Hebrews 1:1

Hebrews 1:1

God speaks through His Son

Remember, this wonderful book of the Bible is written primarily to Jewish believers, men and women steeped in the Scriptures and who have made their faith into a religion that stood head and shoulders above any of the world’s great faiths. Does this mean that Hebrews is not really for us Gentiles? Of course not! What it does is to bring the Jews and the Church seamlessly together and it shows how both have an equal part in the plan of Almighty God. 

The Jews are highly privileged; they are God’s earthly people with a heritage that includes a specific land and access to all the revealed words of God up to the coming of Christ. When we read about “the Scriptures” in the New Testament the authors are not talking about the Gospels or Paul’s letter or any book of the Bible between Matthew and Revelation; the Scriptures are the Tanakh or what we call the 39 books of the Old Testament. When Paul wrote “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,” (2 Timothy 3:16) he was referring to the Old Testament for it was the only Scripture that existed at that time. And of course, much of it was written by the prophets. It was written to Israel since they were God’s chosen people on the earth and were the only people who believed in the Creator God that they called YAHWEH, although they dare not say His name! The Lord God spoke again and again to these people, that they might know Him and His plans and purposes. Sometimes He spoke in encouragement, and at other times, in anger and frustration at their wilfulness and unbelief. The Old Testament of our Bibles is not to be discarded as just ancient history or something that was written for a bygone age, it is God’s Word to the world covering 4,000 years of human existence and given to some of the most godly men and women who have ever lived! These people were all prophets in the sense that their writings consistently point forwards to the coming of Christ. The New Testament was written in less than 100 years and is amazing but makes no sense if it is not understood in the context of the writings of the prophets of old. They had received the Word throughout centuries of earlier human existence which is why men like Paul and the writer of Hebrews refer to them so frequently. 

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