CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Hebrews 10:19.—Compare chaps. Hebrews 4:14-16. Brethren.—A sign of the conciliatory tone which the writer is anxious to preserve. Boldness.—See on chaps. Hebrews 3:6, Hebrews 4:16. Enter into the holiest.—Free access to the sanctuary. This point the writer has argued. By the blood of Jesus.—ἐν τῷ αἵματι. Moulton says, “It is not that we enter with the blood, as the high priest entered the Holy of Holies (Hebrews 9:25); no comparison is made between Christ’s people and the Jewish high priest. But as when he entered within the veil the whole people symbolically entered in with him, so do we enter with our High Priest, who ‘by means of His own blood’ entered for us into the immediate presence of God. In that through which He entered we have our ‘boldness to enter.’ ”
Hebrews 10:20. Consecrated.—Or “inaugurated.” His flesh.—“Through His suffering humanity He passed to His glory.”
Hebrews 10:21. An high priest.—ἱερέα μέγαν, a great priest. See Zechariah 6:11-13.
Hebrews 10:22. Sprinkled, etc.—Allusion is to the ceremonies by which the Jewish priests were cleansed from ceremonial defilements. The writer thinks of Christian believers as being “priests unto God” (Revelation 1:5-6).
Hebrews 10:23.—For faith, R.V. properly reads “hope.” Without wavering.—Or, “so that it do not bend.”
Hebrews 10:24. Provoke.—A singular word to use here, because it is generally employed in a bad sense. There seems to be an implied reproof of the contentions of the disciples, which had been “provocations” in a bad sense.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Hebrews 10:19-25
Duty rests on Privilege.—In this section the hortatory portion of the epistle really begins There have been, again and again, hortatory “asides”; now there is a general practical application of the truths to which attention has been so earnestly directed. The main position of the writer is briefly stated afresh, and in terms which show that he still had the solemn ceremonies of the great Jewish Day of Atonement in his mind. He had fixed attention on this fact—the way into the Holy of Holies, where God’s presence was manifested in sacred symbols, had never been open and free to everybody. A veil hid it away, and that veil never might be passed save on definitely arranged conditions. “Into the second tabernacle the high priest went alone, once in the year, not without blood, which he offereth for himself, and for the errors of the people.” That was picture-teaching of spiritual things. The Holy Ghost signified something by it. The Holy of Holies represents the “more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands”—the place in which God now receives His people. Free access there is lost for man by reason of his wilfulness and sin. God has put a veil which no sinful man may pass. And yet the fact is, that the veil is now done away. The fact is, that man now has free access to God’s spiritually manifested presence. How has this come about? and what is involved in our now having this extraordinary liberty and privilege? The first question is answered by the writer in this way: “But Christ having come, a High Priest of the good things to come [or that are come], through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation, nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, entered in once for all into the Holy Place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.” The material ceremonies of the material tabernacle secured for Israelites material privileges, and pictured and foreshadowed the spiritual ceremonies of the spiritual tabernacle which secure for all men spiritual privileges. When we speak of Christ, we need to remember that the Holy of Holies which He entered is the spiritual presence of God; that the blood which He took is spiritual blood, the offering of Himself, His will, His life, His perfect obedience of sonship; that the veil through which He entered was His life in the flesh, in which the perfection of His obedience was tested and proved; and that the benefits and privileges which He secured for us were wholly spiritual benefits, summed up in right soul-standing with God, and free soul-access to Him. This privilege is restated for us in Hebrews 10:19: “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by the way which He dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh; and having a great Priest over the house of God.” The old priest went into the old sanctuary, but took no one in with him. When he went in, he closed the veil behind him. When he came out, he carefully closed the veil again. Our new and spiritual High Priest, being Himself also His infinitely acceptable offering, took the veil aside, and went in, leaving the veil drawn aside, and the way in open for every one who would come to God by Him. That High Priest went in, and never came out again, and never closed the veil behind Him, and never will. There it stands to-day just as He left it, thrust right back; and there He stands to-day, just as He took His stand when He entered, as sacrifice and priest, the Holy Place. And there the open way is, just as He made it; and by that way we have freedom and boldness of access to God. If those Christian Jews to whom the epistle was written would but enter fully into their new and spiritual privileges in Christ Jesus, they would readily let the old, formal, and material system pass away, and they would be no longer disturbed in mind by those who exaggerated the importance of what was but temporary and preparatory. If they did enter fully into their spiritual privileges, they would surely find that those privileges brought calls to duty, and that the earnest and persistent fulfilment of the duty ensured the constant renewal and constant enjoyment of the privileges. The safeguard of religious truth and religious privilege is not contention and dispute, but an earnest, devoted, obedient life of love and service.
I. Our duty to ourselves.—It is not selfishness or self-centredness to do our duty to ourselves—to meet our obligations to ourselves. A man is just as truly put in trust of himself as he is put in trust of others. “Every man must bear his own burden,” the responsibility of being himself. No man can rightly neglect his own spiritual life upon the excuse that he is busily attending to other people’s. Three things are urged by this writer, as included in our duty to ourselves—Prayer, Purity, Profession.
1. We must freely use our new-found privilege of access to God. Prayer is the spiritual agency by means of which our souls pass along the new Christ-opened way into the presence and communion of God. “Let us draw near, with a true heart, in fulness of faith.”
2. We must be very jealous about that condition of using the new Christly way which is the condition on our side. It is not anybody who may pass in, only those who are aiming at personal purity, who are setting their wills upon righteousness, whose consciences do not accuse them of wilful and purposed sin, and who are putting a strong hand of control upon their daily conduct and relations, to ensure that they run in lines of consistency and righteousness. “Having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our body washed with pure water”—figures evidently taken from the anxiety of the high priest, on the Atonement Day, to secure both bodily and moral purity before venturing through the veil.
3. And we must recognise the importance of a steady persistency in the profession of our faith, and a constant readiness to make confession of our faith, whenever the call to make confession comes. Spiritual safety is guaranteed when a man has no idea of hiding whose he is and whom he serves—when he can say, even before those who persecute him, as did the saintly Polycarp, “I am a Christian.” It was the half-shame and half-fear which were keeping the Jewish Christians from openly confessing Christ, that put their standing in Christ in peril. “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope, that it waver not.”
II. Our duty to one another.—It is of the very essence of a Christian Church that those who stand in the recovered sonship are brought into mutually helpful relations in the recovered brotherhood. A Christian is his “brother’s keeper.” We are responsible to one another for what we can do for one another in the culture and fitting expression of that spiritual life which we have in common. It is not often set before us with sufficient clearness and force, that our duty to fellow-Christians is not merely common-place, every-day, human kindness. This is due from man to man in the ordinary human brotherhood. Our call is to serve our Christian brethren precisely in the sphere of their Christian, that is, their spiritual, life. “Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and good works.” In every Church there are the strong and the weak: “Let those who are strong bear the infirmities of the weak.” In every Church there are the advanced, the experienced, the saintly: let them provoke to all goodness the beginners, the young, and those whose life is in its struggling-time. Spiritual things, virtues, powers, experiences, are never to be thought of as personal possessions: they are trusts for use; they are for mutual edification. The man will lose them who thinks to keep them to himself; the man will keep them who uses them in service to others. Provoke others, then, to love, which is the essence of the Christian life; and to good works, which are the essentials of the expression of the Christian life. Each may be the “helper of another’s joy.” And the peril of the Jewish Christian Churches would be easily removed, if only they would take proper spiritual care of one another.
III. Our duty to the Church.—We stand in relation not only to one another, but also to the Church, as a body, to which we may belong. We are responsible for our personal example of godliness, and for our loyalty to all the Church’s arrangements and claims. This is put into one matter—one which we are surprised to find thus early in the history of the Church causing serious anxiety: “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is.” Nothing puts a man’s spiritual life in more serious peril than irregular attendance at the services of his Church; nothing more readily checks the process of spiritual culture; nothing affords a more injurious example to others; and nothing indicates a weaker sense of the responsibilities under which a man comes in entering the fellowship of a Church. These duties wait on privilege. There can be no enjoyment of the privilege without meeting the obligations. Let no one deceive himself on that point.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Hebrews 10:19. Free Admission to the Holiest.—The humility which is suitable to the Christian life is suitable also in our relations to the Christian truth. We never can, at any one time, see wholes of truth. As with our bodily, so with our mental vision, we may see the front and one side, but we cannot at the same time see the other side and the back. It is well to bear in mind the fact that each representation of truth made to us is only one aspect of it. It may be the best aspect for us, and not be also the best aspect for others. We should therefore hold each setting of religious truth charitably, and with due consideration of the differing thoughts and feelings of others. Each man has a different apprehension of the truth of the Reconciliation or Atonement. Some approach it as philosophical inquirers, and some as conscious sinners. (These are likely to see special value in the substitutionary aspects of the Redeemer’s work.) Some as saved ones, who, looking back, try to understand the salvation. (These are likely to give special prominence to the moral power in our Redeemer’s work.) But all sides and aspects of a truth must be taken into due account if we would apprehend it as a whole.
I. The condition of entrance into the Holiest.—“By the blood of Jesus.” Great spiritual verities are illustrated by the old Jewish ritual. The “Holiest” was separated from the “Tabernacle,” picturing for us the truth that, as men, the worship of the Creator, the God of providence, can be carried on daily; but, as sinners, God is, in some sense, hidden, and can only manifest His favour on conditions. The “mercy-seat” is within the space called the “Holiest.” Many think of the “mercy-seat” as if it were a common thing belonging to the outer court, and always accessible. Note the significance of the veil, and the mode of entrance. The conditions on which sinners can come to God are given in the text and context.
1. The blood of Jesus. This was required on God’s side. It was necessary to the vindication of God’s truth, and the honouring of God’s law, so that no dishonour should come to Him while extending His mercy to sinners, and so that all presumption might be checked. God was honoured in Christ’s obedience unto death, in His surrender of life, or blood-shedding.
2. The humanity of Jesus—“His flesh.” This was required on man’s side. The God we cannot see is behind the veil of Christ’s flesh. Only through the humanity of Jesus do we come to God—to know God—to hold communion with God. It is quite impossible for us men to come to a God conceived only as an abstraction. He must be God manifest.
3. The priesthood of Jesus. This is needed both by God and by us. It represents a living mediation. On such a basis we may well have “boldness, and access with confidence.”
II. The joy of being in the Holiest.—Having free admission to it is a “sacred joy.” Conceive the joy of the high priest while privileged to be within the veil. In the older days there was no abiding there, nor indeed any frequent going there. Show—
1. Our joy in gaining admission to God. Imagine a high priest going into the Holiest for the first time. Compare our first sense of being within the veil.
2. Our joy in securing liberty of access. Gaining the feeling of a right to enter. The right of gracious invitation, and an offered way.
3. Our joy in using our privilege. Able to go to God in all our difficulty, trouble, faintness, feebleness, and sin. As men, we can always go into the outer court to praise, and to thank God, and to worship. Should it not be a joy indeed to us that—as sinners—we can always go into the “Holiest?”
Conclusion.—
1. How firmly based is our forgiveness and acceptance with God! The “Holiest” opened; the “veil” rent; the “blood” sprinkled; the Priest before the “mercy-seat” for us.
2. How large is our privilege of access! “Boldness to enter”! Is it too large? Does it seem to be too easy? God’s commonest mercies are the most necessary, yet the most neglected. Shall it be so with this? A rent veil, and none, or but few, passing through it! A living Priest, and no worshippers, or but few, for Him to present! The Angel of the covenant standing, and no prayers, or but few, for Him to put into His censer!
The Veil of the Flesh.—The veil in the Temple which interposed between the worshipper and the visible presence of Jehovah is compared to the body of Christ (John 2:21). As the veil concealed the glory of Jehovah from ocular sight, so the body of Jesus shrouded His original glory. As God dwelt behind the veil in the earthly Temple, so God dwells behind the veil of human flesh in the person of Jesus: that is, God can be approached only by means of Him. The rending of the Temple veil at the death of Christ attested the fact that His death gave a right of free access to every man to the presence of God. The typical meaning which is here attached to the veil shows that the actual approach to God is made by the existing humanity of Jesus.—Webster and Wilkinson.
Hebrews 10:20. The New and Living Way.—“Consecrated,” or “dedicated,” or even better, “inaugurated.” This way was opened to us by Christ; in it we follow Him. For Him, the way into the Holiest led through the veil—His flesh. As the veil concealed from the high priest the place of God’s presence, which he could enter only by passing through the veil, so, although in His earthly life Jesus dwelt in the presence of God, yet as our representative He could not enter the heavenly sanctuary until He had passed through and out of His life of flesh (see Hebrews 9:11). There is probably a covert allusion to the rending of the Temple veil in the hour when Jesus thus passed through the rent veil of His flesh. This way is new (Hebrews 9:8; Hebrews 9:12), it is living, for in truth this “way” is living union with Christ (John 14:6).—Dr. Moulton.
The Body of Christ a Tabernacle.—In many passages the human nature or body of Christ seems to be regarded as a kind of temporary tabernacle, or veil of the Divine nature which dwelt in Him. As God dwells behind the veil in His earthly Temple, so God dwells behind the veil of Jesus’ body in His spiritual temple, i.e. He can be approached only through the medium of this, or by means of this.
Hebrews 10:23. Holding fast Profession.—The text invites consideration of the duties involved in a Christian profession, and of the watchfulness that is necessary if we are to keep faithful to it. The profession, or confession, of Christ is a voluntary act; and by voluntary efforts it is to be maintained.
I. The duties involved in a Christian profession.—
1. Allegiance to certain revealed truths, as revealed. We are under no obligation to be loyal to those truths as any particular man may have been pleased to restate them.
2. Submission to the living rule of Christ.
3. Keeping of certain well-defined rules, and doing of certain carefully prescribed works. After unfolding each of these, press home the command of the text, “hold fast,” with
(1) head,
(2) heart,
(3) hand.
II. The dangers attending a Christian profession.—The great danger called to mind here is liability to wavering.
1. Liability to waver from allegiance to truth. Note the influence of speculation and criticism—the wisdom of this world; and of religious prejudice, bigotry, sectarianism, and exclusiveness, which are always trying to shift us from God’s truth to men’s opinions.
2. Liability to waver from submission to the living rule of Christ. Easily drift to become self-pleasers and men-pleasers. The inspiring truth of Christ’s living high-priesthood is meant to counteract this. All will be well if we keep Him constantly in soul-vision.
3. Liability to waver in the fulfilment of Christian obligations. That danger always comes when the spiritual health flags, and the vital force is lowered. Depressed life is always attended with neglect of duty. Health and activity and energy in service always go together.
Holding fast Profession.—Observe—
1. The duty of “holding fast profession” itself. Getting and keeping such hold as will effectually secure us against
(1) persecution;
(2) temptation.
2. The manner in which we must do this: without
(1) wavering;
(2) without doubting;
(3) without disputing;
(4) without dallying with temptation to apostasy.
3. The motive or reason enforcing this duty. God’s faithfulness to His promise should be our perpetual inspiration.
Hebrews 10:24. Mutual Consideration and Mutual Provocation.—As Christian individuals responsibilities, obligations, claims, and duties come to us. As members of Christian communities our fellow-members have claims upon us, and we have claims upon them. All human relationships involve mutual responsibilities. God purposes to carry on His redeeming and sanctifying work in small circles by the piety, the gracious words, and hallowing influence of individuals, and in larger circles by the piety, devotion, zeal, and aggressive activity of Churches.
I. We ought to consider one another.—To know one another, to be interested in one another, to be ready to serve one another, but especially to be interested in the Christian well-being and progress of those who are united to us in the Christian fellowship. Take interest in others, and spheres of work and influence are sure to open before us. There are always spiritually feeble ones whom we may strengthen: the permanently feeble, who are always finding it difficult to maintain the religious life; the temporarily feeble, in times of bodily sickness, or family or business troubles. But if we are to be true helpers one of another, it will be necessary for us to watch against the upgrowth of those jealousies and misunderstandings and prejudices that tend to divide us one from another. We should give more thought to our oneness in Christ, and less to our mutual peculiarities and infirmities.
II. We ought to provoke one another to love and good works.—This we may do by—
1. Our example of Christian living. That example should be no doubtful or uncertain witness. With sincerity we should be able to say, “Be ye followers of me, as I am of Christ.”
2. By our joy in meeting Christian obligations and fulfilling Christian duties. This has a most inspiring influence. Illustrate from
(1) attendance on means of grace;
(2) generosity and charity;
(3) Christian aggressive work.
3. By our anxiously using our opportunities for speaking to others. The living Christian should be doing the same work as the living word, which is given “for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness.” “Ye which are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak,” and help others into the spirit of “love” and the life of “good works.”
Pastor and People.—Attention may be fixed on the way in which the writer puts himself into his recommendations and counsels. “Let us consider one another.” He was not only a brother-Christian, he was a teacher, he may have been an apostle: he evidently had some personal office in relation to the Jewish Christian Churches, or some especial authority in them. Advice is never effectively given when the adviser in any sense holds himself aloof from the advice he gives. It is most effective when it is evident that the adviser applies the advice to himself. He carries us with him when he says we, not you. Here then pastor and people are called upon to “consider one another” and to “provoke one another.”
I. What can pastors do for the people?—The word “provoke” is generally used by us in a bad sense, but it need not be. It is a suitable word with which to describe a minister’s work, if we will take it aright. It means, “stir up; urge with all holy persuasions; do not let rest; keep on stirring up; never mind if there is resistance; keep on trying to get a gracious and good influence.”
1. Ministers may provoke by presenting inspiring examples. “Be thou an ensample to the flock.” The example should not be merely of truthfulness, integrity, purity, and “heavenly, Divine charity”: it should be a specifically Christly example of forbearance—“the servant of the Lord must not strive”; of gentleness; of meekness, in its nobler sense of “non-self-assertiveness”; of sympathy, which enables him to come helpfully near to all kinds of human sorrow. But we may not limit ministerial examples to Christly graces; the minister must be an ensample of Christly activity and energy. To deal with this fully would need an audience of ministers. Enough to say now, that a minister should be what he can make himself and what Christ can make him; but in actual fact he too often is only what the people make him, and then he is far down below what, in his moments of noble aspiration, he intensely longs to be. He would, when he is his truest self, provoke men by an inspiring example.
2. Ministers may “provoke” by wise and strong and spiritual teachings. Fearing that he had given offence to a leading member of his congregation by some very strong appeals which he had been led to make, a clergyman foolishly went to him to explain and apologise. The man was wiser than the minister, for he very quietly replied, saying, “My dear sir, it is a very poor sermon that does not hit somebody.” Smoothness and platitudes are helpless, hopeless, and injurious things. Men can go to sleep, and even die in their sins. A minister must so teach as to provoke. He must provoke men to think; provoke men to examine the beliefs which they are holding to-day for no other reason than that they have held them for years; provoke them to self-examinations, that they may see whether their spirit and their conduct are such as “becometh the gospel of Christ”; provoke them to see whether they are cherishing evil, untrustful, unforgiving feelings towards any others; provoke them to put away their sins and self-indulgences; provoke them to the renewal of their neglected religious duties. Christian teachings are not sweet, soft playings on a harp. They are not mild nothings of sentimental comfort. They are—they ought to be—clarion-calls to come forth to the “help of the Lord against the mighty,” who in these days are imperilling the Christian truth, the Christian righteousness, and the Christian charity. We want the holy provocations of a vigorous, searching, and strong ministry.
3. Ministers may provoke by spiritual quickenings. There is something required more than example, and more than teaching. It is the mysterious quickening influence of vigorous, healthy, refined, sensitive, spiritual life. Sometimes we use the term “mesmeric,” and we say of ministers that they have a strange mesmeric power over their congregations. Call it what we may, we all know what is meant, for we ourselves have come again and again into its power. High soul-life has quickened soul-life in us. Spiritual power has provoked the dying embers of our soul-life, and stirred them into a flame again. That supremely good work ministers may do for the people. They may, but only on conditions that are not easily realised.
4. And ministers may provoke by leading the people into new enterprises and good works. The initiative need not always come from the minister; but the leadership of the enterprise, when started, may properly come from him; and with wisdom, courage, and persistency he may help over early difficulties, and guide development along healthy lines.
II. What can the people do for their pastors?—“Provoke to love and good works.” Provoke in a good sense. Ministers are but human. They are as susceptible to kindly surroundings of trustfulness, to signs of sympathy and affection, as other people are; and they readily respond when sweet confidences and loving services tell how God is using them in culturing religious life and virtue. The spiritual life and power of ministers flag very readily, and they have always to set the counsel well in view, “Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” What then can the people do for their minister?
1. Trust him. He cannot always do what the people think to be wise; he often does not do what the people think he ought to do; and he is sure to say, if he really is a man of God and not a mere time-server, what the people think he ought not to say. Trust him. If he is in God’s lead and keeping, trust him. Depend upon it God’s truth and God’s honour are as precious to him as to any of his people.
2. Stand by him. A minister, in coming to preside over a people, commits his reputation, his ministerial reputation, to their charge, and they should be very jealous of it. Calumniators there may be; let them be outside his Church. The healthiest thing for a Church to do is to insist that it will discuss the teachings which the minister presents, but it will not discuss the minister. How wise the rebuke of the good man who, checking remarks at his table that tended to disparage the minister, calmly but firmly said, “He is our minister, and I never allow such remarks as these in my house.”
3. Pray for him. That is the truest and most blessed form of provocation. When persons get out of sympathy with their minister, they always cease to pray for him, or their prayer becomes a mere grumbling to God about him. That prayer-power is always at the command of a congregation, and a marvellous power it is to provoke pastors unto “love and good works.” And when they thus each provoke the other, what a noble life they can live together as pastor and people! what sacrificing services they can render together! Services then are times of refreshing. Christian work is done then with full consecration. “Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and good works.” Let us use our power of mutual provocation.
Hebrews 10:25. The Duty of the House of God.—“Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together.” We have all been surprised to find that our Christian brethren have passed through our experience, have felt our feelings, have battled with our difficulties, and have won the rest which we have gained, by the very means which we had employed. As soon as we know the heart-story of our brethren, we find in how large a measure it is true that “no temptation has taken us but such as is common to man.” And the idea we have of the singularity of our own experience we are disposed to transfer to the Church itself. Men say that there never has been such a period in the Church’s history as the present. It has never been surrounded with the same evils and temptations, or been marked by the same peculiarities. But the truth is, that there is no temptation that has taken the Churches of to-day but such as is common to Churches. In the early days of first love and zeal, the Christian teachers had to deal with a difficulty which sorely troubles the Church of to-day. Men were neglecting the “assembling of themselves together.”
I. Religion is a personal thing, an individual thing, a spiritual thing.—A personal thing—each man must attend to it himself. An individual thing—no man can lose himself in a crowd of seekers; he must stand alone before God, and carry his sin-burden alone to Christ. A spiritual thing—mere association with services and ceremonies cannot secure it; it belongs to a man’s heart, not his hands or his head or his tongue. The best things are liable to abuse. Divine truths suffer, in practically working them out, through our infirmities. We are always too ready to exalt one truth above another, one form of duty at the expense of another. Some make too much of the individuality and personality of religion, and because they are growing all by themselves, are growing long and thin and pale and weak, as many “only children” do growing up all by themselves in homes. A man set by himself to nourish his own religion can never reach the highest stages of Christian life and experience. There is, indeed, a long roll of saintly men and women who, in hermit cells and in monastic and conventual seclusion, have sought holiness, but their lives have always fallen short of the Christian ideal. There are Christian virtues which never can be nourished in this way. All that part of Christian character which relates to the unselfish demands association with others. If a Christian is to be in health, he must not only breathe Christian feeling and feed on Christian truth, he must also feel the power of daily contact with those who are conscious of the same sins, glory in the same Saviour, and labour to win the same holiness. Upon Christian associations, in worship and in work, the culture of a high, worthy, Christian life depends.
II. The religion of Jesus Christ makes plain demand on us not only to nourish our own life, but also to interest ourselves in the Christian life of others.—The Christian spirit in us urges us to care for others, that
(1) they should begin the godly life, and
(2) that they should walk worthy of their vocation. We are gathered up together as redeemed sons of God, children together of the one Father, heirs together of the same infinite inheritance; and there is properly expected from us a family, a brotherly, interest in each other. In the early days of the Church all who had truly learned of Christ consecrated themselves to works of charity and mercy: they relieved the sick and afflicted; they instructed in Christian truth; they preached in order that, if possible, all men might be saved. Our Lord left us an example. In His life the most prominent thing is care for others, self-sacrifice in the effort to bless others. He is never seeking to get pleasure; He is always trying to give pleasure. And He gets the truest and best pleasure in the giving. The first natural cry of a renewed soul is for some one with whom to talk about the new emotions. We cannot be glad, as Christians, without wanting somebody to stand beside us, and join their voice to our psalm of thanksgiving. We cannot pray, but we want some one to kneel beside us, and utter their heart out along with ours in fervent wrestlings and supplications. We cannot listen to the preached word with profit unless others sit beside us, and the dews of Divine truth are refreshing also the soil of their hearts. Plants and trees never do well unless they grow together. It is a pilgrim path we have to tread, but the pilgrims may walk together. The spirit of sin is the spirit of separation. Sin makes men walk in lonely paths, thinking their own thoughts, wrestling with their own doubts. If it were not the spirit of sin, we might say it was the spirit of the age in which we live. The selfishness of modern business competition is opposed to that generous thoughtfulness of others which properly distinguishes the Christian. The world would cut off every tie that binds us to others. Christ would make every tie hold more closely.
III. Our modes of assembling together are practically fitted to accomplish both these ends—to strengthen and develope our own religious life, and to exhibit and express our interest in the religious life of others.—Our text evidently puts our “assembling together” as a means of “provoking one another to love and good works”; and that is the only kind of “provoking” Christians ever should do. Our modes of assembling are mainly of three kinds:
1. We assemble together for purposes of Christian fellowship.
2. We assemble together for purposes of worship and instruction.
3. And we assemble together to remember our Lord’s death, with the help of His appointed emblems. We need all these kinds of meetings. We need all for the full development of our own life. We need all for the adequate expression of our consideration for others.
The Day approaching.—Christians ought to observe the signs of the times, such as God has foretold. There was a day approaching, a terrible day, to the Jewish nation, when their city should be destroyed, and the body of the people rejected of God for rejecting Christ. This would be a day of dispersion and temptation to the chosen remnant. Now the apostle puts them upon observing what signs there were of the approach of such a terrible day, and upon being the more constant in meeting together and exhorting one another, that they might be the better prepared for such a day. There is a trying day coming on us all, the day of our death, and we should observe all the signs of its approaching, and improve them to greater watchfulness and diligence in duty.—Matthew Henry.