Basics of the New Testament - Lesson 8

In this lesson, we’re going to look at the remaining books in the New Testament, starting with the Book of Hebrews. Now, this is the one book where we don’t know the author, and people have been guessing through the centuries who wrote it; maybe Apollos wrote it, maybe others. The one thing that we know for sure is that we’ll never know until we get to heaven. And because we didn’t know the authorship, Hebrews had a little trouble being accepted into the Canon, but it eventually was.

Here’s the historical situation. It’s written to Jews who had become Christians. And what was happening is they were starting to be persecuted. They hadn’t been martyred yet. They hadn’t died for their faith, but they were being persecuted. Their lands were being confiscated, things like that. And what they were thinking was, you know, “Let’s go back to being Jews. We won’t be persecuted if we’re Jews. We’re only being persecuted because we’re Christians.” And so the idea of apostasy is what’s going on here. And the secret to understanding Hebrews is to recognize that he’s very theological, but he’s a pastor. And he’s preaching to a mixed audience. And he’ll go on and on and try to show them why their thinking is wrong. And then he gets very pastoral and very practical and says, “Guys, you understand what happens if you do this.” And so it’s—he shifts between theology and admonitions or challenges or warnings. And so that’s what he pops back and forth because he doesn’t know who in his church is being true and who is going back into Judaism. So that’s kind of the secret for understanding what’s going on in the Book of Hebrews.

The main thing that he does theologically is he argues for the superiority of Christ. Why would you want to go back to being a Jew when Christ is superior to all things? So he talks about Jesus is superior to the angels, and his sacrifice that he offers is superior to the Jewish sacrifices. And as High Priest, he’s superior to the Jewish high priest. It’s about the supremacy of Christ in all things. And why would you leave that to go back into the Jewish faith just to avoid persecution? But then you have these warning passages. And again, like I’ve been saying, Christianity is about entering into and living within a relationship with Jesus Christ. If it were just entering into the relationship and that’s all that matters, then these warnings are irrelevant. But the warnings are relevant. They’re damning, frankly. And that could only be true if becoming a Christian and being a Christian were all part and parcel of what it is to be a Christian. And there are several warning passages interspersed throughout, but this is one of the scariest ones.

In chapter 10:26, the author writes, “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth,” and that would be going back into Judaism, “no sacrifice for sins is left.” In other words, the only sacrifice that’s effective is Christ; not the Jewish high priest, not the sacrificial system, but it’s Christ. “No sacrifice for sin is left. But what’s left? A fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.” In other words, Jewish Christians, if you go back into Judaism to avoid persecution, you are an enemy of God. “Anyone who rejected the Law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot…” (That’s what you’re doing when you apostatize. That’s what you’re doing when you leave the Christian faith. You’re trampling Jesus under feet.) “…who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge, I will repay.” Vengeance is coming to these people that are apostatizing, leaving the Christian faith. And again, the Lord will judge his people. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Now, if that doesn’t scare you, I don’t know what will. Now, thankfully, God is at work in the lives of his children. He is giving them the desires to follow him and the ability to do so. So it’s not like God is just sitting there going, “I can’t wait for you to fail so I can wreak vengeance on you.” He’s for you. He wants you to win. He wants you to flourish. He wants you to succeed. But if you trample him underfoot, if you apostatize, you are his enemy, and you will be treated as such. Scary, scary stuff in the Book of Hebrews. All right.

Something a little more positive, perhaps, the Book of James. James is one of Jesus’ brothers, and the Book of James probably was the first book in the New Testament written. It’s really hard to date, but most people put it quite early. And it’s just full of practical wisdom. People are always looking for an outline, and I’m not sure there is an outline. But it’s just full of practical wisdom. Some of it’s a little difficult. He has a very strong view of the rich, and you’ve got to understand in that culture, the agrarian society where the average payment was a denarius a day. The only way to get rich was to trample over other people. It was really hard to be rich and be ethical in your business, so there’s very strong warnings against the rich.

But perhaps the most famous, and the one that I like the least, is right at the beginning. And James 1, starting in verse 2, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds…” Really? Pure joy? What’s wrong with you, James? Well, here’s why: “because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” I just heard my nephew preach a sermon on this; that when pain comes into your life, one of the reasons that God allows pain in our life is there’s something greater on the other side. And pain is our primary teacher. And we go through the pain, and he walks with us through the pain, and we grow and we learn, and we end up at a much better place than we ever could have been if we stayed on this side of pain and did everything we can to avoid it. And that’s what James is saying, “…because you know that testing your faith produces perseverance, that perseverance finishes work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

We’ve had two children die. One is a miscarriage and one at birth. And I swore I was going to take a big black magic marker and just cross these verses out. But they are true. Pain is our teacher. I wish there were another way, but I’m a human being, and I don’t learn when things are going well. I tend to learn much better and much faster when something hurts. And so God allows the pain into our life because of what he’s going to produce on the other side of pain. It was hard to…I’d been excused from my teaching responsibilities in the university when Rachel died. And then when I came back, I had to deal with this, and a similar passage in Romans. It was a rough entry back into teaching. But anyway, it’s true. It’s true. And I look forward to seeing my daughters in heaven.

So practical wisdom. A lot to say about the tongue, about gossip and slander. I tend to think in my more—I would not say sarcastic days, but my more sane days, that gossip is the language of the church. Churches everywhere around us are being ripped to shreds because of gossip and slander, because of what the tongue does. You know, and my rule is, if you’re talking about somebody who’s not present, don’t talk about him, unless you just want to praise him. But anything else is gossip and slander. There’s a scary verse in one of the letters to the Corinthians that says, “If you destroy the church, God will destroy you.” And churches are generally destroyed, sometimes by the senior pastors having moral failure, unqualified elders. A lot of churches are destroyed because people are gossips. So many people are gossips. They need to read what James has to say. So, perseverance, riches, tongues, what the tongue can do. Lots of good stuff in James worth reading.

Oh, by the way, the other thing that’s in James is the necessity of living out your Christian life. The line is in chapter 2, “Faith without works is dead.” In other words, you can say that you have faith in Jesus Christ, but if your life doesn’t show it, if you’re not showing the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and so forth. If your faith is not followed by works, not in the sense of earning salvation, but works in the sense of showing that your salvation is true, faith without the works is dead. It’s ineffective. It’s not faith at all. So, there’s a strong emphasis on sanctification in James as well. All right.

Next one is 1 Peter, and this is the Peter of Peter, James, and John fame. And mostly Peter is about perseverance in the face of persecution. A lot of persecution in the early church, but that means it was a healthy church because they were salt and light. And salt doesn’t preserve meat unless it’s different than meat. Light doesn’t show unless it’s shining into the darkness, right? Jesus’ metaphors. The church is necessarily in conflict with the world. If your church is not in conflict with the world, then there’s something wrong with your church. Paul tells Timothy that everyone who seeks to live a godly life will be persecuted, period. All right? Not necessarily martyred, but we are different from the world, and that produces conflict. So, 1 Peter’s written a lot to encourage perseverance in the midst of suffering, but in chapter 1, it’s one of my favorite passages because it talks about how do you do that? And you do it by keeping an eye to the future. That’s how you endure persecution.

1 Peter 1 starting at verse 3, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, and fade.” I like to think of this as unlike human inheritances. This one can’t be lost. It’s already waiting for us. It’s there. And that’s what we keep our eyes on. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, “…who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.” Your faith is a gift from God, and the faith that he has given you is what’s enabling you to continue to believe him and to continue to look forward to the end of times. He said, “In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have to grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith of greater worth and gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” I love that phrase, that part of the role of pain and suffering in life is to prove, not to Jesus, to prove to me that I am truly a child of God; and in that process to look beyond the pain to what he has for me. So 1 Peter is really about persecution.

People generally talk about Peter’s second letter, 2 Peter and Jude together, because almost all of Jude is inside 2 Peter. 2 Peter has things to say that Jude doesn’t, but they’re very, very similar letters. And the basic message comes out of Jude, chapter [sic] 3, and that is fight for the faith. In Jude 1:3 (there’s only one chapter in Jude, so you can say Jude 3 if you want), “Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend…” That’s probably not the best translation; it’s the word “to fight.” “…to fight for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people.” You have to be willing to fight for the truth of the Christian faith. It’s not all going to be, I don’t know, what’s the expression? It’s not going to be just easy. There’s going to be heresy. There’s going to be false teaching. There’s going to be attacks from within and from without. And we are called to be, we must be willing to fight for the truth of the gospel. And you know, sometimes persecution comes from without, but lots of times in the church, persecution comes from within. And that’s what’s going on in Jude.

Verse 4, he says, “For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only sovereign and Lord.” So there were people that had snuck into the church and they were teaching two heresies. One is they’re using grace as a license to sin. “Hey, we’re saved by grace. We can live any way we want.” And the second of all, they denied the true character of Christ, his humanity, his divinity, their Christology, their understanding of who Jesus was, was wrong. And Jude and 2 Peter, Peter [sic] and 2 Peter will be saying, “You have to be willing to fight when these kinds of things happen.” Again, wouldn’t it be wonderful to be in a world where the only persecution comes from without. But persecution and suffering, wolves in sheep’s clothing, do come from within the church, and you have to be aware of that. All right.

Moving on now to the three letters that John wrote. This is the same John who wrote the fourth Gospel. 1 John is the longest of these letters. And there’s several basic things going on in 1 John. One is the full humanity of Christ. In other words, you think that people would struggle more with the full divinity of Christ, but John was dealing with people who were denying that Jesus was really human. And the willingness to admit that Jesus was fully human is one of the tests of whether you truly are a Christian or not. So it is an emphasis on the full humanity of Jesus. But there’s mostly an emphasis on the necessity of sanctification. Again, entering into and living within a relationship with Jesus Christ. And the main characteristic here is love. This is, this is how we live our lives, how we must live our lives.

So look at chapter 2:4, “Whoever says, ‘I know him…’” in other words, I know Jesus, that I am in a relationship with Jesus, “…but does not do what Jesus commands, is a liar. And the truth is not in that person.” In other words, you can’t say you’re a Christian and not live as a Christian. If you do that, you’re a liar. But if you go over to chapter 3:6, it’s even stronger, “No one who lives in him,” lives in Jesus, “keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.” Again, now this is not, you know, “I’m sinning here and I’m sinning there.” These are people that are living lives of sin and they’re okay with it. And if you live in sin, you have never seen Jesus and you don’t know Jesus. And there’s all different kinds of variations on that. Later on, he’s going to say that if you don’t love your brother who you can see, you can’t love God who you can’t see. Think about that one for a second. If you don’t love your brothers and sisters in Christ, and I’m thinking of situations in a church where clearly people don’t love each other, that if you don’t love your brothers and sisters in Christ, then you can’t love God, can’t love God. See, this is the necessity of sanctification, the necessity of spiritual growth. And John’s not trying to scare you; he’s trying to encourage, for the most part, I think trying to encourage you. We are to love one another. This is what Jesus said in his high priestly prayer in John 17. We are to be united in love. And John is very, very strong on the necessity of love in the Christian’s life.

The other thing that comes out of John is the whole issue of assurance. How do you know you’re a believer? How do you know you’re a Christian? Well, there’s three tests that John gives. One is just the truthfulness of God. Do you believe that what God says is true? In 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just…” That’s his character. He is a faithful and a just God. And as a result, if we confess our sins, because he is faithful and just, he will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. See, that’s tied into believing; I believe that’s true. So, part of our assurance is, do you believe that’s true? But the second thing on assurance is continued obedience. And I think this is probably the strongest. Again, chapter 3:10, “This is how we know who are the children of God and who the children of the devil are.” So, it’s binary. John is binary. He’s black and white. You’re either a child of God or you’re a child of the devil. “Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother or sister.” Wow. See, your assurance that you are truly a child of God comes when you recognize that you’re doing what is right. And that means you love the members of your faith community, your brothers and sisters.

The third mark of assurance is the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. And in chapter 3:24, “The one who keeps God’s commandments lives in him…” (meaning in God) “…and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us. We know it by the Spirit he gave us.” At the end of the day, me, personally, I know I’m a believer just because I know it. I’ve been a Christian—I’m 72 now, became a Christian when I was, I don’t know, 5 or 6 or something. I’ve been living mostly in obedience to God with a constant witness of the Spirit that I am a child of God. And there’s nothing you can do to dissuade me from that. Now, if I start questioning the truthfulness of God, if I start living in disobedience, if I’m okay not loving brothers and sisters, then that inner witness is not very strong. The point is you need all three. You need belief in the truthfulness of God, you need your growth in sanctification, and you need the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. When you have that, you can be assured that you are a child of God.

2 and 3 John, the other two letters, are very short letters. They were written to, we don’t know who, but small churches. Basically, John’s saying, “I want to visit you soon, so I’m just going to drop this quick note in the mail, so to speak, and just, y’all, love one another. Just love one another, please.” So, 2 and 3 John. All right.

We’re to the last book, the Book of Revelation. Now, Revelation is probably the most debated of all the books in the New Testament, because it is certainly the strangest book in the New Testament, and that’s because it’s a different genre than what we’re used to. There’s different types of literature, different genres, and there’s different rules of interpretation. If I start saying, “In a land a long time ago, far, far away, there lived a fairy princess,” you know that I’m telling a fairy tale. I’m not telling you history. And then you don’t understand it as if there actually was a fairy princess, but there’s something else that I’m wanting to communicate. So, there’s different rules for different genres. And this is apocalyptic literature. It’s an apocalyptic genre. It has its own rules. And in apocalyptic literature, what it does, it uses bizarre images that normally are about the inbreaking of God into history, usually at the end of time. And there are other examples of apocalyptic literature other than just Revelation. But you have to have a different set of interpretive rules.

So, example, in Revelation it says when Jesus comes back, he’s going to come back with a sword coming out of his mouth. Well, are we to understand that actually is going to be a piece of metal coming out? Or is it a metaphor that actually refers to a reality? They’re not just metaphors in the sense of they don’t correspond to reality. They are metaphors that actually correspond to something. And when Jesus comes back with a sword in his mouth, certainly it means that Jesus is going to come back as a warring warrior and king to destroy his enemies and to save his people. That’s the truth of that particular metaphor. So often people get really concerned about trying to date these things. Okay, what does the third seal refer to? What’s the fourth trumpet about? And I think those are all the wrong questions, frankly, because that’s not how we are meant to understand the Book of Revelation. And one thing that makes that complicated is that people might tend to read it sequentially; but you have these cycles of seals and trumpets and bowls. And the problem is you get to the end of the seals and it reads like the end of time. And then you get to the end of the trumpets and it reads like it’s the end of time and the end of bowls. Well, I think what John is doing is that in ever-increasing circles, it’s a downward spiral where the message gets stronger and stronger and stronger and more frightening to people. He’s describing the same event. So I think that’s what’s going on in Revelation. Other people disagree with me, that’s fine. But it is difficult to understand.

But without getting into the details, let me tell you what all of us can agree on, all right? We agree that it’s going to get worse, that Jesus is going to win, and the call on us is to be faithful. Now, it doesn’t matter what your position is, that’s the message of Revelation. It’s going to get worse. Satan is going to get more and more powerful. People are going to get more and more sinful. They’re going to more and more attack the church, attack the gospel, attack us. It’s going to get worse. As my brother-in-law likes to say, “Why are you surprised when things get worse? Isn’t it supposed to get worse?” Yeah, it is supposed to get worse. But Jesus is going to win. And when you have the new heavens, the new earth, the last couple of chapters, it really looks like the Garden of Eden as Eden was originally before sin came in. And he is going to return, and he is going to make all things right. And so the call on our life is to be faithful in the midst of persecution. There’s a refrain in the Book of Revelation that talks about the person who is victorious will receive the crown. Well, the person who’s victorious is the person who is killed for being a Christian and remains faithful to death. Okay, it’s going to get worse. Jesus is going to win. We’re going to enjoy the new heavens and new earth if we’re faithful. That’s what the Book of Revelation is really all about.

So that’s the New Testament. It’s the Testament. Again, we went through it quickly. I trust that it has been helpful to you. But let me just sum up what I think the New Testament is all about, actually, the Bible is all about. We were created for relationship, okay? God created the world and he put us in it. We are in his image, men and women equally in his image, his vice-regents on the earth, so that we could take care of his earth and live in relationship, not only with each other, but with him. And then something happened. It’s called sin. And when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, sin entered the world and started to twist God’s good creation. And so what you have from Genesis 3 all the way through the Old Testament are a series of promises that God is going to redeem his people. He’s going to, in fact, redeem his earth. Paul says in Romans 8 that the earth is groaning until the end of time comes. So he’s going to redeem the earth. He’s going to redeem his people. And that promise, the promise of redemption so that we can enter into and live in a relationship with Jesus Christ, is fulfilled in the person and the work of Jesus Christ. Because of what Jesus did on the cross, he did for us what we could not do for ourselves. He paid the penalty for our sin so that we could be forgiven and enter into a relationship with God. And then we are called to live faithfully within a covenantal relationship with him, receiving all the blessings of covenantal life.

And someday the struggle will be over, and we’ll be in heaven. There will be no sin, and we can see him face to face for who he is. Do you believe that? I hope you do. If you don’t, I’d really encourage you to find someone that has walked the path, the Christian path for sometime. Ask him or her your questions. And I hope, I trust that you will come to a point of believing that Jesus is who he says he is, and that he did what he said he was going to do.