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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Norman McNulty: The Book of Hebrews

Norman McNulty

Hebrews 1:1-9: Introduction and Divinity of Christ

Hebrews 1:9-2:9 “The Enemy After the Cross”

Hebrews 2:9-18 “The Humanity of Christ”

Hebrews 3 & 4 “God’s Rest”

Hebrews 5 and 6 “Milk or Strong Meat?”

Hebrews 7  “The Melchizedek Priesthood”

Hebrews 8 “The New Covenant High Priest”

Hebrews 9  “The Holy of Holies”

Hebrews 9:23-10:13  “The Blotting Out of Sin”

Hebrews 10:13-39  “Seated at the Right Hand of God”

Hebrews 11:1-7  “Faith in the Creator God”

Hebrews 11:8-40 Pilgrims and Strangers

Hebrews 11:39-12:4 Jesus and the Last Generation

Hebrews 12:5-29 “The Highway to Mount Zion”

Hebrews 13 “Final Class and Summary of Book”

Why don't we start with a word of prayer and we'll get right into our study on the book of Hebrews.

Father in heaven, we thank you for this Sabbath day.

We pray that you would bless us as we start this new study on the book of Hebrews.

May we learn things that will be helpful for us on our journey to heaven.

All right, well, it's good to see each 1 of you here and I always enjoy starting a new class and I'm particularly excited about studying the book of Hebrews together up here.

This is a powerful book in the New Testament and we're going to talk about the reasons for it being written and what the purpose for the book is.

Personally I have found it to be a very helpful book in the understanding of Seventh-day Adventist theology.

Just for starters, you know, the book of Hebrews is an interesting book in that it starts off immediately with a theological exposition.

It doesn't start off with the author saying, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, to the Hebrews in Jerusalem, or anything of that nature.

It just starts off directly with a theological introduction.

There's very few books in the Bible that are actually like that.

We think of the book of John, we think of the book of Genesis.

Also, when it comes to the authorship of the book of Hebrews, Modern scholars have a big debate over who actually wrote the book.

If you look at the setting for the book, it was written in 66 AD, which was written 4 years before the fall of Jerusalem.

And so for those who say that it was written after the fall of Jerusalem, it would be kind of hard to...

For those who say it was written in the first century and that it wasn't Paul, it would be hard to argue that because this book was written while the city of Jerusalem was still standing.

And so that at least keeps Paul on the running from that standpoint.

The other thing is, people say, well Paul in his other epistles, the way he wrote is different than the way he writes, or whoever is writing Hebrews writes.

In the other epistles, Paul kind of loosely quotes the Old Testament if he quotes the Old Testament, but in the book of Hebrews, the Old Testament is being quoted word for word, so therefore it can't be Paul.

Well, let's think about the setting of Paul when he wrote those other epistles.

He would sometimes write a short letter to the Galatians or the Ephesians while he was on a ship somewhere and he hastily wrote off a letter.

The book of Hebrews, Paul would have written it from a prison cell where he would have had all the time in the world to make sure that he got everything exactly right word for word.

So that keeps Paul in the running as well.

And a couple of other points, in Hebrews 10, the author makes the point that the just shall live by faith.

Paul makes that very same point in Romans 1, so we see some similarities there.

And finally, last but not least, Ellen White says that Paul wrote the book of Hebrews.

Now, in my particular Bible, it says the epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews.

So this is an Oxford King James Version Bible.

So the people who compiled the King James Version also thought that Paul was the author of Hebrews.

Now we believe that the the book of Hebrews was written in 66 AD.

Now what is the significance, or around 66 AD, I don't want to be totally hard and fast on that date, what is the significance of that time period for the Hebrew people that claim to be Christians?

Now, if you read the book of Hebrews, you can see that Paul is writing this book with the understanding that his readers are Hebrew, they're Jewish, and they also believe that Jesus is the Messiah.

So what would the significance then be of this book being written in 66 AD or around that time period?

Well if you think about history, 4 years later the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman Army.

So what about the epistle of Hebrews would be important to the Jewish Christians living in the city of Jerusalem.

If you remember, Jesus in the book of Matthew tells his followers that when you see the abomination of desolation with the Roman army surrounding the city, flee the city at that point.

The problem with the Jew, the Jewish Christians however, was even though Jesus said that shortly before he died in 31 AD, By the 60s, over 30 years later, the Jews had, the Jewish Christians had not yet built their own tabernacle for worship.

They still participated in the Jewish ceremonies, and they still kept all the rites and ceremonies.

And even though the Jerusalem Council had taken place in Acts chapter 15 where Paul comes back from his journeys to the Gentiles and says look how God is blessing and we aren't circumcising the Gentiles and God's blessing us anyway and the Holy Spirit is being poured out on the Gentiles just as it has been on us.

So clearly circumcision shouldn't be a determining factor on salvation and all of that.

At the Jerusalem Council, if you read Acts chapter 15, the Jewish leader said fine.

The Gentile Christians don't need to participate in the Jewish ceremonies.

However, just a few things, don't eat food offered to idols, don't eat things that are strangled and things like that.

But when it came to the Jews, the Jews basically said, hey, we're going to keep doing this.

This is what we're used to doing and we think this is a perfectly good thing to do.

And after the Jerusalem Council, years later, Paul comes back to Jerusalem and the issue comes up again where the Jews are saying, hey Paul, you're telling the Gentiles that they don't have to keep the law, meaning the ceremonial law.

Are you telling people that the law of Moses isn't important?

You know, the Jews are starting to question you, the Jewish Christians, and we're worried about this.

You're losing your influence with the Jewish Christians.

And so Paul, in order to try to gain the favor of the Jewish Christians.

Paul takes a vow where he purifies himself and goes to the temple and shaves his head.

The ironic thing is, Paul is going around teaching the Gentiles, you don't have to do these purification things that the Jews do anymore, because when Christ died on the cross, those things are no longer binding.

Yes, the 10 Commandments are still binding, but all those Jewish ceremonies, you don't have to do anymore.

But then Paul comes to Jerusalem and in order to try to keep the influence of the Jews, he goes through this vow, shaves himself, and what happens?

He gets recognized immediately by the non-Christian Jews in the temple.

He gets arrested and he is a prisoner the remainder of his life.

And Ellen White tells us that the effectiveness of his ministry was cut short because of that decision.

Paul has the rest of his life as a prisoner to think about how him bowing to the pressure of the Jewish Christians to try to show them, hey, I'm still part of the team here, even though he's preaching that you don't have to do these ceremonies, how that cut short his ministry.

So Paul had a vested interest then in trying to help the Jewish Christians not make the same mistake that he made that cut short the effectiveness of his ministry.

And Paul, of all of the apostles, you might argue was perhaps the most theologically astute.

Not to minimize Peter or John or the others, I mean John wrote Revelation and so forth.

But Paul had an outstanding knowledge of the Old Testament and Paul knew that according to the words of Christ the city of Jerusalem was going to be destroyed.

Jerusalem was going to be destroyed and what would happen to all of these Jewish Christians who still thought that the temple was the centerpiece of their worship?

If you're a Jewish Christian you've accepted Christ as your Savior, He's the Messiah, but yet you believe that the center of worship still revolves around the temple in Jerusalem.

If Jerusalem and the temple are destroyed, and that's where you are placing, you know, the center of your worship, you're gonna have some serious issues when Jerusalem is destroyed.

And so Paul understood that there was a great danger for the Jewish Christians.

So just a few years, 3 to 4, 5 years before Jerusalem is destroyed, the book of Hebrews arrives on the scene.

Now, do we know if this book was effective?

First of all, we are told by historians and also by Ellen White that not 1 Jewish Christian lost their life in the siege of Jerusalem.

Number 2, you could say, oh well that's fine, they followed the words of Christ and he said when you see the city surrounded, get out of there.

But how do we know Hebrews was effective?

The Jewish Christians were so adamant about continuing to observe the ceremonial law that they basically convinced Paul to do a vow that ended up getting him arrested and taken to prison.

And you would think that if they were still that adamant after they left the city, as the Jewish Christians dispersed into the other cities around the world as they did, and they started to worship with other Christians, which would be Gentile Christians, if they thought that the ceremonial law was so important, don't you think they would have tried to have imposed that system on the other Christians around the world?

They would have if they still believed it was important, but there is no record of them doing so, which tells us that whatever Paul said in the book of Hebrews, convinced the Jewish Christians that, hey, this ceremonial law that we were continuing to do has no force now because of what Christ did.

So it was a very effective book and we're gonna study some of the things that Paul teaches that convinced the Jewish Christians of that time that they no longer needed to enforce the ceremonial system.

And you would have to think that the Jewish Christians who loved Paul and then they saw how his ministry was cut short, how that a book like this would have a lot more force as he's writing them and he's basically saying, hey, look what happened to me.

Here's what we really should be focusing on.

Now, was the book of Hebrews written exclusively and only for the Jewish Hebrews of that time to Help them escape Jerusalem when the Roman army armies surrounded the city And the short answer to that is no How do I know that Well in Matthew chapter 24 the words of Christ were intended to save the Jews from the destruction of Jerusalem.

However, is Matthew chapter 24 only for the Jewish Christians to help save them from the destruction of Jerusalem?

No, it's also for God's last day people to help us to be ready for the second coming of Christ.

And it's interesting the way Paul writes the book of Hebrews it has the same type of application.

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Series

Norman McNulty: The Book of Hebrews

Hebrews 1:1-9: Introduction and Divinity of Christ

Transcript

Parent Series

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Recorded

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Norman McNulty: The Book of Hebrews

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Norman McNulty: The Book of Hebrews

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