Here are some notes for the class on the Book of Hebrews that I taught for the Connections class in the fall of 2001 and the Bridges class in the spring of 2002 at Salem Alliance Church. Sorry, no puns - well, not many - are included! It’s hard to proofread your own stuff, so I invite all editors to let me know what they find.

The scriptural quotes usually come from the New American Standard Version - not because it’s better than any other, but because the edition I use is a handy size for my small desk and old eyes!

Lesson 1 - A Look Behind the Book

• So why study Hebrews?
• OK, but what does it have to say to me today?
• I can’t find the message behind all that Old Testament stuff!
• God's got a contract out on you!

So why study the Book of Hebrews?

After all, it can’t be that important. It’s stuck at the back of the New Testament and it’s filled with Old Testament references I don’t understand. Besides, I’m a Christian, not a Hebrew, so it can’t be for me.

Fair questions - and I’ve got some fair answers. The Book of Hebrews ended up at the back of the New Testament because the front was already taken. Seriously, the New Testament begins with the life of Jesus, goes into the history of the Church, then gives us the letters of Paul. This is a logical arrangement and the way the early Church begain - from Jesus to Paul.

Hebrews begins a section known as the “General Letters” - writings directed at Christians in general, not a specific congregation or person. OK, 3rd John was written to Gaius, a specific person. Boy, you’re a sharp reader! It still counts as a General Letter, though.

Hebrews also builds on Old Testament teachings and the Jewish people were called "Hebrews" before they were called Jews!. Most of the early Christians were converted Jews who knew their Scriptures forward and backward, right to left. Remember, you write Hebrew from right to left. So we need to do some work to appreciate this book, and I’ll be pointing thing out as we go through it.

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OK, but what does it have to say to me today?

Another good question! The Jewish community that this group had left behind were leaning on them good and hard to abandon their new faith and come back to the faith of their fathers.

And let’s face it - this group of believers hadn’t had an easy time of it. Chapter 10 reminds them of their previous sufferings - jail, confiscation of property, etc. - and there’s no indication that things were much better when they received this letter.

So here you have a group of new Christians who abandoned their families, friends, and faith for this new belief, and their lives had gone downhill from there.

So what about you? Have you left "the faith of your fathers" to follow Jesus? You’ll find definite encouragement in this book. After all, you know exactly what they were going through.

Have you ever been tempted to lighten up on your Christian commitment? Abandon the faith? Or something in between? Yeah - me, too! We’ve all been there in some way or other. We’ve all been where these “Hebrews” were, and we all need the message they received.

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But I can’t find the message behind all that Old Testament stuff!

Good! That's job security for me - and some fun work for all of us. So let’s jump in together, have some fun, and see what we can learn about the Old Testament and about ourselves!

Sounds good - where should I start?

By taking a walk! Seriously - you should join the two people walking home to Emmaus from Jerusalem. Luke tells their story in the middle of chapter 24 of his Gospel. They had been in Jerusalem when Jesus was crucified and, though they had heard reports of his resurrection, thought their hoped-for Messiah was dead.

The resurrected Jesus met them and when he heard their story he laughed out loud! “Come on, guys,” he said, “you've read the Old Testament. How come you don't know that all these things had to happen to the Messiah?” Then, as they walked, he talked them through the Old Testament, showing that passage upon passage taught the end of the old covenant (more on this in a moment) and the start of a brand new one.

When they got home, they invited him in for dinner. As he led in prayer over the food they recognized Jesus for who he was, and when they did he disappeared. Grabbing a sandwich and a cup of coffee they headed back to Jerusalem to find Jesus’ followers. When they did they told them what had happened.

And don’t think they forgot what Jesus taught them that afternoon! Those lessons quickly became part of the early Church'’s teachings as they boldly proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah and the start of a brand new work of God on behalf of all people.

These “Emmaus Road” lessons, I’m convinced, lie behind the Book of Hebrews that we’re studying. This tour of the Old Testament and its teachings about the “New and Different” (forget “new and improved”) work of Jesus came from the man himself.

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God makes contracts!

Contracts - where would we be without ’em! Sign on the dotted line and you’re committed. Get someone else’s signature on the other dotted line and they’re committed. Sure, lawyers get paid lots of money to help people wiggle out of these commitments, but for the most part contracts are vital parts of our formal relationships these days.

God has made several contracts in his dealings with humanity. Ok, they're not called “contracts” in the Bible - they’re called “covenants.” These formal agreements bind the parties to specific things. Since God is one of the parties, these covenants are extremely important. The Book of Hebrews touches on three of them -

• The Covenant with Abraham (Abrahamic Covenant) - c. 2000 BC
• The Covenant with Moses (Mosaic Covenant) - c. 1500 BC
• The New Covenant (New Covenant - bet you saw that coming!) - c.30 AD

In Genesis 15 God makes a covenant with Abraham and ratifies it in a most unusual ceremony. He orders Abraham to take some animals, kill them, and cut their carcasses in two, and lay them out. God then “walks” through the pieces, symbolizing the seriousness of the agreement.

With this covenant God obligated himself to bless Abraham and obligated Abraham to receive the blessings. In short - it was one-sided, for Abraham had to do nothing.

Exodus 24 describes part of the details of the covenant God made with Moses. This was a two-sided covenant. It required the Israelites to obey God’s laws, and it required God to bless them if they did, and punish them if they didn’t. This was the “rule of life” that had held sway in Jewish life for roughly 1500 years when Jesus came on the scene.

This covenenat was also ratified by a special ceremony involving animal sacrifices. As described in Exodus 24 Moses took a bowl of blood and sprinkled the people with the “blood of the covenant.” Sacrifice is a common theme in the ratification of these covenants with God and his people.

The New Covenant is describe in Jeremiah 31. Yep, this, too, is sealed with a sacrifice, but more on that later.

Now, on to the book itself!

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