This book was written to the Christian Jews to encourage them in their faith, and to help keep this in context, let's remember that the Jews, in general, were expecting a warrior Messiah. They wanted another king like David that would kill their current Goliath – the Romans. What they got was Jesus – a guy that's telling them to turn the other cheek and wait for the kingdom of God. It wasn't what they had been expecting, but some of them believed anyway. Over time, though, doubts probably started to creep in. I'm sure that they started to wonder if the rest of the Jewish community had been correct and if they should have continued waiting for the Messiah that they had imagined all of their lives. Jesus still wasn't exactly what they had been hoping for.
The author of Hebrews starts off by trying to address those doubts. He wants to remind the reader of exactly why Jesus is worthy of worship and why Jesus is better than what they had hoped. He does this through an escalating contrast of Jesus to things that the Jews are familiar with.
He references the forefathers. Jesus is not one of them.
He steps up to prophets. Jesus is not one of them.
He moves up to angels. Jesus is not one of them.
He arrives at God. Now, we're at the right level.
Since he's now established Jesus' place in the hierarchy of the universe, he can also describe some of the attributes of Jesus that can give us hope and reason to continue our faith in Him. Since Jesus is God and not any of the lesser beings, He is heir of all things, the radiance of God's glory, His word is powerful, He provided purification for sins, and He sits at God's right hand. Clearly our hope is not in man or prophecy or angels. Our hope is in God, the source of all things, especially our salvation.
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