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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
Reading the Old Testament in Light of Hebrews with Michael Allen
In this episode, Nate Claiborne and Michael Allen continue their deep dive into the book of Hebrews, focusing on its rich connections to the Old Testament. They explore how Hebrews serves as a bridge between the two testaments, highlighting the importance of cross-references in understanding the text. The hosts explain that nearly a quarter of the New Testament consists of direct quotes or allusions to the Old Testament, making tools like cross-references essential for fully grasping the depth of the message. They liken these references to musical samples or cinematic homages—elements that gain significance when the audience recognizes their original context.
The discussion also touches on how Hebrews presents Jesus as the fulfillment and superior figure over Old Testament leaders, priests, and prophets, particularly emphasizing His role as the ultimate high priest and final sacrifice for sin. Beyond this, the hosts point out Hebrews' dual use of the Old Testament: it not only highlights Christ’s superiority but also offers examples of faithful living through figures like Abraham, Sarah, and Noah. They stress that these stories serve as models for Christians today, encouraging perseverance in faith. As the conversation unfolds, they also hint at future episodes that will tie these lessons from Hebrews into the church’s upcoming study of the book of Numbers.
Welcome to another episode of the All of Life podcast. I'm your host, Michael Kronenberg, and once again I'm here with. Michael Allen. How are we doing?
Speaker 2:Mike, I'm doing great. Glad to be talking with you today.
Speaker 1:I know this is our much promised. We mentioned it last time we were together that we were going to be recording again, and now here we are.
Speaker 2:Folks have been waiting on it. I hope they have, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean for one thing the All of Life podcast. We were kind of on hiatus a little bit.
Speaker 2:But the day has come.
Speaker 1:We're back weekly episodes. So, man, so here we are. Yeah, we're into the month where, you know, we're getting more and more comfortable with Hebrews. You know, we talked a lot about some of the context and ways of appreciating it last time we were together, and today we're going to do a little bit more of a deep dive on the connections between Hebrews and the Old Testament, particularly as it helps us read the Old Testament, and you were talking last time about cross-references, so we want to just double-click on that a little bit, just make sure that it's clear what we're talking about there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the New Testament, roughly 22% 25% of it, depending on quite how you count are words, phrases and sentences taken from the Old Testament. That's a massive amount, whether it's overtly quoting or it's more subtly alluding to Scripture before. And one way most Bibles whether you're looking at it digitally or you're looking at a hard copy in front of you they're going to help clue you into that is that they're going to have an apparatus on the page. In many it'll be a central column, perhaps between two larger columns of text, or perhaps you have one column of text that's larger and there are marginal notes to various scriptures along the side, or perhaps it's all down at the bottom of the page like footnotes and there are marginal notes to various scriptures along the side, or perhaps it's all down at the bottom of the page like footnotes. There are different ways this occurs and, of course, often digitally.
Speaker 2:It's going to be something you hover over, that's a marker, and suddenly it appears on the screen. In any event, whichever form it is, those are gifts because, like me, I assume most others don't have the entirety of the Old Testament memorized. Not yet at least, Even if you did, you wouldn't immediately recognize the random phrase or line, even if you did know it right.
Speaker 2:So we're all at a disadvantage in that regard. We don't have it all memorized and we wouldn't recognize it all even if we did, and so we've got the gift of folks who've done hard work and they've presented it to us there that, as we're working through Hebrews 1, we will hit a range of references and we can be prompted to look back to this text, to that chapter, and they're like hyperlinks. Whereas you're surfing here, you find something that's adjacent and related there. That doesn't mean everything is equally significant and identically important, but it does give you the range of relevant resources or texts that are going to be important to understand what's going on, and so making sure you've got a Bible that you read that has that before you is really important. You may read another Bible without cross-references just to read quickly or to meditate, but when you want to actually be able to glean and think and study and learn, cross-references are about as important as anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I mean, I'm a big fan of the reader editions of the Bibles where it's getting it closer to the way a normal book looks, where it's just text and chapter headings, and I think those are really great for devotional reading, meditation, moving from reading to prayer. But, like you say, if you're trying to study, which is really a different mode of engaging scripture, you want those cross-references Because, among other things, as we were talking a little bit before we recorded, it lets you into the equivalent of an inside joke. It before we recorded it lets you into the equivalent of an inside joke. Like there are things being said that if you don't know the context for it's like, well, I can kind of make sense of the words on the page, but maybe there's a deeper meaning to what it is, because it's referring back to something I wasn't around for.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, I mean probably, like me, many people have lived in a bunch of different cities over the course of their lives. I think I'm in number seven now where.
Speaker 2:I've been for multiple years and that means most of us, unless we stay in one place with one tribe. We've gotten familiar to the feeling of meeting a new group of people, being welcomed but even realizing however welcoming and hospitable they are. There are going to be points where they use a phrase or they refer to some term and it's not meant to be secret, but it is an inner reference to which you're not yet privy and you've got to ask or they've got to offer, or there's going to be some element of depth that you're just missing. You might catch that. Clearly it was a funny reference or a serious and grave one.
Speaker 2:You can catch the affect, but you don't know anything about what's prompting that. All of us know that feeling which makes us feel like I'm here but I'm not fully here. I'm tracking but I know I'm missing something I might further track. That's what it's like to read Hebrews without an awareness of those scriptural hyperlinks, those cross-references, the earlier scriptures of the Old Testament that it's working with, and so the more we can get familiarity there, the more we can appreciate and track with the fuller richness and beauty of exactly what it's doing. What it's saying is still the case and where it's saying some things are now new and distinct.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because Hebrews really is. I think we mentioned this last time when we were talking about. Just If you can just look at the text, even without these cross-references, you're seeing, depending on how your text is formatted, all of these obvious quotes from the Old Testament. And you brought up the when we were talking before. It's like music samples. It's like, yeah, I kind of recognize that riff. Oh, that's because it's from this song in the 60s and this hip-hop artist has sampled it. He's taken a piece of it and made it part of a new song, and his new song is maybe better than the old thing, but it's doing something different than the old thing, but it's still in continuity with it because it's woven in this piece of an older song into the newer song. And the author of Hebrews is doing that all sorts of Old Testament text, weaving them into his argument, making something new. Yep.
Speaker 2:We experience that often in terms of sampling and worship I mean a number of the songs we regularly sing are taking classic hymns, resetting them obviously with new instrumentation, new arrangement, but also often with new refrains or adapting language for various reasons. Either it likely wouldn't communicate or be understood, or it's being merged or combined with some other statement. We encounter this all the time, not just in pop culture, hip hop music, but even in the kind of hymns and songs that we sing together in church. And there's something too folks who know the older hymn can see what new emphasis is being given when it's slightly adapted or rearranged Right.
Speaker 1:And just to underscore something you said earlier, it's not that Hebrews is an anomaly in the New Testament, in that Paul is just when he's writing. He's just coming up with stuff on the spot. He's doing a lot of this too. What we're trying to underscore, what we're trying to emphasize, is that Hebrews is doing it in a more intensive way than other epistles, the Gospels. Matthew is doing a lot of reference back to the Old Testament, but not quite in the same degree as the author of Hebrews is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally. The prophets of the Old Testament do this. They don't make up stuff. When they challenge the people in their sin, they go to the law, the Pentateuch, jesus if anyone could have just said what he thought, it's the incarnate Son of God. But Jesus instills this idea of teaching by means of using the Torah that came before him, learning from him Paul, peter, all the others this is across the New Testament. Hebrews, along with Matthew and John's account of the gospel. They're the most intense versions, and probably Hebrews more than any other, and so if we can learn how to pay attention to this feature here, it's going to help us as we read across and listen to the preaching on the rest of the New Testament.
Speaker 2:Another way to think about it is to say, of course, the whole Word of God is given by God to build us up, to form us. At the same time, there are some parts of the Bible, certain books, that are like central hubs, so directly connected to so many others that when you know them and you know how to navigate them, they help you not only grasp what they say, but they help you know how to grasp what others say. Haggai is written for your good. It's the inspired Word of God, it plays a distinct and crucial role.
Speaker 2:Deuteronomy is not only that, but it is so connected to so many other parts of the Bible that knowing how Deuteronomy works opens a lot of other doors, which Haggai itself doesn't. Hebrews is like that. Like Deuteronomy, like some other central books, many of which that we've studied Genesis, romans, etc. It not only gives you one remarkable witness, but because it is so directly tied to the teaching of others, especially the Old Testament, it helps you know how to hear them appropriately too. So it really repays study and it really repays attentive listening and reading to that level of its communication, how it's drawing on and developing earlier teaching, earlier scripture.
Speaker 1:Right, right, and so we. I probably don't want to go too deep in the weeds in this, but I know some of the arguments around Hebrews was that it originally was a sermon and even if it's not totally that we do want to remember. These letters in the New Testament were originally mainly heard in corporate worship and were digested, internalized, meditated upon in that way.
Speaker 2:And that's a setting in which we want to be alert to the ways it uses the Old Testament you mentioned. There are some spots where it quotes things at length, where there's an indentation. For instance, you know, jeremiah 31, 31 to 34, a whole paragraph gets quoted by the time we're seven, eight chapters in and it gets quoted and then it gets discussed and explained or interpreted to us. That's a formal quotation of significant length. And there are other formal quotations where your text will surely put it in quotation marks, it'll perhaps indent and so forth.
Speaker 2:But there's a lot of other spots where, as with any sermon, someone is not saying you know, here's what Jeremiah says in chapter 31, but they simply use a word or phrase or oftentimes a range of words and phrases from an earlier scripture, and we see this too in Hebrews. Oftentimes it's alluding to a passage or a set of passages, even when it never exactly quotes it at any length. So we want to be alert to two kinds of ways the Old Testament comes up that formal quotation, which is more obvious, and, on the nose, the more subtle allusion, which is also really important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, those make me think of the way a lot of movies work where a director wants to do an homage to a director that was influential to him, important yeah, those make me think of the way a lot of movies work where there's, you know, a director wants to do an homage to a director that was influential to him, and so there'll be a scene in his movie it's not a sample, so he's not doing what the musician's doing where he straight up takes a piece of the old song and puts it in a new song, but he does a scene where some of the way the characters are interacting or the props, it suggests the classic one.
Speaker 1:I don't have a ton of great examples, but if anyone's seen the Godfather, there's the horse head that ends up in the bed. I'm not going to explain all the context for it, but you know there's an episode of Modern Family where, you know, a stuffed toy horse head ends up in somebody's bed and it's you know. You have to know that it's referring back to this movie, otherwise it's not quite as funny and it's kind of a little weird and off-putting, even Yep, and we all communicate in those ways regularly, in our own intentional and thought-out ways and oftentimes intuitive and spontaneous ways.
Speaker 2:So we want to be alert to that. We also want to be alert to Hebrews uses the Old Testament really to two different effects. Right. Oftentimes people interpreting Hebrews talk about how it's a Christ-centered vision of the Old Testament. That's true, but to catch that we need to appreciate the full range of what Christ-centered means. To catch that we need to appreciate the full range of what Christ-centered means.
Speaker 2:On the one hand, and most obviously, hebrews talks about the way Jesus is greater or superior than a number of major figures from the Old Testament Moses or the law, the angels, the high priests, etc. You have these great, valued figures central to the religion of the Israelites, commanded and blessed by God. Hebrews doesn't dismiss them. None of them get bashed, they're not dissed, they're not challenged, they're simply relativized. Jesus is greater than each of them, which presumes they are each good, they're a good provision of God, but Jesus is the fulfillment or the greater instantiation of each. Most fully.
Speaker 2:Of course, hebrews chapter 5 all the way through Hebrews chapter 10 are one long argument that Jesus is the great high priest and the great sacrifice, and while we continue to give sacrifices of thanksgiving and praise, he has completed or fulfilled the need for sacrifices for sin and guilt, and that's the most blunt and extended and rich argument for him fulfilling that need for blood as an offering in the place of sin and guilt. That's why you ought not go back to synagogue worship or temple worship. That's why you ought to remain on the Christian way. That's why you ought to keep running the race set before you. That's central to the main point of Hebrews, and that's one of these profound examples of Jesus as the greater and final character in a long train that ran through the Old Testament, whether it's a prophet, a priest, a king, a leader, etc. That's not the only way Hebrews talks about the Old Testament, though, and it's pretty amazing. Right after that long argument from chapter 5 through 10, hebrews 11 sounds very different, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:Which we're going to be spending. I think we're spending the month of May. Maybe we're going to linger there for a little bit.
Speaker 2:And Hebrews 11, and then parts of 12 and 13,. They look to the Old Testament and they Especially chapter looks at so many different stories very briefly with one thing in mind how, by faith, so-and-so did such-and-such. They do lots of different things. They build boats, they let spies into the city, they do a range of verbs or actions, but in every case Hebrews is drawing out they're living by faith. And it does so because we, looking to that great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us, we're to run the race up before us. We're to imitate not necessarily their boat building or letting spies into the city, not the particular action per se, but the faith that motivates their living. We're to live likewise by faith, and here we've got use of the Old Testament as a set of examples. So we often talk at New City about how we're called not just to make disciples, but disciples who make disciples.
Speaker 2:Yes, the generational yeah and that means we need to be ready to say follow me as I follow Christ. And we're not the first people to think that or experience that, of course. And Hebrews models this idea of how we can look back, and it goes all the way back to Genesis, to Noah, to Enoch, to Abram and Sarah and so forth. We can see there are people who have been models of imitation. They're sinners, they have sometimes pretty flagrant screw-ups that Scripture will even talk about at times, but they're also models of faith and we're called not to model or imitate their idiosyncrasies but to run the race set before us in a way that likewise lives by faith, but to run the race set before us in a way that likewise lives by faith. And so Hebrews does present the Old Testament, so we see Jesus fulfilling things as the greatest and superior version of it. Hebrews also uses the Old Testament to model Christian living by faith as we follow Abram, Sarah, Rahab, Noah and so forth, Even the innumerable anonymous persons who, nonetheless, which even get mentioned, which do get mentioned and do play a role, even if they have no fame and no grandiosity in the wider sphere, and Hebrews itself tells us those examples from the Old Testament are models for more recent things.
Speaker 2:Chapter 12 turns to Jesus. He's not just one who, by faith, did one thing, he's the author and perfecter of faith and he, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising its shame. He's the ultimate and only sinless example of faith. And then chapter 13 says remember your leaders, those who taught you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, Because Jesus, the object of faith, doesn't change. I can look to my pastors and teachers and parents and elder friends who've modeled faith for me and again, I'm not going to imitate everything about them, but I'm going to observe how they live by faith in that Jesus and knowing Jesus doesn't change. I can now remember and imitate that faith in my own life and try and model it for my kids, friends and others. I might disciple.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and that exemplary way of reading that you're highlighting here. You know, in our McShane Bible reading plan we've just been in, we've been in a variety of texts, but a lot of us have been in 1 Corinthians, and 1 Corinthians 10 is one of those texts that is pointing us back to things from the Old Testament that are, you know, paul's very explicit. These were written as examples for us and the text that he's it's a little ironic I think we may have mentioned this on podcast before. The text that he's talking about are in Numbers, which is where most Bible reading plans, if they didn't die.
Speaker 1:In Leviticus they die in the wilderness in Numbers. But that's where we're going to be this fall, and so there's some continuity we've alluded to it a few times of being in Hebrews. The way that we're going to be experiencing it this spring is kind of a setup for the way we're going to spend time in numbers in the fall.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's the one big negative example. In Hebrews, Chapter 11 and 12 and 13 give you these remarkable positive examples. Hebrews 3,. It tells the story of that generation that was alive at the beginning of Numbers and they'd started with promise. They followed Moses out of Egypt. They walked through the sea.
Speaker 2:They experienced such deliverance. Miriam sings a great song. They believe God, trust his servant Moses, but they grumble repeatedly, they complain repeatedly and we're told they die short of the land and it's because of unbelief. And Hebrews says that as a warning lest we likewise fall into that. And so it does give this negative example, and Hebrews is going to help model us and prepare us as a congregation to explore that more fully this fall as we journey more patiently through the intricate turns and twists of the book of Numbers, as it does tell the sad and tragic death of that old generation, but then it also points to the birth of a new promised generation. That's right, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, we'll have to wait till this fall to get there, but in the meantime we'll hopefully keep digesting Hebrews and using some of the insights that we've gleaned from just the way you've pointed us to using the cross-references. I remember last episode we talked about Calvin as a sure guide to making sense of Hebrews and just hearing the preached word week in and week out through the spring of the same you.
