Clough Hebrews Lesson 2

Introduction (continued); Outline of the Book; Hebrews 1:1-2

…the only way that you can get the flow of the book and still at the same time get the doctrinal details is to go back between, in other words, work with doctrines for a while, go back to the outline; go from the outline, back to the doctrine and go back this way constantly, because you have to stop so long in each verse you’ll lose the argument of the book. But before we get to that sheet I’d like to take up where we left off on the introductory problems and some said I was going too fast so do you have any questions on anything to do with the first section of the introduction called the form? The second section was the addressees or the people that were to receive this epistle. Then we worked with the third area of the introduction and that was the destination of the epistle; when we worked with the destination we had two primary candidates for the destination of this epistle. One was Rome and one was Jerusalem. The arguments for Jerusalem were the absence of a Jew/Gentile conflict.

Again, before we go into these details let me just say for those of you who may be impatient, the reason we go through these details is because if you are observant you’ll notice there are some problems here and these problems should stimulate you to pay careful attention to the verses and watch for answers to some of these problems as we work with the text. Some of these problems can’t be answered but they’ll force you to look more carefully at the text and see things that you wouldn’t normally see. So the arguments for Jerusalem was first: there is an absence of a Jew/Gentile conflict and Jerusalem would be the most likely candidate for a local church with that kind of composition, because obviously if it was some other local church at some other point you’d expect Gentiles. For example, in Rome you’d expect Gentiles there. Why aren’t the Gentiles addressed in this epistle. This is an epistle written strictly to Jewish people. So obviously as a group, if it is a local church, must be an all Jewish local church. A second reason for saying Jerusalem is the location of its destination is that Clement tells us that The church of The Hebrews was Jerusalem. That was its title, The Church of the Hebrews.

A third reason for saying that Jerusalem is the final destination of the epistle is that there was an imminent judgment upon Rome. In other words, in 69 or 68 AD you have a man by the name of Vespasian who with his… Nero couldn’t stand him because Nero used to have music contests and of course he always came out first and Vespasian couldn’t go along with this guy, he was horrible and Vespasian would get at these parties and he’d put his hand up in front of his face or something or look the other way and Nero saw him one time. So he couldn’t stand Vespasian around and so he sent him to the worst place he could think of and that was Palestine. No Roman liked to go to Palestine because the Jews were always giving you trouble. So they sent Vespasian to Palestine and that was just about the time the war began and by 70 AD Vespasian got recalled to be Caesar and his son, Titus, commanded the armies and the wiped out Jerusalem.

Another reason for saying Jerusalem is the destination of the epistle is that the persecution details fit. For example, to refresh your mind turn to Hebrews 10:32, see what these believers were going through, “But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, y endured a great fight of afflictions,” meaning that they had been believers for some time but when they had first become believers they suffered tremendous pressure. We don’t know who they suffered from but they were persecuted and they suffered.

Notice in verse 33, it tells you how they suffered, “Partly, while you were made a gazingstock both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly, while you became companions of them that were so used.” In other words he’s saying that some of these believers were directly persecuted and others freely chose to minister to those who were being persecuted and then they got it. [34] “For you had compassion on me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of y our goods, knowing in yourselves that you have in heaven a better and an enduring substance.” So certainly those verses, you would say, these believers were characterized by a freely giving ministry, they gave of their material substance in the face of tremendous pressure. Thus in Hebrews 12:4 it says something else about their persecution, it says that: “You have not yet resisted unto blood,” meaning that they hadn’t yet been murdered. Then in Hebrews 13:3, “Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them who suffer adversity,” and this speaks of their friends who are also being persecuted. So there’s persecution and it’s not too bad so this would fit with the city of Jerusalem.

Another thing that would argue for Jerusalem is that a lot of priests in Jerusalem believed, according to Acts 6:7. So we have all these reasons for Jerusalem and they look impressive. And many Bible teachers support the Jerusalem hypothesis, but please remember it is a hypothesis, it is not taught directly in the Word of God. So if you hear somebody say dogmatically this is written to Jerusalem, that may be a good deduction and it may be correct, but it’s not taught in the text.

Now here are the reasons why the Jerusalem hypothesis has problems and these are interesting and it’s these kinds of observations you should be alert to as you read this epistle because whether we can decide the issue of destination or not, still these other things kind of give you a little peephole view into the early Christian church. The first reason that makes the Jerusalem hypothesis shaky is that even at the latest allowable date there should have been some believers in Jerusalem that knew Jesus firsthand, and yet in Hebrews 2, 3 and 4 it is stated that all these believers heard about Christ second hand, not first hand. So the readers of this epistle are much like yourselves; this is why you should be able to identify with these believers. They never saw the Lord Jesus Christ physically. All they had was the eyewitness testimony, just as all you have is the eyewitness testimony. You are in the same category as these believers.

A second point, not only are these believers second-hand, so to speak, and not first-hand, but all their knowledge of the Old Testament is by reading; reading the Old Testament, not the temple ritual. The ritual described in this epistle is the ritual of the Old Testament, not the ritual of Herod’s temple. What does that tell you? If they were in Jerusalem wouldn’t you expect that they would have a knowledge based on what they had seen, what was going on in the city.

A third major difficulty, and this one is probably one of the strongest ones against the Jerusalem hypothesis is that throughout the epistle to the Hebrews these believers are said to have given of their material substance to others when everywhere else the church at Jerusalem was poverty stricken and you have numerous quotes in the New Testament in other epistles to the poverty of the Jerusalem church, that Jerusalem received; Paul had to get aid from other believers for Jerusalem. And then another very strong point about this is not only is the church in Hebrews, we’ll say relatively wealthy, but also there is no mention of a temple. Why not mention the temple. In other portions of the Scripture where somebody’s talking Jerusalem they always mention the temple, like Acts 7 for example. So such is the Jerusalem hypotheses, it’s plus and it’s minus.

Now we come to Rome. What are the reasons for saying Rome is the destination? First, it was the first place where this epistle was known. Clement, in 100 AD, is quoting it. So if you have Clement writing from Rome in 100 AD quoting the epistle and it’s not recognized or not recovered elsewhere, it tends to argue that the epistle was first circulated in the city of Rome somewhere. Second, the persecutions could have been the persecutions of Claudius in 49 AD. Another reason for Rome is that the Jews to whom this was written were non-conformist Jews. What do we mean by “non-conformist Jews?” Non-conformist Jews had special practices, extra washing, extra things that were not prescribes in the Old Testament Law. John the Baptist was a non-conformist Jew. The people at Qumran were non-conformist Jews. The Essenes were non-conformist Jews; there were lots of non-conformist Jews in the ancient world. They were the independent fundamentalists of the day.

Then another reason for Rome, which is very interesting is that of all the ancient liturgies that go far back into church history, the Roman Catholic liturgy is the only one that mentions the Melchizedekian priesthood. Why in all the liturgies that are just as old don’t you have you mention of Melchizedek’s priesthood except in the Roman Catholic liturgy which came out of the city of Rome. The question this sends is was the Melchizedek issue a burning issue in some way in the city of Rome. We can’t recover all those details but was this priesthood an issue.

Another reason for saying that it was in Rome was Hebrews 13:24 and someone came up last week and asked me how does that necessarily show it. Let me go through it. “Salute all them that have the rule over you, and all the saints. They of Italy salute [greet] you.” Now “they of Italy” can be those who were thrown out of Italy with the author of this epistle and he’s writing back to Rome, “they of Italy,” and the reason this is an argument for Roman authorship is that why would the people of Italy be interested in them; why not the people of many areas be interested. Well, if they were immigrants, if they were a people who had left, they would naturally be interested in how things were doing at home. So “they of Italy salute you.” Granted, it’s not absolute statement but it’s a fact.

Those are the hypotheses, Jerusalem or Rome. The text doesn’t explicitly say, we can only guess. So we’ve seen the form is ambiguous, we’ve seen the addressees are ambiguous, we’ve seen the destination is ambiguous, and now we come to the authorship and you guessed it, it’s ambiguous because we don’t know who wrote it either. So this is a most marvelous epistle; we can’t be sure of the form, don’t know where it was sent to, don’t know who read it, don’t know who wrote it, and we don’t even know ultimately why it was written. Apart from that we know everything else.

Let’s turn to the authorship. A lot of people will tell you Paul wrote it simply because they read in the Bibles it’s an epistle of Paul. As I tried to show you last week, an epistle of Paul, that little thing in the top of your Bible, was put there by the men who printed your Bible, it wasn’t in the original text. So we go back in church history and ask ourselves, is there any tradition. We look back in the early writings of the Christians, are there any hints as to who wrote it, and we find no hints. So why not Paul.

Here are the arguments why it is not Paul. First, the language and style are different. Second, the emphasis is on Christ’s session and we’re going to see a whole area of the Lord Jesus Christ that is not usually emphasized in the New Testament. In fact, this whole epistle is about Jesus Christ and you stick it out and make it through Hebrews you’re going to have a real good background for understanding who Jesus Christ is. Three, the emphasis is on cleansing, not reconciliation or redemption, by that I mean the word, the word “cleansing” is used, it’s a priestly word. The emphasis again is on Christ’s high priesthood and Hebrews 2:3 would say that it’s not Paul because it says we saw Christ second-hand. Didn’t Paul see Christ first-hand on the Damascus road?

So if it’s not Paul, who else? Here are the other candidates. The oldest traditions, the person in the oldest traditions is Barnabas. A lot of people think Barnabas in the early church wrote it. Some others think Luke wrote it. Then Martin Luther, during the days of the Reformation, came up with a hypothesis, it’s a guess and it’s a brilliant one, that Apollos wrote it. And the reason Luther said this was because he noticed there was a lot of Alexandrian type of vocabulary here, that is, vocabulary that a Greek speaking Jew would use in the city of Alexandria in philosophic and religious circles. So, for example, if you know who Philo is, he was a Jewish philosopher just before Christ, and some of his terms show up in this epistle so it has Alexandrian flavor to it. So that’s one reason Luther suggested it, and the other one he suggested was that Apollos was associated with Priscilla and Aquila who in turn had come from Rome and that would explain this kind of Roman atmosphere about it. So Luther came up with some brilliant guesses on this thing. And again, they are guesses, we can’t verify it, the epistle doesn’t say who wrote it. So we leave the authorship up in the air like we’ve left everything else up in the air.

Now we come to the date. We can do better on that. What about the date of the epistle. We can safely say it was before 95AD because by that time Clement is quoting it, so the epistle has to be written before 95, obviously, it has to be in circulation and canonized as a canonical writing, or at least as a highly authoritative writing, the canon wasn’t completely finished by that time. We can probably say it’s before 70 AD because there’s no mention of the fall of the temple… no mention of the fall of the temple and certainly it would have been easy for the author to weave the fall of the temple into his purposes. So the fact he omits all references to the fall of the temple which occurred in 70 AD shows us it probably occurred before 70 AD.

A third argument why it must have been before 70 AD or very early is that the terminology of the church in 13:7 and 13:17 says “those who rule over you” and there’s no reference to deacons, no references to bishops, no references to elders. In other words, the church officers had not yet solidified and so he just refers to them as those that rule over you; the offices hadn’t clarified. The offices in the local church, this is why it’s so hard to study this subject, are changing from the early epistles to the later epistles; there’s a movement and a hardening of this thing, in fact all the way down to the second century, so it’s a fluid problem and it’s changing, you can’t just ram into some New Testament epistle and pull out some doctrine of ecclesiology because you meet another epistle and it’ll be different. So the church itself is just setting up here in the early time of history.

So the date: sometime before 70 AD but it must have been some time pretty close to that because these are second generation people by chapter 2 verses 3-4. So if they’re second generation believers and it’s got to be before 70 AD that pushes you pretty close to 70 AD so we say 65-70, somewhere in there. In other words, this epistle was written in the eleventh hour of the nation. Israel had had 40 years to decide what they were going to do with the claims of Jesus Christ, whether they were going to decide that Jesus of Nazareth was who He claimed to be or whether they were going to reject Him as an imposter along with the other false christs. Israel had fourteen years of testing. The number forty is important. Forty years in the wilderness; Christ is tested forty days in the wilderness and you have other occurrences of the numeral forty. Forty is the numeral of testing in Scripture. So this may be the last word of the Holy Spirit to Jews to get with it or get out. It was a warning epistle.

The last part of our introduction is what is the purpose of this epistle. What is the purpose? Even that is ambiguous. It probably, I’ll give you the most probable one, and then we’ll go down from there. First, it is a warning not to go back into Old Testament Judaism; it is a warning to get out, don’t slide back. It is a warning, in other words, against compound carnality and that is the way this epistle will come over to us in our own generation. This epistle has some dire warnings in it, warnings that are so strong that people have gotten shook up, even about the doctrine of eternal security. There are tremendously powerful warnings against Christians going into compound carnality. God is presented in His Old Testament judgmental sense here. So it is a warning, don’t go back to where you were freed from, Jesus Christ got you out of it, don’t go back.

A second possibility and this is probably supplemental purpose, is that the Hebrew Christians were freezing up into enclaves and were not going out with the gospel; they were not evangelistic enough. After they had had the Word, this isn’t an exhortation to go rah-rah, but the point is that they’d been around, they’d had the Word taken in, Hebrews 5 says they’d had, and they’d studied doctrine and learned doctrine and they weren’t doing anything with it. They were sitting around playing spiritual tidbits with this thing instead of sharing the blood of life with a world that was starving, like I’m afraid some of ourselves are doing at this moment, instead of sharing the bread of life with a starving world they kept it to themselves. God will not tolerate that either.

And then another possible purpose for the book is that it was written to attack various heresies that were starting to arise about rituals and angels. There’s a lot of ritualism here, attacking on rituals and apparently there was a rise to glorify rituals and there was also a rise to elevate angels and accord them undue attention, a danger that we can slide into very easily; so those are the purposes.

Now let’s look at the worksheet. Those of you who are serious students and taking notes you’ll want to keep this worksheet. This worksheet will give you the outline. The overall outline of the book, very simply put, breaks at Hebrews 10:18. Let me show you why. Now up to this point you might say it’s been doctrinal, although it’s been exhortational also, then in 10:19 it says, “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, [20] By a new and living way….” Verse 21, “And having an high priest,” then he begins at verse 22, having all these things he begins to exhort about specific features of a local church. “Let us draw near with a true heart,” that’s talking about confession and worship, we must utilize 1 John 1:9. If you look in verse 24, “Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works,” that’s the life of believers in a local church. Verse 25, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together,” again emphasis on the local church. And then it goes on, the famous chapter on faith, and chapter 12 the various things on discipline and chapter 13 the specific exhortations.

So on the work sheet this is why we have said the first ten chapters, the superiority of Christianity as the basis of exhortation. That immediately should raise some anticipation in your mind that probably this epistle is the one you’ve been looking for when you’ve tried to deal with cults, such as Mormons, Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Baha’i faith, and these kinds of cults come in after Christianity, saying in effect that Christianity only leads to them. This epistle argues exactly the opposite; it argues that all religions, so to speak, all the religious history of the past has culminated in Christ once and for all, and therefore there is no more left. So this would eliminate every post-Christian religion. The book of Hebrews is a statement of the finality of Christianity; there is not needed any further (quote) “revelation,” (end quote), it is all finished and over with. So this actually undermines the position of these cults, so it’s a handy epistle for that reason.

Then the second part, the details of exhortation for everyday Christian life. Notice the two words, the word repeated in these two parts: exhortation, exhortation. Why? Because last time, remember we spent all that time on form, Hebrews 13 tells us this is a word of exhortation, so when you outline it you outline it in terms of exhortation. Those of you with a spiritual gift of exhortation or if you think you have the spiritual gift of exhortation, pay attention, Hebrews shows you what you should be doing when you exercise your gift properly. It isn’t coming up and slapping somebody on the back; it is showing them the danger of listening to the Word and not acting on it. You cannot be neutral and exhortation’s main objective is to destroy all neutrality.

There is no room to be neutral, once you have heard the Word of God you judge yourself by your reaction to it. This is probably one of the hardest things for people to get through, but you will watch, particularly at the 11:00 service of some church, or this church or any church, and you’ll pick up a lot of people that just trot in, every Sunday they’ve been trotting in for the last 45 years and it becomes a habit. You say why do you go to church? We just go to church, period. It’s a habit and these people don’t realize but they’re hardening their hearts, because if they really were taking in the Word of God you’d see some fruit in their lives but you don’t see any fruit in their lives; furthermore you don’t see them really that interested in the Word of God. So all you can conclude is that the Holy Spirit is not working and then if you can conclude that, then on the basis of this kind of exhortation you can also conclude something yet further, that those people are damning themselves, that you cannot stand to hear the Word of God and be nothing about it without injuring your soul.

That’s why the Word of God is so tricky and why the Word of God is such a serious thing. The Word of God, the ministry of the Word is the most serious area in your life because when you come face to face with it you can’t walk away as though you never had it. You can’t do that. And in Hebrews 4 we’re going to find out why we can’t, because every time you’re face to face with the Logos of God that means that it has cut to your conscience. Hebrews 4 says the Word of God penetrates to your conscience like nothing else does and therefore either you respond to what the Word of God now tells you to do in your conscience or you rebel but you can’t be neutral.

This is why you can explain so much behavior you’ll see in Christian circles; you’ll see it, whatever circle you’re from, you stay around this congregation and you’ll see it, you will see people come in here and for a while they’re real interested in the Word of God. And then after a while they fade out and they’re away looking for something else. The reason that is happening is because they never took in the Word to start with; they were rejecting it while it was being taught. And the drifters are people who are in great danger; in fact the word “drifters” is used to describe these kinds of believers. Hebrews is a very hard epistle; the warnings are so stern, so strict that they sometimes really get scary. We cannot take the Word of God in and not do something positively or negatively, we’re going act or we’re going to react: we’re going to do one or the other and God is going to bless or God is going to curse; He holds us responsible for our exposure.

The first section of that area on your sheet, Hebrews 1:1-2:18, I’ve tried to summarize in sentence form the content. The reason I do this is so when you take notes for this first section you’ll place this in your notebook ahead of where you’re taking notes and refer back to it so you’ll catch the thrust of the argument. We’re going to get involved in angels here, immediately, very heavily so in chapter 1 and it’s a very interesting subject, fascinating subject, learn about how angels have manipulated history and we’re going to learn some fascinating things. But after we learn that we’ve got to back off and say great, now I’ve learned all this, now what do I do with it in the overall argument so I don’t get it out of balance. So this will preserve you from that danger, hopefully.

Let’s look at the outline. Overall, this is the first two chapters. Since Jesus Christ is God’s Son, the only Savior, we must be careful of our response to this news. In other words, obviously there’s an exhortation to be careful what you do with it. You’ve got volition, you can go either way, but you’d better be careful what you’re doing with it when you deal with the final revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 1, God the Father has spoken to us by His Son who is superior to the angels. And obviously you might just note a question down there, why is it necessary for the author to discuss the superiority of angels? That’s a major question of interpretation in Hebrews 1. Why does Jesus Christ have to be compared to angels, of all things. Then in Hebrews 2:1-4 we have the first warning. Then in Hebrews 2:5-18 we have the rest of it: because Christ is the only one to whom God the Father has subjected the world to come. God made Him become, by suffering, the only redeemer for man. Notice the word “only,” I put the word “only” in this twice because that’s the thrust of the argument and this is the thing that knocks out your later religions like Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Islam, Baha’i, and all the rest of it. “Only,” Christ is “only” the one, Christ is the final one.

Now we come to an expansion and this is what we’re doing tonight, Hebrews 1:1-4, we’re working that section. The summary of the Son is God’s superior revealer. I know, so far in my teaching of the New Testament, no verses that contain more doctrine than these four verses. Needless to say we’ll just barely touch on Hebrews 1:1-2 tonight.

Let’s turn to the text and look at these first four verses and then we’ll concentrate on the first part of this section. Hebrews 1:1-4, I want you to see why it’s set off from the rest of the chapter; get to big picture first. What happens in verse 5? See the word “For,” that’s gar in the Greek, those of you who have the Greek testaments, if you know Greek or if you’re just starting Greek, go to the bookstore, get yourself a Greek testament and use it; it’ll help you with your Greek and the advantage of this is that you can pick up your vocabulary fast because you’ll see these words and you can memorize them because you’re familiar with the Scriptures, so it’s going to help you with your vocabulary. The forms in Koine is simpler than what you’re learning in Classical so it should be easier for you. But more than that, you’ve got the tool, why not use it. I know students that spend all their time in Greek, then they put their Greek testament on the shelf and look at the text in English. Isn’t that foolish. I would teach from the Greek if it wasn’t for the fact that so many don’t, they read English, I have to take it out of the English so I know what they teach, but I do all my studying in the Greek. Once you put all that sweat into learning it it’s ridiculous not to use it. So if you have your Greek text bring it to Hebrews. You’ll get some extra things out of it and I think you’ll learn how to use the language a little bit better.

Hebrews 1:5 is an example you’ll see, if you have your Greek text, it says gar there, it’s an explanatory particle and that usually is a marker if you’re outlining, gar, g-a-r. It is an explanatory particle which means from verse 5 to verse 14 explains why verses 1-4 are true. So you’ve got your outline: Hebrews 1:1-4 are saying something; verses 5-14 are telling you why verses 1-4 are true.

Let’s look at Hebrews 1:1, “God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spoke in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, [2] Has in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds; [3] Who, being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, [4] Being made so much better than the angels, as he has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.”

What would you do if somebody got up and preached a sermon like that; what would do? It took about 45 seconds or a minute or so to read that; think of how many doctrines are covered within 60 seconds. Remember the guy who says at the end of the epistle, I just wrote a few words, no big deal, just a few words. Now you just think of the concentration that must have been necessary for people who had not college degrees from Texas Tech to listen to this kind of thing and learn. Just think of that. These were not what we would call educated people; they weren’t stupid people, some of the smartest people are the ones that don’t have an education. That’s why they’re still smart. But these people were normal middle-class people, Jewish people, they had a knowledge of the Old Testament and therefore this person could go into various doctrines he wouldn’t with Gentiles. But next time you hear this little cliché that oh so and so is getting to fat, they’re taking in too much Bible, the neatest reply to that would be to say that they’ve taken too much Bible if they can understand the epistle to the Hebrews just reading in its [can’t understand word], if they’ve got to that point, yeah, okay, I’ll agree. But if they haven’t, and if they can’t understand this epistle, then they don’t have too much Bible, they need a lot more because this was a normal synagogue in the ancient world. So next time you hear that little argument, they’ve got too much Bible, don’t buy it.

Let’s look at Hebrews 1:1 now in detail. I want you to notice, I think you can pick this up in the English and if you have your Greek text look at the Greek in verses 1-2. Where in verses 1-2 is the main verb, actually the first sentence goes all the way down to verse 4; all four verses are one sentence but I’ll narrow it for you, the main verb is somewhere in verses 1-2. Where is it? [someone answers] All right, the verb “he spoke.” Some of you Greek, anybody with a Greek text, when you see the main verb in verse 2 do you know what form that verb is? Do you know what the tense is? Aorist. Okay, so your main verb is in verse 2 is an aorist, it means He spoke. Notice it is not the way the King James is translating it. How does the King James translate it? “Has spoken,” that would be the perfect tense. So it’s not correctly translated in the English, it should be “He spoke.” The significance of this is going to come up in just a minute. It’s not He has spoken, it’s “He spoke.” The difference, “has spoken” refers to the continuing effect of what he said. “Spoke” emphasizes the event of the speaking rather than the results of the event. So rather than stress the results by a perfect we just simply stress the event itself by the aorist. God spoke.

What is the subject of the verb in verse 2? God the Father, God the Son or God the Holy Spirit? What do you think, just looking at the overall context; you don’t get this from the Greek you just get this from good sense. The Father. The Father is the subject; the Father has done the speaking. Now how do you connect and explain verse 1 to verse 2; let’s look at it again. Verse 2, the Father spoke, that’s the main part of the sentence, that’s the center of your sentence. Now let’s do a little study, I don’t know if you’ve ever had diagramming sentences in school. That’s one of the most useful things in Bible study there is. If you’ll take verses 1-4, a big long piece of paper because it gets hairy, if you diagram the sentence you’ll see some very interesting things about the sentence structure in this thing. Here you’ve got God the Father; there’s the verb, God spoke. Now how do you connect the first verse to this sentence? Where’s the thing acting as a verb in verse 1? What is it? Is there anything acting in the clause of verse 1 as a verb? “Spoke,” it’s the same one. Those of you with the Greek please notice it is a participle, not an indicative. This is a participle. And the subject of this thing was God the Father.

So, “the Father spoke,” in the Greek it would be the Father speaking, but it’s an aorist participle which places it back in time of this one, so “the Father having spoken.” “The Father, having spoken, He spoke.” Now why is this? There’s a reason for this. “God the Father, having spoken, has spoke.” Now why? Let’s look at our time; this event of verse 1 precedes verse 2 chronologically. What do you notice in verse 1 and 2 that confirms that the verbs are set in chronological order, so you don’t even have to guess it. What explicit words, it’s available in any translation, between verse 1 and verse 2 that tells you immediately there’s a time difference here? It’s very obvious, “who at sundry times and in diverse manners spoke in time past” the emphasis is contrast between the phrase “time past” and “in these last days.” Time past and in these last days, so we have another contrast between these two things; same subject, same action, time past, present moment.

Those of you who have modern translation, is anyone who has a translation besides those of the King James, that reads “God who at sundry times?” What translation is that? I suppose in all of you who have newer translations it’s reading “God having spoken.” See, the King James misleads you, doesn’t it. Look at the King James translation, “God, who at sundry times and in various manners,” what does that do, by placing it in apposition to the Father? “God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners,” how does that differ grammatically from saying God who, or God having spoken? If you’re writing a sentence what are you trying to do when you say God who spoke this, or God having spoken this? How do you shift between the two. What is the point when you say “God who.” [Someone answers something; tape turns]

Okay, when you have “Father who” it’s emphasizing the nature of the Father, the noun end of the sentence, not the verbal. Do you see why it’s a wrong translation, the Hebrew isn’t talking about the nature of the Father. There’s no emphasis here on what God the Father is, it’s talking about what God the Father has done, it’s on the verb, not on the noun. So that’s why it’s a misleading translation. It should be “God, having spoken in time past,” and it doesn’t stop to deal with God’s nature here, it’s just talking about what He did in time past, “has in these last times spoken unto us.” Now the word “time past” is a word that means a closed era. In other words, the Father in time past with the result that He stopped talking in time past. He’s looking back on a closed era of revelation. Now that means it closed out before God spoke again. Does anybody know from history when the Old Testament canon closed up? When the whole prophetic thing just dried up? Around the 5^th century so it’d be around, say 450, right around in there, approximate. The Jews had come back from the exile, God’s prophets had spoke, Malachi, Zechariah, Haggai, a few Psalms were written, the Old Testament was put into its final form and that was it.

And so for 400 years Israel had lived in the era of the silence of God; there was no living prophet, and during the struggle of the Maccabean revolution and the struggle when the nation so desperately needed guidance, there was none. When Antiochus Epiphanes came in and desecrated the temple, when they needed guidance, there was none. The prophets had died and there was no more prophetic voice left in Israel. So for four centuries, think of it now, to visualize the interval of time. Subtract 400 from 1973, how much American history does that leave. You can empathize that the readers of the epistle to the Hebrews, if you stop and think, that if God’s Word had been written all the way up, past the time of Christopher Columbus on time and stopped, just before Jamestown was founded in Virginia, and we hadn’t had a word from God since, don’t you think if you were living that would seem like a long time to you? For four hundred years you haven’t heard a thing from God, except the Scriptures have been frozen and that’s all that’s passed on. Now that’s the situation of the readers and that’s what he’s getting at. God spoke in that closed era and having done that, now He speaks again.

Now why does he relate the past revelation to the present revelation. This is a very important point here. The past era, 400 years on down to the time of Jesus Christ, and now revelation once again. What do you suppose is the force of the connection between the past revelation, “having spoken, He speaks.” What does that suggest to you that the author is trying to do by tying these two together; why does he bother to tie what Christ has said with what the prophets have said? Why do you think? Why not just present what Jesus said and let it go? [someone answers] There’s a unity of author, the revelations are rationally consistent. The author of Hebrews believes there are no contradictions in the Old and New. Next time the Baha’i people tell you something in the interest of their prophetic religion, they try to always say that the New is a contradiction of the Old. That’s not true; these men would never had accepted Jesus Christ had he contradicted Old Testament revelation. It is the same author of both pieces and the two pieces fit together and therefore they’re rationally consistent.

Another point that he’s making here and that is seen by the contrast between “sundry times and in various manners He spoke,” but there’s no such adverb in verse 2. The “sundry times” refers to the various eras of Israel’s history. Dr. S. Lewis Johnson, to whom I’m indebted for much of my own study in the book of Hebrews at seminary, gave us in class one day an illustration, he said the Old Testament prophets are like you’re in an old house and you hear this clock going dong, dong, the sound of the clock is true but you never know the full message until you hear the last one. And that is a picture of Old Testament theology, always true but you couldn’t tell the full outlines until the last word had been spoken and then it put the capsule on the whole thing in one package.

Then it says “in many ways,” “many times and in many ways,” typology, dreams, visions, prophecies, Theophanies, miracles, all sorts of ways in time past. Now what’s the contrast between the object of the verb? “He spoke,” in verse 1 the indirect object in verse 2. The indirect object to whom it was spoken, the fathers, “the fathers,” contrasted with the indirect object in verse 2, “us.” Again the continuity, we are our generation; who are “our fathers?” The fathers of Israel. This wouldn’t be addressed to Gentiles.

But now the most important thing between the contrast is the instrument of usage… the instrument used in the speaking. What is the instrument in verse 1 and what is the instrument in verse 2? These are put in total opposition to one another. “In prophets,” those of you with a Greek testament, does “prophets” have an article or not, the word prophetes, does it have an article? Yes, “in the prophets,” specific prophets. Why is that little article so important? Because when you come down it says “in Son” does it have the article? No, it’s just huios. Now in that case, without the article, do you know what that means? And if you take Greek you ought to know this and if you don’t this is a doctrinal point here, a noun like this without the article in the New Testament emphasizes the essence of the thing spoken of. If it has the article it emphasizes the identity of the thing. It’s not one Son among many sons, it is he’s saying “He spoke unto us by a Son” type of thing, whereas before it was the prophets, now it’s a Son that God the Father speaks to us with. The emphasis, then, is on the total difference in composition of the instrument. One was human men, the other is this strange being called Jesus Christ, of an utterly qualitatively different composition. And the emphasis is there, “He spoke unto us by a Son,” never did that before. Now do you see where this undercuts Islam and undercuts Baha’i faith in particular. Both of those religions are founded on a prophetes, a prophet. Should a prophet succeed a Son after this kind of verse? No, the prophets are all over with, now we’re in the era of the Son, we don’t need prophets any more, the prophets have passed away, the Son has come. So this shows you the superiority of the Son, once the Son has spoken we don’t need prophets, they’re passé.

Next week we’ll deal with the nature of the word “Son” and go on further but as you begin to see just by looking at verse 3-4 you can see what we’re going to run into. Every one of those nouns in verse 3 was fought over in the early church for 300 years as they sought to define the person of Christ.