RTS Women's Bible Study Overview

Wow, what a group. Well, welcome to the RTS Women's Bible Study. This is a fantastic crew. So good to see you all as we've launched a new year here at RTS for this group, and we have packed as many people in this room as we possibly can, as you can see, which I'm sure you're thankful for, so we can get as many here as we can get. But thanks for coming back and being a part of this. We're really thrilled to launch a new year of the RTS Women's Bible Study. I see a lot of familiar faces, and I see a lot of new faces. I look forward to getting to know you. If you haven't met me yet, I'm Mike Kruger. I'm the president of Reformed Theological Seminary here in Charlotte, and this is the Women's Bible Study that we have every Wednesday morning, and we'll talk about the details going forward. We're so thankful. This is one of those things I didn't know if this was going to happen, and I know that you probably didn't know this was going to happen. For those of you who don't know the background, we did two years in Romans, and then we took a year off. And then in that year off, I thought to myself, am I going to make it back? I didn't know if the schedule and all the different things going on was going to make it back, but all those emails you sent were very persuasive, especially the threatening ones. You better come back. We'll find you. We know where you live. But this is a fantastic group. We're so excited to see. We have 165 women signed up for this Bible study. Just don't tell the fire marshal how many people we've put in this room because I think we've probably broken some rules here, but we're going to try to keep as many in here. So I apologize in advance for feeling crowded. I know it feels crowded. I know you're thinking, how do I navigate here if I need to move around? Well, I don't have an answer for you, but we're just trying to open it up to as many people as possible. We actually still have a waiting list, so we'll just deal with that as we go, but I'm thankful that you're here. Let me also say this is the most on-time group. I'm amazed. I was telling the staff here, I was like, well, you know, you get 165 people in here and it's going to take a while and we're never going to get, you know, how you get everyone to sit down and it was like 935 and everyone's already sat down. I guess there's nowhere to stand, right? So it's easy to sit down when you have nowhere else to go. But we're very thrilled you're here. One of the things we want to do for you as you join this study is learn a little bit more about RTS, who we are as a seminary. Some of you know because you've been here before. Some of you are brand new, but let me just point out a few things in your notebook there on your table. This notebook is going to be the notebook you're going to have for the study. It's going to be the thing that you use throughout your time together with us. You're going to keep this throughout the duration of the Hebrew study, and each week you're going to get a new handout that you can sort of clip in here. There's already handouts on the table that you've seen, no doubt. Let me point out a few things just to help you get to know us. a little bit better. The first thing is this little brochure in there. This is a little trifle brochure that says Charlotte at the top. It's our events calendar. At some point, you don't have to do this now, but at some point I want you to take some time just to look through this and see what's going on. And here's why I mention this. As enjoyable as this Bible study is for everybody who gets a chance to come to it, I want you to know that RTS has a lot of other things going on that we want to make sure that you're aware of. Events, lectures, seminars. special weekends, all kinds of things, and that little trifle flyer can tell you about all those things. And one of the things that, of course, we do, and this is sort of obvious, is that we are a graduate school with seminary classes. This, of course, is not a four-credit seminary class, which I'm sure you're probably happy for, but we have those all the time, and some of you have taken seminary classes before, but I just want to give you an invitation, if you've never thought about it, come take a seminary class with us. You don't have to take it for credit. You can audit it. You can just sit in and enjoy it without having to worry about exams or papers. You'll probably get all the other students mad at you for being so relaxed in the class, where you can just sit there and enjoy the lectures. But you can come and take those classes. I know a number of you have. I want to invite you to do that. You can come take my class. I'm teaching Gospels right now in the fall. I teach Hebrews to Revelation in the spring. Yes, Hebrews. So if you want to go even further and do it, you can take my seminary class. So just take note of all the different things that are going on at the seminary. There's lots happening. In the back of your notebook there, you'll see our RTS magazine. Sometime later, you can flip through that and learn more about who we are. One of the things you'll discover there is that we have campuses all over the southeast. Jackson, Mississippi, Orlando, Florida, Charlotte, North Carolina are our three big ones. Then, we have smaller campuses in DC, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, and New York City. So, Charlotte is just one of many campuses within the RTS system. You know what's interesting about Charlotte this year? Some of you may know this. This is our 25th anniversary. right here in Charlotte. So we are really thrilled about that. We want to give God glory for that. We're going to be talking about that to our supporters throughout the year because I think that's a special milestone for us. But you can learn more about RTS through that. Magazine. And then for you coffee aficionados, some of you may know we opened up a new coffee shop on campus and you have a coupon in there for a free cup of coffee at our coffee shop just a couple hundred yards that way on the other side of our campus and they have really good coffee. It's the real deal. All the machines, all the stuff. Stop by, enjoy the coffee, get on Wi-Fi, hang out, buy a book. There's all kinds of things there. you can check out. Here's the trick on this coupon though, is that the bookstore desperately asked me, tell them they can't come on Wednesdays. What do you think if 165 people marched over to the bookstore right after the Bible study? So enjoy the coupon, but you can't use it on Wednesdays. I think you could probably understand why that's the case. One last thing in your notebook you'll find, for those of you who are at Christ Covenant, you've probably already heard this, there's a conference coming up this fall at Christ Covenant Church that's co-sponsored with RTS. RTS and Christ's Covenant are doing a conference and a number of faculty are speaking at it, including myself, of course Kevin DeYoung is speaking on it, or speaking at it, and so on the Reformation. And so this gives you the details on it. Just want you to know that if you're looking to come out for a weekend to learn about how the Reformation happened, what it means for us today, you'll be able to hear from some wonderful folks on there. So just some information for you to get to know a little bit more about RTS. We're so thankful you're here. I'm looking forward to another year together. with you. Let me say a word of prayer, and then we'll dive into what we've got today in this Bible study. Let's pray together. Lord, you're so good to us to deliver a message, a word to us, Lord, that you speak. And Lord, you speak in all the books of the Bible. But Lord, we want to thank this particular year about how you speak to us in the book of Hebrews, and how you've spoken the final word in Christ, the most glorious word. that could ever be spoken. Lord, we pray that you would bless this Bible study. Lord, we know that it's not about human wisdom that we seek, but divine wisdom. So Lord, we know that only comes by the power of your Spirit who oversees the study of your words. Lord, we ask your Spirit would attend this study, even today, for the rest of the semester and the year. Lord, bless our time together, we pray in Christ's name. Amen. All right, I have two goals today with you. One is I want to introduce you to the Hebrews, or rather to the overall RTS Women's Bible Study. Just what it looks like, why we do it, what the logistics are, the details and so forth. And then secondly today, my goal is to introduce you to the book of Hebrews itself. So a two-fold goal. One more logistical, kind of why we're here and how it works. And then the other is more sort of biblical, theological, what the book of Hebrews is about, why we want to study it. So on your tables in the middle was the outline for today. I see that most of you have already found it. You've probably already clicked it into your notebooks. That little outline today is the thing we're going to follow to talk about those two goals. And of course, each week you're going to get a new outline as we go. So if you look at that outline, notice Roman numeral 1 there, introduction of the RTS Women's Bible Study. Let's just talk a little bit about what we're doing here. and why we're having this. And the obvious question for those of you that are new or why in the world do you have a women's Bible study at RTS? What's going on in your head to make you do something like that? I ask myself that question a lot actually and maybe this morning when I woke up I'm like what am I doing, right? Let me tell you a little bit about why we're here. One reason we're here is because we believe, I believe personally and we believe at RTS, that the Word of God is a powerful. powerful thing. In fact, you're going to learn in the book of Hebrews itself, and you know this because you know the passage, that the Word of God is living and active sharper than a double-edged sword, right? It can actually penetrate your heart and your life in ways that you never knew of or thought of or realized. We believe the Word does that sort of thing. And so the idea behind a Bible study like this is we believe in the power and effectiveness of the Word of God to change you, to encourage you. to convict you, to mold you, to empower you, to share the gospel with those around you and in your life. You know, when someone hears that we have 165 people show up on a Wednesday morning every week at RTS, they're thinking, what are you doing there, right, that makes people show up? What amazing, exciting phenomenon must this be, right? Are you, you know, are you shooting off fireworks? Is it... entertainment? Are you putting on a show? What could possibly get all those people to get up and come here and do a Bible study? And the answer is we're studying the Bible. It's an amazing thing. But I know you're here because you believe that too, right? That the Word of God is powerful and it can change you. So why start a Bible study? Well, for the obvious reason, because we think God's Word really makes a difference in people's lives. Now, beyond that, there's another reason why we started this Bible study, and that is, as the president of this seminary, I wanted to find a way to get the Word of God out in the city of Charlotte, outside a formal seminary classroom. Now, as you know, I already told you this, we have seminary classes going on all the time here, right now actually, seminary classes going on all over there, and I teach some of those. I've been a New Testament professor here for the last 16 years, and our other faculty teach those classes. Those are great, we love doing it, but we know some people are just never going to take a seminary class. And that's okay. Seminary classes aren't for everybody, and sometimes people don't have the time, or they're too intimidated, or whatever it happens to be. And the vision for this study was, hold on a second, why do we have to teach the Word of God in just a seminary class? I can just teach it to whoever wants to come from the community of Charlotte. And so that's what we did. And for those of you that were in the Roman study, we did that, started three years ago, right? In 2000, I guess, 2014 is when we started that, and we started a women's Bible study. We thought it would work well as a women's Bible study, as intimidating as that is for me, not for you maybe, but for me, we thought, you know, this really works well because the community that can be built here among a women's Bible study really makes a lot of sense. And so the Roman study went really well, and so we're starting it up again now with the book of Hebrews. So that's a little bit of the philosophy, the idea behind why we do a Bible study like this at RTS. Now, some of you, many of you, I imagine, were in the Roman study. Some of you don't know, if you're new, that We did two years in Romans, four semesters, I think 44, someone help me out here, 43 installments in Romans. That's a lot. And all of that was wrapped up in 2016. We took a year break and now we're back. How many of you were in the Roman study? Just raise your hand. Okay, that's a good chunk. And we've got a lot of new faces here as well. I'm surprised you came back after that, right? It's like, really? After Romans? Like, I'm never going there again. But here we are for the book of Hebrews. So that's a little bit of our philosophy. of why we want to have a Bible study, and so we're just thrilled you're here. And I'm confident that God is going to be at work in your lives, in my life. One of the things that, if you've taught Bible studies, you know this, is that who's the most impacted sometimes by the Bible study? Not the people who are listening, but often the person who's teaching, right? So I'm kind of, I'm just doing this for me, just so you know. This is just all about doing this for me. No, just kidding, but I do get a lot out of this, and I'm really thankful you're here. Okay, with that little sort of philosophical introduction, I want to direct your attention to the sheet that was already in your notebook, which is sort of the overview of the logistics. It's like a schedule sheet. At the top it says RTS Charlotte Women's Bible Study, and it gives like times and sort of how we work here. And I want to walk through that with you and just make sure everybody understands how we do what we do in the RTS Charlotte Women's Bible Study. Let's start with that first thing there called daily schedule. You can see there it says 915 to 1045. Actually, you know, when you think about Bible studies, it's a pretty tight window. 915 to 1045, it's not long. Our goal here is to give you a chance to study God's Word without taking up your whole day. So hopefully this is accomplishing that. But notice the start time here is 915. We want you to come in, have a cup of coffee, enjoy some fellowship time. If you haven't figured it out, we have coffee up here, but we also have coffee in that station in the back. And we know why, because in the back, the people in the back are like, I can't ever get... up here, right? And so just so you know, you can have coffee in both places when you come. That back door is open when you come, so you can slip in the back if your table's in this corner. So those of you who don't know that yet, this is a good little secret entrance over here. We want you to come and enjoy that fellowship time together. And part of the rationale for that is that we want to start at 9 30. And we want to start 9 30 for the sake of honoring your time. You only have a limited amount of time. It's the time of everybody who's a part of this study and sets it up. We want to try as best we can to start at 9.30. That's tough to pull off, I know, with 165 people. The idea is get here, settle in, get your seat, get a cup of coffee. Then when 9.30 rolls around, we can try to start as quickly as we can. Some of you are figuring out the parking thing. I know that's tricky. We have students here, a bunch of people here for this study. If you don't know it yet, kind of out in the back, we have these basketball courts behind us here. You can actually park back there, and it's a little side road that goes right here. So just keep in mind in the morning, you can park right in the back by that play set and walk up the sidewalk. That's an easy spot for you if parking's full when you arrive. Now, of course, if you arrive late, I know what the motivation is for not arriving late. You know what the motivation is? You get to walk in front of every single person all the way across. Maybe if you're, of course, if you're, you're not going to sit at your table if it's in the back, I know, if you're late. But it's this sort of walk in front, and then we have it on video, too, so we can just show it later. We'll have a montage at the end of the semester of all the people who showed up late. Matt, you want to put, you got that? You want to put that together? This is you, late people. All right, so then at 9.30, Lord willing, we'll start. So look at the second thing. This is the teaching time. Let me say a word about what this is gonna look like. In the teaching time, of course, every week, we'll be working through a section of the book of Hebrews, and I'll give you an outline. And you'll have that in a hard copy. And as we work through the book of Hebrews, I know many of you are note takers. The idea is you can take your notes right on that sheet, plug it into your notebook. Obviously, if you're gonna do that, you wanna take your notebook with you every week, okay? And so I would encourage you to write, this sounds like you're in the fifth grade, I know, but write your name on your notebook. What's going to happen? You're going to take, if you're a note taker and you love taking notes and someone takes your notebook, you're like, I'm going to kill that person, right? They took my notes. So write your name on your notebook. I might even suggest you do it right now, somewhere, so that you don't get it mixed up. They all look the same, I know. And this will keep you from getting that confused with other people. Now, when we do the Bible study, we'll be working through, just so you know, I use the ESV Bible translation for this Bible study. That doesn't mean you have to use the ESV. We think it's a great translation. It's the one we'll be using in here, and certainly it would be helpful if you had that translation, because then when you follow along with me, it's word for word, right? But if you have the NIV or some other translation, that's fine. Just know that I'll be using the ESV up front as we go. Let me make another comment here on the teaching time, and that is, one of the things I've always sought to do in group Bible studies is have group interaction. What I mean by that is ask you questions and get feedback from the group. Now, when you have a Bible study that has 12 people in it, it's a lot easier to do than with 165. So you just should know that in the teaching time, it's going to be largely, mostly just me teaching, which I hope is okay. I trust that's probably why you're here in many ways, but I am going to ask questions from time to time. Be ready for that. I'm not going to call on you, of course. You're thinking, oh no, he's going to call on me. That's not what I mean. I'm going to ask questions to the group to get interaction, but that's going to have to be limited, obviously, just because of the size of the group. The teaching time, at least in my head, I'm trying to get to go to about 10.20, 10.15-ish, somewhere around there. Then we'll transition into the third thing, which is discussion groups. Discussion groups are a key part of what we're doing here. Let me explain why. We believe, and I know you do too, that the Word of God is taught best, not in isolation, but in community. That doesn't mean you can't learn from God's Word, sitting under a tree in a park, reading your Bible alone. Yeah, of course you can, right? But we think it's best in a community, because in community you can help people apply the Word in your life, encourage each other, talk to each other. Now, we're not trying to replace your local church, but we are trying to sort of replicate a little bit of community in your tables, okay? So, we've assigned you a table, which is the table you'll sit at every week, and you'll get to know the folks at your table. And there's also been a person assigned your table to be a discussion leader, okay? Discussion leader doesn't mean they run the discussion. It's more of a facilitator, someone to get the ball rolling in discussion time. And during that group phase, you'll have three questions every week that I'll be putting on that sheet of paper for you to work through as a group. Sometimes you'll get through all three, maybe two, sometimes you probably won't even get past the first question. That's okay, you don't have to get through them all. But this is a time where you can think about the scriptures, think about what you just heard, and talk about it and process it with the group that you're in. We think that's a really important part of what this Bible study is all about. So we want to encourage you to get to know your table. And this is just a great chance to have fellowship and relationships. There's name tags there. If you don't know some folks at your table, you can get to know them. And then over time, this is going to become your... little network, your little group. So we're really thrilled about that aspect of our time together. We hope you're excited about it too. So this will be running from basically 1025, 1020-ish to 1045, and then I'll wrap us up after that with a closing prayer. But this is a good chance for you to reflect upon and think about what you've learned in that group setting. Okay, so this is the lay of the land for our Bible study. This is sort of the... the structure of how every week will go. I'm going to work really hard to get you out of here right on time. 1045 hits, just right on the numbers. We're going to wrap this up for honoring your time and making sure that you can have a predictable day, in terms of what this will look like. We're not going to have one of those situations where you're like, when will this guy stop talking? We'll go on and on until noon. That's not going to happen. We're going to try to end right at 1045. I'm going to make a couple other comments here on logistics. One is the videos. Some of you know that when we did Romans, we filmed every one of them. Matt McQuaid in the back. Everyone say hello to Matt. Matt is in the back, the only other male in the room. Actually, Dave's here too, helping run sound. Matt runs these videos, and he does a fantastic job. If you've seen the Romans videos, these are really high-def, high-quality stuff. When he suggested a few years ago that we should tape these things, I was like, have you ever seen these homemade video jobs? It's like these what I call terrorist videos. Someone's basement with this like dull background and like, you know, it looks terrible and I was like, I don't know Matt, I don't know if this is going to work and he's like, trust me on this one. And he's done an amazing job with these videos. We still hear stories about how the Romans videos are being watched all over the world. I get emails probably once a month from somebody. Africa, Europe, I had one from Slovakia recently. Canada, across the country where someone says, I was watching your Romans video and they'll write me an email and... make a comment, ask a question, or say thank you, or what happens to be. This is because Matt films those every week. We're going to do the same thing for Hebrews. Every week, we're going to shoot for having that video loaded up, maybe by Friday after each study. Maybe on a slow week, it'll be the following Monday. I don't want to lock Matt in here. We're going to try to get those videos up as quickly as possible with the handouts. This is great for you to know, because if you miss a week, you can watch it right on the video. And this is one of the reasons we want to get that out every week. I hope that doesn't encourage you not to come, right? We still want you here, but it'll be a good backup plan for you if missed. And the Romans videos have been encouraging. We're going to do the same thing with Hebrews, and you can look at the details on there. Lastly here, something about dates. We're going to be running, as you probably know from Carolyn's emails, mid-September to roughly mid-November, early November. in the fall, and then we'll be running mid-January to mid-March in the spring. That's the plan at this particular point. We'll be meeting every Wednesday at the same time in that date range. How many of the, how many chapters will we get through? My guess is by the end of the spring, we'll probably be about halfway through Hebrews. Probably right around Hebrews 7, where the whole chapter on Melchizedek. And this is a great place to stop, actually. And so we'll be... ending it with sort of a year-end brunch on the 21st, and this is a great sort of, I think, block of time for us. Now, with that in mind, let me say this. Like any Bible study, you're going to get the most out of that Bible study if you can attend as many of those days as possible. So I just want to encourage you to do your best to try to get as many of these as you can. And now, I know you can't be here every week. That's understandable. People have crazy lives. You're traveling. You're busy. All kinds of stuff going on. We get that. But the more you can... be here consistently, I know the more you're going to get out of this Bible study. And that's, I think, something just to keep in mind. Also, let me mention this. If it turns out you started heading into this Bible study and it's just not working out for your schedule, and you're like, look, I just thought I could make it and I can't make it, or it's just not working out, or that guy Mike doesn't know what he's talking about, I'm not coming back. Whatever happens to be, if you find out you can't really make it work, let us know. Send an email to Carolyn because we have a waiting list of people waiting to get on. Some of you... just got off the waiting list. It's like being called up from the minor leagues, right? I got called up just a couple days ago. I know we sent out, some of you are here, I think, just got a couple notices, just like in the last 24 or 48 hours. So we want to do that for people if someone can't come. So if it turns out it's just not working out for you, that's fine. Just let us know. We'll get someone else who can join the Bible study. We want to make sure it's open to as many people as we can. Okay, those are the logistics. Let me pause here for questions. Questions about the way this is going to work this year, operationally. No questions about Hebrews yet, I'm going to get to that in a minute, but any questions about how we are going to run the study, what it's going to look like? This is where you think, do I want to raise my hand in front of 165 people? We're also going to make a video montage of weird questions at the end, by the way. All the odd questions that were asked in the Bible study, Matt will make a montage of those. Questions? Logistics? Well, if you have some, Carolyn Arring is your first stop shop for getting some of those answered, and she can help you, and she's done a fantastic job. Where's, is Carolyn in here? Everyone give Carolyn a hand. And let me also add Lisa Marie Ferguson has done a fantastic job helping. Our staff here is just wonderful. As you can imagine, it takes a lot of work to put this on every week, setting it up, videoing it, breaking it down, all the food, so we're really thankful for our staff. Okay. Leaving that topic aside, let's look back at our notes and focus on the second thing I want to accomplish today, and that is a brief introduction to the book of Hebrews. So now I want to focus our attention off of details. and nuts and bolts, and I want to put our attention on this book of the Bible that God has given us. And I want to give you an orientation about this book, why we're here, what it's about, why you should be excited, and I trust you are, to study the book of Hebrews. So let's just look at the next Roman numeral in your outline there, introduction of the book of Hebrews. Why in the world are we studying this book? Well, aside from the obvious fact that it's a book in the Bible, people are like, well, why did you pick Hebrews? I remember a couple years ago, I floated the idea of doing the book of Revelation. Some of you thought, now that would be interesting. But then I found out that like six churches in Charlotte were doing Revelation at the same time. So I'm like, well, let's put that on the back burner. Let's do something maybe no one's done much. And that's one of the reasons I want to do the book of Hebrews. I'm convinced this is a much neglected book. Let me explain. I know that many people have learned passages in Hebrews. Certainly, you know about the hall of faith in Hebrews 11, or you may know... The passage I quoted a moment ago about the Word of God in Hebrews 4, or whatever it happens to be. But as a whole, my experience has been that most people don't have the opportunity to study the book of Hebrews that much. It kind of tucked away in the back of your New Testaments, collecting a little dust back there. Most people haven't thought much about it other than a few select verses. So one of the rationales here is let's pick a book of the Bible that's kind of new, right? That's kind of fresh. And I think the book of Hebrews has got that going for it, which I think makes it really a fun Bible study. I love... studying things maybe you haven't had a chance to study before, and it gives you a fresh new insight into those things. Now, my guess, though, is that this room is probably a little different than most. Knowing this crew, you probably have studied the book of Hebrews before, because I know a lot of you. But just out of curiosity, how many of you have done a full-length study? Not just hearing a message from Hebrews, but who've done a full-length Bible study on Hebrews? Raise your hand. Okay, that's pretty good, actually. Maybe a third-ish? Okay, great. So you've been in this before. Some of you maybe haven't done that before, but this is one of the reasons I think it's going to be a great book. Let me mention a second reason here, and that is it helps us understand the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Now, that's a juggernaut, isn't it? How many times have you been reading your Bible, and you're like, look, I understand this verse, but I don't understand how the whole thing fits together. I don't understand the big picture. And in particular, I don't understand how the Old Testament fits with the New Testament. What was the whole point of the Old Testament? Like, why even have it? And how is it fulfilled by Jesus, and what still applies, and what doesn't, and how do these two link together? And is Jesus sort of just fresh on the scene, and did people know he was coming, and how does this work? This is a monumental question for Christians, and you have to have some categories for how to think about the Bible as a whole. One of the things I think we make a mistake in Bible studies doing is we're very micro in Bible studies, and we're going to be like that a little bit in here, don't get me wrong. We're going to look at this word, and this phrase and this little passage, and we're going to look at it in micro detail. One of the problems when you do that sometimes is you never get the big flow of the whole Bible, right? Don't forget, the Bible is not just a bunch of little stories. The Bible is one big story, right? And what the book of Hebrews does so amazingly is it helps us understand the big overall story of the whole Bible. Old Testament to New Testament, the entire scope of redemptive history. how it all led to Christ, how Christ fulfilled it all, and it's the crescendo of God's work on earth. That is the sort of heartbeat of the book of Hebrews. And if you're like me, always pondering that question of how the OT and the NT relate, you're going to love this study because this study is going to really bore down deep, probably deeper than you even want to go, into the question of how the Old Testament and the New Testament fit together. So we're going to have a lot of fun with that in here, and this hopefully is going to be... Um... encouraging for you. But it's the last one that's the real reason I picked Hebrews. It magnifies Christ, arguably like very few other books. Now, we would argue, of course, that every book in the Bible speaks of Christ, and I would certainly argue that every book in the Bible magnifies Christ. No doubt that's the case, but some books just do it in such a way that there's a certain amount of clarity and beauty and wonder you get about Jesus in that book. Hebrews is one of those books. You know, when you read the book of Hebrews, you are very quickly aware that this author loves Jesus Christ. He thinks he's amazing. He is magnificent. He is extraordinary. He is wonderful. He's the crescendo of all that God does to redeem us. He is all in all. Now, if you're like me, have you ever met a person that's really excited about Jesus? just thrilled with him, just thinks he's fantastic and amazing, and you think in the back of your mind, wow, I used to be like that once. Ever have that feeling? I remember the day long ago when I was that excited. about the person of Christ. And I was the one talking about how magnificent he was. And then somewhere along the line, I don't know, I got bored with Jesus. Isn't that amazing? I know he's amazing intellectually. I mean, I could write it down. If I took a quiz, a theological exam, I could tell you all the things, but I haven't really been gripped by the magnificence of Christ. Here's what the book of Hebrews does. It starts off, and we'll see it next week. The very first verses are just zingers about who Christ is and how amazing he is, and we all need that reminder, don't we? And this is why I'm excited about the book of Hebrews, because it magnifies Christ really in no other way. And one of the things we'll see the author does is it particularly focuses on how Christ is our great high priest, how he is our intercessor, how he represents us to God. It's one of the major themes we'll see. in a moment. So this is one of the reasons I picked the book of Hebrews, and I hope that excites you, because it excites me. I love the book of Hebrews, and it's so fun to study. I've had a chance, of course, to study it for a number of years, and every time I do, there's always new things I see I never saw before, and I trust that'll be true for you in this. All right, let's look at the other thing I want to mention there by way of introduction. That's some background comments. Anytime you study the book of the Bible, you got to know who wrote it and where, you know, what its date was and a little bit about... the background of the book, let me just make a few quick comments here on this. There's a lot to say about Hebrews in this category. Those of you who really want to go deeply into some of these issues, you could stick your head in my Hebrews to Rev class next spring, and I go pretty deep into some of these things there. But let me just mention a few things. First, authorship. Here's one of the curious realities about the book of Hebrews, and you know it. We don't know who wrote it. Now, I don't think that's an oddity in the Bible. Actually, there's a number of books in the Bible that we're not exactly sure who the author is. There's no author named in the book of Hebrews. The audience is named. We'll talk about that in a second. The author's not named. Now, as you can imagine, this has occasioned all kinds of discussion throughout the history of the church. People have had all kinds of hypotheses about who the author might be. Some thought it was Paul. Some thought it was Barnabas. Some thought it was Apollos. Some even think it's Luke. Now, those are all curious things in their own right, and there's so much I could say about that. We wanted to have a whole lecture about the intricacies of the book and how it matches those possible different authors. We could have that conversation. Here's the bottom line. We don't know who the author is, but it really doesn't affect our confidence in the authority of the book. And here's why. The author does identify himself later in chapter 2, we'll see it when we get there, as a disciple of the apostles. This is an apostolic person. This is a person who's a companion of the Twelve. And actually tells us that the information he's given us in this book is really apostolic teaching. It comes from... the apostles themselves. This is, by the way, why many people thought that Luke is the author, because that's the way Luke's situated, right? Is that he's a companion of the apostles, and really, in particular, a companion of Paul. And so some have thought, oh, maybe Luke's the author here of Hebrews. Possible, we don't know. Regardless, though, we can be confident that what we're getting here is apostolic teaching. Let me make a comment about date. One of the questions that comes up is, when was the book of Hebrews written? The best we can tell is the book of Hebrews was probably written in the middle of the first century, probably somewhere in the early 60s is our best guess. There's a whole lot of reasons for this I won't get into today. Let me just mention one, though. Time and time again in the book of Hebrews, the author seems to indicate that the temple in Jerusalem is still there. Now, if you're thinking, well, why does that matter? Here's the reason. It's because we know in 70 AD... The temple was destroyed by the Romans, just utterly destroyed, knocked down, wiped out, burned to the ground, nothing left. So if you're writing the book of Hebrews after 70 AD and you're writing a lot about the temple, which as you know the book of Hebrews is a lot about the temple, wouldn't that be something you might mention? Isn't that something that might actually help your argument? Don't go back to the old ways of Judaism because the temple's not there anyway? Well, the author doesn't do that, right? The author seems to indicate that going back to the old ways of Judaism is still possible. This makes many scholars think the temple is still around, which puts the book somewhere before 80-70. Somewhere probably in the early 60s is as good a guess as anybody. Which incidentally works if you have Luke as the author, and either some of the other suggestions as well. But it's really the audience I want to focus on with you here in this background. You've got to get the audience right if you're going to get Hebrews right. Because the situation of the audience is the situation that unlocks the whole book. What's going on with the audience here? Well, the audience is told to us by the title, To the Hebrews. That's just another name of two Jews. Now, we don't think Jews that have rejected Jesus. These are obviously Jews that have believed in Jesus, but they're ethnically Jewish. They came out of Judaism. They've embraced Jesus as the Messiah. They see Jesus as the Savior of Israel. But yet, when we look in the book, we can see that this audience has hit a snag. And this is the heartbeat of the whole book. From what we can tell, and you'll see this unpacked over time, from what we can tell, the audience in the book of Hebrews are Jewish Christians thinking about going back to Judaism and abandoning Christianity. They're thinking about leaving this newfound way with Jesus and going back to the old ways, animal sacrifices, worship at the temple. trusting the old paths, if you will, that Jews had trusted in for generations. In other words, people are starting to doubt whether this Jesus thing is all it's cracked up to be. This means that one of the major themes in Hebrews is this theme of giving up. The people that the author is writing to are thinking about giving up on Jesus and going back to the old ways of Judaism. Now, We're going to unpack all the different ways that happens throughout the class, and there's lots of different things we'll see about that. But it tells us why the author does what he does. The author is going to start off his book and go through the entire book telling us how Jesus is superior to every possible thing that you could put in his place. He's superior to the angels. He's superior to the prophets. He's superior to Joshua. He's superior to Moses. He's superior to Aaron. He's superior to all the things of the old covenant. Jesus surpasses them, is greater than them, is more amazing than them as a whole. And so this is going to be the theme of the book, is the superiority of Christ over all things. And that's conditioned by what's going on with the audience. The audience is thinking about giving up. Now that really transitions us to the whole overall message of the book here. And I want to... transition here to Roman numeral three and think about this with you for a moment. The overall message of the book is really where all the beauty of Hebrews lies. Because if you're writing to an audience that's thinking about giving up on Jesus, then the obvious point of your book is the superiority of Jesus about those things you're thinking about going back to. Those things that you think are better than Jesus. So I want you to notice on a Roman numeral three the way I put the main theme. And this is going to guide us here. The main theme of this book is the supremacy of Christ over all things. There is nothing grander, greater, more beautiful, more wonderful, more satisfying, more extraordinary than Jesus. Now you hear that message and you think, I know that I believe that, but I don't always know if I feel that. I don't know if I always live like that. which means that the message of the book of Hebrews about the superiority of Christ applies to all of us. I doubt there's anybody in this room, maybe there is, thinking about going back to the old ways of Judaism, right? And we're largely in a Western world America. We're mostly Gentile Christians. We're not coming from a Jewish background. We're not thinking, wow, I just want to go back and offer animal sacrifices again, or I want to go back and follow the old ways. No, you're not necessarily thinking about that, but we all are faced with the reality that we're thinking about going back to other things. And this is why the book of Hebrews message is so critical for us today, because the message isn't just that Christ is superior to Aaron or Moses and Joshua. Christ is superior to anything else you've come up with, anything else you feel tempted by to follow other than Christ. He's better. Notice what I put in the parentheses there. This is really the theme of the book. Jesus is better. This is what I want you to feel throughout the whole book of Hebrews, is that Jesus is better than plug in something. plug in anything. Jesus is better. It's the kind of thing that ought to go on a t-shirt, you know? Matt, we ought to have like Hebrews t-shirts. RTS1's Bible study in the back ought to say, Jesus is better. Don't you want that to be the theme of your life, by the way? Jesus is better, and it can be better than anything that you might stick in place of Christ. Now, we need that message. All of us need that message. You don't have to be a Jewish Christian thinking about going back to Judaism. Yes, that's what's going on in the immediate context, but as we apply it to our context, we realize that anything we try to set up in place of Christ, we need to hear the message that Jesus is better than that. Now, of course, the focus will be, though, on the old ways of Judaism. So one of the things I want you to be prepared for is that we're going to talk a lot in here about how Jesus is superior to the Old Testament. His ways are superior to the Old Testament ways. And I'm going to clarify next week, in fact, that this doesn't mean there's something wrong with the Old Testament. Not at all. The Old Testament was fully the divinely inspired word of God. It's just the Old Testament was incomplete. It hadn't been fulfilled, hadn't been fully realized. Jesus does that, okay? And so most of the class is going to be spent on how Jesus is greater than Moses, Jesus is the greater temple, Jesus is better than Joshua, and so that's going to be the dominant theme. Jesus is our best high priest and so on. But what I want you to see throughout the class is that we're applying that to whatever it is in our life that we're thinking about going back to, that we think can replace Christ. Jesus is better. Now let me unpack in that Point B a little bit, why I think this message matters so much for us today. And let me just highlight a couple things. One reason I think that message matters for us today is that most of us, although we believe Jesus is better than anything else and we believe he's superior, we don't actually know how he is or even know why he is. What I mean by that is that we don't have a lot of theological data points for why Jesus is better. We don't have a lot of doctrinal ammunition there to articulate how and why Jesus is better. So what I want to give you in the book of Hebrews here, what I think God wants to give you in the book of Hebrews here, is some detail of exactly how Jesus is better. And that's going to require some doctrinal heavy lifting. Now I want you to know this about the book of Hebrews, and those of you who studied before know this, is that the book of Hebrews is not light fare. It is thick, heavy stuff. But I want you to notice what the payoff here, the payoff is, is it's going to give you some doctrinal anchors for why Jesus is better, how it is, what exactly is true of Jesus that makes him better. If you ask the average Christian that, they're going to be like, well, he's just better. Now, what I want you to realize is that's only going to get you so far, okay? You need some theological and doctrinal anchors to latch on to, the hows and the whys, and the book of Hebrews will give that to you. But be ready. It's not, you know, a fluffy appetizer. This is like a porterhouse steak you're getting ready to cut into here, right? I mean, this is thick, heavy stuff that you're going to be jumping into, but it's wonderful stuff. And one of the reasons I think you're here in this Bible study is because I think you, like many of us, want a Bible study that's going to be thick and substantive, right? You don't want to just come in and get some light, fluffy stuff. You want something real and meaty, and the book of Hebrews is going to give it to you. I'm telling you. John Owen, you may know the name John Owen, a very famous Puritan writer from the late 1600s, early 1600s, wrote a seven-volume commentary on Hebrews that is just monumentally thick. Each volume is about the size of a small dictionary, seven of them. And each time you read a verse, you think, what more could be said here? And then you're like, 75 pages later, oh, apparently a lot, right? And so I'm telling you, there's a lot of stuff here, and we're going to be looking at some really meaty doctrinal stuff. Let me mention a second thing, though. that I think is why this message matters is the obvious doubts that we have. Sometimes we doubt whether Jesus is better, or to put it yet another way, sometimes you just feel like giving up. Now I want to ask you this question. I know, because I just know my own heart, and I know just the way Christians are in general, many of us here today are thinking about just giving up. When I say we're thinking about giving up, it doesn't mean abandoning the faith. No, that's not what we mean. It's not about... sort of becoming some non-Christian. That's not what we mean by giving up. But by giving up, it's just you're weary. You're exhausted. And in the back of your mind, if you're like the audience that has been written to here, you're thinking, you know, this whole Jesus thing isn't all it was cracked up to be. I thought this Jesus thing, honestly, was just going to be better than this. And we have doubts about it. No doubt that was going on with the audience that the author wrote to here. The Jewish Christians were, they had embraced Jesus as the Messiah. They believed that the fulfillment of the prophecies of Israel, but then they started having doubts. Why? Probably because of all the pressures of life, persecutions, opposition. They're like, wow, following Jesus isn't very easy. Following Jesus is hard. It's confusing. We're getting all this resistance. Maybe, you know, maybe we should just kick that to the curb and go back to the old ways. And all of us have a point in our life where we think about just giving up. We're like, you know, this Jesus thing isn't quite worth it. It's not. panning out like I thought it would, and maybe something's better. And you know what we start doing then? We start thinking about the something that's better. Like, what, you know, maybe that person over there is not even a Christian. They look like they're pretty happy. Their life looks better than mine. And here's what we end up doing in the Christian life. We end up following Jesus out of duty and obligation, but we don't follow Jesus out of delight in how wonderful he is. And I can tell you this. If you're following Jesus out of duty and obligation, here's what that's going to look like. You're going to be putting your nose to the grindstone in the Christian life thinking, well, I know this is what I'm supposed to be doing, but all the while, out of the corner of your eye, you're looking at something else over in the world and go, but you know something, that looks better. It just does. Maybe I should go over and be a part of that. And that's what the book of Hebrews is trying to fix. It's trying to remind you it's not better. Jesus is better, even if you're having a hard time, even if you're thinking about giving up. So let me ask this question. This is my sort of one discussion question for this day. What are those other things that we think might be better than Jesus that we're tempted to replace him with? Lots of answers to this question. Certainly, the book of Hebrews gives us sort of the old Jewish system as one option, but I'm thinking about for our modern day. You could speak autobiographically here or just in general. What are some things that we're tempted to think, you know, that's better. That'll give me more satisfaction. That's where life is. This following Jesus thing isn't working out. Life is over there. Where's the over there? Open it up to you. So, hold on, raise your hand. I got, there we go. I see your faces. I'm hearing a voice. Yes, Lauren. Ah, okay. So you're thinking, well, look, if I can just have sort of worldly success, if I can, my ambition can be fulfilled, if my job can go the way I want it to, then, you know, life falls in place how you want it. That's where life is. That's a tempting thought. That's better. Good. What else? Yes. Sorry, over here. Family. Right. And one thing I would add to that is just this idea of relationships. Now, this is one of the things that people think is more satisfying than Jesus, right? You know what really is going to make my life work is good relationships with people, good community. If I can just have good, rich community, I can be in fellowship, have some sisters that walk beside me and share my life, and that's where life is. Now, don't mistake me. Good community is great, but not without Christ. Don't think for a moment that relationships are going to be more satisfying than Jesus. They can't be. Only Jesus is going to be the ultimate satisfying relationship. I saw one hand over here. Yep. Ah, this is a big one. I hear this collective sigh in the room. Everyone's like, yes, if only, if I could just, my life just be easier. If I could just get a break, right? If I could just have a moment where I could put my feet up, right, in a good way, not in a bad way. My poor wife broke her ankle. She's had her feet up for three weeks. She's like, I don't want my feet up anymore. But feet up in a good way, you're like, well, if I could just have it go a little easier for me, then that's where life can be found. And what the book of Hebrews is going to say is like, no, no, no, don't you realize? Even in the Old Testament time with the saints all in the hall of faith, we're going to see in Hebrews 11, they had it incredibly hard. Many of them were martyred and killed for their faith, and yet Jesus was still better than all of that. Think about Moses. The author in Hebrews tells us very plainly, Moses gave up the palatial life in Egypt to live in the palace as a favored son so he could identify with the people of God and live in the desert and live as a nobody. And yet Jesus was sufficient. He's better. Any other thoughts on what we replace him with? Yes? Ah, that's a bull. If you didn't hear it, worship of yourself, right? Sometimes we think we're enough, that we're the stuff, we're better, that I'm wiser, I'm smarter, I can figure it out. You know, the list is long of all the things that we tend to replace Jesus with. And each of us have our own little combinations, don't we? You know one of the things that John Calvin said famously is that the heart of humans is a little idol factory, and what you're doing in your heart all the time as sinful people is you're just cranking out new things to worship other than Jesus. Now even as converted people, that idol factory doesn't shut down, okay? The honest truth is that as followers of Jesus, we're kind of a wayward bride sometimes. We kind of look around and go, I kind of wish I was married to him and not him, right? Jesus is our groom, but sometimes we are in love with other things. We're little idol factories, not wooden stone idols that we put on our shelf and bow down to, but we have our idols, don't we? Here's the thing what the Hebrews is going to do, and I want you to be ready for this this semester. What the book of Hebrews is going to do is it's going to go after our hearts and go after those little idol factories, and it's going to try to shut those down. It's going to shut them down by convincing us of the theme of the book, that Jesus is better than all those other things we might pursue. It doesn't mean that God doesn't give us good things we can enjoy in life. Of course he does, but that doesn't mean they're better than God. Don't let the gift outpace the giver, right? It's the giver behind it that is what the book of Hebrews wants us to focus on. All right, flip your notes over to the back. Roman numeral four there is just a structure and outline of the book of Hebrews. I'm not going to walk through this. Line by line, but I just want you to notice the overall macro flow of the book. Whenever you do a Bible study, you need to know the whole book as a whole. You can see it here in your notes. I want you, as you look at that sample outline, to notice the major headings. They all have the word superior in them. Notice. Next week, we'll see Christ superior to the prophets. After that, superior to the angels. After that, superior to Moses and Joshua. After that, superior to Aaron. After that, superior to the Old Covenant. After that, faith is the superior way of the New Covenant. And then the final concluding. exhortation and chapter. So this is the flow of the book. And then notice something else in that flow. Notice the little bold print there. Warnings. One of the things you're going to learn in the book of Hebrews is it's got six major warning passages throughout. You know what the warning is? The warning is simple. Don't turn away from Jesus and go after that idol. If you turn away from Jesus and go after that idol, we're warning you, says the author, that that is not the way of life. That is the way of death. And those warnings are there because God loves us as his people and wants to keep us walking with him on the path. Some people in our culture don't like warnings. You know, warnings seem mean. Mornings can seem judgmental and these sorts of things. No, warnings can be life-giving if you heed them. Think about all the people who were in the hurricane, and they were given warnings. And those who heeded those warnings were on safe, dry ground. And those who didn't, their lives were at risk. No, there's going to be warnings throughout the book of Hebrews. I want you to know this is coming. life-giving warnings. Don't give up on Jesus. He is better. Be aware that if you go down a different path, you're pursuing the path not of life, but really the path of death. So this outline is where we're headed here, and it can give you a good sort of anchor for what this whole thing will look like for the next number of weeks. Okay, so where do we go from here? Next week, we're going to take the very first set of verses in the book of Hebrews. Next week, we're going to do verses one through three. We're going to launch right into the person of Jesus and his wonder and beauty and greatness, because that's what the author of Hebrews does, launches right in to the beauty and wonder and greatness of Jesus. So what's exciting about the book of Hebrews is there's no slow start here. I mean, just pedal down, out of the gate. I mean, just pedal to the floor. We're going to be hitting it hard next week because Christ is at the center of the very first verses we're going to hit. So I'm excited about that. I hope you are. Now look at those discussion group questions at the bottom. These are the three questions for our time today. The first one is going to be kind of get to know you a little bit. I don't want to truncate that, but don't take all the time on that. Let's do introductions, but let's try to at least get a little bit into two and three if you can, which is, you know, what are you hoping to get out of the book of Hebrews, and are you struggling with giving up? And the answer for all of us on one level is yes, right? Don't we all? And so this is a great reminder of why we're here. We want to fall in love with Christ again. in a fresh and new way, and that's what we pray this Bible study will do. Okay, so let's transition to the groups now. I'm going to pray real quick, and we'll do that, and then we'll be in those for about 15 or 20 minutes, and then I'll close us after that. Let me pray for us. Lord, we're so thankful for this book. What would we do without a book that so clearly, grandly, magnificently proclaims the wonders of Jesus? Help us to see it, and most importantly, be changed by it this semester. And Lord, we pray for these groups now. May these groups be a great place of fellowship and connection throughout this study. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

But thanks for coming back and being a part of this. We're really thrilled to launch a new year of the RTS Women's Bible Study. I see a lot of familiar faces, and I see a lot of new faces. I look forward to getting to know you. If you haven't met me yet, I'm Mike Kruger.

I'm the president of Reformed Theological Seminary here in Charlotte, and this is the Women's Bible Study that we have every Wednesday morning, and we'll talk about the details going forward. We're so thankful. This is one of those things I didn't know if this was going to happen, and I know that you probably didn't know this was going to happen. For those of you who don't know the background, we did two years in Romans, and then we took a year off.

And then in that year off, I thought to myself, am I going to make it back? I didn't know if the schedule and all the different things going on was going to make it back, but all those emails you sent were very persuasive, especially the threatening ones. You better come back.

We'll find you. We know where you live. But this is a fantastic group. We're so excited to see. We have 165 women signed up for this Bible study.

Just don't tell the fire marshal how many people we've put in this room because I think we've probably broken some rules here, but we're going to try to keep as many in here. So I apologize in advance for feeling crowded. I know it feels crowded.

I know you're thinking, how do I navigate here if I need to move around? Well, I don't have an answer for you, but we're just trying to open it up to as many people as possible. We actually still have a waiting list, so we'll just deal with that as we go, but I'm thankful that you're here. Let me also say this is the most on-time group.

I'm amazed. I was telling the staff here, I was like, well, you know, you get 165 people in here and it's going to take a while and we're never going to get, you know, how you get everyone to sit down and it was like 935 and everyone's already sat down. I guess there's nowhere to stand, right?

So it's easy to sit down when you have nowhere else to go. But we're very thrilled you're here. One of the things we want to do for you as you join this study is learn a little bit more about RTS, who we are as a seminary. Some of you know because you've been here before.

Some of you are brand new, but let me just point out a few things in your notebook there on your table. This notebook is going to be the notebook you're going to have for the study. It's going to be the thing that you use throughout your time together with us. You're going to keep this throughout the duration of the Hebrew study, and each week you're going to get a new handout that you can sort of clip in here.

There's already handouts on the table that you've seen, no doubt. Let me point out a few things just to help you get to know us. a little bit better. The first thing is this little brochure in there. This is a little trifle brochure that says Charlotte at the top.

It's our events calendar. At some point, you don't have to do this now, but at some point I want you to take some time just to look through this and see what's going on. And here's why I mention this. As enjoyable as this Bible study is for everybody who gets a chance to come to it, I want you to know that RTS has a lot of other things going on that we want to make sure that you're aware of.

Events, lectures, seminars. special weekends, all kinds of things, and that little trifle flyer can tell you about all those things. And one of the things that, of course, we do, and this is sort of obvious, is that we are a graduate school with seminary classes. This, of course, is not a four-credit seminary class, which I'm sure you're probably happy for, but we have those all the time, and some of you have taken seminary classes before, but I just want to give you an invitation, if you've never thought about it, come take a seminary class with us. You don't have to take it for credit.

You can audit it. You can just sit in and enjoy it without having to worry about exams or papers. You'll probably get all the other students mad at you for being so relaxed in the class, where you can just sit there and enjoy the lectures.

But you can come and take those classes. I know a number of you have. I want to invite you to do that. You can come take my class. I'm teaching Gospels right now in the fall.

I teach Hebrews to Revelation in the spring. Yes, Hebrews. So if you want to go even further and do it, you can take my seminary class.

So just take note of all the different things that are going on at the seminary. There's lots happening. In the back of your notebook there, you'll see our RTS magazine. Sometime later, you can flip through that and learn more about who we are.

One of the things you'll discover there is that we have campuses all over the southeast. Jackson, Mississippi, Orlando, Florida, Charlotte, North Carolina are our three big ones. Then, we have smaller campuses in DC, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, and New York City.

So, Charlotte is just one of many campuses within the RTS system. You know what's interesting about Charlotte this year? Some of you may know this. This is our 25th anniversary.

right here in Charlotte. So we are really thrilled about that. We want to give God glory for that.

We're going to be talking about that to our supporters throughout the year because I think that's a special milestone for us. But you can learn more about RTS through that. Magazine. And then for you coffee aficionados, some of you may know we opened up a new coffee shop on campus and you have a coupon in there for a free cup of coffee at our coffee shop just a couple hundred yards that way on the other side of our campus and they have really good coffee.

It's the real deal. All the machines, all the stuff. Stop by, enjoy the coffee, get on Wi-Fi, hang out, buy a book. There's all kinds of things there. you can check out.

Here's the trick on this coupon though, is that the bookstore desperately asked me, tell them they can't come on Wednesdays. What do you think if 165 people marched over to the bookstore right after the Bible study? So enjoy the coupon, but you can't use it on Wednesdays. I think you could probably understand why that's the case. One last thing in your notebook you'll find, for those of you who are at Christ Covenant, you've probably already heard this, there's a conference coming up this fall at Christ Covenant Church that's co-sponsored with RTS.

RTS and Christ's Covenant are doing a conference and a number of faculty are speaking at it, including myself, of course Kevin DeYoung is speaking on it, or speaking at it, and so on the Reformation. And so this gives you the details on it. Just want you to know that if you're looking to come out for a weekend to learn about how the Reformation happened, what it means for us today, you'll be able to hear from some wonderful folks on there. So just some information for you to get to know a little bit more about RTS.

We're so thankful you're here. I'm looking forward to another year together. with you.

Let me say a word of prayer, and then we'll dive into what we've got today in this Bible study. Let's pray together. Lord, you're so good to us to deliver a message, a word to us, Lord, that you speak. And Lord, you speak in all the books of the Bible. But Lord, we want to thank this particular year about how you speak to us in the book of Hebrews, and how you've spoken the final word in Christ, the most glorious word.

that could ever be spoken. Lord, we pray that you would bless this Bible study. Lord, we know that it's not about human wisdom that we seek, but divine wisdom.

So Lord, we know that only comes by the power of your Spirit who oversees the study of your words. Lord, we ask your Spirit would attend this study, even today, for the rest of the semester and the year. Lord, bless our time together, we pray in Christ's name. Amen.

All right, I have two goals today with you. One is I want to introduce you to the Hebrews, or rather to the overall RTS Women's Bible Study. Just what it looks like, why we do it, what the logistics are, the details and so forth. And then secondly today, my goal is to introduce you to the book of Hebrews itself. So a two-fold goal.

One more logistical, kind of why we're here and how it works. And then the other is more sort of biblical, theological, what the book of Hebrews is about, why we want to study it. So on your tables in the middle was the outline for today. I see that most of you have already found it. You've probably already clicked it into your notebooks.

That little outline today is the thing we're going to follow to talk about those two goals. And of course, each week you're going to get a new outline as we go. So if you look at that outline, notice Roman numeral 1 there, introduction of the RTS Women's Bible Study.

Let's just talk a little bit about what we're doing here. and why we're having this. And the obvious question for those of you that are new or why in the world do you have a women's Bible study at RTS? What's going on in your head to make you do something like that?

I ask myself that question a lot actually and maybe this morning when I woke up I'm like what am I doing, right? Let me tell you a little bit about why we're here. One reason we're here is because we believe, I believe personally and we believe at RTS, that the Word of God is a powerful. powerful thing.

In fact, you're going to learn in the book of Hebrews itself, and you know this because you know the passage, that the Word of God is living and active sharper than a double-edged sword, right? It can actually penetrate your heart and your life in ways that you never knew of or thought of or realized. We believe the Word does that sort of thing.

And so the idea behind a Bible study like this is we believe in the power and effectiveness of the Word of God to change you, to encourage you. to convict you, to mold you, to empower you, to share the gospel with those around you and in your life. You know, when someone hears that we have 165 people show up on a Wednesday morning every week at RTS, they're thinking, what are you doing there, right, that makes people show up? What amazing, exciting phenomenon must this be, right? Are you, you know, are you shooting off fireworks?

Is it... entertainment? Are you putting on a show? What could possibly get all those people to get up and come here and do a Bible study?

And the answer is we're studying the Bible. It's an amazing thing. But I know you're here because you believe that too, right? That the Word of God is powerful and it can change you.

So why start a Bible study? Well, for the obvious reason, because we think God's Word really makes a difference in people's lives. Now, beyond that, there's another reason why we started this Bible study, and that is, as the president of this seminary, I wanted to find a way to get the Word of God out in the city of Charlotte, outside a formal seminary classroom. Now, as you know, I already told you this, we have seminary classes going on all the time here, right now actually, seminary classes going on all over there, and I teach some of those.

I've been a New Testament professor here for the last 16 years, and our other faculty teach those classes. Those are great, we love doing it, but we know some people are just never going to take a seminary class. And that's okay. Seminary classes aren't for everybody, and sometimes people don't have the time, or they're too intimidated, or whatever it happens to be.

And the vision for this study was, hold on a second, why do we have to teach the Word of God in just a seminary class? I can just teach it to whoever wants to come from the community of Charlotte. And so that's what we did. And for those of you that were in the Roman study, we did that, started three years ago, right?

In 2000, I guess, 2014 is when we started that, and we started a women's Bible study. We thought it would work well as a women's Bible study, as intimidating as that is for me, not for you maybe, but for me, we thought, you know, this really works well because the community that can be built here among a women's Bible study really makes a lot of sense. And so the Roman study went really well, and so we're starting it up again now with the book of Hebrews.

So that's a little bit of the philosophy, the idea behind why we do a Bible study like this at RTS. Now, some of you, many of you, I imagine, were in the Roman study. Some of you don't know, if you're new, that We did two years in Romans, four semesters, I think 44, someone help me out here, 43 installments in Romans. That's a lot.

And all of that was wrapped up in 2016. We took a year break and now we're back. How many of you were in the Roman study? Just raise your hand.

Okay, that's a good chunk. And we've got a lot of new faces here as well. I'm surprised you came back after that, right? It's like, really?

After Romans? Like, I'm never going there again. But here we are for the book of Hebrews. So that's a little bit of our philosophy. of why we want to have a Bible study, and so we're just thrilled you're here.

And I'm confident that God is going to be at work in your lives, in my life. One of the things that, if you've taught Bible studies, you know this, is that who's the most impacted sometimes by the Bible study? Not the people who are listening, but often the person who's teaching, right? So I'm kind of, I'm just doing this for me, just so you know. This is just all about doing this for me.

No, just kidding, but I do get a lot out of this, and I'm really thankful you're here. Okay, with that little sort of philosophical introduction, I want to direct your attention to the sheet that was already in your notebook, which is sort of the overview of the logistics. It's like a schedule sheet. At the top it says RTS Charlotte Women's Bible Study, and it gives like times and sort of how we work here.

And I want to walk through that with you and just make sure everybody understands how we do what we do in the RTS Charlotte Women's Bible Study. Let's start with that first thing there called daily schedule. You can see there it says 915 to 1045. Actually, you know, when you think about Bible studies, it's a pretty tight window. 915 to 1045, it's not long. Our goal here is to give you a chance to study God's Word without taking up your whole day.

So hopefully this is accomplishing that. But notice the start time here is 915. We want you to come in, have a cup of coffee, enjoy some fellowship time. If you haven't figured it out, we have coffee up here, but we also have coffee in that station in the back.

And we know why, because in the back, the people in the back are like, I can't ever get... up here, right? And so just so you know, you can have coffee in both places when you come. That back door is open when you come, so you can slip in the back if your table's in this corner.

So those of you who don't know that yet, this is a good little secret entrance over here. We want you to come and enjoy that fellowship time together. And part of the rationale for that is that we want to start at 9 30. And we want to start 9 30 for the sake of honoring your time. You only have a limited amount of time. It's the time of everybody who's a part of this study and sets it up.

We want to try as best we can to start at 9.30. That's tough to pull off, I know, with 165 people. The idea is get here, settle in, get your seat, get a cup of coffee. Then when 9.30 rolls around, we can try to start as quickly as we can. Some of you are figuring out the parking thing.

I know that's tricky. We have students here, a bunch of people here for this study. If you don't know it yet, kind of out in the back, we have these basketball courts behind us here.

You can actually park back there, and it's a little side road that goes right here. So just keep in mind in the morning, you can park right in the back by that play set and walk up the sidewalk. That's an easy spot for you if parking's full when you arrive. Now, of course, if you arrive late, I know what the motivation is for not arriving late. You know what the motivation is?

You get to walk in front of every single person all the way across. Maybe if you're, of course, if you're, you're not going to sit at your table if it's in the back, I know, if you're late. But it's this sort of walk in front, and then we have it on video, too, so we can just show it later.

We'll have a montage at the end of the semester of all the people who showed up late. Matt, you want to put, you got that? You want to put that together? This is you, late people. All right, so then at 9.30, Lord willing, we'll start.

So look at the second thing. This is the teaching time. Let me say a word about what this is gonna look like. In the teaching time, of course, every week, we'll be working through a section of the book of Hebrews, and I'll give you an outline.

And you'll have that in a hard copy. And as we work through the book of Hebrews, I know many of you are note takers. The idea is you can take your notes right on that sheet, plug it into your notebook.

Obviously, if you're gonna do that, you wanna take your notebook with you every week, okay? And so I would encourage you to write, this sounds like you're in the fifth grade, I know, but write your name on your notebook. What's going to happen? You're going to take, if you're a note taker and you love taking notes and someone takes your notebook, you're like, I'm going to kill that person, right? They took my notes.

So write your name on your notebook. I might even suggest you do it right now, somewhere, so that you don't get it mixed up. They all look the same, I know. And this will keep you from getting that confused with other people.

Now, when we do the Bible study, we'll be working through, just so you know, I use the ESV Bible translation for this Bible study. That doesn't mean you have to use the ESV. We think it's a great translation.

It's the one we'll be using in here, and certainly it would be helpful if you had that translation, because then when you follow along with me, it's word for word, right? But if you have the NIV or some other translation, that's fine. Just know that I'll be using the ESV up front as we go. Let me make another comment here on the teaching time, and that is, one of the things I've always sought to do in group Bible studies is have group interaction. What I mean by that is ask you questions and get feedback from the group.

Now, when you have a Bible study that has 12 people in it, it's a lot easier to do than with 165. So you just should know that in the teaching time, it's going to be largely, mostly just me teaching, which I hope is okay. I trust that's probably why you're here in many ways, but I am going to ask questions from time to time. Be ready for that. I'm not going to call on you, of course. You're thinking, oh no, he's going to call on me.

That's not what I mean. I'm going to ask questions to the group to get interaction, but that's going to have to be limited, obviously, just because of the size of the group. The teaching time, at least in my head, I'm trying to get to go to about 10.20, 10.15-ish, somewhere around there.

Then we'll transition into the third thing, which is discussion groups. Discussion groups are a key part of what we're doing here. Let me explain why.

We believe, and I know you do too, that the Word of God is taught best, not in isolation, but in community. That doesn't mean you can't learn from God's Word, sitting under a tree in a park, reading your Bible alone. Yeah, of course you can, right? But we think it's best in a community, because in community you can help people apply the Word in your life, encourage each other, talk to each other. Now, we're not trying to replace your local church, but we are trying to sort of replicate a little bit of community in your tables, okay?

So, we've assigned you a table, which is the table you'll sit at every week, and you'll get to know the folks at your table. And there's also been a person assigned your table to be a discussion leader, okay? Discussion leader doesn't mean they run the discussion.

It's more of a facilitator, someone to get the ball rolling in discussion time. And during that group phase, you'll have three questions every week that I'll be putting on that sheet of paper for you to work through as a group. Sometimes you'll get through all three, maybe two, sometimes you probably won't even get past the first question. That's okay, you don't have to get through them all.

But this is a time where you can think about the scriptures, think about what you just heard, and talk about it and process it with the group that you're in. We think that's a really important part of what this Bible study is all about. So we want to encourage you to get to know your table.

And this is just a great chance to have fellowship and relationships. There's name tags there. If you don't know some folks at your table, you can get to know them. And then over time, this is going to become your... little network, your little group.

So we're really thrilled about that aspect of our time together. We hope you're excited about it too. So this will be running from basically 1025, 1020-ish to 1045, and then I'll wrap us up after that with a closing prayer. But this is a good chance for you to reflect upon and think about what you've learned in that group setting. Okay, so this is the lay of the land for our Bible study.

This is sort of the... the structure of how every week will go. I'm going to work really hard to get you out of here right on time. 1045 hits, just right on the numbers. We're going to wrap this up for honoring your time and making sure that you can have a predictable day, in terms of what this will look like.

We're not going to have one of those situations where you're like, when will this guy stop talking? We'll go on and on until noon. That's not going to happen.

We're going to try to end right at 1045. I'm going to make a couple other comments here on logistics. One is the videos. Some of you know that when we did Romans, we filmed every one of them. Matt McQuaid in the back.

Everyone say hello to Matt. Matt is in the back, the only other male in the room. Actually, Dave's here too, helping run sound. Matt runs these videos, and he does a fantastic job.

If you've seen the Romans videos, these are really high-def, high-quality stuff. When he suggested a few years ago that we should tape these things, I was like, have you ever seen these homemade video jobs? It's like these what I call terrorist videos. Someone's basement with this like dull background and like, you know, it looks terrible and I was like, I don't know Matt, I don't know if this is going to work and he's like, trust me on this one.

And he's done an amazing job with these videos. We still hear stories about how the Romans videos are being watched all over the world. I get emails probably once a month from somebody. Africa, Europe, I had one from Slovakia recently. Canada, across the country where someone says, I was watching your Romans video and they'll write me an email and...

make a comment, ask a question, or say thank you, or what happens to be. This is because Matt films those every week. We're going to do the same thing for Hebrews. Every week, we're going to shoot for having that video loaded up, maybe by Friday after each study. Maybe on a slow week, it'll be the following Monday.

I don't want to lock Matt in here. We're going to try to get those videos up as quickly as possible with the handouts. This is great for you to know, because if you miss a week, you can watch it right on the video. And this is one of the reasons we want to get that out every week.

I hope that doesn't encourage you not to come, right? We still want you here, but it'll be a good backup plan for you if missed. And the Romans videos have been encouraging. We're going to do the same thing with Hebrews, and you can look at the details on there.

Lastly here, something about dates. We're going to be running, as you probably know from Carolyn's emails, mid-September to roughly mid-November, early November. in the fall, and then we'll be running mid-January to mid-March in the spring. That's the plan at this particular point. We'll be meeting every Wednesday at the same time in that date range.

How many of the, how many chapters will we get through? My guess is by the end of the spring, we'll probably be about halfway through Hebrews. Probably right around Hebrews 7, where the whole chapter on Melchizedek. And this is a great place to stop, actually.

And so we'll be... ending it with sort of a year-end brunch on the 21st, and this is a great sort of, I think, block of time for us. Now, with that in mind, let me say this.

Like any Bible study, you're going to get the most out of that Bible study if you can attend as many of those days as possible. So I just want to encourage you to do your best to try to get as many of these as you can. And now, I know you can't be here every week.

That's understandable. People have crazy lives. You're traveling.

You're busy. All kinds of stuff going on. We get that.

But the more you can... be here consistently, I know the more you're going to get out of this Bible study. And that's, I think, something just to keep in mind.

Also, let me mention this. If it turns out you started heading into this Bible study and it's just not working out for your schedule, and you're like, look, I just thought I could make it and I can't make it, or it's just not working out, or that guy Mike doesn't know what he's talking about, I'm not coming back. Whatever happens to be, if you find out you can't really make it work, let us know. Send an email to Carolyn because we have a waiting list of people waiting to get on. Some of you...

just got off the waiting list. It's like being called up from the minor leagues, right? I got called up just a couple days ago.

I know we sent out, some of you are here, I think, just got a couple notices, just like in the last 24 or 48 hours. So we want to do that for people if someone can't come. So if it turns out it's just not working out for you, that's fine. Just let us know.

We'll get someone else who can join the Bible study. We want to make sure it's open to as many people as we can. Okay, those are the logistics. Let me pause here for questions. Questions about the way this is going to work this year, operationally.

No questions about Hebrews yet, I'm going to get to that in a minute, but any questions about how we are going to run the study, what it's going to look like? This is where you think, do I want to raise my hand in front of 165 people? We're also going to make a video montage of weird questions at the end, by the way.

All the odd questions that were asked in the Bible study, Matt will make a montage of those. Questions? Logistics? Well, if you have some, Carolyn Arring is your first stop shop for getting some of those answered, and she can help you, and she's done a fantastic job.

Where's, is Carolyn in here? Everyone give Carolyn a hand. And let me also add Lisa Marie Ferguson has done a fantastic job helping.

Our staff here is just wonderful. As you can imagine, it takes a lot of work to put this on every week, setting it up, videoing it, breaking it down, all the food, so we're really thankful for our staff. Okay. Leaving that topic aside, let's look back at our notes and focus on the second thing I want to accomplish today, and that is a brief introduction to the book of Hebrews.

So now I want to focus our attention off of details. and nuts and bolts, and I want to put our attention on this book of the Bible that God has given us. And I want to give you an orientation about this book, why we're here, what it's about, why you should be excited, and I trust you are, to study the book of Hebrews.

So let's just look at the next Roman numeral in your outline there, introduction of the book of Hebrews. Why in the world are we studying this book? Well, aside from the obvious fact that it's a book in the Bible, people are like, well, why did you pick Hebrews? I remember a couple years ago, I floated the idea of doing the book of Revelation. Some of you thought, now that would be interesting.

But then I found out that like six churches in Charlotte were doing Revelation at the same time. So I'm like, well, let's put that on the back burner. Let's do something maybe no one's done much.

And that's one of the reasons I want to do the book of Hebrews. I'm convinced this is a much neglected book. Let me explain. I know that many people have learned passages in Hebrews. Certainly, you know about the hall of faith in Hebrews 11, or you may know...

The passage I quoted a moment ago about the Word of God in Hebrews 4, or whatever it happens to be. But as a whole, my experience has been that most people don't have the opportunity to study the book of Hebrews that much. It kind of tucked away in the back of your New Testaments, collecting a little dust back there.

Most people haven't thought much about it other than a few select verses. So one of the rationales here is let's pick a book of the Bible that's kind of new, right? That's kind of fresh. And I think the book of Hebrews has got that going for it, which I think makes it really a fun Bible study.

I love... studying things maybe you haven't had a chance to study before, and it gives you a fresh new insight into those things. Now, my guess, though, is that this room is probably a little different than most.

Knowing this crew, you probably have studied the book of Hebrews before, because I know a lot of you. But just out of curiosity, how many of you have done a full-length study? Not just hearing a message from Hebrews, but who've done a full-length Bible study on Hebrews?

Raise your hand. Okay, that's pretty good, actually. Maybe a third-ish? Okay, great. So you've been in this before.

Some of you maybe haven't done that before, but this is one of the reasons I think it's going to be a great book. Let me mention a second reason here, and that is it helps us understand the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Now, that's a juggernaut, isn't it? How many times have you been reading your Bible, and you're like, look, I understand this verse, but I don't understand how the whole thing fits together.

I don't understand the big picture. And in particular, I don't understand how the Old Testament fits with the New Testament. What was the whole point of the Old Testament?

Like, why even have it? And how is it fulfilled by Jesus, and what still applies, and what doesn't, and how do these two link together? And is Jesus sort of just fresh on the scene, and did people know he was coming, and how does this work?

This is a monumental question for Christians, and you have to have some categories for how to think about the Bible as a whole. One of the things I think we make a mistake in Bible studies doing is we're very micro in Bible studies, and we're going to be like that a little bit in here, don't get me wrong. We're going to look at this word, and this phrase and this little passage, and we're going to look at it in micro detail. One of the problems when you do that sometimes is you never get the big flow of the whole Bible, right?

Don't forget, the Bible is not just a bunch of little stories. The Bible is one big story, right? And what the book of Hebrews does so amazingly is it helps us understand the big overall story of the whole Bible.

Old Testament to New Testament, the entire scope of redemptive history. how it all led to Christ, how Christ fulfilled it all, and it's the crescendo of God's work on earth. That is the sort of heartbeat of the book of Hebrews.

And if you're like me, always pondering that question of how the OT and the NT relate, you're going to love this study because this study is going to really bore down deep, probably deeper than you even want to go, into the question of how the Old Testament and the New Testament fit together. So we're going to have a lot of fun with that in here, and this hopefully is going to be... Um... encouraging for you.

But it's the last one that's the real reason I picked Hebrews. It magnifies Christ, arguably like very few other books. Now, we would argue, of course, that every book in the Bible speaks of Christ, and I would certainly argue that every book in the Bible magnifies Christ.

No doubt that's the case, but some books just do it in such a way that there's a certain amount of clarity and beauty and wonder you get about Jesus in that book. Hebrews is one of those books. You know, when you read the book of Hebrews, you are very quickly aware that this author loves Jesus Christ. He thinks he's amazing.

He is magnificent. He is extraordinary. He is wonderful.

He's the crescendo of all that God does to redeem us. He is all in all. Now, if you're like me, have you ever met a person that's really excited about Jesus?

just thrilled with him, just thinks he's fantastic and amazing, and you think in the back of your mind, wow, I used to be like that once. Ever have that feeling? I remember the day long ago when I was that excited.

about the person of Christ. And I was the one talking about how magnificent he was. And then somewhere along the line, I don't know, I got bored with Jesus. Isn't that amazing?

I know he's amazing intellectually. I mean, I could write it down. If I took a quiz, a theological exam, I could tell you all the things, but I haven't really been gripped by the magnificence of Christ. Here's what the book of Hebrews does. It starts off, and we'll see it next week.

The very first verses are just zingers about who Christ is and how amazing he is, and we all need that reminder, don't we? And this is why I'm excited about the book of Hebrews, because it magnifies Christ really in no other way. And one of the things we'll see the author does is it particularly focuses on how Christ is our great high priest, how he is our intercessor, how he represents us to God. It's one of the major themes we'll see. in a moment.

So this is one of the reasons I picked the book of Hebrews, and I hope that excites you, because it excites me. I love the book of Hebrews, and it's so fun to study. I've had a chance, of course, to study it for a number of years, and every time I do, there's always new things I see I never saw before, and I trust that'll be true for you in this.

All right, let's look at the other thing I want to mention there by way of introduction. That's some background comments. Anytime you study the book of the Bible, you got to know who wrote it and where, you know, what its date was and a little bit about... the background of the book, let me just make a few quick comments here on this.

There's a lot to say about Hebrews in this category. Those of you who really want to go deeply into some of these issues, you could stick your head in my Hebrews to Rev class next spring, and I go pretty deep into some of these things there. But let me just mention a few things. First, authorship. Here's one of the curious realities about the book of Hebrews, and you know it.

We don't know who wrote it. Now, I don't think that's an oddity in the Bible. Actually, there's a number of books in the Bible that we're not exactly sure who the author is.

There's no author named in the book of Hebrews. The audience is named. We'll talk about that in a second. The author's not named. Now, as you can imagine, this has occasioned all kinds of discussion throughout the history of the church.

People have had all kinds of hypotheses about who the author might be. Some thought it was Paul. Some thought it was Barnabas.

Some thought it was Apollos. Some even think it's Luke. Now, those are all curious things in their own right, and there's so much I could say about that.

We wanted to have a whole lecture about the intricacies of the book and how it matches those possible different authors. We could have that conversation. Here's the bottom line.

We don't know who the author is, but it really doesn't affect our confidence in the authority of the book. And here's why. The author does identify himself later in chapter 2, we'll see it when we get there, as a disciple of the apostles.

This is an apostolic person. This is a person who's a companion of the Twelve. And actually tells us that the information he's given us in this book is really apostolic teaching.

It comes from... the apostles themselves. This is, by the way, why many people thought that Luke is the author, because that's the way Luke's situated, right? Is that he's a companion of the apostles, and really, in particular, a companion of Paul. And so some have thought, oh, maybe Luke's the author here of Hebrews.

Possible, we don't know. Regardless, though, we can be confident that what we're getting here is apostolic teaching. Let me make a comment about date. One of the questions that comes up is, when was the book of Hebrews written? The best we can tell is the book of Hebrews was probably written in the middle of the first century, probably somewhere in the early 60s is our best guess.

There's a whole lot of reasons for this I won't get into today. Let me just mention one, though. Time and time again in the book of Hebrews, the author seems to indicate that the temple in Jerusalem is still there.

Now, if you're thinking, well, why does that matter? Here's the reason. It's because we know in 70 AD...

The temple was destroyed by the Romans, just utterly destroyed, knocked down, wiped out, burned to the ground, nothing left. So if you're writing the book of Hebrews after 70 AD and you're writing a lot about the temple, which as you know the book of Hebrews is a lot about the temple, wouldn't that be something you might mention? Isn't that something that might actually help your argument?

Don't go back to the old ways of Judaism because the temple's not there anyway? Well, the author doesn't do that, right? The author seems to indicate that going back to the old ways of Judaism is still possible. This makes many scholars think the temple is still around, which puts the book somewhere before 80-70.

Somewhere probably in the early 60s is as good a guess as anybody. Which incidentally works if you have Luke as the author, and either some of the other suggestions as well. But it's really the audience I want to focus on with you here in this background. You've got to get the audience right if you're going to get Hebrews right.

Because the situation of the audience is the situation that unlocks the whole book. What's going on with the audience here? Well, the audience is told to us by the title, To the Hebrews. That's just another name of two Jews. Now, we don't think Jews that have rejected Jesus.

These are obviously Jews that have believed in Jesus, but they're ethnically Jewish. They came out of Judaism. They've embraced Jesus as the Messiah. They see Jesus as the Savior of Israel.

But yet, when we look in the book, we can see that this audience has hit a snag. And this is the heartbeat of the whole book. From what we can tell, and you'll see this unpacked over time, from what we can tell, the audience in the book of Hebrews are Jewish Christians thinking about going back to Judaism and abandoning Christianity. They're thinking about leaving this newfound way with Jesus and going back to the old ways, animal sacrifices, worship at the temple.

trusting the old paths, if you will, that Jews had trusted in for generations. In other words, people are starting to doubt whether this Jesus thing is all it's cracked up to be. This means that one of the major themes in Hebrews is this theme of giving up. The people that the author is writing to are thinking about giving up on Jesus and going back to the old ways of Judaism.

Now, We're going to unpack all the different ways that happens throughout the class, and there's lots of different things we'll see about that. But it tells us why the author does what he does. The author is going to start off his book and go through the entire book telling us how Jesus is superior to every possible thing that you could put in his place. He's superior to the angels.

He's superior to the prophets. He's superior to Joshua. He's superior to Moses. He's superior to Aaron. He's superior to all the things of the old covenant.

Jesus surpasses them, is greater than them, is more amazing than them as a whole. And so this is going to be the theme of the book, is the superiority of Christ over all things. And that's conditioned by what's going on with the audience.

The audience is thinking about giving up. Now that really transitions us to the whole overall message of the book here. And I want to... transition here to Roman numeral three and think about this with you for a moment. The overall message of the book is really where all the beauty of Hebrews lies.

Because if you're writing to an audience that's thinking about giving up on Jesus, then the obvious point of your book is the superiority of Jesus about those things you're thinking about going back to. Those things that you think are better than Jesus. So I want you to notice on a Roman numeral three the way I put the main theme. And this is going to guide us here. The main theme of this book is the supremacy of Christ over all things.

There is nothing grander, greater, more beautiful, more wonderful, more satisfying, more extraordinary than Jesus. Now you hear that message and you think, I know that I believe that, but I don't always know if I feel that. I don't know if I always live like that.

which means that the message of the book of Hebrews about the superiority of Christ applies to all of us. I doubt there's anybody in this room, maybe there is, thinking about going back to the old ways of Judaism, right? And we're largely in a Western world America. We're mostly Gentile Christians. We're not coming from a Jewish background.

We're not thinking, wow, I just want to go back and offer animal sacrifices again, or I want to go back and follow the old ways. No, you're not necessarily thinking about that, but we all are faced with the reality that we're thinking about going back to other things. And this is why the book of Hebrews message is so critical for us today, because the message isn't just that Christ is superior to Aaron or Moses and Joshua. Christ is superior to anything else you've come up with, anything else you feel tempted by to follow other than Christ. He's better.

Notice what I put in the parentheses there. This is really the theme of the book. Jesus is better. This is what I want you to feel throughout the whole book of Hebrews, is that Jesus is better than plug in something. plug in anything.

Jesus is better. It's the kind of thing that ought to go on a t-shirt, you know? Matt, we ought to have like Hebrews t-shirts.

RTS1's Bible study in the back ought to say, Jesus is better. Don't you want that to be the theme of your life, by the way? Jesus is better, and it can be better than anything that you might stick in place of Christ. Now, we need that message.

All of us need that message. You don't have to be a Jewish Christian thinking about going back to Judaism. Yes, that's what's going on in the immediate context, but as we apply it to our context, we realize that anything we try to set up in place of Christ, we need to hear the message that Jesus is better than that.

Now, of course, the focus will be, though, on the old ways of Judaism. So one of the things I want you to be prepared for is that we're going to talk a lot in here about how Jesus is superior to the Old Testament. His ways are superior to the Old Testament ways. And I'm going to clarify next week, in fact, that this doesn't mean there's something wrong with the Old Testament. Not at all.

The Old Testament was fully the divinely inspired word of God. It's just the Old Testament was incomplete. It hadn't been fulfilled, hadn't been fully realized.

Jesus does that, okay? And so most of the class is going to be spent on how Jesus is greater than Moses, Jesus is the greater temple, Jesus is better than Joshua, and so that's going to be the dominant theme. Jesus is our best high priest and so on. But what I want you to see throughout the class is that we're applying that to whatever it is in our life that we're thinking about going back to, that we think can replace Christ. Jesus is better.

Now let me unpack in that Point B a little bit, why I think this message matters so much for us today. And let me just highlight a couple things. One reason I think that message matters for us today is that most of us, although we believe Jesus is better than anything else and we believe he's superior, we don't actually know how he is or even know why he is. What I mean by that is that we don't have a lot of theological data points for why Jesus is better. We don't have a lot of doctrinal ammunition there to articulate how and why Jesus is better.

So what I want to give you in the book of Hebrews here, what I think God wants to give you in the book of Hebrews here, is some detail of exactly how Jesus is better. And that's going to require some doctrinal heavy lifting. Now I want you to know this about the book of Hebrews, and those of you who studied before know this, is that the book of Hebrews is not light fare. It is thick, heavy stuff. But I want you to notice what the payoff here, the payoff is, is it's going to give you some doctrinal anchors for why Jesus is better, how it is, what exactly is true of Jesus that makes him better.

If you ask the average Christian that, they're going to be like, well, he's just better. Now, what I want you to realize is that's only going to get you so far, okay? You need some theological and doctrinal anchors to latch on to, the hows and the whys, and the book of Hebrews will give that to you. But be ready. It's not, you know, a fluffy appetizer.

This is like a porterhouse steak you're getting ready to cut into here, right? I mean, this is thick, heavy stuff that you're going to be jumping into, but it's wonderful stuff. And one of the reasons I think you're here in this Bible study is because I think you, like many of us, want a Bible study that's going to be thick and substantive, right? You don't want to just come in and get some light, fluffy stuff.

You want something real and meaty, and the book of Hebrews is going to give it to you. I'm telling you. John Owen, you may know the name John Owen, a very famous Puritan writer from the late 1600s, early 1600s, wrote a seven-volume commentary on Hebrews that is just monumentally thick. Each volume is about the size of a small dictionary, seven of them.

And each time you read a verse, you think, what more could be said here? And then you're like, 75 pages later, oh, apparently a lot, right? And so I'm telling you, there's a lot of stuff here, and we're going to be looking at some really meaty doctrinal stuff.

Let me mention a second thing, though. that I think is why this message matters is the obvious doubts that we have. Sometimes we doubt whether Jesus is better, or to put it yet another way, sometimes you just feel like giving up. Now I want to ask you this question.

I know, because I just know my own heart, and I know just the way Christians are in general, many of us here today are thinking about just giving up. When I say we're thinking about giving up, it doesn't mean abandoning the faith. No, that's not what we mean.

It's not about... sort of becoming some non-Christian. That's not what we mean by giving up. But by giving up, it's just you're weary. You're exhausted.

And in the back of your mind, if you're like the audience that has been written to here, you're thinking, you know, this whole Jesus thing isn't all it was cracked up to be. I thought this Jesus thing, honestly, was just going to be better than this. And we have doubts about it. No doubt that was going on with the audience that the author wrote to here. The Jewish Christians were, they had embraced Jesus as the Messiah.

They believed that the fulfillment of the prophecies of Israel, but then they started having doubts. Why? Probably because of all the pressures of life, persecutions, opposition. They're like, wow, following Jesus isn't very easy. Following Jesus is hard.

It's confusing. We're getting all this resistance. Maybe, you know, maybe we should just kick that to the curb and go back to the old ways. And all of us have a point in our life where we think about just giving up. We're like, you know, this Jesus thing isn't quite worth it.

It's not. panning out like I thought it would, and maybe something's better. And you know what we start doing then? We start thinking about the something that's better. Like, what, you know, maybe that person over there is not even a Christian.

They look like they're pretty happy. Their life looks better than mine. And here's what we end up doing in the Christian life.

We end up following Jesus out of duty and obligation, but we don't follow Jesus out of delight in how wonderful he is. And I can tell you this. If you're following Jesus out of duty and obligation, here's what that's going to look like.

You're going to be putting your nose to the grindstone in the Christian life thinking, well, I know this is what I'm supposed to be doing, but all the while, out of the corner of your eye, you're looking at something else over in the world and go, but you know something, that looks better. It just does. Maybe I should go over and be a part of that.

And that's what the book of Hebrews is trying to fix. It's trying to remind you it's not better. Jesus is better, even if you're having a hard time, even if you're thinking about giving up.

So let me ask this question. This is my sort of one discussion question for this day. What are those other things that we think might be better than Jesus that we're tempted to replace him with?

Lots of answers to this question. Certainly, the book of Hebrews gives us sort of the old Jewish system as one option, but I'm thinking about for our modern day. You could speak autobiographically here or just in general.

What are some things that we're tempted to think, you know, that's better. That'll give me more satisfaction. That's where life is.

This following Jesus thing isn't working out. Life is over there. Where's the over there? Open it up to you. So, hold on, raise your hand.

I got, there we go. I see your faces. I'm hearing a voice. Yes, Lauren. Ah, okay.

So you're thinking, well, look, if I can just have sort of worldly success, if I can, my ambition can be fulfilled, if my job can go the way I want it to, then, you know, life falls in place how you want it. That's where life is. That's a tempting thought.

That's better. Good. What else? Yes.

Sorry, over here. Family. Right.

And one thing I would add to that is just this idea of relationships. Now, this is one of the things that people think is more satisfying than Jesus, right? You know what really is going to make my life work is good relationships with people, good community. If I can just have good, rich community, I can be in fellowship, have some sisters that walk beside me and share my life, and that's where life is.

Now, don't mistake me. Good community is great, but not without Christ. Don't think for a moment that relationships are going to be more satisfying than Jesus.

They can't be. Only Jesus is going to be the ultimate satisfying relationship. I saw one hand over here.

Yep. Ah, this is a big one. I hear this collective sigh in the room. Everyone's like, yes, if only, if I could just, my life just be easier.

If I could just get a break, right? If I could just have a moment where I could put my feet up, right, in a good way, not in a bad way. My poor wife broke her ankle. She's had her feet up for three weeks. She's like, I don't want my feet up anymore.

But feet up in a good way, you're like, well, if I could just have it go a little easier for me, then that's where life can be found. And what the book of Hebrews is going to say is like, no, no, no, don't you realize? Even in the Old Testament time with the saints all in the hall of faith, we're going to see in Hebrews 11, they had it incredibly hard. Many of them were martyred and killed for their faith, and yet Jesus was still better than all of that.

Think about Moses. The author in Hebrews tells us very plainly, Moses gave up the palatial life in Egypt to live in the palace as a favored son so he could identify with the people of God and live in the desert and live as a nobody. And yet Jesus was sufficient.

He's better. Any other thoughts on what we replace him with? Yes? Ah, that's a bull. If you didn't hear it, worship of yourself, right?

Sometimes we think we're enough, that we're the stuff, we're better, that I'm wiser, I'm smarter, I can figure it out. You know, the list is long of all the things that we tend to replace Jesus with. And each of us have our own little combinations, don't we? You know one of the things that John Calvin said famously is that the heart of humans is a little idol factory, and what you're doing in your heart all the time as sinful people is you're just cranking out new things to worship other than Jesus.

Now even as converted people, that idol factory doesn't shut down, okay? The honest truth is that as followers of Jesus, we're kind of a wayward bride sometimes. We kind of look around and go, I kind of wish I was married to him and not him, right? Jesus is our groom, but sometimes we are in love with other things.

We're little idol factories, not wooden stone idols that we put on our shelf and bow down to, but we have our idols, don't we? Here's the thing what the Hebrews is going to do, and I want you to be ready for this this semester. What the book of Hebrews is going to do is it's going to go after our hearts and go after those little idol factories, and it's going to try to shut those down. It's going to shut them down by convincing us of the theme of the book, that Jesus is better than all those other things we might pursue. It doesn't mean that God doesn't give us good things we can enjoy in life.

Of course he does, but that doesn't mean they're better than God. Don't let the gift outpace the giver, right? It's the giver behind it that is what the book of Hebrews wants us to focus on. All right, flip your notes over to the back.

Roman numeral four there is just a structure and outline of the book of Hebrews. I'm not going to walk through this. Line by line, but I just want you to notice the overall macro flow of the book.

Whenever you do a Bible study, you need to know the whole book as a whole. You can see it here in your notes. I want you, as you look at that sample outline, to notice the major headings.

They all have the word superior in them. Notice. Next week, we'll see Christ superior to the prophets. After that, superior to the angels. After that, superior to Moses and Joshua.

After that, superior to Aaron. After that, superior to the Old Covenant. After that, faith is the superior way of the New Covenant. And then the final concluding. exhortation and chapter.

So this is the flow of the book. And then notice something else in that flow. Notice the little bold print there. Warnings.

One of the things you're going to learn in the book of Hebrews is it's got six major warning passages throughout. You know what the warning is? The warning is simple. Don't turn away from Jesus and go after that idol. If you turn away from Jesus and go after that idol, we're warning you, says the author, that that is not the way of life.

That is the way of death. And those warnings are there because God loves us as his people and wants to keep us walking with him on the path. Some people in our culture don't like warnings. You know, warnings seem mean. Mornings can seem judgmental and these sorts of things.

No, warnings can be life-giving if you heed them. Think about all the people who were in the hurricane, and they were given warnings. And those who heeded those warnings were on safe, dry ground.

And those who didn't, their lives were at risk. No, there's going to be warnings throughout the book of Hebrews. I want you to know this is coming. life-giving warnings. Don't give up on Jesus.

He is better. Be aware that if you go down a different path, you're pursuing the path not of life, but really the path of death. So this outline is where we're headed here, and it can give you a good sort of anchor for what this whole thing will look like for the next number of weeks. Okay, so where do we go from here? Next week, we're going to take the very first set of verses in the book of Hebrews.

Next week, we're going to do verses one through three. We're going to launch right into the person of Jesus and his wonder and beauty and greatness, because that's what the author of Hebrews does, launches right in to the beauty and wonder and greatness of Jesus. So what's exciting about the book of Hebrews is there's no slow start here.

I mean, just pedal down, out of the gate. I mean, just pedal to the floor. We're going to be hitting it hard next week because Christ is at the center of the very first verses we're going to hit. So I'm excited about that. I hope you are.

Now look at those discussion group questions at the bottom. These are the three questions for our time today. The first one is going to be kind of get to know you a little bit. I don't want to truncate that, but don't take all the time on that. Let's do introductions, but let's try to at least get a little bit into two and three if you can, which is, you know, what are you hoping to get out of the book of Hebrews, and are you struggling with giving up?

And the answer for all of us on one level is yes, right? Don't we all? And so this is a great reminder of why we're here. We want to fall in love with Christ again.

in a fresh and new way, and that's what we pray this Bible study will do. Okay, so let's transition to the groups now. I'm going to pray real quick, and we'll do that, and then we'll be in those for about 15 or 20 minutes, and then I'll close us after that. Let me pray for us. Lord, we're so thankful for this book.

What would we do without a book that so clearly, grandly, magnificently proclaims the wonders of Jesus? Help us to see it, and most importantly, be changed by it this semester. And Lord, we pray for these groups now.

May these groups be a great place of fellowship and connection throughout this study. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Transcript for:RTS Women's Bible Study Overview

Transcript for:
RTS Women's Bible Study Overview