The Book of Hebrews
The authorship of the book of Hebrews has always been subjected to speculation since the early churches, but its canonicity has been quite well established. While the early churches, in general, attributed the book to the Apostle Paul as the writer, one of the early church fathers, Origen said, “Who wrote it, God only knows”. The book is dated certainly before 90 A.D. as Timothy was still alive at the time (13:20).
From the contents of the letter, we know that it is a personal letter addressed to a group of Jewish Christians. It is helpful to bear in mind its purpose and who the first readers of the letter were in order to understand the flow of arguments and the interpretation of the letter. Consider that the recipients
- might have slipped back into Judaism (or at least in danger of doing so), and
- were having doubts about the divinity of Christ, hence nullifying the merit of His Atoning sacrifice on the cross.
The bulk of the writing therefore deals with
- The superiority and divinity of Christ
- The completeness of His redemptive work (versus the incompleteness of OT sacrifices) and
- The horrible danger and consequences of wavering or falling away from one’s faith in Christ Jesus.
God Spoke to Us in These Last Days:
(1) God speaks to us (vv. 1-2a)
a. How does this opening remark show us that the recipients of the letter were Jewish?
b. How does this opening remark affirm the role of the prophets in the Old Testament?
c. Who is Jesus Christ? How different is He from the prophets of old?
d. How has God spoken “by His Son”?
e. What might you understand by the term, “last days”?
(2) Who Jesus Christ is (vv. 2b-3)
a. What is His relationship with the all (created) things? (v. 2b)
b. In saying that Christ is “the heir” of all things, what does the Bible mean? (see Jn. 1:1-2; Col. 1:16)
c. Who is the Son in relation to Father God? (also see Jn. 1:14, 18)
d. What is Christ’s continuing work in the universe?
e. How is redemptive work described?
f. What does the sitting down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven signify?
(3) Christ’s name is above that of the angels (vv. 4-6)
a. What name has Christ inherited?
b. In quoting Psalm 2:7 and 1 Chronicles 17:13, how does the author of Hebrews prove his point? (v. 5)
c. What is the other name used in 1:6 to describe the Son?
d. How is He above the angels? (v. 6—note that the quotation is a “close approximation” of Ps. 97:7 and Deut. 32:43 in the Septuagint. This is not apparent in our reading of most English translations. [Guthrie, TNTC, 74])
(4) What is the main message to you today and how may you apply it to your life?
Continued: 1:7-9—Christ, the Son Versus Angels
(1) Who are angels? (v.7; see Ps. 104:4)
(2) What is the point the author is making?
(3) In contrast, how does the use of “throne” and “scepter” point to who the Son is? (v. 8; Ps. 45:6)
(4) How does v. 9 (i.e. Ps. 45:7) make a further contrast between the Son and angels?
1:10-12—More than the King, but the Creator God
(5) Who is the Creator of the earth and the heavens?
(6) What will happen to the earth and the heavens?
(7) How is the Creator compared to His creation?
Continued: 1:13-14—Christ, the Son Versus Angels
(8) What did God say to the Son concerning His work of salvation? (v. 13; Ps. 110:1)
(9) What role do angels play in the work of our salvation? (v. 14)
(10) Why do you think it is important to distinguish between Christ, the Son, and the angels?
(11) What is the main message to you today and how may you apply it to your life?
2:1-4—Salvation through Christ Cannot be Ignored
(1) The author is comparing the message given through the angels with the salvation wrought by Christ (v. 2)
a. What is the message given by the angels? (see Gal. 3:19)
b. What is the punishment for not obeying the Law? (v. 2; see Gal. 3:10-13)
(2) The difference of the salvation through Christ (vv. 3-4)
a. Who first announced the message of salvation to the world?
b. Who were the first hearers who confirmed the message to us?
c. How did God testify the truthfulness of this salvation through Christ?
d. How then is this salvation different from the message given by the angels?
e. What is the consequence should we ignore this great salvation?
f. In what way(s) can one “ignore” this great salvation?
2:5-9—The “Must” of Incarnation (I)
(3) The author uses Psalm 8 to talk about Christ’s incarnation.
a. How does Psalm 8:4-6 talk about man in relation to angels? (v. 7)
b. What is God’s plan concerning man and God’s creation? (v. 8)
c. According to the author of Hebrews, has this plan of subjecting everything to “him” materialized yet? (v. 8)
d. In whom has this plan of subjecting “everything under him” been materialized now? (v. 9)
e. How? (v. 9)
f. Does “everything” refer only to this visible created world? (v. 5)
(4) What is the main message to you today and how may you apply it to your life?
The “Must” of Incarnation (II)
(1) The “fitting” suffering (v. 10)
a. Who is the “author” of our salvation?
b. What will this salvation do to us, “the many sons”? (v. 10)
c. Why then is it “fitting” that God should make this author of our salvation perfect through suffering? (v. 10)
d. While a “suffering Messiah” is foreign to the Jewish mind, how important is it that Christ must suffer?
e. Within the context of this “fitting” suffering, why does the Bible emphasize that Father God is the One “for whom and through whom everything exists”? (v. 10)
(2) Brotherhood (vv. 11-12)
a. Who were we who have been made holy by Christ?
b. Should He be ashamed to call us His brothers? (Ps. 22:22) Why or why not?
(3) His Children (vv. 13-18)
a. In what sense are we His brothers, and in what sense are we His children? (v. 13; Isa. 8:18)
b. The sharing of the children’s humanity:
- What has the death accomplished for His children? (vv. 14-15)
- Beyond the destroying of the devil, and freeing us from death, what is the reason for Christ to be like His brothers in every way? (v. 17)
- Why? (v. 18)
- In what capacity did Christ accomplish His service to God? (vv. 16-17)
(4) How important is it to you personally that Christ has shared your humanity in every way?
(5) What is the message to you today and how may you apply it to your life?
Previously the author has argued that Christ must suffer and die for His brothers as God’s high priest (2:9-18). Now he urges us to fix our thoughts on Him:
(1) What might be the implications in calling his recipients “holy brothers”?
(2) What is the heavenly calling all believers share in? (v.1)
(3) He urges us to “fix your thoughts on Jesus”
a. What is meant by to "fix our thoughts on Jesus"?
b. Who is the Jesus to whom we confess?
(4) In what way is Jesus compared to Moses? (v. 2; Num. 12:7)
(5) While Jesus is certainly greater than the angels (chapters 1-2), how is He compared to Moses? (v. 3)
(6) Why?
(7) In using the builder’s analogy, who, in essence, does the author say Jesus is? (v. 4)
(8) 3:5 asserts that Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s household testifying to what would be said in the future (v. 5).
a. What would be said in the future?
b. How does Moses’ faithfulness serve as a testimony in this respect?
(9) In comparison, how different is Christ’s faithfulness (v. 6), in terms of:
a. Who He is in God’s house?
b. What does it mean that we are God’s house?
c. Is 3:6b a condition? Why or why not?
(10) What is the main message to you today, and how may you apply it to your life?
For the author of Hebrews, the comparison of Jesus to Moses serves as another chance to launch a warning to the people from falling away from their faith in Christ’s redemption and back into Judaism. The launching pad is the failure of Israel in entering into the “rest” that God desired for them due to their disobedience in the desert.
(1) The warning of Psalm 95:7-11—In urging his readers to “hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast” (3:6), the author cites the warning from the captioned psalm (vv. 7-11).
a. Who is the true author of the Psalm? (v. 7)
b. From the exhortation that follows in the rest of the chapter, one of the main emphases of this quote from the Psalm is the word, “today”.
- Which particular period of time of testing of the Israelites does He refer to? (v. 8)
- What does the Holy Spirit describe the 40 year experience in the desert as? (v. 9)
- What had these forefathers seen in the 40 years? (v. 9, Neh. 9:19-21)
- In spite of what they saw, what had they chosen to do? (v. 10)
- What was the result of their rebellion? (v. 11)
- What does the Holy Spirit call us to do upon the hearing of these words? (vv. 7-8)
(2) Application (vv. 12-14)—the author of Hebrews now applies this warning to us.
a. What does he call the kind of heart that turns away from the Living God? (v. 12) Why?
b. He urges us not to be hardened by sins’ deceitfulness. (v. 13)
- How should we do so?
- Why does he make an emphasis on “daily” and “today”?
c. Is 3:14 a condition? Why or why not?
(3) Failure to enter God’s rest (vv. 15-19)—He reiterates the failure of the Israelites under Moses.
a. What was the first rhetorical question? (v. 16)
b. What was the second rhetorical question? (v. 17)
c. What was the third rhetorical question? (v. 18)
d. Why is the entrance into the Promised Land called entrance into “God’s rest”?
e. What conclusion does the author draw? (v. 19)
(4) What is the main message to you today and how may you apply it to your life?
4:1-3—We Have Entered God’s Rest
(1) Why does the author say, “we who have believed enter that rest”? (v. 3a)
a. What is meant by “that rest”?
b. How have we entered?
(2) Why couldn’t the people led by Moses out of Egypt enter God’s rest? (v. 2)
(3) What lesson should we then learn from them? (v. 1)
4:4-11—The Sabbath Rest
(4) Since Genesis 2:2
does say that God rested from all His work on the 7th day of
creation (Heb. 4:4), and that Jesus asserts that “My Father is always at His work to
this very day and I, too, am working” (Jn. 5:17), consider the following questions.
a. Why did God’s rest from His work of creation form the basis of the Sabbath rest? (Exod. 31:17; see Note below)
b. What work is God still and always doing?
c. What then is the true meaning of God’s rest we are called into?
(5) While those under Moses’ leadership did not get to go into the Promised Land, what about those under Joshua’s leadership? (v. 8)
a. Did they enter into the Promised Land?
b. Did they enter into God’s rest? (v.8) Why or why not?
(6) The true meaning of entering into God’s rest (vv. 9-11)
a. What is the kind of work that a person rests from that allows him to enter God’s rest? (v. 10)
b. How can one “make every effort to enter that rest”? (v. 11)
c. For the Jewish Christians:
- How had they entered into God’s rest in the first place? (see 4:3)
- If they fall back into Judaism, what kind of work will they resume that prevents them from enjoying God’s rest?
(7) What is the main message to you today and how may you apply it to your life?
Note:
In using His example of resting on the 7th day of creation as the basis of instituting the Sabbath rest, God signifies that He has created all that is needed to sustain life, and by observing the Sabbath rest, the people of God would be demonstrating their complete trust in God for all their needs.