Hebrews: Christ-Centered Message

Written by Warren |Posted on April 14, 2009 | Comments

I was reading through Hebrews since yesterday and felt like I was reading from the notes of a Christ-centered preacher. Each time the author of Hebrews would mention a character or event (e.g. Abraham, Moses, Melchizedek) he would then lead us to someone better: Jesus Christ. The author of Hebrews is showing us that the Old Testament was all according to plan.

God Rested on the 7th Day
We know that God rested on the 7th day. But in reality, God didn’t need no rest. Later God mentioned to the Israelites because of disobedience “you shall not enter My rest” (Hebrews 4:3), He did that to tell us that the 6day creation was actually the pattern of the Law wherein people must obey to be saved. But on the 7th day He rested to show that people ought to look forward to this day (Hebrews 4:4-5). That is why God said to the disobedient “you shall not enter My rest” (Hebrews 4:6) because outside of the “rest” would be days of work (Hebrews 4:9-10). And no one would be saved by doing good works. That is why it is necessary for us to enter His “rest” otherwise we’d be stuck in doing works thinking that this is the way to salvation. And Christ is the only way for us to enter that “rest.” We see here Christ-centered message.

Faithfulness of Moses
In Hebrews, Moses was said to be faithful to God’s house – which is God’s children, God’s people, or the church (Hebrews 3:2, Hebrews 3:6). The Jews knows about this. In fact they put much emphasis on Moses as the only authority. We see this manifested when they killed Christ thinking that Christ is disobeying the laws of Moses that is punishable by death. But Christ has been counted worthy of more glory (Hebrews 3:3) because He is both the owner and builder of God’s house (Matthew 16:18, Hebrews 3:4). Again we see here Christ-centered message.

Necessity of High Priests in the Old Testament
Hebrews also reminds us the necessity and importance of priests in the Old Testament. The purpose of the high priests is to offer gifts and sacrifices to God (Hebrews 5:1) in behalf of men who committed sin (Hebrews 5:2) and this is a requirement from God (Hebrews 5:3). But one priest came to offer gifts and sacrifices once and for all for people to be saved from their sins. That is Christ (Hebrews 5:5). He became the gift and sacrifice to God in behalf of our sins. And He sat at the right hand of God serving as the Great High Priest forever interceding for us each time we commit sin. That is why it was necessary for the curtain of the temple in Jerusalem to be torn (Matthew 27:51) to stop the priestly sacraments because we already have the Great High Priest right there on the right hand of God interceding for us. In the Old Testament, the tabernacle was actually a shadow of the things to come (Hebrews 8:5) that is why it was necessary for Moses to strictly follow the pattern that was shown to him (Exodus 26:30). Because of the work of Christ, there is no need for priests to intercede for us or to make sacrificial offerings for us. We now have Christ. Again we see Christ-centered message here.

I could go on and on. Hebrews is a very rich book. Most importantly it leads us to Christ. Because Christ should always be the center of our Christian life. Christ said that all scripture talks about Him. So when we read David fighting Goliath, we don’t see ourselves in the middle of a big crisis pretending that we are the little courageous David. No. We rather see someone better than David who conquered something bigger than any crisis you could think of: SIN.

When Christ is not preached, everything else just falls short. What do we get? We get a courageous David, we get a faithful Abraham, we get a fearless Daniel, we get a righteous Job. Its just a motivating factor for all of us to become “better” Christians. But in reality, we, and all the characters of the Bible, all of them, all of us fall short to what was to come. He is the only pattern and standard we must comply with. He is our only Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.