Let's Go!

By Warren Wiersbe

Does the book of Hebrews seem daunting to you? Let Warren Wiersbe unfold principles from this timeless letter which can turn quitters into conquerors and produce a vibrant, productive faith. As you study the book of Hebrews along with Wiersbe, you will grow in your walk with the Lord, mature in your faith and discover the calling He has for you. Get ready to go in (Heb. 1-4), go on (Heb. 5-6), go up (Heb. 7-10), and go out (Heb. 11-13)!

• Language: English
• Publisher: CLC Publications
• Release date: Jan 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781936143351

Book preview

1

Why Hebrews?

It was a Saturday night and the high school auditorium was packed. I remember hearing Billy Graham preach at the Youth for Christ Rally. I didn’t go forward at the invitation, and I didn’t even raise my hand for prayer. But I remember putting my trust in Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord. I always had been a faithful Sunday school pupil, and had even been confirmed in the church, but I had never been born again until that night. Many prayers offered by many people were answered.

There were several other teenagers converted that evening, and the adults who had sponsored the rally knew we needed follow-up instruction, so they started a Tuesday evening Bible class in the home of a gifted Bible teacher who could feed both the lambs and the sheep, and he had a way of shaking up my thinking.

The teacher felt led to teach the epistle to the Hebrews! Hebrews always seemed like one of the books of the Bible that only great theologians in high towers devoted their lives to studying in great depth. Here I was, sixteen years old, just a few weeks old in the Lord, and I was going to study Hebrews? Me? As shocking as that was to me, even more shocking was when I discovered that studying Hebrews was the best thing for me as a baby believer. Week by week, verse by verse, word by word, we were shepherded through the book. Many wonderful truths were beyond my grasp, but enough stayed with me to make a difference in my spiritual walk. Those hours in Hebrews instilled in me a lifelong appetite for God’s Word. I’ve been feeding on Scripture ever since, and trying to feed others.

That was over sixty years ago. Ancient history. Now let’s come up to date.

If the church today needs to understand and apply one book in the Bible, that book is the epistle to the Hebrews. We don’t know who wrote it, but we do know who needs to read it: every Christian believer. It is a book for the baby believer, like I was, as well as for the mature believer. Christians who have been seduced by simplistic slogans and success theology and who are over-awed by religious celebrities don’t put Jesus first in their lives, and glorifying Him is the last thing on their mind. When it becomes more important to sit in the glow of the latest Christian celebrity than to get to know Jesus better, a careful study of Hebrews will help you focus on Christ, who He is and what He has done. When church becomes tepid rather than transforming, it’s time to turn to Hebrews with a fresh eye and an open heart.

If you are a preacher and have begun to count converts but never weigh them and turn the shepherding over to others, it’s time to spend some time in this amazing book and get to know Christ all over again. And what about saints who neglect the Bible, who have lost their appetite for the heavenly manna? Why? Perhaps they have been seduced by the garbage from the dumpsters called the secular media. And, alas, there are professed believers who lead double lives, confident they will get away with it.

There’s no bumper-sticker theology in Hebrews. The writer serves meat and not skim milk. He mentions great people like Abraham, Sarah, Moses and Aaron, but the only celebrity in the book is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. A.W. Tozer used to remind us that it’s difficult to get people to attend meetings where the only attraction is God. He should see the church today! The role model in the church today isn’t Jesus; it’s the latest movie or TV star, sports hero or musician. Our Lord would never have made a good American idol. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering (Isa. 53:2–3). Hebrews glorifies Jesus Christ.

Hebrews is about believers maturing in the faith, growing up and acting like adults on a battleground and not like children on a playground. Hebrews warns us that, if we name the name of Christ, we cannot live any way we please and get away with it. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb. 10:31).

But that’s for unsaved people, the careless Christian argues.

The writer of Hebrews replies, Read the previous verse: ‘The Lord will judge His people.’ Who? His people.

In the pages of Scripture, we meet some of these people whom God had to judge: Lot, who moved into Sodom and lost everything (including his wife) ended up living in a cave, getting drunk and committing incest. Moses lost his temper and saw the gates into the Holy Land slammed shut so that even his repeated prayers couldn’t open them. Moses didn’t get in until he came down from heaven with Elijah for our Lord’s transfiguration (see Matt. 17:1–13). David committed adultery and cleverly plotted murder, but he ended up going to his baby’s funeral, weeping over his own daughter who was raped as well as over the death of two of his ambitious sons. Samson had to have his own way (Get that woman for me!) and in his spare time supported prostitutes, but he ended his life blind and bound, grinding grain like a slave. Yes, he climaxed his life by killing thousands of Israel’s enemies, but no Christian father today encourages his son to be like Samson, unless it’s in Samson’s repentance.

The Lord will judge his people. Hebrews 12 tells us how our loving Father disciplines His children in love, and if professed Christians who repeatedly rebel aren’t disciplined by God, they simply don’t belong to God’s family. Hebrews 12:23 calls God the judge of all, and Hebrews 13:4 says that God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. No exceptions.

The consummate twentieth-century preacher Vance Havner used to say, It’s come to the place in our churches where, if you want to fellowship with anybody, you have to backslide. Knowing and obeying the epistle to the Hebrews is a good remedy for Christians who ignore the Bible and prayer, find excuses to stay home from church, practice a juvenile variety of worship and comfort themselves with the false confidence that they will end well.

Some people think that studying Hebrews is impossible—like trying to run a marathon with one leg in a cast. When I was in high school, I hated Mondays because it meant starting the day in phys ed class, running the outdoor obstacle course, regardless of the weather, and then diving into a lukewarm shower. Then we would try to dry off and get to the next class on time without catching cold as we ran between buildings. Please don’t think that the book of Hebrews is like that. It may not always be easy or comfortable reading, but it wasn’t written to make us comfortable. It was written to make us conformable to Jesus Christ.

The aim of Hebrews is to help us become better Christians, and anybody who doesn’t want to be a better Christian probably isn’t a Christian at all. The author calls his epistle my word of exhortation (Heb. 13:22) and uses the Greek word paraclete to describe his letter. It is translated exhortation and carries the meaning of encouragement, consolation and comfort. It is one of the names of the Holy Spirit, the comforter, the encourager, the one who helps us (see John 14:15–27). Maturing in the Christian life has never been easy any more than maturing in our physical, intellectual or emotional lives is easy. We can’t help growing old, but we can help it if we don’t grow up.

Believe me, if you come to Hebrews with a grateful heart, wanting to learn more of what it means to be like Christ, then your Monday morning experiences will be fewer and fewer, and you will thrive on the encouragement the writer shares with you.

Specifics about Let’s Go!

This is not a detailed study on the book of Hebrews. Rather, it’s an overview and a practical application of the book’s important truths to the life and ministry of God’s people today.