CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Hebrews 12:9. Father of spirits.—See Numbers 16:22; Numbers 27:16; Zechariah 12:1. “The Creator of all spirits, who is the Giver of life to all, who knows the spirit which He has made, and can discipline it by chastening.”
Hebrews 12:12. Lift up the hands.—Lit. “straighten out the relaxed hands and the palsied knees” (Isaiah 35:3).
Hebrews 12:15. Root of bitterness.—See Deuteronomy 29:18.
Hebrews 12:16. Fornicator.—The Scriptures do not thus describe Esau. Farrar thinks that the writer must have in mind the Jewish Hagadah, in which Esau is represented in the blackest colours, as a man utterly sensual, intemperate, and vile. And this also was the view of Philo.
Hebrews 12:17. Place of repentance.—In his father. There is no reference to repentance in relation to God. He could not induce his father to change his mind in regard to the matter. The reference is entirely to the transfer of the rights of primogeniture to the younger of the twins, Jacob. The rest of the chapter pleads for watchfulness and steadfastness on the ground that everything under the-new dispensation is of a milder aspect, and of a more inviting, encouraging nature, than under the old. For the references to Old Testament Scriptures, see Exodus 20:21; Deuteronomy 4:5.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Hebrews 12:9-17
Hebrews 12:9-11. The Father of Spirits.—The contrast here presented between our earthly father and our heavenly Father, and the arguments for the superior claims of our heavenly Father, are based upon a distinction which needs to be more fully recognised. Our earthly father is father of the body and the animal life that we have; our heavenly Father is Father of the souls that we are. The natural relations illustrate the spiritual, but the spiritual are altogether higher than the natural.
I. We recognise authority in the natural relation (Hebrews 12:9).—That sense of parental authority is the basis of moral character. It associates right and wrong with the will of a person, and prepares us to see absolute right and wrong as the will of God. It is to rise into the higher plane of being to recognise the authority of God in the spiritual relation.
II. We yield to the natural authority, even though we know it is imperfect (Hebrews 12:10).—The sense of fatherly unwisdom comes to the son. His judgment does not go with his father’s. He is keen enough to see that the father is serving his own ends, rather than doing the best for him; and, nevertheless, the loyal and good son yields to his father, does what he wishes, submits himself in obedience. How much more then should the submission and obedience be offered when the Father’s wisdom and judgment and motive are absolutely unquestionable, and the child knows that the fatherly dealings are altogether for his profit?
III. When there is full trust in the natural relation, things painful can easily be borne.—This may be illustrated by things required to be done or borne in times of illness. The assurance that parental love aims at restored health and strength enables the child to endure. And in the higher, spiritual relation we may be so sure that our heavenly Father is ever working to produce the “peaceable fruits of righteousness in us,” that we may find it easy to bear chastening which, “for the present, is not joyous, but grievous.”
Hebrews 12:12-17. Christian Ways of helping One Another.—It is evident that the writer had the passage from Isaiah (Isaiah 33:3) in mind. Four ways of mutually helping under the Christian strain are here indicated.
I. By considerateness for the weak.—Lit. “Straighten out the relaxed hands and the palsied knees” (Hebrews 12:12). Make one effort to invigorate the flaccid muscles which should be so tense in the struggle in which you are engaged. This, however, unduly confines the advice to the Christian’s work upon himself. It seems better to refer the words to the way in which the strong ones in a Church can bear the infirmities of the weak. In the Christian chain there always are weak links. They may be a peril. They should be an anxiety. They can be strengthened. That is the work of the experienced and strong-principled.
II. By personal example.—“Make straight paths for your feet” (Hebrews 12:13). Let those about you see you “walking worthily of the vocation wherewith you are called.” Every steadfast Christian is a power; every beautiful Christian is an inspiration. Integrity helps all who watch it.
III. By wise ordering of relationships.—“Follow peace with all men” (Hebrews 12:14). That is, shape your conduct, meet your obligations, and show a graciousness in all the daily associations of your life: they shall disarm your foes, and make peaceful all your human relations. “Blessed are the peacemakers.” And those who follow after holiness always find that holiness makes for peace.
IV. By anxious watchfulness and resolute dealings with the beginnings of evil.—“Looking carefully” (Hebrews 12:15-17). The care concerns things and persons.
1. Things. “Lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you.” Things include opinions, teachings, attractions of worldly pleasure, neglects of duty, self-indulgences, etc.
2. Persons. “Lest there be any profane persons.” Persons are always more mischievous than things, because there is life, and activity, and power of influence in them. It is the person whose word, example, or influence is morally mischievous against whom the writer inveighs.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Hebrews 12:10. Different Principles in the Chastening of Sons.—R.V. “Chastened us as seemed good to them.” It is an indication of the thoughtful observation and intelligent insight of this writer, that he discerns the weakness usually attaching to the discipline of earthly parents. It is the expression of the father’s ideas and wishes, rather than a careful. adaptation of method and rule to meet the differing dispositions of the children. So often the family rules are applied without modification, and the maintenance of the parental authority is more cared for than the moral well-being of a particular child. It has also to be said, that the yet graver mistake made by human parents is punishing when in a temper, and making the chastisement represent the wounded personal feeling, rather than the care for the child’s good. On these sides of parental weakness there can only be contrast between man and God. We may never think of the heavenly Father as losing His self-control under any aggravation of His sons. And we may think of Him as so concerned for the individual well-being of each son as to adapt the outworking of His parental principles so as to secure the “profit,” the moral and spiritual good, of each. Restlessness of sons under the weak fatherhoods of earth may be reasonable. The restfulness of sons under the strong, wise, gracious fatherhood of God should be expected.
Hebrews 12:11. Grievous Now, Joyous By-and-By.—It seems to be an ever-working law of life for moral beings that joy shall not come first—that joy shall always be a consummation, an issue, of something which, in one form or another, involves struggle, self-restraint, “strain and stress.” Things can only gain moral character out of conflict. The moral life is recognising the good and the evil, with inclination to choose the evil, and judgment, based on knowledge, approving the good; and then a conflict resulting in following the judgment, and not the inclination. That struggle must come first; it is always grievous; but triumph brings joy.
The Happy Fruit of Righteousness.—εἰρηνικός is that which bestows happiness or produces it. This corresponds with the writer’s design, who means to say that afflictions, rightly improved, will be productive of fruit that will confer happiness, such fruit as righteousness always produces.—Moses Stuart.
The Purpose of Affliction relieves the Pain of Affliction.—“Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.” That may be true as a fact of observation, but we must never think it be true as a matter of Divine appointment. If we could clear away all the troubles which men bring upon themselves, there would be very little, if any, trouble left in the world to account for. Concerning earthly trouble we may say, Man made it, by disturbing the Divine order in His wilfulness; but God overrules it, takes the evil thing up into His service, and works out a surprising benediction—a benediction that could not be wrought in any other way—by means of it. But the use which God makes of it must never be allowed to blind our eyes to the evil of it. Trouble is trouble, though we may be lifted up, by our confidence in the fatherliness of God, to call it chastisement and correction. But though man is the cause of all, or almost all, the trouble under which this fair earth of ours groans continually, we have the perplexing fact to deal with, that those who suffer are by no means always those who sin; and it is not easy for us to discern why those who suffer need the chastening. The tower in Siloam falls in a way that men call accidental, but those who were crushed to death were not sinners above all who dwelt in Jerusalem. The Judæan Christians suffered bitter persecutions at the hands of Jewish brethren and heathen neighbours, but the troubles were not brought upon them through their evil-doing, but through their well-doing. See these things standing on the level with them, and they are hopelessly perplexing, and it is easy for us to say, There either is no God, or He is a very inefficient one. This kind of thought has troubled the people of God from the times of Job and Asaph, and led many to make shipwreck of faith. The writer of this epistle does not propose to explain to the Hebrew Christians the meaning of their troubles and persecutions from the level. He tries to lift them up above, so that they may look down upon them, see how they are being overruled, and what they are working towards. On the level you can only see the things that are close to you; up above you can see other things, you can form some idea of the relations of things, and begin to trace how things work together. Up above we can begin to discover working principles, and Divine purposes and meanings. But precisely our difficulty is the difficulty of getting and keeping up above. If we follow the lead of the writer of this epistle, we shall find that the best way is to fill our minds and hearts full of the glory of the Lord Jesus; the marvellous wisdom and grace of His mission; the moral life that He quickens; and the power of His abiding presence in the world as its Redeemer, not only from sin, but also from all the woes that sin has brought in its train. Enter into the mind of Christ, and you will rise above the level of earthly troubles; and looking down upon life as He looks, you will see a great moral purpose being outwrought: the world is being kept, and afflictions are the moral salt that is keeping it; the world is being cleansed, and human troubles are the refiner’s fires and the fuller’s soap, that are doing the cleansing work. Just this seems to be expressed in our text, which the R.V. gives in a somewhat sharper form: “All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous, but grievous: yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness.” Mr. Spurgeon has a clever illustration of the point of this text. There is a little plant, small and stunted, growing under the shade of a broad-spreading oak, and this little plant values the shade that covers it, and greatly does it esteem the quiet rest which its noble friend affords. Once upon a time there comes along the woodman, and with his sharp axe he fells the oak. The plant weeps and cries, “My shelter is gone, every rough wind will blow upon me!” “No,” says the angel of the flower, “now will the sun get at thee, now will the shower fall on thee in more copious abundance than before, now thy stunted form shall spring up into loveliness, and thy flower, which could never have expanded itself to perfection, shall now laugh in the sunshine, and men shall say, How greatly hath this plant increased, how glorious hath become its beauty through the removal of that which was its shade and delight!” This is the truth now presented to us—the purpose of affliction relieves the pain of affliction.
I. Affliction passing over us is hard to bear.—The heap of wheat as it is brought in from the fields, and spread out all over the threshing-floor, cannot but feel it hard when the heavy threshing-roller, with its cutting teeth, is drawn backward and forward over it. That tribulum-work, that tribulation, cannot be joyous, but grievous. But presently it appears what good work has been done by the severe discipline: the husks have been split, and have fallen away from the grain; and it only needs now the winnowing fan to secure the pure corn for the food of man. In every human life there is a mission for the threshing-roller of afflictive discipline. Human trouble takes on a great variety of forms, but it never takes any that are easy to bear at the time. It is in the very nature of trouble that it must be pressure, strain, distress. It would not have its ministry in character if it were not. It is easy to classify the afflictions that befall humanity. They take form as suffering, as sorrowing, as sinning.
1. The form of suffering. Suffering, pure and simple, without the element of sin embittering it, is part of the economy of nature; man only shares it in common with the creature, and we need to speak cautiously and carefully concerning it when we speak of it as evil. It would be possible to show that even important animal qualities, and much more moral qualities, can only be wrought by simple suffering. At once it will come to mind that the motherliness of motherhood, both in the creatures and in humanity, follows upon, and can only follow upon, the suffering of the birth-time. Think closely, and it will soon appear, that moral character can never be made anywhere, save by the agency of suffering. Of Christ it is said, “Though He were a son, yet learned He obedience by the things that He suffered.” We must therefore speak thoughtfully and wisely on this matter. But this is certainly true, and always true—suffering is hard to bear. Personal suffering, taking shape as sickness, frailty, pain, always is. Disease comes in so many painful and repulsive forms. It comes at what seem such unfitting times. It brings in with it such a trail of other woes. It breaks into the enterprise of life, disturbing and imperilling our business relations. It often wholly upsets the plan of our life, and leaves us, when convalescent, to battle again for lost position. It brings strain and stress on those whom we love more than we love ourselves. Hezekiah is the type of all sick folk in his experience of the hardness of his lot: put aside, in pain and helplessness, when life’s schemes were just working out well, but nothing seemed really accomplished. It was hard to be cut off in the midst of his days. It is hard to be sick for a while; it is hard to be frail and weak all life long. While the cloud hangs low over us, we can but walk in the darkness, and feel depressed by it. No personal suffering for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous. It has to feel grievous; it is just its ministry to make us feel burdened and distressed. Do not be surprised that you find your frailty hard to bear: it is precisely what you ought to find it and feel it.
2. The form of sorrowing. A very large portion of human affliction is not personal, but relative, suffering. It is such affliction as David knew when he wailed over his ruined son. It is such sorrow as St. Paul knew when he feared his companion would be taken away, and he would have “sorrow upon sorrow.” It is such sorrow as our Divine Lord felt when He stood by the tomb of His friend Lazarus, with the heart-broken sisters beside Him. It is the sympathetic entering into the sorrows of others which brings their burdens to lie on our hearts. And the sympathy is keen according to our dispositions. There are some who can pass amid the suffering with a chilly self-control, a calmness that keeps them from undue distress; but there are many who, in the quickness and keenness of their sympathy, sorrow unduly, suffer more than the actual sufferers. Perhaps many of us can see, in looking back over our lives, that we have known more affliction through sympathy than through personal suffering. Maybe we have had to deal with great sufferers, or to come helpfully near to those who have been in overwhelming distress; and the strain for us has almost been overstrain. And sometimes our utter helplessness, our inability to meet occasions, the misery of having to stand by with folded hands while the great billows of woe have rolled over our beloved, has been overwhelming woe for us. Even public distress may try us greatly. What do the clergy feel when they bury the bread-winners, and the mothers for whose love and tending the children will lift a life-long wail? Sometimes one is disposed to say that the burdens of sympathetic sorrowing are far heavier than the burdens of personal suffering. How much is suggested when it is said of our great High Priest, that He is “touched with the feeling of our infirmities”!
3. The form of sinning. The bitterness of suffering, to us moral beings, lies in our conviction of its close association with sin. But this is no overwhelming distress while we keep to the general fact, that the Divine order has been disturbed by human wilfulness, and the penalties fall upon the whole race, and, vicariously, fall heavy on some members of it. The weight of the woe comes when we are distinctly able to associate personal sin with personal sufferings. What revelations the doctor could make to us if he would be open and true in dealing with us! We go with him round the wards of the hospital, and he could say—There, that miserable sufferer is reaping the drink-seed that he sowed; that wreck of humanity on whom you can hardly bear to look is ending in unspeakable wretchedness a life of vice. When that association of sin and suffering comes close into our spheres, when our prodigal comes home to die, our wilful girl drags life-ruin upon herself, then we have sorrow upon sorrow—sorrow in which is the bitterness of death. That sorrow is hardest of all to bear. While passing over us it is altogether grievous. And you will have found in your experience, that it is very hard to deal with sufferers when you know that they are sinners, and when the sufferings take offensive and repulsive forms, as they always do when they come directly out of sin. It seems so wonderful that our Divine Lord could be so sympathetic with outcasts and sinners, and could deal so graciously with those who were possessed with the devil of uncleanness. But it is the Christliness of Christ that He could take the sin with the suffering, and help at once the sinner and the sufferer. They let a sufferer down through the roof, right in front of Him. Jesus looked upon him, and saw a sinner. But He did not therefore despise him. He only saw the severest feature of his need, the root of all the mischief, and He dealt first with that. It is our Christlikeness likeness if we can bear the suffering that comes out of sin, though that kind of affliction is hardest of all to bear. Whatever form our human troubles take, our text—the first half of it—certainly is true: “No affliction for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous.” While passing over us it is hard to bear.
II. Affliction passed by is good to remember.—The psalmist must have felt that it was when he said, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now will I keep Thy word.” Affliction had done something for him, and something so good that he liked to think about it. It is well to remind ourselves of the temporary character of all human suffering and affliction. It is always “a light affliction, and but for a moment.” It is always a cloud, light or dark, high or low, that is passing on, and drops its rains upon us as it passes. We always have a chance of standing under a clear sky, watching our clouds sail away to the west. We have had our troubles, but they never stayed. They came and went. And when they were gone right past, somehow we began a little to understand them; and the farther they receded into the distance, the more clearly we saw how they—strange puzzle-pieces though they were—fitted into the plan of infinite Wisdom. They bore to us a mission. They carried out their mission. They left us with the blessing of their mission. What have the suffering and sorrowing times of our lives done for us? Perhaps it would be wiser not to try and read the answer by going over the scenes of our own lives. We can never be quite sure of being just to ourselves. It is better to see what suffering did for Jesus. There is so much in that sentence, “Made perfect through suffering.” But we may also each one of us think of some saintly soul who has come, like the silver, through a seven-times refining. It is quite safe for us to trace in them what sublime moral and spiritual agencies these our human afflictions prove to be. We watch them, and see “what almighty grace can do,” and then we hope that almighty grace is doing it for us. Only a word or two can be given to this point, but they may suffice to guide thought along helpful and comforting lines. We can sometimes see—
1. How afflictions have loosened the grip of the world upon the soul. What an enslaving power things seen and temporal have! What would they have if God did not break in upon them with His afflictive dispensations? The claims and rush of life keep our souls looking down and around. The visions and quietness of sorrow-times lift our souls up and away. The other life is far off, and the world is near, while health and energy are with us. The other life comes near, and the world-interests recede, when God puts us into desert places of sickness and trouble. It is said that we never really see the full splendour of God’s sky in the smoky towns. Go out into the broad desert spaces, away from the world, and the stars fairly glitter, and the blue is unspeakably beautiful. Can we not look back and see how trials that were hard to bear loosened our hold of life a little? And what is the mystery of all life save this—gradually getting loosened from the world, and getting soul-anchored in the city of habitations, whose builder and maker is God? It is good to remember how God has been loosening our world-grip, and teaching our hearts to say, “This is not our rest.”
2. We can see how afflictions have tightened our trust in God. Have you held a child’s hand in a first railway journey. It just lay quietly in yours, for the child felt all safe with father; but then the train rushed screaming into the dark tunnel, and the child’s grip tightened, and held tight till long after the calming sunshine had come back again. That is the way it is with us and the Father-God. When the strain-times of life come, we grip His hand hard. And after the strain-times of life are passed by, we love to remember how our Father’s hand clasped ours in the time of fear, and thrilled our souls with the feeling of uttermost safety. We should never be trusting God as we are trusting Him to-day, if it were not for those experiences of sorrow and trouble which are passed and gone long since. The writer of this epistle has a very suggestive term for the issues of Divinely sent afflictions. He calls them the “peaceable fruits of righteousness,” or “it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness.” Why does he call it “peaceable fruit”? I think he must have had this in mind: When our life-troubles first come to us, the trouble in the trouble is the resistance of our wills, the warfare that we make over submission and obedience. But as we learn the Christ-lessons of afflictions, we gain the Christ-mastery over self-will, and then gradually, as afflictions come, there is little or no resistance, little or no warfare. Our souls gradually gain the peace of righteousness, the peace of right-mindedness, that can quietly say, facing each new woe—
“Is this Thy will, good Lord?
Thy servant weeps no more.”
“To them that have been exercised thereby.” You have had many a trouble; but have you been “exercised thereby”? Has your soul-life of love and submission and trust been exercised thereby? Can you gratefully recognise what God has done for you through times of strain and stress? Let us sit down beside St. Paul, and feel that he is writing for us, as truly as for himself, when he says—“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
Hebrews 12:13. The Removal of Hindrances.—There are two ways of training children, and two ways of exerting our influence in the associations of life:
1. We may directly mould the child-mind, habits, and life to a pattern which we ourselves form.
2. We may watchfully and carefully take out of the child’s way everything that would hinder the child from naturally and healthily developing itself. This is the kind of influence which can be so wisely and helpfully exercised in the Church, and in the ordinary associations of life.
Hebrews 12:14. The Christian’s Race and Goal.—The idea running through this chapter is that this world is the Christian’s training for heaven. Our Christian course is compared to a race, which implies our effort; not to a voyage, in which we are borne by the effort of others. The images employed in Scripture imply the most sustained effort. A race which is to be run; a narrow path by which many shall seek to enter into life, and those only who strive shall enter; a battle to be won, which requires the whole armour of God, and this we are invited to put on. How far has the reception of the good news that “Christ died for all” really had the effect of leading men to live “not unto themselves, but unto Him that died for them and rose again”? How, then, are we to run this race that is set before us? The answer is, “Looking unto Jesus.” He is our pattern. Christian holiness is a growing conformity to the image of Christ. He saves both from the guilt and from the power of sin—gives purity as well as pardon. He has brought in everlasting righteousness.—Robert Barclay.
Peaceableness and Purity.—The connection between “peace” and “holiness” may profitably be thought out.
1. Peace as a state and condition, peace as an atmosphere, is the surrounding in which Christian holiness can alone thrive. Other good things may thrive in time of war: holiness cannot. There is a bloom on it which cannot stay unless the air is still.
2. But there is a more precise point in the text. It is this—the man who seeks peace, who “follows after peace,” is the man who will be sure to seek also holiness, and follow after purity. Let any one make for peace, keep peace, that man will be sure to make things clean, and keep things clean. He knows that the one thing that spoils peace is self-indulgence and sin.
The Peaceful Temper.—Christianity and worldly wisdom meet in conmending the duty of this text. Wise advice is, Beware of getting into quarrels with people. The reason for “following peace” which worldly prudence suggests is the quietness and happiness of life, which are interfered with by relations of enmity to others. The reason which religion gives is the duty of brotherly love, of which the peaceful disposition is a part. The frequency of the advice indicates that there is some strong prevailing tendency in human nature to which it is opposed. What can that tendency be? Some rush into quarrels from simple violence and impetuosity of temper, which prevents their examining the merits of a case, and permits them to see nothing but what favours their own side. And there is the malignant temper, which fastens vindictively upon particular persons. Men of this character pursue a grudge unceasingly, and never forget or forgive. There are also many persons who can never be neutral, or support a middle state of mind. If they do not positively like others, they will see some reason for disliking them; they will be irritable if they are not pleased; they will be enemies if they are not friends. This disposition has the necessary result of placing them in a kind of enmity towards numbers of persons to whom there is not the slightest real reason for feeling it. It is simply irksome to them to maintain an attitude of indifference and neutrality. The relation of peace towards others is exactly that which the temper described has such a difficulty in adopting. A state of peace is precisely this middle state to which such objection is made. It is not a state of active love and affection; nor is it a state that admits of any ill-feeling; but it lies between the two, comprehending all kindly intentions, forbidding the least wish for another’s injury, avoiding, as much as possible, dispute and occasion of offence, consulting order, quiet, and contentment, but not arriving at more than this. Peace implies the entire absence of positive ill-will. The apostle then says that this is our proper relation toward all men. More than this applies to some, but as much as this applies to all. Be in fellowship with all men, so far as to have nothing wrong in your relation to them—nothing to disunite. Is any other principle of conduct and kind of temper indeed fit for this world in which we live? There are so many obstacles to mutual understanding in this world, and so very thin a veil is enough to hide people from each other, that any other line is hopeless. Two reasons have much to do in promoting the temper to which we are referring:
1. It is very irksome to keep watch over ourselves, and to repel the intrusion of hostile thoughts by the simple resistance of conscience, when we are not assisted by any strong current of natural feeling in doing so.
2. The hostile classes of relation are evidently accompanied by their own pleasures in many temperaments. There is a kind of interest which people take in their own grievances, their own grudges, their own causes of offence at various people, their own discords and animosities, which occupies their thought, it must candidly be said, in a manner not disagreeable to themselves. They enjoy these states of mind towards others in their own way. It is with the entire knowledge of these weaknesses and frailties of human nature, and these elements of disturbance, even in minds of average goodness, that St. Paul said, “Follow peace with all men.” It is not without design that the two things “peace” and “holiness” were connected together by the apostle. A life of enmities is greatly in opposition to growth in holiness. All religious habits and duties—prayer, charity, mercy—are formed and matured when the man is in a state of peace with others, when he is not agitated by small selfish excitements and interests, which divert him from himself and his own path of duty, but can think of himself what he ought to do and where he is going.—J. B. Mozley, D.D.
Holiness bringing Sight of God.—
1. Seeing God is, to all Scripture writers, the very highest conception of bliss. Such a conception attests their superiority to ordinary men. What a sublime conception it is! It really means full, satisfying, up to capacity, knowledge of God. Present knowledge is not restful; the knowledge which comes by faith is. The future knowledge of God may be called “seeing,” in the sense of restful, satisfying, sure knowledge, but not in the sense of being absolutely complete. He must be God who can fully see God.
2. Holiness is, for all Scripture writers, the necessary condition of bliss. Here also is a conception beyond the reach of ordinary men. Holiness is an idea wholly limited to religion. The ordinary man reaches to conceive of goodness according to the standard of the Golden Rule. The religious man reaches to conceive of goodness as “godliness,” according to the standard of his spiritual apprehension of God. With that altogether higher conception all his life becomes higher-toned. See what belongs to the Scriptural idea of holiness.
(1) Sincerity—no guile.
(2) Right-principled.
(3) Right-hearted.
(4) Separated from.
(5) Consecrated to.
(6) Sanctified and sanctifying; white and whitening.
3. How does holiness become the condition of seeing God?
(1) Holiness is the trained vision that alone gives perfect sight.
(2) Holiness fully seen and apprehended is God. It is inseparable from Him. He is the embodiment of it to us. Like alone sees like. The holy alone can see the Holy One. But as our apprehension of holiness grows, we lift it more and more away into the future. It seems to be something attainable in the by-and-by alone. Then there is the danger of our becoming content with an imperfect Christian life now. It should therefore be duly impressed upon us that the Scripture sets holiness before us as present, and practical, and attainable. Absolute perfection is unattainable anywhere, in any world, by a dependent creature; but high measures of holiness are attainable by us, though we are creatures—attainable, if we will live the life of faith.
Hebrews 12:15-16. The Perils of Churches.—Our Lord made it quite clear that the sincere and insincere would be blended in His earthly Church; that no strict attempts could ever be wisely made to separate them; and that the presence of the insincere would have a disciplinary influence on the sincere. Dr. A. B. Bruce says: “In the parables of the tares and the drag-net, especially in the former, we are warned that in the future history of the kingdom there will appear a revolting and unnatural mixture of good and bad men, Christians and anti-Christians, children of the heavenly Father and children of Satan.… Christ deliberately recommends patience as the least of two evils, the other being the uprooting of wheat along with tares in headlong zeal to get rid of the noxious crop [of tares]; which implies a close inter-relationship between the two kinds of growths that may well seem an additional calamity.” St. Paul, in his address to the elders of Ephesus, pointed out the main sources of peril for Christian Churches. “I know that after my departing grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.” It is a point of importance to see that the supreme peril of any Church never comes with its circumstances, but always from the character and conduct of its members. The Church’s foes are traitors within the city.
I. Peril comes from the inconsistent member.—The man who is sincere, and has the grace of God; but fails to respond worthily to the grace; fails to order his life by the grace; fails to rise to the spiritual level to which the grace would lift him. The man who permits his life to be below the Christ-standard.
II. Peril comes from the quarrelsome member.—That is the “root of bitterness”—the man who makes disturbance, because nothing is ever to his mind, and somebody is always hurting his feelings. The quarrelsome man does the supreme mischief of introducing the quarrelsome spirit.
III. Peril comes from the insincere member.—There are those who are in the Church, but not of it. Their insincerity may be indicated in their
(1) profanity;
(2) in their immorality. There never can be any right sense of God when there is no cleanness, no moral self-restraint, in the life.
Hebrews 12:16. Selling the Birthright.—“So Esau despised his birthright.” It was done in a moment; but such moments cannot occur except as the epitome of years. There is a plant which is fabled to rush into crimson blossom once only in a hundred years; but even then all the hundred years have been causing, have been maturing, that one crimson flower. So it is with every great sin. It is but the ripened fruit of hundreds of little tendencies. Esau’s guilty moment was but the expression and heritage of all his past life. It was as a youth that he had sold his birthright; it was as a man, it was forty years afterwards, that the seed of that youthful profanity set into the bitter fruit of irreparable grief. It was forty years afterwards that he stood before his aged and trembling father, and found that what he had sold for a mess of pottage was not only the birthright, but the blessing, the glory, the dominion, the prosperity, of years. Then he read his boyish sin under the terrible glare flung upon it by its consequences. It is the epitome of retribution. What was Esau’s sin? He sold his birthright because he despised it; and he despised it because it was not a thing which he could see, or eat, or drink, or grasp with both hands; because it was a glory and a blessing which pertained not to the body, but to the soul. And is this sin rare? Is it not the very commonest of all sins? Is it not distinctly the sin to which every one of us is tempted? And why? Because all men have not faith; and this sin is the absence of faith, the opposite of all faith. For faith is the power to recognise the spiritual, and to trample on the carnal. Want of faith often looks like the sin of a moment, but it is the abstract of a tendency, it is the habit of a life. It is that profane self-indulgence to which an ideal blessing is as nothing compared to a momentary pleasure. What then is the birthright that each one of us has? It is the synthesis of all spiritual blessings. It is a body rightly endowed: it is a mind thrilling with bright affinities for all things beautiful and high; it is a spirit, in which are folded the wings which can soar to heaven, and hold communion with the Divine. It is life; the innocent brightness of childhood, the spring of youth, the force of manhood, the snowy and sunlit heights of age. Do men keep their birthright? Our birthright is innocence, holiness, peace with God, life, light, immortality. Where is the holiness of the liar, the schemer, the blasphemer? Where is the innocence of the drunkard? Where the peace with God of the impure? Yet there are among these crowds some who have not sold their birthright—some who, even in Sardis, have not stained their raiment; the holy, and the brave, and the merciful; the white souls who have toiled, and fought and overcome—souls “transparent as crystal, active as fire, unselfish as the ministering spirits, sweet and tender as grace; strong, generous, and enduring, as the hearts of martyrs.” But how comes it that all are not such? It is because, for one morsel of meat, they have sold their birthright. The one aim and object of all God’s education of us in life is the cherishing, the preserving, the securing, of our birthright. It is in youth that the birthright is most often sold. This should be the aim of every man who would make something of his life—to keep his birthright unimpaired, not to sell it for a mess of pottage, not to sell it for the careless hour or the sensual snare. That youth is in the highest sense well educated who by God’s grace passes into the battle of life strong, self-denying, pure; scorning mean pleasures, scorning vulgar comforts, scorning idle uselessness; brave to meet danger, brave to defy sin, brave to fight in the cause of God; strenuous to do and to do dare; ready to spring to the front in every good cause; not following the multitude to do evil. To be thus is to have the birthright of a man. To strengthen the higher, to control the lower, to enlist on the side of the higher every pure spiritual influence, to help you to win the tranquil mastery over yourselves—this should be your aim.
“One there is can curb myself,
Can roll this strangling load off me,
Break off my yoke and set me free.”
That one is Christ.—Farrar.
Profanity in the Home.—In Scripture there are few characters more profitable for study than Esau. Here is a man who came to sin by birth into it, by the sins of others as well as his own, by every-day and sordid temptations, by carelessness, and the sudden surprise of neglected passions. There is everything about Esau to engage us in the study of him. The mystery that haunts all human sin, the pity that we feel for so wronged and genial a nature, only make clear to us more fully the central want and blame of his life.
I. Esau was sinned against from his birth.—His father and mother were responsible for much of the character of their son. The marriage of Isaac and Rebecca began in a romance, and it ended in the sheerest vulgarity, just because, with all its grace and wonder, the fear of God was not present. Their introduction was very picturesque. The Nemesis of picturesqueness without truth is always sordidness; the Nemesis of romance without religion is always vulgarity; and vulgarity and sordidness are the prevailing notes of Isaac and Rebecca’s wedded life. Throughout we see a divided house—father and elder son upon one side, mother and younger son upon the other. Of such a false and hasty mother was Esau born, and he had her haste. Sin, whatever form it assumes, always works itself out, if not in the first generation, then in the next, to violent ends. The faults that spoiled Rebecca’s character were the same faults that ruined Esau’s life.
II. Esau got his “profane” character at home.—“Profane” means “thoroughfare.” A “profane” character means an open, common character, unhallowed, no guardian angel at the door, no gracious company within, no heavenly music pealing through it, no fire upon the altar, but open to his dogs and his passions, to his mother’s provocations, and his brother’s fatal wiles. The home was not walled in by reverence and truth, and the steadfast patience of father and mother.
III. In the subsequent tragedy we see the climax of minor vices.—Two habits came to their fatal head in Esau’s confession and his offer to sell his birthright (see Genesis 25:30-34).
1. First, his hunger; second, exaggeration. The physical selfishness of hunger, stimulated by the mental selfishness of thinking and feeling in an exaggerated way about oneself, sprang to fatal empire, and at their bidding the deluded man sold his birthright, his life, and his honour. There are more people cheated out of their spiritual birthrights by ordinary selfishness than by great crimes. The habit of insisting upon getting our own way in every little matter distorts the true porportion of life to our eyes. The habit of thinking in an extravagant way about oneself, how often it cheats us out of the great chances of life, and renders us unfit for life’s noblest callings! Some are needed to take the lead in Church or State, for inspiration in the crowd, for God’s work; but a base love of comfort, a selfish exaggertion of their impotence or weakness, a cowardly succumbing to the sorrow that should have been the flood-tide to carry them to triumph, turned them from their idea and their God-given right.
2. The other point in the development of Esau’s tragedy is this—his passion made him the prey of the first designing man he came across. There is not a pleasure or a passion which to-day tempts any one, but there are men and women waiting to make something out of it for themselves, and to make fools of us. Let no one be deluded by either of the two great temptations to a life of pleasure—by the fancy that you are going to play the full-grown man in it, or by the fancy that you are going to enjoy a cordiality and a friendship that you will fail to find in more sober or steady circles.
IV. Let us get back to this word “profane.”—It is the centre of the whole evil. Fence your characters; make yourselves not common. Guard against little vices. Keep the virtue of truth. Jealously guard your hearts from the vulgar world; jealously fill them with the inhabitants of the world of holiness and truth. An empty mind is the unsafest and unhallowedest thing in the world.
V. God has provided something more for us than guardian angels: He has given us a Saviour.—A Saviour sufficient for the world. Let Him dwell in your hearts by faith, and, like Jacob, you may be lifted from your low level to the very heights of spiritual character and genius.—Prof. G. Adam Smith.
Hebrews 12:17. Lost Opportunities.—This verse is easily misapprehended. It is quite misused when it is made to mean that a man may at some time want to repent, and find repentance impossible. It is equally misused when it is made to mean that a man may seek forgiveness from God, and fail to gain it. All that is said is, that Isaac, having given the blessing, refused to undo what he had done.
Estimating the Value of Things Lost.—Wonderful is the intelligence with which we can perceive the value of anything we have lost. The collector of household treasures is cited, who in his daily walks may see in a shop-window a little bit of china, a picture, an apostle spoon, a quaint old volume, which he intends to bargain for one day when he shall have leisure; so he passes it a hundred times, indifferent as to its merits, half uncertain whether it is worth buying. But he discovers some day that it is gone; and then in a moment the doubtful shepherdess becomes the rarest old china, the dirty-looking bit of landscape an undeniable Crome, the battered silver spoon an unquestionable antique, the quaintly bound book a choice Elzevir. “The thing is lost; and we regret it for all that it might have been, as well as for all that it was, and there are no bounds to the extravagance we would commit to regain the chance of possessing it.” This is but the subjunctive or potential mood of what is simply but largely indicative in Scott’s sufficiently commonplace couplet—
“Those who such simple joys have known
Are taught to prize them when they’re gone.”
Francis Jacox.
Blessings Estimated when they have Vanished.—Possession drowns, or at least mightily cools, contentment. Want teaches us the worth of things more truly. How sweet a thing seems liberty to one immured in a dungeon! How dear a jewel is health to him who is in sickness! I have known many who have loved their dead friends better than ever they esteemed them in their lifetime.… When we have lost a benefit, the mind has time to reflect on its several advantages, which she then finds to be many more than she was aware of while in possession of it. It is a true remark, that blessings appear not till they have vanished.—Owen Feltham.
Belated Appreciation of Blessings Past.—Coming home faint from the field, Esau, that cunning hunter and man of the woods, preferred to his birthright a meal of Jacob’s bread and pottage of lentils. Behold, he was a-hungered; felt even at the point to die of hunger: what profit should that birthright do to him? Let it go. And it went. Thus Esau despised his birthright. Time passes; and we see the red hunter, even Edom, plying his aged father with savoury meat, that Isaac may eat of his son’s venison, and bless his elder-born, before he die. But the blessing is forestalled. The subtle purchaser of the birthright is the fraudulent possessor of the blessing. In vain, for all too late, is Esau’s great and exceeding bitter cry, “Bless me, even me also, O my father!” The blessing is gone, like the birthright. For one morsel of meat was the birthright bartered. And he who stigmatises the barterer as a “profane person” tells us that we know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place of repentance—τόπον μετανοίας: by some of our best commentators referred to Isaac, who could not be induced to alter his decision, though the disinherited suppliant sought it carefully with tears. A morsel of meat was worth more than the birthright till the birthright was gone. Gone, the valuation of it was declared with streaming eyes and an exceeding bitter cry, with, as it were, groanings that could not be uttered—a flood of unavailing tears, shed all the more because shed in vain. And such is the way of the world.—Francis Jacox.