Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Hebrews take 1

So I've been reading through Hebrews, writing down my thoughts and comments as I go. As you can imagine, its slow going. Reading, writing, re-reading. I'm also reading it in the New Living Translation, which is very different for me because I generally stick to New King James. I love the poetic lines of the NKJV, but NLT gives a more everyday, blunt view. Anyway, my notes are random, and in order to understand you might have to look up the passages ( biblegateway.com would be awesome for that, just make sure its in NLT version).

Chapter One
Reafferms that Jesus is God and is the one to redeem all people. Shows how Jesus is higher than the angles and is in a more prominate position at the right hand of God.
14- " Therefore, angels are only servants--spirits sent to care for people who will inheret salvation."
Does that mean angels are on earth now? Are they only watching those who will choose to be saved? How are they serving? Once you believe, do they stop serving?

Chapter Two
Listen carefully to the word of God and heed what it says. Every disobediant action is punished in the same way, may it be big or small.
Jesus came lower than the angles because he was born a man but that does not make him spiritually lower. Because he was born flesh, he and all humans are God's children and Jesus isnt' afraid to call us his brothers and sisters.
Jesus did not come to help angels. Angels can help themselves and aren't in need of help. Jesus came to redeem all people, pay the wage of their sins in order to save them. He was tested in everyway,because of that we can be assured that he understand what we go through and relate to our struggles. Because he is God he can help us through our struggles.

Chapter Three
Jesus is greater than Moses because Jesus is God's son.Moses was faithful, but even he didn't make it to the promised land because he disobeyed God.
God built a house (aka everything) and put Jesus in charge of it all. If we remain confident in him, we stay in the metophoric house of God.
We must check ourselves daily that we aren't becoming like the Isrealites and hardening our hearts toward God. Having someone there to ask us and check us is worthwhile.

Chapter Four
God made a special place of rest for those who believe in him. We won't know this place if we dont believe or if we harden our hearts and turn away from him.
The word of God is a scapel. It cuts us into peices, exposing every bit of our being, so that all is visible. God can see everything. Every hidden desire, every thought, every little thing. We're accountable to him.
Jesus is like a high preist. He's been tested in every area so we can hold onto faith through him. Because he is the high preist, we can walk bodly up to God and ask for mercy and grace so that we can become right in God's eyes.
16b- "There we will recieve his mercy and we will find grace to help us when we need it most."

Chapter Five
God called Jesus to be a high priest. Jesus offered prayer and sacrifice to God for himself and us. In order to be a high priest you had to know weakness and be chosen by God. Jesus did that and learned to be obediant through all the things that he went through on earth.
We need to grow as believers in Christ and teach others what we know. But first we must know who and what we talk about before teaching. By learning and studying about God we move from 'milk' to 'meat' and can then teach others.

Chapter Six
At some point we need to stop repeating the basics of believing and move on to heavier issues. Its hard to win back those who have once believed and then turned away. God doesn't forget how hard we work from him. The more we serve, the closer to God we get.
God cannot lie. He took an oath to his own name because his name is the greatest. If we make an oath, we make it to his name because it is the greatest.But we still shouldn't take oaths because we lie and break our vows.

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