Bible Discussion Thread

INTRODUCTION TO HEBREWS (Part 6):

IV. THE PURPOSE OF THE LETTER:

To warn against apostasy during persecution. It's when believers suffer that believers consider to stop following Christ or consider compromising in their walk with the Lord when things get tough.

There are three groups addressed by the Book of Hebrews. Now in order to understand the various passages and the various sections of Hebrews, we have to understand these three groups to whom it was written:

1) To Hebrew believers.

2) To Hebrews who have an intellectual understanding of Christ but have not been saved, and they are considering going back to the religious system of Judaism because of the persecution for identifying with Hebrew believers.

So, these are Hebrews who understand what's being taught, and they intellectually agree with it, but they have never received Christ. And Chapter 10 is going to tell us that after they identified with the Hebrew believers and they went home, their possessions were stolen.

And their fellow Jewish comrades were kicking them out of the temples, and it would cause some of them to lose their jobs. Some of their friends would disown them. So, you can imagine a Jewish person, right at that place where you understand and you agree with it, but you haven't received Christ.

But you have this persecution going on and you say "If I go all the way with this thing, this is what's going to happen. Everybody is going to disown me." Some of them were considering going back into the old religious system of the Old Testament.

3) There were also Hebrew unbelievers.

These were those who were at these meetings, those who were in the crowd that just did not believe. So, if we understand these three groups, we can better understand some of the scriptures that are being presented. There are sections of scriptures to each one of these three groups in the book of Hebrews.