Hebrews is a tough book for many reasons — its imagery and themes are difficult. It is a sermon once delivered to a first-century church suffering persecution. Their lives were getting harder under the formalized, institutional persecution of Rome under Nero. In the fourth chapter, the preacher explains that God would not necessarily take hardship away, but that in Jesus Christ, our Great High Priest, we have someone who understands what it means to suffer. We don’t have a cold and distant God,…