GREATER THAN (A STUDY IN THE BOOK OF HEBREWS) WEEK 13 - SECURING HOPE, WEEK 1

We read from the Author of Hebrews how important it is to maintain momentum in understanding and living out faith in Jesus. He said in Heb 5:11-14: “About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”

The people who were receiving this letter apparently had been Christians for awhile. We know that they are HEBREW people (Jewish people), as were the majority of the Early Church in Jerusalem. (A fact that many people don’t know - that Jews and Christians are very closely connected to each other, and what Jesus began 2000 years ago was intended to bring the Jews to the next level of relationship with their God. Some of them got it, some of them did not.)

And as we read through Hebrews, we see that these Jewish converts were having a tough go in their new-found faith in Jesus. And that’s understandable. If you grew up being taught one way, believing in a certain set of teachings, sometimes it’s difficult to embrace something new without being tempted every now and then to go back to the old ways.

So the Author of Hebrews is encouraging these Jewish Christians to keep growing, keep maturing. His point is that, if you’re not moving forward, you are in danger of falling back to your old ways.

He is reminding them throughout this book of the superiority of Jesus. In fact this whole book is one gigantic exciting commercial for faith in Jesus! The Author will tell us that Jesus is better than the Prophets, better than the Angels, better than Moses, better than the Law, better than the High Priest, and even better than the annual sacrifices proscribed in the Law. 

The old way of doing things served, he says, as a foreshadowing of a better covenant, a better connection with God - not based on our performance in adhering to the external lawbook, but in the deepening relationship we have with our Heavenly Father made possible through the work of Jesus on the cross.