So, you have to imagine how Hebrew people who had the Mosaic law baked into their culture, trying to live right and devout would have difficulty embracing this because their whole lives they’ve been taught a different way. And now they have to kind of open of their eyes and wake up to something new that God is doing in the world, and realize that they’re the first ones in. So, it’s not like this group mentality where something is over time been brought into culture, like we experience now in our faith. They’re like the first ones. And so, this is a big step of faith forward. So, like if someone came along and started saying okay all of you Gentile believers you now need to practice animal sacrifice. God is doing a new thing and we’re going back to the old way. But it’s a new thing and you need to offer these sacrifices. Right, that would be hard for us to get our minds around. In the same way that it would be difficult for them to make that step forward, even though, even though this was supposed to happen, even though there was precedent for this new thing to come. All kinds of new things are coming down the pipe, just like they are now. And so, we can see the tension in this, that we don’t normally see without context, because this is just a doctrinal statement about our faith, like we…we understand these things. That like that Jesus was the sacrifice once and for all, his blood covers all sins for all time, we no longer need to sacrifice. Like that’s the normal way of thinking. But if it weren’t, right, we’d have to take some time to be able to move in that direction, prayerfully. And yet, the writer of Hebrews is skilled enough to continually look back into the sacred Hebrew Scriptures. So, when we’re talking about Melchizedek, we were talking about Psalm 110. But all throughout there’s these references back to prophetic utterances that are revealing that this is what’s happening and it’s happening right now. So, Psalm 40 is quoted today as a prophetic utterance supporting what they’re saying. Jeremiah chapter 31 is quoted today as a prophetic utterance to show this is what’s happening. And for we who are so far removed from this time, like we can get the book of Romans and we can get the book of Hebrews together and read them and go like, there. There is the complete doctrine of the Christian faith. But what’s really going on historically is that Paul is out moving among the Gentiles, the gospel is spreading like wildfire among the Gentiles. The Jewish people, the Hebrew people are having a much more difficult time embracing this, and for the most part they’re not embracing this, but this letter to the Hebrews is intended to be circulated, and wrestled with, and talked about among those people. This is the document to those people to explain all of this in a very Hebrew centric context. So, it’s not just a book of theological understandings and doctrines. It’s a very missional letter offering language to explain the good news to a people who had rejected Jesus at face value. But because of all that came afterward, we’re considering. So, we have the book of Hebrews as the basis for so much Christian doctrine. But the story that kind of lingers here behind the story is the tension that arises when God begins to do a new thing. So, if we go back to the time when the book of Hebrews was written, God is doing a new thing, and the writer of Hebrews is using the Scriptures to show how that works. And in the process, it’s setting aside old things. In this case, the whole sacrificial system.
Daily Readings and Commentary from the Daily Audio Bible