S1 || Jesus the Messiah is Above All || An Introduction to the Book of Hebrews || Session 1

We open the Book of Hebrews and find a letter written to Hebrew believers under pressure—public shame, seized property, and the easy out of slipping back into what once felt safe (Judaism). The writer won’t let them settle. With language that sings and arguments that cut clean, Hebrews makes one claim again and again: Jesus the Messiah is better.

The book’s first ten chapters build the case that Christ is greater than angels, Moses, priests, sacrifices, and even the Mosaic covenant they served. He is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact imprint of His nature, our sympathetic High Priest in the order of Melchizedek, and the once-for-all sacrifice who opens the true sanctuary. The final chapters turn doctrine toward daily life—faith that endures, discipline that trains, love that acts, and worship that overflows. Along the way, five warning passages act like guardrails, not to shake assurance, but to stop drift, dullness, and the temptation to trade long-term joy for short-term relief.

If you’re leading a group or studying solo, we’ve built free resources to help you teach and apply Hebrews with confidence. Come learn why the old system, good as it was, cannot match the living Christ who intercedes for us now. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs courage today, and leave a review to help others find the study. What’s one area where you sense the call to move from good to better?

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Free Study Resources
• 0:51 Why Hebrews And Who It Addresses
• 3:18 The “Jesus Is Better” Theme
• 4:10 Who Wrote Hebrews
• 8:17 Canon, Placement, And Style
• 10:51 Method: Messiah’s Superiority To Judaism
• 13:25 Scope, Density, And OT Quotations
• 16:35 Audience Background And Persecution
• 19:10 Warnings Against Complacency
• 21:06 Don’t Return To Judaism Under Pressure
• 23:02 Irrevocable Decisions: Esau And Kadesh
• 26:20 Not Salvation Loss, But Consequences

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:20

Hello and welcome to Reasoning Through the Bible. My name is Glenn. I'm here with Steve. Today we are starting the book of Hebrews, a wonderful book that talks about some great truths of Christianity, a little bit about our ministry. We have a ministry where we not only go verse by verse through the entire Word of God, but we provide free materials for you so that you can teach it yourself at your church or in your small group. Tell your church leaders about us or your group leaders. If you go to our website, reasoningthible.com, you'll find that we have lesson plans there where you can teach this material yourself. We have student guides. We have a great amount of biblical resources to help you teach the Word of God in your group. In today's session, we're going to just have an overview of Hebrews before we get into the specifics. Steve, this is a great book. It's a lofty book. We're going to be in what I call the rarefied air of theology mixed with wonderful language.

SPEAKER_01: 1:27

I always say this at the beginning of every book. I'm looking forward to studying this book. There's some great things here. It's really a contrast of the New Testament books versus the Old Testament books. The Old Testament books kind of have these long stories and a little bit lengthy things that we can talk about. These New Testament books, in many cases, most of them, I would say, are really condensed as to their theology and doctrines and stuff. So it's kind of a contrast between teaching Old and New Testament. You had to take the different styles and different ways to teach them. And so anyway, Hebrews, looking forward to going through it.

SPEAKER_00: 2:08

Hebrews is, of course, just that with the title. It's written to an audience that were Hebrew. They're Jewish Christians that believed in Jesus Christ. That's somehow a concept that gets lost today. People that are Jewish that put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ as the Messiah, they don't stop being Jewish, just like a French person or a Russian person or any person like that don't lose their national ethnicity. If a Jewish person puts their faith in Christ, then they're still Jewish. But it is written to Hebrews that had put their faith in Christ and had been persecuted for it. Now the writer is giving them some great truths so that they can withhold and stand firm in their faith. A recurring theme in these several books of the New Testament that are written to Jewish Christians, James and Hebrews and Peter and a few others. A lot of the themes in Hebrews, especially, but in the other Jewish epistles as well, is that Jesus is a better way. We have here in Hebrews a Christ that is a better sacrifice and a better way. He is superior to the old way and the old sacrifices. None of these epistles in these letters like Hebrews have much information about the doctrines of the church, like we might find in some of the other letters, like some of Paul's epistles. The theme here is the superiority over Judaism. A key verse that I would pick out is Hebrews 3:1 that says this: quote, therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession. That is the message here, really, is to consider Jesus. Now, there is a question in this book about who wrote it. It doesn't say anywhere in the book, it doesn't give the name. No one really knows who wrote it, but Steve, we can have some clues. I mean, over the years, different Christians have had different theories. What would be your comments on who wrote the book of Hebrews?

SPEAKER_01: 4:30

There's several clues that you could go. Some people say Apollos wrote it. Obviously, some people say that Paul wrote it. I have a little bit of an idea personally on who I think maybe wrote it, but I really don't dwell on it. I think it's a rabbit trail that people can go off and spend a little bit too much time on. I go with that the Holy Spirit didn't lead somebody to leave their name with it, and that's good enough for me. I have my own personal ideas on who wrote it, but I'm not going to marry myself to that. I'm not dogmatic about it. I'm just going to go with we don't know who wrote it and just go with what the text says.

SPEAKER_00: 5:13

There are some clues in the book that can give us an idea of the author, but again, the author, nobody really knows. One of the clues is in Hebrews 13, 23, speaks of our brother Timothy as being with the same community as the author, and he knows what's happened to Timothy. The writer was in the community of Christians that knew Timothy and knew of Timothy and had been with Timothy. We also have Hebrews 10.34, says the author speaking of himself, my chains, or I am in chains, which means he had been arrested for his faith, just as Timothy had in 1323. We have here someone that was in the community of believers that were hanging around with the apostles and Timothy, had been most probably arrested for his faith. People over the centuries have had different theories, Steve, as you alluded to. Probably the most common view, at least anecdotally, that I've heard is more people believe it was Paul than anyone else. To me, the style of the book doesn't really follow Paul's common style. But I also quickly follow that by style of writing is not really a good way to make a firm dogmatic conclusion simply because the same writer can write with different styles. We all know of authors that wrote very different styles of writing. That said, I want to read one quote here that I think would sum up my views. There's a man named F. W. Farrar. He gives a good description of the stylistic differences between Paul and the book of Hebrews. Farrar says this this writer cites differently from St. Paul. He writes differently, he constructs and connects his sentences differently. He builds up his paragraphs on a wholly different model. St. Paul consistently mingles two constructions, leaves sentences unfinished, breaks into personal illusions, substitutes the syllogism of passion for the syllogism of logic. This writer is never ungrammatical. He is never irregular. He is never personal. He never struggles for expression, and he never loses himself in parentheses. We have some stylistic differences that all of us can just read it and tell. But again, that's a very weak possible conclusion simply because style differences are so different. I can easily imagine a very young, energetic, young believing the Apostle Paul writing very differently than a very older Apostle Paul that had been through many experiences, had been shipwrecked and beaten many times, would probably write very differently. The style differences don't have a very good holding of who wrote it. We have some clues as to the author that I just gave. We also have in chapter 2, verse 3 and 4, has some stronger clues. Chapter 2, verse 3 says God's word was, quote, confirmed to us by those who heard. And the next verse speaks of the signs and the wonders and the miracles that confirmed them, which is the original hearers and doers, as the author was not part of the original group. So if you add these clues together, then we have the author as being someone with a conservative interpretation. That is, we have someone who is intimately acquainted with the initial group of apostles and who traveled with them. We have a Jewish Christian simply because there's so much here on Judaism that the person must be intimately familiar with Jewish law and culture. We have a highly educated person that is familiar with Jewish cultures. We have someone that is working alongside the initial group of apostles and was willing to be arrested for their faith. Next, we have a question of it being accepted into the canon of Scripture. There were four tests that the early church fathers gave as being a book that would be recognized as authoritative in the canon of Scripture. The book had to be written by an apostle or a companion of the apostles. It had to be universally recognized and read in churches across the first century. It had to have contents that were in line with what people knew the apostles taught. And the book had to have the signs of inspiration, which were clearly seen. If you just read the inspired books and the non-inspired books, it's they're usually quite clear which ones are inspired. The only question there was the authorship. Because it is anonymous, then some of the early church fathers, in an attempt to be quite careful, questioned whether it should be recognized in the canon. But once it was studied carefully and seen that the author was either an apostle or with the apostles, it was accepted. And after that, there really was no controversy. It falls into a spot in the New Testament. There's a pattern. The New Testament has the Gospels. Then there's a continuation of the history of the Gospels, which is the book of Acts. Then we have Paul's epistles going from the largest to the smallest. And then we have Hebrews that is put in between Paul's and the others, and then the remainder of the epistles, such as Peter and James. The style of this book is quite interesting simply because the language here is so grand and so wide and so deep that it's just thoroughly impressive. Steve, any comments you have about the language here and the kind of contents that we're going to find in this book?

SPEAKER_01: 11:07

Well, I think the main thing that's talked about here is the methodology that the author goes through. It's to show the superiority of Messiah over the system of Judaism. When we say Jesus Christ, Christ is translated from the Greek Christos, which means anointed one. And Messiah, the Hebrew word behind that is anointed one. When we say Jesus Christ, we're saying Jesus the anointed one or Jesus the Messiah. So the direction that the author takes is to show the superiority of the Messiah, who we would say is Jesus Christ, over the system of Judaism. And it's not so much to contrast what is the difference between good and bad, because God gave the laws of Moses as something as good. Paul talks about it as being our tutor, but it's really contrasting between what is good and what is better. We're going to see those type of themes as we continue to go through this book. And I think that he does it in a very eloquent way.

SPEAKER_00: 12:19

The scope and scale of the book of Hebrews cannot be overestimated. Hebrews is grand, it's immense, it is wide, and it is deep. Hebrews contains doctrine that can only be compared to the book of Romans and possibly Colossians. The scope and depth and breadth of the theology here is just impressive. All we can really do is stand at the feet of the book of Hebrews and stare at the grandeur of the teachings in this book. I really don't feel adequate to approach it simply because it is so profound and so deep and it covers so much ground. It really is amazing. The writer here quotes somewhere around 86 times he quotes the Old Testament, and he ties together just vast quantities of the Old Testament showing that Christ is better. He is a fulfillment of many of these Old Testament things. And we have, again, about 10 chapters of doctrine. Even when we get to the application section, much of that is by example. Chapter 11 gives us application, but it's really just examples of people in the Old Testament that are held up as faithful people. Most of the book of Hebrews is lofty and magnificent. Studying the book of Hebrews brings us into very rarefied air. Hebrews is a magnificent book that teaches us a lot of theology about how Christ fits in with the rest of the Bible, especially the Old Testament. The amount of teaching that it pulls out of the Old Testament is very impressive.

SPEAKER_01: 14:05

We thought when we went through Colossians that that was pretty dense in theology and doctrine. I think Hebrews, if it doesn't stand toe-to-toe with it, I think it is even above it and has more denseness of theology in it.

SPEAKER_00: 14:21

The audience of the book of Hebrews, as we've said, are Hebrew Christians. The writer assumes that the reader has an intimate knowledge of the Jewish sacrificial systems and history. So we kind of give you a warning with that in as we start this book. It really helps if you have a knowledge of the Old Testament. We're going to, as we go through here, do our best to kind of give a history of each of the sections, but you might want to go back at the same time and study like some of the last half of Exodus passages like that, because it really comes into play in the book of Hebrews. The writer of Hebrews just assumes that you know the sacrificial system, many of the instances that he's talking about. One thing you might do is we covered much of the sacrificial system when we were in the last half of the book of Exodus. You might go and look there. It was in the chapters 20 and 30 of the book of Exodus that we taught. We can refer you to there. In Hebrews chapter 10, verses 32 and 33 say the audience had experienced salvation. These were saved people. They put faith in Christ, and then they had experienced some public suffering and reproach. Their property was seized and taken away, it says in 1034. That verse also says that while they were prisoners, they showed sympathy to the other prisoners. The tone in this book suggests that the suffering was largely in the past, in what it calls the former days in 1032. The writer is writing to a group of Jewish Christians that had been saved, they had put their faith in Christ, they had suffered persecution for it, they had had their property seized, possibly had other persecutions, and had gotten past that. Now they had settled in and were complacent. The writer chastises this group, saying they should have been more mature by now. Chapter 5, verse 12, quote, by this time you ought to be teachers. You have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles. The audience, therefore, had become complacent. And Steve, that very possibly a message that I need to hear and our listeners need to hear is to not become complacent in our faith.

SPEAKER_01: 16:47

In Hebrews, we see some of the details of the persecution that Jewish Christians, Jewish believers in Jesus, as the Messiah, were going through. We have a little bit of Saul who was persecuting the Christians in Acts, a detail there that in fact he was actually going up on his way to Damascus to arrest and incarcerate, bring them back to Jerusalem, some Christian believers that were up there, Jewish Christian believers. Here in Hebrews, we see more details of what was actually going on. While the author reprimands them for not being more mature, they're under great pressure to go back under Judaism in order to relieve themselves from this persecution. That's one of the things that the author is going to address. He's encouraging them yes, you should move on with your spiritual life and you should be more mature. He's telling them, don't go back under Judaism. He gives several reasons why they shouldn't do that.

SPEAKER_00: 17:55

It's quite a magnificent book. And again, it's written to people that's possibly just like us that need to hear a message that Jesus is really superior to anything that we see around us. The writer is urging these Christians upward and on to maturity in Christ. The readers had failed to grow, failed to move away from milk and on to solid food, he talks about in 512. In Hebrews, Jesus is held up as our redeemer. He's held up as better than the old system. He's held up as our high priest in the Order of Melchizedek. We get to meet him again in this book. In this book, the opening of it, the first few verses are just a masterpiece of literature and theology. There's about a dozen references to the deity of Christ in the first half of the first chapter. It really is amazing how much teaching he can squeeze into a small amount of space. Yet the language here is that of beauty and it has rhythm and pacing to it. But it has a great deal of doctrine and theology, but the language is couched in language that is easier to read. It's beautiful language. It's almost poetic. So it's the only book that focuses so heavily on Jesus' ministry in heaven and all of the theology that goes around that, but also does so in a language that we just find so beautiful. The book has these lofty theological ideas, but five times in the book, the author pauses these lofty doctrinal issues to give warnings and chastisements to the readers. How many warnings have we heard from the pulpit in recent days? How many times have we heard our pastors and our leaders chastise the audience for being complacent and needing to move on to maturity? And Steve, that's some of the lessons. I have here an outline of the book and some of the topics in it. But Steve, what do you find is going to be coming up in this book?

SPEAKER_01: 20:08

As I mentioned before, that these Jewish believers were under great pressure and persecution. That's the pressure from the persecution itself. To relieve that pressure, they were thinking about going back under Judaism because that would immediately take this pressure off of them. The author uses a couple of examples of decisions that were made in the past in the Old Testament. One of them was with Esau. He made an irrevocable decision to sell his birthright. Then another example were the Israelites when they came out of Egypt, whenever they came to Kadesh Barnea, and Moses had sent out the spies into the land. The spies come back. Ten of them say we can't take it. Two of them say we can. There was a riot that came up that almost killed the two spies that said we could. That was Joshua and Caleb. Because of that unbelief, that was the tenth act of rebellion that they had made. That generation was told, you're not going to go into the land. It was an irrevocable decision that they would not go into the land. The author is making this case for these Jewish believers to not go and make an irrevocable decision to go back into Judaism. Some of them might have thought, well, I'll just go back under Judaism, take the uh pressure off of me, and then at a later date, I'll repent of that and go back and follow my belief in Jesus Christ and get out of it that way. But the context as we go through here is to keep in mind, he's not talking about personal salvation. The decision of Kadesh Barnia and the decision by Esau, there was punishment and consequences to those decisions. And that's what the author is trying to get over to them. That generation in their day was under an irrevocable decision that had been made by their leadership that they attributed Jesus' miracles to Satan himself. That was known as the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Because of that, that generation was going to be judged. And it was going to be judged in we now know A.D. 70. The temple was destroyed, Jerusalem was sacked, and the people were dispersed. The author is encouraging them, don't go back under Judaism and be associated with that judgment that's going to take place. We've often mentioned in some of our other studies, Glenn, you can control the decision you make, but you can't control the consequences. As we go through here, we're going to see, he's not talking about individual salvation. These believers, he addresses them as believers throughout the whole thing, that their salvation is not in question. They're believers in Jesus Christ. But whether or not they live and are prosperous and they have blessings, that is under question if they go back under Judaism and be associated with this judgment that's going to take place with the people. So that's something to keep in mind as we continue to go through the book.

SPEAKER_00: 23:23

If we look at an outline of the book of Hebrews, the first 10 chapters are a doctrinal section. The last few chapters from 11 to 13, that's a practical section. In those first 10 chapters, the doctrinal section, it's just magnificent. It talks about the glory of the Son, Jesus Christ. It holds up Jesus being superior to the angels. Jesus is a better king that has a better death. Jesus is a better high priest. Jesus gives us a better new covenant and was a better sacrifice. Jesus, in all ways, is superior and better to the old ways. Even in the practical section, it presents the privileges of the Christian. What do we inherit as our rights as believers and the triumphs of a life of faith? We can live in triumph because of our faith and the application of faith to the present life. There's many doctrinal and theological issues and items that are in this book, but again, it's couched in language that's just magnificent. The book starts off at the beginning of chapter one with the inspiration of Scripture. The Bible is inspired by God. It is of utmost importance. And as we said before, the first 13 verses has at least 14 claims to the deity of Christ. Hebrews very solidly lays the foundation of the deity of Christ right out of the shoot at the top of the page in the first chapter. Then chapter 2, verse 3 says, How will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? Hebrews teaches that there is salvation in no one else but Christ. It gives us some information about whether miraculous sign gifts are for today or whether they have ceased. It talks a good bit about the nature of Jesus Christ. How could it be that he is both God and human at the same time? Chapter two of Hebrews mentions the answer to this. Chapter two also presents Jesus as the creator of all things. It teaches the substitutionary atonement that Jesus died in the place of everyone on earth. Jesus presents Jesus as being the creator of all things, the upholder of all things, and the reason for all things. It includes sanctification of the believers, the setting apart of Christians for God's service. Hebrews explains to us that Jesus has power over death and the devil. The book speaks of the Christian being freed from the chains of sin and empowered by the Lord to live the Christian life. How do we live the Christian life? Well, it tells us in the book of Hebrews. The book reviews most of the Old Testament sacrificial system and shows how it points to Christ. Hebrews explains the distinctions between the Old Covenant and the new. Hebrews ties an amazingly large number of Old Testament events and teachings to culminate in Christ. I just can't wait to get in this because it's just so vast, it's so wide and high and deep, and it focuses on the premier person in all of creation and all of the heavens, which is the Lord Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_01: 26:54

I absolutely agree with you, Glenn. It's going to be a great study. I know I say that every time, but we've already started digging into it, and I'm just looking forward to it once again.

SPEAKER_00: 27:06

Join us again next time as we start with Hebrews chapter one, as we will reason through the book of Hebrews. Thank you so much for watching and listening, and may God bless you.