Call to Commitment

  

Chapter 5

 1. For every high priest taken from among men is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.

2. He can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also subject to weakness.

3. Because of this he is required as for the people, so also for himself, to offer sacrifices for sins.

4. And no man takes this honor to himself, but he who is called by God, just as Aaron was.

 

Defining high priesthood

 In the first four verses, the writer defines the office of high priesthood. The Jewish Christians are very familiar with it, but they need to be reminded of its basic principles. Now we, who are less acquainted with Jewish priesthood, can learn and profit from his writing. It is consistent with human nature to be taken up with superficial details, surrounding the things into which God has placed us, and tend to forget the main purpose for which He created them.

 The first consideration that we must understand is that a high priest was chosen among his peers. In order to fulfill the purposes of his position, he must have the inner qualities that will equip him for ministry. Because he is a part of the human race, he understands the inner trials and suffering of those, to whom he renders service. His ministry is lost, if he is not compassionate. It is a great lesson for all those, who take on leadership of any kind in the church. For one to simply take on the duties and responsibilities related to any office, is to miss the point completely. He must have a heart preparation, before entering into Christian ministry.

 

  An expository study of the book of Hebrews

                            Chapter 4

 1. Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it.

2. For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.

3. For we who have believed do enter that rest, as He has said: “So I swore in My wrath, they shall not enter My rest,” although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.

4. For He has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all His works”;

5. and again in this place: “They shall not enter My rest.”

6. Since therefore it remains that some must enter it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience, 

7. again He designates a certain day, saying in David, “Today”, after such a long time, as it has been said: “Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.”

8. For if Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day.

9. There remains therefore a rest for the people of God.

10. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.

11. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.

 An expository study of the book of Hebrews

                             Chapter 3

 1. Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Christ Jesus,

2. who was faithful to Him who appointed Him, as Moses also was faithful in all His house.

3. For this One has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as He who built the house has more honor than the house.

4. For every house is built by someone, but He who built all things is God.

5. And Moses indeed was faithful in all His house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which would be spoken afterward,

6. but Christ as a Son over His own house, whose house we are if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end.

 An attempt to compare the incomparable

 Knowing their Jewish history, the believing Jews struggled in leaving it behind. God’s hand was powerfully and notably in all that they had learned since childhood. It was the task of the writer to show them that what God had done through the gospel was so much greater than their past. He addresses them as holy brethren, whose present calling was from heaven. God had separated them from the world around them and their Jewish nation hated them for it. They needed to see this as a high privilege.

   An expository study of the book of Hebrews

Chapter 2

 1. Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away.

2. For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just reward,

3. how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him,

4. God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders, with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to His own will?

 

 An expository study of the book of Hebrews

 

1. God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets,

2. has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;

3. who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

 Jesus Christ is greater than the prophets. Who is He?

 We enter this chapter and this book with great anticipation. We want to see Jesus and we open our hearts for the illumination that comes only from the Holy Spirit. Before the writer gives the first piece of advice, he extols Christ and thereby our hearts are warmed and encouraged to be faithful to Him at all costs. It is for our eternal benefit that God, Who created and rules over heaven and earth, desires to communicate with us. As we begin to ponder this book, verse by verse, that is our first consideration. In the past and in the present, God has spoken from heaven and we have a Bible that contains 66 books, by which we look into things from His perspective (v.1).

  We marvel at the insight of the prophets and their wonderful relationship with God, but God sends One, Who is superior to the prophets. In His great love for His people, the Father searches heaven, looking for a more perfect way to share His thoughts and heart with us. He sent His Word personified… In these last days, He sent us God the Son incarnate, in order to communicate from human lips to human ears, the infinitely superior purposes, existing in His throne room (v.2). There is something in the nature of God that pleases Him to save the best for last.

 We live in the very last moments of the last days. Peter quoted the prophet Joel, who prophesied of them: “It shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of my Spirit on all flesh” (Ac.2:17). We know, then, that the last days had already begun, when God poured His Spirit upon 120 disciples. Peter wrote in his second epistle that we should be patient, as we wait for the second coming of the Lord because, “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years…” (2 P.3:8). As the Lord sees things, a little less than two days have goneby since the time of the apostles.