Hebrews Leader Guide: Grace and Gratitude

By David A. deSilva

The Book of Hebrews helps us see the connection between God’s grace in our lives and the call to invest ourselves in God’s mission in the world. In doing so, we express gratitude for the salvation we have received and respond to God’s grace by being faithful to the One who delivers us.


In Hebrews: Grace and Gratitude, author and New Testament scholar David deSilva takes you through a study of Hebrews, tracing the themes of grace and gratitude through this unique New Testament book. In the Book of Hebrews, you will discover a bold perspective on who Jesus is and what he has done, as well as a powerful reflection on the meaning and significance of his death and resurrection in light of the Old Testament. As you read and study this letter, you will receive a deeper appreciation for the salvation we have received through Christ and hear afresh God’s call to a life of gratitude and faithfulness.

The Leader Guide contains everything needed to guide a group through the six-week study including session plans, activities, and discussion questions, as well as multiple format options.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Release date: Apr 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781501896132

David A. deSilva

David A. deSilva (PhD, Emory University) is Trustees’ Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Greek at Ashland Theological Seminary. He is the author of over thirty books, including An Introduction to the New Testament, Discovering Revelation, Introducing the Apocrypha, and commentaries on Galatians, Ephesians, and Hebrews. He is also an ordained elder in the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Book preview

Introduction

In Hebrews: Grace and Gratitude, Dr. David deSilva, Trustees’ Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Greek at Ashland Theological Seminary in Ashland, Ohio, invites readers to read, reflect on, and respond to one of the New Testament’s most rhetorically, theologically, and ethically challenging texts.

The Letter to the Hebrews is, as deSilva explains, actually a sermon in written form, addressed by a passionate Christian preacher to a congregation he feared was in danger of drifting away from the new life God had graciously made available to them in the death and exaltation of God’s Son, Jesus. It is, as the author of Hebrews himself calls it, a message of encouragement (Hebrews 13:22) designed to motivate a first-century Christian community of faith to treat salvation as the precious gift it is: not a one-time transaction but an ongoing, dynamic relationship with God in which grateful response was not only proper but expected, in keeping with contemporary ethics of giving and receiving.

In his book’s introduction, deSilva puts the core challenge of Hebrews to its audience, then and now, bluntly: "Does Jesus really offer you enough to make it worth investing . . . your whole life? . . . Do you ever wonder if perhaps God desires and deserves more from you, given what God has done and promises to do for you according to our faith?"

This Leader Guide will help facilitators guide small groups in reflecting on such serious and significant questions. Leaders and participants alike will get the most value out of the Guide by using it as they read Dr. deSilva’s book; however, it may also be used as a companion to reading Hebrews itself. All scripture quotations in the Leader Guide, unless otherwise noted, are from the Common English Bible (CEB).

This Leader Guide contains discussion questions and occasional activities from which leaders may organize six sessions, corresponding to the six chapters in Dr. deSilva’s book:

Session 1: The Sermon’s Setting and the Son’s Glory (Hebrews 1:1–2:4)

Participants will be introduced to the preacher’s view of Jesus Christ and begin thinking about their life of faith as a series of investments in what God, through Christ, has already invested in them.

Session 2: Threshold Moments (Hebrews 2:5–4:13)

Participants will reflect on the significance of Jesus’s solidarity with humanity and explore what perseverance in faith looks like in their own lives and situations and for Christians in other, more challenging contexts around the globe.

Session 3: Responding Gracefully to Grace (Hebrews 4:14–6:20)

Participants will examine the preacher’s unique depiction of Jesus as a priest and will identify ways in which they, their community of faith, and other Christians respond to Jesus’s priestly service with their own.

Session 4: A Full, Perfect, and Sufficient Sacrifice (Hebrews 7:1–10:18)

Participants will discover why the preacher of Hebrews connects the Old Testament figure of Melchizedek with Jesus and will recommit themselves to the priestlike service to which God calls all baptized believers.

Session 5: Faithful Response in Action (Hebrews 10:19–11:40)

Participants will ponder the meaning and consequences of willful sin, and will also draw lessons for their own lives of faith from the great cloud of witnesses whom the preacher recalls in Hebrews 11.

Session 6: A Summons to Persevere in Gratitude (Hebrews 12:1–13:25)

Participants will consider the life of faith as a life of being trained and disciplined and will be challenged to commit to sacrificial ways of praising God and doing good.

Each session includes an opening and a closing prayer.

Group leaders will want to carefully read and reflect on each chapter of Hebrews: Grace and Gratitude before each session, in order to have a broader base of knowledge from which to answer questions; however, leaders are not expected to be experts in either Dr. deSilva’s book or Hebrews itself and should feel free to say I don’t know when appropriate, inviting participants to search for answers to questions together.

Group leaders will want to choose a comfortable meeting space physically accessible to all participants. Be sure to have Bibles on hand for participants who may not bring their own, at least one copy of Hebrews: Grace and Gratitude, and a copy of the accompanying DVD with a television or computer on which to play it. Leaders may want to have large sheets of paper or a marker board for writing down questions, answers, or notes from group discussion. Few sessions call for additional supplies, but they are listed when necessary.

May God use this study of Hebrews: Grace and Gratitude to inspire you and your group to grow in an appreciation of all we have been given in Jesus Christ and strength for responding more and more faithfully and gracefully!

A Note About Scripture Translation

In Hebrews: Grace and Gratitude, author David deSilva references his own translation of scripture from the Greek New Testament. This is a fantastic reminder of the first-century AD context in which the books of the New Testament were written, as well as the hard work of scholars and translators to make the Bible available to us in English today. DeSilva’s translations also open the possibility for new insights into the meaning of a passage that might not be as apparent in many English translations.

In this Leader Guide, scripture quotations have been printed