Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip.'--Heb. 2:1.
LET them slip'; that conveys a vivid picture of a man holding some treasure with limp fingers, and allowing it to drop from his nerveless grasp. But, striking as that picture is, the one which is really expressed by the original word is more striking still. The Revised Version correctly renders, instead of, we should let them slip,' we drift away from them'; and that is the real meaning. Drifting' is the thing to be afraid of. Just as some boat, not made fast to the bank, certainly glides down stream so quietly and with so little friction that her passengers do not know that they are moving until they come up on deck, and see new fields around them, so the things which we have heard,' and to which we ought to be moored or anchored, we shall drift, drift, drift away from, and, in nine cases out of ten, shall not feel that we are moving, till we are roused by hearing the noise of the whirlpools and the falls close ahead of us; and look round and see a strange country. Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest, haply, we should drift away from them.'
We see not yet all things put under Him, but we see Jesus.'--Heb. 2:8-9.
OWE of our celebrated astronomers is said to have taught himself the rudiments of his starry science when lying on the hill-side, keeping his father's sheep. Perhaps the grand psalm to which these words refer had a similar origin, and may have come from the early days of the shepherd king, when, like those others of a later day, he abode in the field of Bethlehem, keeping watch over his flock by night. The magnificence of the Eastern heavens, with their larger constellations burning,' filled his soul with two opposite thoughts--man's smallness and man's greatness. I suppose that in a mind apt to pensive reflections, alive to moral truths, and responsive to the impressions of God's great universe, the unscientific contemplation of any of the grander forms of nature produces that double effect. And certainly the grandest of them all, which is spread over our heads, little as we dwellers in cities can see the heavens for daily smoke and nightly lamps, forces both these thoughts upon us. They seem so far above us, they swim into their stations night after night, and look down with cold, unchanging beauty on sorrow, and hot strife, and shrieks, and groans, and death. They are so calm, so pure, so remote, so eternal. Thus David .felt man's littleness. And yet--and yet, bigness is not greatness, and duration is not life, and the creature that knows God is highest. So the consciousness of man's separation from, and superiority to these silent stars, springs up strong and victorious over the other thought. Remember that, in David's time, the nations near, who were believed to be the very centre of wisdom, had not got beyond the power of these impressions, but on Chaldean plains worshipped the host of heaven. The psalm then is a protest against the most fascinating, and to David's age the most familiar form of idolatry. These great lights are not rulers, but servants; we are more than they, because we have spirits which link us with God.
Then, kindling as he contemplates man as God meant him to be, the poet bursts into rapturous celebration of man's greatness in these respects--that he is visited by God, capable of divine communion, and a special object of divine care; that he is only lower than the loftiest, and that but in small degree and in one specific respect, because they, in their immortal strength, are not entangled in flesh as we; that over all others of God's creatures on earth he is king.
Very fine words,' may be fairly said; but do they correspond to facts? What manhood are you talking about? Where is this being, so close to God, so lowly before Him, so firmly lord of all besides?' That is the question which the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews deals with in our text. He has quoted the psalm as an illustration of his thesis that Christ, and we in Christ, are exalted above angels, and then he proceeds to admit that, as a matter of fact, men are not what David describes them as being. But the psalm is not, therefore, an exaggeration, nor a dream, nor a mere ideal of the imagination. True, as a matter of fact, men are not all this. But as a matter of fact Jesus Christ is, and in His possession of all that the psalm painted our possession is commenced and certified. It is an ideal picture, but it is realised in Jesus, and having been so in Him, we have ground to believe that it will be so in us. We see not yet all things put under man--alas no, but--we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour; and as He tasted death for every man, so in His exaltation He is prophecy and pledge that the grand old words shall one day be fulfilled in all their height and depth.
The text, then, brings before us a threefold sight. It bids us look around, and if that sadden us, it bids us look up, and thence it bids us draw confidence to look forward. There is an estimate of present facts, there is a perception by faith of the unseen fact of Christ's glory, and there follows from that the calm prospect for the future for ourselves and for our brethren. Let us deal with these considerations in order.
It became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.'--Heb 2:10.
IT does not become' us to be hasty or confident in determining what becomes' God. We had need to know the divine nature more perfectly, and the bearings of His actions more comprehensively and clearly than we do, before it can be safe to reject anything on the ground that it is unworthy of the divine nature. Perhaps we have not quite got to the bottom of the bottomless; perhaps men's conceptions do not precisely constitute the standard to which God is bound to conform. It is unsafe to pronounce that a given thing is unworthy of Him. It is much safer to pronounce that a given thing is worthy of Him.
And that is what the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews does here, venturing upon ground on which the New Testament seldom enters, viz., the vindication of the doctrine of a suffering Christ, on the ground of its being congruous with the divine nature that He should suffer. Especially would such a thought be appropriate and telling to the audience to whom it was originally addressed. We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling-block,' says Paul. And that doctrine of a suffering Messiah was the thing that stood in the way of the Jewish reception of the gospel, more perhaps than anything besides. So here we have the writer turning the tables upon the people, who might oppose it, on the ground of that discord and incongruity, and asserting that the whole of the sufferings of Jesus Christ do entirely harmonise with, are worthy of, and become' the supreme and absolute sovereignty of the God for whom are all things, and by whom are all things.'
There are three points, then, to which I desire to turn. There is first, the great sweep of the divine purpose. There is, secondly, the apparently paradoxical method of effecting it; and there is, finally, the assertion of the entire congruity between that method and the divine nature.
He is not ashamed to call them brethren, 12. Saying, I will declare Thy name unto My brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto Thee. 13. And again, I will put My trust in Him. And again, Behold I and the children which God hath given Me.'--Heb. 2:11-13.
NOT ashamed to call them brethren.' Why should He bey It is no condescension to acknowledge the fact of brotherhood, any more than it is humility to be born. And yet there is One who had to empty and humble Himself in becoming man; and for whom to call men His brethren is a depth of unimaginable condescension. We would say that a prince was not ashamed to call his subjects his friends, and to eat and drink with them, but we should not say it of a subject. This word ashamed' is meaningless in the present connection unless there underlies it the lofty conception of Christ's person which is enfolded in the first chapter of this epistle. If He be, and only if He is, the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of His person,' is it condescension in Him to enrol Himself amongst our fraternity.
The writer selects three Old Testament passages which he thinks exhibit in prophetic outline the Messiah as claiming brotherhood with men. If the writer had known the gospels, he could have found other words that would have been even more weighty, such as Behold My mother and My brethren'; but probably he was ignorant of them; or possibly, writing to Jews, he may have felt that to use their own manner of exposition was the best way of reaching them.
It would lead us into discussions altogether unsuited to the pulpit to examine the relevance of these three prophetic quotations. My object is a different one. The three citations from the Old Testament, which are adduced in my text as proofs that the Messiah identifies Himself with His brethren, deal with three different aspects of our Lord's manhood; and if we take them altogether, they afford, if not a complete, yet a very comprehensive answer to the question why God became man. It is from that point of view that I desire to consider them here.
There are, then, three points here;
(1) Christ's assumption of manhood in order to show God to men
(2) Christ's assumption of manhood in order to show the pattern of a godly life to men; and
(3) Christ's assumption of manhood in order to bring men into the family of sons.
"Wherefore in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren.' Heb. 2:17.
I BRING these words: It behoved Him,' into connection with similar words in an earlier verse of the chapter, on which I was lately preaching: It became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.'
In the latter words the sufferings of Jesus Christ and His consequent perfecting for His work of Messiah are considered, in an aspect somewhat unusual with scripture writers, as being in accordance with the divine nature, and worthy of God. He, by whom are all things,' had no other way of effecting His highest purpose of redemption than through the sufferings of Jesus Christ. He, for whom are all things,' could win men to be for Him only through those sufferings. And so the paradox of the Cross was worthy of God and like Him. In my text the same series of historical facts, the life of Jesus Christ and His death, considered as a whole, are regarded not as worthy of God, but as that which behoved' Christ. It behoved' is stronger than it became,' The one phrase points to the confortuity of the thing in question with God's character and nature; the other declares that the thing in question has in it a moral necessity or obligation, and that Christ's assimilation to His fellows, especially in all the ills that flesh is heir to, was laid upon Him as a necessity, it, view of His purpose of redemption and the helping of His fellows.
So then we have here, in the words which I have read, and in the context, three thoughts on which I touch now. First of all, the completeness of Christ's assimilation to us, especially in regard to suffering; second, Christ's sufferings as necessary for the fulfilment of Christ's design; and lastly and more especially, Christ's sufferings as indispensable for His priestly office. Now look at these three things briefly.
Consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus.' Heb. 3:1.
Consider Him that endured'. Heb. 12:3.
THE kinds of consideration enjoined in these two exhortations are somewhat different. The former of them is expressed by a word which means fixed attention and close scrutiny. It is employed, for instance, by our Lord in His injunctions to consider the ravens and the lilies, and by Peter in his account of his vision of the great sheet let down from heaven, upon which, when he had fixed his eye, he considered. Such a fastened gaze of awakened interest and steady contemplation, the writer would have all who are partakers of the heavenly calling to direct upon Jesus.
The other exhortation refers to a specific kind of contemplation. The word might almost be rendered compare,' for it means to weigh one thing in relation to another. It is the contemplation of comparison which is meant. What or whom is the comparison to be drawn between? Jesus, as the Leader of the great host of the faithful, and ourselves. The main point of comparison is to be found in the difficulties of the Christian life. Think what he has borne and what you have to bear; how He bore it and where, having borne it, He is now. The Captain has sustained the whole brunt of the assault and has conquered. Think of Him and be brave, and lift up the hands that hang down, and confirm the feeble knees.
So, then, throwing these two injunctions together, we may regard them as impressing upon us an all-important exercise of mind and heart, without which there can be no vigorous Christian life, and which, I fear me, is woefully neglected by the average Christian to-day.
If we hold the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.'--Heb. 3:6.
Two of the favourite thoughts of this letter are included in these words. There are none of the New Testament writers who give so frequent and earnest warnings against the danger of falling away from the Christian profession as does the writer of this letter, and there are none of them who set the power and the blessedness of hope as a Christian virtue in so many attractive lights. The reason for the prominence of these two thoughts in the letter is, of course, largely the circumstances of the persons to whom it was addressed. They were Hebrew Christians, in constant danger of being drawn away from their Christian profession by the seductions of Judaism--the system from which they had passed, and which still exercised a power over them. These peculiarities, of course, have ceased to operate with regard to us, but the lessons contained in the words are of permanent value.
Note, then--
To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts'--Heb. 3:7-8.
WHOSE Voice? The writer of the psalm from which these words are quoted meant God's. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in quoting them, means Christ's. And the unhesitating transfer, without explanation or apology, of a sacred saying of the Old Testament from God to Christ is a plain indication, especially considering that the writer was a Jew addressing Jews, of what he and they believed about Christ's divinity. His voice was God's voice, to be listened to with equal deference, and capable of bringing the same result.
To-day'; when is to-day? The writer of the psalm meant his own epoch; the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews means his. And the unhesitating transfer of the words from one period to another rests on the principle that there is a continuous voice of God sounding through all the ages, to which each generation in turn has the privilege of listening, and the responsibility of not turning away. So we are not only permitted, but obliged, to bring down the to-day' to our own period, and to believe that God's voice in Christ is speaking to us individually as truly and directly as if it had never been uttered to any of the men of the past. One more remark by way of introduction. If ye will hear His voice' conveys the idea of volition. The writer of the epistle had no such intention. He did not mean to say, If ye want to hear God's voice, open your ears.' But he uses the if' as it is often employed in Scripture, not to express doubt, but simply to cast a statement into the form of a supposition. The meaning is really substantially equivalent to as often as.' Instead of will' we get the meaning much better when we read, with the Revised Version shall.' To-day, if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts.'
Now if that be the connection and the meaning of the words before us, there are three things that I want to press upon you from them. First, that Jesus Christ is speaking to you; second, that there is a danger of steeling your hearts against Him; third, that it is wise to listen to-day.
The deceitfulness of sin.'--Heb. 3:13.
THERE is a possible reference here, in this personification of Sin, as leading men away by lies, to the story of the First Temptation. There, the weapons of the Tempter were falsehoods. There was a lie about, the unlawfulness of the suggested act, insinuated rather than boldly spoken, Hath God said, ye shall not eat?' There was a lie about its disadvantages, Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. There was a lie about its ultimate consequences, Ye shall not surely die.'
And these three falsehoods are typical of the methods which sin employs to draw us away from the path of right.
The writer of this letter does not leave us in much doubt as to what he means by sin, for he includes in it not only gross outward acts, but goes a great deal deeper, and in the verse before my text, all but defines it as being an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.' Whether it come in the form of gross breaches of the common laws of morality, or whether it come in more refined but not less dangerous forms, everything by which my heart goes away from God is sin; and every such thing gains its power over me by dangling before my credulous eyes a series of falsehoods.
So then my purpose is just to try to unrip some of these lies, and see what is inside of them. The deceitfulness of sin' tells lies about the bait:--lies about the hook that it hides; lies about the criminality of the act to which she would draw us; and, lastly, lies about the possibilities of deliverance. Let me touch on each of these in order.
We are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end.'--Heb. 3:14.
One of the great characteristics of this remarkable letter to Hebrew Christians is the frequency and earnestness of its warnings against apostasy. Over and over again we find these recurring, and in fact we may say that the whole letter is written in order to guard against that danger. The circumstances in which the persons to whom it was originally addressed found themselves largely explain that emphasis laid upon their danger of forsaking Christ. For they had to face what was perhaps the greatest trial to which faith was ever exposed, in the entire dissolution and violent extinction of the whole Jewish system which the prescription of uncounted centuries, in addition to the direct voice of God Himself, had consecrated. And they were to hold fast by their confidence,' though it seemed as if heaven and earth were being swept away. No wonder that there was danger of their becoming of those that drew back to perdition,' when such convulsions were uprooting the pillars on which their whole habits of thought and action had rested.
But, dear brethren, though our lot is cast in quieter times, the continual tendencies of our nature, and the continual stress of circumstances, make the exhortation of my text quite as important and as fitting for us. Cast not away your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward,' must ever ring in the ears of Christ's disciples. And in these words of our text we have set forth very strongly and beautifully--
We which have believed do enter into rest'--Heb. 4:3.
Do enter'--but on a hundred gravestones you will read He entered into rest' on such and such a day, as a synonym for He died.' It is strange that an expression which the writer of this Epistle takes pains to emphasise as referring to a present experience should, by common consent, in popular use, have been taken to mean a future blessing. If nominal Christians had found more frequently that their faith was strong enough to produce its natural effects, they would not have so often misunderstood our writer. He does not say, We, when we die, shall enter into rest,' but We who have believed do enter.'
It is a bold statement, and the experience of the average Christian seems to contradict it. But if the fruit of faith is repose; and if we who say we have faith are full of unrest, the best thing we can do is not to doubt the saying, but to look a little more closely whether we have fulfilled its conditions. We which have believed do enter into rest.'
There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. 10. For He that is entered into His rest, He also hath ceased from Him own works, as God did from His.'--Heb. 4:9-10.
WE lose much of the meaning of this passage by our superficial habit of transferring it to a future state. The ground of the mistake is in the misinterpretation of that word remaineth'; which is taken to point to the rest,' after the sorrows of this life are all done with. Of course there is such a rest; but if we take the context of the passage, we cannot but recognise this as the truth that is taught here, that faith, and not death, is the gate to participation in Christ's rest-that the rest remained over after Moses and Judaism, but came into possession under and by Christ.
For the main scope of the whole passage is the elucidation of one of the points in which the writer asserts the superiority of Christ to Moses, of Christianity to Judaism. That old system, says he, had in it for its very heart a promise of rest; but it had only a promise.
It could not give the thing that it held forth. It could not, by the nature of the system. It could not, as is manifest from this fact--that years after they had entered into possession of the land, years after the promise had been first given, the Psalmist represents the entrance into that rest as a privilege not yet realised, but waiting to be grasped by the men of his day whose hearts were softened to hear God's voice. David's words clearly, to the mind of the writer of the epistle, show that Canaan was not the promised rest.' David treats it as being obtained by obedience to God's word; and as not yet possessed by the people, though they had the promised land. He treats it as then, in his own day,' still but a promise, and a promise which would not be fulfilled to his people if they hardened their hearts. All this carries the inference that the mosaic system did not give the rest' which it promised. Hence, says the author of the Hebrews, that rest' held forth from the beginning, gleaming before all generations of the Jewish people, but to them only a fair vision, remains unpossessed as yet, but to be possessed. God's word has been pledged. He has said that there shall be a share in His rest for His people. The ancient people did not get it. What then? Is God's promise thereby cancelled? They could not enter in because of unbelief,' but the unbelief of man shall not make the faith of God without effect. Therefore, as the eternal promise has been given, and they counted themselves unworthy, the divine mercy which will find some to enter therein, and will not be balked of its purposes, turns to the Gentiles; and the rest' provided for the Jews first, but unaccepted by them, remains for all who believe to partake.
And, still further, the writer establishes the principle that the rest promised to the Jew remains yet to be inherited by the Christian, on a second ground: For,' says he, in the tenth verse of the chapter, for He that is entered into His rest, He also has ceased from His own works, as God did from His.' How is that a proof? It is not a proof that there is a rest for us, if you interpret it as people generally do. But it is so if you give to it what seems to be the correct interpretation--by referring it to Christ and Christ's heavenly condition. He that has entered into His rest,'--that is Jesus Christ, He has ceased from His own works'--His finished work of redemption--as God did from His'-His finished work of creation. And there is the great proof that there is a rest for us: not only because Judaism did not bring it, but because Christ hath gone up on high. We have a great High Priest that is passed into the heavens. Christ our Lord has entered into His rest--parallel with the divine tranquillity after Creation. And seeing that He possesses it, certainly we shall possess it if only we hold fast by Him. There remains a rest'--proved by the fact that Christ hath gone into it, and carrying the inference, Let us labour, therefore, to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.'
We find here, then, three main points. First, the divine rest, God's and Christ's. Secondly, this divine rest, the pattern of what our life on earth may become. And lastly, this divine rest, the prophecy of what our life in heaven shall assuredly be.
Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest. lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.'--Heb. 4:11.
WITH this simple, practical exhortation, the writer closes one of the most profound and intricate portions of this Epistle. He has been dealing with two Old Testament passages, one of them, the statement in Genesis that God rested after His creative work; the other, the oath sworn in wrath that Israel should not enter into God's rest. Combining these two, he draws from them the inferences that there is a rest of God which He enjoys, and of which He has promised to man a share; that the generation to whom the participation therein was first promised, and as a symbol of that participation, the outward possession of the land, fell by unbelief, and died in the wilderness; that the unclaimed promise continued to subsequent generations and continues to this day. All the glories of it, all the terrors of exclusion, the barriers that shut out, the conditions of entrance, the stringent motives to earnestness, are one in all generations. Surface forms may alter; the fundamentals of the religious life, in the promise of God, and the ways by which men may Win or miss it, are unchangeable,
And so the reiterated appeal comes to us with its primeval freshness, saying, after so long a time, Today, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.'
We have, then, in the words before us, these three things--the rest of God; the barriers against, and the conditions of, entrance; and the labour to secure the entrance.
Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.'--Heb. 4:16.
IN the context are three great exhortations which bear a very remarkable and distinct relation to each other: Let us labour to enter into rest'; Let us hold fast our profession'; Let us come boldly to the throne of grace.'
It is a hard thing to labour to enter into rest. How is it to be done? The second exhortation helps us to answer, Let us hold fast our profession,' which being translated into other words, is this: our true way of labour is to cling in faith to Him whom we acknowledge; but knowing the weakness of our own hearts, and how they waywardly fluctuate and pass away from the one confidence and happiest trust, it is with profound wisdom that the ultimate injunction is held out for the foundation of all--Let us come to the throne of grace.' There we get the strength that will enable our slack and benumbed fingers to grasp again the thing we hold. There we shall get that fresh grip of Christ which will quicken us for the labour of entering into rest. And so this portion of exhortation interposed between the doctrinal and theological parts of this letter is addressed to every one in the Christian profession. I ask you, then, to look at this exhortation, which covers the whole ground of Christian duty and strength.
Now, first, here is a very remarkable and beautiful expression--the throne of grace.' Grace, of course, as I do not need to explain, is the New Testament word for the undeserved favour and loving regard of God to man considered as weak, sinful, and unworthy; it is love which has its own motive, apart from any regard to worthiness in the object upon which it falls. Grace is its own real impulse and motive, and grace is set in Scripture as the opposite of desert; it is of grace, not of works, and so forth. It is set as the antagonist of sin and unrighteousness and all evil, and so runs up to the idea that it expresses the unmerited, self-originated, loving regard of God to us poor miserable creatures, who, if dealt with on the ground of right and retribution, would receive something very different indeed. But my textsays the throne of grace is the throne of God. I wonder if it is too picturesque to take that word grace here as a kind of synonym of God? Think of the figure that was in the writer's mind, as being that grace itself was the occupant of the throne, that there she sits, regal, sovereign, enthroned in the heart of the universe, queen of all things, and giving from her full and generous hand to every creature all that which the creature requires. And then if we take the more prosaic notion--which perhaps is the safer one--and think that the metaphor is not that grace is queen and sovereign, but only that the throne is based and established, as it were, in grace, out of which this undeserved love flows in broad, full streams. Even if we take the metaphor thus, we come to the same thought, that whatever else there may be in the divine nature, the ruling sovereign element in Deity is unmerited love and mercy and kindly regard to us poor, ignorant, sinful creatures, which keeps pouring itself out over all the world. God is King, and the kingly thing in God is infinite grace.
Then we can scarcely but bring into connection with this grand idea the other phases which the Old Testament gives to the same thought. Read such words as these:--Justice and judgment are the habitation of His throne'--God sitteth on the throne of His holiness'-' The throne of Thy glory.' Yes, the throne of justice and of judgment. White and sparkling--cold and repellent. The throne of glory--flashing and dazzling, coruscating and blinding, glittering and shim-mering--ready to smite the diseased eye. The throne of Thy holiness. Yes, lofty, far up there, towering above us in its pure completeness, and we poor creatures, being ourselves blinded and dazed, and far away from Him, down amidst the lowlands and materialities, and all that majesty in the heavens--the justice and judgment, the holiness and glory--all that is only the envelope and wrappage, the living centre and heart of it is a pure, lambent glow of tenderness, and the throne is truly the throne of grace. The' throne' gives us all ideas of majesty, sovereignty, dominion, infinitude, greatness. The thought that it is the throne of grace' sheathes all these in the softest, tenderest, most blessed folds of love--unmerited, free, spon-taneous-simply because He is God, and not on account of any goodness in us. Bearing in mind this great conception of true love, ruling, dominant, the sovereign element in the divine nature, let us ask, How do we reach it? Are we warranted in believing it? Read the verses that come before: For we have not a High Priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.' Turn that doctrinal statement into a statement of principle and it just comes to this: that our certitude that God's throne is a throne of love and grace, is all involved in, dependent upon, and built upon, the work of Christ, the High Priest of our profession. That is to say, not thank God' that His work makes God's throne a throne of grace --that is not the teaching of the Scripture--but that He, as High Priest, and, therefore, as the revealer to us of God as He is, shows us in His life and death, in the gentleness of His character, in the tenderness of His compassion, in the depth of His sympathy on earth, in the tenderness that touched the little children in their innocence and the harlots in their filth, and in the death He died upon the Cross for the sake of the world, the very heart of God is cut open, as it were, and the two halves fall apart as when we cut some rich fruit to lay bare the inmost pulp. God is manifested to us, God declares Himself to us, in the sympathy of the humanity, in the life, in the death upon the Cross; and the Priest, in His sacrifice, and by His sacrifice, shows us that between the cherubim throned above the mercy-seat shimmers the Shekinah of power, with its white centre of love and peace. And then, on the other side, that same great thought of the priesthoodof Christ influences this conception of the throne of God in another fashion still; for, as it seems to me, there is no understanding of the depth and meaning of the work of Jesus Christ, our Lord, unless we heartily accept this, that His great sacrifice for us, in which mainly He is the Priest of our profession, is the means and channel and medium and condition through which all the love of God expresses itself to the world, and has communicated to sinful man all His goodness and all His pity and His tenderness, supplying all our necessities, and is all things to us through Christ our Lord. Seen through Him the throne is white with tenderness; flowing through Him from the throne proceeds the river of the water of life, and so, in both ways, the throne of grace is such by reason of the priesthood of Christ.
Look for a moment, in the next place, at the temper and disposition with which we come to this throne. Let us come boldly.' Now boldly is a somewhat incongruous word; it neither conveys the original, nor does it correspond to our sense of propriety. The thought would be far more beautiful and far more naturally represented by a more literal translation' Let us come with frank confidence' to the throne of grace. The word literally means, if we go to the etymology of it, speaking everything. You can easily understand how naturally that becomes an expression for the unembarrassed, unrestrained full out-pouring of a heart. You cannot pour out your heart in the fullest confidence to a person you do not respect, but if you get with some one you entirely trust, how swiftly the words flow, and how very easy it is to tell out the whole heart. Just so with this great word of the writer of this Epistle, descriptive of the temper and disposition with which men are to go to God--with confidence, full, cheerful, and unembarrassed, and which expresses itself in full trust, exactly as one of the old Psalms says--Ye people, pour out your heart before Him.' Yes, let it all flow out, just as you would do to husband or wife, or lover, or friend, or the chosen companion to whom we can tell everything. Ah, but there is no such person--there is nobody, not a soul, could stand the turning inside out of a man I There is no one able to do it to another, even supposing the other could bear it! But my text says come,' and is so gentle in its love, so strong in its grace, sweetly wooing us to the freest and frankest outpourings of all our hearts before the throne. Let us then come with confidence, because Jesus' work as our High Priest is in the writer's mind. You remember the vision in the Revelation where the seer beholds the angel coming with a censer, and he takes incense from off the golden altar, and he goes on to say, that this much incense was offered in the censer with prayers of saints. That is a picturesque and graphic representation of this same idea; my poor cry, the devotions of my trembling, unfaithful heart, the halting, limping approach of my sluggish spirit, these go along with, and are offered through, that Great High Priest. Let the much incense of Thy prayer On my behalf ascend.' Truly we have a loving High Priest; let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace. Let us not use as a mere empty form those words for Christ's sake,' but let us remember that these words do hold the very secret of all acceptable approach to God, and that' no man cometh to the Father but by Me.' There is reason enough, God knows, in your heart and mine, and in our poor, miserable, wretched, conventional, formal chatterings called prayers, for diffidence and distrust. Well, then, let us fully look that fact in the face, entertain untremblingly the fullest consciousness of the insufficiency and unworthiness of all we do, and all we are, and all we feel, and all we seek, and then wrenching ourselves away as it were from the contemplation of our own selves, which only land us in diffidence and despair, let us turn to Him, that we may have boldness and confidence in our access to the feet of Him who is our Great High Priest, passed into the heavens, and who now sits on the throne of grace.'
And now, lastly, a word about the issue and result of this confidence of access to the throne of grace, the throne of spontaneous love. That we may obtain mercy,' says the writer, and find grace to help in time of need.' It is noteworthy, I think, to consider that the writer here is evidently thinking, not about a communion with God which is not prayer, but a communion with God which, on our side, is the lifting up of an empty hand, and on His side the bestowing a large, full gift. There is no fellowship with God possible on the footing of what people call' disinterested communion.' We have always to go to Him to get something from Him. The question is, What do we expect to get? My text tells us, not the temporal blessings, not the answers to foolish desires, not the taking away of thorns in the flesh, but mercy and grace to help--inward and spiritual blessings. But what are these? Well, I don't know whether it is too nice or too microscopic criticism to say that I seem to see a difference between obtaining mercy and finding grace. I take it grace is used in what I call its secondary sense, not meaning so much the love of God unmerited, but rather signifying the consequences of that love in the gifts bestowed upon us, and you know that is a usage of the word common in the New Testament, thus making the word into a plural, graces'-the manifold gifts that love bestows upon us. So that, I take it, this word is here used in the secondary sense, and if that be so, we may shape a difference between the two phrases, obtaining mercy' and finding grace.'
I do not think I can put that better than by using a metaphor. The one expresses the heart of God, the other expresses the hand of God. We may obtain mercy as a suppliant coming boldly, confidently, frankly, with faith in the Great High Priest, to the throne of grace. There we get the full heart of God. I stand before Him in my filth, in my weakness, with conscience gnawing at me in the sense of many infirmities, many a sin and shortcoming and omission, and on the throne, if I may so say, is a shoot of tender love from God's heart to me, and I get for all my weakness and sin pity and pardon, and find mercy of the Lord in that day. And then in getting the full heart of God, with all its divine abundance and pardoning grace and tender, gracious pity, I get, of course, the full hand of God to obtain mercy, and find grace. the bestowment of the needful blessings, the obtaining of grace in time of need, the right grace No blunders in the equipment with which He supplies us. He does not give me the parcel that was meant for you; there is no error in the delivery. He does not send His soldiers to the North Pole equipped for warfare in Africa. He does not give this man a blessing that the man's circumstances would not require. No, no; blessed be God, He cannot err. We fall back upon the words that precede my text, And there is no creature concealed from His sight, for all things are naked, and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account.' That may be, and is terrible, unless we take it along with the other word, We have not a High Priest who cannot sympathise with our weakness.' We see a divine omniscience shining upon us through the merits of the great High Priest, full of light and hope, and because all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him who is our High Priest; therefore the right grace will be most surely given to me to help me in time of need, or, as the words may perhaps be more vigorously and correctly translated, find grace for timely aid, grace punctually and precisely at the very nick of time, at the very exact time determined by heaven's chronometer, not by ours. It will not come as quickly as impatience might think it ought, it will not come so soon as to prevent an agony of prayer, it will not come in time enough for our impatience, for murmuring, for presumptuous desires; but it will come in time to do all that is needed. Ah, and it will come before Peter has gone below the water, though not until Peter has felt the cold waves rise to his knees, and has cried out, Lord, save me, I perish.' Master, he whom Thou lovest is sick,' and He abode still two days in the same place where He was, and when He came,' Lord, if Thou hadst been here my brother had not died.' Said I not unto thee, that if thou didst believe thou shouldest see the glory of God.' God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved, the Lord shall help her, and that right early.' You remember the narrative of that great final battle on the plains of Waterloo. For long weary days brave men died by the thousands--the afternoon of the last day was wearing rapidly away, the thin red living line getting thinner and thinner, the squares smaller and smaller at each returning charge--but at last, just before the daylight faded, just before endurance could do no more, there comes old Blucher at last and gives the order, and the whole line bore down upon the enemy and scattered them. Ah, help came at the right time, not so soon but that the courage of our brave soldiers had been tested, but before despair had settled upon the ranks, and in time for a great and perfect victory. Oh, my friends, Let us come boldly to the Throne of Grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace for every time of need.'
Through waves and clouds and stormsHe gently clears thy way;
Wait thou His time--thy darkest night
Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and. was heard in that He feared.'--Heb. 5:7.
WE may take these great and solemn words as a commentary on the gospel narrative of Gethsemane. It is remarkable that there should be here preserved a detail of that agony which is not found in our Gospels. The strong crying and tears find no record in our evangelists, and so it would appear as though the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews was not altogether dependent upon them for his knowledge of Christ's life. In any case here we have independent witness to the story of Christ's passion, and a very instructive hint as to the widespread and familiar knowledge of the story of our Lord's suffering, which existed at the very early date of this Epistle in the churches, so that it could be referred to in this far-off allusive way with the certainty that hearers would distinctly understand what the writer was speaking about. So we get a confirmation of the historical veracity of the narrative that is preserved in our Gospel. But the value of such words as these is their bearing upon far deeper things than that. They point to Gethsemane as showing us Christ, as the companion of our sorrows and supplications, as a pattern of our submissive, devout resignation, and as a lesson for us all how prayer is most truly answered.
First, then, take that great thought of my text, the Christ as being our companion in sorrow and in supplication. In the days of His flesh--when He bore what I bear--in the days of His flesh He offered prayer and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death.' Now I do not dwell at any length upon the additional contribution to the vividness and solemnity of the picture given us in the detail of the text before us, but I want to refer for one moment, and I will do it as reverently as I can, to the unapproachable narrative, and to make this one remark about it, that all the three evangelists who are our source of knowledge of that scene in the garden of Gethsemane employ strange, and all but unexampled, words in order to express the condition of our Saviour's spirit then. Matthew, for instance, uses a word which, in our Bible, is translated He began to be very heavy.' Only once besides, as far as I know, is it employed in scripture, and it seems to mean something like On the very verge of despair.' And then Mark gives us the same singular expression, adding to it another one which is translated, sore amazed.' It has been suggested that a more adequate rendering would be began to be appalled,' and another suggestion has been, that it might be adequately rendered with the phrase that He began to be out of Himself.' Then comes Luke, with his word, which we have translated into English as agony.' And then there come Christ's own strange words, My soul is encompassed with sorrow almost up to the point of death.' That is not a proverb; I take that to be a literal fact that one more pang and the physical frame would have given way. Now, I do not point to these things in any spirit of curious investigation. I feel, I hope, Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.' And yet I cannot help feeling that there is a tendency nowadays to say too little about the Gospel story of Christ's sufferings; it is a reaction, no doubt, and prompted by good motives; it is a reaction from the preaching of a former time, when men used these sacred narratives of our Lord's last days in the coarsest possible manner, and the climax of it is that horrible kind of preaching that Roman Catholic preachers used to indulge in--Passion sermons. And yet I cannot but feel that we are in danger of going to the other extreme and losing much by not sufficiently dwelling on the facts.
Then there is another point. What is the meaning of that--what is the explanation of all the passion, and paroxysm of agony, and fear, and bloody sweat, and horror-stricken appeal? Is it not a very, very unheroic picture that? Is it not strangely unlike the spirit in which many men and women, who drew all courage from Christ, have gone to their death? Is not the servant above his master here, if you will think of a Latimer at the stake, or of many a poor unknown martyr that went to his death as to his bed, and set that side by side with the shrinking of Christ? Well, dear brethren, I know the attempt to explain the flood of sorrow, of dread, and horror of great darkness that wrapt the soul of Jesus Christ in these last moments, on psychological principles, and say it is a pure and lofty end, shrinking from death; but it seems to me the only explanation of it all is the good old one: The Lord hath made to meet upon Him the iniquity of us all.' And so with the weight of the sins and the sorrows of the world, He began to be sorrowful and very heavy.
And then, passing on, let me deal with the matter from another point of view, and remind you that, whatsoever there may be all His own and beyond that reach of common humanity, experienced in the solemn and awful hour, yet it is also the revelation of a companionship that never fails us in all our struggles, tears, and prayers. Oh, how different that makes our passage through the lonely experience of our human life! There are times in every life when all human affection and all human voices fail in the presence of a great sorrow, and when you feel that you must tread this path alone. Although loving hands are stretched out to me through the darkness, and have grasped my own and helped me to stand, yet nothing will still the aching of the solitary heart except the thought of a Christ who has suffered it all already, and who, in the days of His flesh, offered up, with strong crying and tears, His prayer unto Him that was able to save. You remember the old Roman story--grand in its heroic simplicity--of the husband and the wife resolved to escape from the miseries of a tyrant-ridden world by suicide--which to them was less criminal than it is to us--and the wife first of allstruck the dagger into her own heart, and drawing it out, embrued with her own blood, hands it to her husband, with the dying words Paetus! it is not painful.' The sharp edge that strikes into your heart, brethren, has cut into Christ's first, and the blade tinctured with His blood inflicts only healing wounds upon us. He is our priest because He has gone before us on every road of sorrow and loss, and is ready to sustain us when it comes to our turn to tread it.
And so turn for a moment to the other conception that is here, viz., that the same solemn scene shows us Christ as being, not only our companion in sorrow and supplication, but our pattern of submissive reverence. The language of my text needs just one word of explanation in order to show where this lies. You observe it reads, And was heard in that He feared.' Now, these last words, in that He feared,' have always received two varying expositions, and, I suppose, always will receive them. The text fairly allows one or the other. They may either mean, He was heard or delivered from the thing He dreaded '--which you know is not true--or they may mean that He was heard by reason of His reverence and submission, or, if we may use such a word--a word that is not Scriptural and very modern--was heard because of His piety. And I suppose the latter was distinctly the meaning in the writer's mind. Christ's prayer was, If it be possible,' and His second prayer was, If this cup may not pass from Me Thy will be done.' He felt the reluctance of the flesh to enter upon the path of suffering, the perfectly natural human shrinking from all that lay before Him. But that shrinking never made His purpose falter, nor made Him lose His son-like dependence upon the Father's wilt and submission to the Father's will. And so there come out of that, large lessons that I can only just touch for a moment.
And the first of them is this: let us learn and be thankful for the teaching, that resignation, submission to all the burdens and pains and struggles and sorrows which life brings to us, does not demand the suppression of the natural emotions and affections of the flesh. Christ recoiled from the cup, but Christ's submission was perfect. And so for us there are two ways. Inclination and duty will often draw us two different ways. Tastes and weaknesses will often suggest one thing, and the high sense of the path we ought to travel upon will suggest another. But the inclination must never be allowed to mount up into the region of the will and to make our purpose falter, or make us abandon that which we feel will be the rough path. Then there will be no sin in the fact that the flesh shrinks, as shrink it must, from the thing which duty demands we should do. Christ, the example of a perfect resignation, is an example of a will that mastered flesh. That is full of encouragement and strength to us in our time of need and conflict.
And then there is the other side of the same thought.
Not only does there often come into our life the struggle of duty and inclination, but there comes into our life sometimes the other struggle between submission and sorrow. In like manner there is no sin in the tear, there is no sin in the strong crying. It is meet that when His hand is laid heavy upon my heart, my heart should feel the pressure; it is meet that I should take into my consciousness and into my feeling the pain; and then it is meet that if I cannot do anything more--and I don't think we can--I should at least try through my tears to say, Not my will, but Thine'; and if I cannot do anything more, at least, I was dumb, I opened not my mouth because Thou didst it.'
And the last point I touch upon is this, that according to the teaching of this commentary upon that solemn scene, our Lord in it sets before us the lesson of what the true answer to prayer is. He prayed unto Him that was able to save Him from death,' and says my text: He was heard.' Was HeY How was He heard? He was heard in this. There appeared unto Him an angel from heaven strengthening Him. He was heard in this because His prayer was not Lot this cup pass,' but His prayer was, Thy will be done,' and God's will was done.
And so there comes out the true heart of all true prayer, Thy will be done.' And the true answer that we get is, not the lifting away of the burden, but the breathing into our hearts strength to bear it, so that it ceases to be a burden. Let us make our prayers not petulant wishes to get our own way, but lowly efforts to enter into God's way and make His will ours, so shall come to us peace and strength, and a power adequate to our need. The cup will be sweetened, and our lips made willing to drink it. Christ was heard, and Christ was crucified.
Learn the lesson that if, in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, we make our requests known unto God, whatsoever other answer may be sent, or not sent, the real and highest answer will surely be sent, and the peace of God, which passeth understanding, shall keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
The earth, which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God.'--Heb. 6:7.
THIS is a kind of parable or allegory in which echoes of many scriptures are gathered up. The comparisons of the process of forming character to the growth of a plant, of divine influences to the rain, of the discipline of life to husbandry, of holy deeds to fruit, are common to all languages; and recall many sayings of lawgiver and prophets, as well as many of the parables of our Lord. Especially there seems to be allusion here to the two parables of the Sower and the field that brought forth wheat and tares. But the old illustrations appear here with a somewhat new setting. The writer extends his vision beyond the fact of growth and fruitfulness to that which precedes it and to that which follows it. For fruitfulness there must be the drinking in of the rain from heaven. And if there be fruitfulness there will be God's blessing.
Then, further, in His estimate there are only two kinds of soil, one which bears wholesome fruits, and on which falls the perpetual dew of heaven's benediction, the other which brings forth thorns and briars, and on which fall the lightnings of a curse that burns it and its miserable crop. Both soils are typical of professing Christians; in one or other of them each of us finds His likeness.
But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak.'--Heb. 6:9.
THE writer has been describing, in very stern and solemn words, the fate of apostates, and illustrating it by the awful metaphor of' the earth which.., beareth thorns and briars,' and which is, therefore, rejected, and is nigh unto cursing, whose end is to be burned.' Then he softens, and knowing that rebukes are never so pointed as when the arrow is feathered by love, he changes his voice. But, beloved'--they needed to be assured that all the thundering and lightning did not mean anger, but affection--we are persuaded better things of you, and those things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak.'
Wherever, then, salvation is, certain other things will also be.
Now, of course, it is clear that the word salvation is not here used to mean the ultimate, complete deliverance from all evil of sorrow or sin, and the ultimate, complete endowment with all good of joy and holiness, but for that earlier stage of itself--which unfortunately, too often is supposed to be all that is needed, and to be sure to last, if once possessed, whether diligently tended or left neglected--the initial gifts which are received by a convert in the very beginning of his Christian career, viz., the assurance of divine forgiveness, and the establishment of a new relation between him and God. It is that initial and incomplete salvation of which the writer is here thinking. And, he says, it does not come alone. Like a planet set in the heavens, with moons that circle round it; like a diamond set in a cluster of precious stones; like some queen with her train of attendants, when that incipient salvation comes into a soul, it comes companioned by other blessings that are its natural and necessary attendants and accompaniments.
And what are these? The whole context is full of instruction as to what they are. We can gather them all up into the one metaphor--fruitfulness; or to put away the metaphor, we can gather them all up into the one phrase, a holy life.' That, or these--for the one phrase, a holy life,' will break up and effloresce into all manner of beautifulnesses and goodnesses--are the things that accompany salvation.'
It is plain that the possession of' salvation' is sure to lead to that result. For it is something more than a judge's pardon; it is a Father's forgiveness, and even if it were nothing more than forgiveness, it would, as such, set in operation new emotions and aims in the child's heart and will. God's forgiveness does not only take away guilt, but breaks the power of sin. But surely the faintest dawn of salvation brings a new life which has affinities for all righteousness and every form of goodness, and brings the forgiven man under the influence of new motives, drawn from his blessed new experience of the mercies of God,' and strongly impelling him to that grateful, happy yielding of himself as a living sacrifice, from which whatsoever things are lovely and of good report are sure to spring, as naturally as rare exotics will, even in our northern cold, when the right temperature is maintained in the conservatory. The initial salvation sets us in new relations with God; it puts into us a new life, infantile and needing much care in its feebleness, no doubt, but still capable of growth to power and maturity, and even in infancy like the new-born Hercules, able to strangle the serpents. The initial salvation turns us in a now direction, changes our estimate of things to be pursued and avoided, gives new standards, new aims, new desires, new power to reach these aims, to satisfy these desires. If any man be in Christ'--even if he has but this moment entered, and has gone but a step or two in--he is a new creature; old things are passed away, all things have become new.' Simultaneous with the rapturous new assurance that God loves and forgives, come the inclination towards, and possibility of, a new life of holiness. It is for the most part an undeveloped possibility, and will need much careful tending, and much fencing off of infantile diseases, and much discipline, before it comes to a perfect man' after the pattern of Jesus; but the life is there, and, with fair play, will come to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. Salvation' never enters alone, but ever is attended by a train of fair virgins.
Now, from this thought of the primacy of salvation and the subordinate place of its certain accompaniments, important practical results follow. One of these is what we Christians need to have perpetually recalled to our minds, namely, that the way to increase our possession of the accompaniments is to increase our possession of the central blessing which they accompany, and therefore that the true course for us to pursue, if we would live that holy life which accompanies salvation, is to seek to increase, first, our possession of those primary experiences that constitute salvation the sense of the divine favour, the consciousness of the forgiving and reconciling love of God, and to strive to increase that faith, by which a fuller tide of salvation will flow into our more widely opened hearts. Begin with that with which God begins; seek to have more of the divine salvation; that is the best way to get more of the graces that accompany it. Welcome the entrance of the queen, and her train of attendants, in all the variety of their sweet loveliness and feminine graces, will follow her. The things that accompany salvation' are best secured by making sure, and increasing our conscious possession of, the salvation which they accompany. To aim at possessing the graces of character which are the results of conscious enjoyment of salvation, without that enjoyment, is like the folly that would begin building a house at the rooftree. Such graces may be partially produced without salvation,' but they are but like artificial flowers in comparison with the sweet children of the dew and sun, and have no fragrance and no life.
But another needful lesson is that the best test and evidence of our being saved, men and women, is our manifesting in our lives these certain attendants on salvation. We should be very sceptical of the genuineness of any profession of being saved,' whether made by ourselves or by others, which is not manifestly accompanied by these, its inevitable consequences and attendants. The pure heart, the clean hands, the truth-speaking tongue, the loving disposition, the integrity in business, the control of one's own dispositions and tempers and tastes and appetites, and all these other fair traits of character which are the constituents of a holy life, the manifold rays which melt into the one white light of holiness--these things are the only tokens for the world, and the principal tests for myself, of the reality of my salvation. They are not the only tests for us. Thank God, Christian men do not need to take only the indirect method of determining the genuineness of their faith and love by examining their outward lives. They can say, I have felt, I know and Thou knowest, that I love Thee.' As to others, our only way of knowing whether the watch is going, is to note whether the hands are travelling round the dial, but for ourselves, we may have direct consciousness of our emotions, being, as it were, inside the watch ease and aware of its working. Yet, since we can hoodwink ourselves about our inward state, and inspection of ourselves is always difficult, and its results apt to be biased by what we wish to find within, we have all much need to check our judgments of ourselves, especially in regard to our faith and love, which are the conditions of our possessing salvation, by the test of our actions, which we are less liable to misconstrue, and which will often tell us unwelcome, but wholesome truth. We shall be wise if we habitually test our Christian emotion by our conduct in the rough road of daily life, and if we gravely suspect the depth and genuineness of all feeling, however sweet and lofty it seems, which does not come out into action. If our Christian experience is worth anything, it will drive the wheels of self-sacrificing duty. It takes tons of pitchblende to make a drachm of radium, and it needs much experience of the possession of salvation, and many precious and secret inward emotions in order to produce the life of self-sacrifice which is the ultimate test of the worth of our religion. If these certain accompaniments are wanting, or are sparse and lacking in radiance in our lives, it is high time that we asked ourselves very seriously what the worth to us is of a salvation that does not produce in us the things that accompany salvation.'
But the text suggests another thought to which we may now turn. It is that where these accompaniments of initial salvation are present, further salvation will follow. The whole of the context, including my text itself, goes upon the principle that whilst a holy life, or, to put it into other words, good works,' is, or are, the accompaniments of the initial salvation, they are the causes of a fuller salvation. For look what follows, and look what preceded our text. The earth which drinketh in the rain '--that is step number one--and that drinking in of the rain is the initial act of faith which opens thirstily for the entrance of the initial salvation. Then follows--and bringeth forth herbs '--that is the second step, and corresponds to the holy life of which I have been speaking; and finally comes receiveth a blessing from God,' which corresponds to a fuller salvation. After the text we read: God is not unrighteous to forget your work of faith and labour of love' which implies a promise of rich reward.
That is to say, if we have these accompaniments, and do our very best to make them conspicuous and continuous and more thoroughly the mainsprings of our actions, then we shall receive a fuller salvation, just because we have thus sought to appropriate and to develop the consequences in our conduct of the partial salvation with which we were started at first. Salvation is a great word which in Scripture is presented in many aspects. Sometimes it is spoken of as a thing in the past experience of the Christian; sometimes it is spoken of as a thing which he is progressively realising throughout his life: The Lord added to the Church daily such as were being saved'; sometimes it is spoken of as an experience which is reserved for the future, receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls,' in that life beyond.
Now, this experience or possession, call it which you like, or state of spirit and heart, which has its roots in the past, and is being developed all through the Christian life, and is to be perfected in the future world, has for one chief cause of its progressive increase in our own consciousness, a holy life. And if we, as good ground, are trying to bring forth herbs meet for Him by whom it is dressed,' we shall be like the earth softened by the rain, and smiling with harvest, on which God smiles down in the sunshine of His approval, and which He visits with His benediction. We shall possess a fuller salvation. A firmer grasp of the great truths which bring salvation when received, and of all their consequences of peace and joy, and spiritual elevation and calm, a closer union with Jesus, a larger endowment of the Spirit, will follow our faithful attempts to perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord,' and so to possess, and to present, more of the things that accompany salvation.' Good works are a cause of a fuller salvation.
The most fruitful Christians need to be warned against possible barrenness and apostasy.
We are persuaded better things of you, beloved'--but yet, though persuaded, the writer felt that he must thus speak.' For we never get beyond the risk of fruitlessness. We never get beyond the need of effort to resist the tendencies that draw us away. We never get beyond the need of warnings. It is always safe for us to look at the field that is bristling with briars and thorns, and is nigh unto cursing.' Therefore the warning note is sounded, and it is sounded, thank God! in order that what it points to as possible, may never be actual for any of us.
We all need warning, but those of us who, like myself, are set to give it sometimes, have to remember that it loses all its force unless it is manifestly the warning of love. Beloved! persuaded,' as we are, of better things of you,' it yet is our solemn duty thus to speak, that thus it may never be with any of you. And it is the less likely to be the case with any of us that we shall bear but thorns and briars,' the more we remember that it is possible for us all, and will be possible until the very end.
We desire that every one of you do shew the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end.'--Heb. 6:11.
MANY of us have seen a picture in which the artist paints Hope' as a pale, fragile figure, blind, and bent, wistfully listening to the poor music which her own finger draws from a broken one-stringed lyre. It is a profoundly true and pathetic confession. So sad, languid, blind, yearning, self-beguiled is Hope, as most men know her.
Put side by side with that the figure which an unknown sculptor has carved on one of the capitals of the ducal palace in Venice, where Hope lifts up praying hands and a waiting, confident face to a hand stretched out towards her from a glory of sunbeams. Or set by the side of the picture our own great poet's picture--
Upon her arm a silver Anchor lay,On which she leaned ever, as befell;
And ever up to Heaven as she did pray,
Who does not feel the contrast between the two conceptions? What makes the difference? The upward look. When Hope is directed heavenwards she is strong, assured, and glad.
My text speaks of the certitude and the blessedness of Christian hope, and of the discipline by which it is to be cultivated.
"That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.'--Heb. 6:12.
THIS is the end of a sentence, and the result of something that has been stated before. What is that? We desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end.' Diligence is the opposite of slothfulness, and the former is to be cultivated that the latter may not overtake us. But it is the same diligence,' and that expression raises the question--The same as what? Now the writer has just been praising his readers for their work of faith and labour of love' which they showed in ministering to the saints. And then he says, in effect, I wish that you took as much trouble to cultivate your own Christian graces as you do to help other people in regard to these outward matters, for then there would be no fear of your becoming slothful, and you would be treading in the steps of those that have gone before, and who now inherit the promises.'
That is to say, there are a good many Christian people who spend a good deal more pains and effort upon the less central and deep things of Christian conduct than they do upon the keeping of the centre and mainspring of all in active operation. Some of us need the hint--Look after your own Christian graces as diligently as you do after works of benevolence.'
We, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us', Heb. 6:18.
THE name of Christian was invented by outsiders. It is very seldom used in the New Testament, and then evidently as a designation by which Christ's followers were known to others; and not as one employed by themselves. They spoke of each other as disciples,' believers,"saints,' brethren,' or the like. Sometimes they used more expanded names, of which my' text is an example. It sets forth part of the characteristics of those whom the world knew as Christians.' Now that the name has been adopted by the Church and has lost a good deal of its original force in many minds, this description may serve to teach what is one essential feature in the description of a Christian. He is one who has fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before' him. That strikes a good many off the list, does it not? Not birth, nor baptism, nor acceptance of a creed, nor association with a community makes a Christian, but the personal act of fleeing for his life and grasping the horns of the altar.
I confine myself to the plain, evangelical teaching, the acceptance in heart and life of which makes a man a Christian, whilst nothing else does. I want to ask you all--or, rather, I pray, that my poor words may help you to ask yourselves, and not rest till you have answered the question Have I, thus, my very own self, fled for refuge to the hope that is set before me?' An old divine said, Preachers should preach, not for sharpening wits, but for saving souls.' And that is what I want, God helping me, to try to do.
Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil.'--Heb. 6:19.
THERE is something very remarkable in the prominence given by Christianity to hope as an element in the perfect character. The New Testament is, one may say, full of exhortations to hope perfectly.' It is regarded as one of the three virtues which sum up all Christian goodness. Nay! In one place the Apostle Paul lays upon it the whole weight of our salvation, for he says we are saved by hope.'
Now this great prominence given to the exercise of this faculty seems to correspond with the will of God as expressed in our nature, for man is a creature obstinate in his hope. But it seems to be strangely at variance with the value of hope as attested by experience; for who does not know that most hopes are false; and that whether they be disappointed or fulfilled, they betray.
The world is full of complaints of the fallacies of hope. Poets and moralists are sure of a response when they touch that chord; and it sometimes seems to us as if elaborate provision were made in our nature for deluding us into activity and tempting us along toilsome paths, to gather a handful of mist at the end, and then to say in our bitterness, All is vanity and vexation of spirit.'
But yet' God never sends mouths but He sends meat to feed them'; and if there be in a man a faculty so obstinate and strong as this, there must be somewhere a reality which it can grasp; and, grasping, can be freed from all its miseries and mistakes.
So my text tells us where that is, and tells us further how ennobling and steady an ally of all great and blessed things hope is in a man, when it is rightly fixed on the right objects. The metaphor of my text is unique in Scripture, though it be common in other places. Only here do we find the familiar thought that hope is the anchor of the soul.' I take that metaphor as the guiding thought in my words now; and ask you to consider the anchor; the anchorage, or holding-ground; the cable; and the steadfastness of the ship so anchored in all storms.
First being, by interpretation, King of righteousness, and after that also King of Salem. which is, King of peace.'--Heb. 7:2.
THAT mysterious, shadowy figure of the priest-king Melchizedec has been singularly illuminated and solidified by recent discovery. You can see now in Berlin and London, letters written fourteen centuries before Christ, by a king of Jerusalem who describes himself almost in the very words which the Old and the New Testaments apply to Melchizedec. He says that he is a royal priest or a priestly king. He says that he derived his royalty neither from father nor mother, nor by genealogical descent; and he says that he owes it to the great King'--possibly an equivalent to the Most High God'; of whom Melchizedec is in Scripture said to have been a worshipper. The name of the letter-writer is not Melchizedec, but the fact that his royalty was not hereditary, like a Pharaoh's, may explain how each monarch bore his own personal appellation, and not one common to successive members of a dynasty.
And are not the names of King and city significant --King of righteousness … King of peace'? It sounds like a yearning, springing up untimely in those dim ages of oppression and strife, for a royalty founded on something better than the sword, and wielded for something higher than personal ambition. Such an ideal at such a date is like a summer day that has wandered into a cold March.
But the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews imposes a meaning not only on the titles, but on their sequence. Of course therein he is letting a sanctified imagination play round a fact, and giving to it a meaning which is not in it. None the less in that emphatic expression first King of righteousness, and after that also King of peace,' he penetrated very deeply into the heart of Christ's reign and work, and echoed a sentiment that runs all through Scripture. Hearken to one psalmist: The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness.' Hearken to another: Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.' Hearken to a prophet: The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever.' Hearken to the most Hebrais-tic of New Testament writers: The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace.' Hearken to the central teaching of the most Evangelical, if I may so say, of New Testament writers: Being justified'-- made righteous'by faith, we have peace with God.' So the first' and the after that' reveal to us the very depth of Christ's work, and carry in them not only important teaching as to that, but equally important directions and guides for Christian conduct; and it is to this aspect of my text, and this only, that I ask your attention now.
The order which we have here, first of all King of righteousness, and after that King of peace,' is the order which I shall try to illustrate in two ways. First, in reference to Christ's work on the individual soul; second, in reference to Christ's work on society and communities.
First, then, here we have laid down the sequence in which
Such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners and made higher than the heavens.'--Heb. 7:26.
IT became Him to make the Captain of our salvation perfect through sufferings.' In all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren.' Such an High Priest became us.' In these three sayings of this Epistle the historical facts of the gospel are considered as corresponding to or in accordance and congruity with, respectively, the divine nature; Christ's character and purpose; and man's need. I have considered the two former texts in previous sermons, and now I desire to deal with this latter. It asserts that Jesus Christ, regarded as the High Priest, meets the deepest wants of every heart, and fits human necessity as the glove does the hand. He is the answer to all our questions, the satisfaction of all our wants, the bread for our hunger, the light for our darkness, the strength for our weakness, the medicine for our sickness, the life for our death. Such a High Priest became us.'
But the other side is quite as true. Christianity is in full accordance with men's wants, Christianity is in sharp antagonism with a great deal which men suppose to be their wants. Men's wishes, desires, readings of their necessities and conceptions of what is in accordance with the divine nature, are not to be taken without more ado as being the guides of what a revelation from God ought to be. The two characteristics of correspondence and opposition must both unite, in all that comes to us certified as being from God. There is an offence of the Cross'; and Christ, for all His correspondence with the deepest necessities of human nature, and I might even say just by reason of that correspondence, will be to the Jews a stumblingblock and to the Greeks foolishness.' If a message professing to be from God had not the discord between man's expectations and its facts, a message so like a man's would bear upon its front the evidence that it was of man. If a message professing to be from God had not the correspondence with man's deepest wants, a message so unlike men would bear upon its front the evidence that it was not of God.
So then, remembering the necessary complementary thought to this of my text that such a high priest became us,' there are two or three considerations springing from the words that I desire to suggest.
We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; 2. A minister of the sanctuary.'--Heb. 8:1-2.
A LITTLE consideration will show that we have in these words two strikingly different representations of our Lord's heavenly state. In the one He is regarded as seated on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty.' In the other He is regarded as being, notwithstanding that session, a minister of the sanctuary'; performing priestly functions there. This combination of two such opposite ideas is the very emphasis and force of the passage. The writer would have us think of the royal repose of Jesus as full of activity for us; and of His heavenly activity as consistent with deepest repose. Resting He works; working He rests. Reigning He serves; serving He reigns. So my purpose is simply to deal with these two representations, and to seek to draw from them and from their union the lessons that they teach.
See (saith He) that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.'--Heb. 8:5.
I do not intend to deal with the original bearing of these words, nor with the use made of them by the writer of Hebrews. Primarily they refer to the directions as to the Tabernacle and its furniture, which are given at such length, and with such minuteness, in Leviticus, and are there said to have been received by Moses on Sinai. The author of this Epistle attaches an even loftier significance to them, as supporting his contention that the whole ceremonial worship, as well as the Temple and its equipment, was a copy of heavenly realities, the heavenly sanctuary and its altar and priest. I wish to take a much humbler view of the injunction, and to apply it, with permissible violence, as a maxim for conduct and the great rule for the ordering of our lives. See that thou,' in thy shop and office, and wherever thou mayst he, make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.' A far-reaching, high-soaring commandment, not to be obeyed without much effort, and able to revolutionise the lives of most of us. There are three points in it: the pattern, its universal applicability, and the place where we get to see it.
The Articles Of The New Covenant
I will put My laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts.'--Heb. 8:10.
WE can scarcely estimate the shock to a primitive Hebrew Christian when he discovered that Judaism was to fade away. Such an earthquake might seem to leave nothing standing. Now, the great object of this Epistle is to insist on that truth, and to calm the early Hebrew Christians under it, by showing them that the disappearance of the older system left them no poorer but infinitely richer, inasmuch as all that was in it was more perfectly in Christ's gospel. The writer has accordingly been giving his strength to showing that, all along the line, Christianity is the perfecting of Judaism, in its Founder, in its priesthood, in its ceremonies, in its Sabbath. Here he touches the great central thought of the covenant between God and man, and he falls back upon the strange words of one of the old prophets. Jeremiah had declared as emphatically as he, the writer, has been declaring, that the ancient system was to melt away and be absorbed in a new covenant between God and man. Is there any other instance of a religion which, on the one side. proclaims its own eternal duration--the Word of the Lord endureth for ever'--and on the other side declares that it is to be abrogated, antiquated, and done away? The writer of the Epistle had learned from sacreder lips than Jeremiah's the same lesson, for the Master said at the most solemn hour of His career, This is the blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.'
These articles of the New Covenant go very deep into the essence of Christianity, and may well be thoughtfully pondered by us all, if we wish to know what the specific differences between the ultimate revelation in Jesus Christ, and all other systems are. The words I have read for my text are the first of these articles.
I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people.' Heb. 8:10.
TWO mirrors set over against each other reflect one another and themselves in each other, in long perspective. Two hearts that love, with similar reciprocation of influence, mirror back to each other their own affections. I am thine; thou art mine,' is the very mother-tongue of love, and the source of blessedness. All loving hearts know that. That mutual surrender, and, in surrender, reciprocal possession, is lifted up here into the highest regions. I will be their God, they shall be My people.' That was the fundamental promise of the Mosaic dispensation, laid. at Sinai--Ye shall be unto Me a people for a possession.' All through the Old Testament we find it re-echoed; and yet the interpenetration of God and the people was imperfect and external in that ancient covenant.
So the writer here, falling back upon the marvellous prophecy of Jeremiah, regards this as being one of the characteristics of Christianity, that what was shadowed in Israel's possession of God and God's possession of Israel, is, in substance, blessedly and permanently realised in the relations of God to Christian souls, and of Christian souls to God.
Not only is there this mutual possession, as expressed by the two halves of my text, but each half, when cleft and analysed, reveals the necessity for a similar reciprocity. For God's giving of Himself to us is nothing to us without our taking of God for ours; and, in like manner, our giving of ourselves to God, would be all incomplete, unless in His strange love, He stooped from amidst the praises of Israel to accept the poor gifts that we bring.
So the duality of my text breaks up into a double dualism, and we have God giving Himself to us, and His gift realised in our acceptance of Him for ours; and then we have our giving of ourselves to God, and the gift realised and ratified in His acceptance of us for His. And to these four points, briefly, I wish to turn.
They shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know Me, from the least to the greatest.'--Heb. 8:11.
IN former sermons I have tried to bring out the force of the preceding two articles of the New Covenant.' These two were the substitution of inward inclination and impulse for the rigid bonds of an external commandment, and the substitution of a real, spiritual, mutual possession of God and His people for the mere outward relationship that existed between Israel and Jehovah. My text is the third article of the New Covenant. It lays hold, like the other two, of something that characterised the ancient dispensation, declares its imperfection, recognises its prophetic aspect, and asserts that all which the former merely shadowed and foretold is accomplished in Jesus Christ.
In old days there had been some direct communication between God and a chosen few, the spiritual aristocracy of the nation, and they spake the things that they had heard of God to the multitude who had had no such communication. My text says that all this is swept away, and that the prerogative of every Christian man is direct access to, communication with, and instruction from, God Himself. The text has two things in it; the promise, which is the essence of it, and a consequence which is deduced from that promise, and sets forth its results in a graphic manner. They all shall know Me, from the least to the greatest'; that is the real promise. They shall no more teach every man his neighbour, saying, Know the Lord,' is but a result thereof.
For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.'--Heb. 8:12.
WE have been considering, in successive sermons, the great promises preceding my text, which are the articles of the New Covenant. We reach the last of these in this discourse. It is last in order of enumeration because it is first in order of fulfilment. The foundation is dug down to and discovered last, because the stones of it were laid first. The introductory' for' in my text shows that the fulfilment of all the preceding great promises depends upon and follows the fulfilment of this, the greatest of them. Forgiveness is the keystone of the arch. Strike it out, and the whole tumbles into ruin. Forgiveness is the first gift to be received from the great cornucopiae of blessings which the gospel brings for men. The writer is tracing the stream upwards, and therefore he comes last to that which first gushes out from the divine heart. All these previous promises of delight in the law of the Lord, mutual possession between God and His people, knowledge of God which is based upon love, are consequences of this final article,' I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their iniquities will I remember no more.'
But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; 12. Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. 13. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: 14. How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? 24. For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands,which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: 25. Nor yet that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others: 26. (For then must He often have suffered since the foundation of the world:) but now once in the end of the world hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. 27. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, bus after this the judgment: 28. So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time, without sin, unto salvation.'--Heb. 9:11-14, 24-28.
SPACE forbids attempting full treatment of these pregnant verses. We can only sum up generally their teaching on the priesthood of Jesus.
This man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God.'--Heb. 10:12.
To that tremendous assertion the whole New Testament is committed. Peter, Paul, John, the writer of this book--all teach that the Jesus who died on Calvary now sits at the right hand of God. This is no case of distance casting a halo round the person of a simple teacher, for six weeks after Calvary, on the Day of Pentecost, Peter declared that Jesus, exalted at the right hand of God,' had shed forth this,' the gift of that Divine Spirit. This is no case of enthusiastic disciples going beyond their Master's teaching, for all the evangelists who record our Lord's trial before the Sanhedrin concur in saying that the turning-point of it, which led to His condemnation, was the declaration, Ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power.' The rulers interpreted the assertion to mean an assertion of divinity, and therefore condemned Him to death. Christ was silent, and the silence witnessed that they interpreted His meaning aright. So, then, for good or evil, we have Jesus making the tremendous assertion, which His followers but repeated. Let us try to look at these words, and draw from them some of the rich fulness of their meaning. Communion, calm repose, participation in divine power and dominion, and much besides, are implied in this great symbol. And I desire to dwell upon the various aspects of it for a few moments now.
By one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.' Heb. 10:14.
IN the preceding sentence there is another for ever,' which refers to the sacrifice of Christ, and declares its perpetual efficacy. It is one, the world's sins are many, but the single sacrifice is more than all of them. It is a past act, but its consequences are eternal, and flow down through all the ages. The text explains wherein consists the perpetual efficacy of Christ's sacrifice, and the reason why it needs no repetition while the world lasts. It endures for ever, because it has perfected for ever them that are sanctified.
Now, in looking at these words, two things are noteworthy. One is the double designation here of the persons whom Christ influences by His offering, in that they are perfected,' and in that they are sanctified.' Another is the double aspect of our Lord's work here set forth in regard to time, in that it is, in the first part of the sentence, spoken of as a past act whose consequences endure--He hath perfected '--and in the latter part of our text, according to the accurate rendering, it is spoken of as continuous and progressive, as yet incomplete and going on to perfection. For the text ought to read--He hath perfected for ever them that are being sanctified.' So there you have these two things, the double view of what Christ does, perfects' and sanctifies,' and the double view of His work, in that in one aspect it is past and complete, and in another aspect it is running on, continuous, and as yet unfinished.
Knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance.'--Heb. 10:34.
THE words in heaven' are probably no part of the original text, but have somehow or other crept in, in order to make more plain what some one supposed to be the reference of these words to the future inheritance of the saints. They, however, rather disturb than help the writer's thought. He is speaking of a present and not of a future possession. Ye have,' and not ye shall have,' a better and an enduring possession,' not in heaven, but here and now.
But even if these words be expelled from the text as disturbing the writer's thought, there still remains a variation in the reading of some importance. It is a very slight difference of form in the original, but the two meanings between which we have to choose are these: Knowing that ye have yourselves as a better and an enduring possession'; or, a better and an enduring possession for yourselves.' I am inclined rather to the former of the two, both from external authority and internal congruity, though the choice between them is difficult. But, if we accept this as the meaning of these words, we can gather from them important lessons, of which I ask your consideration.
Them that believe to the saving of the soul.'--Heb. 10:39.
THE writer uses a somewhat uncommon word in this clause, which is not altogether adequately represented by the translation saving.' Its true force will be apparent by comparing one or two of the few instances in which it occurs in the New Testament. For example, it is twice employed in the Epistles to the Thessalonians; in one case being rendered, God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain' (or, more correctly, to the obtaining of) salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ'; and in another, called to the obtaining of glory through Jesus Christ.' It is employed twice besides in two other places of Scripture, and in both of these it means possession.' So that, though practically equivalent to the idea of salvation, there is a very beautiful shade of difference which is well worth noticing.
The thought of the text is substantially this--those who believe win their souls; they acquire them for their "possession. We talk colloquially about people that cannot call their souls their own.' That is a very true description of all men who are not lords of themselves through faith in Jesus Christ. They who believe to the gaining of their own souls' is the meaning of the writer here.
And I almost think that we may trace in this peculiar expression an allusion, somewhat veiled but real, to similar words of our Lord's. For He said, when, like the writer in the present context, He was encouraging His disciples to steadfastness in the face of difficulties and persecutions,' In your patience'--in your persistent adherence to Me, whatever might draw you away,--ye shall win'--not merely possess, as our Bible has it, and not a commandment, but a promise--in your patience ye shall win your souls.' Whether that allusion be sustainable or no matters comparatively little; it is the significant and beautiful thought which underlies the word to which I wish to turn, and to present you with some illustrations of it.
He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.'--Heb. 11:6.
THE writer has been pointing to the patriarch Enoch as the second of these examples of the power of faith in the Old Covenant; and it occurs to him that there is nothing said in Genesis about Enoch's faith, so he sets about showing that he must have had faith, because he walked with God,' and pleased Him, and no man could thus walk with God, and please Him, unless he had come to Him, and no man could come to a God in whom he did not believe, and whom he did not believe to be waiting to help and bless him, when he did come. So the facts of Enoch's life show that there must have been in him an underlying faith. That is all that I need to say about the context of the words before us. I am not going to speak of the writer's argument, but only of this one aspect of the divine character which is brought out here. He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.'
By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house.'--Heb. 11:7.
THE creed of these Old Testament saints was a very short one, and very different from ours. Their faith was the very same. It is the great object of the writer of this Epistle, in this magnificent catalogue of the heroes of the faith, the muster roll of God's great army, to establish the principle that from the beginning there has only been one kind of religion, only one way to God;and that, however rudimentary and brief the articles of belief in those early days, the faculty by which these far-away believers lay hold on them, and its practical issues, were identical in themand in us, And that is a principle well worth getting into our minds, that the scope of the creed has nothing, to do with the essence of the faith.
So we may look at this instance and discern in it. beneath all superficial differences, the underlying identities, and take this dim, half-intelligible figure of Noah, as he stands almost on the horizon of history, as being an example for us, in very vivid fashion, of the true object of faith, its operation in a two-fold fashion, and its vindication.
Dwelling in tabernacles, for he looked for a city.'--Heb. 11:9-10.
THE purpose of the great muster-roll of the ancient heroes of Judaism in this chapter is mainly to establish the fact that there has never been but one way to God. However diverse the degrees of knowledge and the externals, the essence of religion has always been the same. So the writer of this Epistle, to the great astonishment, no doubt, of some of the Hebrews to whom it was addressed, puts out his hand, and claims, as Christians before Christ, all the worthies of whom they were nationally so proud. He is speaking here about the three patriarchs. Whether he conceives them to have all lived on the earth at one time or no, does not trouble us at all. By faith,' says he,' Abraham sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise,' because, he looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose builder'--or rather Architect--and maker'--or rather Builder--is God.'
Now, of course, the writer gives a considerable extension of the meaning to the word faith'; and in his use one aspect of it is prominent, though by no means exclusively so--viz., the aspect which looks to the unseen and the future, rather than that which grasps the personal Christ. But this is no essential difference from the ordinary New Testament usage; it is only a variation in point of view, and in the prominence given to an element always present in faith. What he says here, then, is substantially this--that in these patriarchal lives we get a picturesque embodiment of the essential substance of all true Christian living, and that mainly in regard of two points, the great object which should fill mind and heart, and the consequent detachment from transitory things which should be cultivated. He looked for a city,' and so he was contented to dwell in a movable tent. That is an emblem containing the essence of what our lives ought to be, if we are truly to be Christian. Let us, then, deal with these two inseparable and indispensable characteristics of the life of faith.
These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.'--Heb. 11:13 (R.V.).
THE great roll-call of heroes of faith in this grand chapter goes upon the supposition that the living spirit of religion was the same in Old and in New Testament times. In both it was faith which knit men to God. It has often been alleged that that great word faith has a different signification in this Epistle from that which it has in the other New Testament writings. The allegation is largely true; in so far as the things believed are concerned they are extremely different; but it is not true in so far as the person trusted, or in so far as the act of trusting are concerned. These are identical. It was no mere temporal and earthly promise on which the faith of these patriarchs was builded. They looked indeed for the land, but in look ing for the land, they looked' for the city which hath foundations'; and their future hopes had the same dim haze of ignorance, and the same questions unresolved about perspective and relative distances which our future hopes have; and their faith, whatever were its contents, was fundamentally the same out of a soul casting itself upon God, which is the essence of our faith in the Divine Son in whom God is made manifest. So with surface difference there is a deep-lying absolute oneness in the faith of the Old Testament and ours, in essential nature, in the Object which they grasp, and in their practical effectsupon life.
Therefore, these words of my text, describing what faith did for the world's grey forefathers, have a more immediate bearing upon us than at first sight may appear, and may suggest for us some thoughts about the proper, practical issues of Christian faith in our daily lives.
They that say such things declars plainly that they seek a country.' Heb. 11:14.
WHAT things? Evidently those which the writer has just been saying that the patriarchs of old said,' as stated in the previous words--They confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims upon earth.' The writer has in his mind, no doubt, some of the beautiful incidents of the Book of Genesis; especially, I suppose, that very touching one where Abraham is standing up by the side of his dead, in the presence of the sons of Heth, and begs from them for the first time a little piece of land that he could call his own. He tells them that he is a stranger and a sojourner amongst them, and wants the field and the cave that is therein' in which to bury his dead. Or he may be thinking of the no less touching incident, when Jacob, in his extreme old age, tells the King of Egypt that the days of the years of his pilgrimage have been few and evil, not having attained to the years of his father.
The writer points to these declarations, and reads into them what he was entitled to read into them, something more than a mere acceptance of the external facts of the speakers' condition, as wanderers in the midst of a civilisation to which they did not belong. He sees gleaming through the primary force of the words the further hope which the patriarchs cherished, though it was, as it were, latent in the nearer hope of an earthly inheritance--viz., that of the city which hath foundations, and the country which they could call their own.
Although the writer is not adducing these patriarchs as being patterns for us, but is only establishing his great thesis that they lived by faith in a future blessing, as we ought to do, still we may take the words of my text, with a permissible amount of violence, as appropriate to all of us who call ourselves Christians. They who say such things do hereby declare plainly,' and by their lives should declare more plainly still, that they are seeking a country.'
Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He hath prepared for them a city.'--Heb. 11:16.
THESE are bold words. They tell us that unless God has provided a future condition of social blessedness for those whom He calls His, their life's experience on earth is a blot on His character and administration. He needs heaven for His vindication. The preparation of the City is the reason why He is not' ashamed to be called their God.' If there were not such a preparation, He had need to be ashamed. Then my text, further, by its first word wherefore,' carries our thoughts back to what has been said beforehand; and that is, They desire a better country, that is, a heavenly.' Therefore God is not ashamed of them,' as the Revised Version has it, with a fuller rendering, to be called their God.' That is to say, the attitude of the men who look ever forward, through the temporal, to the things unseen and eternal, is worthy of their relation with Him, and it alone is worthy. And if people professing to be His, and professing that He is theirs, do not so live, they would be a disgrace to God, and He would be ashamed to own them for His,
So there are two lines of thought suggested by our text; two sets of obligations which are deduced by the writer of this Epistle from that solemn name--The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob.' The one set of obligations refers to Him; the other to us. Theft are, then, three things here for our consideration--the name; what it pledges God to do; and what it binds men to seek. Let me ask you to look at these three things with me.
By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; 25. Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; 26. Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward. 27. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing Him who is invisible.'--Heb. 11:24-27.
I HAVE ventured to take these verses as a text, not with the idea of expounding their details, or even of touching many of the large questions which they raise, but for the sake of catching their general drift. They are the writer's description of two significant instances in the life of the great Lawgiver of the power of faith. He deals with both in the same fashion. He first tells the act, then he analyses its spring in the state of feeling which produced it, and then he traces that state of feeling to certain external facts which were obvious to the faith of Moses. The Great Refusal,' by which he flung up his position at the court of Pharaoh, and chose to identify himself with his people, is the one. His flight from Egypt to the solitudes of Horeb is the other. The two acts are traced to the states of feeling or opinion in Moses. The former came from a choice and an estimate. He chose to suffer with the people of God'; and he esteemed the reproach greater riches than the treasures in Egypt.' The latter in like manner came from a state of feeling. He forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king.' What underlay the choice, the estimate, the courage? He had respect,' or more literally and forcibly, he looked away to the recompense of the reward,' He saw Him who is invisible.' So, an act of vision which disclosed him a future recompense and a present God was the basis of all. And from that act of vision there came states of mind which made it easy and natural to choose a lot of suffering and humiliation, and to turn away from all the glories and treasures and wrath of Egypt.
That is to say, we have here two things--what this man saw, and what the vision did for his life, and I wish to consider these two. The same sight is possible for us; and, if we have it, the same conduct will certainly follow.
Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset [us], and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, 2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of [our] faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. '--Heb. 12:1-2.
WHAT an awful sight the rows above rows of spectators must have been to the wrestler who looked up at them from the arena, and saw a mist of white faces and pitiless eyes all directed on himself! How many a poor gladiator turned in his despair from them to the place where purple curtains and flashing axes proclaimed the presence of the emperor, on whose word hung his life, whose will could crown him with a rich reward!
That is the picture which this text brings before our eyes, as the likeness of the Christian life. We are in the arena; the race has to be run, the battle to be fought. All round and high above us, a mist, as it were, of fixed gazers beholds us, and on the throne is the Lord of life, the judge of the strife, whose smile is better than all crowns, whose downward-pointing finger seals our fate. We are compassed with a cloud of witnesses, and we may see Jesus the author and finisher of faith. Both of these facts are alleged here as encouragements to persevering, brave struggle in the Christian life. Hence we have here mainly two subjects for consideration, namely the relation between the saints who are gone and ourselves, and the encouragement derived from it; and the contrasted relation between Jesus and ourselves, and the encouragement derived from it.
Let us run with patience the race that is set before us.'--Heb. 12:1.
THE previous clauses of this verse bring before us the runner's position as compassed about with a cloud of witnesses,' and his preparation as laying aside every weight and.., sin.' The text carries us a stage further in the metaphor, and shows us the company of runners standing ready, stripped, and straining at the starting-post, with the long course stretching before them.
The metaphor of the Christian life as a race is threadbare, so far as our knowledge is concerned, but it may be questioned if it has sunk deeply enough into the practice of any of us. It is a very noble one, and contains an ideal of the Christian life which it would do us all good to hold up by the side of our realisation of it. It might stimulate and it would shame us.
What is the special note of that metaphor? Compare with the kindred one, equally well-worn and threadbare, of a journey or a pilgrimage. The two have much in common. They both represent life as changeful, continuous, progressive, tending to an end; but the metaphor of the race underscores, as it were, another idea, that of effort. The traveller may go at his leisure, he may fling himself down to rest under a tree, he may diverge from the road, but the runner must not look askance, must not be afraid of dust or sweat, must tax muscle and lungs to the utmost, if, panting, he is to reach the goal and win the prize. So, very significantly, our writer here puts forward only one characteristic of the race. It is to be run with patience,' by which great word the New Testament means, not merely passive endurance, noble and difficult as that may be, but active perseverance which presses on unmoved, ay, and unhindered, to its goal in the teeth of all opposition.
But, whilst that is the special characteristic of the metaphor, as distinguished from others kindred to it, and of the ideal which it sets forth, I desire in this sermon to take a little wider sweep, and to try to bring out the whole of the elements which lie in this well-worn figure. I see in it four things: a definite aim, clearly apprehended and eagerly embraced; a God-appointed path; a steady advance; and a strenuous effort. Now let us ask ourselves the question, Do they correspond to anything in my professing Christian life?
We have here, then,
Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us.' Heb. 12:1.
THERE is a regular series of thoughts in this clause, and in the one or two which follow it. Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us; and let us run with patience the race that is set before us--looking unto Jesus.' That is to say, If we would run well, we must run light; if we would run light, we must look to Christ. The central injunction is, Let us run with patience'; the only way of doing that is the laying aside all weights and sin'; and the only way of laying aside the weights and sins is, looking unto Jesus.'
Of course the Apostle does not mean some one special kind of transgression when he says,' the sin which doth so easily beset us.' He is speaking about sin generically --all manner of transgression. It is. not, as we sometimes hear the words misquoted,' that sin which doth most easily beset us.' All sin is, according to this passage, a besetting sin. It is the characteristic of every kind of transgression, that it circles us round about, that it is always lying in wait and lurking for us. The whole of it, therefore, in all its species, is to be cast aside if we would run with patience this appointed race. But then, besides that, there is something else to be put aside as well as sin. There is every weight' as well as every transgression--two distinct things, meant to be distinguished. The putting away of both of them is equally needful for the race. The figure is plain enough. We as racers must throw aside the garment that wraps us round--that is to say,' the sin that easily besets us'; and then, besides that, we must lay aside everything else which weights us for the race --that is to say, certain habits or tendencies within us.
We have, then, to consider these three points;--First, There are hindrances which are not sins. Secondly, If we would run, we must put aside these. And lastly, If we would put them aside, we must look to Christ.
In the first place, there are hindrances which are not sins. The distinction which the writer draws is a very important one. Sin is that which, by its very nature, in all circumstances, by whomsoever done, without regard to consequences, is a transgression of God's law. A weight' is that which, allowable in itself, legitimate, perhaps a blessing, the exercise of a power which God has given us--is, for some reason, a hindrance and impediment in our running the heavenly race. The one word describes the action or habit by its inmost essence, the other describes it by its accidental consequences. Sin is sin, whosoever does it; but weights may be weights to me, and not weights to you. Sin is sin in whatever degree it is done; but weights may be weights when they are in excess, and helps, not hindrances, when they are in moderation. The one is a legitimate thing turned to a false use; the other is always, and everywhere, and by whomsoever performed, a transgression of God's law.
Then, what are these weights? The first step in the answer to that question is to be taken by remembering that, according to the image of this text we carry them about with us, and we are to put them away from ourselves. It is fair to say then, that the whole class of weights are not so much external circumstances which may be turned to evil, as the feelings and habits of mind by which we abuse God's great gifts and mercies, and turn that which was ordained to be for life into death. The renunciation that is spoken about is not so much the putting away from ourselves of certain things lying round about us, that may become temptations; as the putting away of the dispositions within us which make these things temptations. The other is, of course, included as well; but if we want to understand the true depth of the doctrine of self-denial and self-sacrifice which is taught here, we must remember that the sin and the weights alike lie within our own hearts--that they are our feelings, not God's perfect gifts--that they are our abuse of God's benefits, not the benefits which are given to us for our use. We shall have to see, presently, that by the power which we possess of turning all these outward blessings of God's hands into occasion for transgression, God's most precious endowments may become weights--but let us observe that, accurately and to begin with, the text enjoins us to put away what cleaves to us, and is in us, not what is lying round about us.
Then, if it be mainly and primarily, legitimate feel ings and thoughts, abused and exaggerated, which make the weights that we are to lay aside, what are the things which may thus become weights? Oh, brethren I a little word answers that. Everything. It is an awful and mysterious power that which we all possess, of perverting the highest endowments, whether of soul or of circumstances, which God has given us, into the occasions for faltering, and falling back in the divine life. Just as men, by devilish ingenuity, can distil poison out of God's fairest flowers, so we can do with everything that we have, with all the richest treasures of our nature, with the hearts which He has given us that we may love Him with them; with the understandings which He has bestowed upon us, that we may apprehend His divine truth and His wonderful counsel with them; with these powers of work in the world which He has conferred upon us, that by them we may bring to Him acceptable service and fitting offering; and, in like manner, with all the gladness and grace with which He surrounds our life, intending that out of it we should draw ever occasions for thankfulness, reasons for trust, helps towards God, ladders to assist us in climbing heavenward. Ah! and because we cleave to them too much, because we cleave to them not only in a wrong degree but in a wrong manner (for that is the deepest part of the fault), we may make them all hindrances. So, for instance, in a very awful sense is fulfilled that threatening, A man's foes shall be they of his own household,' when we make those that we love best our idols, not because we love them too well, but because we love them apart from God; when instead of drawing from those that are dear to us--our husbands, and wives, and children, and parents, and friends, and every other tender name--lessons of God's infinite goodness, and reasons why our hearts should flow perpetually with love to Him--we stay with them, and hang back from God, and forget that His love is best, His heart deepest, and His sufficiency our safest trust. That is one single instance; and as it is in that sacredest of regions, so is it in all others. Every blessing, every gladness, every possession, external to us, and every faculty and attribute within us, we turn into heavy weights that drag us down to this low spot of earth. We make them all sharp knives with which we clip the wings of our heavenward tendencies, and then we grovel in the dust.
And now, if this be the explanation of what the Apostle means by weights '--legitimate things that hinder us in our course towards God--there comes this second consideration, If we would run we must lay these aside. Why must we lay them aside? The whole of the Christian's course is a fight. We carry with us a double nature. The best of us know that flesh lusts against spirit, and spirit against flesh.' Because of that conflict, it follows that if ever there is to be a positive progress in the Christian race, it must be accompanied, and made possible, by the negative process of casting away and losing much that interferes with it. Yes! that race is not merely the easy and natural unfolding of what is within us. The way by which we come to' the measure of the stature of perfect men' in Christ, is not the way by which these material bodies of ours grow up into their perfectness. They have but to be nourished, and they grow. The blade and the ear, and the full corn in the ear,' come by the process of gradual growth and increase. That law of growth is used by our Lord as a description, but only as a partial description, of the way by which the kingdom of Christ advances in the heart. There is another side to it as well as that. The kingdom advances by warfare as well as by growth. It would be easy if it were but a matter of getting more and more; but it is not that only. Every step of the road you have to cut your way through opposing foes. Every step of the road has to be marked with the blood that comes from wounded feet. Every step of the road is won by a tussle and a strife. There is no spiritual life without dying, there is no spiritual growth without putting off the old man with his affections and lusts.' The hands cannot move freely until the bonds be broken. The new life that is in us cannot run with patience the race that is set before it, until the old life that is in us is put down and subdued. And if we fancy that we are to get to heaven by a process of persistent growth, without painful self-sacrifice and martyrdom, we know nothing about it. That is not the law. For every new step that we win in the Christian course there must have been the laying aside of something. For every progress in knowledge, there must have been a sacrifice and martyrdom of our own indolence, of our own pride, of our own blindness of heart, of our own perverseness of will. For every progress in devout emotion, there must have been a crucifying and slaying of our earthly affections, of our wavering hearts that are drawn away from God by the sweetness of this world. For every progress in strenuous work for God, there must have been a slaying of the selfishness which urges us to work in our own strength and for our own sake. All along the Christian course there must be set up altars to God on which you sacrifice yourselves, or you will never advance a step. The old legend that the Grecian host lay weather-bound in their port, vainly waiting for a wind to come and carry them to conquest; and that they were obliged to slay a human sacrifice ere the heavens would be propitious and fill their sails, may be translated into the deepest verity of the Christian life. We may see in it that solemn lesson--no prosperous voyage, and no final conquest until the natural life has been offered up on the altar of hourly self-denial. That self-denial must reach beyond gross and undoubted sins. They must be swept away, of course, but deeper than these must the sacrificial knife strike its healing wound. If you would run with patience,' you must lay aside every weight,' as well as the sin which so easily besets you.'
So much for the why; well, then, how is this laying aside to be performed? There are two ways by which this injunction of my text may be obeyed. The one is, by getting so strong that the thing shall not be a weight, though we carry it; and the other is that feeling ourselves to be weak, we take the prudent course of putting it utterly aside. Or, to turn that into other words: the highest type of the Christian character would be, that we should, as the Apostle says, use the world without abusing it '--that' they who possess should be as though they possessed not; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not.' The noblest style of a Christian would be a man, who exercising all the faculties which God had given him, and enjoying all the blessings wherewith God had surrounded him, walked his Christian course like some of those knights of old, lightly bearing his heavy mail, not feeling it a burden, but strong enough to bear the massive breastplate and to wield the ponderous sword, and fitted for his rough warfare by it all. It would be possible, perhaps, some day for us to come to this--that inasmuch as it is the feelings within us which make the weights, and not the objects without us- we should keep and enjoy the blessings and the gladness that we possess, and yet never thereby be thwarted or stayed in our journey heavenward. It would be the highest condition. I suppose we shall come to it yonder, where there will no longer be any need to maim ourselves that we may enter into life,' but where all the maimings that were done in this world for the sake of entering into life, shall be compensated and restored, and each soul shall stand perfect and complete, wanting nothing.
But, alas! though that course be the highest, the abstract best, the thing for which we ought to strive and try; it is not the course for which the weakness and inaptness of the most of us makes us strong enough. And therefore, seeing that we have a nature so weak and feeble, that temptations surround us so constantly, that so many things legitimate become to us harmful and sinful--the path of prudence, the safe path, is absolutely and utterly to put them away from us, and have nothing to do with them.
Of course, there are many duties which, by our own sinfulness, we make weights, and we dare not, and we cannot if we would, lay them aside. A man, for instance, is born into certain circumstances, wherein he must abide; he has a calling whereunto he is called.' Your trade is a weight, your daily occupations are weights. The spirit of this commandment before us is not, Leave your plough, and go up into the mountain to pray.' Again, a man finds himself surrounded by friends and domestic ties. He dare not, he must not, he cannot, shake himself free from these. There are cases in which to put away the occupation that has become a weight--to sacrifice the blessing that has become a hindrance--to abstain from the circumstances which clog and impede our divine life, is a sin. Where God sets us, we must stand, if we die. What God has given us to do, we must do. The duties that in our weakness become impediments and weights, we must not leave.
But for all besides these, anything which I know has become a snare to me--unless it be something in the course of my simple duty, or unless it be some one of those relations of life which I cannot get rid of--I must have done with it! It may be sweet, it may be very dear, it may lie very near thy heart, it may be a part of thy very being:--never mind, put it away! If God has said to you, There, my child, stand there, surrounded by temptations!--then, like a man, stand to your colours, and do not take these words as if they said--I am to leave a place because I find myself too weak to resist--a place in which God, for the good of others or for the good of myself, has manifestly set me. But for all other provinces of life, if I feel myself weak I shall be wise to fly. As Christ has said, If thy hand offend thee,' put it down on the block there, and take the knife in the other, and cut it off': it is better, it is better for thee to go into life with that maimed and bleeding stump, an imperfect man, than with all thy natural capacities and powers to be utterly lost at the last! And some of us, perhaps, may feel that these solemn lessons apply not only to affection and outward business. I may be speaking to some young man to whom study, and thought, are a snare. I know that I am saying a grave thing, but I do say, In that region too, the principle applies. Better be ignorant, and saved, than wise, and lost. Better a maimed man in Christ's fold, than a perfect man, if that were possible, outside of it.
I know that there is a large field for misconception and misapplication in the settlement of the practical question--Which of my weights arise from circumstances that I dare not seek to alter, and which from circumstances that I dare not leave unaltered? There is a large margin left for the play of honesty of purpose, and plain common-sense, in the fitting of such general maxims to the shifting and complicated details of an individual life. But no laws can be laid down to save us that trouble. No man can judge for another about this matter. It must be our own sense of what harms our spiritual life, and not other people's notions of what is likely to harm either theirs or ours, that, guides us. What by experience I find does me harm, let me give up! No man has a right to come to me and say, There is a legitimate thing, an indifferent thing; it is not a sin; there is not in it, in itself, the essential element of transgression; but you must forsake it, because it is a weight to other people! To my own master I stand or fall. The commandment is, Have no weights! But the way to fulfil that com-mandment-whether by rejecting the thing altogether, or by keeping it, and yet not letting it be a weight, that is a matter for every one's own conscience, for every one's own judgment and practical prudence, guided by the Spirit of God, to determine. The obedience to the commandment is a simple matter of loyalty to Christ. But the manner of obedience is to be fixed by Christian wisdom. And remember that on both sides of the alternative there are dangers. There is danger in the too great freedom which says, I am strong; I can venture to do this thing--another man cannot--and I will do it! There is a danger on the other side in saying, We are all weak, and we will forsake all these things together! The one class of moralists are apt to confound their own unsanctified inclinations with the dictates of Christian freedom. The other class are apt to confound their own narrowness with the commandments of God. The one class are apt to turn their liberty into a cloak of licentiousness. The other class are apt to turn their obligation into a yoke which neither they nor their disciples are able to bear. The Apostle pointed out the evils which these two ways of dealing with things indifferent are apt to foster when he said to those who adopt the one, Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not'; and to those who adopt the other' Let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth.' That is to say, on the one hand, beware of the fancied superiority to the weaknesses and narrowness of your more scrupulous brother, which is prone to creep into the hearts of the more liberal and strong. Remember that perhaps the difference between you is not all in your favour. It may be that what you call over-scrupulous timidity is the fruit of a more earnest Christian principle than yours; and that what you call in yourself freedom from foolish scruples, is only the result of a less sensitive conscience, not of a more robust Christianity. Then for the other class, the lesson is, Let not him which eateth not, judge him that eateth.' Judge not from the height of your superior self-denial, your brother who allows himself what you avoid. Your besetting sin is self-righteous condemnation of those who perhaps, after all, are wiser as well as wider than you, and who in their strength may be able to walk as near to God on a road, which to you would be full of perils, as you are in the manner of life which you know to be needful for you. Let us all remember, besides, that a thing which to ourselves is no weight, may yet be right for us to forsake, out of true and tender brotherly regard to others who, weaker than we, or perhaps more conscientious than we, could not do the same thing without damaging their spirits and weakening their Christian life. Him that is weak in the faith, receive.' Him that is weak in the faith, help. And in all these matters indifferent, which are weights to one and not weights to another, let us remember, first, for ourselves, that a weight retained is a sin; and let us remember, next, for others, that they stand not by our experience, but by their own; and that weare neither to judge their strength, nor to offend their weakness.
And now, in the last place: This laying aside of every weight is only possible by looking to Christ. That self-denial of which I have been speaking has in it no merit, no worthiness. The man that practises it is not a bit better than the man that does not, except in so far as it is a preparation for greater reception of the spiritual life. Some people suppose that when they have laid aside a weight, conquered a hindrance, given up some bad habit, they have done a meritorious thing. Well, we are strengthened, no doubt, by the very act; but then, it is of no use at all except in so far as it makes us better fitted for the positive progress which is to come after it. What is the use of the racer betaking himself to the starting-post, and throwing aside every weight, and then standing still? He puts aside his garments that he may run. We empty our hearts; but the empty heart is dull, and cold, and dark: we empty our hearts that Christ may fill them.
That is not all: Christ must have begun to fill them before we can empty them. Looking to Jesus' is the only means of thorough-going, absolute self-denial. All other surrender than that which is based upon love to Him, and faith in Him, is but surface work, and drives the subtle disease to the vitals. The man that tries, by paring off an excrescence here, and giving up a bad habit there, to hammer and tinker and cut himself into the shape of a true and perfect man, may do it outwardly. He will scarcely do that, but it is possible he may partially. And then, what has he made himself? A whited sepulchre'; outside, --adorned, beautiful, clean; inside,--full of rottenness and dead men's bones! The self that was beaten in the open field of outward life, retires, like a defeated army, behind broad rivers; and concentrates itself in its fortresses, and prepares hopefully for a victorious resistance in the citadel of the heart.
My brother, if you would run with patience the race that is set before you,' you must lay aside every weight.' If you would lay aside every weight, you must look to Christ, and let His love flow into thy soul. Then, self-denial will not be self-denial. It will be blessing and joy, sweet and easy. Just as the old leaves drop naturally from the tree when the new buds of spring begin to put themselves out, let the new affection come and dwell in thy heart, and expel the old. Lay aside every weight' -- looking unto Jesus.' Then, too, you will find that the sacrifice and maiming of the old man has been the perfecting of the man. You will find that whatever you give up for Christ you get back from Christ, better, more beautiful, more blessed, hallowed to its inmost core, a joy and a possession for ever. For He will not suffer that any gift laid upon His altar shall not be given back to us. He will have no maimed man in His service. So, the hand that is cut off, the eye that is plucked out, the possessions that are rendered up, the idols that are slain--they are all given back to us again when we stand in God's own light in glory--perfect men, made after the image of Christ, and surrounded with all possessions transfigured and glorified in the light of God. There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.
Set down at the right hand of the throne of God.'--Heb. 12:2.
ST. LUKE gives us two accounts of the Ascension, one at the end of his Gospel and one at the beginning of the Acts. The difference of position suggests delicate shades of colouring and of distinction in the two narratives, the one is the ending of the sweet intercourse on earth, the other is the beginning of a new era and a different type of companionship. So in that which closes the Gospel, emphasis is put upon our Lord's ascension as being parted from; and all that is told us is of the final benediction befitting a farewell, and of the uplifted hands, which left upon their minds the last sweet impression of the departing friend. But if we turn to the Acts of the Apostles, where the incident is the same, the whole spirit of the narrative is altered. We see there the beginning of a new era, and so we read nothing about parting, but, instead of the indefinite expression, He blessed them, we hear of their promised investiture with a new power, and of there being laid upon them a new obligation--Ye shall be clothed with the Spirit: ye shall be My witnesses.' And the two men who stand by them, and are only mentioned in the Book of Acts, announce the great thought, that the departing Christ will return, He shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go.' All in that account has a forward aspect. It is a beginning with a new power, strengthened by a new duty, and having a far-off hope. Thus equipped, these eleven no more feel that their Lord is parted from them, nor that they are abandoned and forlorn; but they cast themselves into their new circumstances, and joyfully take up their new work. So the Ascension of Christ is represented in that second account as being the transition from the earthly to the heavenly life and type of communion with Him, and as the preparation for that great fact which my text enshrines in highly figurative language, as being the sitting at the right hand of the throne of God. The Ascension is no transient fact, it is the beginning of the permanent condition of the Church, and of the permanent present relations between Jesus Christ, God, the Church, and the world. So I desire to turn now to the various characteristics of the present and permanent relationship of Jesus Christ to these three--God, the Church, the world.
And first of all I wish to notice we have here the thought of the Enthroned Christ. The attitude of sitting indicates repose. The position at the right hand of the throne of God indicates participation in the divine energies and in the administration of the divine providences. But the point to observe is that the Ascension is declared to be the prerogative of the Man Christ Jesus. And so with great emphasis and significance, in the verse with a part of which I am now dealing, we have brought together the name of the humanity, the name that was borne by many another Jew in the same era as Jesus bore it, we have brought together the name of the humanity and the affirmation of the divine dignity, We see Jesus, set down at the right hand of the throne of God.' And over and over again, not only in this Epistle, but in other parts of Scripture, we have the same intentional, emphatic juxtaposition of the two ideas which shallow thinkers regard as in some sense incompatible--the humanity and the divinity.
Remember, for instance, this same Jesus shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go.' And remember the rapturous and wonderful exclamation which broke from the lips of the proto-martyr. Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.' So then that exaltation and ascension is--according to New Testament teaching, which is not contradicted by the deepest thought of the affinities and resemblances of the divine and the human--the lifting up of the Man into the glory which the Incarnate Word had with the Father before the world was. And just as the earthly life of that Incarnate Word has shown how divine a thing a human life here may be, so the heavenly life of the still Incarnate Word shows us what our approximation to, and union with, the divine nature may be, when we are purged and perfected in the Kingdom of God, whither the Forerunner is for us entered.
But further, in addition to this thought, there comes another which is constantly associated with the teaching of this session of the Son of Man at the right hand of God, namely, that it, is intercessory. That is a word the history of which will take us far, and I dare not enter upon it now. But one thing I wish to make very emphatic, and that is that the ordinary notion of intercession is not the New Testament notion. We limit it, or tend to limit it, to prayer for others. There is no such idea in the New Testament use of the phrase. It is a great deal wider than any verbal expression of sympathy and desire. It has to deal with realities and not with words. It is not a synonym for asking for another that some blessing may come upon him; but the intercession of the great High Priest who has gone into the holiest of all for us covers the whole ground of the acts by which, by reason of our deep and true union with Jesus Christ through faith, He communicates to His children whatsoever of blessing and power and sweet tokens of ineffable love He has received from the Father. Whatsoever He draws in filial dependence from the Divine Father He in brotherly unity imparts to us; and the real communication of real blessing, and not the verbal petitions for forgiveness, is what He is doing there within the veil. He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.'
But still further in this great figure of my text, the Enthroned Christ, there lies a wondrous thought which He Himself has given us, I go to prepare a place for you.' What activities are involved in that wondrous idea it boots us not to inquire, nor would it become us to say. We know that never could we tread those pure pavements except our robes and our feet had been washed by Him. But that is the consequence of His earthly work, and not of His heavenly and present energy. Perhaps in our ignorance of all that lies behind the veil, we can get little further than to see that the very fact of His presence is the preparation of the place. For that awful thought, that crushing thought, of eternal life under conditions bewilderingly different from anything we experience here, would be no joy unless we could say we shall see Him and be with Him. I know not how it may be with you, but I think that the nearer we come to the end of the earthly life, and the more the realities beyond begin to press upon our thoughts and our imaginations as those with which we shall soon make acquaintance, we feel more and more how unquestionable the misery the thought of eternal life would bring if it were not for the fact that the world beyond is lighted up and made familiar by the thought of Christ's presence there. Can you fancy some poor clod-hopping rustic brought up from a remote village and set down all in a moment in the midst of some brilliant court? How out of place he would feel, how unhomelike it would appear, how ill at ease he would be; ay, and what an unburdening there would be in his heart, if amongst the strange splendour he detected beneath the crown and above the robes, sitting on the throne, one whom he had known in the far-off hamlet, and who there had taken part with him in all the ignoble toils and narrow interests of that rustic scene. Jesus said, I go to prepare a place for you,' and when I lift up my eyes to those far-off realities which overwhelm me when I try to think about them, I say, I am not dazzled by the splendour, I am not oppressed by the perpetuity of it, I do not faint at the thought of unlike conditions, for I shall be the same and He will be with me.
It is enough that Christ knows all,
And so the Enthroned Christ is preparing a place for us. Ay, brethren, and He is not preparing it for us only when we die, but He is preparing it for us whilst we live; for it is only by faith in Him that we have boldness of access and confidence. And neither for the prayers and desires of Christian men on earth nor for the spirits of just men made perfect hereafter will the eternal golden gates swing open except His hand is on the bolt, and by His power the way into the Holiest is made manifest. And so set your minds as well as your affections on the things above, where Christ is sitting on the right hand of God.
Now, secondly, we have here the Present Christ. Matthew, in his Gospel, does not tell of the Ascension, but he preserves the promise, Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world,' and that promise is not contradicted, but is realised by the fact of Christ's ascension. He does tell us of the remarkable utterance to Mary on the morning of the Resurrection. Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father.' The implication that we have plainly is, when I am ascended you may touch. And the contact of even her nervous and clutching hand round His feet is less than the touch and the presence for which that departure makes the way. He was parted from them' is the thought that ends the Gospel. He was parted for a season that thou mightest receive Him for ever, is the thought that begins the Acts and the history of the Church. And it is true of Him and His relation to us, and because it is true about Him and about His relation to us, it is also true about all those who sleep in Jesus. Their relation towards the earthly form ceases, and there is an empty place where they once stood.
But there is a presence more real and capable of yielding finer influences, strengthening and sanctifying, than ever came from the earthly presence. It is blessed to clasp hands, it is blessed to link arms, it is blessed to press together the lips; but there is a higher touch than these, and sight is a less clear vision than faith; and they who can pass across the abyss of the centuries and the yet broader and deeper and blacker abyss between earth and heaven, and lay the hand of faith on the hand of Christ, have passed through the veil, that is to say His flesh, and have clasped .His real presence. Yes, and the thing that calls itself such, is but a part of the general retrogression of Catholicism to heathenism and materialism. We have the real presence if we have the Christ in our heart by faith. He is present with us; enthroned on high above all heavens, He yet is near the humblest heart, the companion of the lonely, the solace of all that trust Him. He trod the winepress alone,' in order that none of us need ever live alone or die alone.
And there is another side to this presence. As I have said, He is present with us here, and you and I may be present with Him yonder; for one of the Epistles tells us that, we die with Him that we may live with Him, and that God has quickened us (if we are Christian people) together with Him and made us sit together with Him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.' Your life, Christian men and women, is in its roots and sources, and ought to be in its flow and course, hid with Christ in God,' and you should not only seek to realise the presence of the Master with you, but to climb to Himself, being present with Him.
Thirdly, this great figure of my text sets before us the working Christ. The attitude of sitting at the right hand of God suggests repose; but that is a repose which is consistent with, and is accompanied by, the greatest energy for continuous operation. You remember, no doubt (although, perhaps, not in its full significance), the great words with which the close of St. Mark's Gospel points on to the future,' So then, after the Lord had spoken unto them, He was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. And they went everywhere preaching the word.' The Master gone, the servants left; the Master resting, the servants journeying and toiling. It is like the two halves of Raphael's great transfiguration picture. The Lord and the three are up there in the amber light, the demoniac boy writhing in his convulsions, and the disciples by him helpless, down here. The gap is great. Yes. They went everywhere preaching the Word, the Lord also working with them, and confirming the Word with signs following.' There is the true notion of the repose of Christ resting indeed at the right hand of God, yet working with His servants scattered over the face of the earth. And so in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, the keynote is struck when St. Luke says, The former treatise have I made of all that Jesus began both to do and to teach until the day on which He was taken up'; and this treatise, O Theophilus, is the second volume of the one story, the history of all that Jesus continued both to do and to teach after the day on which He was taken up. Acts of the Apostles? No; Acts of the Ascended Christ--that is the name of the book. Never mind about the apostles. They do come into the foreground; but the writer has little care about them. It is the Christ who is moving; and so we find it all through the book, the Lord did this, the Lord did that, the Lord did the other thing; and the apostles are, I was going to say, the pawns on the chess-board. And so you remember, too, that dying Stephen saw the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. He sprang to his feet, not breaking the eternal repose, to look down and to send down help and sustenance and blessing and good cheer to the man there at the fool of the old wall ready to die for Him.
And that is the type of the whole history of the Church. I have said that Christ's Ascension is the transition from the lower to the higher form of presence; and it is the transition to the wider form of work. He works for us, on us, in us, and with us, and as the apostle Peter said in expounding the significance of the Day of Pentecost, Being to the right hand of God exalted He hath shed forth this,' so the Christ is no longer tired, but is still working, working in us, with us, and for us.
And lastly, the metaphor of my text brings before us the returning Christ. It was not only the angel's message that declared that departure and ascension were not the last that the worker was going to see of Jesus. The necessities of the case, if I may say so, tell us the same message. The Incarnation necessarily involves the Crucifixion; the Crucifixion (if it is what we believe it to be) as necessarily involves the Resurrection, for it was not possible that He should be holden of it,' the grim death. The Resurrection and the Ascension are but as it were the initial point, which is produced into the line of His heavenly session. It cannot be that Ascension is the last word to be said. The path of the King does not run into a cul de sac like that. The world has not done with Jesus Christ. He is coming, was the great thought around which all the past clustered. He will come, is the great hope around which all the future hopes for the Church and the world are piled and built. He shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go,' corporeally, visibly, locally, in His manhood, in His divinity. As He was once offered to bear the sin of many, so shall He come the second time without sin unto salvation.' Brethren, that is the hope of the Church, discredited by many unworthy representations and mixed up with a great deal that does not commend it by the folly of those who believe in it; but standing out so distinct and so required by all that is gone before, that no Christian man can afford to relegate the expectation into the region of dimness, or to waver in his faith in it, without much imperilling his conception of his Master, and the blessedness of union with Him. You do not understand the Cross unless you believe in the throne; and you do not understand the throne unless you believe in the judgment-seat. The returning Christ shall judge the world. Brethren! Jesus is enthroned. Do you bow to His command? Do you trust His power? Do you see in Him the pattern of what you may be, and the pledge that you will be it if you put your confidence in your Lord? The enthroned Christ is present. Do you walk in blessed and continuous communion with Him? The enthroned and present Christ is working. Do you trust in His operation, peacefully, for yourself, for the Church, for the world? Do you open your heart to the abundant energies with which He is flooding His Church, and which His Church is so sadly and so much allowing to run to waste? The enthroned, present, working Christ is coming back, and you and I have to choose whether we shall be of the servants whom the Lord, when He cometh, shall find watching,' and obeying His command with girt loins and lit lamps, and so will sweep with Him into the festal hall, and sit down with Him, on His throne; or whether we shall wail because of Him, and shrink abashed from the judgment-seat of Christ.
Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.'--Heb. 12:4.
YE have not yet resisted'--then others had done so; and the writer bids his readers contrast their own comparative immunity from persecution from the fate of such, in order that they may the more cheerfully do the easier task devolved upon them. Who were those others?
If the supposition of many is correct that this Epistle was addressed to the Mother Church at Jerusalem, the fate of Stephen the first martyr, and of James the brother of John, who had had the rule over' that Church, may have been in the writer's mind. If the date assigned to the letter by some is accepted, the persecution under Nero, which had lighted the gardens of the Capitol with living torches, had already occurred; and the writer may have wished the Jerusalem Church to bethink themselves that they had fared better than their brethren in Rome. But whether these conjectures are adopted or no, there is another contrast evidently in the writer's mind. He has been speaking of the long series of heroes of the faith, some of whom had been stoned and sawn asunder,' and he would have the Christians whom he addresses contrast their position with that of these ancient saints and martyrs. And there is another contrast more touching still, more wonderful and impressive, in his mind; for my text follows immediately upon a reference to Jesus Christ,' who endured the Cross, despising the shame.' So Himself had resisted unto blood.' And thus the writer bids his readers think of the martyrs in the Mother Church; of the blood that had deluged the Church at Rome; of the slaughtered saints in past generations; and, above all, of the great Captain of their salvation; and, animated by the thoughts, manfully to bear and mightily to resist in the conflict that is laid upon them. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.'
For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but He for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness.'--Heb. 12:10.
FEW words of Scripture have been oftener than these laid as a healing balm on wounded hearts. They may be long unnoticed on the page, like a lighthouse in calm sunshine, but sooner or later the stormy night falls, and then the bright beam flashes out and is welcome. They go very deep into the meaning of life as discipline; they tell us how much better God's discipline is than that of the most loving and wise of parents, and they give that superiority as a reason for our yielding more entire and cheerful obedience to Him than we do to such.
Now, to grasp the full meaning of these words, we have to notice that the earthly and the heavenly disciplines are described in four contrasted clauses, which are arranged in what students call inverted parallelism--that is to say, the first clause corresponds to the fourth and the second to the third. For a few days' pairs off with that we might be partakers of His holiness.' Now, at first sight that does not seem a contrast; but notice that the for' in the former clause is not the for' of duration, but of direction. It does not tell us the space during which the chastisement or discipline lasts, but the end towards which it is pointed. The earthly parent's discipline trains a boy or girl for circumstances, pursuits, occupations, professions, all of which terminate with the brief span of life. God's training is for an eternal day. It would be quite irrelevant to bring in here any reference to the length of time during which an earthly father's discipline lasts, but it is in full consonance with the writer's intention to dwell upon the limited scope of the one and the wide and eternal purpose of the other.
Then, as for the other contrast--for their own pleasure,' or, as the Revised Version reads it, as seemed good to them'--but He for our profit.' Elements of personal peculiarity, whim, passion, limited and possibly erroneous conceptions of what is the right thing to do for the child, enter into the training of the wisest and most loving amongst us; and we often make a mistake and do harm when we think we are doing good. But God's training is all from a simple and unerring regard to the benefit of His child. Thus the guiding principles of the two disciplines are contrasted in the two central clauses.
Now, these are very threadbare, commonplace, and old-fashioned thoughts; but, perhaps, they are so familiar that they have not their proper power over us; and I wish to try in this sermon, if I can, to get more into them, or to get them more into us, by one or two very plain remarks.
For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.'--Heb. 12:17.
THESE words have been often understood as teaching a very ghastly and terrible doctrine, viz., that a man may earnestly and tearfully desire to repent, and be unable to do so. Such teaching has burdened many a heart, and has put obstacles before many feeble feet in the way of a return to God. It seems to me to be contradicted by a thousand places of Scripture, and to involve something very much like a contradiction in terms.
The Revised Version, by a very slight change, has dispelled that ugly dream. It has put the clause for he found no place of repentance' in a parenthesis. The effect of that is to bring the first and last clauses of the verse more closely together; and to show more clearly that what Esau is represented as seeking, and seeking with tears in vain, is not repentance, but the Father's blessing.
It may not, perhaps, be legitimate, regard being had to the construction of the sentence, to treat the clause in question as a parenthesis, because it is so closely connected with the succeeding clause by the antithesis of' found' in the one and sought' in the other. But although that may be so, I have no doubt whatever that the truth intended to be conveyed by the parenthesis of the Revised Version is the true interpretation of the words before us; and that we are to find here simply the declaration that this man, at a given time of his life, would have inherited the blessing,' sought it carefully with tears,' and found it not.
Now the words, thus understood, teach a sufficiently grave and solemn lesson, though they do not teach the ghastly, and, as I believe, the erroneous thought that has been drawn from them. And it may be worth our while to consider for a moment the lessons that they do teach, and to try to lay them upon our hearts.
Ye are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, 23. To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven.'--Heb. 12:22-23.
THE magnificent passage of which these words are part sums up the contrast between Judaism and Christianity which this whole Epistle has been illustrating and enforcing. The writer takes the scene on Sinai as expressive of the genius of the former revelation, whose centre was a law which evoked the consciousness of sin, and kindled terror; and which was embodied in sensible and material symbols. Far other and better are the characteristics of the latter revelation. That excites no dread; is given from no flashing mountain with accompaniments of darkness and trumpet blasts and terrible words; and it brings us into contact with no mere material and therefore perishable symbols, but with realities none the less real because they are above sense, and not remote from us though they be.
For, says my text, Ye are come,' not Ye shall come.' The humblest life may be in touch with the grandest realities in the universe, and need not wait for death to draw aside the separating curtain in order to be in the presence of God and in the heavenly Jerusalem.
How are these things brought to us? By the revelation of God in Christ. How are we brought to them? By faith in that revelation. So every believing life, howsoever encompassed by flesh and sense, can thrust, as it were, a hand through the veil, and grasp the realities beyond. The scene described in the first words of my text may verily be the platform on which our lives are lived, howsoever in outward form they may be passed on this low earth; and the companions, which the second part of our text discloses, may verily be our companions, though we wander lonely as a cloud,' or seem to be surrounded by far less noble society. By faith we are come to the unseen realities which are come to us by the revelation of God in Christ. Ye are come unto Mount Zion.'
Now, looking generally at these words, they give us just two things--the scene and the companions of the Christian life. The remainder of the passage will occupy us on future occasions, but for the present I confine myself to the words which I have read. And I shall best deal with them, I think, if I simply follow that division into which they naturally fall, and ask you to note, first, where faith lives, and, second, with whom faith lives.
Ye are come, to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.'--Heb. 12:23.
THE principle of arrangement in this grand section of this letter is obscure, and I am afraid that I cannot cast much, if any, light upon it. We might, at first sight, have expected that the two clauses of our present text should have been inverted, so as to bring all the constituent parts of the city of the living God' closely together--viz.,' the angels,' the members of the militant Church on earth, and those of the triumphant Church in heaven; and also to bring together God the Judge of all,' and Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant.' But the arrangement, as it stands in our text, may be compared profitably with that of the preceding verses, which we were considering in the last sermon. There, as here, the allusion to the immediate presence of God passed at once into the reference to the citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem. And just as there Zion, the palace, was immediately connected with the city of the living God, so here the writer, harking back, as it were, to his original starting-point, no sooner names God the Judge' than he passes on to set before us the spirits of just men made perfect.' In the earlier clauses we have had the more general reference to the palace and the city around it. Here, if I may so say, we pass within the palace gates, and the writer tells us what we find there. This interweaving of the presence of God with that of the creatures that live in His love witnesses to the great truth that our God dwells in no isolated supremacy, but in the midst of a blessed society; and that the solitary souls who find their way into His presence have a welcome, not only from Him, but from all their brethren of His great family.
So the arrangement may not be so inexplicable as, at first sight, it strikes us as being, if it suggests to us the close and indissoluble connection between God Himself and all those who, in every place, whether the place above or the place beneath, call upon the name of Him who is both their God and ours. In dealing with these words, I have simply to consider these two ideas thus set before us.
Ye are come, to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.'--Heb. 12:24.
IN previous sermons on the preceding context, we have had frequent occasion to remark on the parallel and contrast between Sinai and Zion, as expressive of the difference between the genius of Judaism and Christianity, which shapes the whole of this section. That contrast and parallel are most obvious at its beginning and here at its close.
In the beginning we had the mountain of the Law, swathed in darkness, lit by flashing flame, contrasted with the sunny slopes of Zion, palace-crowned, and the wild desert set in opposition to the city of peace that clustered round the foot of Zion's Mount. Here at the close we have the key-words of the old revelation laid hold of and applied to the new. Judaism was a covenant in the form of a law, of which the terms were these: Do, and thou shalt live!' The gospel is a covenant in the form of a promise, of which the tenor is Believe and live; live and do!' The ancient covenant had Moses for its mediator, passing between the mountain and the plain. The gospel has a better and a truer link of union between God and man than any mere man, however exalted, can be. The ancient system had its sprinkled blood, by which the men on whom it fell entered into the covenant, and were ceremonially sanctified. The new covenant has its blood. An awful voice rolled amongst the peaks of Sinai. That blood of sprinkling' speaks too. And then the writer blends with that allusion another, to the voice of the blood of the first martyr, every drop of which cried to God for retribution, and points to the blood of the more innocent Abel, every drop of which appeals to the Father's heart for pardon.
Now it may be said that thus to present Christian truth under the guise of the symbols of an ancient ceremonial and external system is a retrograde step. And some people, who think themselves very enlightened, tell us that the time is past for looking at Christianity from such a point of view. One great man has let himself talk about Hebrew old clothes.' I am very much mistaken if these old clothes will not turn out to be something like the raiment that the Hebrews wore in the wilderness, which waxed not old for forty years,' and outlasted a great many suits that other people had cut for themselves. We have only to ponder upon these emblems until they become significant to us, in order to see that, instead of being antiquated and effete, they are throbbing with life, and fit as close to the needs of to-day as ever they did. They came with a special message, no doubt, to these men to whom this letter was first addressed, who were by descent and habit Hebrews, and saturated with the law. But their message is quite as much to you and me; and I desire now simply to bring out the large and permanent meanings which lie beneath them.
See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh: for if they escaped not who refused Him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven.'--Heb. 12:25.
THE writer has finished his great contrast of Judaism and Christianity as typified by the mounts Sinai and Zion. But the scene at the former still haunts his imagination and shapes this solemn warning. The multitude gathered there had shrunk from the divine voice, and entreated that it might not be spoken to them any more.' So may we do, standing before the better mount of a better revelation. The parallel between the two congregations at the two mountains is still more obvious if we remark that the word translated in my text refuse' is the same as has just been employed in a previous verse, describing the conduct of the Israelites, where it is rendered' entreated.' It may seem strange that after so joyous and triumphant an enumeration of the glorious persons and things with whom we are brought into contact by faith, there should come the jarring note of solemn warning which seems to bring back the terrors of the ancient law. But, alas! the glories and blessedness into which faith introduces us are no guarantees against its decay; and they who are come unto Mount Zion and the city of the living God,' may turn their backs upon all the splendour, and wander away into the gaunt desert.
He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. 6. So that we may boldly say. The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.'--Heb. 13:5-6.
HE hath said'; we may, say.' So, then, here are two voices; or, rather, a voice and an echo--God's voice of promises, and man's answering voice of confidence. God speaks to us that we may speak to Him; and when He speaks His promises, the only fitting answer is to accept them as true in all their fulness and individual application, and to build on them a fixed confidence.
The writer quotes two passages as from the Old Testament. The first of them is not found verbatim anywhere there; the nearest approach to it, and obviously the source of the quotation, occurs in a connection that is worth noting. When Moses was handing over the charge of his people to his successor, Joshua, he said first to the people and then to Joshua, Be strong and of good courage … He will not fail thee, neither forsake thee.' The writer of the Epistle falls back upon these words with a slight alteration, and turns He' into I,' simply because he recognised that when Moses spoke, God was speaking through him, and countersigning with His own seal the promise which His servant made in His name. The other passage comes from Psalm. 118. So, then, let us listen to the divine voice and the human answer.
Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.' Heb. 13:8.
How far back does this yesterday' go? The limit must be found by observing that it is Jesus Christ' who is spoken of--that is to say, the Incarnate Saviour. That observation disposes of the reference of these words to the past eternity in which the eternal Word of God was what He is to-day. "The sameness that is referred to here is neither the sameness of the divine Son from all eternity, nor the sameness of the medium of revelation in both the old and the new dispensations, but the sameness of the human Christ to all generations of His followers. And the epoch referred to in the yesterday' is defined more closely if we observe the previous context, which speaks of the dying teachers who have had the rule and have passed away. The' yesterday' is the period of these departed teachers; the to-day' is the period of the writer and his readers.
But whilst the words of my text are thus narrowly limited, the attribute, which is predicated of Christ in them, is something more than belongs to manhood, and requires for its foundation the assumption of His deity. He is the unchanging Jesus because He is the divine Son. The text resumes at the end of the Epistle, the solemn words of the first chapter, which referred the declaration of the Psalmist to the Son '--Thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.' That Son, changeless and eternal by divine immutability, is Jesus Christ, the incarnate Redeemer.
This text may well be taken as our motto in looking forward, as I suppose we are all of us more or less doing, and trying to forecast the dim outlines of the coming events of this New Year. Whatever may happen, let us hold fast by that confidence,' Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.'
It is a good thing that the heart be established with grace.'--Heb. 13:9.
THIS saying immediately follows the exhortation with which it is contrasted: Be not carried away with divers and strange doctrines.' Now, it is quite clear that the unsettlement and moving past some fixed point which are suggested in the word carried away' are contrasted with the fixedness which is implied in the main word of our text. They who are established, rooted and grounded,' are not apt to be swept away by the blasts of divers and strange doctrines.' But there is another contrast besides this, and that is the one which exists between doctrines and grace; and there is a still further subsequent contrast in the words that follow my text,' It is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats.
Now I need not trouble you with the question as to what was the original reference of either of these two expressions, doctrines' and meats,' or whether they both point to some one form of teaching. What I rather want to emphasise here, in a sentence, is how, in these three principal words of three successive clauses, we get three aspects of the religious life--two of them spurious and partial, one of them sufficing and complete--teachings'; grace'; meats.' Turned into modern English, the writer's meaning is that the merely intellectual religion, which is always occupied with propositions instead of with Jesus Christ, Who is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever,' is worthless, and the merely ceremonial religion, which is always occupied with casuistries about questions of meats, or external observance of any sort, is as valueless. There is no fixity; there is no rest of soul, no steadfastness of character to be found in either of these two directions. The only thing that ballasts and fills and calms the heart is what the writer here calls grace,' that is to say, the living personal experience of the love of God bestowed upon me and dwelling in my heart. You may have doctrines chattered to all eternity, and you may be so occupied about the externals of religion as that you never come near its centre, and its centre is that great thing which is here called grace,' which alone has power to establish the man's heart.
So, then, the main theme of these words is the possible stability of a fluctuating human life, the means of securing it, and the glory and beauty of the character which has secured it. Let us turn to these thoughts for a moment.
We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle. 15. By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually.' --Heb. 12:10, 15.
WE have an altar.' There is a certain militant emphasis on the words in the original, as if they were an assertion of something that had been denied. Who the deniers are is plain enough. They were the adherents of Judaism, who naturally found Christianity a strange contrast to their worship, of which altar and sacrifice were prominent features.
Just as to heathen nations the ritual of Judaism, its empty shrine, and temple without a God, were a puzzle and a scoff, so to heathen and Jew, the bare, starved worship of the Church, without temple, priest, sacrifice, or altar, was a mystery and a puzzle.
The writer of this letter in these words, then, in accordance with the central theme of his whole Epistle, insists that Christianity has more truly than heathenism or Judaism, altar and sacrifice.
And he is not content with alleging its possession of the reality of the altar, but he goes further, insists upon the superiority, even in that respect, of the Christian system.
He points to the fact that the great sin-offering of the Jewish ritual was not partaken of by the offerers, but consumed by fire without the camp, and he implies, in the earlier words of my text, that the Christian sacrifice differs from, and is superior to, the Jewish in this particular, that on it the worshippers feasted and fed.
Then, in the last words of my text, he touches upon another point of superiority--viz., that all Christian men are priests of this altar, and have to offer upon it sacrifices of thanksgiving.
And so he exalts the purely spiritual worship of Christianity as not only possessed of all which the gorgeous rituals round about it presented, but as being high above them even in regard to that which seemed their special prerogative. So, then, we have three things here--our Christian altar; our Christian feast on the sacrifice; and our Christian sacrifices on the altar. Let us regard these successively.
Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach. 14. For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.'--Heb. 13:13-14.
CALVARY was outside Jerusalem. That wholly accidental and trivial circumstance is laid hold of in the context, in order to give picturesque force to the main contention and purpose of this Epistle. One of the solemn parts of the ritual of Judaism was the great Day of Atonement, on which the sacrifice that took away the sins of the nation was borne outside the camp, and consumed by fire, instead of being partaken of by the priests, as were most of the other sacrifices. Our writer here sees in these two roughly parallel things, not an argument but an imaginative illustration of great truths. Though he does not mean to say that the death on Calvary was intended to be pointed to by the unique arrangement in question, he does mean to say that the coincidence of the two things helps us to grasp two great truths--one, that Jesus Christ really did what that old sacrifice expressed the need for having done, and the other that, in His death on Calvary, the Jewish nation, as one of the parables has it, cast Him out of the vineyard.' In the context, he urges this analogy between the two things.
But a Christ outside the camp beckons His disciples to His side. If any man serve Him, he has to follow Him, and the blessedness, as well as the duty, of the servant on earth, as well as in heaven, is to be where his Master is. So the writer finds here a picturesque way to enforce the great lesson of his treatise, namely, that the Jewish adherent to Christianity must break with Judaism. In the early stages, it was possible to combine faith in Christ and adherence to the Temple and its ritual. But now that by process of time and experience the Church has learnt better who and what Christ is, that which was in part has to be done away, and the Christian Church is to stand clear of the Jewish synagogue.
Now it is to be distinctly understood that the words of my text, in the writer's intention, are not a general principle or exhortation, but that they are a special commandment to a certain class under special circumstances, and when we use them, as I am going to do now, for a wider purpose, we must remember that that wider purpose was by no means in the writer's mind. What he was thinking about was simply the relation between the Jewish Christian and the Jewish community. But if we take them as we may legitimately do--only remembering that we are diverting them from their original intention--as carrying more general lessons for us, what they seem to teach is that faithful discipleship involves detachment from the world. This commandment, Let us go forth unto Him without the camp,' stands, if you will notice, between two reasons for it, which buttress it up, as it were, on either side. Before it is enunciated, the writer has been pointing, as I have tried to show, to the thought that a Christ without the camp necessarily involves disciples without the camp. And he follows it with another reason,' here we have no continuing city, but we seek that which is to come.' Here, then, is a general principle, supported on either side by a great reason.
Let me first try to set before you,
By Him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name. 16. But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.'--Heb. 13:15-16.
MUCH attention is given now to the study of comparative religion. The beliefs and observances of the rudest tribes are narrowly serutinised, in order to discover the underlying ideas. And many a practice which seems to be trivial, absurd, or sanguinary is found to have its foundation in some noble and profound thought. Charity and insight have both gained by the study.
But, singularly enough, the very people who are so interested in the rationale of the rites of savages will turn away when anybody applies a similar process to the ritual of the Jews. That is what this Epistle to the Hebrews does. It translates altar, ritual festivals, priests, into thoughts; and it declares that Jesus Christ is the only adequate and abiding embodiment of these thoughts. We are not dressing Christian truth in a foreign garb when we express the substance of its revelation in language borrowed from the ritualistic system that preceded it. But we are extricating truths, which the world needs to-day as much as ever it did, from the form in which they were embodied for one stage of religion, when we translate them into their Christian equivalents.
So the writer here has been speaking about Christ as by His death sanctifying His people. And on that great thought, that He is what all priesthood symbolises, and what all bloody sacrifices reach out towards, he builds this grand exhortation of my text, which is at once a lofty conception of what the Christian life ought to be, and a directory as to the method by which it may become so. By Him let us offer sacrifices continually, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.'
Now, it seems to me that there are here mainly three points to be looked at. First, the basis of; second, the material of; and third, the divine delight in, the sacrifices of the Christian life. And to these three points I ask your attention.
The God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that groat Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant.'--Heb. 13:20.
A GREAT building needs a deep foundation; a leaping fountain needs a full spring. A very large and lofty prayer follows the words of my text, and these are the foundations on which it rests, the abundant source from which it soars heavenward. The writer asks for his readers nothing less than a complete, all-round, and thorough-going conformity to the will of God; and that should be our deepest desire and our conscious aim, that God may see His own image in us, for nothing less can be well-pleasing in His sight.' But does not such a dream of what we may be seem far too audacious, when we pursue the stained volume of our own lives, and remember what we are? Should we not be content with very much more modest hopes for ourselves, and with a vary partial attainment of them? Yes, if we look at ourselves; but to look at ourselves is not the way to pray, or the way to hope, or the way to grow, or the way to dare. The logic of Christian petitions and Christian expectations starts with God as the premiss, and thence argues the possibility of the impossible. It was because of all this great accumulation of truths, piled up in my text, that the writer found it in his heart to ask such great things for the humble people to whom he was writing, although he well knew that they were far from perfect, and were even in danger of making shipwreck of the faith altogether. My purpose now is to let him lead us along the great array of reasons for his great prayer, that we too may learn to desire and to expect, and to work for nothing short of this alto--the entire purging of ourselves from all evil and sin and the complete assimilation to our Lord. There are three points here: the warrant for our highest expectations in the name of God; the warrant for our highest expectations in the risen Shepherd; the warrant for our highest expectations in the everlasting covenant.
Make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ.'--Heb. 13:21.
MASSIVE foundations prognosticate a great building. We do not dig deep, and lay large blocks, in order to rear some flimsy structure. We have seen, in a previous sermon, how the words preceding my text bring out certain great aspects of the divine character and work, and now we have to turn to the great prayer which is based upon these. It is a prophecy as well as a prayer; for such a contemplation of what God is and does makes certain the fulfilment of the desires which the contemplation excites. Small petitions to a great God are insults. He is the God of peace,' therefore we may ask Him to make us perfect,' and be sure that He will. He is the God' that brought again from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep,' therefore we may ask Him and be sure. He is the God who has sealed an everlasting covenant' with us by the blood of the Shepherd, therefore we may ask Him and be sure.
This prayer is the parting highest wish of the writer for his friends. Do our desires for ourselves, and for those whom we would seek to bless, run in the same mould? How strange it is that Christian people, who believe in the God whom the previous verse sets before us, so imperfectly and languidly cherish the confidence which inspires desires, for themselves and their brethren, such as those of our text this morning! Let us look at these great petitions, then, in the light of the great name on which they are based.
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