This Sunday we turn our attention to book of Hebrews. The Bible readings will be Heb. 1:1-4; 13:15-25. These, when read, focus our attention on the person and work of Christ. It is here, with God's work in Christ, that the author of Hebrews begins his ‘short exhortation' (Heb. 13:22) and it is with Christ, the Great Shepherd of the sheep that he brings the letter to a close in a magnificent benediction. In between these starting and ending points, which act like bookends to all the intervening material, he draws us to Christ again and again. As he does so he never loses the urgency of his pastoral exhortation on the one hand, or the great hope he has in Christ for his readers on the other.

Far from being a book whose setting and relevance is confined to first century Jewish converts, Hebrews is a book of great significance for each generation of believers. The issues faced by the book's first century audience are still seen, in principle, in countless situations today. Who among us and which of our congregations have not been affected by some of the same problems as the Hebrews? Dullness of hearing; slothfulness of action, especially in the matter of love; the temptation to draw back from Christ and his people in times of persecution; the inroads of unbelief that may lead to a hard heart; the longing for a safe refuge in the face of suffering; the security given to us by the things that are seen rather than the hope of eternal unseen things; the tug and pull of our familiar culture and its mores; the propensity to ‘drift away' from the truth; these and many other related experiences have been the continual experience of the Church. We need to hear, then, the message of Hebrews afresh.

In the sermon for this week we will give a general introduction to Hebrews under the headings culture; conflict; conscience and Christ. The pull of culture is immense. This is especially so where the three great cultural shaping and preserving influences (upbringing, law and worship) are closely related. These act as mutual reinforcers to such a degree that it is virtually impossible to compute their power, or to break the hold that culture has over us. Where that culture is challenged, it leads to conflict. Many and varied are the forms of persecution, ostracism, rejection and banishment that the people of God have suffered. Why? Because Christ has met them, effecting a ‘cultural meltdown' in which his nurture, law and worship are greater than those things we have learned from our father's knee. In that conflict the conscience (which truly does ‘make cowards of us all') is stirred up, as at any time of suffering. Underneath all our self preservation, fear, anxiety and desire for visible security lies the fear of death. Under the fear of death lies the fear of judgment. The roots of the fear of judgment lie in the unsettlement of troubled conscience. The matter of conscience, given such powerful attention in this book, is of universal importance. Without the conscience being pacified because of the work of the God in the Son, there is no resting place. In Hebrews, the exposition of the new covenant in its superiority over the old rests heavily on the effectiveness of the new to cleanse and purify the conscience, once and for all.

By the nature of the case then, the constant focus in the letter is on Christ. He is the transformer of culture, the refuge in times of conflict and the one who brings peace to conscience so that the suffering does not drive us back to the bolt hole of our old haunts and habits. This is why there is so much attention in Hebrews to Jesus, in the glory of his person and the fullness of his work. This is why there is such consistent exhortation to ‘consider' him; to ‘fix our eyes on' him, to ‘hear his voice', to ‘not drift away' and to ‘hold fast' to him in our confession. He is indeed the author and perfector of our faith. It would be a tragedy, therefore, if we came to the book of Hebrews as a source book for our theological formulations simply, or as a reference guide to the practices of the Jews under the old covenant arrangements. In Hebrews we want to meet the Son himself, coming to us in the Word and Spirit, drawing us to the Father in our worship.

There are many good commentaries available on Hebrews, and these deal with many technical matters such as setting, date, authorship, structure etc. These you can read and research at your leisure. It is not our place in a series of Sunday sermons to give detailed attention to these things.

However, as an extra resource, you may like to check out this link http://www.newcreation.org.au/books/covers/310.html
Here you will find a very simple, but well researched, ‘running commentary' on the text, which can be downloaded for free. It is not a technical commentary in any way, but aims to give a very accessible reading of the text in a distilled and succinct manner. I commend it to you as a wonderfully useful resource.