Introduction to The Book of Hebrews

All right, thank you, music ministers.

Have your Bibles.

Or you can look upon the screen, turn

to the book of Hebrews.

The first thing that you need to know about our new journey into this

verse by verse study, which is going to take quite

some time, is what I've already mentioned to you.

It's overall point, and

its overall theme, the

absolute, supremacy, and

preeminence of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus is, preeminent

over, superior

to everything, and

every body.

There's no body, there's nothing that you can

come up with, that anywhere gets close

to his supremacy,

and his preeminence.

And my prayer, as I've already said, for both myself and you.

Once we finish all of this book,

We will all have a much deeper understanding of

the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But before we get started, we're going to need to do an introductory message

here today.

We're going to lay a foundation with some background information

that you're going to find helpful as we go.

You're going to understand it better as we go why.

I put together what I did for today.

No question.

This is not an easy book to study at all.

This book is full

of a lot of deep truth and

serious theological content.

And so, as I said, it's going to require very diligent

preparation on my part to

put together these messages for you, and

serious focus in

listening on your part, and also,

more than in any buck I've ever preached,

your own personal study at home of Hebrews.

Let's just dig into it.

Like all of us just dig into it.

Your personal study time at home, get into Hebrews.

If you don't have a study Bible, let me know.

I got an extra one, they sent me for three from Grace Community Church.

Speaking of that, John MacArthur's Old Testament, professor

was a brilliant man named Dr. Charles Feinberg, and this is what he said.

You cannot understand the book of Hebrews unless you

understand the book of Leviticus.

Because the book of Hebrews is based upon the principles

of the Levitical priesthood.

Now, if that wets your whistle in the direction we're going, it should.

But not to worry.

If your Leviticus IQ is

not up to snuff right now, that's okay, because I'm

promising you, if you come every Sunday, by

the time we get to the end of this book, you're going to know a whole lot more about it.

And it would be helpful.

If you also, next to Hebrews in your personal

Bible study time, if you would do a study of Leviticus as well.

with a study Bible in your hand, to get

to know some of the ceremonies and the types and

the symbols for which Hebrews

gives us the actual reaction, the

actual fulfillment.

Now, Hebrews, as I'm sure all of you know was written by

an unknown author.

And there's been a lot of speculation and debate

about who wrote Hebrews.

There are many candidates.

Paul, Apollos, Peter,

Luke, name a few.

Dr. James White has an interesting theory

that other people also have, that

it was dictated by Paul to

Luke, who then wrote it

down in his own style.

But really, if you dig down into this whole thing,

and there's endless reams of reading about this, vocabulary

style, literary patterns really, truly

don't support any particular claim.

In other words, you could find things.

Like, if you said it was Luke, and you could find things to

pick that apart, and I think it's best to say, we don't know.

I think that's just best.

I mean, where scripture doesn't speak.

It's like Calvin said, directly to something, and

it leaves you, you don't know?

Well, just leave it right there.

You don't know.

And be okay with that.

And it's really kind of fitting that we don't know.

Because the purpose of the book is to exalt Christ.

So I think it's kind of fitting that we don't know.

So what we'll do is, as we go through this

study, we will refer to the reality

that it was definitely written

by the Holy Spirit, who we do know.

In fact, if you look at Hebrews 3 7,

How does it start out?

Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit

says, you see that?

And then he goes on to quote Psalm 95, 7.

Today, if you hear his voice.

So that tells us right there.

It's the Holy Spirit.

And ultimately, the Holy Spirit wrote the whole Bible, right?

using men to do so.

Also, there's no references to Gentiles in this book.

There is no references to problems in

this time period between Jews and Gentiles

in this church that Hebrews is written to, and

you want to know why that is?

Because this little congregation that received

this letter was a persecuted and

suffering group of Jewish believers,

and unbelievers as well, but all Jewish.

And guess what?

We don't even know where the exact

location of this little group of Hebrews

existed geographically.

We do know, for a fact, it was outside of Israel,

and that will come clear as we go along, possibly

Greek, maybe Italy?

There's a little reference toward the end.

We don't know.

Again, so we not meant to know.

We also know, this is interesting, that this community was

evangelized and even taught by actual apostles.

long after Jesus went back to heaven,

and some New Testament prophets.

And when I say that phrase, if you remember a couple weeks ago, we talked about this.

In the early Church Apostolic Age, there were New

Testament prophets that had been given the gift of prophecy,

but as the Apostolic era ended out, just

like we believe in cessationism,

all of that died out with the canon of scripture coming back,

and the age and the apostles dying out.

So, evidently, this

church had started fairly soon after

the ascension of Jesus.

And by the time that this particular letter was written and

delivered, this small church of believers

had actually existed for quite some time.

We know from chapters 10 and 12 that this

group was facing even more

intensified persecution

at the time the letter got to them than they had

previously experienced.

Now, let's talk about where the persecution came from.

Well, during this time period, the Romans, starting

with Claudius, if you remember in

your history books, he expelled the Jews from Rome in

49 A.D. and

then later Nero, A.D. 64,

and then, of course, from Jews, who

didn't believe Jesus was Messiah, they really got

a lot of persecution, in those early,

in the 1st century, they got a lot from their own Jewish physical

brethren.

And unlike many of the Jews in Israel

that we've been studying in the book of John,

no one in this little group of

Hebrews, ever had the opportunity

in their lives to meet Jesus, or even

see Jesus, with their eyeballs.

They were too far away when he had his ministry

going in Israel.

So anything that they knew about Jesus came

secondhand, first from the apostles in the New Testament

prophets, kind of like for us, right?

We do know this also, that

there were not any missionaries that went out

anywhere from the main church in Jerusalem until

at least seven years after

this church was founded.

And so, we also know that

you're going to see this.

This is important, the use of present tense language.

In many sections of this book,

lets us know that the Levitical priesthood

of the Jews and the sacrificial system was

still in operation when this letter was written.

Now, without a long explanation, of which

I could give you one, but just for time's sake.

It seems the best time

frame when this was written was between 65

and 69 A.D.

Now, let me tell you why this is important, this present tense language

about the sacrificial system.

That tells us for sure that this book was

written before 70 A.D. when the temple

was destroyed by the Romans.

Because you know what happened.

A good bit of time had passed from the start of

the church until the letter had been delivered.

And that's why it says in Hebrews 5:12.

Look at it.

For though, by this time, you ought to be teachers.

But you need, again, for someone to teach you the elementary principles

of the oracles of God, and

you have come to need milk, and not solid food.

So he's getting onto them, kind of.

You've been around a while, but I'm still having to give you milk,

not seven food, because the sacrifices are

still going on in Jerusalem, how do we know that?

Because 70 AD hadn't happened yet, because what happened in saving DAD?

The Romans came in and destroyed the temple.

And there hasn't been a temple or a Jewish sacrifice since that time to this very day.

Do you think that's a coincidence?

There's no possible way that that's a coincidence, right?

Now, let me get to the really, really,

really important thing to understand here.

And you got to keep this in your mind.

There are three basic

groups of people in view throughout this whole epistle.

And if we do not keep these groups in mind,

this book will become very confusing for us.

It'll become confusing for you when you're in home studying it.

But if you get this right now, you're going to be

on your way to having a firm grasp of what's happening.

If this book was only written to believers,

boy, we would run into some verses that would give us big problems

in interpreting a number of passages,

as you're going to see that simply cannot apply to believers.

So it's clear, first, that both

unbelievers and believers are a target,

in fact, as we're fixing to see, not only in these

three groups, do you have to understand there's three groups, you

also have to understand who

is being addressed, and

when they're being addressed.

Both of those things are going to get mixed up in

understanding this book, especially in chapter 6, and in chapter 10.

Now, what's a good idea to do is to

give you a summary of the three groups.

So you can get them in your mind, and you can keep them in your mind as we study.

First, in this Jewish congregation, there

were true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

They had come out of Judaism,

in which they had been born and raised their whole life,

until those apostles and New Testament

prophets came on the scene, evangelized them.

God saved them, regenerated them.

They had true saving faith.

They are ethnically Jewish, but they are Jewish believers

in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And they paid a heavy price.

Persecution for their newfound faith.

And we're going to see that in chapters 10 and 12.

First, I mean, just being

ostracized from their Jewish brethren in their community, from their families.

Think of the family members who didn't believe Jesus was Messiah.

And how those family members now treated what they

considered to be blasphemy, kicked out of the synagogue.

I've told you before, we've talked about it.

The synagogue in every Jewish community was

the social gathering place.

It's where everything went down, kicked

out, kicked out of your family, kicked

out of your synagogue, kicked out of the social strata of the community.

So there was suffering of

all levels and all different kinds, kind of like what

Saul was doing before he became Paul.

And then, also, you got to think about the Romans and

what they were doing in this time period, as I mentioned earlier.

But not yet martyrdom for these folks,

as we're going to see in chapter 12.

Now, as I said, by this time, they

should have been mature enough to deal with all that, but

they were not, and you're going to see the letter address that.

Also, and you can understand this.

they were in real danger of mixing

in legalism

and the ceremonies of Judaism with their Christian faith.

It was so very tempting for them, and

this was a serious problem for them.

Just like in all Jewish congregations, it

was very hard for them to accept all

the clear cut distinctions between the gospel and

the new covenant and the old with the ceremonies and the rituals.

I mean, it just couldn't tear apart from it.

They were still hung up, let me give you an example, on the

temple ritual and worship.

What was still happening when they got this letter?

And that, folks, is why.

We are going to see the writer play so much emphasis

that there is a new priesthood, that

there is a new temple, that there is a new permanent

sacrifice, and all of these

are far better than the old ones.

That's going to be drilled into your brain as we go through these verses.

And we have to understand that

all of this was so very

hard for them, having been born and raised

in Judaism.

It would kind of be like, what you are taught here.

You come every Sunday, and you hear this Sunday in and

Sunday out, and somebody comes in, and it's totally

news, like, What?

And you added that, that even though the old covenant and

the new covenant are dramatically different, guess what?

The same Old Testament, that

they had grown up reading and studying and

memorizing, was still inseparably

linked to the new covenant.

So could you see how that would make it?

Hey, well wait a minute.

This is still the scripture.

This is still the word of God right here.

And many of the passages are quoted here

in this epistle from the Old Testament,

many to demonstrate the

differences between the Old and the New Covenant.

So lots of Old Testament is going to be quoted to

teach, and it's really primarily, teaches the

church for all time, of course, but specifically these people

who had been ingrained in Judaism.

So, I would say, we really can't be too hard on them, right?

I mean, put yourself in their shoes.

I mean, we'd all be struggling with this if we had been 1st

century Hebrews with now this is the Messiah.

And add to that, the pressure, the persecution

from their fellow Jews, a

lot of complexity, trying to hold

on, wait, that, we can't let this go, we can't let this go.

That's what God said.

Right?

This is what God said in this word.

It's really, it's really very difficult.

I'm overemphasizing this to

prepare you for what you're going to hear.

So you understand how hard it was for them to make a clean break

away from the Old Covenant and family

members who were still not believers.

Now, again, I want to re emphasize this.

Put all that together.

And what that equals is, they were in danger.

of, in their little community, developing all

to their self, a ceremonial,

ritualistic, legalistic form

of Christianity that had way too much old

covenant elements in it.

That's what they were endangering.

And that's why we see this strong content in the teaching

of the Holy Spirit, to make very clear, you're going to

see it over and over how much better the new covenant

is, how much better Jesus is, how much better

what Jesus did is than anything you had before.

They desperately needed to hear that.

They needed to have their faith strengthened

in the new covenant, and they desperately

needed to be shown.

You don't need the new temple at all.

You don't ever need to go back to that temple.

There's nothing for you at that temple, and

then in the providence of God.

It was very soon completely destroyed, not

one stone left upon another, and as I said,

2026.

There has not been a Jewish sacrifice in that Temple sits,

because the Muslims run it now, on the Temple Mount.

They needed to understand.

You don't need the daily, old covenant

priesthood, the daily sacrifices, the

monthly sacrifices, the yearly sacrifices.

You don't need them at all, ever again,

because as Hebrews makes clear, they have a new

and better covenant as Christians.

You're Christians now.

They had a new and better priesthood in Christ, the

fulfillment, a better sanctuary, a

new, and absolutely, once for

all, permanent, perfect sacrifice

in what the Messiah did in his substitutionary death on the cross.

That's what they needed to get into their bloodstream.

They needed to understand that these types and shadows and

pictures and symbols of the old covenant,

revealed in the Old Testament, were now totally

given way to all the reality in the new covenant.

That's what they needed to understand.

So this first group is made up

of genuine Jewish believers, who

needed to understand all that, and who needed to have confidence,

they needed confidence in this new covenant, and

exactly how it differed from the O.

Now, let me go to the second group.

These are Jewish.

non Christians who had intellectual faith only.

Remember, the demons believe, right, and they tremble.

Now, we've all encountered people who have

heard the truth of Jesus Christ, and they

are intellectually convinced that he is who he claimed to be.

They may have made a profession of faith.

I'm a Christian.

I believe in Jesus, but... by their behavior.

They make it very clear that they have not ever

really, truly surrendered to the Lord

Jesus Christ in Bible,

repentance and saving faith.

They profess faith in Christ,

but they do not genuinely possess

faith in Christ and his gospel.

And it's probably true that every church group,

since Pentecost has had people in it like this.

And so, these folks, as

we go through Hebrews, at different parts,

and I'm going to tell you when they are, I'm going to tell you, okay, it's this group now.

They are directly addressed and exhorted by the Holy Spirit.

Hey, you need to go all the way to saving faith.

is what you need to do.

And not only that, they are warned, big time,

of the consequences of not doing that.

Let me show you a quick example.

Hebrew 6, 4 to 6.

Here is this group.

For in the case of those who have once been enlightened, and

have tasted of the heavenly gift, and have

been made partakers of the Holy Spirit.

Wait a minute, what does that mean, brother Philip?

Well, you're going to find out when we get to those verses.

Because I don't have time to go through all that right now.

And have tasted the good word of God and the powers

of the age to come and then have fallen a way.

It is impossible to renew

them again to repentance, since they again crucify

to themselves the Son of God and put him to

an open shame.

You see the thick waters we're fixing to get into here?

Thickness is what this is going to be.

We'll explain that when we get to it.

But that's a passage that's been used by people,

who believe that a true Christian can

lose their salvation, to support their position.

But, as I said, with a right understanding

of who, out of the three groups,

is being addressed in that passage we can

avoid falling into that kind of area.

So you see what I'm saying?

Every Sunday, when you come in here in Hebrews, you got to have your thinking cap on.

We got to make distinctions.

We've got to be discerning.

And this is a warning right here.

Not only to those who have just the intellectual

faith in Christ only, to not stop

where they are, but you need to go all

the way to saving faith.

And that's not the only warning.

Let me give you one more.

Hebrews 10:26 and 27.

For if we go on, sinning

willfully, after receiving the knowledge of the

truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice

for sins, but a terrifying expectation of

judgment and the fury of a fire,

which will consume the adversaries.

And then, further, look at 29.

Verse 29.

How much severer punishment do you think he will

deserve, who has trampled underfoot the

Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the

blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified,

and has insulted the Spirit of grace?

Wow.

There and more.

are controversial passages

right there, that Christians have debated and argued about all

through the centuries.

And we will deal with every one of them in detail when we get to them.

Third group, last group.

Third group of Hebrews here are the

Jews in this community who had not believed in Jesus at all.

They had rejected him as Messiah.

The writer also wants them to

clearly understand exactly who

Jesus claimed himself to be.

This is really the main thrust of chapter 9.

I'll give you an example in chapter 9,

11, verse 11 out of Hebrews, warning

to point these people to Christ, but when Christ appeared.

As a high priest of the good things to come,

he entered through the greater and more perfect

tabernacle, not made with hands, that

is to say, not of this creation.

And then he goes on from there to explain in depth all of that.

So in this section, it's the

unbelievers, who are directly spoken to.

So this is not to Christians or those who are only intellectually

convinced this group needed to be evangelized.

Yo, you're rejecting Jesus?

You're rejecting your Messiah?

Well, let me tell you who he is.

That's the thrust here.

So, these are the three groups, if you can remember that,

that are in view here in the book of Hebrews.

And again, the key to interpreting any part

of this book is to understand

and grasp which group is being addressed

and when they're being addressed.

And really, back up, meta

picture, primary message is really

to believers, overall.

And what you have here is these periodic warnings here

and there to these two unbelieving groups that

are sprinkled in and out the book.

And really, really.

It's just a masterful way that could only be

divine, that the Holy Spirit is able to speak

to all three groups with this text all

woven together into one book.

It's clearly inspired by God.

There's just no question about it.

In Hebrews, there is confidence, and

assurance, for the Christian, you're going to get that Christian.

There is warning to the intellectually

convinced that they have to come all the way to saving faith,

or the knowledge that they have will damn them forever.

And there's a very convincing presentation to the

totally unbelieving Jews in this community.

So everybody's covered.

But also, overall, as I said earlier, the

biggest picture is the supremacy and

the preeminence of Jesus, over

everything that exists.

He's better than anything that was before.

He's better than any Old Testament person, or angel,

or ritual, or ceremony, or sacrifice.

He is better than anybody or everything

that is.

That is the primary message that we...

I'm going to keep hammering it into your forehead every

Sunday when you are here.

As I said, we're going to get a summary of the whole

epistle, in the first three verses.

And then it's going to go on.

to detail how Christ is superior to everything.

Now, I'm going to tell you.

That was as condensed an introduction as I could give you.

I'm telling you, I left a lot on my table.

At the house, I could have gave you a lot more stuff,

but I just wanted to condense the

introduction to give you some foundational thoughts

that are important, understanding how this

book is going to go, and we're just going to let it all play

out as we go.

How about that?

Okay?

Now, but I don't want to leave, 'cause

I can't leave without dipping our toe

in a verse, all right?

So first verse.

And there's no build up here.

There's no greeting here,

like we get in the other epistles.

This book just starts

off with a nuclear explosion

in the first three verses, right out of the gate.

This is what we're going to do.

We're not going to get to all three verses today, okay?

But we're going to take these first three verses together,

and we're going to put them in an outline.

Number one, the preparation for Christ,

number two, the presentation of

Christ, and number three, the preeminence

of Christ.

That's going to be our three point outline in

these first three verses.

So look with me at verse number one.

God.

After he spoke, long ago,

to the fathers, in the prophets,

in many portions, and in many ways.

Now, this tells us how God

wrote the Old Testament.

The purpose of the Old Testament was to prepare

for the coming of Christ in

his incarnation, whether in prophecy,

or type, or principle, or commandment,

or whatever it was.

It was all big picture, the presentation,

and the preparation of Christ.

Now, as you know, this, little theology for a second.

God has revealed himself to all mankind

in what the theologians call general revelation, right?

And we know that from Romans one.

And Romans 1, we both get, God has revealed

himself to all mankind in creation, and

God has revealed himself to all mankind in conscience,

from the visible creation that we can see with

our eyes, and then innately, all

men know instinctively that God exists,

the most hardened atheist.

When he lays his head down at night in the still

of the night, he knows, because God

has implanted it in there.

God's law is written on every heart, and that's

how we innately know right from wrong.

That's how every person knows, innately, that if

I pulled out an M16 and just started spraying, everybody

who watched the news story from this morning spraying of the

M16, at Providence Baptist Church, would know.

That's wrong.

That's how you know that.

General revelation.

Creation and conscience is enough to

hold all people accountable, as Romans one says.

But it's not enough to save anybody.

OK?

If we're going to know anything about

God beyond general

revelation, God has to speak.

Now, look at verse one again.

God after he what?

spoke.

Okay?

Aside from the fact that we can know God exists

through creation and conscience, I want you to ask you this question.

What would we know about God, besides that if he didn't speak?

Nothing.

Nil, nada, zilch.

Will you just be running around here, acting according

to our own natures, and that's all we would ever do?

And here's a classic illustration of this from John MacArthur.

I want you to imagine this right now.

Imagine us living in a natural box.

And in this natural box.

is the whole universe of the time space existence

that we currently live in.

All of the planets and

galaxies and stars,

and we can move around in this box physically, although

we can't get much further than our own planet, but

I mean, if we could, fly around the universe, it's massive, right?

We can't get our minds around how big the universe is.

But we're still inside this natural box.

But then, outside of the natural box that

we all exist in, in this universe,

outside is the supernatural.

outside the box.

OK?

Now, deep down inside,

we know the supernaturals out there.

as part of general revelation, right?

We know alternity has been placed in our hearts.

We know, but on our own,

We can't, on our own, know anything about

what's outside the box in the supernatural.

We can't experience anything outside the

natural box in the supernatural.

While we're inside this natural box.

So some people come along and say, well, you know what we need to do?

We need to start a religion so that we can discover

the supernatural that we know is out there, and so

they go to the edge of the natural box.

And they start trying to poke holes in it with their religion,

and they want to break into the supernatural,

and you can pick your religion.

Buddhism, Hinduism, pick your cult.

I don't care what it is.

It's all an attempt to get outside

the natural box and into the supernatural

realm.

But guess what?

The natural man cannot.

on his own, escape into the supernatural.

None of us in here can transcend our

natural existence.

We can't even get on the roof.

Right?

Right now unless you go get a ladder.

So we have a problem.

We can't discover anything about God

beyond general revelation, as I said

earlier, any more than a bug

has the ability right now in the grass to understand us

in what makes us tick.

It's about the same.

And we can't even condescend down

to the bugs level to communicate to them anything.

But in fact, in our case, with

God, God could.

In fact, God did,

God literally became

a man and busted through the natural box

that we're in, and when he busted through the natural box,

What Hebrews one is telling us, as he told

us all about himself, and that outside

supernatural world.

Every single religion in the world

is in a backward situation.

Because every religion in the world is man's

attempt to jump out of the box.

There's only one religion in the world that says the opposite.

Biblical Christianity, which says, God came into the box.

that we're in, in the person of Jesus Christ,

to reveal himself to us and

to seek and save that which was lost.

And that is the major difference between

Christianity and every other religion in

the world, just like every other religion in the world,

is a system of works, to get out of the box,

to reach God, only biblical

Christianity is our responding in

faith alone to the God who came into the box, in

the person of Jesus Christ.

alone.

There's no other system like biblical Christianity.

And that's why people when they say, well, look, man, you can

pick any religion you want to.

They all lead to God.

I say no, they do not.

None of them do, ever, ever.

Every other religion is man's attempt to discover

God, Christianity is God

invading man's world, literally, personally,

and revealing himself in great detail,

as we read about every Sunday in his book.

And God first spoke outside

of general revelation through the words of

the Old Testament.

That's where he started.

Men alone didn't write the Bible.

God used men as instruments

to write down what he wanted all of us to know.

This is a great passage right here that we have

before us supporting the divine

inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Let's keep going, and I want to show it to you.

Verse one, God.

After he spoke, long ago,

to the fathers, in the prophets,

in many portions, and in many ways,

now, many portions refers to the 39 books

of the Old Testament.

And think about it.

They reflect many different historical times,

locations, cultures, people,

situations, over 1,500 years,

and 40 plus writers, and consider how

it all fits together with itself.

That's amazing.

Consider how it fits all together with the New Testament.

Astounding.

Next, verse one, in many ways.

Well, what does that mean?

Well, in the Old Testament times, visions, symbols,

poetry, law, prophecy?

No matter the literary style?

It was always God's revelation of what

he wanted his people to know, whatever vehicle

he used to make that happen, in the Old Testament, listen to what it's called.

It's called Progressive Revelation.

You can't read all of the truth in Genesis out of the Old Testament, can you?

No.

Genesis gives you some.

Then Exodus gives you some.

Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and it builds, and it

builds, and it builds, and it builds throughout the entirety, and

that's why we call it progressive revelation.

As I said a few weeks ago.

The Bible never goes from error to truth.

That's not what we're talking about and the difference between the Old Covenant and the New.

Even from the Old Testament

to the New Testament, it's always just this.

Remember this, incompleteness to completeness.

That's what Old Testament to New Testament is.

So nothing in the Old Testament is wrong.

There is development and progression

of truth revealed until guess what?

It's totally refined and revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.

It's kind of like the kids back here.

First, what do they start off with?

Letters.

A, B, then words.

Then they get on to sentences.

That's how they learn.

That's the same way God gave his revelation to us, progressively.

Bits and pieces.

It started out with the types and the shadows, and

the ceremonies, and the prophecy.

You could liken those to the words, and then the full sentences

came in Christ.

And I'm not just talking about what Christ spoke in the gospels.

I'm saying all that the New Testament says about Jesus.

Now go back a little bit in verse one.

says he spoke long ago to the fathers.

That's our ancestors.

Did you know that?

Old Testament people.

That's our spiritual ancestors, as

sons and daughters of Abraham, right?

Isn't that what the New Testament teaches us?

And physical ancestors, if you're Jewish.

Next in verse one.

In the prophets.

And they were his messengers.

Now, think about this.

The prophet is one who speaks to men

or God.

The Old Testament priest spoke to God,

or men, when we were doing the sacrifices.

The prophet brought God's message to

men, this gives us, right here, the

divine authorship of the Old Testament,

in the prophets.

Look at 2 Peter 1,2.

121.

He says, For no prophecy was ever made by an act

of human will, but men moved by

the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

2 Timothy 3:16, all scripture

is inspired by God,

that phrase meaning God breathed.

So, that was the

preparation for Christ.

Now, lastly, real quick for today, I want you

to see, just for a minute, we'll get more into it next time, the

presentation of Christ.

Look at verse two.

In these last days, he has spoken

to us in his son.

This is the finalizing of

God coming into the box and revealing what he wants us to know about himself.

God, who used to speak in many ways, to many people,

has finally big pictures spoken in one way through

one individual, Jesus.

And I say big picture because there were eight men who wrote the

New Testament, not including the author of Hebrews, and the entire

New Testament, as I said earlier, is centered around one person.

Jesus,

The gospels give the story.

The epistles all comment on the person and work

of Christ, and what living in obedience to

Christ looks like, and what coming to faith in Christ looks

like, and then the book of Revelation tells

us where all of this is going to end up.

So it's all Christ, from beginning to end.

That's why verse 2 says, in these last days has

spoken to us in his son.

You're going to see, it's so interesting to consider none

of the old prophets of the Old Testament, grasp

the whole truth, even when they were getting the revelation.

Only in Jesus do we get the full picture.

The Old Testament, as I said, bits, pieces,

rolled out progressively, right?

But Jesus is the final and full

revelation in these last days.

Now, if you were here a few weeks ago, you

will remember that that phrase can be used the last days

as starting during the first coming of Jesus.

So that means we're still in them right now, the last days.

And that's how the phrase is used here.

And let me tell you something.

These Jews really understood the

last days, to me, the days when Messiah would be here.

The messianic age.

When they heard that phrase, that's what they were thinking about.

And certainly, they were in

the Messianic age, and we're still in the Messianic age.

Now, in these last days, God

has spoken to us in his son, and guess what he did?

He finished.

He finished speaking.

in the New Testament.

That's why it's utter blasphemy to

add anything to the New Testament.

Anything else out there in all of literature

that claims to be revelation from God is

blasphemous.

God has spoken in His Son,

in the New Testament, and that's it.

It's over.

It's ended.

That's why, at the end of Revelation, it says, if you add anything to this,

the plagues are going to be added to you

you.

Take anything away?

The same thing will result.

God's final revelation was

made in one greater, as we will

see, than any of the prophets of the Old Testament king Jesus.

Now, we're going to stop here.

with this introduction in verse one.

And next time, we're going to get into verse 2 and 3. which

is the preeminence of Jesus.

So we're off, folks.

Here we are.

We're cranking the boat.

Get ready for a long,

amazing journey, of a verse

by verse, exposition, of the book of Hebrews.

Again, I can't encourage you enough.

Read it regularly for yourself.

When you get to the end, go back to chapter one, verse one, read it again.

And then just keep repeating that as we go through this book.

Get familiar with what's coming ahead.

And if you got questions, jot the questions down,

and pray for me.

that I can continue to understand it, and prepare for you on

Sundays, what I'm learning during

the week, and we'll all learn the book together.

Sound like a deal?

All right, let's pray.

Father, we thank you, Lord.

For this tremendous book.

The word is clear when the Holy Spirit testifies it'll

only testify of Christ, and boy, does the Holy Spirit testify of Christ here?

In this great book of Hebrews, I thank you.

For the opportunity to preach it.

I'm absolutely overwhelmed and very humbled that you would

have somebody like me to do this, but you got to have preachers somewhere.

And so I pray that you would help me to understand it, to communicate it,

that your people would have ears to hear it, and

that through every message, of course, Christ

would be exalted, and you would be glorified.

In Jesus' name we pray.

en.