The Holiest of All - Bible Study for Christians seeking maturity in the faith

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 21
Hebrews 3:6 — IF WE HOLD FAST OUR BOLDNESS TO THE END

” ⁶ … whose house are we, If we hold fast our boldness and the glorying of our hope firm unto the end.” (Hebrews 3:6)

Among the Hebrews there were not a few who had gone back and were in danger of falling away. They had given way to sloth, and had lost the joy and confidence of their first faith. The writer is about (Hebrews 3:7-4:13) to sound a note of solemn warning, to call them to beware of that evil heart of unbelief, which departs from the living God. As the transition he writes, making the words as it were the text for what follows, ”Whose house we are, if we hold fast our boldness, and the glorying of our hope firm to the end.”

Holding fast firm to the end. Steadfastness, perseverance, this is indeed the great need of the Christian life. There is no question that exercises the earnest minister of the gospel in our days, as in early times, more deeply than what may be the reason that so many converts grow cold and fall away, and what can be done that we may have Christians who can stand and conquer. How often does it not happen, both after times of revival and special effort, and also in the ordinary work of the Church, that those who for a time ran well, got so entangled in the business or the pleasure of life, the literature, or the politics, or the friendships of the world, that all the life and the power of their profession is lost. They lack steadfastness; they miss the crowning grace of perseverance.

The words of our text teach us what the cause of backsliding is, and whence the want of power to stand comes, even in those who strive after it. They show us at the same time what the secret is of restoration, as well as of strength to endure unto the end. “Whose house we are,” he says, “If we hold fast our boldness and the glorying of our hope firm to the end.” Or, as it is expressed a few verses further on: “If we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end” (Hebrews 3:14.) A boldness and confidence that make us abound in hope, that make us glory in hope of the glory of God, and glory in tribulation too,—this it is that makes us strong to resist and overcome. Nothing can make us conquerors but the bold and joyful spirit that day by day glories in the hope of what God will do.

It is in this that so many fail. When first they found peace they learnt that they were saved by faith. They understood that pardon and acceptance and peace and life all come by faith alone. But they did not understand that we can only stand by faith; that we must always walk by faith; that ever and increasingly we must live by faith; and that every day and every hour nothing can help us but a clear, definite, habitual faith in God's power and working, as the only possibility of growth and progress. They sought to hold fast the light and blessing and the joy they had found; they knew not that it was their boldness of faith, the glorying of their hope, the beginning of their confidence— that it was this they needed to hold fast firm to the end. And even when they learnt something of the need of faith and hope, they did not know how indispensable the boldness of faith and the glorying of hope were. No one can conquer without the spirit of a conqueror. The powers of sin and Satan, of the world and the flesh, are so great, only he who is bold and glories in his hope upon what God will do will have strength to resist them. And he only can be bold to face the enemy who has learnt to be bold with God, and to glory in Him. It is when faith becomes a joy, and hope is a glorying in God, that we can be more than conquerors.
The lesson is one of the most important the Christian has to learn. We shall see later on how our whole Epistle has been written to teach us that boldness is the only root of steadfastness and perseverance, and therefore the true strength of the Christian life; and how, too, its one object is to show what abundant ground for the boldness we have in the work and person and glory of our Lord Jesus.

”Whose house we are, if we hold fast our boldness and the glorying of our hope firm unto the end.” Would you know the blessedness of all it means, Whose house we are, Christ as a Son is faithful in His house, see here the open gate. In spite of all the enemies that surround you, yield yourself boldly to Jesus Christ as His—your heart a home for Him to dwell in. Glory in the hope of all that He has promised to perfect in you. “Hold fast the beginning of your confidence firm to the end.” Was not that beginning this— that you confessed yourself to be nothing and Christ to be all? Did you not just cast yourself on His mighty saving power? Hold fast this beginning with the greatest confidence. He will each moment guard and keep His house, and maintain His work within it. Claim boldly and expect confidently that Christ the Son will be faithful over His house as Moses the servant was over his. And when the difficulty arises : the way to maintain this boldness and glorying of hope is always the same. Just remember the answer the epistle gives, “Consider Jesus, who was faithful.” Yes, just consider Jesus! How faithful, even unto death, He was to God in all that He had given Him to do for us. Let that be to us the assurance that He, who is still the same Lord, will be no less faithful in all the blessed work He can now do in us, if we hold fast our boldness and the glorying of our hope firm to the end.

Chapter Notes:

1. Faith is the mother of hope. How often a daughter can be a help and a strength to her mother. So, as our hope reaches out to the future and glories in it, our faith will grow into the boldness that can conquer all.

2. Hold fast together what this passage has joined: the faithfulness of Jesus and the boldness or confidence of our faith. His faithfulness is our security.

3. “The glorying of our hope.” Joy is not a luxury or a mere accessory in the Christian life. It is the sign that we are really living in God's wonderful love, and that that love satisfies us. "The God of hope fill you with all joy in believing, that ye may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost." (Romans 15:13)

4. Christ is faithful as a Son over His house: how confidently l may trust Him to keep charge and rule in it!

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 22
Hebrews 3:7-11 — ON HEARING THE VOICE OF GOD

” ⁷Wherefore, even as the Holy Ghost saith, ‘To-day, if ye shall hear his voice, ⁸ Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, like as in the day of temptation in the wilderness, ⁹ wherewith your fathers tempted me by proving me, and saw my works forty years. ¹⁰ Wherefore I was displeased with this generation, and said, They do always err in their heart: but they did not know my ways; ¹¹ as I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.'” (Hebrews 3:7-11)

The writer has such a deep impression of the low and dangerous state into which the Hebrews had sunk, that, having mentioned the name of Moses, he makes a long digression to warn them against being like their fathers and hardening themselves against Him who is so much more than Moses. From Psalm 95 he quotes what God says of Israel in the wilderness, hardening its heart against Him, so that He sware that they should not enter into His rest. The words of the quotation first point us to what is the great privilege of God's people; they hear His voice; then, to their great danger, hardening the heart against that voice. Not to the unbelieving Jews, but to the Christian Hebrews are these words of warning directed. Christians in our day have no less need of them. Let us take more abundant heed to the word: “Wherefore, even as the Holy Ghost saith, ‘To-day, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.’”

When God spake to Israel, the first thing he asked of them was a heart that did not harden itself, but that in meekness and gentleness, in tenderness and docility turned itself to listen to His voice. How much more may He claim this, now that He speaks to us in His Son. As the soil must be broken up by the plough and softened by the rain, so a broken, tender spirit is the first requisite for receiving blessing from God's word, or being in truth made partakers of God's grace. As we read in Isaiah, "To this man will l look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite heart, and trembleth at My word" (Isaiah 66:2). When this disposition exists, and the thirsty heart truly waits for divine teaching, and the circumcised ear opens to receive it, God's voice will bring real life and blessing, and be the power of living fellowship with Himself. Where it is wanting, the word remains unfruitful, and we go backward, however much head and mouth be filled with Bible truth. ”Wherefore, even as the Holy Ghost saith, ‘If ye hear His voice, harden not your hearts’.”

iI is not difficult to say what it is that hardens the hearts. The seed sown by the wayside could not enter the soil, because it had been trodden down by the passers-by. When the world, with its business and its interests, has at all times a free passage, the heart loses its tenderness. When we trust too much to the intellect in religion, and very great care is not taken to take each word as from God into the heart, into its life and love, the heart gets closed to the living voice of God. The mind is satisfied with beautiful thoughts and pleasant feelings ; but the heart does not hear God. When we are secretly content with our religion, our sound doctrine and Christian life, unconsciously but surely the heart gets hardened. When our life does not seek to keep pace with our knowledge, and we have more pleasure in hearing and knowing than obeying and doing, we utterly lose the meekness to which the promise is given, and, amidst all the pleasing forms of godliness, the heart is too hard to discern the voice of the Spirit. More than all, when unbelief, that walks by sight, and looks at itself and all around in the light of this world, is allowed to have its way, and the soul does not seek in childlike faith to live in the invisible, as revealed in the word, the heart gets so hardened that God's word never enters. Yes, it is an unspeakably solemn thought, that with a mind occupied with religious truth, and feelings stirred at times by the voice and words of men, and a life apparently given to religious works, the heart may be closed to the humble, direct intercourse with God, and a stranger to all the blessing the living word can bring. “Wherefore, even as the Holy Ghost saith, ‘If ye hear His voice, harden not your heart.’”

Let all who would seek the blessing to be found in this Epistle, beware of studying it simply as an inspired treatise on divine things. Let it be to us a personal message, the voice of God speaking to us in His Son. Let us, under a sense of the spiritual mystery there is in all divine truth, and the impotence of the human mind rightly to apprehend spiritual things, open our heart in great meekness and docility to wait on God. The whole of religion, and the whole of salvation, consists in the state of the heart. God can do nothing for us, in the way of imparting the blessings of redemption, but as He does it in the heart. Our knowledge of the words of God will profit nothing but as the heart is opened to receive Himself to fulfill His words in us. Let our first care be, a meek and lowly heart, that waits on Him. God speaks, in His Son, to the heart, and in the heart. It is in the heart that the voice and the Son of God must be received. The voice and the word have weight according as we esteem the speaker. As we realize the glory and the majesty of God, His holiness and perfection, His love and tenderness, we shall be ready to sacrifice everything to hear what He speaks, and receive what He gives. We shall bid all the world around us, all the world within us, be silent that we may hear aright the voice of the divine Being speaking to us in the Son of His love.

Chapter Notes:

1. Salvation will be found in these two things—God speaking to me in His Son, and my heart opening to hear His voice. It is not only in order to salvation, as a means to an end that is something different and higher, that He speaks. No, His speaking gives and is salvation, the revelation of Himself to my soul. Let the work of my life be to hearken with a meek and tender spirit.

2. The Lord opened the heart of Lydia to give heed to the things which were spoken. This is what we need. God Himself will draw our heart away from all else, and open it to take heed. Let us ask this very earnestly.

3. Nothing so effectually hinders hearing God's voice as opening the heart too much to other voices. A heart too deeply interested in the news, the literature, the society of this world, cannot hear the divine voice. It needs stillness, retirement, concentration, to give God the heed He claims.

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 23
Hebrews 3:7 — EVEN AS THE HOLY GHOST SAITH

” ⁷ Wherefore, even as the Holy Ghost saith, ‘To-day, if ye shall hear his voice.” (Hebrews 3:7)

In quoting the words of the 95th Psalm the writer uses the expression, “as the Holy Ghost saith.” He regards that Psalm as simply the language of the Holy Spirit. He looks upon the Scriptures as truly inspired by God, God-breathed, because men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21). He regards them as the very voice of God, and attaches to the words all the weight of divine authority, and all the fullness of meaning they have in the divine mind. lt is on this ground that he sees in them a deeper meaning than we would have looked for, and teaches us to find in the words, “enter into my rest” (Hebrews 3:11), the revelation of a deep spiritual mystery and a prophecy of what Christ should bring. As it was the Holy Spirit who of old first gave the word, so it was the same Spirit who taught the apostle to set forth to us its spiritual meaning and lessons, as we have them in the fourth chapter. And even now it is that same spirit alone who can reveal the truth spiritually within us, and make it life and power in our experience. Let us wait on Him as we meditate on these words, “as the Holy Ghost saith.” The words of the Holy Ghost need the Holy Ghost as their interpreter. And the Holy Ghost interprets only to those in whom He dwells and rules.

In the opening words of the Epistle we were told that it was the same God, who had spoken to the fathers in the prophets, who has now spoken to us in His Son. The inferiority of the Old Testament did not consist in this that the words were less the words of God than in the New. They are equally the words of the Holy Spirit. But the superior excellence of the new dispensation lies in this that, in virtue of the mighty redemption wrought out by Christ, taking away the veil between God and us, and the veil from our eyes and heart (see Hebrews 10: 20, Isaiah 25:7; 2 Corinthians 3:16), the word can enter more fully into us with its life-giving power. The Son of God, as the living Word, dwelling in us through the Holy Spirit, brings the truth and the power of the word as a divine reality into our living experience. The Old Testament was as the bud; in the New the bud has opened and the flower is seen. “As the Holy Ghost saith.” This word assures us that the Holy Spirit will Himself unfold in the New what He had hidden in the words of the Old.

This brings us to a lesson of the very deepest importance in our spiritual life: that what the Holy Ghost hath spoken, He alone can make plain. He uses human words and thoughts, and, as regarded from the human side, human reason can understand and expound them. But even in one who may be a true Christian, this does not bring him farther than the Old Testament, the preliminary stage: "The prophets sought and searched diligently what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did point unto" (1 Peter 1:10-11). Beyond this, to the real possession and experience of the redemption they proclaimed, they did not come. It was only when Christ was glorified, and the Spirit was given as an indwelling fountain of light and life, that the divine meaning and power could be known. And so it is with ourselves; to understand the words of the Holy Spirit I must have yielded myself to be led by the Spirit, I must be living in the Spirit. It is only one who knows Hebrew who can expound a Hebrew writing; it is only the Spirit of God who knows the mind of God and can reveal it to us. Take, for instance, what is said of entering into the rest of God, anyone who will take trouble, and study it carefully, will be able to form some conception of what it means. But truly to know the rest of God, to enter into it, to enjoy it in living power,—none but the Holy Spirit can teach us this.

”Wherefore, even as the Holy Ghost saith, To-day if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your heart.” Here is the first lesson the Holy Spirit teacheth. He calls us not to harden or close the heart, but to hearken to the voice of God there; the Holy Spirit cannot possibly lead us into the power and the blessing of God's word unless with our whole heart we hearken to the voice. The Holy Spirit can teach in no way but in a heart that is given up to hearken and obey. When the Son came into the world he spake : “Lo, I am come to do Thy will, O God” (Hebrews 10:7). The proof of the Spirit's presence in Him, the sacrifice in the power of the Eternal Spirit, the way to the outpouring of the Spirit, was that of hearkening and obedience. The first message of the Holy Spirit, and the condition of all further teaching is ever, ”If ye will hear His voice, harden not your heart” (Psalm 95:7-8 KJV). God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our heart; God asks us to yield our whole heart to His leading; it is as the indwelling Spirit that He will call us and fit us to listen to God's voice.

We are commencing the study of an Epistle of which the keynote is, God speaks to us now in His Son. The wonderful truths of the heavenly priesthood of our Lord Jesus, and of our access into the Holiest of All by the blood, to dwell and worship there, and there in God's presence to be made partaker of the full union with Christ, are to be unfolded. Let us seek a deeper sense of the need, and also the certainty, of the teaching of the Spirit within us: Let us pray "that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give [us] a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him" (Ephesians 1:17). Let us hear God's voice in meekness and tenderness of heart. Let us in deep humility yield ourselves to the Spirit's guidance. We can count upon it that the same Spirit who first of old inspired the words of the Psalm, who then in this Epistle revealed their fullness of meaning, will reveal to us in power all the light and truth they are meant to bring into the believing heart.

Chapter Notes:

1. God speaking to us in His word, and in His Son, is all by the Holy Spirit. Everything depends upon our right relation to the Spirit. Let the word be as a seed in which the life of God dwells. Let us receive the word, in the faith that the Holy Spirit will open it, and make it work mightily, in us who believe.

2. And as we wait on the Spirit to open the word, we shall through the word be led to and receive the spirit of heaven, as the divine seal of our faith in the word.

3. So shall we learn to speak the word in the power of the Spirit. The disciples, however much they knew of Jesus through His intercourse and teaching, and as the witnesses of His death and resurrection, were not allowed to go and preach Him, until they received the Spirit from on high. The Spirit-breathed word, the Spirit-opened word, must also be a Spirit-spoken word; we, too, must speak out of a living communication of the Spirit from the throne of the glorified Christ. From beginning to end, everything connected with God's word must be in the power of the Holy Spirit.

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 24
Hebrews 3:7 — TODAY

” ⁷Wherefore, even as the Holy Ghost saith, ‘To-day, if ye shall hear his voice.” (Hebrews 3:7)

These words are generally applied to the unconverted; the Psalm in which they occur, and the context in which they stand in this Epistle, both prove that they are meant for God's people. In all the dealings of the Holy Ghost with believers, be they weak and erring, or strong and glad, His great word to them is, “To-day.”

“The Holy Ghost saith, ‘To-day.’” What does this mean? God is the Eternal One. With Him there is no yesterday or to-morrow; what we call past and future are with Him an ever-present Now; His life is an ever-blessed, never-ending “to-day.” One of the great words of this Epistle in regard to Christ and His salvation is the word eternal, or forever. He has become the Author of eternal salvation—that is, a salvation which bears the character of eternity; its chief mark is that it is an ever-present now, that there is not a moment in which Christ, who ever lives to pray for us, is not able to maintain us in it, in the power of an endless life.
Man is the creature of a moment; the past has gone from him, and over the future he has no control; it is only the present moment that is his. Therefore it is that, when he is made partaker of Christ, a High Priest for ever, and the eternal salvation He imparts, God's great word to him is “To-day.” In Christ all the blessedness of the great eternity is gathered up in an ever-present Now: the one need of the believer is to know it, to respond to it, and to meet the “To-day, the Now, my child!” of God's grace with the ”To-day, the Even now, my Father!” of his faith.

If you would understand the meaning of this divine ”to-day”, look at it in its wondrous setting. “Wherefore, even as the Holy Ghost saith, ‘To-day.” Satan's word is ever tomorrow. Man's favorite word, too, is tomorrow. Even with the child of God the word of unbelief is too often “tomorrow”. God's demand is too great for to-day; God's promise too high; we hope it will come easier later on. “The Holy Ghost saith, ‘To-day.’” That means that He who is the mighty power of God is Himself ready to work in us all that God wills and asks; it is He who is each moment pleading for immediate surrender, for a present trust, because He bears with Him the power of a present salvation.

“Today!” it is a word of wonderful promise. It tells that “today”, this very moment, the wondrous love of God is for thee—it is even now waiting to be poured out into thy heart; that “today”, all that Christ has done, and is now doing in heaven, and is able to do within thee—this very day, it is within thy reach. To-day the Holy Ghost, in whom there is the power to know and claim and enjoy all that the Father and the Son are waiting to bestow, to-day the Holy Ghost is within thee, sufficient for every need, equal to every emergency. With every call we find in our Bible to full and entire surrender; with every promise we read of grace for the supply of temporal and spiritual need; with every prayer we breathe, and every longing that rules in our heart, there is the Spirit of promise whispering, To-day. “Even as the Holy Ghost saith, ‘To-day.’”

“Today!” it is a word of solemn command. It is not here a question of some higher privilege which you are free to accept or reject. It is not left to your choice, O believer, whether you will receive the fullness of blessing the Holy Spirit offers. The “To-day” of the Holy Ghost brings you under the most solemn obligation to respond to God's call, and to say, “Yes, To-day, Lord, complete and immediate submission to all Thy will; To-day, the surrender of a present and a perfect trust in all Thy grace. ‘Even as the Holy Ghost saith, To-day.’”

“Today!” a word, too, of earnest warning. “Wherefore, even as the Holy Ghost saith, ‘To-day, if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts …They shall not enter into My rest.’”

There is nothing so hardening as delay. When God speaks to us, He asks for a tender heart, open to the whispers of His voice of love. The believer who answers the “To-day” of the Holy Spirit with the “tomorrow” of some more convenient season, knows not how he is hardening his heart; the delay, instead of making the surrender and. obedience and faith easy, makes it more difficult. It closes the heart for to-day against the Comforter, and cuts off all hope and power of growth. O believer, “Even as the Holy Ghost saith, ‘To-day’”, when you hear His voice, open the heart in great tenderness to listen and obey; obedience to the Spirit's today is your only certainty of power and of blessing.

To all Christians whose life has been one of feebleness and of failure, who have not yet entered into the rest of faith, into God's own rest, this word, today is the key to all their disappointments and to all their failures. You waited for strength, to make obedience easier; for feeling, to make the sacrifice less painful. You did not listen to the voice of God breathing through every word. He speaks that wondrous note, even through the living word, Jesus Christ, that wondrous note of hope, “To-day”. You thought it meant for the sinner a call to immediate repentance; you did not know that it means for the believer, each time he hears the voice, immediate, wholehearted submission to all God says, as well as immediate trustful acceptance of all He gives. And yet just this is what it does mean.

In the Epistle to the Hebrews we have a very wonderful exhibition of what Christ, as a High Priest at the right hand of God, can do for us in the power of an endless life. The entering into the rest of God, the perfect cleansing of the conscience in the blood through which He entered into the presence of God, our access within the veil into the presence of God, the being brought close to the very heart of God, the being taken up and kept in Christ in the love of God,—these blessings are all ours. And over each of them is written the words, “Now is the accepted time” (2 Corinthians 6:2 KJV). “Even as the Holy Ghost saith, ‘To-day.’”

Chapter Notes:

1. Brother, let you and me bow in great stillness before God to hear this wonderful message: the Holy Spirit whispering, “To-day, to-day.” Let our whole heart open up to take it in. Let all fear and unbelief pass away as we remember: it is the Holy Spirit Himself, the giver of strength, the dispenser of grace, the revealer of Jesus—who says “To-day.”

2. Let our faith simply listen to God's voice, until it rings through our soul day by day, and all the day. We shall take God's word “To-day,” and make it our own. We shall meet this wonderful “To-day” of God's love with the confident “To-day” of our faith. And it will become to us a foretaste of that eternal “To-day” in which He dwells.

3. The Holy Spirit's “To-day”, accepted and lived in, will be within us the power of an endless life, the experience of an eternal salvation, as an ever-present, never-ceasing reality. "Even as the Holy Ghost saith, ‘To-day.’"

4. Just yesterday l heard a servant of God testify that at his conversion he was led to say, “l am going to do the will of God to-day, without thinking of to-morrow,” and he had found the unspeakable blessing of it. Let anyone begin to live a whole-hearted life, by the grace of God, for one day. For to-morrow will be as to-day, and still better.

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 25
Hebrews 3:12 — AN EVIL HEART OF UNBELIEF

” ¹² Take heed, brethren, lest haply there shall be In any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God.” (Hebrews 3:12)

The great practical aim of the Epistle is to call us to faith. It is with this view that it will show us what a sure ground we have for it in the word and oath of God, in the person and power of our heavenly High Priest. It will remind us how unbelief has been the cause of all falling away from God, and all failing of entrance into the enjoyment of His promise and His rest, as faith has in all ages been the one power in which God's saints have lived and worked. It has already spoken of "hold(ing) fast our boldness and the glorying of our hope firm to the end"(Hebrews 3:6); it here uses the word "believe" for the first time in the call to beware of “an evil heart of unbelief.”

“An evil heart of unbelief.”Think a moment of what the expression means. And note first the place the heart takes in religion. We have heard the, “Harden not your hearts” (verse 8). It is in the heart God speaks, and where He longs to give His blessing. On that there followed God's complaint, "They do always err in their heart; they did not know my ways” (verse 10). It is a heart that goes wrong that cannot know God's ways. And so here again, it is the evil heart that cannot believe, that falls away from the living God. Do let us, in our study of the Epistle and in our whole religious life, beware of rejoicing in beautiful thoughts and happy feelings, while the heart, with its desire and will and love, is not wholly given up to God. In our intercourse with God, everything depends on the heart. lt is with the heart man believeth and receiveth the salvation of God.

“An evil heart of unbelief.”. Many think and speak of unbelief as a frailty; they wish to believe, but do not feel able; their faith, they say, is too weak. And of course they have no sense of guilt or shame connected with it: not being able to do a thing is counted a sufficient excuse for not doing it .

God thinks differently. The Holy Ghost speaks of the “evil heart of unbelief.”. The heart is the organ God created in man for holding fellowship with Himself. Faith is its first natural function; by faith and love it lives in God. It is the ear that hears the voice of God, the eye that can ever see Him and the unseen world; the capacity for knowing and receiving all that God can communicate. It begins as trust in the word spoken; it grows into fellowship with the Person who speaks; its fruit is the reception of all God has to bestow. Sin turned the heart from the unseen to the seen, from God to self, and faith in God lost the place it was meant to have, and became a faith in the visible world and its good. And now unbelief, whether avowed and definite, or more secret and unconscious, is the great mark of the evil heart, the great proof of sin, the great cause of everlasting darkness and damnation. There is no warning the professing Christian Church needs to have sounded more loudly than this one to the Hebrews: “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief in falling away from the living God.”

“In falling away from the living God.” This is the terrible evil of unbelief; it incapacitates a man for holding fellowship with God as the living One. The expression, “the living God”, occurs four times in the Epistle. In the Old Testament it contrasted God with the dead idols, who could not hear or speak or help. Alas, how often professing Christians have, instead of a graven image, the more dangerous idol of a thought-image—a conception of the mind to which they bring their worship. “The living God”, speaking in His Son, hearing them when they speak, working out in them His mighty salvation—the living God who loves and is loved—Him they know not. With all their Christian profession and religious exercises there is “an evil heart of unbelief”, in falling away from the living God.

Let us take the warning. Ere we come to the deeper truth the Epistle has to teach us, let us learn well our first lesson: the one thing God looks to, the one thing we need to receive, the fulness of blessing our great High Priest has for us and waits to bestow, is a heart of faith—a true heart drawing nigh to God in fullness of faith (See Hebrews 10: 23).

“Take heed.” We ought to give more abundant heed—lest there be in any of us, even for a moment, “an evil heart of unbelief.” Let us cast out everything that can cause or can strengthen it, whether it be worldliness or formality, too little knowledge, or too much head-knowledge of God's word, too little looking to the state of our heart or too much occupation with self; let us take heed lest there be at any time in us “an evil heart of unbelief.” Let a tender heart, hearkening to His voice, listening to and trusting His word, ever be the sacrifice we bring Him.

“With the heart man believeth” (Romans 10:10), whether in God or the world. As our heart is, so is our faith, and so our life. Our enjoyment of Christ, our spiritual strength and fruitfulness, our nearness to God, and our experience of His working in us, all depend, not upon single, isolated acts of faith, but upon the state of the heart. Therefore God breathes into us the Spirit of faith, to keep our heart ever tender and open towards Him. Oh, let us above everything beware of “an evil heart of unbelief.”

And if we would know how true living faith is to be obtained and increased, note the connection. As unbelief falls away from the living God, so faith draws nigh to Him and is fed and nourished in His presence. Practice the presence of God in deep humility and stillness of heart. Thirst for God, the living God. "My soul, be thou silent unto God: for my expectation is from Him" (Psalm 62:5). He is the living God. He sees and hears and feels and loves. He speaks and gives and works, and reveals Himself. His presence wakens and strengthens and satisfies faith. Bow in lowly meditation and worship before the living God, and faith will waken up and grow into boldness and the glorying of hope. He is the living God, who makes alive and out of whom life comes into them who draw near to Him. Tarry in His presence—that, and nothing else—but that, most surely—will free thee from the “evil heart of unbelief.”

Chapter Notes:

1. “Unbelief in falling away from the living God.” Remember with holy fear the close connection between unbelief and departing from God. They act and react with each other.

2. The faithfulness of Jesus fills the heart with the fullness of faith. You remember the lesson? Here it is the same again: drawing nigh to the living God will fill the heart with living faith. And the Epistle is going to teach us how God draws nigh to us in Jesus and how, in Jesus, we draw nigh to God.

3. Never speak or think of unbelief as a weakness, but always as the sin of sins, the fruitful mother of all sin.

4. The living God in heaven, and the believing heart on earth: these are the two powers that meet and satisfy each other. Let your faith know of no other measure or limit than the living God. Let it be living faith in a living God.

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 26
Hebrews 3:13 — EXHORT ONE ANOTHER DAY BY DAY

” ¹³But exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called To-day; lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” (Hebrews 3:13)

In the previous verse we read, "Take heed, brethren, lest haply there be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God." That is, let each one not only look to himself, but let all look to it that there is not in any one of you the evil unbelieving heart. The Church is one body; the sickness of one member is a danger to the whole body. Each one must live to care for those around him. Each member is entrusted by Christ to the love and care of his brethren, and is dependent on their help. Believers who are joined together in one house— in a neighbourhood, in a church—are responsible for one another. They must take heed that there be not in anyone the unbelief that falls away from God. They are called to help and encourage each other so that all may at all times continue steadfast in the faith.

In our meditation on verse 6, we spoke of the painful fact that in so many cases the first boldness and joy of hope is not held fast firm to the end. Here is one cause. There is not the care and help for each other which the Lord intended. In caring only for ourselves, our brother not only suffers, but we lose much ourselves. The healthy life of the individual member is dependent on the life around him, and on the part he takes in maintaining that life. The warning has a deeper significance than we think: "Take heed lest there be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief."

It is this thought our text seeks to enforce: “But exhort one another day by day, lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Christians are bound to exhort one another; it is their duty and their right. It is implied in the whole constitution of the body of Christ, that the members care for one another. Its life is entirely dependent on the Spirit of Christ, who pleased not Himself, and that Spirit is a love that seeketh not its own, but has its very being in loving and blessing others. As each member humbly yields himself to be helped and to help, the safety and the vigour of all will be secured. The communion of saints in all our Church circles must be proved in the cultivation of a practical ministering love and care for each other.

“Exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called To-day.” We saw what solemn meaning there was in the Holy Spirit's call, ”To-day, if ye hear His voice.” We sought to apply that personally. Here we are taught that all the urgency that call implies must by each one of us be applied to our neighbour as well as to ourselves. We must think of the danger of delay, of the time when it will be no longer “To-day” for those around us, who are forgetting it, and exhort them “day by day.”

“To-day!” The work is urgent and must be done immediately. It may be difficult—but He who commands will enable. Our conscious unfitness must drive us to Him who can fill us with the love and the boldness, and the wisdom we need. “Day by day.” The work is slow, and must be done unceasingly, "so long as it is called To-day." The Spirit of Jesus can give us grace and patience and faith to persevere. "In due time we shall reap if we faint not."

“Day by day.” This word of the Holy Spirit is the complement of that other “To-day”. The “To-day” of the Holy Spirit must day by day be accepted and obeyed afresh. It is only as we are ready, every day without one exception, to live fully in the obedience to the voice of God and the faith of Jesus, that our life can grow. What has once—or for a time—been done, will not avail. “Day by day” our fellowship with Jesus, our consecration to Him, and our service for Him, must be renewed. So shall we in our care for others, as much as in our personal walk, hold fast our boldness firm to the end.

"Exhort one another, lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." We heard the warning, “Harden not your hearts” (verse 8). Here is its exposition, “Hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (verse 13). All sin is deceit, its promised pleasures are all a lie. But there are some sins that are open and unmistakable. There are others that are specially deceptive. Where the sanction of the Christian world, or the force of habit and custom, or the apparent insignificance of what we do, makes us think little of the sin, it has a terrible power to deceive the professing Christian. And through this deceitfulness of sin, be it worldliness, or unlovingness, or pride, or want of integrity, hearts are hardened, and become incapable of hearing the voice of God. What a call to all who are awake to their own danger to listen, "But exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called To-day; lest any one of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin."

Let me press upon everyone who would study this Epistle, the solemn obligation resting upon him to care for those around him—not only the outcast, but those with whom he is associated in church fellowship, very specially any who are in danger of being “hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.” The Christ unto whom we are to grow up in all things is the Christ "from whom all the body, fitly framed and knit together, through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in its measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love.” (Ephesians 4:16) Our connection with the head, the power of our growth unto Him in all things, must be maintained in our love to the members of His body around, however feeble or backward.

And if we would know where, the grace for this work is to be found, the answer is not far to seek. It is in Jesus Christ our Head and in His love shed abroad in our hearts. As in this Epistle we study the compassion of Jesus, as our High Priest and Leader, let us believe that He makes us partakers of His Spirit. He forms us in His own likeness, He leads us in His footsteps, He makes each of us what He was—a Priest with a priestly heart ready to live and die for those around us. Therefore, brethren, “exhort one another day by day.”

Chapter Notes:

1. This work is most difficult. But strength for it will come as for any other work. First of all, accept the command; get the heart filled with the sense of obligation; yield yourself to your Master in willing obedience, even though you see not the slightest prospect of doing it. Then wait on Him for His light and strength—for wisdom to know how to begin, for boldness to speak the truth in love. “Present yourself unto God as one alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness in His hands” (Romans 6:13). Let the fire within the heart be kept burning: the grace of obedience will not be withheld.

2. This Epistle is an exposition of the inner life, the life of faith. But with this, work is considered as a matter of course that needs no vindication. Let every Christian give himself to his Lord to watch over others: let all the fresh grace and the deeper knowledge of Jesus we seek be for the service of those around us. “Exhort one another daily.”

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 27
Hebrews 3:14-15— PARTAKERS OF CHRIST

“ ¹⁴ For we are become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end; while it is said, ¹⁵ To-day, if ye shall hear his voice, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.” (Hebrews 3:14-15)

In the second chapter the twofold oneness of our Lord Jesus and His believing people was set before us. On the divine side they are one, “For both He that sanctifieth, and they that are sanctified are all of one” (Hebrews 2:11). On the other, the human side, they are one, because He became man, and took our nature upon Him. “Since then the children are sharers of flesh and blood, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same” (Hebrews 2:14). There we have the same word as here. Just as truly as Christ became partaker “in flesh and blood”, we become “partakers of Christ” (Hebrews 3:14). In partaking with us of flesh and blood, Christ entered into perfect fellowship with us in all we were; our life and our death became His. When we become partakers of Christ, we enter into perfect fellowship with Him in all He was and is; His death and His life become ours.

We are become “partakers of Christ”! What a mystery! What a treasure! What a blessedness! The whole object of the Epistle is to show what there is in the Christ of whom we are become partakers, and what He can do for us. But here at the outset, amid needful words of remonstrance against giving way to sloth or unbelief, believers are reminded of what their portion and possession is: they are become “partakers of Christ”. There is often danger, as we listen to the teaching of Scripture about Christ as our High Priest, of regarding Him as an outward person, and His work as something that is done outwardly for us in heaven. This precious word reminds us that our salvation consists in the possession of Himself, in the being one life with Him, in having Himself as our own. Christ can do nothing for us but as an inward Saviour, Himself being our life as He personally dwells and works in us. As truly and fully as Christ, when He became partaker “of flesh and blood”, was entirely and eternally identified with man and His nature, so that He and it were inseparably united in one life, so surely, when we become “partakers of Christ”, do we become indissolubly identified with Him. Since Christ became partaker “of flesh and blood”, He is known, and will be to all eternity, even upon the throne, as the Son of Man. No less will we, when we truly become “partakers of Christ”, be known, even now and to all eternity, as one with Christ on the throne of glory. Oh, let us know ourselves as God knows us—as “partakers of Christ.”

It is the one thing God desires. When God set forth His only begotten Son as the only possible way of access to Himself, it meant that He can delight in or have fellowship with nothing in which the likeness of His Son is not to be seen. We can have no farther entrance into God's favour or good pleasure than He can see Christ in us. If God has called us to the fellowship of His Son, and made us participators of all there is in Christ, the sonship, and the love, and the Spirit of the Father, let us live worthy of our privilege—let us live as men who are—oh the riches of the grace!—are become “partakers of Christ!”

And how can we know in full assurance that it is so, and ever rejoice in the blessed consciousness of all it implies. Just as it was said before, where our blessed relation to Christ was set forth in another aspect, we are “His house … if we hold fast our boldness and the glorying of our hope firm unto the end,” so we have the answer here again: "We are become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end." The beginning of our confidence must be held fast. We must not, as many think, begin with faith, and continue with works. No, the confidence with which we began must be held fast firm to the end. We must see that when we are made “partakers of Christ”, that includes all, and that as at first, so all the way unto the end, we can receive out of Christ only by faith and according to our faith. Apart from faith receiving Christ's strength, our works avail not. God works nothing but through Christ, and it is as by faith we live in our riches in Christ that God can work into us all there is in Him for us. It is this faith through which God can work all our works for us and in us.

For “we are become”—note, not we shall become—we are become, “partakers of Christ, if we hold fast to the end.” Our perseverance will be the seal of our being partaker of Christ. The faith by which, at conversion, we know at once that we have Christ, grows clearer and brighter, and more mightily effectual in opening up the treasures of Christ, as we hold it fast firm unto the end. Persevering faith is the witness that we have Christ, because through it Christ exercises His keeping and perfecting power.

Believer! would you enjoy the full assurance and the full experience that you are a partaker of Christ? It is alone to be found each day in the living fellowship with Christ. Christ is a living person; He can be known and enjoyed only in a living personal communication. Christ is my Leader; l must cling to Him—l must follow Him—in His leading. Christ is my High Priest; l must let Him lift me into God's presence. Christ is the living Son of God, our life; l must live Him. l am His house; l can only know Him as Son in His house as I yield myself to His indwelling.

But all—and only—through faith, we are become “partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end.” Begin each day, meet each difficulty, with the renewal of the confidence you reposed in Jesus, when first you came to Him; with a brightness that shines unto the perfect day you will know what boundless blessing it is to be a partaker of Christ.

Chapter Notes:

1. When Christ became partaker of human nature, how entirely He identified Himself with it, that all could see and know it. l am become a partaker of Christ: let me be so identified with Him that my whole life may be marked by it. So may all see and know that l am partaker of Jesus Christ.

2. How did Christ become partaker of our nature? He left His own state of life, forsook all, and entered into our state of life. How do l become partaker of Christ? By coming out from my state of life, forsaking all, giving myself wholly to be possessed of Him and to live His life.

3. “If we hold fast the beginning.” Christ maintained His surrender to be Man firm to the end, even unto death. Let me maintain my surrender to Christ, live one life with Christ, at any cost.

4. Partaker of Christ—of His life. His dispositions as man, His meekness and lowliness of heart; partaker of a living Christ—who will live His life out in me.

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 28
Hebrews 3:16-19 — THE REST IN CANAAN

“ ¹⁶ For who, when they heard, did provoke? nay, did not all they that came out of Egypt by Moses? ¹⁷ And with whom was he displeased forty years? was it not with them that sinned, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness? ¹⁸ And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that were disobedient? ¹⁹ And we see that they were not able to enter in because of unbelief.” (Hebrews 3:16-19)

In the opening verses of the Epistle we saw that God has two dispensations, or ways of dealing with man, and that these find their counterpart in the Christian life. There are believers who always walk in the twilight and bondage of the Old Testament; there are others, who truly know the joy and the power of the New Testament, and have fellowship with God, not as through the prophets, but truly and directly in the Son Himself.

In the words we are now to meditate on, we have the same truth in another aspect. The writer had spoken of Christ as more than Moses. This gives him occasion to speak, in the tone of solemn warning, of the people of Israel who came out of Egypt. They did not all enter Canaan. There came a separation among those whom God had redeemed out of Egypt; some perished in the wilderness; others did indeed enter and possess the Promised Land. The cause of this failure to enter Canaan was, we are told, disobedience arising out of unbelief. When God commanded them to go up and possess the land, they gave way to fear. They believed not God's promise, and they were disobedient. Unbelief is ever the cause of disobedience; they could not enter in because of unbelief and disobedience.

The story has a deep spiritual significance, and teaches a lesson of great solemnity. In our chapter we have twice heard already that it is not enough to begin well; we must hold fast “unto the end” (Hebrews 3:6,14). Of the people of Israel we read— "By faith they kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, that the destroyer of the firstborn should not touch them. By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land: which the Egyptians assaying to do were swallowed up" (Hebrews 11:28-29). There was the initial faith to go up out of Egypt . But when they were tested to see if they would hold fast the beginning of their confidence firm unto the end, the great majority failed. Their faith was but for a time: they had faith to leave Egypt, but they had not faith to enter Canaan.

Among the Hebrews there were Christians who were in the same state. They had begun well, but had been hindered. Some were standing still; some had already turned back. And even so there are many Christians in our churches who never come farther than the initial faith of conversion. They say they know God has saved them from Egypt. They rest content with the thought of having been converted. There is no hearty desire, no earnest purpose to press on to a life of holiness, no readiness at any sacrifice to go up into the Promised Land of rest and of victory.

When Israel was about to enter the land of Canaan, Moses used the words : "And He brought us out from thence, that He might bring us in to give us the land which he sware unto our fathers" (Deuteronomy 6:23). It is to be feared that there are many Christians who put asunder what God hath joined together. They would gladly be brought out from the land of bondage; they are not ready to go all the length with God, to enter the land and conquer every enemy. They would gladly be made happy in being delivered from bondage; they long not to be made holy in a life of separation and service. To the voice that calls to enter into God's rest they hearken not, but harden their hearts instead.

It was not in Egypt—let us note this well—it was on the very borders of Canaan that the men God had begun to save hardened their hearts. It is among Christians who profess conversion, who have not only begun the Christian life, but even made some progress in it, that the hardening of the heart is now still found. The call to holiness, the call to cease from the life of wandering and murmuring, and enter into the rest of God, the call to the life of victory over every enemy and to the service of God in the land of promise, is not obeyed. They say it is too high and too hard. They do not believe with Caleb, "We are well able to possess the land” (Numbers 13:30); they fear the sacrifice and cling to the carnal life. In not hearkening to God's voice their heart is hardened. God has sworn, they shall not enter into His rest.

l cannot with too much earnestness urge every Christian reader to learn well the two stages of the Christian. There are the carnal, and there are the spiritual; there are those who remain babes, and those who are full-grown men. There are those who come up out of Egypt, but then remain in the wilderness of a worldly life; there are those who follow the Lord fully, and enter the life of rest and victory. Let each of us find out where we stand, and taking earnest heed to God's warnings, with our whole heart press on to go all the length in following Jesus, in seeking to stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.

What do all these warnings in our Epistle—specially dedicated to the unfolding of the heavenly life and power, the complete salvation of our great High Priest—mean? They mean this, that no teaching of what Christ is can profit, unless our hearts are longing and ready to follow Him fully. The Epistle will sum up all its teachings in its call to enter into the Holiest of All, into the rest of God. But it wants us to feel deeply that there can be no entering in, except in the path of faith and full obedience with a heart that is ready to forsake all its own will and to follow Him who bore the cross— a heart that will be content with nothing less than all that God is willing to give.

Chapter Notes:

1. “They were not able to enter in because of unbelief.” “Take heed, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief.” Everything depends upon faith. At each step in the teaching of our Epistle, let faith be exercised. Faith in the God who speaks to us; faith in the blessed Son, in the divine power and all-pervading nearness in which He works, in His true humanity, and the heavenly life He perfected for us and imparts from heaven; faith in the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, and is God's power working in us. Let faith be the habit of our soul, the every breath of our life.

2. “Because of unbelief.” Just what Jesus says: “Because of your unbelief”, in answer to our “Why?“ Let us cultivate the deep conviction that the root of all disobedience and failure, of all weakness and trouble in the spiritual life, is unbelief. Let us not think that there is some inexplicable mystery about our prayers not being heard; it is simply unbelief that will not trust God, will not yield itself wholly to God, will not allow God to do what He promises. God save us from unbelief!

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 29
Hebrews 4:1-3 — THE REST OF FAITH

“ ⁴ Let us fear therefore, lest haply a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to have come short of it. ² For indeed we have had good tidings preached unto us, even as also they: but the word of hearing did not profit them, because it was not united by faith with them that heard. ³ For we which have believed do enter into that rest; even as he hath said, ‘As I swore in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest’: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.” (Hebrews 4:1-3)

We have seen that with Israel, after its deliverance from Egypt, there were two stages. The one, the life in the wilderness, with its wanderings and its wants, its unbelief and its murmurings, its provocation of God and its exclusion from the promised rest. The other, the land of promise, with rest instead of the desert wanderings, with abundance instead of want, and the victory over every enemy instead of defeat: symbols of the two stages in the Christian life. The one in which we only know the Lord as the Saviour from Egypt, in His work on the cross for atonement and pardon. The other, where He is known and welcomed as the glorified Priest-King in heaven, who, in the power of the endless life, sanctifies and saves completely, writes God's laws in the heart, and leads us to find our home in the holiest of God's presence. The aim of the writer in this whole section is to warn us not to rest content with the former, the preparatory stage, but to show all diligence to reach the second, and enter the promised rest of complete deliverance. “Let us fear therefore, lest haply, a promise being left of entering into His rest, any of you should come short of it.”

Some think that the rest of Canaan is the type of heaven. This cannot be, because the great mark of the Canaan life was that the land had to be conquered and that God gave such glorious victory over enemies. The rest that is spoken of in Canaan was for victory and through victory. And so it is in the life of faith, when a soul learns to trust God for victory over sin, and yields itself entirely, as to its circumstances and duties, to live just where and how He wills, that it enters the rest. It lives in the promise, in the will, in the power of God. This is the rest into which it enters, not through death, but through faith, or rather, not through the death of the body, but the death to self in the death of Christ through faith. “For indeed we have had good tidings preached unto us, even as also they: but the word of hearing did not profit them, because it was not united by faith with those that heard.”

The one reason why they did not enter Canaan was their unbelief. The land was waiting: the rest was provided; God Himself would bring them in and give them rest. One thing was lacking; they did not believe, and so did not yield themselves to God to do it for them what He had promised. Unbelief closes the heart against God, withdraws the life from God's power; in the very nature of things unbelief renders the word of promise of none effect. A gospel of rest is preached to us as it was to them. We have in Scripture the most precious assurances of a rest for the soul to be found under the yoke of Jesus, of a peace of God which passes all understanding, of a peace and a joy in the soul which nothing can take away. But when they are not believed they cannot be enjoyed: faith is in its very nature a resting in the promise and the Promiser until He fulfill it in us. Only faith can enter into rest. The fullness of faith enters into the full rest.

“For we which have believed do enter into that rest.” It is not, shall enter. No. To-day, “even as the Holy Ghost saith, ‘To-day’," now and here, we which have believed do enter into rest. It is with the rest of faith—here as with what we heard of being “partakers of Christ” (verse 14)—the blessing is enjoyed, “if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end” (verse 14). The initial faith, that passes out of Egypt through the Red Sea, must be held fast firm, then it comes to the fullness of faith that passes through Jordan into the land.

Let every student of this Epistle realize how intensely personal its tone is, and with what urgency it appeals to us for faith, as the one thing needful in our dealings with the word of God. Without this the Word cannot profit us. We may seek by thought and study to enter into the meaning of the promise, but God has sworn that we never shall enter into its possession, or into His rest, but by faith. The one thing God asks in our communion with Him and His word is the habit of faith, that ever keeps the heart open towards God, and longs to enter in and abide in His rest. The soul that thirsts for God, for the living God, will have the spiritual capacity for receiving the revelation of how Jesus, the High Priest, brings us into God's presence. What is to be taught us later on of our entering into the Holiest of All is nothing but the clearer unfolding of what is here called “entering into rest.” Let us, in studying the Epistle, above everything have faith.

Would you enter into the rest? Remember what has been taught us of the two stages. They are represented by Moses and Joshua. Moses the leader, Joshua the perfecter or finisher of the faith of Israel. Moses brought the people out: Joshua brought them in. Accept Jesus as your Joshua. Do not let past failure and wandering and sin cause either despair or contentment with what you are. Trust Jesus who, through the sprinkling of the blood brought you out of Egypt, to bring you just as definitely into His rest. Faith is always rest in what another will do for me. Faith ceases to seek help in itself or its efforts, to be troubled with its need or its weakness; it rests in the sufficiency of the all-sufficient One who has undertaken all. Trust Jesus. Give up and forsake the wilderness. Follow Him fully: He is the rest.

Chapter Notes:

1. Let no one imagine that this life in the rest of faith is something that is meant only for a favored few. l cannot too earnestly press it upon every reader: God calls you—yes you, to enter the rest. He calls you to a life of entire consecration. lf you rest content with the thought of having been converted, it may be at the peril of your soul: with Israel you may perish in the wilderness. "As I swore in my wrath: they shall not enter into my rest."

2. lf God be indeed the Fountain of all goodness and blessedness, it follows that the nearer we are to Him, and the more we have of Him, the deeper and the fuller our joy will be. Has not the soul, who is not willing at all costs to yield to Christ when He offers to bring us into the rest of God, reason to fear that all its religion is simply the selfishness that seeks escape from punishment, and is content with as little of God here as may suffice to secure heaven hereafter?

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 30
Hebrews 4:4-8 — THE REST OF GOD

“ ⁴ For he hath said somewhere of the seventh day on this wise, ‘And God rested on the seventh day from all his works;’ ⁵ And in this place again, ‘They shall not enter into my rest.’ ⁶ Seeing therefore it remaineth that some should enter thereinto, and they to whom the good tidings were before preached failed to enter in because of disobedience, ⁷ He again deflneth a certain day, saying in David, after so long a time ‘To-day’, as it hath been before said, ‘To-day if ye shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts.’ ⁸ For if Joshua had given them rest, he would not have spoken afterward of another day.” (Hebrews 4:4-8)

We speak, with Scripture, of the rest of faith. Faith, however, only gives rest because it rests in God; it rests because it allows God to do all; the rest is in God Himself. It is His own divine rest into which we enter by faith. When the Holy Ghost says, “my rest,” or “His rest,” or “God rested,” it teaches us that it is God's own rest into which we enter, and of which we partake. It is as faith sees that the creature was destined to find its rest nowhere but in the Creator, and that in the entire surrender to Him, to His will and His working, it may have perfect rest, that it dares to cast itself upon God, and have no care. It sees that God, the cause of all movement and change, is Himself the immovable and unchangeable One, and that His blessed rest can never be disturbed by what is done either by Himself or by others. Hearkening to the loving offer, it forsakes all to find its dwelling-place in God and His love. Faith sees what the rest of God is; faith believes that it may come and share in it; faith enters in and rests, it yields itself to Jesus to lead it in and make it partaker. Because it honors God and counts Him all, God honors it; He opens the door, and the soul is brought in to rest in Him.

This faith is faith in Jesus. It is the insight into His finished work, the complete salvation He bestows, the perfection which was wrought in Him personally, and in which we share as “partakers of Christ” (Hebrews 3:14). The connection between the finishing of a work and the rest that follows is clearly seen in what is said of creation. God rested on the seventh day from all His works (see Genesis 2:3). “For he that is entered into His rest, hath himself also rested from his work, as God did from His” (Hebrews 4:10). The rest of God was His glad complacency in what He had finished in Creation, the beginning of His blessed work of Providence to care for and bring on to perfection what He had wrought. And so it is the finished work of Jesus that is ever set before us in the Epistle as the ground of our faith, the call for us in fullness of faith to draw nigh and enter in and rest. Because Christ hath put away sin, hath rent the veil, and is set down on the right hand of the throne,—because all is finished and perfected, and we have received the Holy Spirit from heaven in our hearts to make us the partakers of that glorified Christ, we may with confidence, with boldness, rest in Him to maintain and perfect His work in us. And, resting in Him, He becomes our Joshua, perfecting our faith, bringing us in, and giving us a home in the rest of God with Himself, now to go no more out for ever.

And if you would know why so few Christians enjoy this rest, it is because they do not know Jesus as their Joshua. We shall see later how Aaron was only a type of Christ in His work on earth. Melchizedek is needed as a type of His work in heaven, in the power and joy of the heavenly life. Moses and Aaron both shadow forth the beginning of Christ's work—His work on earth; Melchizedek and Joshua His work in heaven. They show us clearly how, as in the type God ordained, so in reality there are two stages in Christian knowledge and experience. All the feebleness of our Christian life is owing to one thing: we do not know Jesus in heaven; we do not know that Jesus has “entered in” (Hebrews 9:12,14), and that this secures to us boldness and the power of entrance into a heavenly state of life—that He there sits upon the throne as our High Priest in power, maintaining in us His own heavenly life; keeping us in personal fellowship with the living Father so that, in Him. we too enter the rest of God. It is because we do not know Jesus in His heavenly life and power that our life is feeble; if we learn to know Him as He is to be revealed in this Epistle, as our heavenly Joshua, actually bringing us and our inmost nature into the rest of God, we cannot but enter into that rest. When Joshua went before, the people followed at once in fellowship with him. Entering the rest of God is a personal, practical experience of the soul that receives the Word in living faith, because, in it, it receives Jesus on the throne

Let us do what Israel did in crossing Jordan; they allowed Joshua to bring them in; they followed him. Let us follow Jesus in the path He trod. In heaven God's will is all. On earth Jesus made that will all. He lived in the will of God, in suffering and doing, in meeting trial, in waiting for the Father's guidance; in giving up everything to it, He proved that God's will was His path. Follow Him. Yield thyself, in the death to self, to the will of God ; have faith in Jesus on the throne, as thy Head and life, that He has brought thee in and will make it true in thy experience; trust Jesus, as being partaker of His nature and life, to work all in thee that the Father seeks. Do these thngs and you will know how blessed it is to enter the rest of God.

Chapter Notes:

1. Deep restfulness, even amid outward activity, is one of the most beautiful marks and aids of the life of faith. Cultivate that holy stillness that seeks to abide in Gods presence, and does not yield too much to things around.

2. This rest is Gods rest: it is found in His fellowship. Think of all He sees, of all He feels, and has to bear; think of the divine peace and patience with which He guides all; and learn to be patient and trustful, and to rest in Him. Believe in Him, as the one God who works all in all, and works in you that which is well-pleasing in His sight, and you shall have perfect rest in letting Him do all for you and in you.

3. God is a supernatural, incomprehensible Being ; we must learn to know Him in a way that is above reason and sense. That way is the adoration of faith, and the deep humility of obedience. Through these the Holy Spirit will work the work of God in us.

4. All entering in means a coming out from the place we were in before. Forsake all, and follow Jesus into God's presence.

5. O my soul, listen to this word of the great God, and let His unspeakable love draw thee— “To-day, enter into My rest.”

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 31
Hebrews 4:9-10 — REST FROM WORKS

“ ⁹ There remaineth therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God. ¹⁰ For he that Is entered Into his rest hath himself also rested from his works, as God did from his.” (Hebrews 4:9-10)

“There remaineth therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God”: taken in connection with what precedes about the seventh day or Sabbath, the rest is here called a sabbatism or Sabbath rest. It is spoken of as remaining, with reference to the rest in Canaan. That was but a shadow and symbol: the real Sabbath rest remained, waiting its time until Christ the true Joshua should come and open it to us by Himself entering it.

Here in verse 10 we have another proof that the rest does not refer to heaven. How needless it would be in that case to say of those who have died, “There remaineth therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For he that hath entered into his rest, hath himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.” The remark would have no point. But what force it has in connection with the rest of faith in this life, pointing us to what is the great secret of this entrance into rest—the ceasing from works, as God did from His.

In God we see, as it were, two distinct stages in His relation to His work. The first was that of creation—until He had finished all His work which He created and made. The second, His rest when creation was finished, and He rejoiced in what He had made, now to begin the higher work of watching the development of the life He had entrusted the creature with, and securing its sanctification and perfection. It is a rest from work which is now finished, for higher work now to be carried on. Even so there are the two stages in the Christian life. The one in which, after conversion, a believer seeks to work what God would have him do. The second, in which, after many a painful failure, he ceases from his works, and enters the rest of God, there to find the power for work in allowing God to work in him.

It is this resting from their own work which many Christians cannot understand. They think of it as a state of passive and selfish enjoyment, of still contemplation which leads to the neglect of the duties of life, and unfits for that watchfulness and warfare to which Scripture calls. What an entire misunderstanding of God's call to rest. As the Almighty, God is the only source of power. In nature He works all. In grace He waits to work all too, if man will but consent and allow. Truly to rest in God is to yield oneself up to the highest activity. We work, because He works in us to will and to do. As Paul says of himself, " l labour, striving according to His working who worketh in me mightily” [literally: agonizing according to His energy who energizes in me with might]" (Colossians 1:29). Entering the rest of God is the ceasing from self-effort, and the yielding up oneself in the full surrender of faith to God's working.

How many Christians are there who need nothing so much as rightly to apprehend this word. Their life is one of earnest effort and ceaseless struggling. They do long to do God's will, and to live to His glory. Continued failure and bitter disappointment is their too frequent experience. Very often as the result they give themselves up to a feeling of hopelessness: “it never will be otherwise.” Theirs is truly the wilderness life— they have not entered into God's rest. Would that God might open their eyes, and show them Jesus as our Joshua, who has entered into God's presence, who sits upon the throne as High Priest, bringing us in living union with Himself into that place of rest and of love, and, by His Spirit within us, making that life of heaven a reality and an experience.

“He that is entered into rest, hath himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.” And how does one rest and cease from his works? It is by ceasing from self. It is the old self life that always insists upon proving its goodness and its strength, and presses forward to do the works of God. It is only in death that we rest from our works. Jesus entered His rest through death; each one whom He leads into it must pass through death. "Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus" (Romans 6:11). Believe that the death of Christ, as an accomplished fact, with all that it means and has effected, is working in you in all its power. You are dead with Him and in Him. Consent to this, and cease from dead works. "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord. Yea, saith the Spirit, for they do rest from their labours" (Revelation 14:13). That is as true of spiritual dying with Christ as of the death in the body. To sinful nature there is no rest from work but through death.

“He that is entered into rest, hath himself also rested from his works.” Ceasing from our works and entering the rest of God go together. Read the first chapter of Joshua, and hear God's words of strength and encouragement to everyone who would enter. Exchange the wilderness life with your own works for the rest-life in which God works. Fear not to believe that Jesus came to give it, and that it is for you.

Chapter Notes:

1. ”Not l, but Christ” (Galatians 2:20). This is the rest of faith in which a man rests from his works. With the unconverted man it is, ”Not Christ, but I.” With the feeble and slothful Christian,” l and Christ: / first, and Christ to fill up what is wanting.” With increasing earnestness it becomes, “Christ and l: Christ first, but still l second.” With the man who dies with Christ it is, “Not l, but Christ”: Christ alone and Christ all. He has ceased from his work: Christ lives in him. This is the rest of faith.

2. God saith of His dwelling among His people, "This is My rest forever; here will l dwell" (Psalm 132:14) Do not be afraid to say this, too. It is the rest of God in His delight and pleasure in the work of His Son, in His love to Jesus and all who belong to Him. It is the rest of Jesus in His finished work, sitting on the throne, resting in the Father's love. It is the rest of our faith and love in Jesus, in God, in His love.

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 32
Hebrews 4:11 — GIVE DILIGENCE TO ENTER INTO THE REST

“ ¹¹ Let us, therefore, give diligence to enter Into that rest, that no man fall after the same example of disobedience.” (Hebrews 4:11)

Our epistle is intensely practical. How it detains and holds us fast in hope of persuading us not to be content with the knowledge or the admiration of its teaching, but personally to listen to the message it brings from God by the Holy Ghost, and indeed do the thing God would have us do—enter into His rest. “Let us …give diligence to enter into that rest.”

“Let us … give diligence.” The word means, “make haste, be in earnest, put your whole heart into it, see that you do it.” “Enter into the rest; that no man fall after the same example of disobedience.” The danger is imminent—the loss will be terrible. God has sworn in His wrath that unless we hearken and obey, we shall not enter His rest. Let us give diligence to enter in. All the wonderful teaching the Epistle contains farther on—as to the Holiest that is opened for us as the place where God wants to receive us into His rest and live, as to the great High Priest who has opened the way and entered in and lives as our Joshua to bring us in—will profit us nothing, unless there be the earnest desire, the willing readiness, the firm resolve, to enter in. It is this disposition alone that can fit a man spiritually to apprehend the heavenly mysteries the Epistle opens up.

And surely it ought not to be needful to press the motives that should urge us to obedience. Ought not the one motive to suffice—the unspeakable privilege God offers me in opening to me the entrance into His own rest? No words can express the inconceivable greatness of the gift. God speaks to me in His Son as one who was created in His image, capable of fellowship with Himself; as one whom He has redeemed out of the awful captivity of sin and death, because He longs to have me living with Him in His love. As one for whom He has made it possible to live the outer life in the flesh, with the inner life in Christ, lifted up, kept safe in the Holiest of All, in God's own rest, — oh, can it be that anyone believes this and does not respond? No, let each heart say, “Blessed be God, into this rest would I enter, here would l dwell.”

We are so accustomed to the wilderness life of stumbling and sinning, we have so learnt to take the words God speaks of that life— “They do alway err in their hear" (Hebrews 3:10)— as descriptive of what must be daily Christian experience, so that we hardly count it a practical possibility to enter into the rest. And even when the desire has been awakened, the path appears so dark and unknown. Let me, for the sake of such, once again gather up what has been said as to the way to enter in: God in His great mercy, may even help some to take the step. The instructions are very simple.

First, settle it in your mind. Believe with your whole heart that there is such a rest, and do so today. It is God's rest, in which He lives; into which Jesus, as your Joshua, has entered. It is your rest, prepared for you; your Land of Promise; the spiritual state of life which is as surely yours as Jesus is, into which Jesus will bring you and where He will keep you. It is the rest in which you can live every hour, free from care and anxiety, free from weariness and wanderings, always resting in the rest that trusts God for all. Believe this.

Then cease from your own works. Not as if you had to attain this perfectly before entering into God's rest. No, but consent, yield, be willing that all self-working should come to an end. Cease from self. Where there is life there is action; the self-life will seek to work, except you give up self into the death of Christ; with Him you are buried, in Him you live. As Christ said, “Hate your own life; lose it” (see Luke 14:26). Cease from your own works, and bow in deep humility and helplessness of all good, as nothing before God.

Trust Jesus as your Joshua, who brings you in, even now. Israel had simply to trust and obey and follow Joshua. Set your heart on Him who has entered the heavens to appear before God for us. Claim Jesus as yours, not only in His cross and death and resurrection, but above all in His heavenliness, in His possession of the rest of heaven. Claim Him, and leave Him to do His blessed work. You need not understand all. Your feelings may not be what you would wish. Trust Him, who has done all for you in earth and heaven, to do all in your heart too.

And then be a follower of them who through faith and patience have inherited the promises. Israel passed in one day through Jordan into Canaan, but did not in one day come to the perfect rest. It is at the end of the life of Joshua we read, "The Lord gave them rest round about” (Joshua 21:44). Enter to-day into the rest . Though all may not be bright at once, look to Jesus, your Joshua, and leave all in His hands. Come away, out of self, and live in Him. Rest In God, whatever happen. Think of His Rest, and of Jesus who has entered it in your name and who, out of it, fills you with its Spirit, Think of Jesus, and fear not. To-day, if you hear His voice, enter in.

Chapter Notes:

1. Jesus said, "Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for l am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls." (Matthew 11:29) It was through meekness and lowliness of heart that Jesus found His rest in God: He allowed God to be all, trusted God for all—the rest of God was His abode. He invites us to share His rest, and tells us the secret. in the meekness and lowliness of Jesus is the way to God’s rest.

2. Israel did not enter Canaan. And why? It is twice said because of disobedience, and thrice because of unbelief. The two things always go together. Yield yourself in everything to obey. This will strengthen you to trust for everything He has promised to do.

3. The rest includes victory: "The Lord will give thee rest from all thy enemies round about, and thou shalt dwell in safety" (Deuteronomy 12:10). "And the Lord gave them rest round about … the LORD delivered all their enemies gave He into their hand" (Joshua 21:44).

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 33
Hebrews 4:12-13 — THE HEART-SEARCHING WORD OF GOD

“ ¹² For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. ¹³ And there is no creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” (Hebrews 4:12-13)

They have been earnest words with which the writer has been warning the Hebrews against unbelief and disobedience, hardening the heart and departing from. God, and coming short of the promised rest. The solemn words of God's oath in Psalm 95:11 (“I have sworn in My wrath, they shall not enter into My rest”) have been repeated more than once to urge all to give diligence lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. He is about to close his warning. He does so by reminding them of the power of the word of God as the word of the omniscient One— of Him with whom we have to do, before whose eyes all things, our hearts and lives too, are naked and open. Let each student of the Epistle make a very personal application of the words. Let us take the oath of God concerning His rest, and the command to labour that we may enter in, home to our heart, and say whether we have indeed entered in. And if not, let us all the more yield ourselves to the word to search and try us: it will without fail do its blessed work in us, and prepare us for following with profit the further teaching concerning our Lord Jesus.

“For the word of God is living and active.” At times it may appear as if the Word effects so little. The Word is like seed: everything depends on the treatment it receives. Some receive the Word with the understanding: there it cannot be quickened. The Word is meant for the heart, the will, the affections. The Word must be submitted to, must be lived, must be acted out. When this is done it will manifest its living, quickening power. It is not we who have to make the Word alive. When, in faith in the life and power there is in the Word, the heart yields itself in humble submission and honest desire to its action, it will prove itself to be life and power.

“And sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow.” The first action of God's Word is to wound, to cut, to divide. In the soul, the natural life has its seat; in the spirit, the spiritual and divine life has its place. Sin has brought confusion and disorder; the spirit is under the mastery of the soul, the natural life. God's Word divides and separates; wakens the spirit to a sense of its destiny as the faculty for the unseen and eternal; brings the soul to a knowledge of itself as a captive to the power of sin. It cuts deep and sure, discovering the deep corruption of sin. As the knife of the surgeon, who seeks to heal, pierces even to the dividing of the joints and marrow, where it is needed, so the Word penetrates all; there is no part of the inner being to which it does not pass.

“And quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.” It is specially with the heart that God's Word deals. In chapter 3, we read of the hardened heart, the evil heart of unbelief, the erring heart. When the word “heart” occurs later in the Epistle we shall find everything changed; we shall read of a heart in which God's law is written, of a true heart, a heart sprinkled with the blood, a heart established by grace (see Hebrews 8:9-10; 10:22). We have here the transition from the one to the other. God's appeal was, “To-day, if ye hear His voice, harden not your heart” (Hebrews 3:7-8). The heart that will but yield itself to be searched by God's Word, to have its secret thoughts and intents discerned and judged by it, will be freed from its erring and unbelief, and quickened and cleansed, and made a living table on which the Word is written by God Himself. Oh, to know how needful it is, but also how blessed, to yield our hearts to the judgment of the Word.

“And there is no creature that is not manifest in His sight.” God's Word bears the character of God Himself. He is the all-knowing and all-pervading: nothing can hide itself from the judgment of His Word. If we will not have it judge us now, it will condemn us hereafter. “For all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” Yes, the God with whom we have to do is He of whom we later read: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 10:31). And again: "Our God is a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:29). It is this God who now pleads with us to enter into His rest.

Let each of us gladly yield ourselves to have to do with Him. If perhaps there be a secret consciousness that all is not right, that we are not giving diligence to enter into the rest, oh, let us beware of setting such thoughts aside. It is the first swelling of the living seed of the Word within us. Do not regard that thought as coming from yourself, or from man who brings you God's word; it is God waking you out of sleep. Have to do with Him. Be willing for the Word to show you what is wrong. Be not afraid of its revealing to you your sin and wretchedness. The knife of the physician wounds to heal. The light that shows you your sin and wrong will surely lead you out. The Word is living and will give you life.

Chapter Notes:

1. God has spoken to us in His Son. This is the keynote of the Epistle. “To-day, lf ye hear His voice, harden not your hearts” (Hebrews 3:7-8). This is the keynote of this long and solemn warning. Let us hearken, and let us yield to the Word. As we deal with the Word, so we deal with God. And so will God deal with us.

2. Judge your life not by what thy heart says, or the Church, or the so-called Christian world—but by what the Word says. Let it have its way with you: it will greatly bless you.

3. “All things are naked and laid open before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” Why, then, through indifference or discouragement, do you shut your eyes to them? Oh, lay everything open before God, the God with whom we sooner or later have to do, whether we want to or not.

4. “The Word is living and active.” Have great faith in its power. Be sure that the Holy Spirit, that the living Word, that God Himself works in it. The Word ever points to the living God, who is present in it, and makes it a living Word, in the heart that is seeking for life and for God.

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 34
Hebrews 4:14 — A GREAT HIGH PRIEST

“ ¹⁴ Having, then, a great High Priest, who hath passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.” (Hebrews 4:14)

After his digression, in the warning to the Hebrews, not, like their fathers with Moses, to harden their hearts through unbelief, our writer returns to his argument. He had already twice used the words “high priest” (see Hebrews 2:17; 3:1), and is preparing the way for what is the great object of the Epistle—the exposition of the heavenly priesthood of the Lord Jesus, and the work He has by it accomplished for us (Hebrews 7:10-10:18). In this section (Hebrews 4:14-5:10), he first gives the general characteristics of that priesthood, as typified by Aaron, and exhibited in our Lord's life here on earth. In chapters 1 and 2, he had laid the foundation of his structure in the divinity and the humanity of our Saviour: he here first speaks of Him in His greatness as a High Priest passed through the heavens, then in His sympathy and compassion, as having been tempted as we are.

“Having, therefore, a great High Priest.” The “therefore” refers to the previous argument, in which Christ's greatness had been set forth, and in view of the dangers against which he had been warning, the readers had been urged to steadfastness in holding fast their confession. The force of the appeal lies in the word “Having.” We know the meaning of that word so well in earthly things. There is nothing that touches men so nearly as the sense of ownership of property. l have a father, l have money, l have a home—what a world of interest is awakened in connection with such thoughts. And God's word comes here and says: You have,—O best and most wonderful of all possessions—You have a great High Priest. You own Him; He is yours, your very own, wholly yours. You may use Him with all He is and has. You can trust Him for all you need, and know and claim Him as indeed your great High Priest, to bring you to God. Let your whole walk be the proof that you live as one, “having … a great High Priest.”

“A great high priest who hath passed through the heavens.” We have said more than once, and shall not weary of repeating it again, that one of the great lessons of our Epistle has been to teach us this: The knowledge of the greatness and glory of Jesus is the secret of a strong and holy life. Its opening chapter was nothing but a revelation of His divine nature and glory. At the root of all it has to teach us of Christ's priesthood and work, it wants us to see the adorable omnipotent divinity of Christ. In that, our faith is to find its strength and the measure of its expectation. By that, our conduct is to be guided. That is to be the mark of our life— that we have a Saviour who is God. “A great high priest, who hath passed through the heavens.” Later on we read: “Such an High Priest became us, made higher than the heavens” (Hebrews 7:26). It is difficult for us to form any conception of what heaven is, so high, and bright, and full of glory. But all the heavens we can think of were only the vestibule through which he passed into that which is behind, and above and beyond them all—the light that is inaccessible, the very life and presence of God Himself. And the word calls us to follow our great High Priest in thought—and when thought fails, in faith and worship and love—into this glory beyond and above all heavens, and “having” Him as ours, to be sure that our life can be the counterpart of His, the proof of what a complete redemption He has wrought, the living experience of what he has effected there.

“A great High Priest … Jesus the Son of God.” The name “Jesus” speaks of His humanity and of His work as a Saviour from sin. This is the first work of the priest—the cleansing, the putting away of sin. The name “Son of God” speaks of His divinity and His power as High Priest to bring us to God, into the very life and fellowship of the Holy One. It is in His Son that God speaks to us; it is to the perfect fellowship and blessedness of the ever-blessed One that our great High Priest that is passed through the heavens can, and does indeed, bring us.

“Having, therefore, a great High Priest, let us hold fast our confession!” He is “the Apostle and High Priest of our confession” (Hebrews 3:1). The knowledge of what He is is our strength to hold fast our confession. Twice the Hebrews had been told how much would depend on this (Hebrews 3: 6,14). "Whose house are we, if we hold fast" (Hebrews 3:6) and "We are become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast" (Hebrews 3:14). Our faith in Christ must be confessed. lf we have Him as our great High Priest, He is worthy of it; our souls will delight in rendering Him this homage; without it, failure will speedily come; without it, the grace of steadfastness, perseverance, cannot be maintained.

O brethren, having a great High Priest, who is passed through the heavens, let us hold fast our confession. Let every thought of Jesus, in heaven for us, urge us to live wholly for Him and, in everything, to confess Him as our Lord.

Chapter Notes:

1. Ought it not to fill our hearts with worship and trust, and love without end, this wondrous mystery: the Son of God, become Man—the Son of Man, now God on the throne— that we might be helped.

2. “Who hath passed through the heavens” beyond all thought of space and place, into the mystery of the divine glory and power. And why? That He might in divine power breathe that heavenly life into our hearts. His whole priesthood has, as its one great characteristic, heavenliness. He communicates the purity, the power, the life of heaven to us. We live in heaven with Him; He lives with heaven in us. With Him in our hearts we have the kingdom of heaven within us, in which God's will is done, as in heaven, so on earth. Let us believe it can most surely be.

3. After all the solemn warning, about falling in the wilderness and coming short of the rest, see here your safety and strength— “Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Jesus" (Hebrews 3:1). Having Jesus, let us hold fast.

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 35
Hebrews 4:15 — A HIGH PRIEST, ABLE TO SYMPATHIZE

“ ¹⁵ For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with (who is not able to sympathize with) the feeling of our Infirmities (weaknesses); but one that hath been tempted In all things like as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15)

May God in His mercy give us a true insight into the glory of what is offered us in these words—even this, that our High Priest, whom we have in heaven, is one who is able to sympathize with us, because He knows, from personal experience, exactly what we feel. Yes, that God might give us courage to draw nigh to Him, He has placed upon the throne of heaven one out of our own midst, of whom we can be certain that, because He Himself lived on earth as man, He understands us perfectly, is prepared to have patience with our weakness, and to give us just the help we need. It was to effect this that God sent His Son to become Man, and, as Man, perfected Him through suffering—that not one single feeble soul should be afraid to draw nigh to the great God,, or in drawing nigh, should doubt as to whether God is not too great and holy fully to understand, or to bear with his weakness. Jesus, the tried and tempted One, has been placed upon the throne as our High Priest. God gives us a glimpse into the heart of our compassionate, sympathizing High Priest!

“For we have not a high priest who is not able to sympathize with our weaknesses.” The writer uses the two negatives to indicate how common the thought is which he wishes to combat. A rich king, who lives every day in luxury, can he—even though he hear of it—can he fully realize what it means for the poor sick man, from year to year, never to know where his daily bread is to come from? Hardly. And God, the glorious and ever-blessed, can He truly feel what a poor sinner experiences in his daily struggle with the weakness and temptations of the flesh? God be praised! Jesus knows, and is able to sympathize, He is “one who hath been in all things tempted like as we are, yet without sin.”

In all things! The thought of Jesus as a sympathizing High Priest, is ordinarily applied to those who are in circumstances of trial and suffering. But the truth has a far deeper meaning and application. It has special reference to the temptation which meets the soul in the desire to live wholly for God. Jesus suffered, being tempted: it was the temptation to refuse the Father's will that caused His deepest suffering. As the believer, who seeks in all things to do the will of God, understands this, the truth of the sympathizing High Priest becomes doubly precious.

What is the ordinary experience of those who set themselves with their whole heart to live for God? lt happens very often that it is only then they begin to find out how sinful they are. They are continually disappointed in their purpose to obey God's will. They feel deeply ashamed at the thought of how often, even in things that appear little and easy, they fail entirely in keeping a good conscience and in pleasing God. At times it is as if the more they hear of the rest of God and the life of faith, the fainter the hope of attaining it becomes. At times they are ready to give up all in despair: a life in the rest of God is not for them.

What comfort and strength comes at such a time to a soul, when it sees that Jesus is able to sympathize and to succor, because He has Himself been thus tempted. Or did it not become so dark in His soul, that He had to wrestle and to cry, "If it be possible?" (Matthew 26:39) and " Why hast thou forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46) He, too, had to trust God in the dark. He, too, in the hour of death had to let go His spirit, and commit it, in the darkness of death, into God's keeping. He knew what it was to walk in darkness and see no light. And when a man feels utterly helpless and in despair, Jesus can sympathize with him; He is “one that hath been tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin.” If we would but rest in the assurance that He understands it all, that He feels for us with a sympathy in which the infinite love of God and the tenderness of a fellow-sufferer are combined, and is able to succor him, we should soon reach the rest of God. Trusting Jesus would bring us into it.

Holy brethren! partakers of a heavenly calling! would you be strong to hold fast your confession, and know in full the power of your Redeemer God to save; listen to-day to the voice of the Holy Spirit:' Jesus was in all things tempted just as you are. And why? That He might be able to help you. His being able to sympathize has no other purpose than that He should be able to succor. Let the one word, sympathize, be the food of your faith; the other, succor, will be its fruit, your blessed experience. Just think of God giving His Son to come and pass through all the temptations that come to you, that He might be able to sympathize, and then lifting Him up to the throne of omnipotence that He might be able to succor, and say if you have not reason to trust Him fully. And let the faith of the blessed High Priest in His infinite and tender sympathy be the foundation of a friendship and a fellowship in which we are sure to experience that He is able to save completely.

Chapter Notes:

1. Some time ago l asked a young lady who had come from Keswick, and spoke of her having been a happy Christian for years before, and having found such a wonderful change in her experience, how she would describe the difference between what she had known before and now enjoyed. Her answer was ready at once: "Oh, it is the personal friendship of Jesus!" And here is one of the gates that lead into this blessed friendship: He became a Man just that l might learn to trust His gentle, sympathizing kindness.

2. Study well the three “ables” of this Epistle. Jesus able to sympathize, able to succor, able to save completely. And claim all.

3. “Tempted like as we are.” He was made like to us in temptation, that we might become like Him in victory. This He will accomplish in us. Oh, let us consider Jesus, who suffered being tempted, who experienced what temptation is, who resisted and overcame it, and brought to nought the tempter, who now lives as High Priest to succor the tempted and give the victory—let us consider Jesus, the ever-present Deliverer: He will lead us in triumph through every foe.

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 36
Hebrews 4:16 — LET US DRAW NEAR WITH BOLDNESS

“ ¹⁶ Let us therefore draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help us In time of need (or ‘timely help’).” (Hebrews 4:16)

In the first two chapters the true divinity and the real humanity of our Saviour were set before us, as the very foundation of our faith and life. In the two verses we have just been considering these two truths are applied to the priesthood of Christ. “Having a great High Priest who hath passed through the heavens” (Hebrews 4:14) and having an High Priest who is able to sympathize; let us draw near. The one work of the High Priest is to bring us near to God. The one object of revealing to us His person and work is to give us perfect confidence in drawing near. The measure of our nearness of access to God is the index of our knowledge of Jesus.

“Let us therefore,” with such a High Priest, “draw near with boldness to the throne of grace.” The word translated “draw near” is that used of the priests in the Old Testament. it is this one truth the Epistle seeks to enforce, that we can actually, in spiritual reality, draw near to God, and live in that nearness, in living fellowship with Him, all the day. The work of Christ, as our High Priest, is so perfect, and His power in heaven so divine, that He not only gives us the right and liberty to draw nigh, but by His priestly action He does in very deed and truth, so take possession of our inmost being and inward life, and draw and bring us nigh, that our life can be lived in God's presence.

“Let us … draw near.” The expression occurs twice; here and Hebrews 10:21. The repetition is significant. In the second passage, after the deeper truths of the true sanctuary and the rent veil and the opening of the Holiest have been expounded, it refers to the believer's entrance into the full blessing of a life spent in the power of Christ's heavenly priesthood, in the presence of God. Here, where all this teaching has not yet been given, it is applied more simply to prayer, to the drawing nigh to the throne of grace, in a sense which the feeblest believer can understand it . It is as we are faithful in the lesser, the tarrying before the throne of grace in prayer, that we shall find access to the greater—the life within the veil, in the full power of the Forerunner who hath entered there for us.

“Let us therefore draw near … that we may receive mercy.” This has reference to that compassion which we need when the sense of sin and guilt and unworthiness depress us. In drawing nigh to the throne of grace, to the mercy-seat, in prayer, we first receive mercy, we experience that God pardons and accepts and loves. And we find grace for timely help. This refers to that strengthening of the inner life by which He, who was tempted in all things like as we, meets us and enables us to conquer temptation. Grace is the divine strength working in us. "My grace is sufficient for thee; my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9). The Holy Spirit is "the Spirit of grace” (Hebrews 10:29). The believing supplicant at the throne of grace not only receives mercy, the consciousness of acceptance and favor, but finds grace, in that Spirit whose operation the Father always delights to bestow. And that grace is for timely help, literally "well-timed help"—just the special help we need at each moment. The infinite mercy of God's love resting on us, and the almighty grace of His Spirit working in us, will ever be found at a throne of grace, if we but come boldly, trusting in Jesus alone.

And now comes the chief word, "Let us therefore draw near with boldness." We have already been taught to “hold fast our boldness” (Hebrews 3:6). We shall later on be warned, “cast not away therefore your boldness” (Hebrews 10:35). And the summing up of the Epistle will tell us that the great fruit of Christ's redemption is that we have “boldness to enter” in (verse 19). It is the expression of the highest form of confidence, in the unhesitating assurance that there is nothing that can hinder, and in a conduct that corresponds to this conviction. It suggests the thought of our drawing nigh to God's throne without fear, without doubt, with no other feeling but that of the childlike liberty which a child feels in speaking to its father.

This boldness is what the blood of Christ, in its infinite worth, has secured for us, and what His heavenly priesthood works and maintains in us. This boldness is the natural and necessary result of the adoring and believing gaze fixed on our great High Priest upon the throne. This boldness is what the Holy Spirit works in us as the inward participation in Christ's entrance into the Father's presence. This boldness is of the essence of a healthy Christian life. lf there is one thing the Christian should care for and aim at, it is to maintain unbroken and unclouded the living conviction and practice of this “draw[ing] near with boldness.”

”Let us, therefore, draw near with boldness.” Jesus the Son God is our High Priest . Our boldness of access is not a state we produce in ourselves by meditation or effort. No, the living, loving High Priest, who is able to sympathize and gives grace for timely help, He breathes and works this boldness in the soul that is willing to lose itself in Him. Jesus, found and felt within our heart by faith, is our boldness. As the Son, whose house we are, He will dwell within us, and by His Spirit's working, Himself be our boldness and our entrance to the Father. “Let us, therefore, draw near with boldness”!

Chapter Notes:

1. Do take hold of the thought that the whole teaching of the Epistle centers in this, that we should so be partakers of Christ and all He is, should so have Him as our High Priest, that we may with perfect boldness, with the most undoubting confidence enter into, and dwell in, and enjoy, the Father's presence. It is in the heart that we partake of and have Christ: it is Christ, known as dwelling in the heart, that will make our boldness perfect.

2. Each time you pray, exercise this boldness. Let the measure of the merit of Jesus—yea more, let the measure of the power of Jesus—work in you and lead you on to God. Let it be the measure of your boldness.

3. What tenderness of conscience, what care, what jealousy, what humility, this boldness will work, lest we allow anything for which our heart can condemn us, and we so lose our liberty before God. Then it will truly be our experience—

“So near, so very near to God,
More near I cannot be.”

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 37
Hebrews 5:1-3 — THE HIGH PRIEST BEARING GENTLY WITH THE IGNORANT

“ ¹ For every high priest, being taken from among men, is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins: ² Who can bear gently with the Ignorant and erring, for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity (weakness); ³ And by reason thereof is bound, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins.” (Hebrews 5:1-3)

We know how much the Epistle has already said of the true humanity and sympathy of the Lord Jesus. In chapter 2 we read:

“It became Him (God) … to make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering” (verse 10).

“Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same” (verse 14).

“Wherefore, it behooved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren” (verse 17).

“In that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted” (verse 18).

And in chapter 4. we have just heard,

“For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath been in all points tempted like as we are” (verse 15).

And yet the truth is counted of such importance, that once again our attention is directed to it. It is not enough that we have a general conviction of its truth, but we need to have it taken up into our heart and life, until every thought of Jesus is penetrated and permeated by such a feeling of His sympathy that all sense of weakness will at once be met by the joyful consciousness that all is well because Jesus is so very kind and cares so lovingly for all our feebleness and all our ignorance.

Let us listen once again to what the word teaches. “Every high priest, being taken from among men, is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that He may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.” Here we have the work of a high priest, and the first essential requisite for that work. His work is “in things pertaining to God”: He has charge of all that concerns the access to God—His worship and service—and has, for this, to offer gifts and sacrifices. And the requisite is, he must be a man, because he is to act for men. And that for this great reason that he may be one “who can bear gently with the ignorant and erring, for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity (weakness); and by reason thereof is bound, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins.” At the root of the priestly office there is to be the sense of perfect oneness in weakness and need of help. In priestly action this is to manifest itself in sacrificing, “as for the people, so also for himself.” And all this, that the priestly spirit may ever be kept alive for the comfort and confidence of all the needy and weary—“who can bear gently with the ignorant and erring.”

Glory be to God for the wondrous picture of what our Lord Jesus is. A priest must be God's representative with men. But he cannot be this, without being himself a man himself encompassed with weaknesses, and so identified with and representing men with God. This was why Jesus was made a little lower than the angels. The high priest is to offer “as for the people, so also for himself.” Offering for himself was to be the bond of union with the people. Even so our blessed Lord Jesus offered “prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears” (verse 7)— yea, in all that, He offered Himself unto God. And all this so that He might win our hearts and confidence as one “who can bear gently with the ignorant and erring.” God has indeed done everything to assure us that, with such an High Priest, no ignorance or error need make us afraid of not finding the way to Him and His love. Jesus will care for us. He “bear[s] gently with the ignorant and erring.”

Have we not, in our faith in the priesthood of Christ, been too much in the habit of looking more at His work than at His heart? Have we not too exclusively put the thought of our sins in the foreground, and not sufficiently realized that our weaknesses, our ignorance and errors—that for these, too, a special provision has been made in Him who was made like us, and Himself encompassed with weaknesses, that he might be a merciful and faithful High Priest, “who can bear gently with the ignorant and erring.”

Oh, let us take in and avail ourselves to the full of the wondrous message: Jesus could not ascend the throne as Priest until He had first, in the school of personal experience, learned to sympathize and to bear gently with the feeblest. And let our weakness and ignorance henceforth, instead of discouraging and keeping us back, be the motive and the plea which lead us to come boldly to Him for help, “who can bear gently with the ignorant and erring.” In the pursuit of holiness our ignorance is often our greatest source of failure. We cannot fully understand what is taught of the rest of God, and the power of faith, of dwelling within the veil or of Christ dwelling in our hearts. Things appear too high for us, utterly beyond our reach. lf we but knew to trust Jesus, not only as He who made propitiation for our sins, but also as One who was specially chosen and trained and prepared and then elevated to the throne of God to be the Leader of the ignorant and erring, bearing gently with their every weakness! Let us this day accept afresh this Savior, as God has here revealed Him to us, and rejoice that all our ignorance need not be a barrier in the way to God, because Jesus takes it into His care.

Chapter Notes:

1. Oh, the trouble God has taken to win our poor hearts to trust and confidence. Let us accept the revelation, and have our hearts so filled with the sympathy and gentleness of Jesus that, in every perplexity, our first thought shall always be the certainty and the blessedness of His compassion and help.

2. How many souls there are who mourn over their sins, and do not think that they are making their sins more and stronger by not going with all their ignorance and weakness boldly to Jesus.

3. Do learn the lesson: The whole priesthood of Jesus has but this one object— to lead you boldly and joyfully to draw near to God and live in fellowship with Him. With this view, trust Jesus as definitely with your ignorance and weakness as with your sins.

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 38
Hebrews 5:4-6 — THE HIGH PRIEST CALLED BY GOD

“ ⁴And no man taketh the honour unto himself, but when he is called of God, even as was Aaron. ⁵ So Christ also glorified not Himself to be made a high priest, but He that spake unto him, ‘Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.’ ⁶ As He saith also in another place, ‘Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 5:4-6)

A priest sustains a twofold relationship—to God and to man. Every high priest is appointed for men in things pertaining to God. We have just seen what the great characteristic is of his relation to men: he must himself be a man, like them and one with them, with a heart full of gentleness and sympathy for the very weakest. In his relation to God, our Epistle now proceeds to say, the chief requirement is that he should have his appointment from God. He must not take the honor to himself: he must be called of God. All this is proved to be true of Jesus.

The truth that Jesus had His appointment from God was not only of importance to the Hebrews to convince them of the divine and supreme right of Christianity; it is of equal interest to us, to give us an insight into that which constitutes the real glory and power of our religion. Our faith needs to be fed and strengthened, and this can only be as we enter more deeply into the divine origin and nature of redemption.

“And no man taketh the honour unto himself, but when he is called of God.” It is God against whom we have sinned, in separation from whom we are fallen into the power of death. It is God we need; it is to Him and His love the way must be opened. It is God alone, who can say what that way is, who is able to have it opened up. And this now is what gives the gospel, and our faith in Christ, its security and sufficiency—that it is all of God. Christ has been called of God to be High Priest. The very God who created us, against whom we sinned, gives His Son as our Redeemer.

”So Christ also glorified not Himself to be made a High Priest, but He that spake unto Him, ‘Thou art My Son, this day I have begotten thee.’ As He saith also in another place, ‘Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.’” Here it is not merely the fact that Christ was called of God to be High Priest, but the ground upon which He was chosen, that we must specially notice. The two passages quoted teach us that it was as Son of God that He was appointed High Priest. This opens up to us the true nature and character of the priesthood. It shows us that the priesthood is rooted in the sonship: the work of the priesthood is to reveal and communicate the blessed life of sonship.

As Son, Christ alone was heir of all that God had. All the life of the Father was in Him. God could have no union or fellowship with any creature but through His beloved Son, or as far as the life and spirit and image of the Son was seen in it. Therefore no one could be our High Priest but the Son of God. If our salvation was not to be a merely legal one— external and, l may say, artificial—but an entrance anew into the very life of God, with the restoration of the divine nature we had lost in paradise. It was the Son of God alone who could impart this to us. He had the life of God to give; He was able to give it; He could only give it by taking us into living fellowship with Himself. The priesthood of Christ is the God-devised channel through which the ever-blessed Son could make us partakers of Himself, and with Himself of all the life and glory He hath from and in the Father.

And this now is our confidence and safety—that it was the Father who appointed the Son High Priest. It is the love of the God against whom we had sinned that gave the Son. It is the will and the power of this God that ordained and worked out the great salvation. It is in God Himself our salvation has its origin, its life, its power. It is God drawing nigh to communicate Himself to us in His Son.

“Christ also glorified not Himself to be made a High Priest.” It was God who gave Him this glory. Just think what this means. God counts it an honor for His Son to be the Priest of poor sinners. Jesus gave up His everlasting glory for the sake of this new, which He now counts His highest, glory—the honor of leading guilty men to God. Every cry of a penitent for mercy, every prayer of a ransomed soul for more grace and nearer access to God, He counts these His highest honor, the proofs of a glory He has received from His Father above the glory of sonship, or rather the opening up of the fullness of glory which His sonship contained.

O doubting troubled soul, will you now believe this: that Jesus counts it His highest honor to do His work in any needy one that turns to Him? The Son of God in His glory counts His priesthood His highest glory, as the power of making us partake as brethren with Him in the life and love of the Father. Do let Jesus now become your confidence. Be assured that nothing delights Jesus more than to do His work.

Do what God has done: Glorify Him as your High Priest; and, as you learn to turn from yourself and all human help to trust the Son of God, He will prove to you what a great High Priest He is; He will, as Son, lead you into the life and love of the Father.

Chapter Notes:

1. Could God have bestowed a more wondrous grace upon us than this, to give His own Son as our High Priest? Could He have given us a surer ground of faith and hope than this, that the Son is Priest? And shall we not trust Him? And give Him the honor God has given Him?

2. What is needed is that we occupy and exercise our faith in appropriating this blessed truth: Jesus is the eternal Son, appointed by the Father as our Priest to introduce us into His presence, and to keep us there. He was Himself so compassed with weaknesses and tried with temptations, that no ignorance or weakness on our part can weary Him, or prevent Him doing His blessed work—if we will only trust Him. Oh, let us worship and honor Him. Let us trust Him. Let our faith claim all He is able and willing to do—our God-appointed High Priest.

3. Faith opens the heart—through faith this divine Being fills and pervades the whole heart and dwells in it. He cannot bring you near to God except as He brings your heart near. He cannot bring your heart near except as He dwells in lt. He cannot dwell in it except as you believe. Oh, consider Jesus until your whole heart is faith in Him and what He is in you.

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 39
Hebrews 5:7-8 — THE HIGH PRIEST LEARNING OBEDIENCE

“ ⁷ Who In the days of his flesh, having offered up prayers an supplications, with strong crying and tears, unto him that was able to save him out of death, and having been heard for his godly fear, ⁸ Though he was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which he suffered.” (Hebrews 5:7-8)

We have already noticed with what persistence the writer has sought to impress upon us the intense reality of Christ's humanity—His being made like unto His brethren, His partaking of flesh and blood in like manner as ourselves, His being tempted in all things like as we are. In the opening verses of our chapter he has again set before us the true High Priest—Himself compassed with weaknesses. He now once more returns to the subject. In verse 6 he has already quoted the promise in regard to the order of Melchizedek, as the text of his further teaching, but felt himself urged to interpose before repeating the quotation in verse 11. He did this in order to unfold, still more fully, what the full meaning is of the blessed humiliation of the Son of God. He leads us in spirit down into Gethsemane, and speaks of the wondrous mystery of the agony there, as the last stage in the preparation and the perfecting of our High Priest for the work He came to do. Let us enter this holy place with hearts bowed under a consciousness of our ignorance, but thirsting to know something more of the great mystery of godliness, the Son of God become flesh for us.

“Who in the days of His flesh.” The word "flesh" points to human nature in the weakness which is the mark of its fallen state. When Jesus said to His disciples in that dark night, "Watch and pray; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Matthew 26:41), He spoke from personal experience. He had felt that it was not enough to have a right purpose but that, unless the weakness of the flesh were upheld, or rather overcome, by power received in prayer from above, that weakness would so easily enter into temptation and become sin. The days of His flesh, encompassed with its weaknesses, were to Him a terrible reality. It was so that He would not yield to this that He watched and prayed.

“Who in the days of His flesh, having offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him out of death, and having been heard for His godly fear,” having gained the strength to surrender His will and fully accept the Father's will and the renewed assurance that He would be saved and raised out of it, though He was a Son —the form of the expression implies that no one would have expected from the Son of God what is now to be said— “yet learned obedience by the things which He suffered.” Gethsemane was the training-school where our High Priest, made like to us in all things, learned His last and most difficult lesson of obedience through what He suffered.

“Though He was a Son.” As the Son of God, come from heaven, one would say that there could be no thought of His learning obedience. But so real was His emptying Himself of His life in glory, and so complete His entrance into all the conditions and likeness of our nature, that He did indeed need to learn obedience. This is of the very essence of the life of a reasonable creature, of man, that the life and the will he has received from God cannot be developed without the exercise of a self-determining power and without the voluntary giving up to God in all that He asks, even where it appears to be a sacrifice. The creature can only attain his perfection under a law of growth, of trial, and of development, in the overcoming of what is contrary to God's will, and the assimilating of what that will reveals.

Of Jesus it is written: “The child grew, and waxed strong, becoming full of wisdom” (Luke 2:40). What is true of His childhood is true of His maturer years. At each stage of life He had to meet temptation, and overcome it. He came out of each victory with His will strengthened, and His power over the weakness of the flesh, and the danger of yielding to its desire for earthly good, or its fear of temporal evil, increased. In Gethsemane His trial and His obedience reached their consummation.

“[He] learned obedience by the things which He suffered.” Suffering is something unnatural, the fruit of sin. God has made us for joy. He created us not only with the capacity but the power of happiness, so that every breath and every healthy movement should be enjoyment. It is natural to us, and it was so to the Son of God, to fear and flee suffering. In this desire there is nothing sinful. It only becomes sinful where God would have us submit and suffer and we instead refuse. This was the temptation of the power of darkness in Gethsemane—for Jesus to refuse the cup. In His prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, Jesus maintained His allegiance to God's will: In wrestlings and bloody sweat He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. The deepest suffering taught Him the highest lesson of obedience: When He had yielded His will and His life, His obedience was complete and He Himself was perfected for evermore.

This is our High Priest. He knows what the weakness of the flesh is. He knows what it costs to conquer it, and how little we are able to do it. He lives in heaven, able to succor us—sympathizing with our weaknesses, bearing gently with the ignorant and erring—a High Priest on the throne, to whom we may boldly draw nigh to find grace for timely help. He lives in heaven and in our hearts, to impart to us His own spirit of obedience so that His priesthood may bring us into the full enjoyment of all He Himself has and is.

Chapter Notes:

1. ”Heard for His godly fear.” How it becomes me then to pray in humble, holy reverence, that l may pray in His spirit, and be heard, too, for His godly fear. This was the very spirit of His prayer and obedience.

2. “[He] learned obedience by the things which he suffered.” Learn to look upon and to welcome all suffering as God's message to teach obedience.

3. “[He] learned obedience.” This was the path in which Christ was trained for His priesthood. This is the spirit and the power that filled Him for the throne of glory; the spirit and the power which alone can lift us there; the spirit and the power which our great High Priest can impart to us. Obedience is of the very essence of salvation. Whether we look at Christ being perfected personally, or at the merit that gave His death its value and saving power, or at the work wrought in us—obedience, the entrance into the will of God, is the very essence of salvation.

4. “[He] learned obedience.” Jesus was obedience embodied, obedience incarnate. l have only as much of Jesus in me as l have of the spirit of obedience.

[mattfivefour]

Chapter 40
Hebrews 5:8-9 — THE HIGH PRIEST PERFECTED THROUGH OBEDIENCE

“ ⁸ Though He was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which He suffered. ⁹ And having been made perfect, He became unto all them that obey Him, the author of eternal salvation.” (Hebrews 5:8-9)

Our Lord Jesus “learned obedience by the things which He suffered.” Through this obedience He was “made perfect” and “became unto all them that obey Him the author of eternal salvation.” So he entered heaven as our High Priest, a Son, perfected for evermore.

The word “perfect” is one of the keywords of the Epistle. It occurs thirteen times. Four times in regard to the Old Testament, which could make nothing perfect.

“For the law made nothing perfect” (Hebrews 7:19).

“Sacrifices that cannot, as touching the conscience, make the worshipper perfect” (Hebrews 9:9).

“The law … can never … make perfect them that draw nigh” (Hebrews 10:1).

“That apart from us they should not be made perfect” (Hebrews 11:40).

As great as is the difference between a promise and its fulfillment, or hope and the thing hoped for—between the shadow and substance—is the difference between the Old and New Testament. The law made nothing perfect: it was only meant to point to something better, to the perfection Jesus Christ was to bring. With the New Testament perfection would come. Thrice the word is used of our Lord Jesus, who in Himself prepared and wrought out the perfection He came to impart.

“For it became Him (God) … to make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering” (Hebrews 2:10)

“And having been made perfect, He became unto all them that obey Him, the author of eternal salvation. (Hebrews 10:9).

“For the law appointeth men high priests, having infirmity; but the word of the oath, which was after the law, appointeth a Son, perfected for evermore” (Hebrews 7:28).

The perfection brought by Christ was that which was revealed in His own personal life. He came to restore to us the life of God we had lost—a life in the will and love of God. This alone is salvation. God perfected Him through suffering— wrought out in Him a perfect human character, in which the divine life was fully united with the human will. He learned obedience through suffering and manifested perfectly the humility and submission and surrender to God that is man's duty and blessedness. So, when He had been perfected, He became the Author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him, because He now had that perfected human nature which He could communicate to them. And so He was appointed High Priest—a Son, perfected for evermore.

As Son of God, He was to take us up into the very life of God; as High Priest, He was to lift us, in actual spiritual reality, into God's fellowship and will and presence. The way in which He was perfected through obedience was the living way in which He was to lead us—as the Son, perfected through obedience, who had found and opened and walked the path of obedience as the path to God. He animates us with His own Spirit to do it too, He, the perfected One, can alone be our salvation.

Then twice we have the word of what Christ has done for us.

“For by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14).

“Jesus the Author and Perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2).

Christ's perfecting us for ever is nothing but His redeeming us by His one sacrifice into the perfect possession of Himself, the perfected One, as our life. His death is our death to sin, His resurrection as the perfected One is our life, His righteousness is ours, His life ours; we are put in possession of all the perfection which the Father wrought out in Him through suffering and obedience.

And once the word is used to describe the spiritual sanctuary opened by Christ:

“The greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands” (Hebrews 9:11).

And three times it is used in regard to Christian character:

“Solid food is for full-grown (perfected) men” (Hebrews 9:14).

“Let us … press on to perfection” (Hebrews 6:1).

“Now the God of peace … make you perfect (in the Greek the word “perfect” here is not the same as in the other passages) in every good thing” (Hebrews 13:20-21).

Those who receive solid food are those who are not content with the mere beginnings of the Christian life, but have given themselves wholly to accept and follow the perfected Master. These are they who press on to perfection— nothing else than the perfection which Christ revealed, as God's claim on men, and as what He has won and made possible for them.

“He learned obedience … and having been made perfect, He became … the author of eternal salvation.” Perfection in God is His will. There is no perfection for man but in union with that will. And there is no way for attaining and proving the union with that will but by obedience. Obedience to the good and perfect will of God transforms the whole nature and makes it capable of union with Him in glory. Obedience to God's will on earth is the way to the glory of God's will in heaven. The everlasting perfection of heaven is nothing but the obedience of earth transfigured and glorified. Obedience is the seed, the power, the life of Christ's perfection and ours.

We are approaching the threshold of the Holiest of All, as this Epistle is to open it up to us as the sphere of the heavenly priesthood of Him who was made after the order of Melchizedek. Ere we proceed thither let us learn this lesson well: The distinguishing mark of the earthly life of our High Priest; the source of His heavenly glory and His eternal salvation; the power of His atonement of our disobedience; the opening of the living way in which we are to follow Him our Leader; the inner disposition and spirit of the life He bestows—of all this, the secret is obedience. Through obedience He was perfected, His sacrifice was perfect, He perfected us for ever, He carries us on to perfection.

Chapter Notes:

1. When the perfect heavenly life of the Lord Jesus comes down from heaven into our hearts, it can assume no form but that which it had in Him—obedience.

2. God must be obeyed: in that one word you have the hey to the life and death of Jesus, His sitting at God's right hand, His priesthood, His dwelling in our hearts, as well as to the whole of the Gospel—God must be obeyed.

3. Christ, the obedient One, who inaugurated for us the new way of obedience unto death as the way to God— is this the Christ You love and trust? Is this your delight in Him, that He now has delivered you from your disobedience, and makes you strong to live only to obey God and Him? is Christ precious to you because the salvation He gives is a restoration to obedience?