Hebrews Overview

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As I have explained in the past, one of the reasons I am doing this blog is I am curious to see what kind of messages one might get from reading the bible. What might one learn as a take-away. Here is my quick summary of the good and bad from Hebrews.

I'm continuing my efforts to organize and categorize the items here. Hopefully this will be better than the last one, and I will continue to improve them as time goes on.

Good:

--Empathy--

5:2 Consider your own weakness when you see other's struggling with theirs

"He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness."

--Compassion--

10:34 Compassion is a good thing

"For you had compassion on those in prison..."

13:3 Be compassionate 

"Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body."

--Hospitality--

13:2 Show hospitality even to strangers

"Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."

--Inspiration--

12:1 Use historical (and mythical) figures as inspiration to live good lives

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,"

--Contentment--

13:5 Be content with what you have

"Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you.'"

Bad:

--Violence and Veangence--

1:13 God is violent

"And to which of the angels has he ever said, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet"?"

10:12-13 Jesus is vengeful and violent

"But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet."

--Suffering--

2:9-10 glorification of suffering

"But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering."

5:8 Obedience is the most important thing and suffering is good

"Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered."

--Obedience--

5:8 Obedience is the most important thing and suffering is good

"Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered."

13:17 Obey all church leaders

" Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls..."

--Justice--

5:9 Justice by proxy

"And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him"

--Apostasy--

6:6 Apostates are crucifying Jesus a second time

"[For it is impossible...] to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt."

--Love--

8:9 God does not love everyone

"...For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord."

--Faith--

11:1 When the bible says faith, it means blind faith

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

--Sexuality--

12:16 Sex is bad

"[see to it] that no one is sexually immoral..."

13:4 No sex before marriage, no 'sexual immorality'

"Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous."

Hebrews 13

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Sacrifices Pleasing to God (v. 1-19)

Show hospitality to strangers, remember those who are in prison and those who are mistreated

A pretty good start to this chapter. But then we hit verse 4

"Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous."

My first pass I focused on the adultery part of this, and figured "don't cheat on your spouse", which is good. On the second look, I focused a little more on 'sexual immoral', what exactly does that mean? I'm guessing that refers to a bunch of stuff that I don't personally have a problem with, and that I would actually consider a bad thing for society. For instance, it is probably talking about homosexuality, which is the vilification of a huge group of people for something they were born with. Also, 'let the marriage bed be undefiled', my first thought was that this went along with not cheating, but I bet it is really saying you should be a virgin on your wedding night. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge fan of people sleeping around all the time (among other things it is dangerous emotionally) but this is an unnecessary extreme. For one thing it encourages people to marry young. 

verse 5 is about being content with what you have.

Generally this is good advice, although as with not being greedy, a little bit is okay. Being content with what you have is a good thing, but wanting more is also something that can motivate you to work hard, and depending on what you work on, this could be good for you, and for society as a whole. Even with that caveat, this is good.

The Jews sacrifice animals, but we have our own altar. Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross, we should continually offer up a sacrifice of praise which is pleasing to God.

I couldn't quite figure this out on my own, so I went against my normal procedure and read Guzik's take on this before I wrote up my thoughts. He suggests that the Jewish Christians at the time were probably looked down upon by the other Jews, and this is an attempt to say they have their own altar (the cross) and they can do their own sacrifices(v10). This take seems to make sense to me given the reading. The whole thing seems very defensive to me.

v17 "Obey your leaders and submit to them..."

I guess I need to state the obvious here, blind obedience is dangerous. The idea that just because someone is a church leader means they are worthy of obedience is exactly the kind of thing that has lead to all of the current catholic church scandals involving child molestation. 

Now this is interesting, Guzik say that church leaders have a right to tell us "how to live and walk after God." But also that this idea shouldn't be taken too far. He then quotes Chuck Smith who says "A teacher should teach us to submit to God, not to himself." This is a great perspective.

Benediction (v. 20-21)

May God equip you with what you need to do his will.

This seems to be a fairly shallow prayer to me. We are praying that God gives us the tools to please him. I understand praying that God give us what we need to please ourselves, but shouldn't God automatically give us what we need to please him? Just seems a bit silly to me.

Final Greetings (v. 22-25)

Basically just a sign off.

For the overview post (If you think I should add or remove stuff from this list please let me know, I think it would make good conversation)

Good:

13:2 Show hospitality even to strangers

"Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."

13:3 Be compassionate 

"Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body."

13:5 Be content with what you have

"Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you.'"

Bad:

13:4 No sex before marriage, no 'sexual immorality'

"Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous."

13:17 Obey all church leaders

" Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls..."

Hebrews 12

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Jesus, Founder and Perfecter of Our Faith (v. 1-2)

Use all of these examples [from last chapter] as motivation to set aside sin and run this race with endurance.

I'm assuming the race we are running is our lives? Basically this is saying to be inspired by people of the past to be good people. That sounds pretty good.

Guzik agrees with me that the witnesses are the examples of faith from the previous chapter, that's nice.

v2 "looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."

I had a little trouble parsing that verse, so I figured I'd just post it here for discussion. It looks like Jesus had the right hand of the throne set before him, I think that is the joy that is mentioned. However, to get there, he had to die on the cross, and therefore he endured the cross. Apparently the fact that he endured the cross caused him shame and he despises that fact.

I'm not sure if I am understanding this verse correctly, but this is the only way I could make sense of it. For good measure I scanned through some other translations and this still is the best I can do. From this passage it seems that Jesus wanted that seat at the right hand of God and was willing to go through the same of dying on the cross, although it pissed him off. 

According to Guzik, the point of the shame is that many people are willing to do things for Christ as long as it won't cause them shame, but they should be willing to take some shame for Jesus. He does seem totally on board with the idea that Jesus is in this for the glory though.

Do Not Grow Weary (v. 3-17)

We all have to endure our struggle against sin, but this is just Jesus disciplining us. Discipline always sucks at the time, but through it we grow stronger. You should grow from your struggle against sin and be good always. Help other people with their struggle so that they can stay holy, don't let roots of bitterness spring up and cause trouble.

Basically saying your struggle with sin is for your own good. I guess this is essentially an attempt to answer the problem of evil. There is a logic to the idea, we grow stronger through struggle and pain, but of course it doesn't really solve the problem in a universe run by an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God.

Guzik does seem to agree with my interpretation that this is an answer to the problem of evil. He says that God doesn't choose evil, but he allows it to happen as nothing happens outside of his purpose. So basically he's using the free will argument. This of course doesn't answer the question of horrible natural disasters, or man made things that are horrendous in scope, like the holocaust to pick the easy example. 

He does spend a lot of time talking about the other details of the section, that hardship is ultimately good as we learn from it and such. This I do agree with, depending on how hard the hardship is.

v16 "[see to it] that no one is sexually immoral..."

Seriously, why does sex always have to be bad in the bible?

A Kingdom That Cannot Be Shaken (v. 18-29)

Once again, I find this section thoroughly confusing, but I will do my best to summarize.

v18-21 seem to be describing a bad place, hell maybe? a blazing fire, a tempest, hearers who beg not to be further spoken to.

v22-24 seem to shift gears, they speak of mount zion, heavenly Jerusalem, angel gatherings.

They are talking about heaven? I'm guessing they are trying to contrast the 2 places? I don't know. I taught math, I never had to grade essays, I guess I can start now. F, see me.

Apparently we are trying to go up mount Zion instead of Mt Sinai like the Jews. I don't know how the hell I was supposed to tell that the first part was mount Sinai and the second was mount Zion.

v25-29 Do not refuse God, for those who did when he warned him on earth were unable to escape, so how can we escape now that he is warning us from heaven. He shook the earth and said he will once more shake the earth and heaven. He will shake heaven to remove things so that all that remains are things that can't be shaken, we should be grateful to receive a kingdom that can't be shaken.

Terrible. I can't even really figure out what this is trying to tell me. Basically listen to God is the bottom line I guess, but the actual words they are using to convey the message are garbage. If God shakes heaven to get rid of the undesirable stuff how can you follow that up by saying that it is unshakable? So it's saying that we got rid of the stuff that falls away so the remaining stuff is unshakable, but at the very least we are going there, so new stuff is coming in. That's it, I'm not doing more here, this is shit. F, seriously.

I guess things being shaken up is supposed to be God changing the rules. So he changed the rules once but he won't again. Fool me once...

For the overview post (If you think I should add or remove stuff from this list please let me know, I think it would make good conversation)

Good:

12:1 Use historical (and mythical) figures as inspiration to live good lives

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,"

Bad:

12:16 Sex is bad

"[see to it] that no one is sexually immoral..."

Hebrews 11

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By Faith (v. 1-40)

v1 "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

This is interesting, we start this chapter off with a definition of faith. I will often see Christian argue that when they talk about faith, they are not talking about blind faith, but having faith in things with good reason. This seems to disagree with that assertion, apparently faith is just being confident of things just because you hope for them. It's funny to me that Christian will often decry the idea of blind faith, when their book actually uses the phrase "things not seen". 

Not surprisingly, Guzik has issues with my interpretation. He says "faith is the 'sense' that gives us evidence of the invisible, spiritual world." I don't know what he means when he says the word 'sense', but this sounds like nonsense to me. He also quotes Bruce who says "faith is the organ which enables people to see the invisible order". Again, what the hell is he talking about when he says faith is an organ? He also says "Faith is needed for what we can’t see and can’t touch", I would argue that this is because they are imaginary. He also says "Faith does not contradict reason, though it may go beyond reason." I don't know what this means, he is just spewing a bunch of nonsense, all of these things are meaningless, he is trying to disguise the fact that faith is believing things with no good reason.

This chapter largely contains a bunch of examples of people who have faith, I want to focus on a few details contained within.

v6 "without faith it is impossible to please [God]..."

That is interesting, it is only possible to please God through faith. We can't please God because of properly knowing about him, we must have faith in him, he must be unseen to us. Does this mean that Paul did not please God? He had actual evidence (according to the story) that God existed, does that mean he didn't have faith in the way it is being discussed here?

In v13, speaking of the descendants of Abraham it says "These all died in faith, not having recieved the things promised" it goes on to say about them "they were strangers and exiles on the earth"

I have no idea what this is saying.

According to Guzik, the promise is the coming of the messiah, which they believed in and yet God hadn't fulfilled yet. That seems a reasonable enough interpretation to me.

v35-37 "...Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two,they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated"

but they justify this by saying that they will get what they deserve in heaven

v39-40 "And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect."

So basically it instructs you to have faith because God will take care of you, but even if he doesn't God still wins. Why would God have to hide behind a no lose scenario?

Again, Guzik claims that this promise was the messiah coming. This does seem to make sense, as it explains the "something better for us" bit there.

For the overview post (If you think I should add or remove stuff from this list please let me know, I think it would make good conversation)

Bad:

11:1 When the bible says faith, it means blind faith

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

Hebrews 10

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Christ's Sacrifice Once for All (v. 1-18)

The basic message here seems to be the same one we have seen a few times in the last couple of chapters, that the priests have been doing their best with the shadow of what is perfect in heaven, but their sacrifices could never really take away sins but the death of Jesus can. And since his sacrifice was so perfect, he only had to do it once, unlike the priests who had to do something every year. This is the framework we have here, there are a few specific verses I want to focus on.

v2 "Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins?"

So this is saying that if they cleansed sin, then it would only have to be done once, because once you are cleansed it should be over. But isn't the point that the sacrifice cleanses a sin that you did, but later if you sin again you need to be cleansed again? The verse seems to be representing the old sacrifices in a dishonest way. Also, if a proper sacrifice makes you not have a consciousness of sin, doesn't that mean that after the perfect sacrifice you wouldn't sin any more? This is clearly not the case with Jesus. What is being said here? It seems to me that the complaint against the old sacrifices applies just as well the the sacrifice of Jesus.

v12-13 "But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet."

Jesus is quite vengeful is he not? Not only does he want his enemies defeated, he wants to humiliate them. This doesn't sound like the merciful, loving, prince of peace I have heard about.

Matthew Henry did not address the question of vengeance, but he instead focused on whether Christ could have enemies anywhere but hell. Of course he has them on earth too. In this discussion I found the following gem "But Christ’s enemies shall be made his footstool; some by conversion, others by confusion; and, which way soever it be, Christ will be honoured." so this suggests to me that if you are converted to Christianity, there is a chance that you will wind up as Christ's footstool. Doesn't sound so appealing does it?

v17 "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more."

My initial thought here was that this is an immediate contradiction to v13, but if we really think about who is being spoken to, I think this makes fine sense. If you follow Jesus, he will forgive you of all of your sins. If you don't, he wants you to be his footstool. And actually, this seems to fit pretty well into the whole heaven/hell thing too. There is very much a 'with us or against us' mentality here. Just doesn't seem like a God of love/peace/forgiveness to me.

The Full Assurance of Faith (v. 19-39)

The old rules suggest that if we sin with no possibility for a sacrifice we would be in big trouble, but that is not the case, as Jesus will have compassion on us as we would for someone in prison. We should have faith that this is true.

I'm obviously not a fan of the whole faith thing, but I like the idea of compassion.

For the overview post (If you think I should add or remove stuff from this list please let me know, I think it would make good conversation)

Good:

10:34 Compassion is a good thing

"For you had compassion on those in prison..."

Bad: 

10:12-13 Jesus is vengeful and violent

"But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet."

Hebrews 9

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The Earthly Holy Place (v. 1-10)

A holy place is described where the priests perform their ritual duties, there is also a second section behind a second curtain that only the high priest can go and only once a year (the holy of holies). He goes there to make offerings for the unintentional sins of his people. But the holy spirit says that the holy place is not yet open as long as the first section is still standing. The first section is symbolic of the current age. Therefore gifts and offerings deal with various regulations but they cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper.

I think it is interesting that they are explicitly talking about the symbolic nature of this passage. It makes me wonder how much of Hebrews (and also how much of the bible as a whole) is supposed to be symbolic. What is supposed to be literal and what is just a symbol, and how are we supposed to tell the difference?

Redemption Through the Blood of Christ (v. 11-28)

Jesus entered the true holy place not made by men through the use of his own blood, for if the blood of a cow can sanctify, how much more will the blood of Christ do?

On one hand this seems to make some sort of sense, if the blood of a cow has cleansing properties, then the blood of Jesus should have stronger properties. I was thinking though, what is the purpose of a sacrifice, I had always thought it was to give up something of value, I'm showing loyalty to my God by giving up part of my harvest, Jesus dying for me doesn't quite seem analogous. Although I guess here they are focusing on the fact that blood is cleansing, I guess I don't understand that one bit.

The old law required blood so that is why it has to be done this way.

We are changing the law right? So why do we have to follow their rules? I'm not sure this makes a lot of sense.


Jesus has sacrificed himself for all of us at once, he does not have to do the sacrifice every year as the old high priests did.

I guess it is supposed to be a perfect sacrifice so it only has to happen once, as opposed to the old high priests who had to do it more often. 

Christ will again appear one day not to deal with sin, but to see those who have been eagerly waiting for him.

We end by mentioning the eventual second coming of Christ.

Wow, I scanned through Guzik's commentary to see if I had missed anything and came across this comment.

"It is assumed that all believers will eagerly wait for Him. It’s a sad case that this assumption doesn't always play out as true!"

I think that plenty of believers think this is true, and this mentality is what let's people believe guys like Harold Camping and ruin their lives by wasting their retirement savings on billboards.

For the overview post (If you think I should add or remove stuff from this list please let me know, I think it would make good conversation)

Again, not a whole lot here, sorry if these posts have been fairly boring lately, the material I have to work with is just not very interesting right now. 

Hebrews 8

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Jesus, High Priest of a  Better Covenant (v. 1-13)

Jesus is the high priest, presiding from heaven where things are perfect and God-made rather than on Earth where things are man-made. The old priests served only a shadow of the heavenly things, where Jesus actually serves us from heaven. The covenant of Jesus is superior to the old covenant as it is enacted upon better promises, for if the old covenant had been faultless there would have been no reason to look for a better one.

So the message here is 'my new religion is better than your old religion'. I don't have anything to add here.

The old testament is quoted (although I'm assuming the quote isn't quite right, as this seems to be the norm) for evidence that the old covenant is imperfect. v8 mentions that new covenants will be established with the houses of Israel and Judah.

That is actually interesting, if God mentioned that he would establish new covenants back in the OT it does seem to imply an imperfection with the old covenant. I wonder what the actual intention of those original verses was.

v.9 God declares that the descendants of the people leaving Egypt didn't continue the covenant, so God shows no concern for them.

So much for a God who cares about everyone. How could this possibly be an all loving God?

I looked through a handful of commentaries here but no one really addressed this issue. They either ignored it completely or focused on some nuance in the translation. Even giving the benefit of the doubt as much as I could imagine, I still think this point comes through. God decided if they weren't going to pay attention to him, he would ignore them right back. Really doesn't sound like a loving God to me.

God's covenant with Israel is that he will write his law on their hearts and minds. In speaking of the new covenant he makes the old one obsolete.

This idea is something I see a lot when arguing with people about morality. If God is necessary for morality how can atheists be moral? Well, you have God's law written on your heart!

Guzik says that this means that the new covenant features transforming someone from the inside out instead of through application of external laws. I actually like this interpretation. I'm not sure I completely agree with the interpretation though from the text itself. If God is writing his law into your brain he is still applying an external law, he's just using mind control to do it.

v.12 "I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more"

I'm not really sure what to make of this. I guess the key here is to answer the question of who is being referred to here. One reading makes it sound like everyone, because God is writing his law on their hearts. Perhaps we are talking about everyone in Israel, as we are talking about the house of Israel. I would guess the most reasonable interpretation though, would be all Christians, because those are the people whose sins are forgiven. But this declaration seems to be coupled with the idea of God's law being written on your heart and mind, so does that mean that only Christians have his law written on their heart?

For the overview post (If you think I should add or remove stuff from this list please let me know, I think it would make good conversation)

Bad:

8:9 God does not love everyone

"...For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord."

Hebrews 7

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The Priestly Order of Melchizedek (v. 1-10)

Melchizedek greeted Abraham after he returned from his 'slaughter of the kings' and Abraham gave him 10% of the spoils. The descendants of Levi who priests have a commandment to take 10%, but Melchizedek is an outsider. Yet he takes his tithe from Abraham and blesses him. Since the superior bless the inferior, it is clear that Melchizedek was superior to Abraham. This is particularly noteworthy as Melchizedek has no genealogy, although his name translates to 'king of righteousness'. It could be said that Levi paid tithes through Abraham as he was born after all of this went down between Melchizedek and Abraham.

The whole idea that Melchizedek has no genealogy is interesting for sure, and the fact that his name translates to 'king of righteousness' makes me very suspicious. I have 2 ideas to explain this, first, this is all made up and it is bad writing. You are just being lazy if your library cop is named bookman. The second is that this guy was embarrassed about his background or hated his parents or something and invented a new persona. As long as you are going to give yourself a new name, why not pick something that sounds good, like Max Power? The real answer is surely something else, but these are the things that occurred to me while I was reading. (pop quiz, who can identify the two TV references in this paragraph?)

Jesus Compared to Melchizedek (v. 11-28)

Perfection was impossible to attain under the Levitical priesthood, otherwise there would have been no reason to have Jesus be a new high priest and start a new priesthood after the order of Melchizedek. For new high priest necessarily bring along a change of rules, so Jesus only came along because such a change was necessary.

This would probably make a lot more sense if I had already read the old testament and had any clue what was up with Melchizedek. Apparently he set things in motion way back when and had a hand in the rules of the old testament. And Jesus came along and allowed those rules to be changed. Also, apparently Melchizedek was immortal in some fashion or another, I don't quite get that part. In all honesty, I'm finding it hard to care about this stuff. My motivation to read the bible has always been centered around what lessons (good or bad) could be learned from reading it, I really don't care about how they organize their leadership. There was one verse that did catch my attention though.

v.18 "a former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness"

Why would a perfect God make a weak and useless commandment?

Guzik argues that the law is God's perfect standard, but it gives no one the power to keep that standard. So it is valuable as a demonstration of what God wants, but it is not the basis of a walk with God. This is interesting, I was going to argue that this is hardly useless then, and therefore his interpretation is a bit off base. However, his translation says unprofitable instead of useless. According to the lexicon (if I'm using it correctly) it seems that unprofitable is a better fit than uselessness.

Hebrews 6

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Recall that I put the end of chapter 5 with today's reading as it seems to fit here better.

Warning Against Apostasy (5:11-6:12)

By now you should be teachers, but instead you still need to be taught the basics of the word of God. The advanced lessons are for those who have been trained by constant practice discerning good from evil.

Basically we seem to be calling these people idiots, or at least bad students.

We will therefore leave the elementary doctrine and move on to maturity. For if someone has known Christ but then leaves the faith, they will not be able to return to the faith as they are crucifying Jesus again with their actions. They are like a field that once bore useful crops but now is overrun with thorns an thistles, such a field should be burned.

Here we are basically saying that if you leave the faith you can never come back, you have crucified Jesus all over again. I once heard someone make a claim along these lines, that once you leave the faith you are crucifying Jesus in your heart and you can't be saved again as Jesus already died for you once. I thought the statement was totally bizarre, I should have figured it was right out of the bible. 

This whole idea of apostates being evil is definitely a negative. It makes sense that it would be in a religion, I could see it being useful as far as keeping members. But it definitely has some negative consequences. It makes you fearful of exploring certain ideas, you can't leave the faith and come back, it could make you hate people who have left your faith, they are a lost cause so why treat them well. This reminds me a lot of blasphemy being an unforgivable sin, from a meme standpoint it is a useful item to have in the religion, but it seems to be a negative for the people who are actually members of that religion.

It also mentions leaving the elementary doctrines, which are basically the magic tricks of Jesus, in favor of more mature things. I'd sure like to know what those mature things are, hopefully they are coming up.

But we know that you are not apostates, we want you to have hope until the end and work hard for the saints.

I'm not sure who is writing this letter and how they are related to the saints, but this plea sounds somewhat self serving. Also, I find the wording of v11 which includes "until the end" very curious.

The Certainty of God's Promise (v. 13-20) 

God has made a promise to Abraham and his heirs, so he has made 2 promises. Since he cannot lie we should hold fast to hope.

I don't really understand the significance of the second promise. If God can't lie it is redundant, if he can, why couldn't he just lie twice? Also, it says that god cannot lie, yet we know this to be false.

Note: I had a busy day today, and didn't have time to give the commentaries the same attention I typically like to. Though I did quickly scan one and found nothing significant worth mentioning. If anyone thinks I missed a perspective please feel free to speak up. As always, this kind of thing is more than welcome.

For the overview post (If you think I should add or remove stuff from this list please let me know, I think it would make good conversation)

Bad:

6:6 Apostates are crucifying Jesus a second time

"[For it is impossible...] to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt."

Hebrews 5

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Jesus the Great High Priest [cont.] (v. 1-10)

Every high priest offers sacrifices to God for sins on behalf of his men. He is able to deal with his men gently because he has similar weaknesses himself. The high priest is also obligated to offer sacrifices for his own sin, which is an honor that can only be given directly from God. This honor had been given to Aaron, and Jesus has it as well since he's the son of god.

To cut to the heart of the matter here, one of the things being said is that even the high priest has to deal with the same difficulties as his followers, and he should use this as a basis for compassion and empathy for those people. This is a good message, and even though in this case it is specifically talking to the high priest, I don't see any reason why this message can't apply to anyone. "Consider your own difficulties and have compassion for others who you see struggling", something like that.

As far as the sacrifices, I wonder what exactly we are talking about here. My understanding is that once Jesus died on the cross, sacrifices are no longer necessary. But perhaps that only applies to animal sacrifices? I'm hoping the Christian commentaries will help me out here. Between this and the 'rest' thing from the last 2 days, it seems that Hebrews focuses a lot of old testament stuff, it's like Hebrews is being written to the old school folk of the day who don't like change.

Guzik points out that the phrase 'gifts and sacrifices' is used in verse 1, reminding us that not every sacrifice was a blood atonement. This is interesting, but it still uses the word sacrifice. I'm not yet satisfied.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown indicate that we are indeed talking about an animal sacrifice. I also looked at the lexicon, which indicates that the sacrifice we are talking about is 'thuo' which does indeed mean an animal sacrifice.

Jesus did not seek out to be a priest, but he was appointed.

I suppose this is a good thing, I remember Worf talking about how the truly great don't seek power, but instead have power thrust upon them when Martok became the Chancellor of the Klingon empire. 

When Jesus was flesh, he begged God to save him from death, but he learned obedience and through suffering he became perfect and the source of salvation for all.

Lots of stuff here I don't like, obedience is the most important thing, suffering is good, and the whole idea that Jesus can pay for your sins.

Also, TWF pointed out in a previous post that this passage seems to be pointing at David being the high priest and not Jesus, although it is fairly ambiguous so it is difficult to make a very strong case.

Warning Against Apostasy (v. 11-14)

This actually doesn't seem to say much on it's own but instead leads in to chapter 6, I'm going to group it with tomorrows reading.


For the overview post (If you think I should add or remove stuff from this list please let me know, I think it would make good conversation)

Good:

5:2 Consider your own weakness when you see other's struggling with theirs

"He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness."

Bad:

5:8 Obedience is the most important thing and suffering is good

"Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered."

5:9 Justice by proxy

"And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him"

Hebrews 4

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A Rest for the People of God [cont.] (v. 1-13)

Usually I like to give my summary first, then read the commentaries, but I must admit I've having trouble making heads or tails of this passage. I really can't figure out what 'rest' is supposed to be. Sometimes it sounds like he is talking about resting on the sabbath, v4 talks about God resting on the 7th day and v9-10 people resting as God did. But then v3 and v5, as well as v11 from yesterday prohibit some people from that rest. Am I really to believe that God forbids nonbelievers from resting on the Sabbath? I guess the most logical thing then is that rest is talking about a peaceful rest when you die. In verse 7 it talks about 'a certain day "Today"' I don't know what that means. I'm hoping a commentary will help me figure out what the hell is going on here.

According to Matthew Henry, this passage is about how great our privilege under Jesus is and how the Jews are inferior under Moses. Verse 2 in particular seems to be talking about the Jews. He seems to think rest is spiritual rest in heaven. I tend to agree that it is spiritual rest, although I wonder if "in heaven" is a modern perspective. As I mentioned yesterday, I'm not completely sure of the history, but my understanding is that the idea of people actually going to heaven came later. 

Also, I thought i'd mention the last few verses (11-13), it basically says that we should all strive to enter that rest, and we should not be disobedient. God is like a sword, he can see us no matter where we are and we can't hide from him. He can read our minds, we are naked and exposed to him and we must give account. I must say, this God sounds pretty horrible, all of the imagery brought up here I find somewhat disturbing.

Jesus the Great High Priest (v. 14-16)

Jesus is our high priest, he is the son of God, he passed through heaven. He has been tempted as we have but he is without sin. He can sympathize with us and give us mercy and grace in our time of need.

This is a great sounding story, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to have any grounding in reality. Furthermore, it fosters the 'heads I win, tails you lose' kind of mentality. If you go through a hardship and come out the other side okay, you can say you made it through with God's grace, often I see people do this instead of thanking the people who helped them or their own initiative. If things go sideways for them it is rare that they will blame God, they are just being tested, or they think they failed a test or something. It's sounds like a good story as long as you don't think about it too hard, but it is rotten underneath as far as I'm concerned. (I honestly have no idea how I'm going to incorporate this into my overview post, am I really going to put 'help from God in your time of need' in the bad column? Maybe I should just leave it out)

Hebrews 3

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Jesus Greater than Moses (v. 1-6)

Moses was a great servant of God, but Jesus is his son, so he deserves more honor than Moses.

I'm not really sure what this is, based on Christianity this is obviously true. Is this a dig at the Jews?

A Rest for the People of God (v. 7-19)

The holy spirit has said to not harden your hearts if you hear his voice. The people following Moses did this after they were tested in the wilderness for 40 years. Therefore, the holy spirit swore his wrath that 'they shall not enter my rest'. The author then tells the Hebrews to take care not to let an evil, unbelieving heart lead them to fall away from the living God. Encourage one another so that you become hardened to the deceitfulness of sin.

The basic premise here seems to be that an evil heart will hear God's voice and then ignore it, and we are all constantly in danger of succumbing to this. So to combat it, we need to constantly encourage one another against it. Why would the voice of God be so easy to ignore? Doesn't it make more sense that believers are just fooling themselves into thinking they are listening to God? If God set everything up, and God wants us to worship him, why would he set things up so the default is us falling away from him?

According to Matthew Henry, we harden our hearts out of a desire to sin.

"As I swore in my wrath, They shall not enter my rest"

I have no idea what this means, but it is stated twice. Hopefully the commentaries will help me out.

Guzik says that rest is mentioned 11 times in chapter 3 and 4, he will go over what it means in chapter 4, but for now we need to know that unbelief is what keeps us from this rest. bleh. I tried looking forward at his next commentary, a page find shows that 'rest' comes up 42 times. From scanning the page, it looks like this rest is just what we think of as rest "a cessation from works". I really don't understand the big deal here. Maybe after I dig into this a bit more in depth tomorrow it will make more sense, or maybe someone can help me out here.

It almost sounds like we might be talking about a peaceful death. This is a guess, but I am not finding a lot of help in these commentaries so I'm just throwing out ideas. My understanding is our current ideas about heaven and hell are fairly modern, and I'm pretty sure that OT people lived on through their offspring instead of living on in spirit up in heaven. Are the Hebrews still in a time when they live on through their progeny and part of their goal in life is to die peacefully with their bloodline going on into the future? Again, pure conjecture on my part, take it with a grain pound of salt.

According to Gill, they are referencing Songs of Solomon, perhaps my wild conjecture has some merit. 

Hebrews 2

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Warning Against Neglecting Salvation (v. 1-4)

We must pay close attention to the message of salvation by resurrection or we will fall away from it. This is very dangerous, because we have heard from angels in the past that every transgression will receive a "just retribution", and these messages proved to be true. Clearly avoiding this great salvation would be a transgression. Also, via signs, wonders and miracles, the holy spirit has distributed gifts according to his will.

This was a lot of stuff in just 4 verses. I'm not really sure what to make of the idea that if we don't pay enough attention to this message we will fall away from it. That seems to be true of everything right? Stop paying attention to something and it will become less important to you and fall away. I wonder if there is something more here than what I see.

The idea that the messages from the angels have proved to be reliable is laughable. I wish I knew exactly what they are talking about, what what they consider to be proof. Could they be claiming that in the scripture God claims something will happen, and then later in that very scripture it does happen? I'm not impressed.

I have less time today than normal to dig through commentaries, but it seems that yes, the proof is word of mouth and scripture.

The message about the salvation is pretty interesting, they simultaneously use carrot and stick. If you accept the salvation then you get paradise, but if you don't you will be punished harshly. Christians claim this is proof of God's love, but that doesn't make sense when you consider the punishment part of it. Imagine if someone pulled a gun on you and said if you follow them they'll give you a million dollars but otherwise they'd shoot you in the face, would you consider this generosity? I think we'd all call that person insane, and yet when Jesus pulls this same trick it is considered love.

The Founder of Salvation (v. 5-18)

Jesus was temporarily made less than angels, but now he has now been put in charge of everything. The tasted death for the sake of humans (or is it just for Abraham's family?) and beat the devil.

This seems to be the overall point of this section, that Jesus was put on our level for a short period of time, below the angels, but now he is at the top. There were a few specific verses I wanted to address in more detail.

v8 "Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him."

Wait, so is everything under his control or not? What is the message here? I'm assuming that everything will be under his control at some point, this doesn't sound like an omnipotent God to me.

Guzik doesn't quite answer my question, but he brings up an interesting point here. He says that everything is put under control of man, I guess that is something else that is in the bible, that man is in charge of everything? This sounds familiar to me. So Jesus had to become a man for this to still be true. Jesus is in control of everything, but Jesus is a man so everything works together. This sounds like a pretty shady loophole to me. For an analogy, suppose a billionaire said he would let a small very poor village have control over a large portion of his assets, but then he sent his son to marry one of their women, then put his son in control of it all. Would he be keeping his word? What if further, the son didn't live in the village, but instead came home and controlled them from a distance. Do we think the billionaire kept his word? Maybe technically, but certainly not the spirit of it.

Gill on the other hand, does address my observation head on. He points out that everything is under control of Jesus, but we don't see it. This is a very good point, just because we can't see it, doesn't mean it isn't so. I consider this a good answer.

v9 "...Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death..."
v10 "For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all  things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering"

Suffering if a fact of life, and sometimes it is necessary, sometimes it can even be noble. But the suffering itself should not be celebrated. The thing gained by the suffering should be the focus, here the focus is clearly on the actual suffering itself.

Also, Jesus is made perfect through suffering? Wasn't he perfect before? He was the image of God wasn't he?

Guzik says "It isn’t that there was anything lacking in His Deity, but only in His experience: how does God in heaven know suffering by experience". Interesting argument, but what about every other possible thing we can experience. Does Jesus have to experience it to understand it? Why is suffering so special here? Does God have to kill someone before he understands it and knows it is wrong? Actually, now that I think about it that might explain the old testament.

v14 "...that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil"

If I'm reading this right, God sent Jesus to die so that he could beat the devil, who had the power of death. Does this sound like the actions of an all powerful God to you? It sounds to me like the actions of a God who is part of a pantheon. If God is all powerful, shouldn't he have had the power of death? Why did the devil have it? Why did Jesus have to die to take this power from the devil?

Guzik tries to get out of this by saying the devil had rule over death because of the sins committed in the garden of Eden. His taking of Jesus was unlawful so Jesus took away his right to rule over death. He then points out that this approach is problematic because Jesus laid down his life, however, Satan clearly wanted to kill him, so he committed "attempted unlawful murder". This is pure nonsense as far as I'm concerned. Even in his own narrative, it wasn't murder, although I guess Satan committed the desire for murder, so it is a thought-crime at best.

v16 "For surely it is not the angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham"

I'm guessing people try to spin this as Jesus was here to help all humans, but then shouldn't it say the offspring of Adam? The offspring of Abraham is the Jews right? One group of people, not everyone. This seems to conflict with the idea that Jesus was here to save everyone.

As expected, Guzik interpreted "seeds of Abraham" to be "people of the faith". Is this a legitimate interpretation? I don't know, it doesn't seem right to me, but I am a bit out of my element here. But weren't these people very interested in genealogies?

For the overview post (If you think I should add or remove stuff from this list please let me know, I think it would make good conversation)

Good:

Once again, I found nothing of value in this book. I was thinking about how a Christian might respond to that, they would object I'm sure, saying that the whole book is good. God sent his own son Jesus to die for us. Jesus was willing to die for our benefit. This is a story we hear often, but the entire idea is bankrupt. Not only does it make no sense for Jesus to die on our behalf in this way, but he shouldn't need to? What did I do that needs redemption? Oh Adam ate an apple? Seriously? And if I did need redemption, how does Jesus' death help me out? This whole idea is terrible and it glorifies suffering, and the fact that so many Christians find this a positive thing is just another strike against it in my book.

Bad:

2:9-10 glorification of suffering

"But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering."