Today we are beginning a new series on the book of Hebrews. I prefer as a pastor to preach through entire books of the bible, verse by verse, rather than topically as I did last week - establishing spiritual disciplines - so we will go back to that methodology quite often as a church. I believe that preaching in that way helps me to be faithful to scripture as it was written, not just to pick out my own ideas and feelings and find scripture that fit those. I believe that has worked out for us so far - as it feels like we have dealt with issues in scripture right on time for things that have been going on in our lives.
So today we begin something new. We are going to study the Book of Hebrews. We won’t dive deeply into every verse, though I do believe this book probably warrants that kind of attention. This will be more of a survey of the letter,we will cover as much of it as we can.
A Christian couple should always refer to scripture when attempting to determine gender rolls, we talked about that a little bit in our bible study on Friday. So when it comes to morning routines - they should turn to scripture as well. Women should do their part, but men make the coffee. It says right here. Hebrews.
Introduction:
Who wrote it?
We don’t know. Church history has a list of guesses, but there is no proof. We give credit to this epistle to the Holy Spirit, to God for providing it for us.
Who was it written to?
Specifically - we don’t know. Again, there are clues. It was written to people who were expected to have an understanding of the Septuagint, that spoke Greek. There are priestly matters dealt with in this book - so it may have been written to priests who converted. We don’t know for sure who - other than that they were Jews who converted.
When was it written. - Evidence says that it was written before the destruction of the temple in 70 AD.
The book of Hebrews. The original manuscripts title this letter “To the Hebrews” but like the Gospel of John we shorten things up a little bit to just say John… we call this - Hebrews.
