AP

Hebrews 1:5-6  For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father”?  Or again, “I will be his Father, and he will be my Son”?  And again, when God brings his firstborn into the world, he says, “Let all God’s angels worship him.”

For 2,000 years, Jewish people who rely on the Old Testament Scriptures alone to understand what ‘The LORD ’, (‘Yahweh’), their God, is doing in the world, and just where they fit into his Plan, have been struggling with many mysteries and have many unanswered questions.  How do the events of the last three millennia fit in with the clear, ‘unbreakable’ promises God has given them in these Scriptures?  Promises like the ones given to Abraham and confirmed to Moses about possessing the ‘Promised Land’ forever, and especially the ones given to King David in 2 Samuel 7:8-16 – “This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I took you from the pasture, from tending the flock, and appointed you ruler over my people Israel. I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all your enemies from before you.  Now I will make your name great, like the names of the greatest men on earth.  And I will provide a place for my people Israel and will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed.  Wicked people will not oppress them anymore, as they did at the beginning and have done ever since the time I appointed leaders over my people Israel. I will also give you rest from all your enemies.  The LORD declares to you that the LORD himself will establish a house for you: … I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. … But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you.  Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever. ’”  

Hebrews is a letter written to these people, who in the first century AD were especially confused by how these promises did not seem to be working out as they should, to show that the essential key to their fulfilment as promised, was the entering into time and space of God’s Son, Jesus.  The writer systematically points out, from their very Scriptures, how Jesus is the perfect (and only possible) fulfilment of all these Scriptures, and that their participation in this fulfilment must begin by acknowledging Jesus as their Promised Messiah.  He is greater than the angels, than Moses, than the sacrificial system and priesthood given through Moses, and than the glorious Temple built by David’s son, Solomon.  In other words, Jesus replaced all these things, and so the ‘everlasting’ promises concerning them can only be fulfilled in him!  How important it is, therefore, that we, as God’s ‘chosen people’ (his Church) today, should be actively involved in Jewish evangelism.

– Bruce Christian