Hebrews - My Initial Thoughts

So, I took my own advice and read through Hebrews last night and here are some initial thoughts that might give us a little bit of a bird's eye view...if you read through it, I would love to read your thoughts too!

1. What the writer of Hebrews writes is strongly connected to everything God has been doing all along - this is important because too many Christians see the God of the Old Testament as different from the God of the New Testament (law vs. grace). But God is the one who has been, is and will be at work on His plan throughout!
2. Hebrews has an incredibly 'high Christology.' Fancy academic way of saying that the view of Jesus in Hebrews is as high and divine as you can get (see 1:8-9 where it seems Jesus is called 'God').
3. There seems to be an emphasis on the eternal - that God and God's people and His creation and work of salvation will last forever, while everything else just fades away. (hmmm, more material for our sermon series: Christmas Remains)
4. The writer pushes and pushes the readers to pay careful attention and to jump in full throttle in cooperating with what God is doing. No room for excuses whatsover! So the writer says things like: "don't be lazy!" & "don't harden your hearts" & "make every effort to grow" etc. God isn't into spoon feeding long-time Christians - that doesn't produce a strong faith!
5. There are real dangers to the Christian life and people can and do drift away, so be on guard.
6. Suffering is part of the Christian life. Don't be surprised by it. Stop looking for a rapture to take us away. Jesus suffered. We may suffer too.
7. But, in the midst of suffering and dangers...we see Jesus, who remained faithful and now has overcome!
8. Jesus wanted our redemption so much that he put humanity on Himself and lived it to reach us, empathize with us, and ultimate to free us and save us! That's someone worth following!
9. We each have a role in each other's faith - to encourage, prod, spur, push, pull, love and pray each other into growth.
10. There are real consequences to sin, so stop it!
11. Faith changes how we see things - it opens new possibilities that didn't seem to be there before (see Abraham in chapter 11!)
12. From beginning to end, there seems to be an emphasis on how God still speaks His Word.

It's a start...more to be said. Looking forward to getting into it with ya'll.

Thoughts...questions...etc.

Tomorrow, I'll suggest the initial reading for the next couple of days.