Highlights From HebrewsSample

The Words of God

The book of Hebrews begins with a brief statement of Christian epistemology. Epistemology is the field of philosophy that investigates knowledge. It seeks to answer such questions as What can we know? And, How do we know things?

Historic Christianity says that God is a God who speaks. God created human beings in His image, perfectly designed to receive His speech. Thus, humans have no problem understanding God and what God has to say—people can understand who God is and what God says. The problem between God and man does not lie in the area of communication but in the area of sin: human beings have rebelled against God and refuse to listen to Him.

The Old Testament shows us that God revealed Himself through symbols such as the pillar of cloud and the tabernacle, and also through speech and writing. In fact, the only way we know about the tabernacle and the pillar of cloud is because God wrote it down for us to read. The author of Hebrews says that God spoke to the fathers through the prophets. He spoke at various times and in various ways, such as dictating Leviticus to Moses, revealing His Word in dreams to Zechariah, and inspiring the writers of Judges, Samuel, and Ecclesiastes. Now, in the climax of revelatory history, God has spoken through His Son, whose very words are recorded in the Gospels and whose authority lies behind all the words in the New Testament books.

Many modern theologians do not believe in a God who speaks. They say that either God has not spoken or that God has not spoken exclusively in Christ and His Word, or that even if God has spoken, human beings cannot clearly understand God’s communication. All that is possible between God and man, they say, is a mystical encounter of some sort, an “oh, wow!” experience that will change your life. The Bible, they say, records the reflections of people who had this experience, and if we read the Bible, we might have such an experience, too. Such beliefs turn God into an amorphous blob, devoid of character, incapable of communicating with His own creation. The author of Hebrews tells us that if we are going to understand the true religion, we need to hear the very words of God.

CORAM DEO Living before the face of God

Hebrews continually quotes from the Old Testament and refers to its symbols and types. The religion of the book of Hebrews and the Bible is grounded in revealed truth, not personal experience. Let us commit ourselves to knowing God through His Word, not through subjective experience.