Suffering Glory

Hebrews 1 & 2

Joel Miles

February, 18 2024

With a friend, your family or in your small group, discuss the following questions:

1. Read Hebrews 1:1-2 and 2:1-4. What do these have in common? How does this help us begin to understand what is being talked about in this whole text?
2. What does it mean that God has now spoken to us by His Son in these last days? Why it is important to notice that this does not denigrate the Old Testament witness, but rather exalts the revelation of given to us through God’s Son, Jesus Christ? Why is it important to notice that the author uses the Old Testament in 1:5-13 to explain who Jesus is?
3. Read Hebrews 1:1-4. List all the claims made about the person of the Son? Who is the Son? 
4. Why is it so significant to grasp that Jesus Christ is God Himself; “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being”? Why is it that the name the Son has inherited cannot be the name “Jesus,” but almost certainly refers to the name Yahweh? Why does that matter?
5. What does it mean that the Son made purification for sins?
6. Read 1:5-13. What is the claim the author is making through the Old Testament texts? Why is it significant that the authors says that God himself is speaking in 8-13?
7. Read 2:1. What is the importance of the word “therefore” in this verse? What is the author warning against? What does it mean to “drift away”? Why do we need to pay “the most careful attention”?
8. Read 2:2-4. What reasoning does the author offer for why we need to make sure we don’t drift away? (Note: the “message spoken by angels” refers to the Old Testament Law, which the people believed was given by God through angelic intermediaries). 
9. Read Hebrews 2:14-15; 10:32-39; 13:12-14. Why do you think the readers were being tempted to drift away by going to the Old Testament law? How can we encourage one another to hold on in the midst of difficulty? How can we encourage one another to not drift away from Jesus Christ, because his salvation is so great?