Sugar Land Bible Church

Dr. Andy Woods: Let's go ahead and open with a word of prayer, and we will get started. Let's pray. Father, we're grateful for today, grateful for a new day, grateful that we woke up today. A lot of people did not, and you've seen fit to give us another day to honor you, to glorify you, to worship you, to serve you, which is why we exist. We do pray, Father, that you would take the deep teachings of your word today and apply them to the needs of your people in a way that a human teacher is unable to do or see, but the Holy Spirit can do it.

The Holy Spirit is aware of needs that we have that maybe we don't even know about ourselves. So you know what those needs are. We are in desperate need of your ministry of illumination, whereby the Holy Spirit takes the things of God and allows us to know and walk in all truth. In preparation for that ministry, Lord, we're just going to take a few moments of silence to do personal confession before you, if need be.

We understand, Lord, that we don't do this to restore our position before you. That's secure eternally. But sometimes we do things that break fellowship with you, and when that happens, you've given us provision for that in 1 John 1:9, and so we're just going to take a few moments to do that, to get right with you so that we can receive from you today.

We're thankful, Lord, for the comprehensiveness of your provision to us. We're thankful for a completed canon of Scripture, which can equip us for every good work. We pray that you'll do this now in this particular class, in all of the youth classes that are meeting even as we speak, and in the main service that follows. We'll be careful to give you all the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus' name, and God's people said, amen.

All right. Well, if you can take your Bibles and open them to the book of Hebrews, chapter 1 and verse 3, we're starting a new series in Sunday school covering the book of Hebrews verse by verse. I have a summary that I've written on the book, so you will want a copy of this. If you didn't get one, can you put your hand up and they'll pass one over to you? There's a hand right over here. I feel like an evangelist. I see that hand.

Also, we have a whole bunch of visitors today from Jacksonville, Florida, and they're commenting on how wonderful our weather is, which, just to let you know, this is an abnormality. But would you all, wherever you are—I saw you somewhere—could you all stand up for a second so we can see you and welcome you? Thank you for coming. They were wondering if I knew of any good churches in Jacksonville, Florida. Go to Third Street and take a left—no, I just don't know the area.

So we have completed our teaching on Neo-Calvinism versus the Bible. We've completed our teaching on eternal conscious torment. So the issue is, what are we going to do next? I thought we would start moving into the book of Hebrews. My wife will sometimes quote the book of Hebrews when she wants me to make the coffee in the morning. She says it says "He brews," not "She brews." I know, I have to do something to wake you up a little bit.

The subtitle of this series is "A Faith that Endures." I wish that was an original with me. That comes from my professor, J. Dwight Pentecost, in his little commentary on the book of Hebrews, which I'd recommend to you if you can get it: "Hebrews: A Faith that Endures." I think one of the weaknesses in modern-day Bible study is we tend to just jump right in and start studying a book verse by verse, which is fine, but sometimes we don't do the background work first.

Sometimes, if you can understand the background of the book through something that I call introductory matters, you appreciate the contents of the book a lot more. So we're going to begin here with an introduction to the book of Hebrews. You can see on the screen the issues we're going to try to look at in this introduction. They're actually very pivotal in this book to interpreting some areas of the book that many Christians misinterpret.

The first thing you ask yourself—and you can apply this to any book that you study—is authorship, meaning who wrote the book. That's not an easy question to answer because the book is anonymous. There's a lot of different people mentioned in the book of Acts, tons of people. Probably every person in the book of Acts has been nominated, so to speak, as the author of the book of Hebrews, other than Dorcas. With a name like Dorcas, who would want a biblical author named Dorcas?

Many, many New Testament characters and figures have been nominated as potential authors of the book of Hebrews, but the three major ones would be Apollos, Barnabas, and Paul. Let's just spend a little time on this. Why do people think Apollos wrote the book? The answer is in Acts 18:24, where we learn that Apollos was mighty in the scriptures. It says over there, "Now a Jew named Apollos, an Alexandrian by birth, an eloquent man, came to Ephesus, and he was mighty in the scriptures."

There's a lot in this book that some would call an Alexandrian style of writing, going back to Alexandria, Egypt, so a lot of people think Apollos is the author. Zane Hodges took the position that Barnabas is the author of the book of Hebrews. He thought that because of Acts chapter 4 and verse 36, where Barnabas—and remember, Paul and Barnabas are connected—Barnabas is called a Levite.

It says in Acts 4:36, "Now Joseph, a Levite of Cyprian birth, who was also called Barnabas by the apostles (which translated means Son of Encouragement)." A lot of people think Barnabas wrote the book because he was a Levite. From the Levites came the priesthood, and whoever wrote this book demonstrates a lot of knowledge about the priesthood and the temple and the sacrificial system, et cetera.

Probably the most common view floating around out there is this book was written by the apostle Paul. Why do people think Paul the apostle wrote this book? A lot of different reasons. The end of the book mentions Timothy. If you look at the very end of the book, Hebrews 13:23, it says, "Take notice that our brother Timothy has been released, with whom, if he comes, I will see you."

Whoever wrote this book was connected with Timothy. We know in the book of Acts, beginning in chapter 16, that Paul and Timothy start getting connected. Timothy travels with Paul on the missionary journeys, beginning with the second missionary journey. Of course, Paul wrote two letters in the New Testament to this young man named Timothy.

Then if you look at verse 24 of Hebrews 13, it says, "Greet all your leaders and the saints. Those from Italy greet you." That's Rome, right? Those from Italy greet you. People say it's got to be Paul because Paul was connected to Rome. He always wanted to get the gospel into Rome, and he was a prisoner in Rome two times.

A lot of people will argue that this book sounds like the things that Paul talked about elsewhere in his writings. There's a great familiarity with Paul's style of writing—lots of references to the Old Testament, lots of references in the book of Hebrews to Christ's finished work, lots of references to faith. A lot of people think Paul wrote this because it fits a structure that you see over and over again in Paul, where he develops doctrine first and then he says "therefore."

Whenever you see the word "therefore" in the Bible, you ask the question, "What is the word 'therefore' there for?" Amen? Typically in Paul, it's to take you out of doctrine into practice. You see that in the book of Hebrews. The first section of the book, chapter 1, verse 1 through chapter 10, verse 18, is doctrine. Then you look at Hebrews chapter 10, verse 19, looking for your "therefore," and there it is: "Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus," et cetera.

He switches at that point—the author does—from talking about doctrine, moving into practice. People say that's how Paul writes. Certainly Paul does that in the book of Galatians. First four chapters of the book of Galatians is doctrine, and then you hit chapter 5, verse 1, and it says "therefore," and it moves into application.

Paul certainly does this in Romans. Romans 1 through 11 is doctrine, and then you hit chapter 12, verse 1, and it says "therefore," and it moves you from doctrine into application or daily living. "Therefore, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice," et cetera. Certainly, that's the same thing that happens in the book of Ephesians.

Ephesians is fascinating. The first three chapters is all doctrine. Did you know that in the first three chapters of the book of Ephesians, there are no commands for believers to follow? It's all "this is what you have in Christ by way of your spiritual riches." But then, after laying that foundation, in chapter 4, verse 1, you see the word "therefore," and that switches us from doctrine into practice. In the second section of the book, you have 38 imperatives or commands for Christians.

There's a preaching methodology today that says you've got to get to the application. You've got to get to daily living. You'll notice that Paul had no interest in doing that until he first established believers in solid doctrine. There's no sense in telling someone to do something unless they first understand their resources in Christ and their riches in Christ. Now, once they understand who they are in Christ doctrinally, now you're in a position to tell them, here's the application.

There's a lot of homiletics-type preaching methodology today that I think is just completely anti-Pauline because they want you to get to the point of application as fast as possible. "What does this mean to me?" I call that "narsigesis" instead of exegesis. What is it saying about me, me, me? Paul has absolutely no interest in application until he first explains doctrine.

People say the book of Hebrews must have been written by Paul because it follows the exact same structure. So, probably the most common view floating around out there is Paul is the author of this anonymous book. However, that view has problems also. Paul always gives his name in every book. He wrote 13 books. He always identifies himself by name. Why would he not do it here in the book of Hebrews, if he, in fact, is the author of the book?

Beyond that, the book of Hebrews has a ton of Old Testament quotations, and every single one of them comes from the LXX, which is the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, what we call the Old Testament Hebrew Bible, written a couple hundred years before the time of Christ. You don't find any citation in the book of Hebrews from the Old Testament unless it's quoting the LXX or the Septuagint. Paul doesn't do that all the time. Paul is not slavishly devoted to the Septuagint the way the author of the book of Hebrews seems to be.

A lot of people would say the style of writing is a little bit different in comparison to Paul. One of the things that leads me away from thinking Paul wrote it is Galatians 2, verses 7 and 8. It says, "But on the contrary, seeing that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised," Paul writing, "just as Peter had been to the circumcised, for he who effectually worked for Peter in his apostleship to the circumcised, effectually worked for me also to the Gentiles."

Paul here says Peter is the apostle to the Jews. Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles. So if Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles, what is he doing writing a book to Jewish Christians called Hebrews? You see that? It's not something to start a new church over, this issue of authorship, because the truth is everyone you pick, there's going to be problems.

What is my view on this anonymous book? I agree with Origen on this. Origen was asked who wrote the book of Hebrews, and Origen said, "Only God knows." So that's my view. I have no idea who wrote it. I'm not on an obsession trying to figure out who wrote it because the author wanted to be anonymous. He had a reason for wanting to be anonymous, and so I respect his anonymity. I've written, believe it or not, some anonymous things, and when you want to be anonymous, you have a reason for it. Generally, if anonymity is your goal, I will defer to you; I will respect that.

On this first question, who wrote the book, my answer is I really don't know. How's that for an answer? The far more important issue, though, rather than authorship is audience. That's the big issue because that will control how you understand or interpret the warning passages which I'll introduce you to in this book. Authorship—was it Apollos, was it Barnabas, was it Paul—whatever you conclude on that has no bearing on how you're going to interpret the book.

Audience has a huge impact on how you're going to interpret the book. You spend your most time on introductory matters that bear insight into how you handle the book. You read commentaries on the book of Hebrews today, and they go on and on and on about authorship, and it's like who cares? They've got maybe a sentence or two on audience. I'm like, you guys have got this backwards. The audience is the big deal.

Who is the audience of this book? There's four things. The first one, I think, is the most important. The audience is believers. This is a regenerated, saved audience. Why is that such a big deal? Because what people do with the warning passages is they say, well, what the author is doing is he's aiming the warning passages at the unsaved in their midst. But that doesn't work if the whole audience is saved.

Let me show you why I think this audience is a saved audience. Notice Hebrews chapter 1, verse 2. It says, "In these last days, he has spoken to us in his son." Whatever you're concluding about the audience, you also have to conclude about the author. If the author's saved—we would think so, you can't have an unsaved author in the Bible—the audience is just as saved as the author is.

Look at verse 3. It says, "He is the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature, and upholds all things by the word of his power. When he made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high." You get the idea that their sins have been forgiven, and that only applies to a saved person.

Notice Hebrews chapter 2, notice if you will verse 3. "How will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?" To neglect salvation means you have salvation to neglect. "Hey, you're neglecting your wife." Well, that means you have to have a wife to neglect, right? "Hey, you're neglecting your upkeep of your home." Well, that means you have to have a home to neglect. The fact that he says you're neglecting salvation indicates that they already had salvation. It's very similar to 1 Timothy 4:14, where Timothy is told not to neglect his spiritual gifting, meaning he had to have spiritual gifting for the purpose of neglecting.

Notice Hebrews chapter 3, verse 1: "Therefore, holy brethren." Sounds like saved people to me. These are brethren in Christ; they're holy. In fact, the word "brethren" in this book is used 10 times. Now, sometimes it refers to Christ's brethren; sometimes it refers to humanity. But six out of the nine times, it clearly refers to saved people. Those references are Hebrews 2:11, Hebrews 3:1 and 12, Hebrews 10:19, Hebrews 13:23 and 24.

Also, the audience needs rest. Look at Hebrews 4, verse 1: "Therefore let us fear if while a promise remains of entering his rest." They need rest in the Lord. They don't need salvation; they need to learn how to rest on the promises of God. Look at Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 3. "For we who have believed"—we, see that? "We who have believed enter the rest just as he had as he said, 'As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest,' although his works were finished from the foundation of the world." You see there that they're fellow believers together with the author—we who have believed.

If you look at Hebrews chapter 4, verse 14, they have a high priest: "Therefore since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession." So the author is saying, I have a high priest, you have a high priest, so let us together take advantage of our high priest during a time of difficulty. An unsaved person doesn't have a high priest; they're isolated and alienated from God in need of salvation.

They have access to God's throne. Hebrews 4, verse 16: "Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." They have the total ability to go into the throne room of God by way of intercessory prayer and receive grace. An unsaved person doesn't have that.

When you look at Hebrews 10, verses 36 through 39, they don't need salvation; they need endurance. "For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised." That's a very strange thing to say to an unsaved person. An unsaved person doesn't need endurance; they need to get saved. But these are believers that needed to learn how to endure in their faith.

Hebrews chapter 10, verse 22: they've been sprinkled with a clean conscience. Sprinkled with blood, leading to a clean conscience. That's in Hebrews 10:22. "Let us draw near with a sincere heart, of full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience." You cannot say that of an unsaved person. An unsaved person is still dead in their trespasses and sins and their conscience is not sprinkled clean.

Back in Hebrews chapter 9, verse 14, they're told to serve God. "How much more then will the blood of Christ through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God." You don't tell an unsaved person, "Go serve the living God." They don't even have a relationship to God. You can't serve a God you don't know.

Hebrews 10:10 indicates that they're sanctified. It says in Hebrews 10:10, "By this we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." Unsaved persons are not sanctified. Hebrews 10, verse 15: they have the Holy Spirit. It says, "And the Spirit also testifies to us." An unsaved person does not have the Holy Spirit. Paul in Romans 8, verse 9, says if we have Christ, we have His Spirit. You can't have the Holy Spirit residing in you when you're an unregenerate, unsaved, non-born-again person.

Hebrews 12:2 indicates that Jesus is the author and finisher of their faith. "Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of faith." Does that fit an unsaved person? What faith is there in an unsaved person to perfect? Hebrews 12:7 says that they're sons of God. "It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?" The reason these people are going through discipline is they're God's children. You don't discipline people that are not your kids, right? You don't go next door and discipline the neighbor's kids. I've been tempted to do that a couple times, but that's a no-no. That's parental authority issues. You discipline your own children. The fact that they're under discipline indicates that they belong to you.

Hebrews 12, verse 28 indicates that they are going to receive an unshakable kingdom. "Therefore, since we receive a kingdom, let us show gratitude by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe." So they are receiving a kingdom. They're citizens in the coming kingdom.

There are in this book 38 exhortations for Christians to follow, and there's not a single time in the book where the author says, "You all need to trust Christ to be saved." John's Gospel does do that. John 20, verses 30 and 31, says, "Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that by believing you may have life in his name." Meaning when John writes, he's writing to people that have not believed yet. They don't have life in Jesus Christ because they've never trusted in Christ. "You guys need to get saved" is what John is saying. John is very evangelistic because he's writing primarily to unsaved people.

The author of Hebrews is not. There's nothing like that in Hebrews. There's no altar calls today, although we don't give altar calls here because the Bible never says "walk an aisle to be saved." It says "trust in Christ." If you want to walk an aisle, congratulations and feel free, but that doesn't save anybody, right? It's faith alone in Christ alone that saves. So there's no evangelistic appeal in the book of Hebrews. There's no what we would call today an altar call in the book of Hebrews, which you would think the author would do that if there were people within the group that were unregenerate and unsaved.

File that away in your memory, because that is going to be huge when we hit the warning passages. Almost everybody interprets the warning passages as those are aimed at unsaved people, because there's no way saved people would ever act like that and come under that form of discipline. Which means if you're sitting in a church where the preacher says that over and over again, "Now we're coming to the warning section, but the warning section doesn't apply to the Christian," you know what you do when you hit that section of the sermon? You hit the snooze button. "Oh, that doesn't apply to me. That just applies to the unsaved. Wake me up when he gets out of the warning section."

But if I'm telling you that these warnings, although not loss of salvation but very severe, apply to the Christian, suddenly you've got everybody's attention in the room. You see that? So that's why understanding this analysis of the audience is just really where the time should be spent, not trying to figure out trivial things that have no interpretational significance in the book, such as who wrote the book.

As my professor, Dwight Pentecost, used to say, he used to say "Selah," which is a Hebrew word you see in the Psalms, which is "consider carefully." And what I've done is not bring my own theology to the book; I've just shown you in the book how the book itself is obviously written to saved people.

The second thing to understand about this audience is you're dealing with the second generation of Christians. This is why they're weak and being tempted to go back into the sacrificial system, because you're not dealing with the apostolic generation anymore. You're dealing with the next generation, which was not quite as strong as the apostolic generation, obviously.

How do we know these are second-generation Christians? Look at Hebrews 2, and look at verses 2 and 3. Actually, verse 3: "How will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? After it was first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard." So you're dealing here with a generational change. It was first spoken of the Lord, then it was given to those who heard—those are the apostles. Then from there, it went to us, that's the generation following the apostles.

As it went from the apostles to us, the message of Christianity was confirmed by various signs and wonders, which is one of the reasons that the signs and wonders are taking place so significantly in the book of Acts. Signs and wonders have a tendency to cluster around time periods where God is starting something new, a new dispensation we might say. How do you know it's of God? Because it's confirmed by signs and wonders.

So you see signs and wonders in the Bible clustering around the giving of the law because God is starting something new there at Sinai. You see signs and wonders clustering around the Elijah-Elisha stories because God is doing something new there; he's raising up a new office called the Prophet, and the prophet is speaking out against corrupt kings in Israel. There were a lot of them to speak out against, by the way. That's why prophets had short careers because they were speaking out against the guy that held the levers of political power. Most of the prophets were dead very quickly.

But that office that God had raised up was confirmed by various signs and wonders. Then signs and wonders have a tendency to cluster around the ministry of Jesus because he's offering the kingdom to first-century Israel. He's giving them a chance to receive the offer of the kingdom, and thus the millennial kingdom would have shown up.

Then signs and wonders cluster around the book of Acts because in the book of Acts, you've got something completely new that's happening. Israel has rejected the offer of the kingdom, and God is raising up the body of Christ called the Church. So we've been in that age for 2,000 years, and that's why we don't see the signs and wonders today that we see in the book of Acts to the same degree, I might add, because we're not in a new dispensation today.

Having said that, I do believe God performs miracles today. It's just more sparing, and he does it directly rather than indirectly through an apostle. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't waste my time praying, right? Because when you pray for somebody, you're obviously praying for God to intervene miraculously. So I'm not ruling all of that out. I'm just saying the signs and wonders as you see in the book of Acts are not normative today because we're not in a new dispensation today.

What's the next signs and wonders movement on the horizon? It's going to be entered into by the Antichrist. He's going to come with counterfeit signs and wonders. So this obsession today that everybody wants signs and wonders, well, the next one coming is the devil's signs and wonders movement. It's in the book of Revelation and other places.

Then once that time period has elapsed, then you enter the Kingdom Age, which will be again accompanied by signs and wonders—instantaneous healing and everything like that—because once again we're in a new age of time; a dispensational change has happened. So that's what the author is saying. The message went from the Lord to us apostles, those who heard, and then from there it came to us.

So you're dealing with the generation that followed, and as it came to us, it was confirmed by various signs and wonders. You're dealing with a second generation here. That shows you why the audience is a little weaker. The second generation, whether it's a business or anything, is always a little weaker than the first generation, because the first generation, they're the ones that did all the sacrifice to get the business off the ground. What does the son or the grandson know about hard work? They're just inheritors. So a lot of times they just don't have the same value system as the founders. You see that? This happens in all kinds of organizations, and this is what's happening here. This explains why this audience is so susceptible to returning to the law, which I'll show you in a little bit, because we're dealing with the second generation.

With all of that being said, we're dealing with believers and second-generation believers, and then we're dealing obviously with a Jewish audience. How do we know this is a Jewish audience? Does the title give it away? "Hebrews." Those are Jews. Those are physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It's just this group here being addressed are what we would call Messianic Jews, saved Jews, regenerated Jews.

That title goes all the way back to AD 180. People trust that as it really was the title of this book. Whoever wrote this book and whoever received this book obviously had a lot of knowledge about the Old Testament system, rituals of Judaism, Jewish history. You don't find in this book your typical conflicts that you get in early Christianity between Gentiles that are saved and Jews that are saved.

Paul, for example, in Romans 14, 1 Corinthians chapters 8 through 10, he says things like, you can eat a food sacrificed to idols, but don't do it in front of someone with a weaker understanding. He's talking there about Jewish Christians that think idolatry is a sin, and if you just partake of food sacrificed to idols, you're stumbling them. That shows you that you've got Jew-Gentile tension being addressed in Romans 14, 1 Corinthians chapters 8 through 10. There's nothing like that in the book of Hebrews. There's no Jew-Gentile tension like that.

Paul in Romans 11 is going to talk about the fullness of the Gentiles must come in and then all Israel will be saved. You unnatural branches, don't develop a boastful attitude towards the Jewish branches that have been pushed out of their tree because God is going to bring them in one day. So there's this underlying tension in Romans 11 with Jew-Gentile tensions, and you don't have that at all in the book of Hebrews.

The book of Hebrews is one of six New Testament books that are very special in the sense that they were written to saved Jewish people. We call these the Messianic Jewish books of the Bible. There are six of these. What are those books? Number one, Matthew's Gospel, the first Gospel written. That one is dealing with Jewish Christians who were asking if Christ is the King and we've accepted that, where's the Kingdom? To understand Matthew, you have to put yourself in the shoes of a saved Jewish person, and once you do that and figure out what they're asking, then everything in Matthew makes total sense.

The book of Hebrews would be number two. James would be number three, because that was written to the twelve tribes. That sounds Jewish to me. Those that are saved amongst the twelve tribes. First Peter was written to Hebrew Christians because Peter is the apostle to the Jews. In fact, I'll show you the word "diaspora" in just a minute, which is a word that can only apply to Jewish people. Peter uses that, as does James.

If Peter wrote two books, 1 Peter and 2 Peter, those are Messianic letters also. Then Jude. You read Jude; it sounds an awful lot like 2 Peter. There's a lot of literary dependence there, so we think Jude also was written to a Hebrew Christian audience. It's not that as a Gentile, if you read those books you wouldn't be edified and built up; you would. But as far as the original audience is concerned, there are six of these in your New Testament that are Hebrew Christian in orientation. They're talking about things that a saved Jewish person would want to know about. Those are Matthew's Gospel, the book of Hebrews, the book of James, the two Peter epistles, and Jude.

Where is this audience located? Because the Jewish Christians were heavily persecuted in the book of Acts, and they got out of town. They got out of Jerusalem. Acts 8, verses 3 and 4, says, "But Saul began ravaging the church." They're all Jewish at this point, the church. "Entering house after house, dragging them off and women, and he would put them in prison. Therefore those who had been scattered went about preaching the word." What happened to the Jewish people in the book of Acts in the city of Jerusalem? Well, they were heavily persecuted beginning with Saul of Tarsus, and they got out of town.

Acts 11, verse 19 picks up on that and says, "So when those who were scattered because of the persecution that occurred in connection with Stephen..." Stephen gave this speech in Acts 7 and he condemned first-century Israel. It was not one of those speeches where they all stood up and said, "Yay, what a great speech." They picked up rocks to kill him on the spot because he condemned first-century Israel as an apostate nation.

He said, "You guys are acting like everyone has acted in this nation, going back to its beginning." How would you like a talk like that? Someone comes into your country and says that? "You people are apostate, and you've always been apostate. All right, let's close in prayer." It would be highly offensive, and so they were going to kill him. And they did kill him.

They were so angry, Saul was so angry when this happened that he turned on the Jewish Christians, and that's what pushed them out of Jerusalem. So that's why they were scattered, Acts 8, verses 3 and 4; Acts 11, verse 19. Where did they go? Well, they went to two places. The first place they went is Babylon, because that's where many of the Jews, having not returned from the Babylonian captivity all the way back in Old Testament times, remained. We think James is addressing that group in Babylon.

He says, "James, a bondservant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes who are dispersed." That's the Greek word "diaspora," which is only used of Jewish people. I think it's only used three times in the New Testament. It's used here in 1 Peter 1:1, James 1:1, and I think it's used in John 7. It's a technical word that only refers to Jewish people pushed out of their homeland.

James is addressing group one. They also went into North Central Turkey, the upper north of the Asia Minor area. Peter, the apostle to the Jews, addresses that group. He says, "To those who reside as aliens"—why are they aliens? Because they just got kicked out of their homeland—"scattered"—there's "diaspora," which is used only of Jewish people—and then he mentions those sites: Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, who are chosen.

That's what happened to these Jews; they got scattered into those two areas, Babylon and North Central Turkey. But some of them stayed in town. That's who the book of Hebrews is dealing with. Hebrews is dealing with the believing remnant of Jews that didn't leave and stayed in Jerusalem. We think that because they have a desire to go back to the temple rituals. Where was the temple located before it was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70? It's located in Jerusalem. So they stayed within the land of Israel.

The land of Israel is called the land of Israel. It's not called Palestine. You start using the word Palestine, you're using nomenclature that the Bible knows absolutely nothing about. Matthew 2:21, the Christmas story: "So Joseph got up and took the child and his mother and came into the land of Palestine." Doesn't say that. "To the land of Israel."

Palestine—that name doesn't even come up until the second century, long after the Bible was written, and it was a term that was developed by the Emperor Hadrian of Rome, second century, about AD 117. It's an anti-Semitic term because he, in AD 117, after the Jews were kicked out of their land by the Romans in AD 70, was trying to pretend that the Jews were never there. Does that sound familiar? That's what the Muslims and everybody else does all the time, and it's getting harder and harder to do that because they keep finding all this archaeology that the Jews actually were there, just like the Bible says.

He went in and he just tried to de-Judaize the land, and they say let's come up with a new name for this place. Let's call it Palestine. Why Palestine? Because it's related to Philistine, which was one of Israel's enemies in the Old Testament. So he picked a name that the Jews hated. You see that?

When people say Palestine, and they say it all of the time, they don't really understand that they're using a non-biblical term, and they're actually using an anti-Semitic slur. There are a lot of Bibles that are published today where you look at the map and it'll say Palestine. In fact, some people joined us on one of our trips, flying I think from Rome to join us in Israel. When they were flying, they give you a map of where you're going.

I think they came from Rome, then they went to an Islamic country as a connecting flight; I can't remember which one. Then they came to join our group. They took a picture of the map on the plane coming out of an Islamic country. I have a picture of it. I did not bring it in, but it says over the land of Israel, it says "Palestinian territories." That's what it says.

Even today, people will not acknowledge Israel's place on the map. When I saw that, they showed it to me on their phone, I go, "You gotta send that to me." I've got it in my stack of stuff that I like to bring out from time to time showing you that what Hadrian did is what's going on today. People don't want to acknowledge Israel even being on the map. That's why when the former leader of Iran said, "We're going to wipe Israel off the map," I was like, "All right, that's progress." At least you're acknowledging Israel's on the map to be wiped out. Most of the time they don't even acknowledge Israel's even there.

So that's where this group is. When the persecution under Saul happened, they went to Babylon (James addresses them), they went to North Central Turkey (Peter addresses them), but there's a remnant of Jewish believers that stayed in and around Jerusalem. That's who the book of Hebrews is written to.

Date of the book: when would we date this book? Well, it's got to be written before AD 95 because Clement of Rome quoted it in AD 95, and you can't quote something that doesn't exist, right? As you go through this book, there's references to the temple functioning. Hebrews 8:4, Hebrews 8:13, Hebrews 9:6, Hebrews 10:1 and 2, Hebrews 13:10. Let's look at just one of those. Look at Hebrews 10:1. "For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never by the same sacrifices they offer continually year by year make perfect those who draw near."

When it says the sacrifices cannot do for you what Christ has done for you, that's what the author is saying. He makes reference to the sacrifices continually being offered. So it gives you the impression that the temple with its sacrificial system was still up and running. We know historically that temple was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70. So that pushes the date earlier than AD 70.

There's something said in Hebrews 12, verse 4, which pushes the date even earlier. Look at Hebrews 12, verse 4. The author says, "You have not resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin." You haven't resisted to the point of martyrdom. Now, once you hit AD 64, there is a lunatic on the throne. If you think leadership today is bad, just study Nero.

This guy was an absolute lunatic. He would light Christians on fire and said, "You're the light of the world, how does it feel to be lit on fire?" This is the guy that burned Rome and blamed it on the Christians. He was a pedophile and everything associated with that. He is the one that brought in the first Roman imperial persecution against Christianity.

Christianity knew persecution; they knew it from unbelieving Israel, but they didn't know anything like that. The whole Roman Empire is now against Christianity, and that situation doesn't get rectified until a guy named Constantine comes to the throne and issues what's called the Edict of Milan about AD 313. Constantine made Christianity the formal religion of Rome, which I think probably hurt Christianity more than Nero ever could because Christianity became popular. Persecution has a tendency to purify Christianity.

My point is Hebrews 12, verse 4—"you haven't resisted to the point of blood"—that's a very weird statement if it was written during the Neronian persecution. So the book of Hebrews must have been written prior to the Neronian persecution. But you can't push it too early because, as I said earlier, we're dealing with the second generation. I think a date of AD 62 to 64 works really well. It's not too early, and it's not too late. It's not so late that it pushes you post-AD 70 or post-Neronian persecution, but it doesn't push you so early that it doesn't take into account the fact that we're dealing with a second generation here.

With all of that being said, what is the occasion of this book? What are the circumstances that gave rise to the letter? Number one, the nation, the nation of Israel, is under divine discipline, under judgment that's about to be meted out in AD 70 because of her national rejection of her own Messiah. Daniel said that day would come. "Then after 62 weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing." That's Palm Sunday, crucifixion.

Then Daniel predicted, "The people of the prince who is to come (that's Titus of Rome) will destroy the city and the sanctuary, and its end will come with a flood." This is why Jesus on Palm Sunday is crying. Everybody else is saying "Hosanna" and waving their palms, and he's crying because he knows Daniel 9:26. He knows the nation is going to reject him, and when the nation rejects him, the covenant consequences are going to kick in.

That's why Jesus is always saying the temple that they were so proud of is about to be torn down brick by brick, stone by stone. He's referring to the events of AD 70, and it's built—this discipline is built into the Mosaic Covenant that God gave to the nation of Israel at Mount Sinai. Part of that covenant are blessings nationally for obedience, curses for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28, Leviticus 26).

These curses, when Israel is more and more rebellious, will start to roll like a snowball, and they will climax in a foreign power evicting the nation from their homeland. That's what is spoken of in Deuteronomy 28 in the curses section, verses 49 and 50: "The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as the eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you shall not understand, a nation of fierce countenance, who will have no respect for the old, nor show favor to the young."

When Israel goes away from the covenant, God brings discipline, and he's done it four times. He divided the kingdom after Solomon left because Solomon woke up one day and the king said—the book of Deuteronomy says—"Don't multiply wealth for yourself." Solomon did the exact opposite. Deuteronomy 17 says the king is not to amass wives for himself. Solomon went and did the exact opposite. That was the last 40 years of Solomon's life.

So God brought discipline, 931 BC, and the kingdom was divided between the north and the south. The north continued its trajectory of rebellion against God, so God brought the Assyrians and scattered them (722 BC, 2 Kings 12). The remaining southern kingdom didn't do much better, and so God sent them into the Babylonian captivity (586 BC, 2 Kings 25). Now, in the ministry of Christ, the nation has returned from the captivity and they reject their King nationally.

So to quote that great theologian, Yogi Berra, it's déjà vu all over again. Now God is going to bring the Romans to kick them out of their land and send them in the diaspora. That's why Jesus is crying; that's why he keeps making these predictions about the temple being destroyed, et cetera. So you're dealing with a situation where the discipline has not yet been imposed, but it's about to be imposed.

You're dealing with a flock of people living in and around Jerusalem that were believers. If you look at Hebrews 3, verse 1, it says they had made a confession, a public confession of Christ. "Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession." They had publicly confessed Christ as Lord in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation that had rejected Him as King.

How did they do that? It was through their baptism. Once you got baptized, you were basically saying as a Hebrew Christian, Israel is wrong to reject Christ and the church in its message is right. You were taking a public stand. That's why Peter in Acts 2, as these baptisms are occurring—baptism doesn't save, but it's an outward confession of an inward reality—says things like, "Save yourself from this crooked and perverse generation." In other words, this whole nation is under the disciplinary hand of God. But you can come out of it by trusting in Christ and then publicly acknowledging who Jesus is.

Once they started to do this, the unbelieving Jewish leaders started putting them under duress to return to Judaism. "Stop this nonsense and come back to Judaism. Come back to the temple," which by the way is about to be destroyed; they just didn't know it. They could have known it, but they didn't know it. The audience, through perpetual persecution, is being worn down. This is the second generation.

They're thinking about, "You know what, I'm just going to get these unbelieving Jews off my back. I'm going to go back to Judaism. I'm going to go back to the temple. I'm going to go back to the sacrificial system. It'll appease my persecutors. It'll get them off my back." The book of Hebrews is saying, don't do it! The temptation to go back to the temple was completely and totally real because the temple was still standing. It's only AD 62 to 64. So the temptation to return to the temple was very, very real.

That leads to the purpose of the book. It's an encouragement not to go back into Judaism by explaining that what you have in Christ is superior. It's better! Why go back? And if you do go back, something bad is going to happen to you. It's not a loss of salvation thing, but there's some sort of temporal penalty that you're going to experience by going backward. Everybody says that doesn't apply here because that's aimed at unbelievers, and I'm saying it's not aimed at unbelievers. The author is not writing to unbelievers. He's writing to saved people, so there's some sort of temporal consequence that you're going to experience by going backward. That is really what the book of Hebrews is about. I didn't finish my list, but we'll finish it next time.

Let's pray. Father, we're grateful for your truth, your word. Help us to rightly handle the book of Hebrews so we're not confused, so that we are able to walk these things out in these last days. We'll be careful to give you all the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus' name, and God's people said, amen. Happy intermission to you.