Hebrews: Dust to Glory with R.C. Sproul

i've always said that if i were thrown into prison and kept in solitary confinement and was allowed to have only one book in my possession during my stay obviously the book i would want to have with me would be the bible then i've got on to say if i could only have one chapter of the bible i'd want the sixth chapter of isaiah if i could only have one verse of the bible it would be a verse from the 15th chapter of genesis but if i could have one book of the bible with me to

give me comfort and consolation and for my edification to many people surprised the book that i would select would be the book of hebrews people say i thought you would certainly choose romans i said well no i already know what's in there and then i think i can remember most of that without having the the actual book confronting but what i love about hebrews is if there is any book that brings the whole council of god together in one place it's this book it is so rich in relating the redemptive activity of god from the

old testament and integrating it with the revelation of god in the new testament so that's one reason that i have such affection for the book of hebrews the other is this that the book of hebrews gives us one of the most magnificent if not the most magnificent portrait of christ that we find anywhere in scripture the exaltation of christ and the preeminence of his labor and of his position in the cosmic scope of things is breathed on every page of the book of hebrews let's look at how the book begins in chapter 1 of the

epistle to the hebrews we read these words verse 1 god who at various times and in various ways spoken time past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by his son whom he has appointed heir of all things through whom also he made the world who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and the upholding all things by the word of his power when he had by himself purged our sins sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high having become

so much better than the angel says he has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they i can hardly get through that sentence without having to gasp for breath not simply for the length and convoluted nature of the declaration but because of all of the riches that are compressed together in that opening statement of the letter to the hebrews and the language of that text is characteristic of the entire letter in fact i almost choke at the word letter because some have suggested that the basic literary form of hebrews is not that of an

epistle as is customarily the case with the apostle paul but some argue that what we have here is an extremely ancient homily a sermon whose central focus is the majesty of christ and again the literary quality of this book is normally considered to be the highest that is to be found in the new testament and it raises the question immediately of its author we know that in the early church when the church was sorting through the various books that had been written in the apostolic age and determining in the final analysis what ones were properly

apostolic and what ones were pretenders to that title there was some debate about the authenticity of the book of hebrews and from the records of history we get the idea that the thing that settled the controversy once and for all in the church was the conviction that hebrews was written by the apostle paul and yet almost no scholar in the 20th century would argue that paul wrote the book of hebrews because the literary style the vocabulary and the like and even some of the thematic organization is so different from his customary style but in any

case that raises the question well if paul didn't write it who did and nobody knows various names have been suggested apollo barnabas luke some have even argued that priscilla wrote this book but the question remains unanswered now in addition to that question we don't know to whom it was written exactly and under what circumstances now that poses some significant problems in interpreting the book one of the big controversies with the book of hebrews is how we understand the sixth chapter of hebrews when it talks about those who have tasted of the heavenly gift and so

on and who falling away it's impossible to renew them again unto repentance that was the passage incidentally that created not only controversy in our day but controversy in the early church as to its apostolic message because it seemed to suggest so obviously that people could and did lose their salvation and that seemed to be on a collision course with the teaching of the apostle paul but again we don't know to whom it was addressed or under what circumstances we know that the early church was attacked from many sides with many different heresies and faced many

different problems and some people look at hebrews and say oh the author of hebrews is trying to answer the false teaching of the judaizers of the first century other people were saying oh no the problem that the author is addressing is the influence of the heretical gnostics and still another suggestion is no that the author of hebrews was writing to jewish christians who were undergoing severe persecution and the problem that was being faced was the problem of what was called the first century lapsey the lapsy were those people who caved in under the duress of

persecution we've heard of the glorious testimonies of those who went and gave their lives as a sacrifice to christ became human torches in the gardens of nero who became star attractions in the circus maximus as they were fodder for the lions and play things for the gladiators and we say the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church and early church history is replete with references to the heroic courage displayed by those early christians who became martyrs to the cause of the kingdom of god but not everybody was martyred some people under the

pressure of persecution actually repudiated their confession and denied christ to save their lives and so they were called the lapsy those who had fallen those who had lapsed and so one of the suggestions for uh the cause of this sermons being written was to encourage saints in the midst of persecution to keep the faith and to endure to the end and to follow after this christ who is worth everything and so again the central focus is on him at the very beginning as we as we read that thematic statement that ties up all of redemptive

history in former days god has spoken to us through the prophets but now it's not just a prophet whom he has sent but it is his own son the one whom he has appointed the heir of all things the one who is the brightness of his glory oh that that little phrase if you examine it in the original language is something to keep us busy for several days i'm sure because when we think of the glory of god we think of all of those manifestations in the old testament where the majesty of the invisible god

is made visible outwardly through the shekinah cloud that radiates with such intensity and such refulgence that it has a blinding character to it and we are told over and over again that the brightness of that divine glory when it manifests itself outshines the sun and what the author of hebrews is saying is that that which makes the brightness bright in the glory of god is the second person of the trinity that christ is the very brightness of his glory and there has been no greater more vivid more graphic manifestation of the invisible god in the

midst of humanity in all of history than that which was seen in the incarnation of the son who was not only the brightness of his glory but was the expressed image of his person not just the image of god's nature but the image of his person this is god among us and so the high christology of the book of hebrews is introduced in in this statement and then it is developed throughout this book we are told first of all that christ is superior to the angels lest the gnostic heresy prevail which saw jesus on the

level of one of the other demi urges or angelic beings that are part of the created order christ is not an angel he is the creator of angels and he is lord over the angel and then we are given the comparative analysis in the book between the leading figure of the old testament moses and jesus as the two covenants are being set now in comparison and contrast and of course the contrast is not between the good and the bad but between it's really a comparison between the good and the better and moses was a faithful

servant in the house of god the author tells us but christ was the owner of the house he came to his father's house he's a son in the house not a hard servant in the house and then the superiority of christ's priesthood is worked out through several chapters and it has two basic foci in it in the first place we remember that the high priest in the old testament was the one who made the sacrifice on the day of atonement for the people and that that sacrifice had to be repeated annually and number two the

sacrifices that were accepted by god were accepted on the basis of their representation of their sign character because as the author of hebrews tells us in reality the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin and so what the author is telling us here is that all of the ceremonies all of the rituals of the old testament that focused on atonement and upon sacrifice were all representing as shadows the reality that was to come that would be compressed in the perfect sacrificial offering that is made by the perfect high priest once and for all

through the sacrifice of christ himself who does have intrinsic merit to offer to the father that cannot even be remotely approached by the blood of bulls and goats and secondly the author has to answer the question of the priesthood of christ as it relates to the old testament tradition in the old testament the priesthood was called the aaronic priesthood or the levitical priesthood in that aaron was the first high priest and he was from the tribe of levi and so in order to serve in the priesthood one had to be from the tribe of levi

and that's why it's called the levitical priesthood and yet here in the book of hebrews christ is exalted as the long promised king of the kingdom of god who would come from the tribe of judah and now here he is being celebrated as the great high priest well if the kingly line comes from judah and the priestly line comes from levi how can christ fulfill both of these ideals because he can't be from both tribes and we know that he's from the tribe of judah as he is the son of david well that's why we

have this lengthy discussion in hebrews about the priesthood of melchizedek and the author tells us that christ was a priest not of the aaronic priesthood but and not of the levitical priesthood but of the line of melchizedek of which we hear almost nothing in the old testament and then develops the case that the priesthood of melchizedek is not an inferior priesthood to that of aaron or to the levites but is indeed a superior priesthood and to prove that point the author of hebrews goes back to the old testament and speaks of the incident when abraham

meets this mysterious character melchizedek whose name means king of righteousness and who is described as the king of salem or the king of peace and in that encounter abraham pays a tithe to melchizedek and melchizedek blesses abraham and in jewish tradition it is the inferior who pays the tithe to the superior and it is the superior who gives the blessing to the inferior and so since in that transaction melchizedek is seen as superior to abraham and since levi is a descendant of abraham it follows qed that melchizedek is superior to levi and so what we

have here is the one who is superior to the prophets the one who is superior to the angels the one who is superior to moses the one who is superior in glory and in function to the high priesthood of aaron christ himself who brings all these things together and so the book of hebrews after taking us through this excellence of the work of christ then gives the strong admonition that we not be content with elementary things that we not be as children who are satisfied with milk but that we begin to develop a mature understanding

of the things of god that we taste of the meat of the truth of god and from that that we persevere to the end being faithful to the ministry of christ no matter how many afflictions or how much persecution befalls us because the theme here is so great a salvation the author reminds his readers of the short comings of the people of israel in the old testament whom god visited with judgment because they took lightly the redemption and deliverance that god had provided for them in the exodus they murmured against him in the wilderness and

so on and so all of those things are revisited by the author of hebrews and said now wait a minute if god judges israel because they didn't listen to moses how much more serious is it if we fail to take heed to this visitation of the one who is the son himself and he summarizes it with this exhortation and this warning how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation i want to say something to people who are watching this whole introduction to the scriptures that there's hardly a day goes by that i

don't hear somebody say to me what's the big deal about jesus i can get along fine without jesus i don't believe in a god who is so narrow that he requires only one way to salvation what difference does it make what our religion is and there is this antipathy in our culture against anything that claims exclusivity anything that claims one right way it's just downright un-american and undemocratic to assume that there's only one mediator between god and man and only one savior that can satisfy the demands of the justice of god and so what is

done here is it just it it it just drives me crazy when i hear people talk about jesus and mohammed and buddha and i want to say how can you mention jesus of nazareth in the same breath with muhammad did mohammed make an atonement for your sins was buddha the very brightness of his glory was confuses the incarnation of god himself have you no sense of the greatness of the salvation that god has given to you in jesus christ and if we are not satisfied with that if we protest that god has not done enough

that he's been too narrow-minded and not broad-minded enough to accommodate all of our own preferences and so you neglect the riches of christ the author of hebrews asks the rhetorical question how can you escape escape what how can you escape the judgment of god if you neglect so great a salvation it's rhetorical because the answer is obvious the answer is you can't and then the author canvasses the history of those who were devoted to the true things of god and who paid in many cases with their lives who were eaten by lions and cut in

half and and had their heads dashed against the stone and and were martyred in this manner and in that manner and then goes through the roll call of the heroes of faith who lived a life of faith in the in the midst of an unbelieving world people like abraham people like rahab people like joseph people like david people like gideon and so on and we go through that roll call of the saints and that is followed by the supreme exhortation seeing then that we are encompassed by such a cloud of witnesses then the call to

perseverance we have not yet resisted to blood but we are to live in faith you