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Theology of Hebrews · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to Reformed Thinking. I'm your host and I'm glad
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  you're here with us. It's good to be here.
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  We're a show that's all about, well, digging into the real
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  substance of our faith. We stand on the shoulders of
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  those who came before us. And we should say right up
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  front, we are unapologetically Protestant.
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  We hold to the Westminster Confession of faith.
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  And we believe that Scripture is the only infallible rule for
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  faith and for life. And today we are definitely not
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  just skimming the surface. No, this is this is a deep one.
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  We're getting into some dense, but I think incredibly life
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  giving theological material. And to help us navigate it all,
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  our resident expert is here with me.
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  Happy to be here. And you're right, today is not
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  for light weighting. We are looking at what I think
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  is one of the most intellectually and spiritually
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  demanding books in the entire New Testament.
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  We are talking about the Epistle to the Hebrews.
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  That's the one. Our discussion today is going to
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  be based on the analysis we find in the Moody Handbook of
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  Theology by Paul Ends. And I think this is for anyone
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  who's ever tried to read Hebrews.
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  And you know, you get a few chapters in, you get bogged
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  down. All the talk about Melchizedek
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  and angels. Exactly.
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  It can be tough, but this isn't just a history lesson about old
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  Jewish rituals. As ENS really points out, this
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  book is a theological lifeline. It is.
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  It was written to people who are ready to give up, people who
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  were tempted to just drift away because life had become too
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  hard. That context is everything.
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  We sometimes treat theology like it's just an academic subject,
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  something for a classroom. Right.
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  But Hebrews is a crisis document.
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  It's pastoral care, but it's done through this very high
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  level Christology. So our mission today, following
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  Enza's analysis, is to really get why the author of Hebrews
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  argues that Christ isn't just a good option, or even the best
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  option. But that he is the superior and
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  the final revelation of God. And we're going to see why
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  turning back to anything else isn't just a step backward.
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  No, it's a step into judgement. It's that serious?
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  Which of course, brings us to those famous and sometimes scary
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  warning passages about apostasy. We will definitely unpack those
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  later. We will.
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  But let's start where any good detective story starts with a
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  mystery, the Riddle of the letter.
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  When you open up one of Paul's letters, it usually starts with,
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  you know, Paul and Apostle. Sure, you know who's talking
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  right away. But with Hebrews, it just
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  launches right into the theology.
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  So the big question who wrote it?
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  And that is the classic debate, isn't it?
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  I mean, for centuries people have thrown out names.
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  Paul, Barnabas. Apollos, Luke.
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  A whole list of candidates. A whole list.
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  But if we stick to what ends highlights in his analysis, the
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  answer is actually very simple, which is we don't know.
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  We just don't know. The author is nowhere identified
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  in the text, but here's the interesting part.
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  While the author is a mystery to us, he was not a mystery to the
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  people who first received the letter.
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  Right, because he asked them to pray for him.
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  He mentions his circumstances. He talks about Timothy.
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  Exactly. If you look at chapter 13,
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  verses 18 and 19 or verse 23, he talks about being restored to
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  them. He clearly has a relationship.
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  With them, so they knew who he was.
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  They knew his voice, they knew his history.
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  And that's key. The reason the book's authority
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  was accepted by the early church wasn't because they could slap a
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  famous apostles name on it. It was because the original
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  audience clearly recognized the source as, you know, Apostolic,
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  or at least very closely tied to the apostles.
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  So we have an anonymous author, but a known personal
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  relationship. All right, let's talk about the
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  timing. This is the part I love because
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  it feels a bit like Sherlock Holmes looking at a crime scene.
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  It really does. Ends argues for a very specific
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  window for when this was written, and it all hinges on
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  one massive, very famous building in Jerusalem.
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  It all hinges on the temple, and it's a brilliant piece of
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  deductive reasoning. Really.
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  Ends points out that the book had to have been written before
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  8070. OK, so why is 8070 the line in
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  the sand? What happened then?
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  That's the year the Roman general Titus came in, destroyed
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  Jerusalem, and completely leveled the Temple.
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  The entire Levitical sacrificial system just stopped.
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  It stopped cold. There was no temple, no altar,
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  no priesthood. It was over.
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  And if you're writing a letter to convince a group of Jewish
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  Christians that the Old Covenant system is now obsolete.
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  The destruction of the temple would be your Exhibit A, your
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  closing argument you'd. Shout it from the rooftops.
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  See, God himself has torn it down.
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  Precisely, the author would have said, look, God has physically
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  destroyed the shadow to prove that the substance, the reality
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  in Christ is here. But he never says.
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  That he never mentions it. Never In fact, Ends points out
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  that the author consistently uses the present tense when he
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  talks about the sacrifices. As if they're still happening.
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  Yes, look at Hebrews 10.11. It says every priest stands
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  daily, ministering and offering time after time the same
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  sacrifices. He speaks of it as an ongoing
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  present reality. The priests are still offering
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  gifts. The smoke is still rising from
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  the altar. The temple is still standing.
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  That's a huge clue. It puts us firmly before 8070.
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  But ANZ naries it down even more.
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  He suggests it's likely even before 8064.
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  What's the logic there? Now that brings us into the
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  persecution context. We know from the letter that the
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  readers were suffering. They were facing hardship for
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  their faith. But there's a specific limit to
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  that suffering mentioned. There is a very specific clear
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  in Hebrews 12 verse 4, the author says to them, You have
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  not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.
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  Meaning they haven't been martyred yet.
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  Exactly. They've been harassed, they've
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  been publicly shamed, they've lost property and money.
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  Yes, but they aren't dying for their faith.
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  Not yet. And we know from history what
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  happened in AD 64. We do.
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  The Emperor Nero, after the great fire of Rome, he launched
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  this fierce, bloody, horrific persecution of Christians.
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  That's when martyrdom became, well, common.
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  So the fact that the author says they haven't faced that yet.
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  It strongly implies that we're in that window just before
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  Nero's reign of terror really kicked in.
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  So we're probably looking at a date in the early 60s that
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  really helped set the stage. Now, what about the people
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  getting this letter? The title in our Bibles is the
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  Epistle to the Hebrews. Is that original?
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  It's a second century edition, but as NS argues, it's a very
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  accurate 1 based on all the internal evidence.
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  Everything inside the letter itself points to that
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  conclusion. Everything.
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  The entire book just screams Jewish audience.
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  The arguments only make sense if you have a deep internal
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  knowledge of the Jewish worldview.
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  All the references to the Levitical priesthood to angels.
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  Moses, Aaron. The Tabernacle, the specific
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  details of blood sacrifices. I mean, if you were a Gentile
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  convert in, say, Corinth, half of this book would just fly
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  right over your head. You'd be completely lost.
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  This was written to Hebrews and N suggests they were likely
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  believers living in or around Jerusalem.
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  What I find most compelling, though, is the psychological
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  profile. These people, they were just
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  confused about theology. They were exhausted.
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  That is the perfect word for it. Spiritual exhaustion.
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  Ends describes them as partakers of a heavenly calling.
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  So these are professing believers, but they're in a very
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  dangerous spiritual condition. Because of what they were facing
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  every day. Every day public ridicule,
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  ostracism from their families and community.
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  In 1st century Jerusalem, if you declared that Jesus was the
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  Messiah, you were cut off. From the whole social and
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  economic life of the city. You lost your job, you lost your
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  standing. And after years of this kind of
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  pressure, the initial adrenaline of conversion just wears off.
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  You get tired. And the temptation for them
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  wasn't to go become a Pagan and start worshipping Zeus.
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  No, not all. Temptation was to go back to
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  something that God himself had actually established in the
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  past. Correct.
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  And that is what made it so incredibly seductive.
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  They were tempted to lapse back into Judaism, to return to the
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  shadows of the Old Covenant. Why?
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  Because it was safer. It was socially acceptable.
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  It was even a legal religion under Roman law.
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  It had all the sensory elements, the smells of the incense, the
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  grandeur of the temple, the history of Moses.
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  They were tired of being outsiders.
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  They just wanted to go home. They.
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  Wanted to go home and the author's entire job in this
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  letter is to tell them in the strongest possible terms, you
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  can't go home again because that home is now empty.
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  That really sets the stakes. They're looking backward, and
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  the author needs them to look upward in.
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  This moves us right into the theology of the book, starting
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  with the theology of God the Father.
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  What strikes me in Ince's analysis here is this tension, A
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  tension between God as distant majesty and God as approachable
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  Father. It's a beautiful tension, isn't
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  it? On the one hand, the writer
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  pictures the Father as enthroned on high, and ends links this
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  phrase the majesty directly to the Chicanah glory.
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  Which was the visible presence of God in the Holy of Holies?
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  The brilliant, terrifying light that rested on the mercy seat.
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  For any Jewish reader, that is intimidating language.
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  That's a place where only the high priest can go once a year,
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  and if he gets it wrong, he dies.
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  It stresses God's holiness, His otherness, His distance.
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  It does, but then, almost in the same breath, the author
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  completely flips the script on the idea of access.
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  He does. Because of Christ, the believer
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  is now told to draw near to this very same throne.
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  It's no longer a throne of judgement, it's a throne of
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  grace. It's just revolutionary.
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  It's completely revolutionary, the giant keep out sign that
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  effectively hungover the Holy of Holies for centuries has been
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  taken down. ENS points out that because
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  Christ is our intercessor at the Father's right hand, that
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  restricted zone is now wide open.
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  We can approach with confidence. We have confidence to enter.
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  There's another contrast drawn to the book between the living
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  God and what ENS calls dead systems.
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  That's the core of the warning. The author reminds them that
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  idols are dead, obviously, but even the Jewish system, if you
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  disconnect it from Christ, becomes a dead thing.
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  It's just an empty ritual. It's an empty shell, he warns
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  them. Do not return to a dead system
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  when you have access to the living God.
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  And this is where the imagery gets really intense.
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  Ends highlights the description of God as a consuming fire.
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  Which I think for a lot of modern listeners, we hear that
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  and we think, oh, that sounds like passion or love.
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  Right poetic flourish. But in this context, it's not
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  about passion, is it? Not at all.
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  It symbolizes judgment and discipline.
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  The message is, if you forsake the living God to go back to a
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  dead system, what you will encounter is that consuming
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  fire. It's a warning against apostasy.
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  You're not just, you know, changing denomination.
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  You're playing with fire, literally.
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  And the reason we can't go back, the reason that old system is
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  empty, is because of how God has spoken.
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  This is that apex of Revelation idea from Hebrews chapter 1.
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  Yes, verses 1 and 2. A foundational statement for the
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  whole book. ANZ breaks this down
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  beautifully. He says in the past God spoke
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  piece meal. Fragmented is another good way
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  to think of it. In the Old Testament, God
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  revealed himself through prophets, through visions,
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  through types and shadows. It was true, but it was
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  incomplete. It was like getting a single
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  puzzle piece here and another one over there.
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  That's a great analogy. You don't have the full picture.
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  The New Testament argument, and specifically the argument of
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  Hebrews, is that the sun is the climax, Christ is the full
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  picture. The puzzle is complete in him.
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  It is and ends makes the theological implication of this
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  very, very clear, which is that. There's no need for any more
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  revelation. There is no need for further
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  revelation. Christ is the final word.
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  If you're looking for a new word from God, or if you're looking
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  back to the old words as if they were superior, you're looking
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  past the climax of all of history.
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  And that leads us directly into the heart of the argument, the
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  absolute core of the book. It's Christology.
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  The entire structure of Hebrews seems to be this running list of
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  things that Christ is better than.
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  It's a systematic, logical dismantling of every other
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  figure of authority in the Jewish worldview.
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  The author just goes right down the list.
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  Is Jesus better than the prophets?
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  Yes, because he is the Son, not just a messenger of the Son.
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  Is he better than the angels? Yes, and we have to remember, in
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  Jewish theology, angels were not just, you know, cute figures on
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  a Christmas card. They were the mediators of the
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  law at Mount Sinai. They were huge figures of
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  authority. And the author says.
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  He says no, Christ is the air of all things and the creator of
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  all things. He's in a different category
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  altogether. Then he moves on to the real
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  heavy hitters, Moses and Aaron. And this was a really sensitive
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  spot. I mean, Moses was the Liberator,
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  the lawgiver, the man who spoke to God face to face.
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  To say someone is greater than Moses, that's bordering on
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  blasphemy in a traditional Jewish context.
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  That the author makes the case. He does.
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  He argues that Moses was a faithful servant in God's house,
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  but Christ is the Son over the house, and Christ is the builder
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  of the house. A completely different role.
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  A superior role. And As for Aaron, the first high
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  priest, Christ holds a better priesthood from a better
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  covenant. NS spend some time in his
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  analysis unpacking the specific Greek terms that are used to
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  describe Jesus's deity right in that first chapter.
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  I want to dig into these because they're so rich.
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  They're. Incredibly precise.
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  The first one is character. It's a fascinating word.
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  It's where we get our English word character, but in the
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  original Greek it meant an engraving or an impression.
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  Like from a stamp? Exactly.
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  NS uses the analogy of a coin and a die.
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  When you meant a coin. The image on that coin is the
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  exact representation location of the dye that stamped it.
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  It's not a rough sketch, it's not an artist's rendering.
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  It corresponds in every single detail.
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  So the author is saying Jesus is the exact imprint of the
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  Father's nature. Perfect.
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  If you want to know what God the Father is like in his essence,
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  you look at Jesus. There is no discrepancy, not a
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  single molecule's worth. The other term used there is
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  radiance. Yes, the radiance or effulgence
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  of his glory. The analogy here is the sun and
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  it's rays of. You can't separate them.
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  You can't have the sun without its light.
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  The light is the very expression of the sun.
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  They are distinct, and yet they are essentially one reality.
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  You don't look at a ray of sunlight hitting the floor and
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  say that's something separate from the sun.
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  No, it is the sun reaching you. In the same way Christ is God
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  reaching us. He is the radiance of the
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  Father's glory. Ends also points out a specific
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  word, Pharaon, that describes Christ's work as sustainer, and
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  it corrects a common image we might have.
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  It does. I think we sometimes picture
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  Jesus sustaining the world like the mythical Atlas, you know,
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  holding the globe up on his shoulders.
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  Just keeping it from falling apart.
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  A static kind of holding right? But the Greek word Pharaon
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  implies motion. It means carrying all things
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  forward. He isn't just maintaining the
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  status quo. He is actively moving and
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  guiding all of history toward its intended goal.
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  He's driving the universe toward redemption.
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  That's a great way to put it. He's not holding it up, he's
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  moving it along. So Hebrews makes this ironclad
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  case that he is fully God, but it also stresses, maybe more
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  than any other epistle, that he is fully man.
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  Why does N say this is so critical for the author's
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  argument? Because to be a high priest, he
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  had to be one of us. It's that simple.
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  A priest is a representative. A priest is a representative.
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  He stands between God and man. If he isn't truly human, he
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  can't represent humanity. The text is so clear on this.
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  It says he partook A flesh and blood.
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  He wasn't a ghost, just appearing to be human, no.
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  ENS highlights that the book emphasizes his experience of
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  temptation, of suffering, of loud crying and tears.
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  He didn't just float through life unaffected by it all, he
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  felt the crushing weight of human existence.
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  But, and this is the crucial part, with one massive
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  distinction. He was impeccable.
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  He was without sin. And this is so important.
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  He succeeded where Adam failed. He succeeded where Israel in the
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  wilderness failed. He went through the wilderness
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  of temptation, but didn't grumble or rebel.
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  And that sinlessness is what makes his sacrifice valid.
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  If he had sinned even once, he would have needed a savior for
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  himself. He couldn't have been the Savior
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  for us. This idea of him being our
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  representative, our high priest, leads us right into the next big
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  section, the priesthood and the covenant.
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  And this is where we meet Melchizedek.
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  I think for many readers, this is the guy who confuses people
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  the most. Why does the author suddenly
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  bring up this mysterious figure from Genesis?
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  It was a brilliant and frankly, a necessary legal move.
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  Think about it. The author is making this case
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  that Jesus is our great High Priest and.
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  Any Jewish reader would immediately stop.
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  Him. They'd throw up a hand and say,
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  wait a minute, hold on, Jesus is from the tribe of Judah.
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  And the Law of Moses is crystal clear.
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  Priests must come from the tribe of Levi, and specifically from
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  the family line of Aaron. So according to the law, Jesus
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  is disqualified because. It's a jurisdictional issue.
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  He's from the wrong family. Exactly.
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  The author has a problem he has to solve.
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  He has to find a precedent, A biblical example of a legitimate
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  priesthood that exists outside of and is superior to the
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  Levitical. System.
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  So he goes all the way back to Genesis.
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  All the way back to Genesis 14 to the it's mysterious figure
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  Melchizedek. He's called the king of Salem
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  and a priest of God Most High. And the key event is that
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  Abraham, the great patriarch. Pays tithes to him.
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  Abraham pays tithes to Melchizedek and as Ends
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  explains, the logic is simple but powerful.
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  The one who receives the tithe is superior to the one who pays
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  it. So if Abraham, who is the
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  ancestor of Levi, submitted to Melchizedek.
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  Then Melchizedek's priesthood is superior to Abraham's, and by
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  extension superior to the priesthood of his descendant
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  Levi. So by being a priest in the
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  order of Melchizedek, Jesus not only bypasses the Levitical
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  requirements. He supersedes them.
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  He holds a higher office and ends lists the ways it's
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  superior. The Levitical priest.
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  They all died. They had to be replaced
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  constantly, but Jesus lives forever.
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  An eternal priesthood. It's permanent.
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  The Levitical system was based on the blood of animals, which
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  the author says can't actually take away sin.
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  It just covers it for a time. But Jesus offers his own blood
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  once for all. Which connects directly to the
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  idea of the two covenants. We have the Old Covenant as a
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  shadow and the New Covenant as the reality.
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  And the language the author uses here is so powerful, ends notes
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  the spatial language. Jesus didn't enter the earthly
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  Tabernacle, which is book calls a copy or a shadow.
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  He entered the real thing. He entered the true Tabernacle,
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  which is heaven itself, the very presence of God.
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  The entire Old Testament system was just a scale model, a shadow
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  cast on the ground by the reality which is Christ.
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  And the author is essentially asking the readers, why would
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  you want to go back and play with the model in the dirt when
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  you've been invited to live in the real building?
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  That is a perfect summary of the argument.
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  It's a telling image. And yet, despite this powerful
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  logic, the readers were still wavering.
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  They were still tempted to go back.
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  Which brings us to the warning passages.
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  The. Hard passages.
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  Specifically Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10.
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  These contain some of the most frightening verses in the Bible.
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  It is impossible to restore those who fall away trampling
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  under foot the Son of God. How does NS help us understand
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  these, especially from a Reformed perspective where we
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  believe in the security of the believer?
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  This is often where people get tripped up, and understandably
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  so. NS is very careful to clarify
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  the context first. These warnings are addressed to
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  a specific group of people in a specific crisis.
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  They're addressed to people who are actively contemplating
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  leaving Christ to go back to Judaism.
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  That's it. This isn't about a Christian who
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  stumbles into a particular sin, or has a season of doubt or a
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  bad week. This is about a fundamental,
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  willful rejection of the Gospel itself.
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  OK, so let's look at Hebrews 6 verses 4 to 6, the impossible
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  warning. The text says that for those who
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  have been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift and the
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  goodness of the Word of God, and then fall away, it is impossible
• 20:05
  to restore them again to repentance.
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  That sounds final. It does, but Ends interprets
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  this not as a true believer losing the regeneration, but as
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  a warning against the willful rejection of the only available
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  sacrifice. OK, unpack that.
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  Think about it this way, if you are drowning in the ocean and a
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  rescue boat comes to save you and you look at it and say no, I
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  don't like that boat, I'm going to wait for my old raft to come
• 20:30
  back. But that old raft is already
• 20:32
  sunk. There's no other boat coming.
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  There is no other boat. You're lost not because the
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  rescuer couldn't save you, but because you rejected the only
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  means of salvation. And the old raft they want to go
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  back to the levitical system is no longer valid.
• 20:45
  That's the. Key God has officially shut that
• 20:47
  door. There is no Plan B.
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  If you reject Christ's sacrifice, the author says,
• 20:52
  there no longer remains A sacrifice for sins.
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  You are left with nothing but judgement.
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  So this warning is about the finality of the gospel.
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  If you turn your back on this, there's nowhere else to go.
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  Exactly. It's a warning about the dire
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  consequences of apostasy for someone who has been part of the
• 21:08
  covenant community, seen the truth, and then definitively
• 21:12
  turns their back on it. Then Hebrews 10 seems to ramp up
• 21:15
  the language even more, trampling under foot the Son of
• 21:18
  God. That's such violent language,
• 21:20
  isn't it? It describes apostasy not as a
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  passive drifting away, but as an active of contemptuous insult.
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  It's treating the blood of the covenant, the very thing that
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  saves as common or unholy. And ends notes that the result
• 21:33
  of this for the one who does it is that God confirms them in
• 21:36
  their rejection. He calls it a kind of spiritual
• 21:38
  atrophy. If you willfully and finally
• 21:41
  refuse the means of grace, you eventually lose the ability to
• 21:44
  respond at all. But the author makes a clear
• 21:47
  distinction between this kind of final apostasy and the
• 21:51
  experience of a struggling believer.
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  Yes, and this is the great comfort in Hebrews chapter 12.
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  For the true believer who is struggling, who is sinning, the
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  response from God is not condemnation, it's discipline.
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  The discipline of a loving father.
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  Ends uses that exact analogy from the text A father and a
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  son. If a father disciplines his
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  child, it proves the relationship exists.
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  It's proof of love. He cares enough to correct and
• 22:17
  train. It's painful at the moment, yes.
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  But the text says it yields the peaceable fruit of
• 22:22
  righteousness. So in a way, if you are a
• 22:24
  Christian and you are feeling the conviction and the
• 22:27
  discipline of God in your life, that's actually good news.
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  It's fantastic news. It means you are a true son, a
• 22:34
  true daughter. The person who should be
• 22:36
  terrified is the one who can walk away from God and feel
• 22:38
  absolutely nothing. So the antidote to drifting
• 22:41
  away, according to Enza's reading, isn't just trying
• 22:44
  harder or gritting your teeth. No, it's not about white
• 22:47
  knuckling it. The antidote is given in Hebrews
• 22:49
  12 verses one and two. It's looking to Jesus, fixing
• 22:53
  our eyes on him, the Author and the perfector of our faith.
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  Which moves us perfectly into our final segment of discussion.
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  So great is salvation. That phrase comes from Hebrews
• 23:03
  2, verse 3. How shall we escape if we
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  neglect so great a salvation? The greatness of the Salvation
• 23:09
  is found in its finality and its security.
• 23:13
  We have to keep remembering the contrast that the author is
• 23:15
  drawing. With the Old Testament Saints.
• 23:17
  Yes, they were saved by faith, absolutely.
• 23:20
  But they were always looking forward.
• 23:21
  They had promises. They had types, they had
• 23:23
  shadows. They were, in a sense, peering
• 23:26
  into a fog, hoping for the Messiah to come.
• 23:28
  But the believer now? The believer now stands on the
• 23:30
  other side of the cross and the empty tomb.
• 23:33
  We look back at a finished work. Ends refers to Christ using the
• 23:37
  title captain or pioneer of salvation.
• 23:40
  The Greek word there, archigos, implies a trailblazer, someone
• 23:44
  who cuts the path through the dense jungle so that others can
• 23:47
  follow behind him safely. He's gone before us.
• 23:49
  He has gone before us into death and come out the other side and
• 23:52
  the text says he is bringing many sons to glory.
• 23:57
  This stresses our security. We aren't hacking our own way
• 24:00
  through the jungle alone. We are walking on a path that he
• 24:04
  has already cleared for us. Before we wrap up, I want to
• 24:07
  touch on the role of the Holy Spirit in Hebrews.
• 24:09
  Which ends brings up, it's easy to focus so much on the sun in
• 24:13
  this book that we miss the Spirit.
• 24:16
  That's a good point. Ends points out a couple of key
• 24:18
  roles. First, the Spirit is the one who
• 24:21
  bears witness to this great salvation.
• 24:23
  In the early church, this was evident through miraculous gifts
• 24:26
  and signs. Confirming that the message of
• 24:28
  the apostles was truly from God, right?
• 24:30
  But even more fundamentally, the Spirit is presented as the
• 24:33
  primary author of Scripture. It's really interesting.
• 24:36
  When the writer of Hebrews quotes the Old Testament, he
• 24:38
  often introduces the quote by saying the Holy Spirit says.
• 24:42
  Not David says or Jeremiah says. Exactly.
• 24:45
  It shows an incredibly high view of the divine inspiration of all
• 24:48
  of Scripture. That brings us to the end of our
• 24:50
  source material, but I want to try and synthesize what we've
• 24:53
  covered. If you had to boil it down,
• 24:55
  Hebrews is a book of contrasts. It really is.
• 24:58
  That's the whole structure. It's shadow versus substance,
• 25:01
  earthly versus heavenly, temporary versus eternal.
• 25:04
  And the central repeated thundering argument is simply.
• 25:09
  Jesus is better. He is better than the prophets,
• 25:11
  better than the angels, better than Moses, better than the
• 25:14
  Auronic priests, and his sacrifice is better than all the
• 25:18
  animal sacrifices combined. Now, the application for the
• 25:21
  original audience was obvious. Do not go back to Judaism.
• 25:25
  For us listening today, we're probably not tempted to go find
• 25:29
  a priest and offer a goat sacrifice.
• 25:30
  Probably not. Not.
• 25:31
  So how do we apply this warning against going back?
• 25:34
  We have to ask ourselves a hard question.
• 25:36
  What is our Judaism? What is the thing we are tempted
• 25:39
  to retreat to when following Jesus gets difficult?
• 25:43
  What's our safety net? Exactly.
• 25:44
  For them, Judaism was comfortable, it was familiar, it
• 25:47
  was culturally approved. When we face pressure, maybe
• 25:50
  it's financial instability or social ridicule for our beliefs,
• 25:54
  or just the deep weariness of a difficult life, what is the
• 25:57
  default setting we want to return to?
• 25:59
  Is it our career? Our bank account.
• 26:02
  Is it financial security? Is it a political ideology that
• 26:06
  promises to fix everything? Is it just the approval of
• 26:09
  others, just fitting in with the culture around us?
• 26:12
  That is a convicting question, yeah.
• 26:14
  We want the safety of what we can see and touch, just like
• 26:17
  they wanted the visible temple in its rituals.
• 26:19
  But we are called to hold fast to the invisible but more real
• 26:23
  reality of Christ's finished work.
• 26:26
  And that ties directly into the final provocative thought I'd
• 26:29
  like to leave our listeners with today, drawn from NS's work.
• 26:32
  Go for it. NS mentions that God may in fact
• 26:35
  use suffering to wean us off of our earthly securities.
• 26:38
  The Hebrew Christians have lost their property.
• 26:40
  They lost their social status, but the author tells them they
• 26:42
  have a better possession in heaven, an abiding one.
• 26:45
  So the question for you, for me, for all of us is this.
• 26:49
  If God stripped away your earthly security, your property
• 26:53
  and status, whatever form that takes, your job, your savings,
• 26:55
  your reputation, would you still see Christ as superior?
• 27:00
  Or is our view of his superiority actually dependent
• 27:04
  on our life going well? That is the ultimate test, isn't
• 27:07
  it? Are we clinging to the shadow or
• 27:08
  to the substance? A very striking challenge to
• 27:11
  end. On it is thank you for walking
• 27:13
  us through this has been incredibly helpful and thank you
• 27:16
  to our listeners for joining us on this deep dive into the
• 27:18
  theology of Hebrews. Our hope is that this has
• 27:20
  strengthened your resolve to hold fast to the confession of
• 27:23
  your hope without wavering. Until next time, keep thinking
• 27:25
  clearly.