#100 Understanding Hebrews chapter by chapter + Dr. Madison Pierce

Understanding Hebrews: Context and Overview

Today we're going to go through Hebrews. I have an expert on the line, Dr. Madison Pierce. The ministering spirits part kind of freaks me out. What does that mean?

Like angels serve us. Jesus was human in every way, was tested in every way, suffered. Jesus is human. And so Jesus is a legit priest. He is qualified to be a priest.

Because he lives forever. Wow. That went completely over my head.

God decided to do something bigger and better and more gracious. Rest here is, I think, primarily something that is future.

You said that Hebrews contrast Jesus with the Levitical priesthood. What did you mean by that? Hello, hello. Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Belluno and I'm your host. In this podcast, we talk about the Bible in simple terms with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding God easier.

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I'm your host, Cassian Bolino. Today we're going to go through Hebrews. We're going to go through as much Hebrews as possible because I have an expert on the line, Dr. Madison Pierce, who's going to walk us through the context.

Who are we talking to? What's going on? Because when I became a Christian, one of the first books people told me to read was read Hebrews. That's going to kickstart your faith. That's going to kickstart your knowledge of God.

And, you know, lo and behold, I maybe picked from it like this, you know, this verse and that verse. But now sitting down with it, I have so many questions. So I have the expert, Dr. Madison Pierce, who has dedicated her life to studying it.

You are more than qualified to speak on this. Just a little bit of background on you is you are Reverend Dr. Madison Pierce. You're a lecturer in New Testament and early Christianity at the University of St. Andrews.

You are the author of Divine Disclosure and the Epistle to the Hebrews from Cambridge University and the co-author of Reading the Later New Testament as Christian Scripture. You're also ordained as a Reformed Church in America as a minister of word and sacrament.

You're also a New Testament editor at the Reviews of Biblical and Early Christian Studies and the co-host of Two Cities Podcast. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much. It's so good to be here. I am so glad that I have you.

I mean, there's so many books that you could have focused on, especially in the New Testament. Why did you pick Hebrews?

Yeah, I didn't read Hebrews right away. And I feel like the first sorts of conversations that I had about scripture, I got this impression that God did a thing, and that was what he did with his people in the Old Testament.

And then suddenly God did something else. And I felt like there was always presented to me, or at least I heard a lot of discontinuity. God did this, and then he did that. And that's really different.

So when I got to undergrad, I took a class that was Hebrews and general epistles. And the first half was Hebrews. And the very first chapter is all these different ways that Jesus fits with scripture, how he was foretold in a sense.

And so that gave me this picture of continuity and a sort of like logical way of thinking about the way that God's been with his people through all time. And so Hebrews made sense to me. It's beautiful, I think, but yes, certainly mysterious.

So I stay with Hebrews because I still have lots of questions too.

I love, you know, we prayed before this, but I love that you just made like a really simple comment of like, thank you for having a word that like we can spend so much time in. You know, you've studied this for how many years and yet here we are still exploring it.

You know, here you are still with a few questions. So like what a great God that we serve, you know, first and foremost. But, you know, you being, you know, let's pretend we're like at dinner. Let's pretend that like we're just friends catching up.

What like, if you wanted to just like give me an overview of like Hebrews in, I don't want to say like a hundred words, but like if you just wanted.

To like, what is Hebrews? Like what, what is like the purpose of it? Yeah. Um, I mean, my one sentence summary is that God has done incredible things in the past and today. And so we should live in light of that.

And, you know, a chapter that most of us know is Hebrews 11, and you can kind of see that illustrated where he's talking about, or the author is talking about all these different ways that the people of God have responded and the ways that God has, has been.

Gracious to them in the midst of that. Yeah. Yeah. That, that is true. And we'll definitely get there. That was definitely one of my, um, my favorite chapters, uh, just cause like it is one of those perfect biblical chapters where you're like, thank you for keeping track of all of these miracles.

Cause I couldn't remember all of them and it just goes through everybody with faith. Um, okay. So a little bit of background. What is Hebrews? Is it a letter? Who who's talking?

Who is he talking to? What like, what's the context? Yeah. So this is one of the most mysterious things that all of those questions, we don't know a hundred percent. So I can give you my sort of answers to these questions.

But if you were to talk to another Hebrew specialist, it's possible you get a slightly different answer. So Hebrews doesn't open like a letter. You know, Paul of course is like Paul, apostle Jesus Christ, you know, writing to the Corinthians, to the Romans, to the Thessalonians, you know, on and on and on.

Hebrews starts at many times and in various ways, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets. And that's very different, but Hebrews ends like a letter and it's, you know, you know, grace and peace and I'll be coming quickly, you know, give greetings, all those sorts of things that we do see in letters like Paul's.

And so it's, it seems like a little bit of a hybrid maybe, you know, if it's a letter, then it doesn't start like one, but it seems to have been distributed. If it's a sermon, then, you know, it has this sort of appendage at the end.

So we don't know a lot about what sermons looks like in the early church, but we do know that Hebrews has a lot of things built into it in the Greek that make it really punchy when you're hearing it. So that opening sentence that I just said in English, in Greek, it has all of these P sounds.

And so it's this alliteration. So, and there are lots of different ways that we see the author making it so that they're going to hear the good news and really be able to follow along. So that's the sort of what is, you know, something that's delivered orally and was distributed to a community and yeah.

Happy if it's like a sermonic letter or, you know, an epistolary sermon, but yeah, something like that. And we know it was delivered orally because of the alliteration in the beginning. I think so. Yeah.

And there are other places where the author introduces like rhyming and stuff like that. And so, and that's also, I mean, generally our understanding of ancient practice was that, you know, somebody would bring the letter from Paul or whatever, and then it would be read to the community.

So the letter carrier would have this opportunity to read it and also answer questions. So you and I, we're puzzling over all of these things about Hebrews, but it's likely that whoever delivered it knew the author and was able to say, yeah, I've talked to them about that.

And here's, you know, a little bit more, or this is what I think they're talking about or all of that.

So I didn't realize that that's how, yeah, that's so much context. I didn't realize that like letters were delivered orally, but then the messenger would get a little Q and A.

That's crazy. It's not the typical mailman. Exactly. Yeah. And there's some fun, you know, if you think about like the letter to Philemon being read out in the church in front of everybody, you know, Philemon's like, he's got a lot of pressure on him.

So, but anyways.

Okay. So we don't know who is speaking, but who is being spoken to?

Yeah. Yeah. We don't know who the author is. There are lots of different conversations about that, but it is anonymous. And in its earliest distribution, it's anonymous. It doesn't, it eventually gets associated with Paul for a little while, but then not, but the audience, that's also debated.

So it's called to the Hebrews. And, but that's really interesting because Hebrews wasn't really how the people of God were referred to in the first century. And it's very clear that Hebrews originated in Greek and Hebrews in the first century, when it was used referred to communities that were Hebrew speaking.

And so that it's an interesting thing, but they're like, I think they're likely Jewish, you know, whether they were born Jewish or became Jewish, you know, by means of, of the spread of the church, we don't know necessarily, but I think maybe Hebrews is, is a word that's applied to this because of the subject matter, which we'll get to, but we'll see all of the different ways that the author invites the audience to imagine themselves like they are the people wandering through the desert and all of these different things.

And Hebrews, that, that name for God's people is really common in the Exodus, which is one of the kind of key moments in God's history of his people that the author really, really likes. So yeah. Is there like a specific crisis?

Cause I know like sometimes in letters, it's like, you guys are specifically struggling with this. So this is what, you know, I couldn't nail down the one thing that people were struggling with other than like, Jesus is humanness and like, Jesus isn't an angel.

Like, is there something that we're supposed to pick up on that this letter sermon addresses?

Yeah, good question. I mean, the thing that we can probably say for certain is that this community is, is having a hard time with the people around them. They're, they're clearly experiencing some sort of opposition and probably with the governing authorities.

So like in Hebrews 10, it says that they joyfully accepted the confiscation of their property and that they were imprisoned and all of these different things, you know, Hebrews 13, one of the, the things that the author says in the closing to the letter is, you know, care for those in prison who are incarcerated.

And so this suggests that there's a sort of, there's a lot going on. And in Hebrews 12, it's you've not resisted to the point of shedding blood, but you get the impression that they might. So they're, they're hurting and we can totally understand why there's a lot of, there's a lot of times that the author is telling them to push forward, to persevere, to endure because those are the things that we need to hear when we're really struggling and when a lot of really hard stuff is going on.

Okay. So last question on.

Context is this is after Jesus's death and people are trying to, you know, maintain Christian beliefs amidst the loss of their Messiah. Is that like the timeline wise. What's happening in the.

World? Yeah. So there's a point in Hebrews two where he, the author mentions that they, the community, they sort of heard it through the Lord or sorry, from those who who's heard it from the Lord. It's like secondhand.

So it's not the people that this community didn't hear it from Jesus, but they heard it from the people who heard it from Jesus. So a lot of times we conclude that that means that they're second generation.

And so that, you know, they're at least like in the fifties or sixties, if not later, but, but at least kind of at that point. So this is not like right after Jesus died, but as you know, a couple of decades later and yeah, in the aftermath.

Okay. Okay, cool. Well, now that we have a basic understanding of what, who, what, when, what, how let's get right into Hebrews one. So I approach this with a very like Sunday school Christian mentality, like not really knowing clearly any background and just kind of trying to react off the bat of, you know, why, why lead with, Hey, FYI, Jesus, not an angel, you know,.

Where did people think he was? Yeah. I mean, why the angels is, is, you know, another question that people will debate. So some people do think that there was confusion that maybe people were worshiping angels that they were thinking that Jesus was an angel.

And I think this is possible. You know, the author of course, is really focusing a lot on Jesus becoming flesh. I was so grateful that you, I could tell you picked up on that. Um, cause that's one of my, my big things that I've been working on.

Um, but I, I think my, this is my answer is that it's less about, um, who Jesus isn't and, and more about who he is. And there are some things about angels that, that make it really valuable to provide them as a contrast.

And the two that I think, you know, would be good to highlight one is that angels don't die. So, you know, they're, they're immortal and with, with the Jewish people, that's actually a really big deal because if they don't die, if they're not susceptible to death, then they also aren't susceptible to impurity.

And so all the sacrifices and everything that the Jewish people had to do related to death and, um, all, all sorts of very normal processes, the angels didn't have to do that, but the angels did make sacrifices.

And so that means that when the angels did make sacrifices, they were making sacrifices on behalf of others and sort of out of the abundance of their love for God, you know, thankfulness and worship and things, and not because they needed to fix a problem, if that makes sense.

So I think there there's, it's possible that something in that, um, has to do with why the author wants to start here because angels are a big deal and they're really impressive. And he's telling us Jesus is even more impressive.

Than that. That's a good point because with all the miracles that Jesus did, he was untouched by the uncleanliness and impurity of the miracles, you know, like touching demons or like the bleeding woman or like, you know, leprosy.

And so I can see maybe, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, they're seeing that, you know, also Jesus is not susceptible to impurity yet his sacrifice. And yet his sacrifices were also not for himself, but for others because he was without sin.

And so I feel like maybe people are saying like, he looks like an angel and he walks like an angel. And the author maybe it was like, and yet there's a little bit more. Cause I mean, the, this like scripture hits so hard, like for which of the angels did God ever say you were my son today?

I've become your father. Like I love when God asks like rhetorical questions, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

I love that too. And this is another interesting feature of Hebrews that these words are presented as speech. So that's actually what my PhD was on is looking at the spoken quotations of scripture, but I won't nerd out on that too much right now.

Um, you know, in, in, in, uh, response to what you're saying, yeah, there's some, there's debate as to, you know, how Jesus related to impurity and all of that, but it is really important just for the argument of Hebrews that we make sure and recognize that Jesus was susceptible to death, of course, you know, but we had to think about that sequence because it's really important to the author's argument that Jesus was human in every way, was tested in every way, um, suffered and it's upon suffering that he actually became qualified to serve as high priest on our behalf.

And so again, we'll get there, but, but that transformation is what's really important is that he wasn't like the angels, but he will be, or he, but he is now that, you know, he wasn't in his earthly life, but he's been transformed now.

Jesus' Humanity and Relationship to Angels

Right. And just talking about Jesus as humanist, if we move on to chapter two, it's like, all they talk about is, you know, he's elevated above the angels. He, you know, they're really talking about his humanity, you know, but I mean, he, if you look at verse 14 of chapter two, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death, he might break the power of him who holds the power of death.

That is the devil and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death for surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham's descendants. It's a very clear distinction there of like angels couldn't do what he did.

And he's helping a very specific group of people. I mean, what am I missing there? Because that seems like a really heavy sentence.

No, you're, you're onto something. I mean, that is so valuable. And I mean, another one that we could add to that picture is, um, at the end of all the quotations, the author says are not, this is one 14 are not all angel angels, ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation.

Like I highlighted that I highlighted that incredible. Okay.

The ministering spirits part kind of freaks me out. What does that mean?

That's a great question. Well, okay. So I was just telling you that, um, the angels were depicted doing sacrifices and that's probably the word that's used there is actually the word that's often used of the priests.

And so this is probably a picture of worship that's taking place in the heavenly tabernacle, which as, as you know, and as we'll see, you know, is a big.

Deal in Hebrews. Okay. So it's saying that these ministering spirits are making sacrifices on.

Behalf of people who, uh, are saved. Yeah. Or at least that's where he's going to go. Um, you know, but by calling them ministering spirits, there, there is a sort of like angels or priests who serve us, you know, and, and so there's probably implicit in that some, some of the, that kind of service, but either way they're, they're on our, on our, um, working on our behalf.

Okay. Okay. Good to know. Um, yeah, I think it, there's just like a couple of lines in chapter two, like, uh, for verse 11, both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family.

Um, I think that that was, you know, to put us on the same level, play the same playing field there is crazy. Like I'm on the, I'm in the same family as those who make people holy, because I feel like I'm the one who's receiving anything.

Like I'm not getting anything done without God's help. So, um, but you even kind of said right at the beginning, you're like, I'm glad you picked up on the humanness. Why did you say that? Yeah, it's,.

Honestly, um, Hebrews two is certainly a place where we see that, but a lot of interpreters, a lot of scholars, um, they don't realize how pervasive this is throughout Hebrews. That's actually like just constant.

And so they're like, yeah, yeah. Like he, you know, Hebrews two is, is humanity, but the rest of Hebrews is something else. But actually, you know, as we go through, we'll see that Jesus has to be human for a lot of different things to take place.

And I, a friend and I just finished a book on the humanity of Jesus. So we're, we're really trying to, you know, correct the record and everything here. It's like really top of mind for you. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, but one thing I wanted to mention, cause you're, I love the way that you were highlighting how beautiful it is for us to be kind of on that level and the next verse, or sorry, the next part of the verse that you read, it says, he's not ashamed to call them or us brothers and sisters.

And, and then Jesus speaks and says to, to the father, I'll declare your name to my brothers and sisters in the assembly. I will sing your praise. And this is a really interesting thing because it's the case that in the new Testament, we see Jesus is the son of God.

We are adopted as children of God. And so logically if God's both of our fathers, you know, or all of our father, then we are Jesus's siblings. But this isn't actually explicit elsewhere in the new Testament.

And so we see this like father to son, father to children, but this, this horizontal relationship, this solidarity with Jesus and us, you know, he, as our sibling is really cool and, and it's distinctive to Hebrews really.

Is it anywhere else in the new Testament where we talk about Jesus being our brother and brother.

And where he calls his siblings? The only place that it's sort of implied maybe is in the gospels where he says, you know, those who do the will of the father of my father are my brothers and and stuff.

So he's kind of distancing himself from his literal, you know, relatives in saying that actually it's those who are in the family of God. So sort of, but it's, it doesn't quite.

Have the same effect there. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. It's weird going back to that. Remember, like he is our brother when like for so much, especially recently, I've seen him as like a father or like a protector.

Like, it's just crazy how like Jesus fills all those roles. So it's interesting to like, be reminded almost of that. Okay. So looking at chapter three, okay. So this is where we do like a full pivot. It feels like a U-turn, you know, we're talking about Jesus, like his angel, we're talking about his humanness and now we're like, no, don't go back to Israel.

Don't go back. Don't go back to the wilderness. Why did we, why suddenly are we talking about Old Testament stuff?

The Warning Against Hardening Hearts: Israel and Rest

Yeah. Well, so all through this, the author has been, has been talking about Old Testament stuff. We've had quotations all through and, and, you know, it's depicting Jesus as our brother, you know, through, through quotations.

But what is interesting here is that Jesus sort of fades into the background. So that's probably why it feels like such a pivot is because it was Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, and suddenly it's the spirit speaking to us.

And Jesus is a little more subtle in these chapters. And so what's interesting in Hebrews is that the, you know, like I said, God speaks scripture and the father speaks usually to the son, but sometimes just speaks.

The son speaks to the father, but the spirit speaks to us. And so as the Holy spirit says today, if y 'all in my native Texan, if y 'all hear his voice, do not harden your hearts and so on and so forth.

And so what the author is going to do in this chapter is to play around a little bit with, with the scripture that's been given. And at the end of it, it says, I declared an oath in my anger. Our translations say something like they shall never enter my rest.

It's, I think it's very possible that that's not exactly the right translation that, that is actually, if y 'all shall enter, enter my rest, which is a nerdy, nerdy thing that I, you know, that I won't go into too much detail about, but that means when the author goes forward, there's this promise, you know, that God has either, either God has said y 'all wilderness generation can't enter.

And so it's still available. Like almost like, you know, God is like holding the promise in his hands and they can take it. And once somebody takes it, it's not there anymore. But, you know, so that's one option and that's a pretty common interpretation that it's still available because the, the ancestors didn't take it.

The other option is y 'all shall, you know, if you're going to enter my rest, that implies that it's a possibility. And so they can, we can, and the reason I'm inclined to think the latter is because when we get to Hebrews 11, we're going to see this wilderness generation pop back up and they're not the quintessential baddies that they are in Hebrews 3 and 4.

They're, they're doing all right. So, so I hope that made sense. Cause I definitely,.

We're using baddies liberally here. Yes, yes, yes. That's right. Yeah. I mean, I was definitely confused in chapter three because it feels like, you know, we're talking about Jesus a little less, but then we bring up Moses, you know, Moses was faithful in all God's house.

Jesus had been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of the house has greater honor than the house itself. Love that. Like I said, it's just like some like banger lines sometimes in the Bible.

You're like, oh man, that hit. And, um, and then, yep. I heard, you know, I, I highlighted today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion. That seems like really direct.

My chapter three ends with, so we see that those were not able to enter because of their unbelief. To me, that is like, they, the door's locked. They're not getting in. You snooze, you lose type of thing.

And I guess that's so difficult for me to think about because I'm like, the chosen people, the people in the desert, like they don't get to see the promised land.

That to me just baffles me. They were specifically chosen for it. Yeah. Well, so that, that is, so if we think of the promise as the literal land, then yes, they did not get to cross the threshold that that was the consequence.

But as I said, I think that Hebrews 11 gives us this glimpse that God's mercy extended to them as well, because it says by faith, the people crossed the red sea there and they will inherit with us. This is at the end of chapter 11.

So that's these people. They're the ones that crossed the red sea by faith. And, um, and if you're flipping over to Hebrews 11, it's at the end where it says, um, these all, including the red sea people, they were commended for their faith.

And yet none of them received what had been promised since. And it's not, you know, full stop. It's since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

So they're, they're in it still. Um, it's not like they get nothing. It's, they had the one consequence. They couldn't enter the literal land, but rest the rest that comes that they still get to enjoy.

Okay. Yeah. It sounds like God's like, don't worry. They get their cake just in a different way. And it works out in the way that it's meant to, not the way that you want it to. Um, okay. So looking at chapter four, this feels like the verse about Sabbath, you know, this is why we Sabbath, but he, he talks about it in like a way that I wasn't like prepared for of like, you can't enter God's rest or God's rest or like entering, like there's a lot of restriction that I wasn't prepared for.

Uh, how do you make sense of like,.

What's allowed and what's not allowed with Sabbath? Yeah. Well, so it does say Sabbath rest. And so it would, there's a sense in which it absolutely connects to our weekly practice. Um, but there's also some ways that what this passage is talking about as a whole isn't our weekly rest.

It's an ultimate rest. And so when the author says Sabbath rest, it's because he's been talking about the fact that God rested on the seventh day. And so this is in four, four, I think. Um, yeah, somewhere he's spoken about the seventh day in these words on the seventh day, God rested from all his works and then kind of keeps going.

And so basically what the author is saying is that God has been resting since that seventh day and he's still resting and we will have the opportunity to enter into that rest at some point. And so rest here is, I think primarily something that is future.

So this is like heavenly rest. It's where they're headed. So a lot of Hebrew scholars will say that, um, rest is the same as like Mount Zion, the city of the living God, which is what we'll talk about when we get to Hebrews 12.

And so there is a sense in which we enjoy rest that rest is available to us in God today, but it's important here that rest definitely have a future perspective as well. It's the way that we will participate in rest in the future is going to be different and.

Full. Wow. That went completely over my head. I I'm so sorry. No, no, no, no, no. I know you explained it. Great. When I first read it, I was like, I was just confused. Cause I was like, wait, some of us don't get to rest, but that makes sense that future rest and eternal rest is also kind of an illusion to heaven before I was like, so if I don't Sabbath on Sunday, I'm going to go to hell.

Like that's to me how I was kind of perceiving it. And so, I mean, it drives, you know, a really hard argument here of just like, well, even God who like made the world, he rested and like, who are you to not like do what he does.

And, and so, yeah, I really did like that mention, you know, even on verse 10, for anyone who enters God's rest also rest from their works, just as God did from his, let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.

It's just so insane that like, you know, in today's world to rest is to be, or to not rest is to be disobedient.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, it is, it's, it's super counter-cultural for us to, to rest and to take it easy and, you know, to not just like hustle and whatever. So it's,.

It's important. Rest is spiritual. Looking at chapter five, I couldn't find a lot. I mean, there was like one part of chapter five that I definitely like struggle with, and we'll get to that. But you even said, you know, in our pre-call, you said that Hebrews contrast Jesus with the.

Priesthood. What did you mean by that? Yeah. So, or, I mean, it's common for Hebrews five to be read as a, as a big contrast, like again, as a, like God did this and now he does something totally different.

Hebrews five actually doesn't get there yet though. Hebrews five says that every high priest is taken from humanity. Every high priest makes offerings. And of course we are, you know, just before this and for 14 to 16, some of my very favorite verses in Hebrews, it says, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven.

So he's telling us, the author is telling us what every high priest, Levitical, Melchizedekian, what they have in common. And so this is where the author is actually saying, Jesus is qualified. Jesus is human.

Jesus is representative. Jesus does, you know, makes an offering on our behalf. And so Jesus is a legit priest. And at this time in the first century, there were lots of illegitimate priests. And so this is not, you know, I think it's possible that that's a really big deal to this community.

This is a real priest that's been chosen by God. So like he, it was a priest in what way? Like what qualified him? This feels like such a stupid question, but like, were there rules? There were their qualifications, like what was it and how did Jesus meet those?

Yeah. So in Leviticus, the qualification for being a priest is you're a Levite, but then also you have to be not just a Levite, but a son of Aaron. And then to be a high priest, you have to be selected.

And this is, you know, with Aaron, it's like when his staff buds, you know, it's clear that he's been chosen. And this is the analogy that the author uses here is that he, in the same way Christ did not take on the glory of becoming a high priest, like, you know, like Aaron, but God said to him, you're my son, today I've forgotten you.