Saturday study notes for 7/5/25 Hebrews 1

 Context is King!

• It's not about the original Genesis Creation but "the world to come," Heb 2:5;

• Cp. Hebrews 9:11 the writer speaks of “the good things to come” as the things “not of this creation.” That is the new, future creation (per Heb. 2:5).

• This is verified by Ps 102. “The prayer of an oppressed man,” NET Bible heading, “as he grows faint and pours out his lament before the Lord.” Ending with a Messianic, future hope in Ps 102:13-28.

The speaker “He said” = God the Father!

• 5 To which angel did He say…quoting what God said in Ps 2:7;

• 6 And again, when He brought His first-begotten into the world He said…virgin procreation?

• 7 And of the angels He said….

• 8 But about the Son [He says, implied]…

• 10 And [He says, implied]…

• 13 Now to which of the angels ever did He say…

The pronoun and possessive pronouns (“Your”) refer to the Son:

• 9 "You love what is right…So God, your God, has anointed you, and set you above your companions."

• 8 But regarding the Son, “You, O God, you will rule forever on your throne.”

• 5 "You are my Son…Today I have begotten you."

Psalm 102: Hebrews Vs Greek

• The Hebrews writer using the LXX Ps 102 and not the Hebrew (e.g., today someone might quote the NIV instead of the KJV);

• The LXX has a different sense entirely in Psalm 102:23-25:

“He [God] answered him [the suppliant]…Tell me [God speaking to the suppliant]…You, lord [God addressing someone else called ‘lord’].”

But the Hebrew text has: “He [God] weakened me…I [the suppliant] say, ‘O my God…’”

• The LXX introduces a second lord who is addressed by God:

“At the beginning you founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands” (v. 25).

• Again, in the LXX God is answering the one praying and addressing that person as “lord.”

AB Appendix 3, Jesus Was Not Trini:

"Ps. 102 is largely about the age to come and the restoration of Israel in the future Kingdom and so was entirely appropriate as a proof text for Hebrews 1 in regard to what the Son is destined to do in the future, indeed his role in the new, not the Genesis creation. This sense is reversed when it is made to support the unbiblical idea that Jesus was the Creator in Genesis!"

The Son as lord creator?

• Isaiah 51:16 prophesied how YHWH would empower His servant to be the agent of the age to come by planting, establishing, not creating anew, NOTE: NASB not NIV

"I have put My words in your mouth & have covered you with the shadow of My hand, to establish the heavens, to found the earth, and to say to Zion, “You are My people.”

• Re: different translations: Word Biblical Commentary

“[The NIV translation] makes no sense if it refers to the original [Genesis] creation...In the other instances God acts alone, using no agent. Here the one he has hidden in the shadow of his hand is his agent.”

• The NET Bible, Isa 51:16:

“Perhaps creation imagery is employed metaphorically here to refer to the transformation that Jerusalem will experience (see Isa 65:17-18).”

• Cp. the commission of the prophet as builder, planter, Jer. 1:9-10.

• ‘To plant’ 'establish' as a metaphor for 'to begin anew' or ‘to set firmly in place’.

Messianic age “will perish, grow old and like a garment be rolled up” vv.11-12? 2 Peter 3:1-10

• Just like the original Genesis creation “perished in the flood” (2Peter 3:5-6), so “the present heaven and earth” will perish through fire (2Pet 3.7, 10);

• Rev 20:7-15 and then again the coming new creation (the age to come = the Millennium) will undergo a further change, renewal (Rev 20:7-15).

• And just as Noah and his family stepped out into a “new world,” so will we:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had passed away…” Rev 21

NOTE: Tracy good article on separate matter, two resurrections, July 2025 Focus mag.

AB footnote v.11

"There will be a shaking of heaven and earth at the end of this age and a further change at the end of the millennium. A new heaven and earth will appear at the Parousia and a further renewal after the millennium."

For more https://focusonthekingdom.org/Hebrews110.pdf

Saturday study 6/14/25

Sabbatarian Views Debunked + Difficult Texts

Paul was "not under the Law"

• Paul sometimes qualifies the phrase “under the law” with a negative adverb like “not” or “never” in order to warn all Christians, Jew or Gentile, not to observe the Law of Moses (see Rom. 6:14; Gal. 5:18).

• In 1 Corinthians 9:20 Paul, the Jew and Christian, says:

“I myself am not under the Law”! Instead, he says, he is “under the Law of Messiah” (1 Cor. 9:21).

• See also Romans 8:2:

“The law of the spirit of life in Messiah Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death” (and Gal. 6:2: “the Law of Messiah”).

• So for Paul, to be “under the Law” (Gal. 4:5) meant the same as bondage “under elemental principles of the world” (Gal. 4:3).

• The early Jewish-Gentile church could no longer serve and be subject to the strict Old Covenant system which included weekly, monthly, and annual festivals (Col. 2:16).

• Paul makes clear that such observance is now equal to Gentile paganism itself!

For more see https://jesuskingdomgospel.com/the-jew-gentile-gnostic-heresy/

https://jesuskingdomgospel.com/the-anti-grace-of-john-1/

Another View 1: Paul meant "not under [the penalty] of the Law"

• False claim: when you see “under the Law” add “under the penalty of the Law.”

For example, Romans 6:14 ("you are not under law but under grace") means that Christians are no longer subject to the Law’s power to condemn.

Since all have sinned (Romans 3:23), the Law brings death and judgment. But under grace, that penalty is removed through Christ.

Romans 7 speaks of dying to the Law through Christ. But in verse 12 Paul says: “The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.” This, they argue, shows Paul’s issue is not with the Law itself, but with how it condemns sinful people.

• But apart from being not what the Greek says, this would render Galatians 4:21 unintelligible:

“Tell me, you who want to be under the law, do you not listen to the law?”

• This cannot mean, “Tell me, you who want to be under the penalty/condemnation of the law...”

• No one wants to be under “the penalty of” the law; therefore “under the law” can have no such meaning.

• Obviously, Galatians 4:21 is speaking to those who do not yet understand that they should not be responsible to the Law of Moses in the letter.

• Paul pleads with them to be otherwise.

• We must let Paul tell us what he means by “under the law,” for after all, it is he who is responsible for this phrase throughout the New Testament.

Another View 2: Born Under the Law = live and die keeping the Law

• The claim: Jesus and Paul were born and raised under the Law (Phil. 3:5; Gal. 4:4) therefore, they had to live and die keeping that same Law.

• But that would be like saying a foreigner living in another country had to continue to live and die by the laws of their birth country.

• The fact is that Paul reminds the churches that they have now been set free from the yoke and bondage of the Law of Moses because Christ “cancelled the debt ascribed to us in the decrees that stood against us. He took it away, nailing it to the cross” (Col. 2:14).

Therefore, “If you have died with Messiah to the elemental spirit forces of the world, why, as if you were alive in the world, do you submit to decrees — do not handle, do not taste, do not touch?

All these regulations refer to things that will perish with use; they are just human commands and doctrines. These rules may seem to be wise with their invented religion, ascetic practices, and severe treatment of the body, but they are in reality of no value in stopping sinful indulgence” (Col. 2:20-23; see also Rom. 14:14, 20).

For more see https://jesuskingdomgospel.com/the-diplomacy-of-jesus-and-paul/

Difficult Texts by Torah Law keepers https://jesuskingdomgospel.com/torah-law-of-moses-difficult-texts/

Saturday study June 7, 2025

Title: Two-Track Christianity

Scriptures: Rom 10; Acts 15; 1Cor 12; Gal 3  

The title is based on those who interpret Scriptures, mainly from Paul, warning against observing the Law of Moses were meant for Gentile Christians only. 

Therefore, they claim, it's ok for ethnic Jewish Christians to continue observing Mosaic laws like Sabbath-keeping, food laws, etc. 

But NT writers like Paul are not dispensationalists, writing things applicable only to one group of the Church but not the other! 

In other words, the NT does not preach a “two-track” Christianity. 

Instead salvation is for everyone that holds to “the obedience of faith” (Rom. 1:5; 16:26).

READ Romans 10

• One of Paul’s repeated points is that there is “no distinction between Jew and Gentile, as the same Lord is Lord of all” (Rom. 10:12). 
• Under the New Covenant Law ethnic differences in relation to salvation are no more.
• It is all inclusive and universally offered to anyone who believes.
• Hence, "everyone" as in anyone "who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved," v.13;
• Because now “God’s way of being right is through the faith of Jesus Messiah for everyone who believes, and there is no distinction” (Rom. 3:22).

Jerusalem church council had strongly agreed back in Acts 15, READ: 

• The Debate: Some men from Judea were teaching, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (v. 1).

Paul and Barnabas disagreed strongly and went to Jerusalem to settle the issue with the apostles and elders.

But some believers from the Pharisee group insisted: “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses” (v. 5). 

NOTE: circumcision & Torah-keeping = package deal! You cannot have one without the other. 

• The Outcome: God gave the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles without requiring circumcision in order to keep the Law of Moses: 
• v.8 "God, who knows everyone’s thoughts, gave His approval to them [Gentiles] by giving them [Gentiles] the holy spirit just as He did to us [Jews]."  
• "He made no distinction between them [the Gentiles] and us [the Jews], by purifying their hearts through faith…We believe that we are being saved through the grace of the lord Jesus, just as they are” (Acts 15:9, 11). 
• Again, Jews and Gentiles alike are saved the same way—not by getting circumcized to keep the Law in the letter.
• In vv.16-17 James cites OT prophecy (from Amos 9:11-12) to show that the inclusion of Gentiles was always part of God’s Widescreen Gospel plan.

NOTE Hebrew (Masoretic) reads, “that they may possess the remnant of Edom,” while James cites the LXX, “that the remnant of mankind [aka humanity, all other people] may seek the Lord.”

Both readings point to the inclusion of Gentiles [MT Edom; LXX other people], but the LXX more directly emphasizes Gentiles seeking the Lord, which fits the argument in Acts 15.

• The Point is Gentiles are not required to become Jews (e.g., through circumcision in order to keep the Mosaic Law).

As a result, there is only one hope and one faith for the one body of Christ: READ 1Cor 12:1-13 

• “In one spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, slaves or free; we were all made to drink of one spirit” (cp. Eph. 4:4-6; Acts 13:39; Rom. 3:28-30; 10:12; Gal 3:28-30). 
• All members of that one body are under the Law of Messiah, which is different from the Law of Moses.

Paul speaks in Acts 13:39 to both Jews and God-fearing Gentiles gathered in the synagogue: 

“Through him everyone who believes is made right from all things from which you could not be made right by the Law of Moses.”

In Romans 3 Paul argues:

“We maintain that people are made right by faith and not by works of the Law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is only one Person, and He will make the circumcised right by faith and the uncircumcised right through the same faith” (Rom. 3:28-30).

The Royal We: READ Gal 3

• When Paul repeatedly warns against Torah-keeping he includes himself by saying “we”!

“Before faith came, we were held in custody under the Law, locked up until the faith which was to come would be revealed. The Law was our guardian until Messiah, so that we could then be made right by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian” (Gal. 3:23-25).

• NOTE that Paul, a Jewish Christian, is here speaking of himself and his fellow Jewish Christians who were under the Law as “a guardian” until Messiah came.
• BDAG helpfully defines the word “guardian” as a man “whose duty it was to conduct a boy or youth…to and from school and to superintend his conduct generally; he was not a ‘teacher’…When the young man became of age, the guardian was no longer needed.”
• Paul continues in Galatians 3: 

“For in Messiah Jesus you are all children of God, through faith. For all of you who were baptized into Messiah have clothed yourselves with Messiah. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female; you are all one in Messiah Jesus. And if you belong to Messiah Jesus then you are Abraham’s children, and heirs of the promise” (Gal. 3:26-29).

Not Under the Law

• Paul sometimes qualifies the phrase “under the law” with a negative adverb like “not” or “never” in order to warn all Christians, Jew or Gentile, not to observe the Law of Moses (see Rom. 6:14; Gal. 5:18). 
• In 1 Corinthians 9:20 Paul, the Jew and Christian, says: 

“I myself am not under the Law”! Instead, he says, he is “under the Law of Messiah” (1 Cor. 9:21). 

• See also Romans 8:2: 

“The law of the spirit of life in Messiah Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death” (and Gal. 6:2: “the Law of Messiah”).