Sugar Land Bible Church

Dr. Andy Woods: Let's go ahead and open with a word of prayer and we'll get started. So, let's pray. Father, we're grateful for today. In a world full of tumult, we're grateful that this third assassination attempt on our president did not succeed. And we're grateful for all of the people that were helpful in detaining the person of interest.

I just pray that your justice would prevail in this situation. This president in particular, it just seems like this third assassination attempt is some kind of record. In the same building where there was an assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan back in the early 1980s. So, we pray for his protection, we pray for his provision. We pray this morning again against all attempts to destroy our country either domestically or threats coming internationally.

They seem everywhere, so we do pray that you would confuse the strategies of the enemy. You have ordained the institution of human government to play a role in the maintaining of the social order. And so, we pray that our government would function with all of its problems and all of our complaints about it. We pray that it would function the way you intended, going all the way back to the Noahic Covenant where you established the institution of human government.

Thinking also of Romans 13:1-7 and other passages where you very clearly say that you are the one that ordained government, and government leaders exist by your will. And so, with that in mind, we just pray for this man and his wife and the cabinet members and everyone out there that seeks to do him harm. We just pray for a hedge of protection around him.

I'm somewhat confused as to how something like this could happen, someone could get so close to our leaders of the free world like that. I'm still confused about Butler, Pennsylvania, with someone on the roof with a shotgun. I don't understand that at all, how that could be not observed. So to me, it demonstrates something internally is going on. And I don't have the information to make a call on that, but you know if it is, Lord, you know what it is.

You see everything, and so we just pray for the protection and provision of our leadership and not just him, but all of our leaders. We lift up all of these things in Jesus' name. God's people said, "Amen." Kind of an awkward time to say, "Turn to the book of Hebrews," because there's so much going on in our world. But that's why you guys are here, right?

So, we started a study on the book of Hebrews. We gave out some notes last time and I was going to say let's give out some more, but our stack is gone. So unless the Lord shows up and multiplies the fish and the loaves, we don't have any notes for you today, but we'll have them for you next week. And I'll probably try to figure out how to get these posted online so you can have that. It's my book summary that I did in seminary on the book of Hebrews. And once you have that, you'll understand where this study is going.

But the last time we were together, we started the book of Hebrews. So this is a great place to jump onboard the bus, so to speak. And one of the things I like to do before we start a book is I like to give you the background of the book. So here are some of the background issues we looked at. We've looked at most of these, but we're going to finish this list today, Lord willing.

The first is authorship of the book. Who wrote the book of Hebrews? And I told you last time that I agree with Origen on this, the church father. Origen said, "Only God knows." So that's my answer. I have no idea who wrote it. People go to great lengths to try to figure out who wrote an anonymous book. Was it Apollos? Was it Barnabas? Was it Paul? And the answer is I don't know.

So I had to go all the way through PhD studies to learn those words. There are some things you just can't get a definitive answer on, although the human intellect is always craving answers. The far more important question, though—because who wrote the book, Apollos, Barnabas, Paul, somebody else—it has no bearing on how the book is interpreted.

So you interpret it the same way if Barnabas wrote it, if Apollos wrote it, or if Paul wrote it. So you don't want to, when you're doing your study of the Bible, you don't want to spend all of your time dealing with some issue that has no bearing on how the book is interpreted. So that's why the whole subject of authorship and the amount of sweat people spend on this is really, to me, it's a waste of time.

The far better use of your time is to figure out the audience. Because if you can understand the audience, you can understand the book of Hebrews and the things in the book of Hebrews will start to make sense to you. So what do we know about the audience? And we went through this last time. The most important thing to understand about this audience is you're dealing with saved people.

These are people that have already trusted in Christ for salvation. They are born again, they are regenerated. And if you're struggling with that issue, you might want to take a listen or a look at the recording that we did last week where I showed you, I think, unassailable, irrefutable evidence that this is a saved audience.

And you're going to understand why this is a huge issue when I talk about the so-called warning passages in just a little bit. Because that has a direct bearing on how you interpret the warning passages, which are kind of like hot potatoes. Nobody really knows what to do with them except to throw them somewhere. Very few people interpret the warning passages correctly.

And I think I have the right interpretation of them, not because I'm some kind of genius, but because I sat under somebody, by God's providence, that was able to explain these things to me: a man named J. Dwight Pentecost. He wrote a little tiny commentary on the book of Hebrews. It's called "Hebrews: A Faith That Endures."

This is where we got the title for our series. So if you can find that online, you can get it on Logos, you can get it on Amazon, I highly recommend you read that because it's written in a way that anyone can understand it. It's not written for the scholar and it has in it great points of application.

Because a lot of teachings you get on Hebrews, it's like great information, how do I apply this to life? And so the Dwight Pentecost commentary on the book of Hebrews, a little paperback, "Hebrews: A Faith That Endures," it's one of those things I can't recommend to you more highly. So the audience is saved.

The folks that are being, by the way, let me throw this in, we mentioned it last time, there are about 38 exhortations in the book of Hebrews and there's not a single exhortation for the audience to believe and be saved, like you find in John's Gospel. Which shows me that the audience is already a believing audience.

So the author of the book of Hebrews is not dealing with evangelistic issues. The author is dealing with spiritual growth issues, spiritual development issues. The second thing to understand about the audience, and we covered this last time and it's the way it's worded in chapter 2 verses 2 and 3—and you can go back and listen to last time to get the full explanation of this—but you're dealing with a generation of believers that are second-generation Christians.

So the teaching transferred from Jesus to the apostolic generation, and then it transferred from the apostolic generation to those of us that heard, which would be the generation following the apostles. And as the teaching made that leap from the apostles to the second generation, it was confirmed to them through various signs and wonders, which is something that God does when he's inaugurating a new work.

And here we're seeing the beginning of the church age. So signs and wonders are very prominent in the book of Acts. As we're studying in the book of Exodus in the main service that follows, you'll see a lot of signs and wonders there and God is doing something new. He's raising up a new age of time called the age of the law, where the Mosaic law is being given.

And then you'll see signs and wonders in the Bible, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, kind of clustering around the Elijah/Elisha stories. Floating axe heads and fire from heaven and those kinds of things. And the reason miracles are prominent there is God is raising up a new office called the office of the prophet whose function was to call wayward kings back to God's law.

And that's why most prophets had a very short career span, very short lives, because their function was to call the political ruler back to the law of God. And the political ruler held all the cards because he held the political power in the nation. And so if someone was too outspoken against his leadership, he would just call them a domestic terrorist, I guess, and jail them or kill them, right?

But miracles are clustering around that time period because God is doing something new. He's raising up this office called the prophet. Miracles cluster around the life of Christ because God is doing something new. He's offering the kingdom to first-century Israel, which they nationally turned down.

There's a coming upon the earth a counterfeit signs and wonders movement orchestrated by Satan, where the Antichrist will rule the world. So there Satan is imitating the work of the Antichrist. So people today that are looking for a signs and wonders movement, I'm thinking, well, the next one on the horizon is that of the devil. You sure you want to get too involved in that?

And then miracles in the Bible will cluster around the Kingdom age where, once the Kingdom starts, you can't even get the prayer request off your tongue before it's immediately answered, those kind of things. Where the lame will leap like deer, the blind will see and all of these kinds of things because God is doing something brand new in that thousand-year Kingdom.

So that's why when the message traveled from Jesus to the apostles to this generation, Hebrews 2 verses 2 and 3 says it was confirmed by various signs and wonders. The third thing to understand about this group that's being addressed here is they're Jewish. I mean, doesn't the title of the book give that away?

The letter to the Hebrews. That's a title that's not, it's in your study Bible, it's not inspired, but it's a title that goes back to AD 180. So we're pretty confident that that was the title of the book. And so the fact that they titled the book that way indicates that this audience was Jewish.

And so you have to put yourself in the shoes of a Hebrew Christian and ask the questions that they would be asking. And once you understand that, then you can understand the book of Hebrews. And in fact, not only can you understand the book of Hebrews, you can understand six New Testament books which are specifically written to Hebrew Christians.

They are the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistle of James, the two Peter epistles, Jude, that's five so far, James to the twelve tribes, and then the epistle to the Hebrews. So it's not like as a Gentile Christian I can't gain something from reading those, because all Scripture is for us, although not all Scripture's directly about us, so to speak.

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable, but you can't really figure out why the author's bringing up certain things unless you understand that it's written to, along with those five others, a Hebrew Christian audience. And then the fourth thing to understand about this audience is they're located in the land of Israel.

So Saul of Tarsus, who we know later as Paul, prior to his conversion was a horrific persecutor of the church of God. He did not like this idea of the church starting, he didn't like all of these Jewish people trusting in the Messiah that his nation, the nation of Israel, rejected. And so he launched a terrible, with a capital T, wave of persecution against this newborn church which, at the outset, was all Jewish.

In fact, Saul is the one that was holding the garments of those that threw rocks at the first martyr in the church age, a man named Stephen. You'll see that in Acts 7 and early on Acts 8. But as Stephen died, and they hated every word Stephen said, the unbelieving Jews, because he condemned Israel up one side and down the other.

He said, "You guys," and he was Jewish himself, "have always been rebellious," and he goes back into their history and traces it for them. I mean, you mistreated every prophet God sent your direction, and now you're no different because you've rejected your own king, Jesus. And Saul of Tarsus sitting there listening to that whole thing hated the whole thing.

And so he launched this terrible wave of persecution against these people in the church. So Acts 8 verses 3 and 4 says, "But Saul began ravaging the church." See, this is what Saul, when he was converted, Acts 9, talks about all of the time. He says, "I'm the least of the apostles, the last of the apostles, I'm not worthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God."

And he could not get over the fact that not only was he forgiven of his sins by Jesus, but he was actually put into the service of Jesus. And he went from, you get into Acts 9 and following, he went from being the great persecutor of Christianity to its greatest advocate and defender. And to his dying day, he never got over the fact that God showed him that measure of grace.

So that's instructive for us, because a lot of people think, "Well, I've done this in my life, I've done that in my life, God will never use me," kind of attitude. And the truth of the matter is God's specialty is taking the least qualified people and using them for his glory, which gives me a lot of encouragement because God will accept my resume.

Because I'm unqualified just like everybody else is unqualified. And who is it that writes the opening book of the New Testament? A guy named Matthew who was a tax gatherer. I mean, in that day, if you were like a tax gatherer, it's the same way we today would look at an abortionist or a pornographer or someone that traffics in child sex slavery or some horrific thing.

Because a tax gatherer was always a thief, because after you were done collecting resources for Rome, you could extract whatever you wanted from the people. And number two, if that weren't bad enough, a thief, you were a traitor because you were working for the occupier, Rome. So if you were a Jewish tax gatherer, you were—that's why Zacchaeus is in the tree, right? Luke 19.

What's he doing in the tree? Well, no one else would have him in their little group, so he had to go up in a tree, you know, there in Jericho just to see Jesus. And when Zacchaeus is converted, he says, "I'm going to," what does he say in Luke 19? "I'm going to pay back four times," or something like that, "what I've stolen."

So, who is writing the opening book of the New Testament, which features the regal authority of Jesus Christ? It's this guy Matthew, totally unqualified. So God does not call the qualified, but he qualifies the called. Amen? And so this is so encouraging because we're all of us have shortcomings in our lives where we discredit ourselves and disqualify ourselves and discount ourselves. And God says, "You're my specialty."

But that's how who this man Saul was. Acts 8:3 and 4, "But Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house, dragging off men and women." I mean, he wasn't a big supporter of women here. "He would put them into prison. Therefore those who had been scattered." That's a very important word there. It's the word where we get the word diaspora, which is a word used only in the Bible of Jewish people.

"Therefore those who had been scattered went about preaching the word." And then it picks up again in Acts 11 verse 19, it says, "So then those who were scattered because of the persecution that occurred in connection with Stephen." See, Stephen's, see the name Stephen there? It's Stephen's speech that exasperated or initiated this persecution because Saul of Tarsus just hated it.

Because, to quote that great theologian Jack Nicholson, "You can't handle the truth," right? I mean, Saul could not handle the truth as Stephen sat there and it's not a short speech. I mean, it goes on like, what, 56, 57 verses? And he just weaves together all of this Old Testament, says, "You guys are guilty, just like this nation has always been guilty."

And Saul as a patriot didn't like hearing that, and so he launched this persecution against Stephen, had him martyred on the spot, and then he launched against these Jewish believers in Yeshua and so they were scattered. So then those who were scattered because of the persecution that occurred in connection with Stephen made their way to Phoenicia, Cyprus, Antioch, speaking the word to no one except the Jews alone.

So where did they go? Well, they went to join some of their fellow kinsmen in a place called Babylon, which you see circled there, modern-day Iraq. Very famous place in history. It's I'm not really sure the significance of the flood and what it did rearranging the topography of the earth. But the way Eden is described in Genesis 2 verses 8 through 14 with two rivers, Euphrates, Tigris, Pishon, Gihon, that was probably the location of Eden somewhere in that area, modern-day Iraq.

We know it's where the Tower of Babel stood. Genesis 11 verse 2. It's where the children of Israel were taken into captivity. Daniel 1 verse 2. And a lot of them, look at the genealogies, the post-exilic genealogies in Ezra, Nehemiah, a lot of them never came back from the captivity. They stayed there.

And there was actually a Talmud created there about 500 years after the time of Christ, AD 500, called the Babylonian Talmud. And so it was a where scattered Jews went. They went to join their kinsmen. And so James says, "A bond-servant of God," James 1 verse 1, "and of the Lord Jesus, to the twelve tribes who are what? Dispersed." That's diaspora, abroad. Greetings.

And we generally think that that's who James is writing to: Jewish Christians in the diaspora in the first place they went to following the persecution under Saul of Tarsus after Stephen's speech and martyrdom. And we think that kind of by process of elimination because Peter is going to write to some group, some Jews that are scattered.

Remember, Peter is the apostle to the Jews. Galatians 2 verses 7 and 8. And so he actually went to Babylon. 1 Peter 5 verse 13 tells us that. And I have no reason to give you a big speech on why Babylon doesn't mean Babylon there. He went to Babylon. It'd be a logical place for him to go. And from Babylon, he wrote 1 Peter and 2 Peter, delivered shortly thereafter, to a group of Jews.

And he says to those who are scattered, or who reside as aliens, scattered, there's our word diaspora. And then he lists the places of geography: Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia who are chosen. And that's North-Central Turkey. And that's the second place the scattered Jews went to.

So if Peter is addressing that group, it's very logical to think that James would not address them but would address the other group in Babylon. So it's kind of by process of elimination that we think that. But there are some of the Jews that stayed in Jerusalem and just put up with the persecution.

That's the group that the author of Hebrews is addressing. So the author of Hebrews is addressing regenerated Jews who were new believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, second generation, who managed to stay there in Jerusalem. And this is why the temptation that they're under, as we'll be explaining, was very real to them.

Because this was written during a time where the temple was still standing. It was destroyed by Rome eventually in AD 70. That hadn't happened yet. And so this group was just tired of being persecuted. And you can understand how they felt about it. They got tired of being persecuted by unbelieving Jews, and so their temptation was, "Well, I'll just go back to the temple.

Not because I really believe anymore in the rituals of the temple, but I just want to get these persecutors off my back. You know, I'll show up at a few feast days if that's what will calm these persecutors down." And the author of Hebrews is saying, "Don't do that." That's the point of the book. Don't retrogress. Don't lapse backward.

Because what you have in Christ is better. He's not saying, the author of Hebrews, that there's something wrong with the institutions of Judaism. A lot of people take Hebrews and turn it as some kind of attack on the institutions of Judaism. Well, how could that be when God is the one that's the author of those things?

So the problem isn't the institutions of Judaism, it's just that what you have in Christ is better. The word "better," I think, is used 13 times in this book. So if you retrogress like you're thinking of doing just to get out of persecution, you're retrogressing to an inferior revelation. Not a bad revelation, but now something better is here.

And what was there, it was just a shadow of what God said would come. Now the reality is here. I mean, I'm 6'6" so if the sun is right, you can see my shadow coming into a room a little bit before me, right? But the shadow isn't me. I mean, my wife when I come to the house, she doesn't kiss my shadow. I mean, what would be the fun in that, right?

She kisses me because I'm the reality behind the shadow. So what the audience is being forced to go back to just to get out of persecution is a shadow which just points to an ultimate reality. And what the author starts to explain to them is you have strength to not retrogress because you have a high priest who's at the right hand of the Father.

Not after the order of Aaron, but after the order of Melchizedek, who can help you say no to this pressure. And so that's really the whole point of the book. So the date of the book, as we said before, would be about AD 62 to 64. Second generation living in and near Jerusalem.

The temptation to return to the temple was very near, very real to them because the temple was still functioning. I showed you some references last time indicating that the temple was still up and running when this book was written. Hebrews 10:1 and 2 is a good one that we studied.

So pre-AD 70, pre-destruction of the temple, second generation of Hebrew Christians living in and around the city of Jerusalem with a very real opportunity to go back to the temple to escape the persecution from unbelieving Jews. So all of these points that I'm giving you here are not just random data points. This is not data dump.

I try to give you points that are pertinent to how the book is interpreted. Because if I'm just going to come up here and rattle on and on about things that are interesting but have no bearing on how the book is interpreted, I'm basically wasting my time and I'm wasting your time because those things don't help in interpreting the book.

But these things I'm talking about here are a massive help. And in fact, if you can't understand these things or don't understand these things, then a lot of the statements the book makes will seem an enigma to you. But once this background is understood, everything in the book starts to fall into its logical place, which leads us to the occasion of the book. I mean, why would what is the situation that is being addressed in the book?

Something to understand about the Bible is it's written as crisis literature. With every single book of the Bible, there is some kind of crisis behind the scenes taking place. And if you understand the crisis, you can understand why the author brings up the things that he brings up. And most modern Bible study doesn't do that for you.

They don't explain the crisis behind the scenes, and they just jump right into some kind of selective verse-by-verse understanding of the book. Well, the verses won't make sense to you without understanding the crisis. Because the Bible is what we call occasional literature. It's written to address an occasion.

The Bible was not written like a systematic theology textbook, where the writer says, "Hey, I'm going to defend the doctrine of the Trinity today. Ready? Point A, Point B, Point C." That's not how the Bible was written. Each book of the Bible was designed to deal with some kind of crisis.

Now, the work of a systematic theologian then is to go through the Bible and say, "Let's develop the doctrine of the Trinity because there's no book of the Bible that gives you an exhaustive teaching on the Trinity." I mean, there's no Trinity book, right? Let's open our Bible to the Trinity book. Well, where is that?

Well, a systematic theologian has to assemble that doctrine because it's scattered all over the Bible. So why is it scattered? Because the Bible wasn't written the way we think it should be written as a systematic theology book, it's written to address a crisis. See that?

The Germans called this, I can't remember if it's "Sitz im Leben" or maybe it's "Sitz im Leben," something like that. But that means situation in life. Another way of saying it is occasional literature. And that's how the Bible is set up. Every single book of the Bible there's a crisis.

What's the crisis in Colossians? The Colossian heresy, which reduced Christ to just being an angel. That's the crisis. What's the situation in Galatians? It's legalism coming into the church. What's the situation in 1 Thessalonians and 2 Thessalonians? It's a bunch of people that quit life because they thought Jesus was coming back within a few hours.

So why hold down a job if that's true? I mean, heck, I'll just go out and max out my credit cards. And they had people that died and they wanted to know, "Paul, you talked about the rapture, what's going to happen to our deceased loved ones in Christ? Are they going to be part of the rapture?" So 1 Thessalonians and 2 Thessalonians address that.

Even Romans, Paul is trying to lay the foundation in the church at Rome from a group of people that started that church that were present to hear Peter preach on the Day of Pentecost. Who started that church that weren't apostles? Did you know that? The church at Rome was started by non-apostles, just ordinary folks.

And Paul is going to use Rome as a beachhead to launch out further west into Spain. He explains this towards the end of the book of Romans, and he's got to make sure that that church is on a solid theological footing. So he lays out in majestic, logical form pure doctrine dealing with salvation and other related topics there in the book of Romans.

So even Romans was written to address a crisis. And you could do this with every Old Testament book and every New Testament book. And so what is the crisis in the book of Hebrews? The crisis is you've got a bunch of people who are tired of being persecuted and they want to go back to the functioning temple and embroil themselves in a few feast days and sacrifices just to shut the mouths of their persecutors.

That's the crisis. And the author is saying, "Don't do that." That's the point of the book. It's an exhortation not to do that. So AD 70 was around the corner. The temple would be destroyed because Jesus said it would be, as did Daniel. All the way back in the 6th century BC, Daniel predicted the reaction of the nation when Jesus would show up and present his Messianic credentials to the nation.

And in the famous prophecy of the 70 weeks, Daniel writes here as Gabriel gives Daniel this vision, "Then after 62 weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing." And "the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end will come with a flood." That's AD 70.

When Jesus is rejected by the nation on Palm Sunday, two things are going to happen: he's going to be cut off for a season, he won't inherit the Kingdom. In fact, there it says he will inherit nothing. I mean, tell that to people that think Jesus established the Kingdom in the first century. Are you kidding me? The Bible says he would inherit nothing because he would be rejected by his own nation.

And then as a penalty for that sin, God would put the nation of Israel under the consequences of her Mosaic Covenant, which God gave to her at Mount Sinai, which is laid out as a Suzerain-Vassal Treaty. Did you know that? Suzerain is the superior, vassal is the inferior. It's a treaty structure that a superior would enter into with an inferior during the time of Abraham and during the time of Moses.

And we've we have a bunch of them from that time period. And it lays out one, two, three, four, five, six, I guess, parts. There's a preamble, there's a historical prologue between the parties, there are covenant obligations that the vassal has to do to please the suzerain, there are storage and reading instructions, witnesses are called.

But if the vassal doesn't do what the suzerain says, then there are curses built into a Suzerain-Vassal Treaty structure. And guess what? The whole book of Deuteronomy reads like a Suzerain-Vassal Treaty. Exactly like everything we know about the Ancient Near Eastern Suzerain-Vassal Treaties.

There's a preamble—I've got the verses for you—a historical prologue between the parties as God has entered into this covenant with Israel. There are covenant obligations for the vassal or the inferior to follow—the Ten Commandments and the related what is it, 613 something like that commandments in the Mosaic Law.

There are storage and reading instructions, and there's even witnesses called. How do you witness for God? Well, you can't have a normal jury for that one, so God calls heaven and earth as his witnesses. Deuteronomy 28. And then, just like a Suzerain-Vassal Treaty in chapter 28—the witnesses I'm sorry are in chapter 32 verse 1—but in chapter 28, which is the spine of the Old Testament and quite frankly New Testament, there's a parallel chapter in Leviticus 26.

Deuteronomy 28 verses 1 through 14: blessings for obedience. Here are the things that the suzerain will do for the vassal if the vassal fulfills nationally their instructions under the covenant obligations. They'll go out and fight their wars and they'll win, they will lend and not borrow, and their crops will produce overwhelmingly in terms of productivity.

But if the vassal disobeys the suzerain—verses 1 through 14 are blessings for obedience—then verses 15 through verse 68. Wow. It's almost like God knew what was going to happen. Fourteen verses, "I'll bless you if you obey me." Here's a bunch of other verses that are far more numerous, "Here's what's going to happen if you disobey me."

You're going to go out and you're going to fight your battles and you're going to lose, and you're going to borrow and not be the lender, your crops are going to fail, and you won't be the head rather than the tail, you'll be the tail rather than the head, and you will be a bygone throughout the earth.

And that's kind of a description of Israel's history since she's been kicked out of her land. But God can't cancel Israel's program because of another covenant that he made with them called the Abrahamic Covenant. I'm not dealing here with the Abrahamic Covenant which gives Israel ownership of her blessings, I'm dealing with the Mosaic Suzerain-Vassal Treaty which gives them not ownership, but can they enjoy or possess what they own.

Because you can own something and not enjoy it. Did you know that? You could own a house in the Hamptons. Anybody have that going for them? I need a vacation resort, let me know. So you got this house in the Hamptons, but you're too busy working that you can never go and enjoy it. See that? You own it but you're not enjoying it.

So that's where Israel is today. She owns her blessings—thank you, Abrahamic Covenant—but she's not currently enjoying what she owns and is fact under divine discipline, even right now as I speak. I mean, as much as I'm of the mindset that we should love the Jewish people and help the Jewish nation wherever we can and speak up on behalf of injustices that are committed against the Jewish nation—and there are many—you can't do that without also understanding that they are under divine discipline as we speak.

So they are a nation under discipline right now to the present hour. Did you know that two-thirds of United Nations resolutions go against the modern state of Israel? You say, "Well, why is that?" Well, they're under discipline. This is what God said would happen. Do I become anti-Semitic and hate the Jewish people? I can't do that because the Abrahamic Covenant won't let me do that. See that?

So when she would become disobedient, she would go under these curses. And the curses would roll up like a snowball. And then God would release the ultimate curse, which is in Deuteronomy 28:49 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."

And "he," this power, "will evict you from your land." And this has happened to Israel three times. Solomon, the fourth king of the United Kingdom, woke up one day and just decided to do at the end of his life exactly what the Mosaic Covenant said don't do.

"The king," Deuteronomy 17, "shall not multiply wives for himself." What did Solomon do? He had 700 wives and 300 concubines. "The king shall not amass wealth for himself." What did Solomon do? He amassed wealth for himself. So God, as he does through the Mosaic Covenant, brought discipline and the nation was divided at that point, right after Solomon left the throne. 1 Kings 12.

North and the south. North headquartered in Samaria, south headquartered in Jerusalem. And the north went into apostasy, and so God brought judgment on them through the Assyrians. That's what he said he would do, right? Deuteronomy 28:49 and 50, and dispersed them from their land.

And you would think that the south that was left would have learned from the lesson that happened to the north, but not long after—here's the dates for all of these: Kingdom divided 931, north scattered 722 BC, and there's the places in the Bible where you can find these—south pushed out of their land by the Babylonians in 586 BC.

The north the south did not learn a lick of evidence from what happened to the north and she went into worse rebellion, and so God, faithful to the Mosaic Covenant, kicked them out of their land and that's where the Babylonian captivity comes from, 586 BC. Then the seventy years are over, they go back into the land, they rebuild the temple.

Jesus shows up and, with the exception of a believing remnant, the Jewish nation says, "Thanks, but no thanks." In fact, Jesus, I think it was in the parable of the minas, talked about it where they said, "We will not have this man to rule over us." So to quote that great theologian Yogi Berra, it's déjà vu all over again.

Here come the Romans and would kick them out of their land, push them into worldwide dispersion exactly what God said would transpire. So Deuteronomy 28, you see what I'm saying how it's the spine? It reveals a pattern of discipline that happens over and over and over again to the nation that they're still under today.

So AD 70 hadn't happened yet because the temple was still functioning, but the whole thing was about to be destroyed in a few years. And this crowd here, this crowd I'm describing, this Hebrew Christian crowd had made a confession. The word "confession" is in Hebrews 3 verse 1. The confession is their baptism.

Baptism does not save anybody. But it is an outward expression of an inward reality that I stand with Jesus. The early church, when you got baptized publicly, what you're saying to the unbelieving Jews in and around Jerusalem is, "National Israel was wrong and the church's message is right."

So you were taking a public stand. And that's why once they were baptized, the unbelieving Jews said, "Okay, those are the troublemakers. Let's persecute them." And so the unbelieving Jews placed the audience under duress to return to Judaism. And the audience is being worn down.

AD 70 hadn't happened yet, so there was a temple to go back to. "I'll just slip in and out, few feast days, few few sacrifices. I mean, I know in my heart I don't really mean it, but I'm just tired of being persecuted." So therefore, with that background in mind, now you can see the purpose of the book of Hebrews.

What is the purpose of the book? It is an encouragement or a motivation to not do that. Don't do that. Do not lapse backward into Judaism, which was a good revelation, but you got something way better. Why would you go back to a shadow? And the author communicates his purpose through two tools.

The first tool is beautiful logic. And this is why people think Paul wrote this or Apollos wrote this—I mean, this is like a masterpiece in logic. Major premise, minor premise, conclusion. And what the author shows in this book is what you have in Christ is higher, it's better, it's superior to everything that that temple system has to offer, which by the way is about to be destroyed anyway.

So the author says Jesus is higher than the angels. That's the first two chapters of the book. Why would he say that? Well, because the Jews revered angels. Angels, as you study the Old Testament, were the messengers of God always. So if the author can show that Jesus is higher than the angels, he can show that Jesus is higher than any message found in Judaism.

And that's what he does for the first two chapters of the book. Jesus is higher than the angels. And people look at that and say, "Why is that even an issue?" It makes sense if you put yourself into the shoes of a Hebrew Christian who has always revered angels, but now something higher than angels has come.

So Jesus' message is higher than any angelic message that the Old Testament has to offer. So why retrogress? And then in the next two chapters, I think this is chapters 3 and 4, the author says Jesus is higher than Moses. I mean, if anybody the Jews revered, it was Moses. I mean, he's the lawgiver.

And now the author says Jesus is higher than Moses. So he's higher than the law. And then beginning midway through chapter 4 through midway through chapter 10, the author says Jesus is higher than Aaron. Why Aaron? Because through Aaron came the priesthood, right?

And if you can show that Jesus is higher than Aaron, you can show that the priesthood that Christ is currently orchestrating is higher, better, or superior than that whole Aaronic system that goes all the way back to the book of Leviticus. So why would you retrogress?

Oh, and by the way, the current priesthood of Christ will give you something called rest. Hebrews 4. Why do you need rest? Because you're under pressure. And you have an active high priest at the right hand of the Father who can't wait to help you. And all this struggle that you're facing about retrogressing backwards, he's there to help you in his present priestly session, not after the order of Aaron, but after the order of Melchizedek, meaning he's higher than Aaron.

So that's tool number one. It's just logic. And then there's tool number two. And here's where the big debate is. If you go back to Judaism, something bad's going to happen to you. So these are five times where the author will just interrupt his train of thought and throw in a warning.

And then once the warning is over, he'll go back to his train of thought. So there are five places where this happens. I mean, they're very strong warnings. There's a warning against drifting: chapter 2 verses 1 through 4. There's a warning against disobedience: chapter 3 verse 7 through chapter 4 verse 13. There's a warning against immaturity: chapter 5 verse 10 through chapter 6 verse 20.

There's a warning against despising the truth: chapter 10 verses 26 through 39. And then there's a final warning: chapter 12 verses 25 through 29, in denying the truth. So we have a warning against drifting, disobedience, despising, denying. I couldn't come up with a D for immaturity, acting like a dodo head or something, I don't know.

Maybe you guys can come up with that. But those are where the warnings are. And these warnings are so severe that people say, "These could not ever be aimed at saved people." So once you understand that objection, you understand why we did the analysis of the audience last week where I show you that they are saved people.

So here are the four approaches to the warning passages. They're so severe that this must be a hypothetical, I mean, something that is described that we know could never happen. Oh my goodness, my hero in the faith, Charles Ryrie, takes that view.

He as he's describing Hebrews 6, he says, "By the way, this can never be done." Which to me totally empties Hebrews 6 of its rhetorical impact, threatening somebody with something that could never happen. Because to Ryrie's mind, this is so severe, I mean, this could never happen to a Christian.

The second view is the Arminian view. And here the Arminians are closer to the truth than others because they at least acknowledge that the audience was saved. But they say they lost their salvation, which I can't buy into because Jesus says in John 10 verses 27 through 29, "My sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me; I give them eternal life, they will never perish."

Have you study that in Greek? There's a double negation with the word *aionia* which means forever, means never, never forever. That's what he's saying. Your English translation doesn't do that justice, the way that reads in Greek. "I give them eternal life, they will never, never perish forever, and no one can snatch them from my hand."

Then he says, "My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand." What are you as a Christian? You're not in just his grip of grace, you're in the Father's grip of grace, you're in the double grip of grace, which means you're secure eternally.

So when the Arminians are correctly understanding the audience but they're telling me these are people that can lose their salvation, I say there's got to be a better way than that because the Bible says you can't lose your salvation. So the dominant view on the market today is the Calvinist or Reformed view, which is the idea that these warnings are aimed at unsaved people.

And they get that from the P in Calvinism: perseverance of the saints. The T-U-L-I-P doctrine. And so they have a theology which says nothing this severe could happen to a Christian. Because if they're a Christian, they're always going to persevere in good works and faith. And this is describing something awful.

So their view on it is, and all of these people—Alistair Begg, John MacArthur, I mean Steve Lawson, R.C. Sproul, I mean all the people that you hear on TV and radio, they just preach this around the clock. So the author is teaching and then all of a sudden he gives a lecture to some unsaved people that happen to be there, and then he goes back to talking about saved people. This is how they all teach these warning passages.

John MacArthur takes Hebrews 6, I'll give you the quotes from him as the series progresses, but he says, "This is clearly written to unsaved people." And that's really peculiar to me because there's a line in Hebrews 6 that says, "You should be teachers by now." Can you tell me any example where an unbeliever should teach a believer?

That makes zero sense. But because he and others have this overriding theological commitment to something—perseverance of the saints—it overrides what the text is saying. Because these are written, I'll show you, continue to show you evidence, these are all written to saved people.

The P in Calvinism stands for perseverance of the saints. We've gone over all of this stuff in our Calvinism study, and this is where it's relevant because it controls how the warning passages are understood. By the way, if I'm preaching and I'm talking to believers and believers and believers and believers, then in the middle of my sermon I say, "Okay, now this applies to the unbelievers that might be here," what are you as a believer going to do?

You're going to think about where you're going to go out for lunch and mentally check out. I mean, this applies to unbelievers, it doesn't apply to me. And let me know, preacher, when you get back to talking about believers. But if I am in front of a group and I'm talking about severe warnings that don't have to do with heaven or hell, but they're very severe, and I say, "This could happen in your life as a Christian," guess what? I got everybody's attention. See that?

So the view that I come from is what's called the loss of blessings view. And what is being warned in these five warning passages is not heaven or hell, but it is something very serious that could happen to you unrelated to salvation. The example that is going to be used that unpacks all of this is the Kadesh Barnea incident where they got to the, let's see, southern border of Israel.

They looked into the land, they saw giants into the land, they went into unbelief, and they that whole generation forfeited Canaan. Well, that generation went to hell, right? Careful with that one because Moses is part of that generation and he's on the Mount of Transfiguration.

They didn't they didn't forfeit heaven. By the way, that's why all these songs equating Canaan with heaven, we really need to start getting rid of those because that's a that's an unbiblical parallel. I mean, are you going to get into heaven and fight giants? Canaan is not heaven. Canaan was a blessing above and beyond salvation that they could have had.

That it was right within their fingertips, right within their grasp. They could have had it, but they didn't. And God locked that whole generation out of Canaan. They forfeited a blessing that they could have had above and beyond salvation, unrelated to heaven or hell. See that?

That makes what I'm doing here totally different than the Calvinist understanding—unsaved people—Arminian understanding—they lost their salvation—hypothetical view because Canaan wasn't hypothetical. In fact, they tried to, remember Numbers 14, they tried to get in the next day. Didn't go so well for them. Suddenly they got brave and wanted to get in, and they were beaten back by the giants. The Bible says as far as Hormah.

So that takes us to the message of the book, which you kind of already know: the superiority of the full revelation of Christ in comparison to Old Testament Judaism is shown through Christ's superiority to every major vestige of Judaism. And the author wrote the book of Hebrews so that the audience would not lapse back into Judaism. That's the major message that is communicated in this book.

And you say, "Well, we're not Jews thinking about going back to the temple." Well, the application to us is we're under persecution and we're tempted to go back to false religions all the time to stop the persecution. Ah, go back to Rome. God loves you anyway. What's going to happen to you if you do that? The book of Hebrews becomes relevant.

So, Father, we're grateful for your word, grateful for your truth. And help us to not go through the book of Hebrews, help the book of Hebrews to go through us. We'll be careful to give you all the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus' name. God's people said, "Amen." Happy intermission.