2022 - Amazing to me that the other plan  had me reading six full chapters of this intense book all in a single morning.  I did like the chronological arrangement of the OT, but it just went entirely too rapidly through the NT.  Will stick with this plan.

MSB Introduction to Hebrews, done the night before.  6 chapters is a lot on a Sunday morning!
The book's title, Hebrews, was taken from the traditional Greek title "To the Hebrews".  However, there is nothing within the book that says to whom it is written.  It was included when the NT books were formally brought together into one collection shortly after 100 A.D.

We really don't know who wrote the book.  Dad thought Paul wrote because...who else could have written such a book?  Among those who may have written it are Paul, Barnabas, Apollos, Priscilla,Aquila, and Clement of Rome.  MSB says none of these are "clearly" supported.  In 2:3, the writer includes himself among those people who had received confirmation of Christ's message from others, which appears to rule out someone like Paul as the writer, since he claimed that he had received such confirmation directly from God, rather than from men.  Even the early church had various opinions as to author, with no real consensus.  Best to accept the book as anonymous, but from the Holy Spirit, since it is in the NT.  The book uses the present tense when referring to the Levitical priesthood and to the sacrificial system, indicating that those were still in place when the book was written.  This dates it to sometime before 70 AD.  Other references lead scholars to date the book to around 67-69 AD.

There are no references to Gentiles or Gentile problems, but the book teems with references to the Levitical priesthood and sacrifices.  Likely, the intended audience was the Hebrews.  Most of that audience was likely converted, but among them there were surely those who were attracted to Christianity, but who were having a difficult time letting go of 6000 years of tradition.

It is certain that Christians were facing a period of intense persecution at this time - and Jews were also, since 70 AD was very near - and it is possible that they were contemplating various strategies to deflect that persecution.  "Demoting" Jesus to just an angel may have been one idea.  MSB says that Qumran had already set this precedent by the time Hebrews was written.  

Many possibilities exist for exactly where the audience was located.  The main point seems to be that if they were in Judea or Galilee, they were probably the generation after the death of Jesus, as they had not personally been around when he was.  (2:3,4).  The recipients were not "new converts" as such, but on some doctrine, they still  were on milk instead of solid food.  So "behind" in their learning.

Since so much of the book discusses the rites and rituals of the Levitical priesthood, a good understanding of the book of Leviticus is needed to properly interpret the book.  These awesome sentences as to the purpose of the Law:
"Israel's sin had continually interrupted God's fellowship with His chosen and covenant people, Israel.  Therefore, He graciously and sovereignly established a system of sacrifices that symbolically represented the inner repentance of sinners and His divine forgiveness.  However, the need for sacrifices never ended because the people and priests continued to sin.  The need of all mankind was for a perfect priest and a perfect sacrifice that would once and for all actually remove sin.  God's provision for that perfect priest and sacrifice in Christ is the central message of Hebrews."

Hebrews is a study in contrasts.  The imperfect and incomplete provisions of the Old Covenant, and the better provisions of the New Covenant.  

Under "Interpretive Challenges" MSB says we have to keep three recipient groups in mind as we read Hebrews.  There were 1) believers, 2) unbelievers who were intellectually convinced of the gospel, and 3) unbelievers attracted by the gospel and the person of Christ but who had reached no final conviction about Him.  If we don't keep in mind that these three groups are all "addressed" in Hebrews, we can get into interpretations inconsistent with the rest of Scripture.

The first group is characterized as suffering rejection and persecution by fellow Jews.  They were immature Christians tempted to hold to the symbolic and spiritually powerless rituals of the Law.  The second group believed the "basics" of the gospel, but had not truly trusted Jesus as savior.  They were intellectually persuaded, but spiritually uncommitted.  There are several specific references listed where this is the group being addressed:  2:1-3, 6:4-6, 10:26-29, 12:15-17.  The third group has had some exposure to the gospel but were not yet convinced even intellectually.  Chapter 9 is mostly written to them.

The most serious interpretive challenge is at 6:4-6.  The phrase "once been enlightened" is often taken to refer to Christians, and the warnings that follow have been interpreted to mean there is always a danger of losing one's salvation.  MSB says that in fact those addressed are NOT saved.  No terms used exclusively for believers are applied to them.  It is very possible that these had "gone forward" and made professions of faith, but had not exercised genuine saving faith.  Same thing in 10:26.  The reference is to apostate Christians, not believers.  

I think it might be helpful to keep the outline of this book in mind as it is read.  

Well...I would rather it wasn't so large, but at least it is in here without me having to type it all...

Chapter 1
So per the outline, we are going to see in today's reading that Jesus has a better name, and we will be introduced to Jesus being better than angels, firstly in that he is a greater messenger than the angels.
Starts off with a biography of Jesus.  This verse:
2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, [Heb 1:2-3 ESV]
The phrase "exact imprint of his nature" is interesting.  In the NASB it is translated "exact representation of his nature".  KJV and NKJV say "express image of his person".  
What are they all getting at with this phrase?  MSB says the phrase is used only here in the NT.  In extrabiblical literature, it was used for an engraving on wood, an etching in metal, a brand on animal hide, an impression in clay, and a stamped image on coins.  Apparently an attempt to describe the separate unity of the Father and the Son.  Maybe trying to get at the point that they both pre-existed creation, and so the writer mentions that it was through Christ that the world was created.  I read that note from Ezekiel I think that only God creates, or only "a god" creates.  God challenged idols to "create something" to prove they were gods.  

(2022 - There are a lot of these challenges to false gods in Jeremiah also.  False gods do not create.  Only one creator.  Creation by God and God alone is so vital in so many areas that we should be very careful about how we "accommodate" science into the process.  So many try to say that God "set in motion" the processes from which all the species - and indeed from which man himself - arrived.  And God could have done it that way...but the whole aim of that point of view seems to be to make unbelievers, and evolutionists, more comfortable with the concept of "creator-god" by making sure what we claim for him fits smoothly into our pre-existing beliefs about human origins.  I have a real problem with that.  The main problem I have is "death before sin".  You could allegorize it all and say that death was spiritual separation from God and not physical death at all...but how could that be so?  If you do this, then you can also say that hell itself is separation from God - that it is death in that sense, and not in the sense of eternal physical suffering and pain.  It is a slippery slope.  I don't have the answers to how it all fits together, but I know I do not believe that evolution gives rise to brand new species - nor did it ever - and I most certainly do believe that when the Bible says hell is a fire burning eternally it means flames and burning searing pain.  Else the rich man and Lazarus means...what?  If people live their whole lives "separated" from God and are not bothered, why would eternity the same way be a punishment?  No.  This is not what it means.)

2022 - I also printed out the J. Sidlow Baxter outline for Hebrews.  He has three main points, 1-7 are about Jesus - the New and Better Deliverer, 8-10:18 is about Calvary - the New and better Covenant, and 10:19-13 are about Faith - the True and better principle.
2022 - The subpoint for the first two chapters i "Jesus the God-Man - better than angels.  This corresponds pretty well with the outline above.

2022 - Also in vs 2, "he has spoken to us by his Son" as contrasted with His speaking to us by the prophets up until then.  This writer is saying that the things Jesus' said while he was here are as much "the words of God" as the OT scrolls were.  He is, at the very least, in this little phrase, making Jesus a prophet.
2022 - Where is the "picture" of Jesus sitting coming from?  Is there an OT throne that shows this?  A judgment where Jesus sits next to God?  You can't just throw out things like this without references.  MSB has no OT references to Christ seated or Messiah seated.  Shouldn't this be a reference to the OT rather than an assertion by an anonymous author that such is the case?  Hmm..in vss 8,9 the writer talks about "God's throne" being a reference to the throne of the Messiah in Psa 45:7.  If you have a throne, you sit.  But this doesn't make the Son's throne at the right hand of the Father's throne.  I have a hard time with this being about the Son because, first, it is a love song written "to the king".  And what about this verse:  9 daughters of kings are among your ladies of honor; at your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir. [Psa 45:9 ESV].  Now that has to be about an earthly king, yet the writer applies it to the Son.  And if I don't believe that, am I saying Hebrews is wrong?  I surely do not want to say that!

Chapter 1 offers many "proof texts" that God is higher than angels.  Angels are ministering spirits, Christ created all that is, and Christ will survive all these.  They are transient, Christ is eternal.  Intro said these OT quotes are almost all in Greek from the Septuagint, rather than from the Hebrew texts of those books.  Perhaps all this is a response - as per the intro - to what the community at Qumran was saying about Jesus.  We don't know if they truly believed and taught that Jesus was lower than the angels or if it was a way to avoid persecution by the Jews tagging on to Roman persecution. See tag "Jesus as creator".

2021 - Most of the quotes are from the Psalms.  So whoever wrote this - and wrote it to the Jews - is using only OT scripture, since that's all that really existed at the time and all they would have believed anyway.  I note also that Psa 45:7 here quoted calls the Messiah God, combining the two into one.  Thinking through this, it starts off making "the Son" and the Messiah the same person.  It has not as yet mentioned the name of Jesus.  First we are going to establish some facts about the Messiah.  And the first fact is that Messiah is higher than the angels.  We do that by contrasting scripture - which the Hebrews would have considered as God's own words - about Messiah with scripture about angels.  And the first quote is where it says the Messiah is God's own Son.  It says "I have begotten you".  This might well have been used back then to say that Christ was created at a later time than God.  In fact, I'm sure it is still claimed to mean that.  I can see Islam pointing to this and saying it is a corruption of the OT teaching of a monotheistic God.  So what we say today is that this is about the relationship within the Trinity of what our human limitations describe as a father/son relationship.  We would also say that the begotten part is about the incarnation, not about things that pre-existed creation.  And the father/son part means that the son will be submissive to the father in his actions and choices.  The son will not assert his will, but will do the father's will.  You know, you could type all day about this, but at the end of the day, I am convinced that no human mind can comprehend the way the Trinity works.  We can show that there is a Trinity - I have a good book on that - but the fact is that this is a supernatural relationship and we have no framework in which it will "fit".  So I will stop trying to explain it to myself.  Except...in response to the charge that Jesus was created, note the Psalm quoted in vs 10-12:  The Son created all that is.  The implication is that nothing was created until the Son created at the Father's bidding.  But...how do we know Psalm 102 refers to the Son and not the Father?  The MSB note in Psalm 102:25-27 says that it is the NT that applies this passage to the Son.  There's really not anything in 102 that implies directly that it is about the Son and not about the Father.  So Hebrews is making this claim, as part of the argument to the Hebrews about how they should see and understand the Son.    As part of that, the writer of Hebrews is asserting that Psalm 102 is about that Son.  In so doing, he is showing that the Son is eternal, with that being a characteristic of God and God alone, making the Son also God.  The same but separate.  And I am pushing on.

2022 - Isaiah 44-48 has MANY passages that make Jesus the creator of all things, rather than the Father.  You have to read the prophecy, and see that it is about the second coming, and we know that refers to the second coming of Jesus.  Therefore, the one who is to come was also the creator of all that is.  You have to do a little reading to really get it. The name of the tag is "Jesus NOT Created".  See also notes in Colossians 1 starting "Where did Paul get this idea", plus the creation tag and the "Jesus not created" tag.

2021-2, As I read this in light of the outline, I see that Jesus' name is not mentioned.  The writer assumes that his audience knows that Jesus is - or claims to be - the Son of God, and they know that is what the church is teaching.  If the book is dated correctly, Jesus as been gone for 30-40 years, so church doctrine and understanding is at a very early stage.  So we start off trying to describe the relationship between God the Father and God the Son, as it was understood in the very early church.  These first verses presume that the reader knew of Jesus' claim to be God.  So these verses are telling us that Jesus was also different than God.  The writer found this as difficult to do as we find it today.  He went with "the radiance of the glory of God", and "the exact imprint of his nature".  Both these are visual.  The Son is so much the Father that it is impossible to distinguish between them - yet they are different.  

Then in vs 4, the contrast between the Son and angels is introduced using Old Testament Scriptures.  This may have been a refutation of a developing theory that Jesus was in fact an angel.  So here is why that cannot be so.  
First, God calls the Messiah his son, in two places.  He never refers to angels as sons.
Second, angels are to worship the son.  Why would they worship their equal?  Rather, they worship the superior.  
Third, angels are described as wind and fire, the Messiah as the anointed, beyond his companions.
Fourth, nowhere are angels credited with the ability to create.  No angel ever produced something from nothing.  Only God can do this.  See above about this NT claim that it was the Son who did the creating.
Fifth, no angel is ever offered the seat next to God while God acts on his behalf.
Then the conclusion as to what angels really are and the reason for their creation:   14 Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation? [Heb 1:14 ESV] Angels are workers, executors of God's commands.  Unlike God, no angel is an originator, creator, or lord.  They exist only to serve.  The Son - the Messiah - is qualitatively different, and better than angels.

2022 - Vss 10-12, quoted from Psa 102:26-27.  I can see this Psalm as a Messianic Psalm.  You have to be familiar with the prophecies in Isa and Jer to get that out of  it, but this Psalm seems to be about the Millennial.  Given that it is about Christ, here is another OT passage that makes Christ the one who created all that is.  God did it through Christ, but it was Jesus who "executed" the plan.  Tag this also as "Jesus as creator".

2023 - These verses:
10 And, "You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands; 11 they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment, [Heb 1:10-11 ESV].  I have made much of those verses in Jeremiah where God says that if the heavens cease, or the sun stops rising and setting, then his promises to the Jews will stop.  In this, I see why the James Webb is showing us that we have no concept of how the universe started outside the supernatural creation of a supernatural god.  Now put with this that creation is also crying out for relief from the corruption of sin and the spilled blood of innocents.  Creation is in fact deteriorating.  How can we verify that?  Because it is wearing out "like a garment".  How does a garment "wear out"?  It gets threadbare.  The material at the point of greatest wear gets smoother and thinner.  The colors fade.  They accumulate dirt that cannot be removed.  Duller, less bright, diluted...And isn't that what we see?  If all the universe is retreating from  us in all the directions there are, then the color fades with time.  The "fabric" gets thinner.   Perhaps even a rip or tear here and there.  Interesting how this works.  Might put it as a FB post the day after that earlier one...
Possible FB post.

2022 - Last but not least, in vs 13, is the answer to my question above about Jesus sitting at the Father's right hand.  It says specifically so in this verse, quoted from Psa 110:1.  I'm going to include it:
1 A Psalm of David. The LORD says to my Lord: "Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool." [Psa 110:1 ESV].  Jesus himself quotes this Psalm to the Pharisees.  How did I not remember this?  This is also the Psalm that says Jesus is a priest after the order of Melchizedek.   So chapter 1, when all is said and done, is a very compelling picture of the Messiah as greater than the angels.

Chapter 2
2021-2, Outline says we will look at "A greater salvation", and "A greater savior".  Chapter 1 established Jesus as greater than angels, now we will see that he is a better messenger, with a better message.

2021-2, From MSB notes, at vss 1,2.  He refers back to the chapter intro, and the three groups.  This first verse - therefore - is addressed to those who accept intellectually that Messiah was superior to angels, but they had not yet committed to him as God and Lord.  That is, they had promoted him not only as superior to all men, but even to being superior to angels.  But they had not taken that last step, and made him God incarnate, and Lord of their lives.  Vs 2 I find very interesting:
2 For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, [Heb 2:2 ESV]
2 For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty, [Heb 2:2 NASB95]
MSB note says this is based on the role of angels in delivering the Law at Mt. Sinai, and there are several references.  This idea - that angels delivered the Law - is brand new to me.  So let's look at the references:
First this: 2 He said, "The LORD came from Sinai and dawned from Seir upon us; he shone forth from Mount Paran; he came from the ten thousands of holy ones, with flaming fire at his right hand. [Deu 33:2 ESV]
2 He said, "The LORD came from Sinai, And dawned on them from Seir; He shone forth from Mount Paran, And He came from the midst of ten thousand holy ones; At His right hand there was flashing lightning for them. [Deu 33:2 NASB95]  I don't see how this includes angels in delivering the Law at all.  They were left behind is how I read it.
This next:
17 The chariots of God are twice ten thousand, thousands upon thousands; the Lord is among them; Sinai is now in the sanctuary. [Psa 68:17 ESV]
17 The chariots of God are myriads, thousands upon thousands; The Lord is among them [as at] Sinai, in holiness. [Psa 68:17 NASB95]
You can infer it here I think, without getting too far out there.  But why would Hebrews pick such an obscure reference?  The argument has to be that both these passages connect angels to Sinai, in some way.  But to me, neither of them has the angels actually delivering any information.
Next:
37 This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, 'God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.' 38 This is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our fathers. He received living oracles to give to us. [Act 7:37-38 ESV]  This says "the angel" spoke to Moses at Mt. Sinai.  This is in Acts.  Luke wrote this, as an account of the speech Stephen made before they stoned him.  He says a LOT about Moses in this speech.  The definite article is present for angel.  A specific angel is in mind.  Isn't this more likely a Christophany than an angel?  MSB notes are consistent that this is an angel.  Note at Acts 7:38 says it is like "The Angel of the Lord", as if this is a special and specific angel.  It refers back to vs 30, which says "an angel appeared to him in the flame of a burning thorn bush".  So this was not God himself in the bush but an angel?  Wow...how many times have I missed this:
2 And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. ... 4 When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am." ... 6 And he said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. [Exo 3:2, 4, 6 ESV].  It was an angel that appeared, and then when Moses got there, God spoke to him.  But the angel more or less "announced" God.  That bush was on Sinai.  If this is the only verse Stephen is referencing, then does that angel have anything to do with delivering the Law?  This angel delivered no actionable message.
Last:
19 Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. [Gal 3:19 ESV]
19 Why the Law then? It was added because of transgressions, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator, until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made. [Gal 3:19 NASB95]
This verse, Paul now, clearly implies that the Law came through angels to Moses.  I don't think this is about the 10, but about what came after.  I have never understood it this way before.  The Law was put in place by angels.  Violation of the Law gets punished.  Does this commonality between Paul's understanding in Galatians and the understanding of the writer of Hebrews give us a clue about who wrote Hebrews?  The MSB note at 3:19 says this, in part: "The Bible teaches that angels were involved in the giving of the law (Acts 7:53, Heb 2:2) but does not explain the precise role they played."  Well MSB got that one right!
I had thought this passage might be referring to the reliability of the angel who spoke to Mary, the one that spoke to Zachariah, and the one that spoke to Joseph.  These accounts would have been well known.  But that whole "every transgression..." part defeats that idea and puts us onto the declaration in Galatians.  The OT references are, I believe, pretty obscure.  I would never have picked those out as declaring that the Law was delivered to Moses by angels.  Never.  Is this where Gabriel talking to Mohammad and Joseph Smith's angel came from?  Because messages are delivered from God by angels, even something as important as His Law?
SO....that was along way to go to verify that the message here is that angels, at least "The Angel of the Lord", was worthy enough to deliver the Law to Moses, in some manner.  If angels are trustworthy to deliver such a foundational message to the Hebrews, then what shall we think of a message delivered by one even greater than the angels?  Wow.  What an incredible bit of logic!  What of Messiah's message???

2021-2, We have to take a closer look at vs 3, because now I think I understand it:
3 how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, [Heb 2:3 ESV]
Pressing the point still further...If neglect of the message delivered by mere angels brings retribution when violated, how severe will the penalty be for neglecting a message from an even higher source?  Again, wow is all I know to say!  How penetrating is this question, even before we establish that Messiah is also God!  Even if he weren't, what penalty should there be for ignoring one greater than the angels!?!?!?

Chapter starts with "therefore".
He was saying they needed to pay closer attention - to hold fast - to the original message they received and NOT drift away from it.  Seems to be a warning that the teachings of the apostles were not "evolving doctrines" subject to the changing culture and external pressure pushing on the church.  It was unchanging.  Then as a sort of summation of Christ's position, he recounts the "witnesses".  Declared by the Lord (reference to Jesus baptism and the Transfiguration?), attested to by people who saw him and knew him - eyewitnesses.  Signs, miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed.  So the deeds Jesus did were widely known and believed, and the apostles and others were also given ability to attest to Jesus and to their own designation as preachers and teachers of the true word from God.  There are many reasons to believe in Jesus.  Here is an outline for how to argue that He is the Son, and He is God, and He was sent by God, and His Word is true.
2021-2, in connection with the above, look at the list here, starting at 3b:
1. Declared by the Lord.
2. Attested to by first hand witnesses
3. God confirmed by signs and wonders.  Undisputed at that time.  
4. The saved at the time Hebrews was written received undeniable gifts from the Holy Ghost.  Miraculous gifts like healing, tongues, and prophecy.  
All these things were known, and widely accepted as factual.  All this is to drive home that they ought to be taking apart and inspecting and abiding by every little thing that Jesus ever said.  Look at the confirmations of his message!

This verse:
8 putting everything in subjection under his feet." Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. [Heb 2:8 ESV]
An interesting point.  God put everything under Christ, but we don't see it.  Not yet.  No....per MSB, God put everything under man.  Man in general.  Given authority over the earth.  That was Adam's job.  But sin came, and polluted Adam and the earth with him, and so man has been incapable of fulfilling that divinely ordained position.  Until Jesus came.  By his perfect life, he was the man God intended all men to be.  He fulfilled God's divine purpose for man.  
2021-2, Here is the whole quote:
6 It has been testified somewhere, "What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? 7 You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, 8 putting everything in subjection under his feet." Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. [Heb 2:6-8 ESV].  This quote is from Psa 8:4.  As interpreted by the writer of Hebrews - and MSB - vs 6 is about man in general.  Adam was given dominion over all.  Vs 7, by using the phrase "for a little while", means temporarily lower than the angels...instead of above them as was his natural state.  So vs 7 is about Messiah.  The further argument is that we have never seen - at least since the fall - everything under the control of man.  Man could not fulfill the commission given to him by God to be caretaker of all that is.  Since man cannot do it, who can?  Vs 9 drives it home.

vs 9 is where Jesus is first mentioned.  
2021-2, 9 But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. [Heb 2:9 ESV]
So much in this verse.  "Mankind" could not attain to fulfil God's purpose.  Mankind succumbed to sin, knowingly so.  Adam was not deceived, he chose to sin.  How then was God to reinstate His plan?  He had to make someone, NAMELY JESUS, lower than angels - so make him human - so that through his willingness to die he EARNED the glory and honor necessary for the one who would put everything under his feet.  No unworthy can be given so great a role.  God substituted one man for all mankind so that this position could be filled!  And if Jesus could substitute for mankind in this role God had intended for mankind, then Jesus could also substitute for mankind in fully paying the penalty for wanton rebellion against God, starting with the forbidden fruit, and infecting us all right down to this day.

2022 - This verse:
10 For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. [Heb 2:10 ESV].  Once again in the NT we see Jesus referenced as the creator of all things.  It is referenced so often that it is no wonder we can find it in the OT if we're just looking for it.  I don't know how I missed the importance of this before.  If it was by the Son that all things were created - things originally put under subjection to man - how fitting is it that the Son, taking on the form of the man he created, should be the means by which creation is restored!?  Come on!  This is not a fictional, unreliable, "doubtable" collection of very nice moral stories from the past.  It is SO MUCH MORE than that.  The  connections are just too complex, complete, and numerous to have been assembled by many alone! Tags "Jesus as creator", creation.
2022 - This verse also:
11 For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, [Heb 2:11 ESV].  Isn't this saying that Jesus is "the same" as men.  He sanctifies - so he is God, but is of the sanctified, who are men.  "The same source..." surely makes Jesus fully man, and the creator of man, and who better qualified to assume the "nature" of man than the one most intimately acquainted with how men are put together- he created us from dirt, he knows how to "be" us.  He formed us as beings capable of perfection, capable of complete obedience to the will of the Father.  The Son who created us knows that potential for perfect obedience is inside us because he put it there.  So he became man KNOWING BEFOREHAND that a perfect life was possible because he put that possibility into us.  Again, look how absolutely beyond the creativity of man this whole "system" is!
2022 - This whole thing of Jesus creating - of God creating THROUGH Jesus - where God designs and Jesus executes - gives us insight into the roles within the Trinity.  I don't want to blaspheme or commit heresy, but can I say that Theos conceives and Kyrios executes?  Can I say that Theos is the "head" and Kyrios is the "hands"?  God drew up the blueprints and Christ built the machine?  What then of the Spirit?  The user?  The tester?  The proof of concept?   Maybe I don't have an answer because my whole premise here is wrong.  But I'm leaving it here anyway.  


2021 - Just reading through it from here.  (2021-2, Picking up the pace this time also, as my brain is tired.  But I got oh so very much more out of vss 1-9 this year than I ever have before!)  There is just too much for me to understand.  Here is what I mean:

This book by Pink, just on Hebrews, has 1,307 pages.  And I'm supposed to read and digest the whole book in the Chronological Bible in 3 mornings.  So that's over 400 pages/day of explanation for what I am supposed to read each day.  Going with a different plan next year.  Can't say that enough.  Very anxious to get moving on that as the NT readings in the Chronological are becoming frustrating because of the brief time allotted, instead of getting more priority.  This is my third time to use the Chronological.  It's been great to read things in order.  But it is time for a different approach - one that emphasizes the NT more.

Proofs offered that Jesus was made flesh not to benefit angels, but to benefit man.  Jesus became a man and was unashamed to call them brothers, and to call us his children. (?)  Am I reading that right?  Each of the verses quoted seems to have been picked out...and I don't know the context of most.  This is Scripture, so they are not out of context, but it would be good to go back and see the material from which they came.  This is written as if the readers will be very familiar with these quotations - or have access to study them.

2021 - These profound verses:
14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. [Heb 2:14-15 ESV]
Our fear of death comes from Satan.  He has pounded that fear into us so that he might better control and manipulate and deceive us.  The fear of death is his greatest weapon against man.  That is why Jesus chose that battleground to destroy him - he was defeated on his most favored ground, and lost.  While I believe that self-preservation is in our genes (which God created, and so that is built into us in my opinion), after reading this it seems to me that we need to overthrow/confront/desensitize ourselves to fearing death, even though we seek to avoid it in any reasonable way.  We know that fear can be overcome, because we consider those who die for their country, who die for their children, and who die for their friends to be a special kind of hero.  We admire these people who conquered their fear of death for the sake of others.  The "new" part of this to me is that we should not fear death, though avoiding death is "built in".
What a FB post, if I can work it out....

2023 - So those who say that the curse - that you "die" if  you eat, and yet they didn't die - was not about physical death at all but spiritual death only, miss the whole point.  Not only is it about physical death, but the real part of the curse is the lifetime of fearing death.  How much worse to know that you will die than to just die.  If you didn't expect death until it happened, would death - physical death - have any power over us at all?  No.  But that fear, that can own us.  So then, should we say that at the fall, the spirit was separated from god, but lived, immortal as it was before, and the curse was physical, on our bodies, were made a little lower than the angels.  So when the Bible says we are dead in trespasses and sins, it means our spirits are dead in the sense that they are separated from God and cannot have any interaction directly with God.  But the "dead" it is talking about there is NOT literally about a dead spirit that must be resurrected at salvation.  We have to keep in mind, to always ask ourselves when we read these passages, if we are talking about the death of separation from God, or the death of the body that we fear so much, even after salvation.  The eternal life we receive at salvation is to be eternally in the presence of God in our physical bodies free from the fear of ever dying physically OR being separated from Him.

2022 - Vs 14...Satan has the power of death.  Jesus, through death, destroyed Satan AND delivered us from the lifelong slavery of death.  How much is in this construction?  How is it that Satan has the power of death?  How did Christ's death destroy Satan - it says it destroyed both Satan AND fear were destroyed.
First then, how is it that Satan gained the power of death?  Is it that by inducing Adam to sin, and so corrupting the whole human race for all time, he insured man's eternal separation from God?  In that case this would mean that Satan has the power over spiritual death.  Destroyed Satan would then be more metaphorical than physical in that Jesus removed ALL of Satan's power, his primary weapon, his threat.  After Christ, Satan no longer stood between man and God, keeping us forever separated from him instead of in His presence as it was in Eden.  
Second, the "lifelong" slavery of death?  Another way to put it:
15 Only in this way could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying. [Heb 2:15 NLT].  Read this way, this second part is about the fear of physical death.  So..first Satan is unseated from his position between us and the presence of God (which analogy I do not like, but am leaving it here as I struggle to comprehend this verse), so he no longer wields power over spiritual death, and then, because we have the hope of an eternal existence with God after our physical death, we no longer need see physical death as the end of all that is good.
Jesus suffering paid for the sins of all mankind, and so restored all mankind - through Jesus - to an eternal perfect relationship with God.  Justice had to be done in suffering, so that sin was in fact erased, paid in full, "the time was served".
This is why Jesus is the one way.  The one who created man became man and suffered and died as man in order to "undo" the sins of all time and restore us to the state we were in when he created us in the first place.  ONLY Jesus, incarnate, could ever have done this.  Oh wow!  Only by demonstrating through his perfect life that a perfect life was possible for man could he prove to the heavenlies that his original creation was indeed potentially perfect.  It COULD be done, but Adam failed, and Jesus did not.  This showed that though we were not robots but had a choice, it WAS possible to get it right.  We just failed.

This verse:
17 Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. [Heb 2:17 ESV]
The Son became flesh - the same flesh as those to whom he was sent, so that he could become our high priest.  He is merciful because he has experienced life in the flesh.  Faithful because he is from God.  Makes propitiation - that is, he offers/officiates over the sacrifice of atonement - on our behalf, because he is qualified for that position.  

2021-2, I can only summarize vss 10-18, I did not go into them vs by vs in great detail.  The idea is to establish, by OT scripture, that Jesus was of the same stuff precisely as mankind.  Since he was exactly like us, it was "allowable" for his death to cleanse all of sin, so that we no longer need fear the everlasting death that sin requires.  Instead, through Jesus' death as a man, we overcome eternal death - which is Satan's ultimate weapon.  He can still kill our bodies, but that is no longer automatic eternal punishment.  We no longer need fear death, but can instead welcome it as we go from life into the presence of Almighty God, who sent Jesus to save us and make that "reunion" possible.  Since Jesus death removes our sin, he is positionally in the role of High Priest, making propitiation to God on our behalf, as the OT priests sacrificed each year for the atonement of the sins of the people.
Come on!  How in the world could man EVER fabricate such a system?  WHY would man do so, for he has absolutely nothing to gain by perpetrating a fiction like this.  This plan is rigorously logical, rigorously consistent with what the Bible had proclaimed for millennia.  No discrepancies.  How can anyone not believe?

2022 - Jesus life as a man proved that his creation was not just theoretically capable of perfection but also practically capable of perfection.  I wish I had a metaphor for this.  I keep thinking of a watchmaker.  A watchmaker can make a watch, but the watch is not proved workable until it's works are put into motion?  That doesn't work.  I don't know...but again this year I think I made a lot of progress in understanding more of this chapter.  

Chapter 3
Now the writer is showing that Christ was higher than Moses.  His point is that Moses lived in the house Christ built.  Through Christ, all things were created.  Moses lived in creation.  Christ must be above Moses.  The implicit assumption - not stated that I can see - is that Christ is the Messiah.  He makes the case that Moses was a faithful servant, but Christ is faithful as a son.  Does this refer back to vs. 2:13b?

2023 - This verse I have not noticed before:
1 Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, [Heb 3:1 ESV].  Jesus the apostle of our confession.  What an interesting term!  Same Greek word that was used of the 12.  Here are the definitions from the BLB outline of Biblical usage:
1.              a delegate, messenger, one sent forth with orders         
   1.                      specifically applied to the twelve apostles of Christ                 
   2.                      in a broader sense applied to other eminent Christian teachers                 
       1.                              of Barnabas                         
       2.                              of Timothy and Silvanus                         
I note that this does not mention Hebrews 3:1.

2022 - God built the house.  Moses was a faithful servant in the house God built.  Jesus is the faithful son of the house.  We are the house itself.  Not a perfect analogy, but I get the idea.

A case is then made that despite all they saw, despite all God did for them, Israel rebelled in the wilderness, and because of this they were cursed.  They were never allowed to enter God's rest.  The case is built that they didn't believe, and it was unbelief that led to their dying in the wilderness, not inheriting the promises.  Only those who believe - and do not instead harden their hearts against the truth - will inherit the promises, will receive the rest.  The point seems to be that the rituals and sacrifices and feasts - no matter how profoundly followed, will not replace true belief.  

2023 -Vss 7-11 are quoted from Psa 95.  As I recall, almost all the quotes in Hebrews are from the Psalms, or Isaiah.  There have been few - if any - from the books of Moses.  Why would the writer of Hebrews be avoiding those books?

2022 - By extension, no accumulation of good works, not even works that God would bless and affirm, can overcome the congenital sin that characterizes all men.  No matter that you follow the cloud and the fire, if you don't believe, you die in the wilderness.  He is steering them away from the Levitical traditions and laws and telling them that what is in their hearts is what matters.  Indeed, it is all that EVER mattered.
2022- This verse:
12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. [Heb 3:12 ESV]
The writer is making it very clear that there are those within the church, or within the synagogue, certainly with the Hebrew heritage, that no matter what they seem to be, still harbor unbelief.  This phrase fall away...I get a picture of a mountain peak, and people climbing to reach that peak.  But some, because they lack what is needed to summit the peak, "fall away" when the going gets difficult, and can never ever reach the top.  Think of it as having no "pitons", or too short a rope.  As the final push to attain grows steep, only those properly equipped can attain the summit.  Only those with true belief can be saved.  This is why it is phrased as "falling away".

2022 - The verse is repeated that says 15 As it is said, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion." [Heb 3:15 ESV].  It is here twice, so it must be doubly important to understand.  In terms we are familiar with today, we would say this means that when you come under conviction, when you are overcome with the urge to walk down the aisle and take the preacher's hand, and tell him you want to be saved, don't dare risk delay.  In Israel's case, they wandered 40 years and the call never came again. They had seen so  much - God had directly showed them His power - and yet they still would not believe, would not submit, would not embrace, would not follow, would not trust.  All these are necessary to salvation, and the call may never be repeated.  This is a good FB post.  

2022 - The conclusion then, in vss 16-19, is that those who left Egypt left with Moses.  They followed "the greatest Hebrew", knew him, talked to him.  Yet even their status as followers of Moses himself was not enough.  They followed Moses, they saw the miracles in the desert, they had closer contact with God than any people before or since.  Yet even these, because they rebelled and would not believe, incurred not God's peace, but God's wrath.  Based on what then?  Not on position.  Not on place.  But because of unbelief.  No "standing in the church", no amount of preaching, song leading, choir practice...no generosity to the pastor and his family, no deacon or elder attains because of what they do.  Belief.  Only belief attains.  The rest is incidental to belief.

2023 - This last verse:
19 So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. [Heb 3:19 ESV].  I think the point in this book is that the most connected Hebrews that ever walked, those who followed Moses himself out of Egypt, ALL were prevented from entering God's rest because of their unbelief.  The tabernacle traveled with them, the fire and the cloud were there, they received Moses' interpretations and judgments directly, they survived on manna that came directly from heaven...yet they did not enter God's rest.  None of these things sufficed in the face of their rebellious unbelief, their refusal to trust.  They would not abandon their own resources and fall backward into the arms of God.  They could not let go.  This writer is saying that the Hebrews of his day must let go of the Law that they depend on and fall backwards in faith also.  Because unbelief can and still will separate them from God's rest.  The Law was built atop faith, not a substitute for faith.  Christ is greater than angels.  Christ is greater than Moses, and so greater than the Law.  The argument is that the Son was not just a messenger - as are angels - but is specially appointed as the one through whom God works redemption.  All the way back to Psa 2:7 in Heb 1:5, "You are my son...".  Moses was only a servant in God's house, Jesus is the son in the house.

Chapter 4
2022 - The outline says this chapter is about "A better rest". This chapter also starts with "Therefore," indicating that it will sum up what went before, in 3, which also started with Therefore, or 2 and 3, since both started with therefore.  I think the chapter breaks are just wrong, and this is the summary of 3, which made the point that even with Moses to tell them directly, the Israelites in the desert still didn't really believe, and it cost them the promised rest, just as it costs us peace in this life and eternity in the next if we don't believe.

The first 13 verses seem to be about the current "Israel" not behaving like their fathers in the desert.  It reminds the readers that God knows what is in their hearts.  This seems to be directed to those who believe intellectually, but not with their hearts.  They see that Jesus life matches up with the Messianic prophecies.  They believe he is the one they waited for.  But even so, they don't want to abandon the Law.  They are anchored in the past, in the Law, just as old Israel was anchored in Egypt.  They couldn't let go of tradition and history, and believe that a new way was opened to them.  The ones addressed in Hebrews are having a hard time abandoning the old wineskins and embracing that a new day has dawned - even though they see that Jesus was the Messiah.  They did not expect Messiah to so change tradition - to so overhaul their religion as to make it unrecognizable.  The new religion probably seemed "too easy", and they didn't value it because it was so easy.  Aren't we the same?  If it's too good to be true, it probably is would be the same kind of skepticism they had.  They want to believe, but....
The writer is telling them that where they have come to is still short of true, committed belief, and so still short of salvation..

Later - 2022/23-The writer seems to present a parallel between those who followed Moses and those who now have a choice of whether to follow Jesus or not.  He says that all things are established from the foundation of the world.  Perhaps this is to try and show that though everything about following Jesus, accepting salvation, and throwing off the rules and regs of the Law, seems to fly in the face of tradition, to throw away too much history, it is not truly a "new" idea, for if it is correct - as has been shown in the first three chapters, not only correct but better, then it was always meant to unfold this way, and it is NOT rejecting tradition so much as embracing the continuing revelation of God's initial plan, in place since before there was a universe.  
He goes on to distinguish between the rest promised to Israel in the promised land and the "rest" offered to David much later.  If God was still offering rest to David, then it is a qualitatively different rest than what was in view upon entering Canaan.  Then he elevates this rest, this currently offered rest through Christ, to the same kind of rest God enjoyed at the end of creation.  A Sabbath rest.  Hmm...rest from sacrificing, from offering...from working, to enjoy true and lasting peace within.  Rest from works of all kinds.  Rest from obeying 631 rules or whatever it is to just enjoying life.  Rest from trying to get everything perfect in order to go to heaven, rest from a worship rife with works in order to get it right to a worship in Spirit and in truth, without physical requirements at all.  As God rested from the work of creation, we can rest from the requirements of reconciliation set up by the Law.  One lasting eternal rest, with no necessity of repetition of any kind.  No second baptism, no re-salvation, nothing.  BUT, the same kind of disobedience that kept Israel from Canaan can also keep us from rest in our day.  If we "harden our hearts", as in vs 7, if we hear the call and disdain it, then we can miss our offered rest just as those who died in the desert missed theirs.  

Later - 2022/23 - Could it be that Canaan was an "endpoint" in God's plan, set up from before the foundation of the world?  Had Israel obeyed His commands, would it have been just "rest" from then on?  I don't think so.  The sacrifices - daily - would still have been required.  God rested on the Sabbath...that is, His work in constructing a workable sustainable system was done, and so he rested, not needing to do any more tweaking and fixing and repairing.  His work was done.  At the border of Canaan, the completed, total Law was in place, all fixed, all "handed down" to man.  Had Israel followed the Law, they didn't need to add any more to it, not tweaking and fixing.  It was sufficient and sustainable for a people to live like that under the Law forever.  But the people did not obey.  They did not embrace and accept that "rest".  By David's day, it was obvious that the "rest" was not going to hold because of disobedience.  For the Law to suffice, obedience beyond the mere requirements of the Law was required.  The people didn't give this.  So something else, some other "work", some new system was required.  THEN, the writer makes the case that this new "rest" is in Christ.  Vs. 10b is still difficult...but is perhaps a reference to the continual sacrifices...but that doesn't make any sense.  In what sense, under the New Covenant, do we "rest from our works as God rested from His"?  Vs 11 seems to equate "our work" and the work of the Israelites in Canaan, and the work of God in creation.  Does it mean that we "work" toward salvation, and once we are saved we never have to do that again?  

LATER - 2022/23 - 11-13 seem to be saying that there is no faking this.  There is no halfway position between "them" and "us".  In the same way that they "fell" by not trusting and obeying, so can we preempt salvation (rest) by not committing fully to belief in Christ as the once and for all.  He will know.  There is no place in our minds that is hidden enough to "fool" Him.
Also, the whole division of soul and spirit is a metaphor about just how discerning God is about where we really stand with him.  We might not be able to divide bone and marrow, we cannot make such a fine division at the cellular level with our primitive tools and understanding, but God can do even better and divide soul and spirit.  There is no secret place.  This is NOT a lesson on the particulars of God's creation of man and his constituent parts.
2023 - Soul and spirit, joint and marrow.  The word, though, is living, active and ABLE to divide even the indivisible, and SHOW whether we depend on the "old" rest or the new rest which comes by faith alone.
2023 - As to this verse as a proof text for tripartite man, look what this same passage says in vs. 12, when it talks about "...the thoughts and intentions of the heart."  If this was about creation and biology and the way that God constructed man, it would have to say the thoughts and intentions of our brains.  We KNOW now that it is in the brain that thoughts and intentions are formed, not in the actual heart.  It is metaphor, just as soul and spirit, and joint and marrow are metaphors and not "instructions for assembly".

2023 - MSB says there was the rest in Joshua's time, when the promised land was conquered and they rested from conquest.  But this was not like the Sabbath rest of creation.  They still had a lot of physical work to do, planting and harvesting, defending the new nation from attackers all around and so on.  Therefore, the rest they had in Canaan was different than the "promised" rest.  The rest in Canaan was physical, the promised rest is spiritual.  This is proven by the fact that "rest" was promised/offered to David long after Joshua.  The rest was still future.  The "Sabbath" rest came with Jesus Christ, upon whom we believe once for all, spiritually, with no need for ongoing repetitious, do overs.  The "rest" that Christ offers - "28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. [Mat 11:28 ESV]" - when done in spirit and in truth, is like the Sabbath rest, in that we need labor toward this end no more.  That vs in Matthew is about the labor of "compliance with the law" imposed by the Pharisees with their legalistic requirements based on the Mosaic Law.  It had turned into a burden, not an honor.  In was unattainable except for the elite few, and so kept out of the grasp - no matter the effort - of the rank and file.  A heavy burden.  And Jesus said, I will do the heavy lifting, and you can rest.  Possible FB post using this verse:  9 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, 10 for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. [Heb 4:9-10 ESV]
2023 - Vs 11 makes it clear:
11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. [Heb 4:11 ESV].   "That rest" is the better rest, the spiritual rest of faith in Christ as the way of salvation.  We are not to fall, as they did, in making it all about the physical rest, which in fact NEVER came, and NEVER will on this earth.  They made it about adherence to ritual, about works, about sacrifices made with hands but not with hearts.  Let us NOT go there, let us not make the New Covenant into a physical task to be completed that we can accomplish by our own hands, but let us remember that it is by the completed, finished, sufficient work of Jesus Christ, and not anything we do, that saved us!

2022- Vss 14-16 are difficult...seem unconnected with what has gone before.  I think what it may be driving at is that Jesus, since he was made wholly man, and yet did not sin, and since we have previously seen that his atoning for our sins makes him our high priest, we ought to realize that he is a perfect high priest, best able - more able than any high priest that ever came before - to accomplish our atonement and bring us into that promised rest.  This last verse of the chapter:
16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. [Heb 4:16 ESV]
We ought not to have any doubts about our high priest, or about his position, or that he has power on earth to forgive sin.  We should turn loose our reservations as to whether he alone can save us, not resist his call in disobedience as so many have before us, but be confident in his authority to both offer to us and then bring about our salvation.
(Next day - I missed something here.  14-16 seem disconnected because they are.  Per the outline above, in vs 14 we shift to a whole new topic, that being the superiority of Christ's priesthood.  Indeed, that is what I saw in it.  This will be the primary topic now through 7:28.  The last verses of 4, through 5:10 just show that Christ is our high priest, and 5:11-6:20 are an exhortation to full commitment to Christ.  So this part is surely addressed to those who accept who Christ is intellectually, but who reserve full commitment in their hearts.

2022 - I don't know who wrote this book of Hebrews, but I would not want to argue with him.  How perfectly he ties things up.  How confident in what we believe can we be if we just follow his reasoning?

Chapter 5
(2023 - A relatively short chapter.  I note that both this outline and the one from J. Sidlow Baxter, run across the "chapter boundaries".  This section started at 4:14 and goes through 7.  Today's reading, then, is a subset of this one major point - that Jesus is higher than Aaron in Baxter's outline.  See above for just how broken up it is in that outline.  Perhaps the reason I get into trouble through here is that the continuity gets chopped up badly.   So this year I am going back to 4:14 and going through 5:10, but I will read on to the end of the chapter, and then tomorrow I will start "in earnest" with 5:11 and go through 6:20 to at least try and maintain some continuity with the outline.)

2023 - It seems like the writer just "jumps" to the priest analogy in 4:14.  I do not see how what came earlier in chapter 4 sets that up at all.  It is like a clean break from Joshua to the priesthood.  
But...He has been talking about the Law, and how it was possible to have entered into rest through the Law - or more accurately through the Old Covenant.  But there is now, in Christ, a New Covenant, a new "route to rest", and as the Old Covenant had a high priest, so does the new.  But rather than a whole system of priests, there is only one, a high priest who is flesh like us but who came from heaven itself.

The purpose of a priesthood:
1 For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. [Heb 5:1 ESV]
A priest stands between God and men.  A priest offers gifts and sacrifices to elicit forgiveness.  A priest is there because access to God is limited to those so chosen.  Or that is how it was in the Old Covenant.  What the Catholics do now is akin to that with their absolution and confessions and last rights.  A priest is needed to intervene for man according to them.  What will Hebrews say about it?

Then the case is made that such a priest is a fitting go-between, because he too is beset by weakness.  The priest also sins, and so is better able to identify with those on whose behalf he intervenes.  But he must also offer sacrifices for himself.  This verse:
4 And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was. [Heb 5:4 ESV]
Not just anyone can be a priest.  It is a calling.  In this case it was inherited.  

2023 - The writer makes the case that there must always be a high priest, like Aaron - or he is making the case that the New Covenant stands in comparison to the Old - and that God sets this up, not man.  Therefore, he sets about to show that Jesus is in fact a new and better high priest than was Aaron, and the Aaronic priesthood down through history.  The approach to this seems to be first showing that Christ was God's Son, and then showing that he is an eternal priest, like Melchizedek.  I am not sure why the "Son verse" is here, unless it is exactly the same construction in Hebrew as the Melchizedek verse.  Perhaps the writer is making the two pronouncements of equal weight.  After all, back in Chapter 1, the very first verses quoted were to show that the Messiah is the Son.  It was established with these very direct quotes:  "You are my Son...", and "I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son".  So it is established that this is about the Messiah, and about his relationship to the Father.  Now, in 5:6, we see this "position" also in Christ: "You are a priest forever...".  Not an hereditary and transient office as it was with Aaron, but a position appointed by God, this time lasting forever in one and the same High Priest, as Melchizedek was.  He was here from we don't know when, and will remain forever.  Melchizedek had "no beginning" since we don't know about his birth, and he was never "succeeded" by another.  Just as Christ now is.

Then Hebrews shows the appointment of the Messiah as not just a priest, but high priest.  Two OT verses quoted, establishing that Messiah was the incarnated God, and that he was appointed to the priesthood.  Melchizedek was a King-Priest.  So is Christ.

2023 - In vs 7, we see the writer establishing that Jesus "functioned" as a priest while he was on earth as a man.  He "offered" prayers and supplications.  These are priestly duties.  These were effective in that God answered, and raised him from the dead.  

These two verses:
9 And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, 10 being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. [Heb 5:9-10 ESV]
As salvation under the Law was through the sacrifices made by the high priest, salvation is still through the high priest.  But the high priest now and forever is based not on inheritance or family, but is like the Melchizedekian priesthood of Abraham's time.  It's like the Law has been excised from history, and Jesus is the new Melchizedek, and will forever hold the position.  Access to God has always been through the high priest - a "requirement" for the Jews to whom Hebrews is written.  They couldn't get around that requirement.  So the writer gives them Jesus, the source of salvation, because God has appointed Him High Priest forever.
2022 - It is also important to note that the "High Priest" existed before the Law, before the Aaronic and Levitical priesthoods were established, in fact before Abraham and so before the Hebrews.  The office of High Priest transcends the Law in that it existed before there was Law, and continues now in the person of Christ though the Law has passed away.  So the writer establishes that the pre-Law priesthood is re-established in Christ by quoting the verse in Psalms that says so in so many words.  These verses leave no doubt as to whom they refer:  
4 The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, "You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek." 5 The Lord is at your right hand; he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath. 6 He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses; he will shatter chiefs over the wide earth. [Psa 110:4-6 ESV]
Vss 5, 6 can only return to Christ at the second advent, to the events of Revelation, and the pre-Millennial battle.  Note also that there won't be any "new Law".  Christ is the forever Melchizedek.  There is no need for any replacement.  
Again, this writer has condensed so much of what the Bible, and what the plan of God is really about.

2023 - Vss 8, 9, Note that Christ learned obedience through suffering.  In that he was God, Jesus could have said no to the cross.  But he was flesh, and the duty and responsibility of "man" is obedience to the Father.  If we could do that, we too would be made perfect.  But since Adam, it has been impossible to maintain obedience.  Jesus, as a man, was obedient to the Father's command that he suffer for sins - just as we as men must suffer in these corrupt bodies in a world polluted with sin - and so was made perfect in God's sight, able both to sacrifice and be sacrificed as a perfect offering. Because OBEDIENCE IS PERFECTION.  Obedience in the face of suffering made him perfect, and is the correct road for us.  Why would a benevolent God allow suffering?  Because it makes us perfect by teaching us to obey God despite all the suffering that comes our way.  What would it mean to say we are obedient when obedience is never put to the test.  If God never asks us to go through anything "hard", then how strong would we be?  How much like Christ would we be?  Suffering is necessary if we want to grow and demonstrate obedience to the Father.  It MUST be t his way.
2023 - And then this final point in vs 11, BECAUSE of Jesus' perfection, brought about by his obedience in suffering, he was made High Priest forever, as we see of Melchizedek, who was BEFORE the Law and before the Aaronic.

2022 - Beginning in vs 11, the outline says we are going to talk about commitment to Christ - based, presumably, on what has been presented so far.  It begins as a severe rebuke to the readers.  The writer says they should already know all this, since they have been Christians for so long, and yet, they have no clue.  They're just kids in the word, and at a learning level where the very concepts they should learn next are too far over their heads.  Like trying to teach Differential Equations to 1st year algebra students...in high school.  They not only don't have the tools, but they don't have the maturity to assimilate such concepts.  They have no "storage space" complex enough to store such knowledge.  And I tell ya, I think he's talking to me here.  At my age, I ought not just now be learning these things.  But yet, I thank God for the opportunity, even at this late date, to grasp at least a bit of the transcendent knowledge that he sees fit to give us by his word.

2022 - One last thing today.  This writer does not seem to me to "speak" like Paul.  It may be that having strictly "learned" Hebrews as his audience frees him to step up the level and the language that he uses, but it is surely a complete break with his established pattern of writing.  And yet, I did find that one connection to Paul's other writing a little earlier.  So it could be...but it is certainly very different.

2023 - Obedience is doing what you would prefer not to do.  Or.  Obedience is doing something other than your first preference.  If you are starving, and you are told to eat, is eating really obedience?  No, because it is what you wanted to do anyway.  But if you are starving, and told NOT to eat...obedience is in doing what you are told though it is NOT what you want to do.  
Is there a FB post here using these verses:
8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. 9 And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, [Heb 5:8-9 ESV]

Chapter 6
2023 - Going back to re-read 5:11-14, since that is where the outline break says the topic of "Full Commitment" begins, after the section on Christ the better priest.  Read it yesterday, but focusing today.  In these last verses of 5, the writer just severely chastises his readers.  He calls them children as far as their understanding of the gospel.  Says they ought to be far more advanced, but they still drink milk,like a baby rather than even a child much less an adult.  Why would he be so harsh?  Who is he that he believes he has the authority to say such things and that they should listen to him and be ashamed because of his words?  We could say Paul, as an apostle, but I can't think of anywhere else that Paul speaks so harshly, even to the Corinthians.  So some other of the 12?  Who?  Matthew was a learned Jew, but surely we don't see Matthew in this.  I come back to Apollos...but how would he have such authority unless this is written to a "seminary" at which he was, or once was, a teacher.  He could reprimand his students, in fact it sort of has that feel to it.  The book sounds like a teacher going back over material that they ought to know already, and being almost angry with them for wasting this time.  There is much to do, and they aren't holding up their end.  Who would say that?  Apollos might, if he was the teacher.  What do we really know about Apollos?  I found these verses:
24 Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures. [Act 18:24 ESV].  Eloquent - a good speaker.  They make good teachers.  Competent?  The literal translation is that "he was mighty in the scriptures".  The word for mighty is "dynatos".  I can see that as a superlative.  Dynamite in the scriptures.  He knew the scriptures thoroughly.  The word is also translated "possible" as in "if possible".  Would we translate it that Apollos had possibilities in the scripture?
12 What I mean is that each one of you says, "I follow Paul," or "I follow Apollos," or "I follow Cephas," or "I follow Christ." [1Co 1:12 ESV].  Apollos is in good company here, with Paul and Peter.  That's right at the top of the hierarchy.  Further, it tells us that Apollos had done some teaching in the church at Corinth, and had been there long enough to baptize a group of people who considered him their primary teacher, above these two pretty big time apostles.
4 For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not being merely human? 5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. ... 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future--all are yours, [1Co 3:4-6, 22 ESV].  The company gets still smaller.  Now it only includes Paul and Apollos.
6 I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another. [1Co 4:6 ESV].  Again, pretty exclusive company.  
It could have been Paul, being the stern schoolmaster, who wrote Hebrews, but there are so many things that don't fit.  He doesn't give his salutation or his closing, he doesn't name the recipients...If it was Paul, this was an internal document at some church where he spent some time that was perhaps never intended for general circulation.  We might say that same about Apollos though, if he wrote it as a professor's reprimand to his students.  So I still don't have a better idea who wrote it, but I think now that I see what it really is.  A review of previous material that ought to have been learned by now.  Teaching the teachers, who were not learning very well.
That's the end of 5:11-14.  Now let's look at 6.

2022 - Outline says we will continue to talk about full commitment to Christ.  

Now the writer says it is time to push on.  Much more could be said, but these things are foundational.  They should be understood already.

2023 - In 6:1, the writer indicates that all that went before is the elementary doctrine of Christ.  It was like a chapter in Systematic Theology about the person of Christ.  And the writer says they should already have known that because it is so fundamental, so foundational, to everything else.  So.  We are going to move on to other things.  Things less foundational I would say, but things that are still very important, and perhaps not on a level to even be taught to babes.  You have to have graduated to solid food before these things will ever make any sense to you.  And there are some big topics here.  We ought to look at these as "building" on the foundational understanding of Christology:
1 Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, 2 and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. [Heb 6:1-2 ESV].  There are six more topics here.  How many sermons could you come up with on these six topics?  Washings?  Beyond just baptism?  It sure looks that way.  Resurrection - we know the Thessalonicans had trouble there.  Final judgment - I know there's more to that topic than meets the eye!  Laying on of hands?  In those days it conveyed real Holy Spirit power.  Perhaps they needed instruction in being careful to whom they conveyed that?  So...are these what the rest of Hebrews is going to be about?

And then here come the really tough verses that the intro talked about.  These:
4 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. [Heb 6:4-6 ESV]
It most certainly reads as if saved people can lose their salvation.  Shared the Holy Spirit?  How is that not saved people?  Unless it is sarcastically showing the incredible sequence that would initiate.  What it is really saying is that IF you could lose your salvation, it would be absolutely impossible ever to regain it.  So if you want to adopt that it can be lost, then realize that once lost, we are with the demons in the abyss, with no hope of ever being saved again.  MSB goes on at length about how this cannot be written about believers.   He concludes the same way I did.  If that's what these verses say, then once lost it can never be regained.  But if it isn't about losing salvation, what is it really trying to say?  Quoting MSB:
"Those who sinned against Christ in such a way had no hope of restoration or forgiveness.  (that is, those who have full knowledge of Christ, complete teaching and instruction about Christ, and with this all in mind, still reject Christ).  The reason is that they had rejected Him with full knowledge and conscious experience (as described in the features of vv 5,6).  With full revelation they rejected the truth, concluding the opposite of the truth about Christ, and thus had no hope of being saved.  They can never have more knowledge than they had when they rejected it.  They have concluded that Jesus should have been crucified, and they stand with His enemies."

2022 - Paul is postulating what the sequence of events would have to be for a saved person to lose their salvation and then regain it.  Improbable things would have to occur, as in Christ would need to be crucified again, each time.  The doctrine of the sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice would fall.  It wouldn't be enough to keep us saved.  He sets the whole thing up with phrases that leave no doubt he is talking about saved people.  The "enlightened", tasters of the gift, sharers of the Holy Spirit...only the saved are indwelt by the Holy Spirit.  If SAVED people fall away, it is IMPOSSIBLE to restore them to salvation.
This begs the question, then.  If this is impossible, why is Paul bringing it up right here, at this point in chapter 6?  What was laid down before that might lead one to ask - just exactly here - whether those who lose their salvation can reacquire it?  Well back in 5, the section title before vs 11 was "Warning Against Apostasy".  Comments on 11-14 are just above.  He accused them of being "toddlers", not only unlearned as to doctrine, but perhaps lacking the concentration span to learn it.  
And then he starts 6 with "Therefore..."  Because you "...need milk, not solid food...", let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity.  Ahh!!!  He is saying that they should not be spending their time rehashing, debating all over again, and re-proving what they have already studied and been told.  It is time to STOP going over the same material again and again.  Doing so does not add to knowledge - there is only so much algebra to learn before going on to something more complex - but just churns things up and gives the appearance of progress when in fact one is still "stuck" in the fundamentals.  That is not useful or profitable, and that is what you are doing, "Therefore..." I'm not going to debate these already proven doctrines with you anymore - like whether or not you can lose salvation because it is so painfully obvious that you cannot - and move on to bigger questions.  (((I note that eternal judgment is listed as an "elementary doctrine" that ought not need further study by this time, yet that is exactly what is challenging me at this point, it is my "extra" study.  And what I'm trying to do is just organize what the Bible says so that I can explain what I believe it teaches.  That's exactly what this writer is saying I ought to know already.  So...that means judgment is decipherable using pretty much only the OT scriptures.  The writer of Hebrews didn't have a complete NT, Revelation had not even been written - though 1 and 2Thess probably had.  But they aren't about judgment they are about the second coming.  
2023 - No.  I think the additional list of topics are things they do not know.  They ought to have already understood Christology, and rather than rehashing it continuously, it is time to move on to these additional topics.)))  If that is correct, did all the previous chapters arise in response to the question of "losing salvation"?  Possibly so....How could you lose the salvation offered by Christ if:  he has a better name, he is the son, he is higher than the angels, higher than Moses, and a more profoundly effective High Priest than the Law ever provided.  If you don't think you could lose the salvation that accrued to those UNDER the law, and BEFORE the law, how could you possibly think you could lose salvation that came through this better one - Christ the Messiah?  OR, what if they were saying that failure to maintain the sacrifices DID result in lost salvation before there was Law and during the Law so wouldn't it still be possible to lose it?    The answer would be that the sacrifices under the Law only delayed God's justice, it NEVER atoned completely for it.  That's why we'll see later that it had to be done year by year.  There are...how many verses in the OT that say faith is better than sacrifice anyway, that animal sacrifices are nothing, but obedience to the Law - because one WANTS to obey the Law, is what God requires.    So at this point, I think it is probably the first situation - that they were concerned about losing salvation, and these first 5 chapters are a refutation of that, culminating with the stating of the question at the beginning of chapter 6.
2023 - Wow.  This previous paragraph is pretty much what I was about to write about these first 6 chapters.  I had forgotten that I had untangled it this way.  I certainly see it that way today.  They were constantly trying to ascertain "how" Christ could give us eternal salvation if angels, the Law, Moses, or the Aaronic priesthood could not.  And the answer was that Christ was greater by far than all these, and was the very Son of God, and the Messiah, the chosen one, the sent one, the sacrificer and the sacrificed.  He is greater than all who came before, and salvation in Christ can NEVER be undone.  So can we please move on now!  That is what the first six chapters are about.

An agricultural analogy.  Land that drinks the rain and produces thistles instead of crops is destined to be burned.
2022 - Not just an analogy.  A metaphor.  The rain is the blessings of God, falling on the saved.  Good crops, life-sustaining (salvation-sustaining) nourishment is the result.  If the rain is producing thorns, then it is not the rain that's the problem, but the land it falls on.  That land is worthless (unsaved), and near to being cursed (going to hell upon death).  This might very well be the authors way of saying that we shall know them by their works.  It is not that saved people can regress and do bad things, it is that they were never saved at all.  This surely might be the point here.
2023 - 7 For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. 8 But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned. [Heb 6:7-8 ESV]
Possible FB post.  God "rains" on all people.  Those who produce crops - useful to others - are blessed by God.  Those who produce thorns, when watered by this very same rain, are in danger of being cursed forever.  God offers salvation to everyone, equally.  If we turn it down, it is not the offer that is the problem.

Then this verse, a bit apologetic maybe for the harshness of what has just been stated:
9 Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things--things that belong to salvation. [Heb 6:9 ESV]
If better things belong to salvation, the section just presented does not belong to salvation.  This is the confirmation verse that he was talking about unsaved, not saved.  
2022  - He has just said a hard thing - that if you aren't producing good crops, though the rain daily falls in the form of teaching and scripture, then you are almost worthless and the fire is your next stop.  BUT, it does not have to be that way.  He is talking about -he is talking to - those who are hearing all this information about Christ, and yet STILL fail to commit.  They want to talk about the same old things over and over, whereas if they were saved, they would understand and move on to bigger things.  He is telling them that their hearts are not yet right, and that he believes/hopes/intends that they WILL be saved because they are right at the very door, but they are not yet saved.

2022 - Verse 11, we hope you can have assurance to the end.  This puts it all together.  If they are still worried about losing salvation, or still thinking - as the new wears off - that they even can lose their salvation, it is sapping their energy toward doing good works and serving, and what the writer wants for them is the assurance of eternity in heaven that ought to be keeping gas in the tank at all times.  

2022 - 13-15 are saying that Abraham went through some difficulties too, but he remained faithful, as these to whom Hebrews is addressed ought also remain faithful.

The chapter concludes with a statement of the permanence of salvation, once obtained.  These verses:
19 We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, 20 where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. [Heb 6:19-20 ESV]
Jesus permanent and unique position as our high priest is reiterated.  Sure and steadfast are not words used of a precarious hold.  We are "placed" behind the curtain, in God's very presence.  Jesus led the way, living a perfect life, and making the perfect sacrifice.  Since this atoned once and for all, the separation is removed.  In Christ, we approach God's very throne.

2022 - All of 13-20 are aimed at reassuring the Hebrews that they cannot lose their salvation any more than Abraham could lose his.  I think this chapter 6 is a "tying up" of the response to the question of whether Jesus is sufficient - whether faith in him alone - can really save us forever.  The Hebrews who had been taught practically from birth that it was the sacrificial system that saved them, that kept them in good standing with God - through the actions of the priests in the Temple, so how was it possible to "disconnect" from all that completely, and individually trust in Christ alone, and "bet your eternity" on Christ's ability to "keep you saved".  That is what it has all been about.  And the writer says all this is elementary doctrine.

Chapter 7
2023 - It occurred to me yesterday, and is in the notes, that Hebrews might have been a chastising letter to the student of the writer of Hebrews.  Remember also that at the end of 6, that writer says "Enough review, let's move on."  And then we get Chapter 7 with the introduction of this teaching comparing Jesus with Melchizedek and contrasting him with the Levitical priesthood.  So I see this as new material for the students, which may build on what went before, but is in fact a new topic.  A new chapter, if you will, in the systematic theology text of the writer of Hebrews.

MSB says this chapter is the focal point of the whole epistle, comparing the priesthood of Melchizedek to that of Christ.  This becomes a very big deal, though Melchizedek is only mentioned twice in the OT, once in Gen. 14:18-20. and again in Psa 110:4.  This verse:
2 and to him Abraham apportioned a tenth part of everything. He is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace. [Heb 7:2 ESV]
18 And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.) 19 And he blessed him and said, "Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; 20 and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!" And Abram gave him a tenth of everything. [Gen 14:18-20 ESV]
I don't get what is meant by the phrase "He is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness.  Are they talking about the meaning of the word Melchizedek?  Two meanings in the same word but always righteousness first, before peace?  MSB does not help at all with this.  Ignores the phrase entirely.  Here are some alternate translations, NLT seeming to be the most "informative":
2 and to him Abraham apportioned a tenth part of everything. He is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace. [Heb 7:2 ESV]  Or is this just about the word order?  In vs. 18, his name comes first, not his title.  Perhaps the word Melchizedek means "King of righteousness", but then the additional phrase "King of Salem" Salem meaning peace, comes second.  Why is that so important that the writer of Hebrews went to so much trouble to point it out?  It is such a "focused" look at just four words.
2 Then Abraham took a tenth of all he had captured in battle and gave it to Melchizedek. The name Melchizedek means "king of justice," and king of Salem means "king of peace." [Heb 7:2 NLT]  Ok, this pretty much says it is about the word order - name first, then title.  Just need to know now why that word order has meaning?

2022 - BLB Interlinear says the name means "my King is Sedek", but lower down, Strong's says it means "king of right", and still lower, Gesenius said it meant King of Righteousness.  So here's the thing.  For this to be profoundly important, we have to believe the name is no accident, but is given by God as revelation to us who come so long after.  That is, today, one can name their child "Leader of the Free World", but that does not make it so.  These verses in Hebrews are saying he was called Melchizedek because that is who he was going to be - the king of righteousness, perhaps the one and only priest of God on the planet at the time.  We are further to understand that Abraham recognized the significance of Melchizedek, else why in the world would he give him a tenth of everything?  He had to recognize who Melchizedek really was - a priest for the ages.  Once you accept these two things - his name was no accident, and Abram recognized his significance - then it opens the door to the rest.

2024 - Here's a thought on this verse:
2 ...He is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace. [Heb 7:2b ESV].  So in vs 1, we see that Abraham gave a 10th of everything to Mel, who was King of Salem and also priest of the Most High God.  He combined the two offices.  Why is this important?  Well think of the next few verses as the "teacher" of Hebrews, presenting this material to his students.  He is up in front of the class and begins this way:  "I'm going to tell you a few things about Mel.  FIRST, look at his name.  It means king of righteousness.  Second, he is the actual real life King of Salem.  Third, Salem means peace, so he is also king of peace.  So...king of righteousness and peace, and King of the city of Salem.  Fourth, we are given no information on his birth, death, parentage or history.  The Son of God also has no beginning or end, and so compares in this way to Mel.  So that is the end of the "set up" and now in vs 4, the writer "unpacks" what all these things mean.

2024 - I wonder why, in Gen 14.18-20, "He was priest of the Most High" is in parentheses.  I do not understand that.  We see it over and over and I do not know what it is that way.  Is it telling us something about the original text?  Does it mean it is inserted by the translator or scribe?  What does it mean???  Because Hebrews is now going to make a very big deal out of the priesthood of Melchizedek.  Hmmm...I looked at the other Bibles in BLB and only the ESV and the NET put parentheses around this phrase.  NASB does not.  So...ESV ought to explain why they have these parentheses.  I did not find any explanation in the introductory pages to my edition.  I checked the verse in Genesis.  I noticed that in vs 17, we find the phrase "that is, the King's Valley" inside parentheses.  It is in this case just an explanation/clarification/amplification of of what "Valley of Shaveh" means.  Turns out that this phrase is also in parentheses in the NASB95.  It is certainly not a complete sentence, where the parenthesized text in 18 is a complete sentence.   We could say the the information in parenthesis in vs 18 is also just an amp/clar/exp of what went just before.  In 18, the information in the parentheses is additional information about the subject - Melchizedek.  So my best guess at this point is that these two phrases don't really fit in grammatically with the text around them.  They are sort of an aside to the reader.  Many versions put "that is, the King's valley" in parentheses...because it is not a complete sentence.  But only two put the vs 18 phrase in parentheses.  BUT, ALL of the translations put the explanation in 18 in there.  So there is no dispute about whether it ought to be there or not, just perhaps some differences in the rule employed to decide what phrases ought to be in parentheses.  Everyone but ESV and NLT seem to have decided that "complete sentences need no parens" but ESV decided that if it is just a sort of inserted aside to the reader, whether complete or not, ought to be in parens.  Wow.  What a lot of time and energy spent on such a minor point.  However, I have gotten stumped time and again about these parens and why they are or are not there.  Perhaps now I won't have to stop and stress about it ever again!

Mel had no known genealogy.  We don't know who his parents were - that is we don't know what tribe he was from.  2022 - Therefore, his position is not based on his family.  We don't know when he was born, we are given no date for his death.  So...Melchizedek's priesthood has no beginning and no end.  It is infinite.  So is the priesthood of Jesus Christ.  This is a notable similarity between the two.  I expect the whole righteousness and peace thing also corresponds between to two...what reference is Hebrews alluding to with 7:2???  The name Jesus means "savior", because he will save his people from their sins.  Moving on....
2022 - This verse:
3 He is without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest forever. [Heb 7:3 ESV]
Hebrews draws this parallel.  This is not something we later "interpreted", or "read into it".  Hebrews says that the priesthoods of Melchizedek and Jesus are more alike than the priesthoods of the Law and Jesus.  Apparently "older" is better.  
2024 - This verse 3 is not true of Christ.  We do know his mother, and his father, and we know fairly precisely when he was born a man.  Is Hebrews discounting these things about Jesus and making his eternity the surpassing thing about Jesus?  Or are we getting a hint here, this early in church history, of the "wholly man and wholly God" doctrine?

2024 - Vs 4 is the conclusion of the four "facts" about Mel that were just presented.  These things tell us that he was a very great man, and that is why Abraham gave him a tithe.  Then begins a comparison of the priesthood of Mel compared to the Levites - the tribe of Moses and Aaron.  Notice that Abraham "volunteered" the 10th part to Melchizedek.  The Levites receive tithes by Law.  Worshipers are required to give them tithes.  Both the Levites who receive the offerings and the ones who give the offerings are descended from Abraham.  Neither has any claim to be superior to the other, so no obligation for the non-Levites to give tithes to the Levites.  Only the Law makes this so.    The question begged then is why would Abraham the Patriarch, the father of us all, the greatest of our great, make an offering to this Melchizedek?

Hebrews then points out that it is always the lesser that gives a tithe to the superior.  Abraham gave a tenth to Melchizedek.  Therefore, Melchizedek was greater than Abraham.  The tribe of Levi was "in Abraham", in that Levi would be a descendant of Abraham.  Therefore, Levi himself, the father of the Levitical priesthood that was to come, paid a tithe to the priesthood of Melchizedek.  Remember that parallels were first drawn between Melchizedek and Christ, and now Hebrews is establishing that Melchizedek's priesthood was greater than the Levitical priesthood and SO...Christ's priesthood corresponding to Melchizedek's, is also greater than the Levitical priesthood.
2024 - So where are we going?  We are going to say that in the same way Mel was worthy to receive tithes from Abraham, Jesus is worthy to receive tithes under the New Covenant.  He is a priest of a different order, a better, higher order, who is owed tithes not because of some regulation or other in the Law, but because his is a higher priesthood than the Levitical.  The author is trying to sever the bond of obligation to the Law felt by these "nearly persuaded Jews".  They "dare not" turn their backs on the Law of Moses, because there is nothing of more esteem to a Jew than the Law of Moses.  So Hebrews is trying to "prove" that there is a HIGHER bond of obligation that ought to have priority.

2022 - Several points are made.  The Levites receive tithes not because of their superiority, but because they are priests under the Law, and the Law commands that they receive these.  No superiority of priest over person is therefore implied.  The priests and the people are equal.  Not so in the case of Melchizedek and Abraham.  There was no obligation for Abraham to tithe to him. but Abraham did, after Mel blessed him - therefore the greater blessed the lesser and the tithe acknowledged the positional relationship.

2023 - This verse:
7 It is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior. [Heb 7:7 ESV].  Should I make a big deal when I think an inferior is blessing me, and so trying to assert dominance over me in a very backwards attack.  He seems to be blessing me, yet doing so is just a statement of his own superiority?  Last night at church the speaker blessed us all at the end of his message.  Bobby Kelly often does that.  Paul does that at the end of his letters.  Is that ok?  Positionally, according to Hebrews, it is beyond dispute that the lesser is the one who should get blessed.
2024 - It is also true that it is considered a courteous greeting to meet someone and say "The Lord bless the and keep thee", and they might reply "And you also".  This is not about dominance...and yet...

2022 - This key verse:
8 In the one case tithes are received by mortal men, but in the other case, by one of whom it is testified that he lives. [Heb 7:8 ESV]
We saw parallels between Christ and Mel, now we see contrasts between the Levites and Mel.  The Levites are mortal men, receiving tithes because of who they are, their lineage, and the Law.  But Mel received it because Abraham recognized him as Priest of God forever, just as Christ was going to be.  MSB note says it means the Levitical priesthood "changes" as the priests, each in turn, die and are replaced.  But since the death if Mel is not recorded anywhere, his priesthood does not change in this way.
Another MSB note, on 7:9,10, points out that in the same way Levi paid homage to Mel in that he was "in the loins" of Abraham when he paid, so we all sinned against God in that we were all "in the loins" of Adam when he sinned.  The Levitical priesthood, being inferior, paid tithes to Mel because his priesthood was superior to theirs.  This seems to me to be going WAY out there.  And though I understand what they're saying, I'm having trouble understanding why it is such a big deal.

Next argument:  If the Levitical priesthood had been sufficient, why would Jesus have come - not as a Levite - but as Melchizedek?  But did he?  Jesus' genealogy back to Adam is in scripture.  Or...are we saying that since God is his father, he has no beginning, no genealogy?  The NT genealogies are those of Joseph on one hand of of Mary on the other.  But Jesus was the Son of God.  So in this sense, Jesus "pre-dated" genealogy.

2022 - Having established the parallel's of Mel and Christ, and stating outright that Jesus is priest on the order or Melchizedek, the question is, why was he even needed?  I ask why this question if we have just gone to so much trouble to establish that the priesthood of Mel was superior to that of the Levites.  We've already answered this question. And keep in mind that MSB says chapter 7 is THE chapter in Hebrews.

2024 - Vs 11 is the fork in the road, the question that arises based on the logic that has gone before:
11 Now if perfection had been attainable through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the law), what further need would there have been for another priest to arise after the order of Melchizedek, rather than one named after the order of Aaron? [Heb 7:11 ESV].  
Another salvo at the superiority of the Law as the ultimate.  The Levitical priesthood, in Abraham, had paid homage to Mel, and so showed that Mel's version of priesthood was better - and a predecessor - than their own.  If we are to "stay with" the Levitical priesthood, it should be based on the ability of that priesthood to make us perfect before God.  But...We have already seen that there was previously a BETTER, and we know further that in Psa 110.4, the promised Messiah will be a priest - NOT like the Levites - but like the OLDER, BETTER order of Melchizedek.  If the Law and its priests could get there, why did the Messiah come as a priest of a different order!?!?!?  This is awesome!

2022 - I have a note in my Bible saying that some see Mel as the pre-incarnate Christ.  I have a really hard time with that view though...He could not have been flesh, yet to be King of Salem he would have had to live a life.  Doesn't that preempt, sort of, the incarnation in Bethlehem?

Requirements changed when the priesthood went from Mel to Levi.  Wouldn't it also change when it went from Levi to Jesus?  Further point is made that Jesus is descended from the tribe of Judah, and Moses never made Judah a source of any priesthood.  This is the point, not my point about pre-existing above.  Jesus was from a tribe external to any  priesthood the Law ever established.
2024 - How could even a devout Jew argue this?  The "requirements" change when the order of the priesthood changes.  This is NOT about getting a new high priest, it is about getting a NEW ORDER of priest.  The writer has shown we went from Mel to Levi...AND now he has show that we will go from Levi BACK to Mel!  The Law CAME with the Levitical priesthood, wouldn't the Law also GO when the Messiah - a priest of a different order, that of Melchizedek - arrived?  The Law should fall with the supercession of a BETTER high priest!

Then to drive the point home, Hebrews quotes Psa 110:4, which is a prophecy of the Messiah, and says he is after the Order of Melchizedek.  This is why all this is important, though only two references to Mel are in the OT.  One tells of his superiority over Abraham and Levi, and the other says the Messiah will be like THIS priest, NOT like the Levitical priesthood.  He is a "clean break" from the Law of Moses, abolishing that Law, and with it the Levitical priesthood entirely.  With the priests, so also went the sacrifices.  (So then how will the sacrifices come back in the Millennial????)

2022 - This verse:
16 who has become a priest, not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life. 17 For it is witnessed of him, "You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek." [Heb 7:16-17 ESV]
Jesus earned the title of priest after Mel by his sinless life.  And he is declared by God to have earned that same title.  And the point of that is that the Law was too weak to perfect anything at all - and had to be oft-repeated - but Christ, like Mel, is a once for all priest.

Another difference, from the same verse in Psalms, is that God swore the priesthood of the Messiah would last forever.  The Levites became priests by birthright, not by divine oath.  They were priests under the power of the law.  Jesus, as Messiah, was a priest because God swore he would be a priest forever.  

2024 - Oh my!  Vss 18-19!:
18 For on the one hand, a former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness 19 (for the law made nothing perfect); but on the other hand, a better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God. [Heb 7:18-19 ESV].  The final blow to the Law.  The Law COULD NOT perfect, so wouldn't we set it aside upon the arrival of "a better hope"!!!

2022 - These verses:
21 but this one was made a priest with an oath by the one who said to him: "The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, 'You are a priest forever.'" 22 This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant. [Heb 7:21-22 ESV]
Eternal priesthood was an expected characteristic of the Messiah because of this verse.  Hmm...There was a precedent for eternal priesthood.  Eternal priesthood is superior, as evidenced by the payment of tithes by Levi to Mel.  Since the priest is superior, the covenant which he represents is also superior.  Therefore, following the Messiah is a far better thing than continuing in the Law.  This is what the writer is trying to convey to his audience - to "get them over the hump" of leaving the Law behind for something far better than the  Law.

This is all now summarized in this short verse:
22 This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant. [Heb 7:22 ESV]

Levitical priests died, and had to be replaced.  So that covenant had many priests (over time).  The Messiah is permanently the high priest, is never replaced, and "saves to the uttermost" since he always lives to make intercession for us.

This verse:
27 He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. [Heb 7:27 ESV]
Here is equivalence of the priest, as both the one who sacrifices, and the sacrifice.  The priest lives forever, the sacrifice is perfect.  This is what the OT Law of Moses symbolized - the coming of this perfection.

2022 - This verse:
28 For the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect forever. [Heb 7:28 ESV]
This puts one more argument forward.  The Law came, but AFTER that, in Psalms, God made it clear that a better priesthood was coming, when He swore that Messiah would be a priest forever.  Why would God say that unless the Levitical was so insufficient as to require replacement.  It means that Jesus had to become the High Priest and the better covenant.  The Law must be, should be, and was always going to be abrogated in favor of something better.  To Jews, this was justification for leaving the Law behind.  It also is a great argument for presentation at the Jerusalem council when they were deciding whether to make the Law binding on Gentiles.  Why should it be?  It is an inferior thing to Christ.  Perhaps Hebrews was written well after that council, and it should have been a death knell to the Judaizers for the next hundreds of years.  Yet they seem to have persisted.

Chapter 8
2023 - Chapter 7 ended showing that Jesus was high priest IN HEAVEN at God's right hand.  He was not a high priest such as those under the law, mere men, who died and had to be replaced, and so on.  Then look at these first points of 8:
This is the point of what I have built thus far:
   We have a heavenly high priest now, in the heavenlies.
   He is at the right hand of God's own throne.  He can whisper in God's ear.
   He is in the TRUE tent, the original, not some earthly imitation of that "side by side" relationship that now exists in heaven.
   The arrangement in heaven is set up by God, not by man.

The Levitical priesthood daily offered sacrifices for themselves and those they represented.  This verse:
3 For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. 4 Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. [Heb 8:3-4 ESV]
Says that it is necessary for Jesus to have something to offer since he is the high priest.  I think that's what it says...  On earth though, the Law has set up and priests appointed by birth and sacrifices specified.  

2024 - I see this now...The high priest under the Law, annually, first made atonement for his own sins, and then by entry into the Holy of Holies and sprinkling of the blood of the goat upon whom the lot fell, atoned for the sins of the people.  There had to be a sacrifice because there had to be blood.  If this was the "picture" on earth of God's requirement, then we must try to "see backward through the shadow" to what the original ceremony, in perfect heaven, would have to be?  The point is that Jesus is both the High Priest, and the offered sacrifice presented directly to the Father in the heavenlies.  This is a "proof" that the crucifixion was in fact a sacrifice to God to atone for the sins of all men.  And now that sacrifice - in the office of High Priest - is presented continuously to God, so that sins no longer accumulate, but are constantly forgiven.  Because they are forgiven constantly, the Holy Spirit - God - can live inside our bodies - the tabernacles of the New Covenant - and not be in the presence of sin.  Come on!  Who could make this up!  This is God's own truth here!!!

This is described as "they serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things."  Since the earthly, Levitical rites and rituals and indeed the priesthood itself is only a "picture" of the more perfect heavenly priesthood and intervention, the heavenly priest is the better priest.
2023 - The point being made, I think, is that we can learn MUCH about the TRUE TENT from careful observation of the earthly tent, understanding that it is a representation of the heavenly.

2022 - The conclusion of the logic of the whole first paragraph is that if the Law had been sufficient, there would have been no necessity of the promised priesthood in Psalms.  God would not have replaced the Law with a better covenant, if the first had been sufficient.  What is tripping me  up is the part about the heavenly priest needing to have something to offer.  There is a sort of "embedded" argument that Jesus is high priest in heaven because he would not be high priest on earth, since there are already priests on earth that are making the sacrifices.  So it is a big deal that he ascended back to heaven, instead of just walking around on earth after his resurrection.  Is that the point?

I am having so much trouble understanding...This book is written to devout, intense, meticulous Jews in an effort to convince them by argument that they should abandon the Law of Moses and put all the faith they previously placed in that Law in Jesus Christ instead.  The arguments are likely a direct and point for point refutation of a defense of the Law of Moses that either had been presented, or was in fact a documented apologetic for Judaism that this writer of Hebrews was intimately familiar with.  He is systematically tearing down that defense by showing that the New Covenant, in Christ, is superior in every way, and in fact is the "end" of that covenant.  The New Covenant is a replacement of the Old Covenant because the events the Old Covenant anticipated and pictured have now taken place - being fulfilled in Jesus, and effectual forever since he lives forever.  

THEREFORE, I am going to move on through the rest of this book pretty quickly and not get bogged down and frustrated.  I recall that the MSB intro said you need to be pretty familiar with Leviticus to make sense of Hebrews.  I am obviously lacking in this respect.

There is a long quote from Jeremiah about the coming New Covenant.  This is used to convince the audience that the time of the New Covenant has arrived with the coming of Messiah.  This is so.  However, the Jews have by and large rejected this New Covenant and so it's full and complete details are not immediately evident.  This New Covenant is clearly a covenant between God and "the house of Israel and with the house of Judah".  It is NOT with Gentiles!!!  This looks forward to the wholesale establishment of the covenant in the latter days, during trib and great trib and then the Millennial most especially and specifically.  Jesus brought that covenant, is the key to that covenant, and is King and High Priest of that Covenant.  It is offered.  But it's actual "playing out" will not come until much later still.  We are in the church age - a marking of time to the great benefit of those not in the original promises - but the Jeremiah prophecy has not yet exploded onto the scene.

2023 - I think this quote from Jeremiah is showing just how very much was missing from the Old Covenant in terms of the relationship of God to man.  What COULD NOT be under the old was that God could not dwell inside us, could not communicate directly with us because of our impurity.  There could not be "personal revelation" because sin on the part of the recipient precludes it.
2023 - And then vs 12:
12 For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more." [Heb 8:12 ESV].  ONLY under the New Covenant will our INTENTIONAL sins be forgiven.  Until Jesus, intentional sin could not be forgiven, but it's punishment could be delayed.  Adam CHOSE sin.  Israel in the wilderness repeatedly CHOSE sin.  They knew it was sin, yet they went ahead.  Bulls and goats cannot fix intentional sin.  But we know from all the way back to Jeremiah that something better was coming.  A relationship where God COULD and WOULD communicate with us directly - through the indwelling Holy Spirit - made possible by the offering of the perfect High Priest, God's own Son, who gave his own sinless blood and body, and moved the "point of interaction" between God and man from the earthly temple to the very throne of God.  
2024 - Found this today in Jeremiah:  19 I will restore Israel to his pasture, and he shall feed on Carmel and in Bashan, and his desire shall be satisfied on the hills of Ephraim and in Gilead. 20 In those days and in that time, declares the LORD, iniquity shall be sought in Israel, and there shall be none, and sin in Judah, and none shall be found, for I will pardon those whom I leave as a remnant. [Jer 50:17, 19-20 ESV].  Couple of things...It is possible, even likely, that the writer of Hebrews is quoting, at least partially, this passage from Jeremiah.  BUT, I would point out that the passage in Jeremiah has made a distinction between Israel and Judah.  Jeremiah's promise of restoration, at least in this passage, is about ISRAEL - the Northern 10 tribes.  There is, however, another place in Jeremiah where the new covenant is discussed.

2022 - So as I read Ezekiel and Revelation, there will be a sacrificial system in the Millennial.  I think the long quote from Jeremiah is about that.  But even that system will go back to the law, because the altar will be on earth, and I believe the Levitical line will be re-established to do the sacrificing.  But with Jesus as High Priest and King.  Hmm...Just like last time, chapter 8 is where I get lost.

Chapter 9
2022 - Chapter 8 established the need for a better covenant than the Law and concluded that the new covenant therefore made the old obsolete.

2022- This verse:
2 For a tent was prepared, the first section, in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of the Presence. It is called the Holy Place. [Heb 9:2 ESV]
Per Baxter,
Lampstand - Represents Christ the Light of the world, and especially of his own people.
Table and Bread - Spiritual Sustenance.  Christ the Bread of Life, the Holy Spirit, the water of Life.

Then, 4 having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron's staff that budded, and the tablets of the covenant. [Heb 9:4 ESV]
Altar of Incense - Acceptable Supplication, prayer in the name of Jesus
Ark - Access through covenant relationship, Christ as the covenant, ground of our access to God.

Still 2022 - I was hoping that a look at the furnishings in detail might give me some insight into the things the writer of Hebrews chose not to discuss here.  And perhaps give me insight into why the first section must "fall" before the second is accessible.  Along those lines, perhaps the lampstand looked forward to Christ's arrival, and until that happened, only the high priest had direct access to the Mercy Seat, the presence of God?  And the Table and bread are about the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  Without the Holy Spirit to bear witness with our Spirit, and make interpretation to God that we in our flesh cannot make, we cannot have access directly to the Father.  This surely seems to make good sense.  The idea is that so long as the Holy Place was still prophetic, that is UNTIL Christ completed his work, the people could not have direct access to God.  Until Christ, there was no "qualified high priest" to so completely cleanse us as to bring us into His presence.  The High Priest under the Law could at best ONLY atone for unintentional accidental unknowing sin, which left a lot of sins still hanging out there.  The annual atonement delays the just punishment of the intentional sins by the symbolic shedding of blood.  But that sin is still there, and reckoning is delayed.  But the perfect high priest, Christ crucified, can also atone for intentional sins.  And only when he has accomplished his work - and fulfilled the promise of the Holy place - does the Holiest place become accessible.  
Oh my.  There is no way that man alone devised such an intricately interlocked plan for the ages.  Only the Living God could EVER come up with something like this!
I think this is ample explanation through vs. 14.

The Holy of Holies is described, but the writer says "Of these we cannot now speak in detail."  MSB says the writer says this because he does not want to obscure the main point by delving into details. (2022 - see above.  I think these are the things he means.)
All the priests go into the first section - the Holy Place, but only the high priest goes further, and that only once a year, and not without blood to offer for his sins and the "unintentional sins" of the people.  There is no MSB discussion of "unintentional" here.  That still seems like a big question that needs to be answered.  Atonement is for unintentional sins.  What do we do about the intentional ones?  Where can I find that?  Is that the sin offering as opposed to the atonement once a year?

2023 - So these first five verses are a sort of "picture" of the original tent of meeting, and the subsequent Temple.  He seems to be reminding his readers of how this all looked, of what was located in which section.  He's not going into deep dive detail about them, because his point here is not  discussion about furniture.

2023 - In vs 6, after a review of the furnishings, we get a review of the procedures.  We need to keep in mind all that was said in Chapter 8 establishing that this earthly tent was laid out - designed - by God as a representation of the heavenly layout.  None of this architecture is by chance.

2024 - The wording is very specific here.  The sacrifices were for UNINTENTIONAL SIN:
7 but into the second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people. [Heb 9:7 ESV].

2023 - Vs 8, "By this...".  We should see meaning in the fact that many priests often go into that first section, but the High Priest only goes into the second, and that only annually.  What is the meaning?  
   I think it is saying that the first section of the tent was symbolic for the "present age".  About what "present age" would this writer be talking?  What could it be?  It could be the church age.  Does that make sense?  We would have to understand it as meaning that the first section is still there, and will remain so until the Millennial, when Christ is present with us again, and makes this outer section unnecessary.  If that is what it means, then the things spoken of in vs 10 are the only things the "priests of this present age" can do.  They are only complying with regulations for the body, washings, food and drink restrictions.  So I reject this as the meaning of "present age", but with reservations.  Remember that Hebrews is written to Jews, deeply committed to the Law at that time.  Maybe the reformation of vs 10 is the change of heart coming in Rev. 7.  Going on with this idea...remembering that the Temple was still in operation with priests daily going in and out of the holy place - this writer could be talking about those "old" practices.  Could be saying that as long as you continue to hang your hat on what the priests are still doing in say 50 AD, and not switching over - not reforming - to the New Covenant, then you CANNOT have your conscious cleared, you cannot "be saved", you cannot participate in the New Covenant.  BECAUSE, you are still focused on the rules and regs, and on the sacrifices of mere men, and as long as you keep doing this - putting your focus on the Holy place - you will NEVER enter into the New Covenant, which is about the Holy of Holies, and about the true tent in heaven.
   Wow!  That is what it means!  The key is remembering that this is written to devout Hebrews, NOT to the church!  Note also that this means the reformation was the sacrifice of Christ.  That reformed forgiveness from earth to heaven, from flesh to will. (Later 2023 - This is not about the Millennial.  This present age was the age where the temple and the New Covenant existed together.  Essentially, I guess they still do, but there are no sacrifices.  In any case, the reformation referenced is, I believe, the New Covenant, not the Millennial.)
   
2024 - It may also be to show that only unintentional sin could be forgiven in those days, and that only by the High Priest's trip inside the veil.  What about today?  If all our sins are forgiven, are the intentional sins included?  Or do we still answer for those at the judgment?  Probably an heretical question...but it would be nice to know the verse that makes it so.
2024 - The Holy Place was about the present age.  Hmm...The first section represented the Law!  As long as these priests were doing their thing in the Holy Place, the way into the Holy of Holies remains sealed to all but the High Priest.  There can be no direct communication with God.  There are too many priests between He and us.  This arrangement is limited in what it can do.  And what it cannot do is "perfect the conscience of the worshiper". What does that phrase mean?  It means that the Priestly system could only deal with matters in writing.  It was about violating the letter of the Law.  About uncleanness when touching a dead person.  About eating the wrong food.  It could "fix" errors against the specifically enumerated requirements of the Law.  But it COULD NOT FIX THE INSIDE!!!  It was incapable of cleansing the conscience.  Only the indwelling Holy Spirit can do that!  The reformation then, is the Covenant change brought about by a NEW High Priest, not in a tent or a building but in the very presence of God!

(I would like to explore Apollos as the author of Hebrews.  He was eloquent, and he was convincing Jews that Jesus was Messiah even before Priscilla and Aquila informed him more perfectly.  Seems like Hebrews would be a nice "culmination" of all that information that he had.)

This verse, which is just another of many I do not comprehend:
8 By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing 9 (which is symbolic for the present age). According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, 10 but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation. [Heb 9:8-10 ESV]
As long as the Holy place stands, the Holy of Holies is closed?  And this is about the present age?  Does present age refer to the church age, or the wrath against the Jews period?  MSB is not much help...but seems to be saying that the Levitical/Law age is referred to.  Also, this isn't saying that this whole symbolism of Holy Place and Holiest Place is symbolic of the Law, in that God cannot be directly approached by His people.  The symbolism is not limited to "the first section" which is the way I read it.

Just going to keep moving....too much I don't get.

I get the feeling that the last part of this chapter is momentous.  I do not understand it.

2023 - Vss 11-14 make the case that Jesus, by his perfect sacrifice, entered NOT the earthly Holy of Holies up on Temple Mount, but the heavenly, perfect, unspoiled by human hands Holy of Holies in heaven itself.  The earthly priesthood could keep the body "clean", but it could not purify the conscience!  It could atone for unintentional sin, but it could not "fix" deliberate sin.  It just did not have that capability.  Men - as priests, confined to the Holy Place - could never atone for the sins of the will.  Such sins can only be overcome in the true tent, in heaven, by a perfect high priest who presents his own blood as the sacrifice for the willful sins of man.  That is what he's saying!

2022 - This verse:
15 Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. [Heb 9:15 ESV]
Having accomplished what he did, Christ assumes the place of High Priest, and permanently so.  That redemption through his blood finally and at last covers the intentional transgressions that COULD NOT BE ATONED FOR under the Law.  He is the ONLY High Priest, the ONLY Mediator, the ONLY door of access to the presence of God which is in the Holy of Holies.  There is just nothing else like this!  (This section might be seen as a direct connection to Paul as the potential writer of Hebrews because of this verse:  5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, [1Ti 2:5 ESV].)

2023 - 15 starts with therefore, and I finally think I see what it means.  The writer has established that the OC could only go so far, only cover sins of the flesh, only try to keep us sinless according to the sins of the body, but Jesus is High Priest in heaven itself, where all sins can be forgiven.  The New Covenant is centered in a new place.  In heaven itself, not in the Holy of Holies.

2023 - Look at 15b:
15 ...since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. [Heb 9:15 ESV].  NO ONE was redeemed under the first covenant.  Even the OT saints were not redeemed until Jesus shed his blood and presented it at the throne of God.  Looked at this way, I can see a case for the rapture including all the OT saints also.  They are redeemed by Christ, as we are.  If you want to say this is not so, I think you have to focus on the precise meaning of "in Christ".  Those in Christ will be raptured.  Are OT saints in Christ?  Is there any verse that puts them there?  (One we'll be seeing in Heb 11, that says they without us could not be made perfect.  Implies certainly that they WITH US, in fact WERE made perfect, putting us positionally in the same place with them
2023 - I am reading my way on out from 15.  Still have 2 long chapters in Jeremiah to read, and house cleaning to do.  I believe much progress was made this year!

I do think I get that in the same way that Moses "purified" the temple, the scrolls of the law, the temple utensils and vessels, so Jesus, by the shedding of his blood, purified the heavenly places, and He himself now sits in the presence of God, interceding on our behalf as the high priests did symbolically on earth.  As symbolized on earth, but now realized in the heavenlies.  His shed blood purified, but it was his actual death that redeemed us.  Is it that the blood covers unintentional sin, but only death can pay for the intentional?  Blood for mistakes, death for intention.  This is probably wrong.  Never heard anyone say it this way before. (2022 - not sure this is correct at all...I think now I was on the wrong track.)

2022 - Covenants must be sealed in blood.  Just as the Covenant of the Mosaic Law had to be sealed with animal blood, sprinkled on all the people, this New Covenant is also sealed in the blood of Jesus Christ, shed for all.
2022 - This vs:
23 Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. [Heb 9:23 ESV]
Everything "necessary" to the requirements of the covenant must be sanctified with blood.  So blood was sprinkled on the tent, the people, the scrolls of the law, the temple vessels - up to and including the Ark itself - and the priests.  Animal blood might be sufficient to purify the accoutrements of the Law, but the direct access to God accomplished by Christ took "better" blood, a better sacrifice, in fact a perfect sacrifice.  Again, the absolute superiority of the New Covenant is shown.

Reading some MSB notes and oh my...In the same way that each year, the High Priest reappeared from inside the Holy of Holies meant that God had accepted the atonement for another year, so the second coming of Christ shows that God accepted His sacrifice on the cross on our behalf, once and for all.  There is no meaningless nuance of the law - the shadow of heaven - or in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ!

2022 - 25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, 26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. [Heb 9:25-26 ESV].  Christ died once, only once, and that is sufficient.  Jump back to Hebrews 6 and the argument that if one COULD lose their salvation, Christ would have to die for them all over again, and see the reiteration and further cementing in place of that axiom of perseverance of the saints!

2022 - Here is a little bit of a tangent thought:
27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, [Heb 9:27 ESV]
I wonder if this is a different word for judgment than we usually see.  Clearly the Sheep and Goat judgment is about people who have NOT died.  It does seem to be a different word.  The word transliterates "krisis".  I did a quick look at where the word is used, and Matthew didn't use it either in 13 or 25 at all.  He used the word, but not in those chapters.  This little word is used 47 times in 46 verses in the mGNT, 48 times in 47 verses in the Textus Receptus.  This is an important word, and a possibly critical distinction in the judgments.  Moving this to my main judgment study page, and highlighting it.  Could be very crucial.

2022 - And now this too!  This chapter just will not end!
28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. [Heb 9:28 ESV]
What does this mean???  His second appearance will have nothing to do with atonement for sin but instead be about "rescue" of the saved?  Isn't that a thought!?  He will come to establish the Millennial Kingdom for all those who persevere through t/gt.  Not to make a new covenant, but to make good the promises that came before the Old Covenant!  Promises to the descendants of Abraham, NOT to the Gentiles or the church!  A good "proof text" that the raptured will not be on earth during the Millennial.
Also a good proof verse for Limited Atonement here.

Chapter 10
The earthly sacrifices would not be repeated if they were effectual.  Only in heaven can an effectual sacrifice take place.  Only with God, face to face.

2022 - A great verse:
4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. [Heb 10:4 ESV].  These sacrifices served as a reminder that they could never accomplish the purpose.  Over and over, because they were so ineffective.  Anything that continually needs doing - house cleaning, mowing, etc - means that what you are doing is not a permanent solution to the problem.  So plain.  So easy to understand.  But look at this:
5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, "Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; [Heb 10:5 ESV]
Animal sacrifices, animal blood, just won't do, but God prepared a special body for Christ, a human living body of flesh, the same as the bodies of those condemned by their sin.  Only a sacrifice of like for like can atone for sin.  Oh my...this is where pagan sacrifices of humans, of children, came from!  An incredible perversion of one of God's fundamental truths!  It does take a human sacrifice to atone for human sin.  But look what Satan made people do by twisting our "general revelatory" gut-level comprehension of what is right and wrong!  This is the kind of liar and this is the level of hatred that Satan harbors for mankind.  He despises us, he wants to cause us unending pain.  Why?  Because WE can be forgiven and HE cannot!
Here is a possible FB verse...

2023 - Vss 5-7:
5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, "Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; 6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. 7 Then I said, 'Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.'" [Heb 10:5-7 ESV].  I don't think I have ever seen these verses as plainly as I see them now.  These are quoted from Psa 40:6,7.  And it shows that there will be another plan.  It shows that the prepared body WILL be desired where the sacrifices and offerings were not.  But one is coming who will obey perfectly and this one will delight, satisfy, appease - whatever verb you like.  It is clear as day in these verses from Psalms that Jesus was coming to REPLACE the burnt offerings and sacrifices.  Equally clear that he is instead of rather than in addition to the Law!

2022 - This one too:
9 then he added, "Behold, I have come to do your will." He does away with the first in order to establish the second. [Heb 10:9 ESV]
He is saying that way back in Psalms, this was the future plan that even the construction and furnishings of the Tent of Meeting pointed to.  Christ's purpose, in great measure, was to set aside the inferior Law and substitute his own body for all those ineffectual sacrifices.  Leads right into vs 14 below.

This verse:
14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. [Heb 10:14 ESV]

2023 - Vss 12-14 are establishing, linking if you will, the crucifixion of Jesus with the Temple sacrifices, and showing that since Jesus' sacrifice was perfect, it need not be repeated.  Further, since the animal sacrifices WERE repeated, that proves they were in fact insufficient for the purpose.  But Jesus will only die once on the cross, and then he sat down, with his work of redemption complete, and he waits there until his enemies are his footstool.

And this one:
17 then he adds, "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more." 18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. [Heb 10:17-18 ESV]
The sin offering is done.  Does this make the sin offering and atonement the same?  Since there will still be offerings in the Millennial, which ones are they?  Thank offerings, wave offerings?  What?  Surely a literal reading says no more sin offering.

2022 - Vs 16, 17.  I had always believed these verses were about the Millennial, and NOT about those in Christ.  But this seems to apply it to the church age generally, rather than the Millennial exclusively.  Here are those verses:
16 "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds," 17 then he adds, "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more." [Heb 10:16-17 ESV]
Hard to be sure.  MSB says the writer is confirming what he's quoted from Psalms by re-quoting the Jeremiah vss he gave us in Chapter 8.  BUT, it says this in 8:
10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. [Heb 8:10 ESV]
Israel!  It definitely specifically says Israel.  To whom is Hebrews written?  To Hebrews!  To Israel!  If I persist in saying this is a Millennial promise, does it refute what Hebrews says?  No, in no way.  Christ's shed blood is sufficient to bring all Israel back to God.  But because they rejected him at the time, they were blinded and remain so until the end of the church age.  AT WHICH TIME, this prophecy will come true for a great many of them.  Yes.  I'm sticking with this as a Millennial only, Israel only promise.
2023 - No...the sacrifice was once for ALL, not just for Israel.  Perhaps the way to understand it is to keep it in context.  This is written to Hebrews, so it is appropriate that Heb 8:10 name them as recipients of this message.  But that does not make the effect of Jesus' sacrifice exclusive to the Jews.  Our conscience is also cleared when we come to Christ, our sins forgiven,  his word put into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, and we can all read and understand those things he wants us to understand.  He "brings us along", just like what this writer is doing for the Hebrews.  The Hebrews can understand, but that doesn't mean they have no need of teaching.  This is finally the way to see this.  Not exclusive in application, but exclusive in audience.

2022 - Vs 20 - His body is the curtain.  I knew the curtain tore, but had never seen that curtain as symbolic of his body, his death.  When the curtain tore - ripped, violently - the Holiest place was no longer insulated.  Through the body of Christ, we have direct access to God.  
Again.  No way man has "fabricated" such an intricately connected plan for mankind.  What is wrong with Peterson???  He should be able to see this!

2022 - 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. [Heb 10:22 ESV].  These are the rituals the priests had to go through before entering the Holy place and/or the Holy of Holies.  The verse means that we are now priests also, and we can approach the Ark, as they did in those former times.  We no longer need those priests, because Christ is our door to the inner sanctuary.  Wow.  This book just doesn't stop revealing the intricacy of it all.

2022 - This one too:
26 For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, [Heb 10:26 ESV]
If one chooses to remain a Jew under the Law, and necessarily breaks that Law, and commits intentional sin, realize that the Law that used to annually request and receive a stay of execution is no longer available to you.  Even if they do the sacrifice, that covenant is no more, and a better - and still exclusive as that one was - is available.  This is in no way about saved people continuing to sin after they have been saved.  This is not saying that if you are saved, and do enough evil after salvation to "lose" that salvation, that you cannot be saved again.  In the context of the book and chapter, that is not the situation being addressed.  This is about the New Covenant being the only covenant now.  You don't get to choose the covenant that gets you to heaven.  There is only one.

2022 - I don't understand how my previous notes were so brief.  Every verse is like a hammer, nailing home irrefutable truth:
29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? [Heb 10:29 ESV]
If you, as a Law-abiding Jew, break the Law, then you are condemned by two or three witnesses.  And that wasn't a very good covenant because it could accomplish nothing permanent.  Breaking a bad covenant would condemn you.  But what if you break this New Covenant, which is able to perfect you, which is permanent, and which required the blood of God's own Son?  Breaking a bad covenant would condemn you, surely you can expect no mercy at all if you break this one.
2023 - We could use this verse to say that hell is richly deserved by all those who reject Christ, and I believe it does indicate that...but that isn't who the verse is speaking about.  It is speaking about those Jews who "hang on" to the Mosaic Law, and continue to follow that covenant, rejecting the grace offered them and the completed once for all sacrifice made for them.  It is about the Jews addressed by this letter, but it surely applies - perhaps to a lesser extent - to all who reject Christ.  I say lesser because the oracles of God came to the Jews, and their special standing makes them more responsible for understanding what is going on here.

2022 - From 32 on is a sort of pep talk, and seems aimed more now at those who have completely accepted Christ and his completed work.  These have already known hardship, have had their goods plundered - likely by unconverted Jews or the Romans.  They had already suffered great loss, and it isn't over.  This writer is saying that they have come this far with aplomb, and that they must needs continue in faith, to receive what is promised.

2023 - Vss 34-38 may tie into the sheep and goat judgment.  It mentions, in vs 34, having compassion on those in prison.  These were those being persecuted who had compassion.  Hmm...this is stated as if it was in progress at that time...but the sheep and goat is only those still living...  At any rate, "those in prison", and then in vss 37, 38 it seems clear that at the time of Jesus' return, there will be reward for the faithful, and "no pleasure" for those who shrink back.  It does not imply hell for them, but clearly does imply a lesser reward.....until you read vs 39...

I got it read...but am a long way from understanding it.  I need to be very careful what I say about verses in Hebrews, and careful about quoting them to support a position.  Fact is, I don't understand most of this book, and would be in great danger of misrepresenting what it really says - real danger of "false teaching".

Chapter 11
The "faith" chapter.  I have a note that says those who believe in something are the walking talking evidence that it exists.  Else how could their belief persist?  To believe in what does not exist is mental insanity.  When so many believe in the same thing, it is mass insanity.  How do you disprove mass insanity?  What is the evidence that those who believe are insane, and those who don't are sane?  Shaky ground for unbelievers.  If you separate one of the believers from the herd, will he still persist in his belief?  If he does, if any does, then it should scare those who do not believe.

2021 - I like the way this is worded in ESV - especially in light of the paragraph above:
1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. [Heb 11:1 ESV]  as compared to this:
1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. [Heb 11:1 NKJV], which is the way I've always seen it before.  I like conviction better.  Evidence must be seen I think, or at least that's how the word is used nowadays.  If you want it to be exhibit A, you have to be able to put a tag on it.  Conviction cannot be seen, but our actions show that we have it.  Actions based on faith make real the object of that faith for all to see.  And that is what we see in the rest of chapter 11 - actions resulting from conviction.  

This verse:
3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. [Heb 11:3 ESV]
Follow right along from what I said about verse 1.  Rejecting evolution and holding fast to creation - because it is in the Bible, comes by faith.  You can't believe this without faith.  Perhaps because Satan has heaped up so much momentum that He didn't create it.  Creation is a God thing.  No other creature or being creates from nothing except God.  
2021 - The Big Bang theory starts with all that is already present and ready to become what we see.  The Big Bang theory doesn't tells us where all that mass and energy came from.  This verse says it was spoken into existence by God.  It became something from nothing.  It is a supernatural thing beyond the understanding of man.

This verse:
6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. [Heb 11:6 ESV]
Lines right up with "The fool has said in his heart..."  
Unbelievers never ever get a credit for doing good.  Their unbelief precludes any credit.  Being a "good person" without believing is an oxymoron.  It is not a "thing".  Unbelievers judge themselves with great leniency.

7 By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. [Heb 11:7 ESV]
In vs 7 it says that construction of the ark condemned the world.  The faithful action of one man separated that one man from the whole world.  As long as there was a contrast between good and evil, there could be condemnation.  Ever get to feeling alone?  Read about Noah.  Ever think no one wants to hear what you have to say about God?  Read about Noah.  Ever think doing what faith requires is just wasted effort?  Noah's saved his own family.  Faith drove the action that saved Noah from destruction.  Faith compels faithful action.  If you don't feel compelled, then check for true faith.
This is a good vs for a FB post.

Abraham lived in the land of promise as if it was a foreign land.  We live in the world as if it is a foreign land, but in eternity, the world will be new, and the world will be our inheritance, as Cana was Abraham's.  It is foreign for us because sin has corrupted it.  Made it "foreign" to us.

Vs 13 urges us to continue in faith, as these who died without seeing the object of their faith remained faithful.  

Never noticed this one:
16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. [Heb 11:16 ESV]
God not ashamed to be called our God, because we look to the city in heaven He has built for those who have faith enough to shun this corrupted place and things it has to offer in favor of the place built by God.  

This pivotal verse:
19 He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. [Heb 11:19 ESV]
Abraham did not believe for a second that the son of promise would stay dead.  He believed he would die, by his own hand, but he knew it was not permanent.  This is a picture of Christ dying at the hands of sinners.  Christ's resurrection can save those who believe in his resurrection with the same fervent faith Abraham believed that Isaac would live again.  Belief in the face of impossibility.  Though Isaac did not die, his release from the altar of sacrifice was a picture of him returning from the dead.

This chapter is showing that God advances his plan for mankind through people of faith.  He doesn't just "make them do what he wants", but they do it of their own volition through the firm faith they have in God.  God made Pharoah's heart hard, Pharoah had no faith.  In Pharoah's case, God did "make him do what He wanted", to the destruction of Pharoah of His army.  The Israelites went through the sea by faith, and it saved them from drowning.  Pharoah's army went through because it was their duty, and they all drowned.  Same with Assyria, Babylon, Rome.  Those who act out of unbelief, though they do God's will, do so to their own inevitable and well-deserved destruction.  You do not want God to make you do things.  You want to do as He requires of you by faith, with the future inheritance in mind.  Possible FB post.  But what verse would you use?  This is a really good thought, but needs a verse.  Perhaps this one?  29 By faith the people crossed the Red Sea as on dry land, but the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned. [Heb 11:29 ESV]

2022 - This verse:
30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. [Heb 11:30 ESV]
I always think it was the vibration from the trumpets that weakened the walls because of a harmonic frequency that did it.  Or simply that God did it.  This says faith brought the walls down, and perhaps the actions that faith prompted.  Faith always leads to action, and faithful action leads to results.
A separate FB post...or an addition to the one above?

This verse:
35 Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. [Heb 11:35 ESV]
What an interesting study...each time a prophet, Jesus, or an apostle raised someone from the dead, was that person restored to a woman?  No...Jairus' daughter, the guy that fell out of the window...But many times a woman is mentioned.

40 God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us. [Heb 11:40 NKJV]  They could not leave Paradise for heaven and the very presence of God until Christ's resurrection.  That is why Jesus went to get them, to declare himself to those "imprisoned" in paradise, and then lead the captives to heaven with Him.

Chapter 12
First verse - another example of how vs 1 should have been the last verse of the previous chapter:
1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, [Heb 12:1 ESV]
Kind of back to the first verse of 11...Those who do have faith are evidence, are witnesses according to this verse, who testify to the truth, the existence, of Him in whom they have faith.  They are witnesses that the one they believe exists really does exist, because their actions are motivated by their faith, even to their own death.  Who has died for faith in Allah (2021 - yeah...probably quite a few have done so.)?  Who has died for Buddha, for Krishna?  Is there a Muslim Book of Martyrs?  Maybe there are stories of Muslims burned at the stake for not renouncing Allah, but I have never heard them.  The Crusaders killed Jew and Muslim alike, but I don't recall there being any option to recant and live?  Maybe I've just missed all those stories of the great faith of the followers of Islam?  This really ought to be researched.  This is about witnesses.  If the principle is true - that actions prompted by faith are evidence of the existence of the object of faith, then where is the evidence for Allah?  Or do we just punt and say that Allah and Buddha are "false gods", and that those who die for them are just deluded?  Need to be really really careful here.  This is a pretty significant study.
2023 - At this point, I would bet money that many have died for Allah.  Every suicide bomber in Jerusalem was dying for Allah.  We believe they were mistaken, but it is evidence in the same way that Christian martyrs are evidence.  Is there a problem with this logic?  

Next verse:
2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith... [Heb 12:2a ESV]
A founder is at the very beginning.  Interesting that Hebrews has just looked at a long history of faith in a future event, and then speaks of that event as a "new" thing, a new religion, a new covenant, founded - that is begun by - Jesus.  What are we speaking about here?  Surely not the church, not the papacy, not the age of the Gentiles...so what is founded?  MSB is about NASB.  Author and perfecter, not founder and perfecter.  Still, the note says author is an originator or preeminent example, and refers back to the note in 2:10.  That note says it could be translated as pioneer, leader, captain, or originator.  Christ is the source (in the sense of the cause), the initiator, and the leader in regard to salvation.  He has led the way into heaven as our forerunner.  That makes sense.  He began - he opened the door and went first - our access directly to the throne of God.

Our way has been easy so far:
4 In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. [Heb 12:4 ESV]
The chapter moves on to say the struggles we endure that are short of death are discipline, as from a loving father, for our own betterment.

2024 - This seems also like a sentence spoken to students, in some kind of seminary setting, who are there studying to be proclaimers of the gospel, but who have so far not gone out into the world and actually had to suffer physical distress for their trouble.  I think Hebrews is a lesson from a teacher to his pupils.  That sure rings more like Apollos than Paul.

2021 - This verse:
6 For whom the LORD loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives." [Heb 12:6 NKJV], quoting Prov 3:11, 12  I knew this verse, but I have not really appreciated the context.  The writer has just told the Hebrews in vs 4 that they aren't really suffering very much.  It hasn't cost them blood to have faith.  But just the same, they have had some problems and daily life brings things they have to overcome.  Maybe they've been scorned and put out of the synagogue and demeaned by their friends and acquaintances.  Maybe they've been ignored by their own families and had their faith thrown back in their faces.  Just because we haven't been thrown into prison for our faith doesn't mean we have no faith or that God isn't working on us.  I have often worried that here in the land of the free and home of the brave, we haven't had to endure persecution much at all, and if we are not persecuted then are we really Christians?  Are we even worth God's time since we have had it so very easy?  But this verse says that even if we haven't gone to prison for our faith, God knows where we are and He is still bringing us along, teaching us discipline, teaching us to endure, as preparation for a time when we might find ourselves facing the real deal.  If that day comes, we can't expect to be "heroes" if we haven't learned to deal with the little things first.  
Possible FB post.

2021 - Here is the yield of God's discipline:  
11 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. [Heb 12:11 ESV]  
So it gives us peace, no matter what happens around us.  We don't panic, we don't fret, we have been trained that God will get us through it.  Whether a deadly virus, an ice storm, sub-zero temperatures, or snow on top of snow.  

vs 15 is about the Jews receiving this letter who were intellectually convinced that Jesus was Messiah, but who do not fully believe.  They are holding to the rites and rituals, reserving headlong belief to the point of death.  And if they decide just to reject, but keep the appearance of believing, then they become defiled.  2022 - or not....

2022 - This scary verse:
17 For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears. [Heb 12:17 ESV]  "Too Late".
Sometimes, you just run out of chances.  I need to once again review the recommendations of Jonathan Edwards for those who find themselves in Esau's situation.  Maybe I can find those and add them after this verse as another FB post?

The fear of the Israelites before Mt. Sinai is contrasted with the Israelites before Zion.  They were so frightened that they asked God not to speak to them anymore.  But now, in the heavenly Jerusalem, we stand in the very presence of God, because we are in Christ.  They stood before Sinai still under sin's condemnation, unredeemed as yet from the sentence of death.  We, today, who believe, stand before God with no sins imputed to us.  We have no need to quake in fear as they did, but to humble ourselves before the one so gracious as to purge our sin from us in his eyes.  

2022 - This verse:
21 Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, "I tremble with fear." [Heb 12:21 ESV].  It goes on to say that we need not have this much fear, because we stand before God in Christ.

2022 - Some things in these verses also:
22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. [Heb 12:22-24 ESV]
We jump ahead from the initiation of the Law by a terrifying and frightening God to a different mountain.  God's own mountain.  Think of all that transpired between Sinai and the building of the Temple in Solomon's time to the rebuilding after Babylon, to the Temple still standing at the time Hebrews was written.  The Temple that how had a torn veil.
I also find the phrase "to the spirits of the righteous made perfect".  I think this perhaps speaks to the fact that the physical bodies of the OT saints are still in the ground awaiting resurrection and renewal at the Great White Throne.  But since the resurrection, their spirits are in heaven, in the very presence of God.  But at the GWT, spirit will be united with a new body, fit for eternity, and equipped for the perfection of that place.

2023 - These vss, 22-24, are a description of the Temple in heaven, the one not made with hands.  This is imagery of what it looks like in that place.  I think that imagery was current when the writer penned it, and it still looks like this now.  The Greed word used for "perfect" here in 23 is the very same word used of the OT saints in 11:40, though a different Greek tense.  In 11 it was aorist - not specific as to time - and here in 12 it is a perfect passive participle.  Perfect means "describes an action which is viewed as having been completed in the past, once and for all, not needing to be repeated. Jesus' last cry from the cross, TETELESTAI ("It is finished!") is a good example", passive means "Represents the subject as being the recipient of the action. e.g., in the sentence, "we were comforted" the subject "we" receives the action", so the spirits of the righteous receive this once for all perfecting, The participle is this: "Corresponds for the most part to the English participle, reflecting "-ing" or "-ed" being suffixed to the basic verb form. The participle can be used either like a verb or a noun, as in English, and thus is often termed a "verbal noun."".  So we might read it as "the spirits of the righteous perfected".  In Chapter 11, I think the aorist gives us the idea that that the righteous are perfected, each at his/her own proper time, so perhaps this does not mean that at Christ's completion of the sacrifice on the cross, the spirits of all the OT saints stepped from Hades to heaven.  And yet...I see no way around it meaning exactly that.  Then in 12, we see - we SEE - those who's perfection is complete standing in the heavenly temple. To stand at this temple you must first be perfected.  Only the blood of Jesus can do that.  Only in him can we stand in the presence of God.  So....back in 11, they without us may best be understood as NOT ABOUT the WHEN of perfection at all, but about the "two into one" that Paul talks about in Ephesians.  The OT saints were of the circumcision made with hands, but even those so chosen by God had to wait for us Gentiles, and all of us together were perfected by Christ's work on the cross.  That seems the best way to understand it.

3/30/24 - After reading Exodus 29 yesterday, about the consecration of Aaron and his sons, and then going over my notes on Systematic Theology Chapter 51, Item B3, and then this verse:  24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. [Heb 12:24 ESV], I decided that all these are related, and that there is much to learn from looking at them all together.  
I went into a lot of detail on each kind of sacrifice in Exodus.  I think that the sprinkling of blood on the altar, on Aaron, and on his sons, was a way of purifying them for service.  For consecrating them to a purpose and that purpose was to serve God according to God's own commands.  So how does the sacrifice of Abel in Genesis, the consecration of the priests by sprinkling blood on the altar, and worship in the church as described in Hebrews 12 all tie together?  
Abel's sacrifice was the first one ever offered.  It was a blood sacrifice, and God accepted it.  But it was only temporary, and needed to be repeated at some interval.  But Abel's sacrifice instituted the whole practice of sacrificing animal to temporarily defer God's justice toward sinners.  So I think Abel is mentioned in Hebrews not because "his blood cried out to God" after his murder, but because his was the first sacrifice.  That sacrifice by Abel turned into the prescribed sacrificial requirements of the Law, and Aaron and his sons were ordained to perform those sacrifices.  If you read closely, you see that the blood of the sacrifice as the priesthood was initiated was sprinkled on Aaron and  his sons, AND on the altar upon which the sacrifice was burned.  Then we get here to Hebrews.  I think this verse is connecting the shed blood of Christ back through the Law and all the way to Abel's first sacrifice.  Abel was the first sacrifice, Jesus the last, and a sweeter sacrifice because it is both sufficient and permanent.  We, in the New Covenant, are sprinkled with the blood of the perfect sacrifice, to ordain us - to consecrate us - as priests of the living God.  (For this to be complete, the washing with water before donning the ritual clothing ought to be included.  So I may have this all completely wrong...but I don't think so.  I think it ties to purification/consecration by the shed blood of the sacrifice...but beyond that...think about it some more...)
I think taking it beyond this might be going to far.  I don't think this is about baptism at all.  I don't think it is about sprinkling vs immersion.  I think this is about the sacrifice, about Jesus, and about the correlation of his sacrifice, his shed blood, tying back all the way to that first sacrifice offered by Abel.  You need the Law, and Exodus 29, to see that far more than just a temporary placation of the Father, Jesus' blood consecrated all who believe in him for service in the priesthood.  
Going on backwards a bit in Hebrews, we see the difference in the Law and the New Covenant.  Under the Law, the people were deathly afraid even to hear God speak, they dared not approach him.  But under the New Covenant, we approach him directly - because our sins are gone, and we are truly forever purified before God.

2022 - This one...
26 At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, "Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens." [Heb 12:26 ESV]
An end times prophecy certainly.  This is a quote from Haggai 2:6.  You don't hear much about Haggai being quoted in the NT, but this is a big one here.  Here is the entirety from Haggai.  Note that this is an example where by quoting a part, the whole is referenced.
6 For thus says the LORD of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. 7 And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the LORD of hosts. 8 The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the LORD of hosts. 9 The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the LORD of hosts.'" [Hag 2:6-9 ESV]
When you read it all, it is pretty certainly a Millennial prophecy referring to the future glory of a better Temple.  A bit odd that this would come into it when the Temple of that day still stands, and the audience is Jewish.  Ahhhh!!!  He is connecting God's direct communication with mankind before the current Temple was built - a Temple for the practice of a Law that has been shown to be inferior - with the Temple that will come in the Millennial - a better Temple, built for the observance of a far better covenant.  This writer makes SO MANY connections and comparisons and contrasts that it is just beyond me to think how much he knew and understood of God's plan.  If Paul wrote something like this, how could there be any doubt of his inspiration, and if he was inspired, how could we doubt his many claims of an apostolic title?

Chapter 13
This chapter starts off with instructions for Christian living.  Be hospitable to strangers, remember those in prison and in persecution.  

2022 - This familiar verse:
2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. [Heb 13:2 ESV]
Angels walking around among men, unrecognized as to what they are, in the time after the resurrection, with the church age/Gentile age in full swing.  This is not like the healings going away, nor the prophecy going away and tongues going away.  There's no cause to believe that this isn't still happening today.

Keep marriage holy.  
2022 - Here's the whole verse:
4 Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. [Heb 13:4 ESV]
I wonder if this is specifically listed because the writer expected Satanic attack against this institution.  It goes way back, it was instituted by God Himself, and is foundational to His planned organization of mankind.  Of course it is going to be attacked!

Don't love money, but be content.  Remember those who lead, who teach you the way, and observe and imitate the example of their lives.  These verses:
8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. 9 Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them. [Heb 13:8-9 ESV]
Jesus is unchanging.  Only God does not change.  As He is unchanging, so His doctrine is unchanging.  
2022 - The writer is apparently referring to a specific "strange teaching" that certain foods make you more holy.  The writer says that since this is not in scripture, it ought be considered a mere distraction, unworthy of diverting attention from more orthodox teachings.  More broadly, perhaps it means not to be obsessive about your own health and diet and exercise and all those kinds of things.  God strengthens hearts, not Lipitor!
Maybe a FB post...

2022 - In so many words...
12 So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. 13 Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. 14 For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. [Heb 13:12-14 ESV]
We live in the world, but not of the world.  Our hope our treasure our ambition is in the next world, not in this one.  Such a difficult way to live life.  I think this is truly a hard saying.  Our physical bodies demand that we participate in this world - very few will starve themselves when they don't have to do so - and yet these necessities, in the proper sense of things, are not necessary but mere unimportant distractions from our reality.

2024 - Remember that for a time Moses conducted his business with God outside the camp also.  Those inside the camp had rebelled, and God would not go among them at that time.  So God met Moses outside.  Jesus died outside.  If we are more comfortable inside, we ought to worry.

These last two verses, giving us the tiniest fraction of information about the writer of this book.  Whoever he was, he was one of those receiving the letter.  They knew him, he'd come from among them, and he wanted to return but was somehow prevented:
18 Pray for us, for we are sure that we have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things. 19 I urge you the more earnestly to do this in order that I may be restored to you the sooner. [Heb 13:18-19 ESV]

Another verse about who the author might be:
23 You should know that our brother Timothy has been released, with whom I shall see you if he comes soon. [Heb 13:23 ESV]
I don't think we have information anywhere that Timothy was imprisoned.  Anywhere else I mean.  Timothy was in Ephesus, right?  So Hebrews seems likely to have been written by someone spending time in Ephesus, but actually from somewhere else.  It makes sense to me that the writer of Hebrews was a Jew, from Jerusalem, and writing back to those in the synagogue there?  Or in the church there?  Doesn't seem like he'd need to write a letter like this to the Jerusalem church...unless he is one of the apostles in that church.  Maybe Peter?  He doesn't seem likely to me.  
Where did Timothy go from Ephesus after his release?  Would Timothy go to Jerusalem?  He had no ties there.  Where did he have ties?
2022 - This almost seems to say that the writer of Hebrews was free while Timothy was imprisoned.  Maybe, back in 19, the writer feels some obligation to stay where he is in order to testify on Timothy's behalf, or aid in Timothy's rehabilitation after the rigors, and possible severe torture of his imprisonment.  Maybe that is why Paul speaks of his own suffering and persecution in 1,2 Timothy, because Timothy almost died at the hands of the torturers and does not believe he could survive it a second time.  So the writer of Hebrews - ok, I admit I'm leaning away from Apollos and back towards Paul - is staying to help Timothy, and the prayers of those to whom he writes can speed that help along, so that Paul can come and see them sooner.  This seems to do a good job of tying vss 18,19 to vs 23.
But I still don't know to whom Paul is writing.  Not a synagogue though, a church.  Perhaps the Jerusalem church, as that would be "home" to Paul.  In 19, Paul wants to be "restored" to them sooner.  Cannot be restored if you weren't previously separated.  From whom was Paul separated?  Possibly from any church he had ever visited...so not that much help.

Ah well...MSB says he can't figure it out, I'm not going to figure it out on a Tuesday morning.