get back to the early church, and the dynamism of the early church and how they turned the world upside down… sure, but we’ve got to master this content before we could ever get into that position. But what happens today? People want a shortcut, the way easy American way, I want it yesterday and so I’m not going to spend time digging it out the hard way day in and day out and trying to understand; I don’t want to be bothered with all that, it’s too hard, I want something to do it the easy way and so we have deeper life conferences and other places where people flock to avoid the Word of God. This tendency to downgrade literal serious verse by verse exegesis is a symptom of our own weakness. I point this out, not just to be sarcastic, but to show you that we are in bad shape compared to the receivers of this literature. We are in bad shape at this point in history compared to these people, and you’ll see just how badly as we go on.

Another feature of this thing and the form, we’ll conclude by saying it’s in letter form but in sermonic style. “The word of exhortation” is like a sermon which would be given in a synagogue but evidently this man has written it up for us in letter form and that would explain these two types of data that we’ve seen. Included within the form as part of “the word of exhortation” there are five warning passages. I’m sure that those of you who have been Christians any length of time, somewhere along the way have gotten very upset about Hebrews 6, and said oh, what does Hebrews 6 teach, does Hebrews 6 teach loss of salvation. We’re not going to answer that tonight but I want you to know a principle of interpretation.

Here are the five warning passages; all five of these passages have to be interpreted together. You have no right to go into one of these passages and interpret it independently of the other. They are all five together, so before you plow into Hebrews 6 remember you’ve got four other passages in this epistle that say the same thing. So maybe if we interpret the others and can anchor our interpretation carefully in the other exhortations then when we come to Hebrews 6 we won’t have too much trouble. So instead of looking at just one passage that gives you the problem, look at all five. All five are the same kind of exhortation; it is essentially the same exhortation repeated five times, given in different ways, in different vocabulary but for the same reason, same point. So as you read, if you’re going to read Hebrews 6, next time you get in a discussion, just remember something, if you read Hebrews 6 you’d better read the other four passages because they go along with it. And if you try to interpret Hebrews 6 without reading the other four passages then you’ll try to interpret God’s Word out of context. We must interpret inside the context and these five must hang together. So much for the form of the letter.

Now let’s deal with the people to whom it was written, the addressee, the second problem we’re discussing tonight. The first problem was the form; the second problem is the addressee. To whom was this epistle originally addressed. You say well, I thought it was addressed to the Hebrews. Well, the original title wasn’t there, the earliest we know that this title was attached is 175 AD; it wasn’t till Tertullian and the later Clement that this epistle was said to be to the Hebrews, before that there was just no title on the front of it, it was just circulated by itself as a tract. So we have to see if we can find out who the addressees are.

Just to give you an idea and a sample of what the different scholars say, here are the kinds of people that have been suggested: the Jews, Hebrew believers, Gentiles, that’s sort of encompassing, Hebrew priests, non-conformist Jews, the Essenes, the people of Qumran, the Hellenistic Jews. That pretty well takes in about everybody in the eastern Mediterranean, and so immediately you see that the addressees of the epistle aren’t clear. It’s a hard question to find out who the addressees are, but at least we can say two things.

First we can say that they’re definitely not Gentiles; eliminate that one right away. How can we eliminate it? We can eliminate it for four reasons. First, they can’t be Gentiles because in Hebrews 6: and following it speaks of the foundational doctrine, that means your all Jewish doctrine, the foundational doctrine, Hebrews 6:1 and following; there’s a passage there that would seem to indicate they are not Gentile readers.

Another reason for saying that they are not Gentiles is that in Hebrews 8-10 the emphasis is upon the old covenant that you were under; the Gentiles weren’t under the old covenant, so a second reason for saying that they’re not Gentiles to whom this epistle is written is because they were said to have been under the old covenant. Why all the interest in the old covenant? Gentiles weren’t under the old covenant; the old covenant here is the Mosaic Law.

Three, if you turn to Hebrews 7:11 we’ll find the third reason why they can’t be Gentiles. The third reason they are not Gentiles is because in the logic of the argument, and this is just one point in several verses we could cite, but verse 11 is good here, “If, therefore, perfection were by the Levitical priesthood … what further need was there that another priest should rise after the order of Melchizedek?” Now he presupposes the authority of the Old Testament in his argument. He says therefore as you know if perfection is by the Levitical priesthood, then why something else. So his method of argument presupposes that his readers do…. [Tape turns]

…but the Gentiles in the first and second century accepted the authority of the Old Testament on the authority of Christ. If Christ wasn’t who He was, then they’d reject both Old and New Testaments together. The Gentiles certainly wouldn’t believe in the Old Testament without believing in the New Testament. So the logic of the argument in Hebrews 7:11 and other passages is that they accepted the Old Testament as an authority. The logical presupposition of the entire book is that the Old Testament is the Word of God. In the logic of the discussion the Old Testament is the Word of God. And by the way, just a footnote on this point; you are going to be astounded to watch the high, high, high view of inspiration of Scripture the author of Hebrews has. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that the doctrine of inerrant inspiration is something cranked out by the fundamentalists in the 19^th century. If somebody ever whips that one out on you just pull out the book of Hebrews because the book of Hebrews proves that in the first century they had an inerrant inspiration.

The fourth reason why they are probably not Gentiles is that in Hebrews 13:13 and other passages we have idioms that only a Jew would really understand. For example, if you look at Hebrews 13:13 three’s a little idiom there that would just pass over the head of the Gentile reader unless he was well schooled in the Old Testament. “Let us go forth, therefore, unto him outside the camp, bearing his reproach.” That is a reference to the Mosaic Law, and it’s something that is complicated, it involves the Pentateuch, the Torah, and Gentiles readers might have had a general understanding but this is getting pretty nitpicky. So the use of these idioms seem to imply a Jewish heritage, a strong Jewish understanding on the part of the readers.

So the first thing we can say about the addressees is purely negative, that they are not Gentiles. Who are they, then? We can only say this, that they are a special local group of Jews. We say “local” because this epistle is not written to all Jews at large, obviously. I’m going to come to you, it’s referring to a specific group of believers. So that means that it’s local, not written to all Jews though the principles may apply to all Jews, it was originally written to just one group of Jews. It seems to be a special group because of two things. First, there’s an emphasis on priestly ritual that seems to suggest that we may have here priests, believers who were members of the Jewish priesthood. This is a possibility because if you look in Acts 6:7 there’s a little notice that’s given that kind of opens up what was happening in this time in history. The Holy Spirit has seen fit to report to us that something was going on in the establishment concerning Jesus of Nazareth. In verse 7, “And the Word of God increased, and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.” That would fit very well with the emphasis in this epistle on the priesthood and all the details and so on. So they could be a group of priests to whom this epistle was written.

They also could be a group of what was called the non-conformists. The non-conformists were Jews who did not go along with the temple establishment. Examples of non-conformists Jews: the Essenes, reported by Josephus; the Qumran community, these were groups of Jewish people in that day who did not go with the established group of orthodoxy in the city of Jerusalem, they just didn’t buy it and they formed their own community. The reason we think this might be so is that there are certain emphasis on washings in this epistle and these were all baptistic type of Jews. See, when Jesus was preached by John the Baptist, John the Baptist was a non-conformist Jew; remember he was outside of the Jewish establishment of his time; he was out there in the Jordan River with all of this, what the establishment would consider nuts, eating locusts and wild honey and all the other ascetic things. And so John the Baptist would looked upon as sort of a religious oddball and it turns out that Jesus of Nazareth goes to the religious oddball instead of coming to the temple at Jerusalem. And then, to add insult to injury the first time the guy walks into the Jerusalem temple He cleans it out. So needless to say the establishment in Jerusalem did not have such a high view of Jesus of Nazareth.

But the point is that there were these non-conformist sects that emphasize baptism and the washings that are so often mentioned in the book of Hebrews may have been reference to these kinds of practices, because the Old Testament puts emphasis on washings but not so much. Well, we can’t be dogmatic, all w can conclude safely is there was a special group of Jews located somewhere.

The third question, needless to say we couldn’t find out what the form was, we can’t find out who the addressees are, and probably, you guessed it, we can’t find out where it was sent either. The destination of this epistle is up in the air. But just because we can’t answer these questions doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay attention because in trying to answer these questions you learn a lot about the possibilities. To me, I’m always intrigued by these questions, not because I know that I can answer them so much, it’s because in studying them it gives me a better picture of the believers who are my brothers in that century, and the kind of situation that they were faced with.

What about the destination? We’re just about in the same place we were the addressee; everything from Jerusalem on the east to Spain on the west has been suggested as the ultimate destination of this epistle. But two places in particular vie, and the first one is Jerusalem and the second one is Rome. So the two cities that seem to be most prominent in discussion is was this epistle sent to Jerusalem to a group of believers there, or was this epistle sent to a group of believers in the city of Rome. Why these two places. All right, I’ll go through first the reasons for Jerusalem, why people think it was sent to Jerusalem. This is not to confuse you; this is to give you some historic reasons to get you thinking about several things, visualizing the history of this time so you can be better prepared to use your creative imagination and think, if you had a chance to talk to these believers face to face, what would you talk to them about. Where would you go visit them? What would be some things that would be on their mind? These are the questions.

The argument why this is sent to Jerusalem, (then we’ll show some reasons why it’s not to Jerusalem) but first the reasons for Jerusalem: One, there is an absence of the Jew/Gentile conflict in this epistle. Practically every other epistle in the New Testament is worried about circumcision, it’s worried about should these Gentiles who are believers be brought under the Law a that question is never raised in this epistle so how come? It obviously implies a uniformity and the only church that really had a uniformity one way or the other was the church at Jerusalem. The church at Jerusalem was uniformly Jewish, very few (or none) Gentiles belonged to the church at Jerusalem. So it would be a homogenous local church in which the Jew-Gentile conflict would be minimized.

A second reason for attributing it to Jerusalem is that when Clement writes he specifically calls the church of Jerusalem as the church of the Hebrews. And so the local church at Jerusalem got the name among Christian writers as The Church of the Hebrews. It doesn’t mean there weren’t Hebrews at other churches but that particular local church at Jerusalem got this title, The Church of the Hebrews.

A third reason for saying it’s Jerusalem is judgment appears imminent. It would fit the fact that after forty years the prophesied destruction of Jerusalem was coming upon it, that as Jesus had prophesied before His ascension He said, “When you see the abomination of desolations,” get out of here, just get out of this city because something horrible is going to happen to it. And an adumbration of the final Second Advent occurred in 70 AD when the Roman armies under Titus destroyed the city. The Jewish people made the mistake of going up on the wall and spitting at some Roman soldiers and that was all Titus needed, so they just went in and cleaned them out; Geneva rule not in force. So in 70 AD you have a possibility of imminent judgment, and that would be Jerusalem, it would fit.

And then finally, the last reason why Jerusalem has been suggested is that there are a lot of priests there and that would seem to fit. So here are reasons why it was probably sent to Jerusalem.

But now the problem, why the Jerusalem hypothesis has difficulty. Turn to Hebrews 2:3-4; Hebrews was written to a group of readers who, themselves, had never personally seen Jesus, who had learned the gospel through people who had seen Jesus but they themselves never had seen Him. Verse 3, look what it says, “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him.” And the implication of this is that they never heard Jesus, but if there were sent to Jerusalem there ought to have been people living that had heard Jesus. So this is a mark against the Jerusalem hypothesis, that why are all the readers said never to have seen or heard Jesus personally if they were all living in Jerusalem. And you can’t use the argument they all would have died off because the epistle forces you to an early date. So there’s a problem here.

A second problem with the Jerusalem hypothesis is that it’s knowledge of the Old Testament ritual comes from the Old Testament, not from the temple and the temple is the thing that dominated, it was the temple ritual in Jesus’ day, not Old Testament ritual. For example, the tabernacle, not the temple, is made the comments of in this epistle. When the author goes to point out the things of God and the typology he doesn’t talk about the temple; he talks about the tabernacle, he talks about things that could have been read about but he never talks about those things which could have seen by any Jewish believer in Jerusalem.

A third problem with the Jerusalem hypothesis is that in Hebrews 6:10 it’s said that these saints had been wealthy enough to give to believers in other places. See what verse 10 says, “God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love, which you have shown toward His name, in that you have ministered to the saints, and do minister.” You have and you do, and the word “minister” is a polite way of saying they were giving money and goods to believers elsewhere. But every other place in the New Testament where Jerusalem is mentioned they were always mentioned as the poor ones receiving goods, not giving them. The church at Jerusalem is a church that’s in dire poverty. References for this are Acts 11:29; Romans 15:25; 1 Corinthians 16:1; 2 Corinthians 8:1 and Galatians 2:10.

Another problem with the Jerusalem hypothesis that I mentioned earlier is there is never a mention made of the temple. How come, when in Stephen’s address in Acts 7 Stephen does mention the temple, it’s there, they can see it. Herod’s temple was an item of discussion. So that’s the Jerusalem hypothesis.

The last one is the hypothesis that it went to Rome. Several things can be said for Rome as the destination. First, it’s the place where the epistle was first known historically. It’s first quoted by Roman authors. Clement of Rome, in 100 AD writes and he quotes the epistle to the Hebrews. So at least by 100 AD it was well known to writers living in the city of Rome. How come they knew it and writers in other parts of the Mediterranean didn’t know of it, unless this epistle had indeed been sent to the city of Rome.

Second, there were a group of persecutions that would tend to fit the persecutions under Claudius in 49 AD; that was the one we mentioned in the epistle to the Romans. The Jews who believed in Christ and the Jews who didn’t had big fights all the time and it got so bad the Romans couldn’t stand it and so they said all this talk about Christos, Christos, get Him out of here. So they kicked both the Christians and the non-Christian Jews out of the city of Rome, couldn’t stand them fighting about this guy, Christ. And the way it’s humorously written the Romans thought Christ was living and that He was an insurgent down in the Jewish ghetto going around causing trouble and so they hoped that by getting all the Jews out they got Christ out. But it shows you how they did make Christ the issue, doesn’t it, because the authorities recognized that Christ was the source of the difficult down here, they didn’t know who he was but this guy Christ was the problem.

Let’s look at a few passages, Hebrews 10:32. This tells you a little bit about the history of these believers. Maybe some of you who are going through personal struggles spiritually, I want you to see this; some with whom I’m counseling please notice these believers are in similar situations. This is why this epistle is written for you. “But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, you endured a great fight of afflictions, [33] Partly, while ye were made a gazingstock both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly, while you became companions of them that were so used.” In other words, after they had believed in Jesus Christ they were ridiculed, they were persecuted, and that speaks of the persecution.

In Hebrews 12:4, however this persecution never really got to the death sentence, that’s why in Hebrews 12:4 he says, “ye have not yet resisted unto blood,” in other words, you’ve been persecuted, your property has been taken away, you’ve lost your business, many of you, you are social outcasts, but at least you haven’t been killed yet. This puts the epistle early, because later on in Rome there were persecutions where Christians were killed. So that would indicate this is an early persecution spoken of here. The second for Rome is that it would fit the persecutions in 49 AD.

Third is a very intriguing reason and that is of all the ancient liturgies of the early churches, the Syrian church, the Roman Catholic church, the Greek Orthodox church, only one of them has within its liturgy a mention of the priesthood of Melchizedek, and it’s the Roman Catholic Church, which to this day, mentioned in its liturgy the priesthood of Melchizedek, the most holy priesthood, and that apparently is a survival in the Roman liturgy of what happened in the city of Rome. So since Melchizedek is only mentioned in the epistle to the Hebrews it indicates some sort of a linkage.

And the other reasons can be seen by the end of the epistle of Hebrews, Hebrews 13:24 it says, “Salute all them that have the rule over you, and all the saints. They of Italy salute you.” That could mean those, if you have your Greek text you’ll see it’s apo, those from Italy, those who were excluded from Italy, it could be the edict of Claudius forcing them out but there’s some connection with Italy. We’re over time and we’ve only covered three out of the five problems of introduction but we’ll get the others next week.