Hughes Hebrews (2 volumes in 1 / ESV Edition)

An Anchor for the Soul
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4335-3845-2
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 544 Seiten

Reihe: Preaching the Word

The book of Hebrews conveys a double dose of spiritual power: it not only presents the supremacy of Jesus Christ unlike any other New Testament book, but it also repeatedly demands a heart response from the reader. No one can study Hebrews and not grow spiritually as he or she comes face to face with God's one and only Son. In this insightful commentary, readers will find a gold mine of helpful discussion related to a book of the Bible that is easily misunderstood and often overlooked. With divisions and outlines that are never forced but flow naturally from the text, this updated volume in Crossway's Preaching the Word series will be a great resource for anyone studying or teaching the book of Hebrews. Part of the Preaching the Word series.

R. Kent Hughes (DMin, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is senior pastor emeritus of College Church in Wheaton, Illinois, and former professor of practical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hughes is also a founder of the Charles Simeon Trust, which conducts expository preaching conferences throughout North America and worldwide. He serves as the series editor for the Preaching the Word commentary series and is the author or coauthor of many books. He and his wife, Barbara, live in Spokane, Washington, and have four children and an ever-increasing number of grandchildren.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hughes, R. Kent

Leseproben

1

The Eloquence of God

HEBREWS 1:1, 2a

C. S. LEWIS MEMORABLY PORTRAYED the growing Christian’s experience of an ever-enlarging Christ in his Chronicles of Narnia. Lucy, caught up in her spiritual quest, saw the lion Aslan—Christ—shining white and huge in the moonlight. In a burst of emotion Lucy rushed to him, burying her face in the rich silkiness of his mane, whereupon the great beast rolled over on his side so that Lucy fell, half-sitting and half-lying between his front paws. He bent forward and touched her nose with his tongue. His warm breath was all around her. She gazed up into the large, wise face.

“Welcome, child,” he said.

“Aslan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.”

“That is because you are older, little one,” answered he.

“Not because you are?”

“I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”1

Expanding souls encounter an expanding Christ! And this is why I am particularly enthused about this study volume on the book of Hebrews, for that epistle has a double dose of growth-producing power—first, because it presents the greatness of Christ as no other New Testament writing does, and, second, because it repeatedly demands a response from the reader. Seriously considered, Hebrews will make us grow and find a bigger Christ.2

No New Testament book has had more background research than Hebrews, and none has spawned a greater diversity of opinion. There is, of course, broad agreement about several of the most important things. Virtually all agree that the grand theme of this epistle is the supremacy and finality of Christ.

A consensus also exists regarding the general identity of the recipients: they were a group of Jewish Christians who had never seen Jesus in person, yet had believed. Their conversion had brought them hardship and persecution with the result that some had slipped back into Judaism. And thus the purpose for writing was to encourage them to not fall away, but to press on (cf. 2:1ff.; 3:12ff.; 6:4ff.; 10:26ff.; and 12:15ff.).3

There is also universal agreement, first expressed by Origen, that “Only God knows certainly” who wrote this letter. There is also agreement that the author, whoever he was, was a magnificent stylist with an immense vocabulary and a vast knowledge of the Greek Old Testament.

So there is general agreement as to the theme, the purpose, the spiritual status of the recipients, and the anonymity and ability of the author. But from here the mystery darkens, for no scholar has yet proven the exact destination or occasion of the letter—though many contemporary scholars tentatively propose that the letter was written to a small house-church of beleaguered Jewish Christians living in Rome in the mid-sixties before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple.

The respected New Testament authority William Lane, employing this thesis, has proposed a brilliant historical reconstruction that I think accords with the internal pastoral concern of the letter and makes it come alive.4 Hebrews, he notes, was written to a group of Jewish Christians whose world was falling apart. Their Italian locus is most probable because in the closing paragraph of Hebrews the author conveys the greetings of several Italian Christians who were with him (13:24), thus supporting the idea that the harried little church was on Italian soil—very likely in or around Rome.

Their Christianity had not been a worldly advantage. Rather, it set them up for persecution and the loss of property and privilege, and now could possibly even cost them their lives.

We know they had already paid a price for their initial commitment to Christ. As the writer recalls in 10:32–34:

But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.

This description of their earlier sufferings fits well into the picture of the hardships that came to Jewish Christians under Claudius in AD 49. Suetonius’ Life of the Deified Claudius records that “There were riots in the Jewish quarter at the instigation of Chrestus. As a result, Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome” (25.4). “Chrestus,” historians believe, is a reference to Christ, and the riots and expulsion occurred when Jewish Christians were banished from the synagogue by the Jewish establishment.

Now, as the author of Hebrews writes, fifteen years have gone by since the Claudian persecution, and a new persecution looms. No one has been killed yet, but 12:4 raises the possibility that martyrdom may soon come—“In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”

Lane proposes here that the circumstances accord well with the Neronian persecution that would come with the great fire of Rome in AD 64. The historian Tacitus records that Nero made the Christians scapegoats to remove suspicion from himself (Annals of Rome 15:44). Lane concludes, “In the year AD 64 martyrdom became an aspect of the Christian experience in Rome. There were several house-churches in the city, and the group addressed in Hebrews had not yet been affected by the emperor’s actions. But the threat of death and arrest was real.”5

The writer of Hebrews was writing to admonish and encourage his friends, a small group of Jewish Christians who were scared stiff! Some had begun to avoid contact with outsiders. Some had even withdrawn from the worshiping community altogether (10:25). The author feared there might be those who, if arrested, would succumb to the conditions of release—a public denial of Christ (6:6; 10:29). The tiny house-church was asking some hard questions: Did God know what was going on? If so, how could this be happening to them? Did he care? Only God could protect them, but where was he? Why did he not answer? Why the silence of God?

The letter arrived, and word was sent out. The congregation gathered. Perhaps no more than fifteen or twenty were seated or standing around the house. All were quiet. The reader began what has been called “the most sonorous piece of Greek in the whole New Testament”:6 “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (vv. 1, 2a). Through these magnificent words the beleaguered church was brought face-to-face with the God who speaks—the eloquence of God. God spoke in the past, and he speaks in the present in his Son. And this eloquence, the ultimate eloquence of the final word in God’s Son, would bring them comfort in the midst of life’s troubles.

God’s Eloquence in the Past

Cosmic Eloquence

Even before the prophets of old, the cosmos was filled with God’s eloquence. One summer one of my associate pastors and I were walking home together on a particularly clear night. We looked at the North Star, the Big Dipper, the Pleiades. My fellow-minister identified the Dog Star Canis Major (Sirius), the brightest star in both hemispheres. Then we began to joke about how all this happened “by chance.” The vastness and precision of our cosmos declares the necessity of a magnificent God!

The argument from order is overwhelming. If I put ten pennies in my pocket and number them one to ten, then put my hand back in my pocket, my chances of pulling out the number one penny would be one in ten. If I place the number one penny back in my pocket and mix all the pennies again, the chances of pulling out penny number two would be one in a hundred. The chances of repeating the same procedure and coming up with penny number three would be one in a thousand. To do so with all of them (one through ten in order) would be one in ten billion! Noting the order and design of our universe, Kepler—the founder of modern astronomy, discoverer of the “Three Planetary Laws of Motion,” and originator of the term satellite—said, “The undevout astronomer is mad.” David sang:

The heavens declare the glory of God,

and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Day to day pours out speech,

and night to night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words,

whose voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out through all the earth,

and their words to the end of the world. (Psalm 19:1–4)

The cosmic eloquence of God is deafening, but many will not hear it. And even those who hear, hear partially. As Job said, “Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand?” (Job 26:14). The eloquence of God is always there for the believer willing to hear it. So often those who have heard it best have heard it when life was darkest—perhaps while persecuted or in prison. Bunyan, Rutherford, Bonhoeffer, Solzhenitsyn, Colson—

all looked through the bars

and saw the stars.

Prophetic Eloquence

God’s people have always had more than the eloquence of the heavens, for they have had the prophets. “Long ago,” says the...