I am both profoundly honored and humbled by your gracious invitation to deliver this series of talks on the letter to the Hebrews. You have advertised them to the community as lectures, but I shall refer to them as talks. I doubt that I could qualify as a lecturer. The term seems to conjure up a mental image of an erudite professor speaking to a class of young intellectuals. While I am sure you are intellectuals, it is obvious from where I stand that you are not all young. In any event, I prefer to visit with you informally and share with you quite simply some of my views about a letter in the New Covenant Scriptures which is one of my favorites.
Your arrangement for this kind of session proves that you are abreast of the times and sailing with the tide. A great change for the better has taken place in the past several years, and there is a resurgence of interest in the study of the book that we call "The Bible." There are regular gatherings for this purpose in many dormitories in universities where, only a few years ago, this Book was held up to ridicule and scorn. I know groups of businessmen who meet at the noon hour for Bible study. Thousands of women in our land gather in groups for what are called "Bible coffees" every week. We do not meet for such studies merely because it is the "in thing" for our day, but I am thrilled to live in a day when this kind of thing is in.
Before I start talking about a specific letter, I want to speak briefly about how all of the letters came to be written. When I was quite young, I thought the Bible was let down from Heaven in a basket. It seemed to me that God had handed it to us bound in black leather, stamped in gold, and wrapped and tied with white tissue and blue ribbon. It was a bit of a shock when I came to realize the truth about it.
The New Covenant Scriptures are not really made up of twenty-seven "books." What we call "books" are actually letters. Some of these were written to communities of believers in Christ, such as the one in Corinth, or the one composed of mustered-out soldiers of the Roman army in Thessalonica. One was addressed to a group of such communities situated in a province called Galatia, an area infiltrated and inhabited by wild, reckless, and overemotional Gauls, who had swarmed down from the north.
Some were written to individuals. Among these were the two written to Timothy while Paul was incarcerated in the Mamertine Prison in Rome. One was addressed to Philemon, who resided at Colosse, and another to Titus, who had been left on the Isle of Crete, to correct some deficiencies and establish order among the communities of saints located there. Each of these letters grew out of life conditions in which the recipients were involved. They were written to show how followers of Jesus should behave themselves, if they followed the example of Jesus in the midst of a pagan culture. The letters were guidelines to help believers solve their problems while caught up in the human predicament.
Once I thought of them as constituting a written code of laws, a compilation of statutes, judgments, and decrees, such as was handed down to Israel at Mount Sinai. I no longer believe that. Paul, who wrote more of the letters than any other person said, "We are not under law, but under grace." These are personal letters. There is a difference between a legalistic code and a personal letter written out of a heart filled with concern, love, and joy. That is why Paul could drop in a little home remedy prescription for Timothy's upset stomach, and why he could ask him to stop by and pick up his topcoat. Paul had left it hanging in the closet at the home of Carpus, with whom he had lodging in Troas.
What I am saying upsets a lot of people. Perhaps they think it cheapens the Bible to admit that it was written to deal with common, everyday problems in which we become involved in our daily human routines. They may have grown up in a home where the family Bible was kept on a library table, and was treated like the ark of the covenant. No one touched it except to enter another name in the family register, or to tuck in a lock of the baby's hair, or hide the recipe for banana pudding. It was too sacred to read.
I am not upset by the fact that the letters were written to grapple with problems such as unemployment, job-hunting, sex, overeating, and laying up money for your children. It does not cheapen Jesus for me to realize that He became tired, hungry, thirsty, and that He sometimes cried. It helps me to know that He was tempted in all points as I am, and was without sin. I wish I could say that about myself. I am glad the living Word was clothed in the same kind of flesh in which I live, and I am happy that the written Word deals with mundane circumstances that "bug" me.
You probably recall the story of the shipwrecked foreign visitor who was treated kindly by a tribe of aborigines. When he was rescued and returned to his homeland, he decided to send his superstitious benefactors a token of his gratitude. Having observed that they had no way of calculating time, he presented them with a sundial. In their reverence for it, they built a roof over it. That is what many have done with the Word of God. Instead of using it, they have made an idol of it. Bibliolatry is as wrong as any other form of idolatry.
But the letter to the Hebrews is different! We can determine from the text who wrote the letter to the Romans. It starts with the words, "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ," and in the seventh verse says, "To all that be in Rome." The first letter sent to the Corinthians identifies the writers at once. They were Paul and Sosthenes. The second letter was written by Paul and Timothy. But there is no way of positively determining who wrote the letter we are to study. A good many able students think it was written by Barnabas. Several ancient writers assign it to his authorship. Others think it was written by Apollos, the Jew from Alexandria, Egypt, who was said to be "eloquent and mighty in the scriptures" (Acts 18:24). They call attention to the style of writing, and affirm that it is characteristic of the Alexandrian School.
In recent years I have become aware of an increasing number who speculate that Aquila and Priscilla may have collaborated in producing it, as a husband and wife team. Perhaps your Bible has the superscription, "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews." This may be significant, but it is not conclusive. It probably was affixed some time after the letter began to be circulated. The fact remains, there is no way by which we can now establish the authorship beyond question. Even in his day, Origen said, "Who wrote the Letter to the Hebrews, only God knows for certain."
When I am pinned down, and my arm is twisted, and am virtually forced into giving an opinion, I opt for Paul. I have read all that has been written in favor of his authorship, and all that has been written on the other side. After weighing it all, for me the scales are still tipped on the side of Paul. It is not essential for me to take the time to detail the store of internal and external evidence upon which I base my conclusion.
The same kind of mental quandary faces us in trying to identify the recipients of the letter. The writer nowhere says it was written "to the Hebrews." It was written to Jews who were thoroughly familiar with the law given to Israel, and with the history of those who lived under that law. They were children of the fathers to whom God spoke by the prophets, as we are informed in the opening sentence. The letter is a compendium of allusions to the law, priesthood, and tabernacle service. These would have been wholly unintelligible to the non-Jewish world, but every Orthodox Jew would have understood them without explanation.
I believe the letter was written to the "Hebrews," but who were the Hebrews? I think the answer is found in the book of Acts. When the number of the disciples in Jerusalem was multiplied, the first case of dissension arose. Luke, the author, writes, "There arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration" (6:1). The saints had disposed of their real estate holdings and deposited the sale proceeds with the apostles, who purchased food and dispensed it daily to every person, according to his need.
The Grecians were Hellenistic Jews. They had been born in such places as Mesopotamia, Pontus, Asia, Egypt, and Libya. They spoke the language of the land of their nativity as well as Hebrew, in which their synagogue worship generally was conducted. The Hebrews were Palestinian Jews. Most of them were monolingual, speaking only the dialect of Palestine. I think the letter we are studying was addressed to the Palestinian Jews, especially to those who were residents of Jerusalem. I do not think the letter was written to the Diasporan Jews, those who were scattered abroad. James and Peter both wrote to the dispersed Jews, but the letter to the Hebrews was not for them.
The addressees had accepted Jesus as Lord, as is evident from many references in the body of the letter. But they were in grave danger of falling away and relapsing into Judaism, while renouncing the validity of the claims of Jesus as "the Apostle and High Priest of our profession" (3:1). Perhaps the pomp and ceremony, the panoply and pageantry of the temple, proved irresistible with the passing of the years. The disciples of Jesus constituted a despised minority. They were victims of harassment by the priests and politicians, and were regarded as outcasts and social pariahs. They may have looked with longing eyes at the splendor of the temple as the pilgrims convened for the high holy days, and contrasted all of this with their own gatherings in upper rooms and dingy dwellings on back streets as a kind of underground movement.
Whatever their reasoning might have been, many of them were in desperate danger of renouncing the faith and returning to their former status under the law. That is why the letter is full of admonitions and warnings. "We ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip" (2:1). "Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God" (3:12). "Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it" (4:1).
These are but a few statements from the first four chapters, but they portray the urgent purpose of this letter. They could be multiplied to great length, but these will serve to show that the Jewish believers were in imminent danger of "flaking off" or "flacking out" on the faith, as the "now" generation would describe it. I am sure you will at once rush to the conclusion that believers are always in danger of returning to their past life, and every apostolic epistle is a warning against that tendency. That may be true, but there is a special dimension involved in this case. Properly understood, the letter will come alive. Without consideration of it, we may not grasp the meaning of what is said. Along with a great many scholars more eminent than I, I maintain that this epistle was written to Jewish believers in Jesus a very few years before the city of Jerusalem was besieged and destroyed by the Roman army under Titus. That was when the beautiful temple, which Herod the Great had spent forty-two years restoring and refurbishing, was utterly destroyed. This event brought to an effective conclusion the system of Judaism, which centered around the animal sacrifices on the brazen altar, and forever left unrivaled the atonement at the cross, which is God's only altar.
Jesus had predicted this cataclysmic event before His death. He had warned that Jerusalem would be surrounded with armies, that her desolation was near (Luke 21:20). He told His disciples that those who were in Judea should flee to the mountains. Those on the housetops should not come down to rescue personal belongings. Those in the field should not return home for their clothing. Because of the hardships involved, they were to pray that their flight would not be in the winter, nor on the Sabbath Day, when the gates of the city were shut. They would then encounter hostility from the Jews, who resented any person's making more than a Sabbath Day's journey.
Obviously, those who renounced their faith in Christ and remained in the city would be destroyed in a frightful period of tribulation unlike any other in history. This letter was written to encourage the disciples not to put their trust in Jerusalem, but to abandon the city when the time came. It was pointed out that Jesus suffered outside the gate, and the admonition was given, "Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come" (13:13). Observe the significance of the statement, "Let us go forth...for here have we no continuing city." The earthly Jerusalem was doomed. It could provide no safety.
The writer is not talking about the weekly meetings, which became traditional in western culture when we were a frontier people. He wrote about daily gatherings, perhaps in small groups, to bolster one another in the resolution to remain firm. He says, "Exhort one another daily, while it is called Today; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin" (3:13).
Certainly the letter had some effect. Eusebius, the "father of church history," informs us that the disciples of Jesus, having been warned by him, fled to Pella and other places across the Jordan. There is evidence that not a single Christian perished in the siege or in the bloody aftermath. I think the letter to the Hebrews was written for the specific purpose of encouraging the saints to resist enticements to leave the faith and return to Judaism. The importance of the letter to us is found in the admonition, "Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession" (4:14).
W. E. Vine writes, "The Epistle is written to provide the great antidote to meet the dangers both of the true Hebrew believer and of those who were tending to become apostates." This is why I call this talk "The Great Antidote."