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The NewCity Orlando All of Life Podcast
The All of Life podcast, hosted by Nate Claiborne, provides weekly episodes that help further our mission to call, form, and send disciple-makers. At NewCity, we want to see Orlando flourish by filling it with people who say "Follow me as I follow Jesus in all of life."
The NewCity Orlando All of Life Podcast
Introduction to Hebrews with Michael Allen
In this episode of the All of Life podcast, Nate Claiborne and Michael Allen dive into the New Testament book of Hebrews, offering background context and exploring its significance within Christian scripture. They describe Hebrews as a unique combination of sermon and letter, mysterious in its origins, and rich with Old Testament references—especially around themes of sacrifice, holiness, and Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment of those practices. The discussion emphasizes the importance of understanding Old Testament concepts to fully grasp Hebrews' arguments, as the author assumes the audience’s familiarity with Jewish traditions and sacrificial systems.
The hosts also explore the historical backdrop of the letter, suggesting it was likely written in the 60s AD during a period of persecution, possibly under Nero’s reign. This pressure led some early Christians to consider returning to Jewish practices for safety, and Hebrews responds by affirming Jesus' superiority and the finality of His atoning sacrifice. They discuss the book’s deep influence on Christian theology, worship, and liturgy—especially its focus on perseverance, Christ’s role as the high priest, and the enduring importance of faith. For those wanting a deeper dive, they recommend John Calvin’s accessible and insightful commentary on Hebrews and encourage listeners to engage with cross-references to fully appreciate the book’s rich connection to the Old Testament.
Welcome to another episode of the All About Prime Test. I'm your host, tony Clayton, and today I'm with Michael Allen. How are we doing, mike?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. Glad to be talking about a new series.
Speaker 1:That's right. So we just started Hebrews this past Sunday. We're going to be hanging out here all the way until summer, in the Psalms, I think, given the way the calendar lines up. And so we're here today. We're going to give a little more background context and just some insights into the way Hebrews fits into Christian scripture, and I don't know what else we'll get into. We'll see where the conversation leads us.
Speaker 1:But you know, Ben preached on Hebrews, chapter one got us through that and you know just in the first part of two, but given our trajectory through this book, what do we need to? What do we really need to know that's going to help us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, you know, Hebrews is, on the one hand, one of the larger texts in the New Testament. There are lines from it that perhaps are familiar Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. Statements like that. At the same time, Hebrews is a bit of a funky text. Yeah, it's surprising and strange. In some respects it's like a sermon or a homily. In others it certainly ends like a letter.
Speaker 1:Right, though it doesn't all begin that way. It doesn't start.
Speaker 2:You're just off and running, and so it is this weird amalgam or hybrid of a couple different genres. It's mysterious, perhaps in many respects, largely because we don't know from where it comes. Many early Christians thought that it came from the Apostle Paul. There are lots of reasons why that might seem rather unlikely, in terms of a whole lot of differences from Paul's pretty typical and repeated style. But that is not to say that we've got a very good sense of where else it might be from from some named person we know in the early Church, or somebody whose name we don't know. And so, of course, in that regard it in many respects is a text that comes to us kind of like Melchizedek, without beginning or end, without a precise backdrop to it.
Speaker 1:Right and if we think about, we were in Romans for a couple springs and Romans has some very straightforward parts to it. It has some parts that there's a lot of wrestling you got to do to make sense of the flow of the argument, and Hebrews is kind of on par with that, but with the added element that it is drawing on a lot of Old Testament imagery that if you're not really familiar with, you get lost pretty quick in what the author's trying to say.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, and so there's a couple things to take from that One, and you and Ben had talked about this in an earlier podcast introducing the series. It's especially fitting for us as a congregation, having wrestled with Leviticus most recently in the.
Speaker 2:Old Testament, with all its teaching on sacrifice and blood and holiness. Now, to look at the text, more than any other in the New Testament, that talks about those very same things and about the way in which Jesus is the fulfillment of that, and so, in one sense, we ought to just observe, as you did there, how this is a great follow or a sequel. Another thing to observe is this reminds us and we'll have to explore this in another podcast this reminds us how much the Old Testament is a functional part of the argument, not just of the New Testament, but Jesus himself, In other words, the various apostles and writers of the New Testament. They didn't just happen to keep quoting the Old Testament. They clearly learned this from Jesus who, if ever there was somebody who could just say what he thought, it's the incarnate Son of God.
Speaker 1:He could just spout off and he would always offer the true statement the right read.
Speaker 2:Because I'm the incarnate Son of God. That's right. But his MO is always to say you've heard it said but I say to you to refer and quote even earlier Scripture Right. To refer and quote even earlier scripture Right. And clearly that has shaped this text through one of his followers who's written it.
Speaker 1:Right, and I think that's sometimes to our shame. It's easy for us to hang out in the epistles and the gospels, where it's a little more straightforward at times to make sense of what's going on in the text. And so, as we're not as much in the Old Testament, we're not prepared for a book like Hebrews that assumes you know what's going on with the sacrificial system and you know about these stories from the Old Testament and you know about these connections in the prophets and just sort of it doesn't explain it all. Just the author is assuming his audience knows it and you're his audience in this day and age, and so there's the assumption that you already know what's happening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:That said, I think Hebrews also, if we consider why it's written and what it's mainly about it does help demonstrate to us how pertinent the Old Testament still is for us, how pertinent the Old Testament still is for us. So it's worth asking why this text exists, why Hebrews is written, and, as best we can tell, sometime in the 60s, so roughly three decades after the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. Roughly one generation on, we encounter a situation where there are a group of people known as the Hebrews likely most think in the area of Rome and they're there in a time where, at moments, there's some intense persecution. It could be that this is the reign of Nero. That's perhaps a likely option, but it may be another time.
Speaker 2:Persecution is something that is always in the imagination of people in the Roman Empire. That doesn't mean it's a constant reality, either across space or across time. Persecutions tend to come in waves and in local settings, normally as a reaction to other issues. If a ruler is unpopular or if they've lost some other cause or battle, it's easy to get attention off you by blaming and going after others.
Speaker 2:And Christians are an easy target, and we do know there's a wave of persecution in the 60s. And in Hebrews 10, we read that these Hebrew Christians are commended for having not abandoned but cared for those who were imprisoned. And you got to know something about prisons in the Roman world. They don't have cafeterias. The state does not send you to club fed. This is not a much less a resort. It's not even a sustainable life unless others care for you. So family typically have to bring food to the imprisoned, and apparently there were some who were imprisoned for their faith, and others in the congregation or congregations have gone and provided for them, which may seem generous and innocuous, except the prison authorities would surely recognize people coming regularly to care for them and that many or most of them would not look like relatives, and they would pretty easily surmise that the reason they're coming and feeding these prisoners is precisely because they share the same faith, the very faith that was the reason for their imprisonment.
Speaker 2:So standing with these imprisoned Christians is a really dangerous thing and that's why they're to be commended and that's why they might have otherwise shirked that responsibility. If practicing the faith and persisting in it is so dangerous and potentially lands you in prison, you might be inclined to say perhaps I misjudged, perhaps I should go back the Jewish ways of old, perhaps I'd better take a lamb to worship this weekend. And that really explains why this text has to focus on the Old Testament and its fulfillment, the great central figures and realities of the Jews and how Jesus is superior or greater still, and in particular all the teaching on the atoning sacrifice of Christ.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the last thing you were saying about going back to taking a lamb to worship. I think it's worth noting, prior to the 60s right, that the Jews and the Christians were considered, at least from the Romans' point of view. These are kind of the same thing. They don't really we don't have to distinguish between them, and the Jewish people weren't subject to persecution because they were exempt, and as soon as there was a distinguishment between, I don't think distinguishment is a word but I used it anyway.
Speaker 2:No, but it communicates, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:And you know what I mean. It could be a word, could be a word as soon as the Christians were identifiable groups separate from the Jews. Now they don't have the same protections. They're liable to these persecutions that you're talking about. So it's a real strong yeah. I mean. It was safe back at the synagogue on Saturday. Like why do I want to open myself up to these?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and very quickly. You know, folks who are in one minority group are going to find that their way is going to be safer by distinguishing themselves from somebody who's an even more marginalized minority. Common temptation Sure.
Speaker 2:Living in a larger society and so this is going to shape Jewish-Christian relations over the next 60 to 70 years increasingly. But this is a time of acute pressure, of a real violent threat, and you know we can imagine having lived through other moments that might lead to anxiety or worry how much that can shape your sense of hope versus despair, of confidence versus uncertainty. And plainly the text aims to convey a sense that you need to persist, you need to endure, you need to run the race set before you, you need to not make shipwreck of your faith, you need to not fall in the wilderness as did the Israelites of old, but you need to persist and press on, precisely because you can know that, however hard today is, you know that today follows the day in which Jesus made a sacrifice once and for all. You can live on the far side of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so the passages you mentioned. But we also get the comfort we have in a high priest who knows our weakness and all of these other comfort passages. But they're set us alongside these warning passages as well that we could get into now we can circle back to in a little bit, as we're still unpacking some of the introductory matters.
Speaker 2:We oftentimes think, especially maybe, of Hebrews 6 as the most famous or infamous of these warning passages that's drawn a lot of attention and at times provoked a good bit of debate and controversy. It's actually one of five different warning passages and not necessarily the most severe. They seem to actually get more severe as you go. You know we want to keep in mind a couple things. One is a warning is not a promise of something happening. It's like a sign on the side of a road that tells you you know, if you go off the road, there's a decline there, you're going to fall down the side of a mountain or something. Seeing the sign is precisely what is meant to aid that not happening. And so we do want to observe.
Speaker 2:You know, the point of giving a warning is no projection of despair, it's no prophecy of a failure to come. It's in fact a you know, it's a warning sign. It's a early signal of how to continue, how to persist. That's surely an important thing for us to keep in mind here. It's also not the only thing offered. Warning's always surrounded by a range of other things that it follows from, and that it's accompanied by Things Jesus has done and things that we're told are going to continue to be the case.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so maybe our hope too in this series is that we're going to systematically work through the text, passage by passage, and see these warning passages in that context and see all these other pieces and how they all fit together over the course of this spring.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we ought to have a reaction that matches the nature of each section. You never want to treat a given section as though it's the whole picture or the whole view of Christianity in its entirety. But I ought to have a gravity that I feel when I encounter a warning. That is not the same as the kind of comfort I feel when I'm given a word of assurance. And apparently we see here in Hebrews, we see across the New Testament, we encounter across the entirety of the Bible. The more we read, god sees us needing all of those at different times and in different ways, and we want to increasingly become people who are receiving the totality of what Scripture offers us in that regard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we've talked a little bit about just the background context of this letter. We've sort of situated it in the New Testament. We've connected it a little bit to the old. You know, looking back at Leviticus we could look ahead to Numbers and how that's what we're. You know, ben and I discussed that very briefly but we know we're going to be in Numbers this fall and Hebrews is. There's some continuity there with some of the things Hebrews is talking about and some of the things that Numbers is going to confront us with. But maybe we could talk a little bit about just the I know this is a broad subject but I know you've got good insight in it the way Hebrews has been received in the Christian tradition, some of the influences it's had, authors that we could look to for more guidance and insight into making sense of the text.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been one of those texts that, not surprisingly, has been preached on and written about so very much. Some texts, of course, get undue attention for a range of reasons their scale and size, some particular theme or topic they explore. Some particular theme or topic they explore, or some historic moment where something was bound up with some big event or controversy or movement. Hebrews has really impacted the church in a whole range of ways. On the one hand, its central ideas are who Christ is and the nature of the atonement or sacrifice he offers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Aside from talking about the triune God, it's hard to get to more central matters than this particularly as you think about understanding the nature of the gospel of Jesus Christ and what's new about the New Testament of Jesus Christ and what's new about the New Testament?
Speaker 2:Really, there's no text that does that more fully and with more beauty and complexity and range than does Hebrews, and so it's gained remarkable influence in the church from the early centuries through the medieval era, the Reformation, to today, because of its focus on Christ and on atonement. It's also shaped a range of other things. On the one hand, hebrews has informed, not just thinking conceptually about worship, but oftentimes the very language we use in worship. We might think especially about the beautiful benediction at the end, speaking with respect to Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep. But Hebrews in various ways conveys language that has shaped liturgical traditions of a variety of Christian denominations and churches around the globe and through the centuries. That's been a really big impact, particularly language people use when they come to talking about the Lord's Supper, precisely because there we talk about body and blood and Hebrews more than any other New Testament texts talking about blood like Leviticus was.
Speaker 2:So there's Christ in atonement, there's liturgical language that gets used, especially in people's talk of the Lord's table. There's also been a long and steady stream of Hebrews being central for our understanding of the Christian life. The image of running the race set before you, the call to imitate the faith of the saints of old, these and so many other texts have really been elemental to the way Christians around the globe have thought about what it is to, as we often say at New City, invite someone to follow me as I follow Christ. Well, we're learning that, following those who've done that before us. Yes, and Hebrews, more than any other text, gives you just a litany of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Hebrews more than any other text gives you just a litany of that. Yeah, if you could suggest you know, if people really want to just immerse themselves in Hebrews this spring. So you know, we're going to have sermons on it every Sunday. You and I are going to record maybe another podcast or two giving some more background. But if somebody wanted you know a commentary I know there's tons of options out there but maybe from the range of more devotional to yeah, if you've really got some questions, this is a good. I mean, probably not John Owen's, what seven?
Speaker 2:volume Owen's a bit much. It's great but it's large. I would really commend John Calvin's commentary.
Speaker 2:Calvin's a remarkable commentator across the Bible and he's helpful. He's really marked by being a clear writer. He really aims at not getting overly complex and scholastic. He avoids a lot of jargon. He's got a great eye for the language, the style of each author, and Hebrews has a distinctive sort of style that he helps you catch and observes how that relates to other parts of the Bible that sound similar. And then, unlike John Owen and some others, calvin's remarkably merciful in his brevity and so he unpacks what you read in a paragraph or a chapter, but he only does it for two, three, four pages. You don't have to read a lot to see him guiding you through interpreting this or that statement. And I would say this is really central to many of Calvin's own greatest contributions as a theologian and one from our tradition. So I've myself actually researched his work on it and written multiple essays about Calvin's engagement of Hebrews, precisely because he strikes me as such an insightful and significant help in our trying to listen well.
Speaker 1:And for anyone that has not read anything by Calvin before, I just want to encourage people that you'll be surprised at how readable it is. There's some things you can read from 500 years ago that it's old English and you're not. I mean, it's not technically old English, but you're just like lost in what they're trying to say. But Calvin doesn't read like that at all.
Speaker 2:Not at all. Yeah, he's the easiest read. Some people think, well, he was a former lawyer, so he must sound sort of pedantic. Far from it. He's about as poetically minded a reader of the Bible as you'll find. He's brief, he knows when to land the plane and really he just helps point you to the specificities of the scriptural language itself and to help you really glory and wonder at some of the particular things that are said in a remarkable text like Hebrew. So I'd invite folks to read that. You can obviously get copies of that through your local Amazon or other sellers, but you can also find it free online in a range of places.
Speaker 2:So, access is not a problem for anybody.
Speaker 1:We'll put some links in the show notes for different avenues people might want to explore. To get there, as we're kind of thinking about, calvin's going to be a really helpful guide if people want to lean into it a little bit more. We've given background context on the book. Is there any other insight or wisdom advice you want to give to You'd want people of New City to think about, as we're spending this spring in Hebrews? Yep.
Speaker 2:A couple things. One would be, as you're following along, hebrews is going to be one where, if you don't already bring a text with you, now's a good time to make a practice of bringing a Bible or having a tablet where it's on it, because there are going to be points where you want to be able to follow the actual words and where you'll find preachers pointing you not just to the words in Hebrews but to the passages that it's quoting from. Yeah, and so it's always a good word to say we want to be folks who want to be looking at the Bible ourselves regularly, but this would be an especially important series where having access immediately is going to be a big help. That's one practical prompt. I think it's important we should realize when we're hearing a sermon on this or otherwise, we are listening. That's the main thing we're doing.
Speaker 2:So I don't want to have my head in my Bible when someone's reading Scripture from the front of the sanctuary. I want to look at them, listen to them, but it's really helpful to have my Bible so that, as the preacher points me to something, I can look and confirm, I can see and I can note things. I'm aiming to receive mainly the Word, but I want to be able to chew on it, meditate on it, jot down a note to go back to it, and having the Bible there, having the tablet, having a way to engage more personally and to follow up, is going to be incredibly helpful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I think if people, if you look at it, even on a tablet, like I look at stuff in Logos primarily but if you're in a print Bible, if it sets off things as quotes from the Old Testament, it doesn't take much flipping through Hebrews to see it's scattered all throughout. It's pulling from a psalm, it's pulling from Jeremiah, it's pulling from this, pulling from that and as we're going through this series we may refer back to hey, let's go look at the context in this psalm, this prophecy, this part of the Old Testament narrative that is going to help us understand a little bit more of what the author of Hebrews is doing when they pull that into the argument that they're making in their text.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that'd be. A second thing is and we'll talk about this more in a later podcast on how Hebrews engages the Old Testament, and you'll see it through various sermons you can view all sorts of cross-references in your Bible as amazing gifts, and you want to be alert to those. I wouldn't dare suggest that there's a single translation everybody should read. There's a bunch of good ones out there. We read from the ESV, from the pulpit, but that's by no means always the best on every verse, nor is it the only good option. There are a bunch of great ones. I would suggest, though, folks do want to have a Bible that's got cross-references.
Speaker 1:Yes, whether you're doing an.
Speaker 2:NIV, nasb, esv, you name it. You want to have those references, maybe running between two columns or along the margin, and those are there and you'll increasingly see in this Hebrew series. Those are there like hyperlinks where you can see where language, not just ideas, but the actual words in some form, are being drawn from other scriptures. And this is going to be a series where we're going to be moving across back and forth across the Bible, because so much of what Hebrews is trying to argue is it's a new time, a new era, a new day, and we need to appreciate what has changed and how we live in light of it, and that would really lead to a third thing I'd suggest.
Speaker 2:As we come to this as a congregation, we're in the next step, the next large step beyond our journey through Leviticus, and hopefully that raises some questions. We explored a whole lot of things in Leviticus. Why, on the surface, does it look like we don't do in worship some of the things that were discussed at such length? Why is it that the pastors get to lead at the Lord's table as they do, rather than going through so many of the intricacies, the protocols, the rituals that are described at the end of Exodus and then in Leviticus? That actually should be a real question. Why does our worship in some ways look markedly different? And Hebrews is the answer.
Speaker 2:Hebrews is going to point us to what ways still mark the faith of Abraham and our faith as being one, but also in what ways are we in a new era, a new time, and therefore they're markedly different administrations of the same grace, and so I'd want to invite people to think in light of what we explored earlier as a congregation, to ask those questions of, well, what do we do with that now? And to expect Hebrews to provide unique and singular insight there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really helpful and I think that really helps us think through how we're going to approach this as a congregation this spring. Well, mike, I appreciate you taking time to chat with me about Hebrews and giving us some background context, some insight for how to make sense of this, alongside hearing it preached week in and week out through the spring here, and we mentioned it a couple times. But I'll look forward to getting together with you next time to record and talk about how to read the Old Testament in light of Hebrews.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and hopefully we'll learn how it looks back and it'll prepare us also for numbers soon enough. That's right, which tells a story that Hebrews is going to talk about in chapters three and four. So there we go. Hopefully we'll find we keep benefiting.
Speaker 1:It's like we're planning this all out, so it all steps together.
