Thursday, December 16
The book of Hebrews, in all its depth and sublimity, was, in many ways, just one long exhortation to Jewish believers in Jesus. And what it exhorted them to do is: Stay faithful to the Lord!
This faithfulness, of course, should stem from our love of God, of who He is and of His character and goodness, most powerfully expressed at the cross of Christ. Sometimes, though, human beings need to be reminded of what the terrible consequences of falling away will be. That is, we need to remember that, in the end, if we don’t accept what Jesus has done for us in having paid the penalty for our sins, we will have to pay that penalty ourselves, and that means “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 22:13) followed by eternal destruction.
Read Hebrews 10:28-31. What is Paul saying and how does it apply to us, as well?
How interesting that in order to exhort Jewish believers to stay faithful to God, Paul quotes Deuteronomy, an earlier exhortation to Jewish believers to stay faithful to God! Paul quotes Deuteronomy 17:6 in regard to the fact that someone deemed worthy of death would face that death only after at least two people testified against that person.
But Paul did this to make the point that if unfaithfulness could lead to death under the Old Covenant, “how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?” (Hebrews 10:29). In other words, you have more light and more truth than they did, and you know about the sacrifice of the Son of God for your sins; thus, if you fall away, your condemnation will be greater than theirs.
Then Paul immediately goes back to Deuteronomy, now to Deuteronomy 32:35, simply to buttress his argument. Considering what they had been given in Christ and their knowledge of the great provision made for them, the Lord, who said, “vengeance belongeth unto me,” will “judge his people” (Hebrews 10:30) for their apostasy and unfaithfulness. After all, He had judged their forefathers, who didn’t have what these New Testament Jews did, the fuller revelation of God’s love revealed at the cross. Thus, basically, Paul was saying: Be warned.
“The Lord shall judge his people” (Deuteronomy 32:36). What’s our only hope in that judgment (see Romans 8:1)?
Friday, December 17
Further Thought: Just as the Old Testament quotes itself (that is, some of the prophets would quote or refer to, for example, texts from the five books of Moses), the New Testament is filled with direct quotes, references, and allusions to the Old. Psalms, Isaiah, and Deuteronomy were among the most quoted. Often, too, the New Testament writers would quote from what is known as the Septuagint (LXX), sometimes called the “Greek Old Testament,” which was the earliest known Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. The first five books of the Bible, known as the Torah or the Pentateuch, were translated in the third century B.C., and the rest of the Old Testament about the second century B.C.
One can learn a great deal, too, about how to interpret the Bible by how the inspired writers of the New Testament used the Old. And one of the first lessons we could learn is that, unlike so much Bible scholarship today, the New Testament writers never raised any question about the authenticity or authority of the Old Testament books. Nothing in their writings revealed, for instance, doubt about the historicity of Old Testament stories, from the existence of Adam and Eve, the Fall, the Flood, to the call of Abraham, and so forth. The “scholarship” that questions these things is just human skepticism, and it should have no place in the hearts and minds of Seventh-day Adventists.
Discussion Questions:
1. Considering all the light that we have been given as Seventh-day Adventists, what should it teach us about the great responsibility upon us to be faithful to the truths that we have been given?
2. Read again Deuteronomy 18:9-14. What modern manifestations of these “abominations to the Lord” exist today, and how can we make sure that we avoid them?
3. Why, of all people, should Christians, who understand the universal application of Christ’s death on the cross, never “lift up faces” (see Monday’s study)? How can we recognize in ourselves the tendency to do just that (and don’t we fool ourselves if we deny that there is at least some tendency in us to do just that?). How can the cross, and keeping the cross before us, cure us of this wrong attitude?
