Cazenovia Park Baptist Church in Buffalo, NY
Hebrews
The people of Israel, in the wilderness, serve as an example to the people of God today that we must persevere to the end. It is possible to see the amazing power of God, sit under the Word, and yet not believe. Israel experienced all this and more, and fell in the desert.
The original recipients of this letter had regressed in their discipleship to a state of immaturity. Can that happen to us too?
Hebrews 5:1-10
By believing the Good News we have heard, we are called to enter into the rest that Christ gives to us- a rest that fulfills what both the Sabbath Day and the Promised Land pointed to in the Old Testament.
A genuine Christian is one who perseveres to the end. The way we are taught to persevere is to keep our eyes on Christ- or, as this passage says, to “consider Jesus.”
Mankind needed a champion, one to step out as a representative of the human race to achieve our salvation. There was only one way for this to happen, and it came from the mind of God in the Person of His Son. God took on flesh & blood and came to the rescue.
The writer of Hebrews quotes Psalm 8, of the glory that God has promised to man. However, it is clear that man does not yet rule the earth with the glory spoken of there. How do we make sense of this? Through the work of Jesus Christ, the “pioneer” of glory.