“Tell them what you’re gonna tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you told them.” I was taught in Industry that that was the way to do a presentation. In all my technical reports I always include an Executive Summary, up-front, for the same reason: The executives in the room want to know what the bottom-line is. And then based on that they can decide whether to stay for the rest of it (or not).

I am about to begin a verse by verse study through the letter to the Hebrews. (I think you could tell from the last post.) So, before going any further, maybe it is a good thing to answer the question: What is the letter to the Hebrews about?

The title is clear. This letter was written to believing Jews, that is, followers of Jesus, the Messiah. We know they constituted the bulk of the early Church. Eventually, Gentiles poured in. But in the early days the apostles did their job, the job Jesus gave them: to spread the Good News starting in Jerusalem and from there to the ends of the Earth.

Paul himself, even knowing from the beginning that his Jesus-mission was to the Gentiles, always went first to the synagogue in every town he entered. Why? Because the Jews had the written Word of God. They knew – or ought to have known – the whole story inside and out. Of all the people in the world, they were the most qualified to understand the message of the Son (Hebrews 1:1). They had, as it were, a huge head-start on the road to redemption.

Yet, this letter repeatedly calls them back to that road.

Why did they need this letter?

We can all lose our way.

That head-start that the children of Israel had also became a liability. We saw that in the gospels, where the religious leaders – who supposedly lived and breathed the Word of God – could not recognize that Word in Jesus, would not recognize it in Jesus (John 1:10-11). Why? Because to them the fact that they possessed the Word – in the form of the Law – had become a badge of honor, a mark of distinction, a carnet that guaranteed their entrance into the kingdom of God… in other words, a thing, a prize, a treasure to hoard… exclusively theirs, because they already had it.

So, anything or anyone that challenged their privileged status became the enemy… And this attitude made the Word, in their hands, ineffective. The mission Moses gave them, that they were to become examples to the whole world, was forgotten. The mission that they inherited from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to bless all of humanity was forgotten.

How did that happen?

Well, how does that happen in our lives?

It begins to happen the moment we think we already possess the treasure.

You see, salvation is not something we possess. It is something that possesses us. It is not a passive thing that we just carry with us after that one day that we said we believed in Christ. It is a living power that transforms us – from that day, yes – but then going forward to every day after that.

Salvation is supposed to be acting on us hour by hour. And if that is true and we are aware of that activity, then it should also be clear that it is not meant to be contained within us… All that energy, all that power, that living water has to keep on going. It can’t stagnate inside us; it has to flow through us to the lives of others so that it can start within them new springs of living water.

But stagnation happens in our lives, way more often than we notice. Jesus gave that warning to John to pass on to the church in Ephesus.

Revelation 2:1-5 To the angel of the assembly in Ephesus write: These things says he that holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lamps: I know thy works and [thy] labour, and thine endurance, and that thou canst not bear evil [men]; and thou hast tried them who say that themselves [are] apostles and are not, and hast found them liars; and endurest, and hast borne for my name’s sake, and hast not wearied: but I have against thee, that thou hast left thy first love.

Remember therefore whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works: but if not, I am coming to thee, and I will remove thy lamp out of its place, except thou shalt repent.

Have I forgotten my first love?

Many of us were filled with zeal for the Lord when we first believed. This is especially true if that day of salvation was also a day of deliverance… a day when I accepted that living my life, my way, only brought pain to me and those I loved; a day when I realized I had no more hope. And then Jesus showed up and said:

Matthew 11:28-30 Come to me, all ye who labour and are burdened, and *I* will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest to your souls; for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Hearing that call and answering it is the reason many of us became followers of Christ. He changed our lives.

But then time passes… and life somehow becomes again routine. We get distracted, busy, working hard again to make it all work out (in our strength), and we forget the miracle of that Life that Jesus put inside us.

 Matthew 13:22 And he that is sown among the thorns—this is he who hears the word, and the anxious care of this life, and the deceit of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful.

Have you been there?

What do we do when we have forgotten our first love? There is a danger that we may backslide into the old life. But even if we don’t, sometimes we do something just as bad: we lean on our old victories and call the job “done”. We ignore the fact that we are no longer bearing fruit.

This is what happened to the nation of Israel. Except for them, this leaning on the past appeared as a much greater temptation. Remember, their past was the Law of Moses, it was given to them by God Himself… It was full of rituals and regulations and “checklists” to ensure their “holiness”. Kind of hard to call going back to that “wrong.”

But God knew where they were headed and told them through Jeremiah that He knew it and that therefore He had a plan, a New Way…

Jeremiah 31:31-34 Behold, days come, saith Jehovah, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day of my taking them by the hand, to lead them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they broke, although I was a husband unto them, saith Jehovah.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, after those days, saith Jehovah: I will put my law in their inward parts, and will write it in their heart; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know Jehovah; for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith Jehovah: for I will pardon their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more.

This passage and this idea are the core of the message of the letter to the Hebrews.

God is telling them (and us): All the promises that you long for, all that you hope for, cannot be obtained through the old way (you have all tried and failed), so I made a new way and it is My Son: faith in My Son is the only way. Stick to it!

Outline of the letter

Chapter 1

The revelation we have from God was not finished with the prophets; its culmination finally came through the Son of God. He is all we can see and all we ever need to see of God the Father. For after Jesus accomplished, by Himself, the purification of sins, He went back to sit at the right hand of the Father. Therefore, every other power in the universe is subject to Him. Scripture attests to Him as the Only One (of us) singled out for this honor, power, and divinity; all as befits the heir of the Living God.

Angels come in, a distant second…

Chapter 2

I know we like angels.  But notice that whenever the angels enter our story, enter our world, it is all in service of God’s plan of salvation for us. Our salvation is the reason they do their work, and it is also the whole point of the revelation. The Law we so treasure was delivered to Moses by angels. (We know that, because we “saw” them: The Angel of the Lord on the mountain, the Pillar of Cloud and the Pillar of Fire.) If that revelation was binding so that disobeying it merited utter destruction, what are we to say about the revelation delivered to us now by the very Son of God?

It is through His ministry of salvation that we, humanity, can finally enter into the promised world to come. Again, Scripture has been clear about this: Jesus had to be born human (for a while living a little lower than the angels) so that through His death He could pay the penalty of sin for every human being ever born and ever to be born. And by being one of us, perfectly understanding what it is to be human, He became our perfect high priest.

Chapter 3

Therefore, if you have chosen to believe on (trust in, have faith in) the Son of God as the One whom God the father sent to deliver all His Promises, then you are living for the hope of glory, the hope of eternal life. Then there is nothing to be gained by going back to the way of Moses. Moses was indeed faithful… in the House that the Son built! Moses could not deliver us to the eternal promised land. If Moses could have done that, then God’s work would have been done a long time ago. But (again) Scripture testifies that God still works to this day, that His final Sabbath rest is still yet to come. Why? Because He wants us to enter that rest (our hope) with Him. But the only way for us to enter that rest is to leave our sins behind; and that is what the Son does for us… if we trust Him.

Chapter 4

You see, receiving the message is not enough, having the Law is not enough, being born Abraham’s seed is not enough: What it takes is hearing the Word and obeying it; and that can only happen if we live by faith, on purpose. And this faith is not something you can pretend to have because that Word that we have received reaches deep into our heart and reveals who and what we are. You can’t fool God.

Yes, it is a scary thought but remember, we have a high priest that has already entered the True Temple in Heaven. When He wipes away our sins, they are wiped away as far as the east is from the west (from minus infinity to plus infinity).

Chapter 5

I know that idea is hard for some of us to grasp; having lived under the Law and seeing a fallible human like us offering sacrifices year after year to appease God for one more year. But that is not the way it is any more. Our high priest is of a different kind. He did not inherit his priesthood for being a son of Aaron. God the Father declared that His Son would be priest of a different order, the order of Melchizedec. And Jesus proved He was worthy of that calling by carrying out to completion His Father’s plan, even to the dying on the cross. He has become a priest that does not simply cover over sins for a year but rather wipes them out for eternity.

You know this! If you call yourself a believer, you know this and, in fact, ought to be teaching it. But I fear you have become dull of hearing…

Chapter 6

So, be careful… Remember, I told you faith is not something you can pretend to have… This is because faith is a supernatural gift from God. When you call on the Son to save you, He opens your eyes and re-creates your heart. It is with those open eyes that you see the hope of glory; it is with that new heart that you trust in Him. There is no going back. If you try to, then you are doing it with open eyes and full-knowing heart; you are in fact rejecting the Lord. You might as well be crucifying Him all over again.

So, if you cried out to the Lord to be saved for the sake of the hope of glory then cling to it to the end: live by faith, on purpose. I know that sometimes the hope of eternal life seems hard to grasp; it isn’t as tangible as the promised land, or as enticing to our human senses as the other blessings that the Law promised us if we kept its every command. But it is just as real and certain. And God proved it when He promised it to Abraham by first giving the Promise and then swearing by Himself that he would keep that Promise. Therefore, hold on to that hope… for Jesus made it real.

Chapter 7

And this is where His priesthood in the order of Melchizedek comes in. Scripture says nothing of Melchizedek’s beginning, where on Earth he came from, or of his end, where he went after that episode in which he meets Abraham after his victory over the evil kings. But we know that he was Priest of the Most High God and that Abraham gave him a tenth of all he had and accepted from him his blessing. All this was a foreshadow of the High Priest that was to come: Jesus who, though born as man, had no “beginning” for He pre-existed that as Son of God; Jesus, who though He died on the cross, still lives now and forevermore.

Jesus proved Himself worthy of that priesthood and so God the Father gave it to Him and swore it would be His forever. So which priesthood do you want to live under?

The old priesthood with the old covenant never wiped away our sins; so, it never changed our hearts… and they had to keep offering those sacrifices generation after generation because all those fallible priests died. But the new priesthood is embodied in One undying perfect priest, who offered Himself as the sacrifice, once and for all, to make all of us worthy to enter into the presence of the Father.

Chapters 8-10a

This is all according to scripture. The Old covenant with its temple and service was just a foreshadow of the reality that was to come and is now here. As God told us through the prophet Jeremiah, that old covenant was doomed to failure through our disobedience. Which is why God had already planned for a New one, a New one that would be impervious to our fallibility because through it He would change our hearts.

If this is so, and Jesus is the mediator of this New covenant, then the New has arrived; let the Old one pass away. It cannot compare. It cannot compete. Let it go…

Repeated sacrifices of animals, to satisfy the old covenant in a worldly Temple, never took away our sins… Think about it, every one of those people who offered the sacrifices died… because the penalty of sin is death. But when Jesus offered Himself as the sacrifice in the Heavenly Temple, He came back to life again, proving that His sacrifice takes away sin forever.

And if sin is taken away forever, no more sacrifice is ever needed again… which is what God promised through Jeremiah. That is why he said: “He would remember our sins no more.”

Chapter 10b

Therefore, if we have been forgiven thus, cleansed thus, then let us live like it, let us live like we believe it. Hold on to that hope of glory, knowing that God (and Christ) have proven Faithful. And so live and work the life of Love that Jesus taught us; helping each other to continue in this faith.

Again, don’t think that you can turn away without consequence. If God the Father has given you a new heart and opened your eyes for all this, how could you even think of turning your back on Him? Don’t do it. What is going on? When you first believed, you were challenged, you suffered, you were afflicted, persecuted and yet you pulled through and encouraged others to pull through. Don’t give up now!

The just shall live by faith. They can! They must.

Chapter 11

If you haven’t gotten it yet, let me spell it out for you: Faith and Hope work together. Our hope is the eternal life God has promised us; it was for the sake of that hope that we cried out to be saved. In response, God changed our hearts, opened our eyes, and gave us the ability to trust supernaturally… so that we could live our life here in this world, within His Kingdom.

Therefore: Faith is the underlying reality of that which we hope for, it is the evidence of the accomplished things not yet seen.

It is that Faith that teaches us how to live a life pleasing to God even when our future in this world is uncertain. Abel, Enoch and Noah understood that. That is also why Abraham could leave the security of his home to wander the rest of his life in a strange land. He kept going because he knew God had a better place for him. He received the Promise of the Messiah because he trusted God absolutely. And so did his children and all those that we call heroes of Faith: They trusted God even when the Promise they believed was theirs, did not come to them in this life.

It did not because God’s plan was that they should not be made perfect without us.

Chapter 12-13

Therefore, let us persevere. Just as Jesus used the joy set before Him (the accomplishing of God’s plan) to strengthen His conviction to go through to the cross, we need to use that hope set before us to remain faithful. Trials and tribulations will come but God can use them to make us stronger. We don’t have to give up. We have the power to live lives that are holy unto the Lord.

Remember, this Faith is supernatural, and our Temple is not worldly, it is the Real one where God Himself resides; and our high priest is sitting there at the right hand of the Father to help us every step of the way. Don’t ever give up.

So, live Jesus’ life of Love: take care of others, including those the world has rejected. Honor the covenant of marriage and shun the love of money, live a contented life. Don’t strive, don’t fret, don’t fear, the Lord Himself is watching over you. Imitate the faithful. Do good, be generous, pray, praise his Name, and spread His Word… that is the only kind of sacrifice He requires of us now.