Hebrews 9 - The Biblical Illustrator

Bible Comments
  • Hebrews 9:1-10 open_in_new

    The first covenant had also ordinances

    The ancient tabernacle

    The writer now proceeds to compare the old and the new covenants with reference to their respective provisions for religious communion between man and God, his purpose being to show the superiority of the priestly ministry of Christ over that of the Levitical priesthood.

    In the first five verses he gives an inventory of the furniture of the tabernacle pitched in the wilderness; in the next five he describes the religious services there carried on. “Now [our leading back to Hebrews 8:5] the first [covenant] had ordinances of Divine service and its mundane sanctuary.” The epithet κοσμικόν here applied to the tabernacle evidently signifies belonging to this material world, in opposition to the heavenly sanctuary (Hebrews 8:11) not made with hands out of things visible and tangible. The purpose of the writer is to point out that the tabernacle belonged to this earth, and therefore possessed the attributes of all things earthly, materiality and perishableness. The materials might be fine and costly; still they were material, and as such were liable to wax old and vanish away. In Hebrews 8:2-5 is given a detailed description of the arrangements and furniture of this cosmic sanctuary. No valuator could be more careful to make an inventory of household furniture perfectly accurate than our author is to give an exhaustive list of the articles to be found in the Jewish tabernacle, whether in the holy place or in the most holy. Indeed, so careful is he to make the list complete, not only in his own judgment, but in the judgment of his readers, that he includes things which had no connection with religious worship, bat were merely put into the tabernacle for safe custody, as valuable mementos of incidents in Israel’s history--e.g., the golden pot of manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded. It is further to be noted in regard to these articles, that they are: represented as being within the ark of the covenant, though it is nowhere in the Old Testament said that they were, the direction given being merely that they should be placed before the testimony, and it being expressly stated in regard to the ark in Solomon’s temple that there was nothing in it save the two tables on which the ten commandments were inscribed. Whether these things ever had been in the ark we do not know. The fact that they are here represented to have been does not settle the point. While his doctrine is that the ancient tabernacle was at best but a poor, shadowy affair, he takes pains to show that in his judgment it was as good as it was possible for a cosmic sanctuary to be. Its articles of furniture were of the best material; the ark of fine wood covered all over with gold, the altar of incense of similar materials, the pot with manna of pure gold. He feels he can afford to describe in generous terms the furniture of the tabernacle, because, after all, he will have no difficulty in showing the immeasurable superiority of the “true” tabernacle wherein Christ ministers. One single phrase settles the point χειροποίητος (Hebrews 8:11). The old tabernacle and all its furniture were made by the hands of men out of perishable materials. The “ gold, and silver, and brass,” &c., were all liable to destruction by the devouring tooth of time, that spares nothing visible and tangible. This eulogistic style of describing the furniture of the cosmic tabernacle was not only generous, but politic. The more the furniture ,was praised, the more the religious service carried on in the tent so furnished was in effect depreciated by the contrast inevitably suggested. The emphasis laid on the excellent quality of these really signifies the inferiority of the whole Levitical system. Looking now at the inventory distributively, let us note what articles are placed in either compartment of the tabernacle respectively. In the first are located the candlestick, the table, and the shewbread, which was arranged in two rows on the table; to the second are assigned what is called the θυμιατήριον, and the ark of the covenant, containing, as is said, the manna pot, Aaron’s rod, and the tables of the covenant, and surmounted by the Cherubim of glory shadowing the mercy-seat, or lid of the ark. The only article of which there is any need to speak “particularly” is the θυμιατήριον, concerning which there are two questions to be considered: What is it? and with what propriety is it assigned to the most holy place? As to the former, the word θυμιατήριον may mean either “the altar of incense,” as I have rendered it, or “the golden censer,” as translated in the Authorised and Revised Versions. I do not suppose there would be any hesitation on the subject, were it not for the consideration, that by deciding that the altar of incense is intended we seem to make the writer guilty of an inaccuracy in assigning it to the inner shrine of the tabernacle. I have little doubt that this consideration had its own weight with our Revisers in leading them to retain the old rendering, “the golden censer”; and the fact detracts from the value of their judgment, as based, not on the merits of the question, but on the ground of theological prudence. A clearer insight into the mind of the writer would have shown them that this well-meant solicitude for his infallibility was uncalled for. This brings us to the question as to the propriety of placing the altar of incense among the things belonging to the most holy place. The fact is, that the altar of incense was a puzzle to one who was called on to state to which part of the tabernacle it belonged. Hence the peculiar manner in which the writer expresses himself in reference to the things assigned to the most holy place. He does not say, as in connection with the first division, “in which were” (ἐν η), but represents it as “ having” (ἔχουσα) certain things. The phrase is chosen with special reference to the altar of incense. Of all the other articles it might have been said “in which were,” but not of it. Nothing more could be said than that it belonged to the second division. The question is, whether even so much could be said, and why the writer preferred to say this rather than to say that the altar of incense stood outside the veil in the first division. Now as to the former part of the question, in so putting the matter cur author was only following an Old Testament precedent, the altar of incense being in 1 Kings 6:22 called the altar “that was by the oracle,” or more correctly, as in the Revised Version, the altar “that belonged to the oracle.” Then the directions given for fixing its position, as recorded in Exodus 30:6, are very significant. The purport of this directory seems to be: outside the veil for daily use (for within it could not be used save once a year), but tending inwards, indicating by its very situation a wish to get in, standing there, so to speak, at the door of the most holy place, petitioning for admission. So the eloquent eulogist of the better ministry of the new covenant appears to have understood it. He thinks of the altar of incense as praying for admission into the inner shrine, and waiting for the removal of the envious veil which forbad entrance. And he so far sympathises with its silent prayer as to admit it within the veil before the time, or at least to acknowledge that, while materially without, it belonged in spirit and function to the most holy place. In stating the case as he does our author was not only following usage, but utilising the double relations of the altar of incense for the purpose of his apologetic. He wanted to make it felt that the position of that altar was difficult to define, that it was both without and within the veil, that you could not place it exclusively in either position without leaving out something that should be added to make the account complete. And he wished to press home the question, What was the cause of the difficulty? The radical evil, he would suggest, was the existence of the veil. It was the symbol of an imperfect religion, which denied men free access to God, and so was the parent of this anomaly, that the altar of incense had to be in two places at the same time: within the veil, as there were the mercy-seat and the Hearer of prayer; without the veil, because the incense of prayer must be offered daily, and yet no one might go within save the high priest, and he only once a year. How thankful, then, should we be that the veil is done away, so that the distinction of without and within no longer exists, and we may come daily to offer the incense of our prayers in the presence of God, without fear of evil, with perfect “assurance to be heard”! After the inventory of its furniture comes an account of the ministry carried on in the Jewish sanctuary (verses 6-10); the description of which, coming after the former, has all the effect of an anticlimax. One can hardly fail to say to himself, What a fall is here! The furniture was precious, but the worship how poor f Every one capable of reflection feels that a religious system in which the vessels of the sanctuary are so much superior to the service cannot be the final and permanent form of man’s communion with God, but only a type or parable for the time of better things to come, that could last only till the era of reformation arrived. This truth, however, the writer does not leave to be inferred, but expressly points out and proves. On two things he insists, as tending to show the insufficiency and therefore the transitiveness of the Levitical system, and all that pertained to it. First, he asserts that the mere division of the tabernacle into an accessible holy place and an inaccessible most holy place proved the imperfection of the worship there carried on; and, secondly, he points out the disproportion between the great end of religion and the means employed for reaching it under the Levitical system. (A. B. Bruce, D. D.)

    The earthly sanctuary

    I. EVERY COVENANT OF GOD HAD ITS PROPER PRIVILEGES AND ADVANTAGES. Even the first covenant had so, and those such as were excellent in themselves, though not comparable with them of the new. For to make any covenant with men is an eminent fruit of grace and condescension in God, whereon He will annex such privileges thereunto as may evince it so to be.

    II. THERE WAS NEVER ANY COVENANT BETWEEN GOD AND MAN BUT IT HAD SOME ORDINANCES, OR ARBITRARY INSTITUTIONS OF EXTERNAL DIVINE WORSHIP ANNEXED UNTO IT. The original covenant of works had the ordinances of the tree of life, and of the knowledge of good and evil, the laws whereof belonged not unto that of natural light and reason. The covenant of Sinai, whereof the apostle speaks, had a multiplication of them. Nor is the new covenant destitute of them or of their necessary observance. All public worship and the sacraments of the Church are of this nature.

    III. IT IS A HARD AND RARE THING TO HAVE THE MINDS OF MEN KEPT UPRIGHT WITH GOD IN THE OBSERVANCE OF THE INSTITUTIONS OF DIVINE WORSHIP. By some they are neglected, by some corrupted, and by some they are exalted above their proper place and use, and are turning into an occasion of neglecting more important duties. And the reason of this difficulty is, because faith hath not that assistance from innate principles of reason, and sensible experience of this kind of obedience, as it hath in that which is moral, internal, and spiritual.

    IV. THAT THESE ORDINANCES OF DIVINE WORSHIP MIGHT BE DULY OBSERVED AND RIGHTLY PERFORMED UNDER THE FIRST COVENANT, THERE WAS A PLACE APPOINTED OF GOD FOR THEIR SOLEMNISATION.

    1. This tabernacle with what belonged thereunto was a visible pledge of the presence of God among the people, owning, blessing, and protecting them. And it was a pledge of God’s own institution, in imitation whereof the superstitious heathens invented ways of obliging their idol-gods, to be present among them for the same ends.

    2. It was the pledge and means of God’s dwelling among them, which expresseth the peculiar manner of His presence mentioned in general before.

    3. It was a fixed seat of all Divine worship, wherein the truth and purity of it was to be preserved.

    4. It was principally the privilege and glory of the Church of Israel, in that it was a continual representation of the incarnation of the Son of God; a type of His coming in the flesh to dwell among us, and by the one sacrifice of Himself to make reconciliation with God, and atonement for sins. It was such an expression of the idea of the mind of God, concerning the person and meditation of Christ, as in His wisdom and grace He thought meet to intrust the Church withal. Hence was that severe injunction, that all things concerning it should be made according unto the pattern shown in the Mount. For what could the wisdom of men do in the prefiguration of that mystery, of which they had no comprehension? But yet the sanctuary the apostle calls κοσμικον, “worldly.”

    (1) The place of it was on the earth in this world, in opposition whereunto the sanctuary of the new covenant is in heaven (Hebrews 8:2).

    (2) Although the materials of it were as durable as anything in that kind could be procured, as gold and Shittim wood, yet were they worldly; that is, perishing things, as are all things of the world, God intimating thereby that they were not to have an everlasting continuance. Gold, and wood, and silk, and hair, however curiously wrought and carefully preserved, are but for a time.

    (3) All the services of it, all its sacrifices in themselves, separated from their typical representative use, were all worldly; and their efficacy extended only unto worldly things, as the apostle proves in this chapter.

    (4) On these accounts the apostle calls it “worldly”; yet not absolutely so, but in opposition unto that which is heavenly. All things in the ministration of the new covenant are heavenly. So is the priest, his sacrifice, tabernacle, and altar, as we shall see in the process of the apostle’s discourse. And we may observe from the whole

    V. THAT DIVINE INSTITUTION ALONE IS THAT WHICH RENDERS ANYTHING ACCEPTABLE UNTO GOD. Although the things that belonged unto the sanctuary, and the sanctuary itself, were in themselves but worldly, yet being Divine ordinances, they had a glory in them, and were in their season accepted with God.

    VI. GOD CAN ANIMATE OUTWARD CARNAL THINGS WITH A HIDDEN INVISIBLE SPRING OF GLORY AND EFFICACY. SO He did their sanctuary with its relation unto Christ; which was an object of faith which no eye of flesh could behold. (John Owens, D. D.)

    The simplicity of Christian ritual

    The language of sign or symbol enters very largely into all the affairs of life. The human spirit craves and finds embodiment for its impalpable, evanescent ideas and emotions, not merely in sounds that die away upon the ear, but in acts and observances that arrest the eye, and stamp themselves upon the memory, or in shapes and forms and symbols that possess a material and palpable continuity. The superiority of sign or symbol as a vehicle of thought is in some sort implied in the very fact that it is the language of nature, the first which man learns, or rather which, with instinctive and universal intelligence, he employs. There is something, again, in a visible and tangible sign, or in a significant or symbolic act, which, by its very nature, appeals more impressively to the mind than mere vocables that vibrate for a moment on the organ of hearing and then pass away. Embody thought in a material representation or memorial, and it stands before you with a distinct and palpable continuity; it can become the object of prolonged contemplation; it is permanently embalmed to the senses. Moreover, it deserves to be considered that the language of symbol lies nearer to thought than that of verbal expression. As no man can look into another’s mind and have direct cognisance of another’s thoughts, we can only convey to others what is passing in our own minds, by selecting and pointing out some object or phenomenon of the outward world that bears an analogy to the thought or feeling within our breasts. And if further proof of the utility and importance of symbol were wanting, it might he found in the fact that all nature is but one grand symbol by which God shadows forth His own invisible Being and character. The principle on which symbolic language depends being thus deeply seated in man’s nature, it might be anticipated that its influence would be apparent in that religion which is so marvellously adapted to his sympathies and wants. But when we turn to that religious economy under which we live, by nothing are we so much struck as by the simplicity of its external worship--the scantiness, unobtrusiveness, and seeming poverty of its ritual observances. And this absence of symbol in the Christian worship becomes all the more singular when contrasted with the sensuous beauty and splendour of the heathen religions amidst which Christianity was developed, and with the imposing ceremonial, the elaborate symbolism, of that earlier dispensation from which it took its rise.

    I. The simplicity of worship in the Christian Church is a sign of spiritual advancement, inasmuch as it arises, in some measure, from the fact THAT THE GOSPEL RITES ARE COMMEMORATIVE, WHILST THOSE OF THE FORMER DISPENSATION WERE ANTICIPATIVE. TO THE Hebrew in ancient times Christ was a Being of whose person and character and work he had but the most vague and undefined conceptions; to the Christian worshipper He is no shadowy dream of the future, no vague and visionary personage of a distant age, but the best beloved of friends, whose beautiful life stands forth before the mind with all the distinctness of history--whose glorious person and mission is the treasured and familiar contemplation of his secret thoughts. The former, accordingly, needed all the elaborate formality of type and ceremony, of temple and altar and sacrifice--of symbolic persons and objects and actions, to help out his idea of the Messiah and of His mighty work and mission. But to enable the latter to recall his Lord, no more is required than a few drops of water, a bit of broken bread, or a cup of wine. Around these simplest outward memorials, a host of thoughts, reflections, remembrances, are ready to gather. Deity incarnate, infinite self-sacrifice, reconciliation with God, pardon, purity, peace, eternal life through the blood of Jesus, union with Christ, and in Him with all good and holy beings,--these are some of the great Christian ideas already lodged in each devout worshipper’s mind, and which awake at the suggestive touch of the sacramental symbols to invest them with a value altogether incommensurate with their outward worth. The very simplicity of these material symbols implies that the senses have less and the mind far more to do in the process of spiritual conception than in a system of more imposing and obtrusive materialism.

    II. The simple and unimposing character of the Christian ritual is an indication of spiritual advancement again, inasmuch as it arises from the fact, THAT WHILST THE RIGHTS OF JUDAISM WERE MAINLY DISCIPLINARY, THOSE OF CHRISTIANITY ARE SPONTANEOUS AND EXPRESSIVE. The Jew could not eat or drink, or dress, or sow or reap, or buy or sell, arrange his household, hold intercourse with neighbour or friend, perform any one function of individual or social life, without being met by restrictions, forms, observances, which forced religious impression upon him, and, in combination with the more solemn ceremonial of the temple, left a constant deposit of spiritual thought upon the mind, and drilled the worshipper into religious habits. In a more spiritual and reflective age, on the other hand, in which the spiritual perceptions have become developed, and the mind has become receptive of direct religious instruction, such sensible helps to the formation of thought are no longer necessary. The mind in which truth has become an intuition needs no longer to spell out its conviction by the aid of a picture-book. The avenue of spirit thrown open to the worshipper, he no more requires to climb slowly up to the presence-chamber of the king by the circuitous route of sense. But if ritual may in such an age be dispensed with in great measure as a means of instruction, it still performs an important function as a means of expression. No longer necessary as a mould for the shaping of thought, it has still its use as a form in which religious thought and feeling may find vent. If the necessity for a visible temple and sanctuary to symbolise God’s residence with man has ceased, now that He who is “the brightness of the Father’s glory and the express image of His person” has dwelt amongst us-if to prompt our minds in conceiving of sin and sacrifice, no scenic show of victims slain and life’s blood drenching earthly altars be needed, now that the stainless, sinless, all-holy One hath once for all offered up the sacrifice of a perfect life to God--still there is in the Christian heart the demand for outward forms andrites to embody the reverence, the gratitude, the devotion, the love of which it is inwardly conscious. The soul, in its relation to an unseen Father, still craves for some outer medium of expression that shall give form to feeling--that shall tell forth its devotion to the heavenly Friend as the smile, the look, the grasp of the hand, the meeting at the festive board, the gifts and tokens of affection, externalise and express our sentiments towards those we love on earth. And the conclusion to which, from this argument, we are led is obviously this, that the glory of our Christian ritual lies in its very simplicity. For the manifestation of our common life in God, and of our common faith in Christ, the mind craves some outward badge or symbol; and so, in gracious condescension to our needs, our Lord has instituted the two sacramental rites; but even these He has prescribed but in outline, leaving all accessories to be filled in, as the varied needs of His people, in different times and places and circumstances, should dictate. And in this lies the very grandeur of its worship, that in the “chartered freedom” of our Christian ritual, each nation and community, each separate society and church and individual, lifting up its own note of adoration, all axe found to blend in the one accordant anthem, the one manifold yet harmonious tribute of the universal Church’s praise. I conclude with the remark, that the simplicity of the Christian rites serves as a safeguard against those obvious dangers which are incident to all ritual worship.

    1. The chief of these is the tendency in the unspiritual mind to stop short at the symbol--in other words, to transfer to the visible sign feelings appropriate only to the things signified, or to rest content with the performance of outward ceremonial acts, apart from the exercise of those devout feelings which lend to such acts any real value. A religion in which ritual holds a prominent place is notoriously liable to degenerate into formalism. The true way to avoid this error is, obviously, to remove as much as possible its cause. Let there be no arbitrary and needless intervention between the soul of the worshipper and the Divine object of its homage. Let the eye of faith gaze on the Invisible through the simplest and purest medium-Deprive it of all excuse to trifle curiously with the telescope, instead of using it in order to see. And forasmuch as, to earthly worship, formal aids are indispensable, let it ever be remembered that that form is the best which least diverts attention to itself, and best helps the soul to hold fellowship with God.

    2. Moreover, the danger thus incident to an elaborate ceremonial, of substituting ritual for religion, is increased by the too common tendency to mistake aesthetic emotion for religious feeling. Awe, reverence, rapt contemplation, the kindling of heart and swelling of soul, which the grand objects of faith are adapted to excite, may, in a man of sensitive mind or delicate organisation, find a close imitation in the feelings called forth by a tasteful and splendid ceremonial. The soul that is devoid of true reverence towards God may be rapt into a spurious elation, while in rich and solemn tones the loud-voiced organ peals forth His praise. The heart that never felt one throb of love to Christ may thrill with an ecstasy of sentimental tenderness, whilst soft voices, now blending, now dividing, in combined or responsive strains, celebrate the glories of redeeming love. It is easy to admire the sheen of the sapphire throne, while we leave its glorious Occupant unreverenced and unrecognised. Banish from the service of God all coarseness and rudeness--all that would distract by offending the taste of the worshipper, just as much as all that would disturb by subjecting him to bodily discomfort, and you leave the spirit free for its own pure and glorious exercise. But too studiously adorn the sanctuary and its services; obtrude an artificial beauty on the eye and sense of the worshipper, and you will surely lead to formalism and self-deception. (J. Caird, D. D.)

    Christian sanctuaries material, but not worldly:

    I. THE ERECTION OF THE WORLDLY SANCTUARY. In contemplating the character of their “worldly sanctuary” whether in the wilderness or on Mount Zion--we behold God dealing with men in a manner accordant with the character of the covenant under which He saw fit to place them. For whether we review the history of our world at large, or the history of God’s dealings with His Church, we find it to be a law of the Divine Procedure, that, in civilisation and scientific discovery, and in the attainments of knowledge and of arts, no less than in matters directly spiritual, He allows period of lengthened infancy and childhood. In no respect does He allow men to attain at once to maturity. Thus, in mere secular things, how old was our world ere printing was invented, ere the powers of steam were discovered! Railways and electric telegraphs are but of yesterday, it is with the world at large and with individual nations, intellectually and socially, as with the individual man physically. We are born, not men and women, but babes; we speak, and think, and understand as children; we attain manhood slowly. It has been so with human society: it has been so with our own favoured land, where once savages swarmed, and Druids offered their bloody rites. The history of man in every country had been different had not this principle pervaded God’s designs and government--intellectual and social infancy--growth from infancy to childhood--from childhood to manhood--the manhood of intellect, and science and art, and civilisation; from the Rome of Romulus and Numa to the Rome of Augustus from the Gauls of Caesar’s day to the French of the nineteenth century; from the England of Roman conquest and Saxon rule and Norman triumph to the England of our birth. Apply this principle to the subject before us. Israel, long familiarised with material temples and carnal rites in Egypt, was spiritually a nation of children: their worship was wisely and mercifully adapted to their spiritual age and attainment. For the simple worship of the more spiritual dispensation they were wholly unprepared. Form and ceremony--material and sensuous splendour--were needful. To have elevated and simplified their minds and tastes for our simpler worship would have been, in fact, to have forstalled the progress of ages, and changed the whole course of God’s procedure with His Church and with our world.

    II. THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE WORLDLY SANCTUARY AND THE SPIRITUAL WORSHIP OF THE GOSPEL DISPENSATION. The blessed truth, that He who was at once the sacrificial Victim and the sacrificing Priest, by His one offering of Himself, hath made an end of sacrifice, and for ever perfected His people, as touching their justification--these truths discerned, experienced, bring with them true spirituality of mind and heart and life. The believer, while he rejoices in Christ Jesus, and has “no confidence in the flesh,” exhibits also the other feature of the apostle’s portraiture--he worships “God in the Spirit.” The temple with which his eye and heart are filled is the spiritual temple, in which himself is a lively stone--the Chinch of the Father’s election, of the Spirit’s sanctifying. The glory of Christianity is not in tabernacles or temples, in carnal ordinances. The glory of Christianity is Christ; the glory of the gospel, its message, “God is love!” And in accordance with the spirit of simplicity which characterises its doctrines should be the spirit of its worship. (J. C. Miller, M. A.)

    The candlestick

    The gospel of the golden candlestick:

    I. A type of the CHURCH (Revelation 1:20).

    1. The end and use of the Church is to give light, and to hold forth the Philippians 2:15; 1 Timothy 3:15).

    2. The matter of the Church. As the candlestick was of gold, so the matter of the Church is saints.

    3. The discipline of the Church as the golden snuffers (Exodus 25:38) did cut off the snuff of the candle, so discipline and censures cut off corruption and corrupt members.

    4. The union and distinction of Churches. Several branches and seven lamps--therefore distinct; but all growing on one shaft--therefore one.

    II. A type of the MINISTRY. As the candlestick supports the lamp and the light., so does the Church the ministry; and as the lamp or candle shines in the candlestick, so does the ministry in the Church.

    III. A type of the WORD (Psalms 119:105; Psalms 19:10; 2 Peter 1:19).

    IV. A type of the SPIRIT (Revelation 4:5).

    1. The lamps of the candlestick did shine and give light. So the Holy Spirit is a Spirit of light and illumination (Ephesians 1:19).

    2. The lamps were fed with off (Exodus 27:20). Now this oil is the Spirit (Isaiah 61:1; Acts 10:38). Of a softening and healing nature.

    3. The sacred lamps were ever burning, and never went out (Ex Leviticus 24:3). So it is with the Spirit of God in the hearts of His people. The true believer cannot fall away totally and finally.

    4. The dressing and trimming of the lamps signified the revivings of the work of the Spirit, in the hearts of His people, when it begins, or is in danger to decline. This teaches us both the Lord’s goodness and our duty Matthew 12:20; 2 Timothy 1:6). Also Church discipline and mortification are taught us hereby (Matthew 25:7).

    Lessons:

    1. Learn to prize and see the worth and excellency of Church society.

    2. Prize the ministry.

    3. Prize the Word.

    4. Labour to find the Spirit burning and working in your hearts.

    (1) Get fresh supplies of oil (Psalms 92:10). Jesus Christ is the Fountain, and the Holy Ghost the immediate Dispenser of it Zechariah 4:12).

    (2) Stir up that which you have (2 Timothy 1:6; Revelation 3:2).

    (3) Snuff the wick (James 1:23). (S. Mather.)

    The candlestick:

    If the priests had had any duties to discharge at night in the holy place, I should have felt no necessity to make any inquiry at all about the significance of the seven lights; the impossibility of performing the sacred functions in total darkness would have been an adequate explanation. But there was no midnight ritual; why then, when the curtain, which was thrown aside during the day to admit the light of heaven, was closed for the night, was not the holy place left in darkness? There seems to me to be a perfectly obvious and natural answer. The holy place was in the thoughts of every devout Jew when he longed for the mercy of God to forgive his sin, or cried to Him for consolation in time of trouble. It was there that, day by day, the priest offered the incense, which was the visible symbol of all supplication and worship. That was the chamber in which the Lord received the prayers and homage of the nation, as the most holy place was His secret shine. And would not the lamps that burnt there during the darkness, and filled it with light, seem to say to every troubled soul, that God never slumbered nor slept; that the darkness and light are both alike to Him, and that at all times He is waiting to listen to the prayers of His people? (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)

    The tabernacle.
    The tabernacle, and its three antitypes

    The tabernacle, of course, was a type. What did it typify? Some say that it typified Christ, and, particularly, that it typified His incarnation (John 1:14). Others hold that the tabernacle represented the Christian Church. Yet a third opinion is that the tabernacle signified heaven. Which of these opinions shall we choose? We shall not choose any one of them to the exclusion of the others. We incline to adopt all three, and to hold that the tabernacle was a type of Christ, and of the Church, and of heaven. The Man Christ Jesus is God’s tabernacle; so is the Church; so is heaven. God dwells most wondrously in Christ: He dwells most graciously in the Church; and He dwells most gloriously in heaven. Christ is God’s tabernacle to the eye of the Church; the Church is God’s tabernacle before the world; heaven is, and, with the gathered company of the redeemed set round the throne for ever will be God’s tabernacle before the universe. (Andrew Gray.)

    The golden censer

    The golden censer:

    You will have noticed the peculiarity of the expression at the commencement of the Hebrews 9:4; “which”--i.e., the Holiest of all, “had the golden censer,” or rather, “the golden altar of incense.” Of the holy place it is said, in Hebrews 9:2, “Wherein was the candlestick and the table,” &c. The change of expression is significant. The writer does not mean to say that the altar of incense was within the holy of holies, but that the altar of incense belonged to it. The altar actually stood in the holy place, but more truly belonged to the holy of holies itself. It is very wonderful that any man who had read this Epistle intelligently could imagine for a moment that it was possible for the writer to have been so ill-informed as to have believed that the altar was actually within the most sacred inclosure. Apart altogether from inspiration, the intimate and profound knowledge of the Jewish system which the whole of the Epistle indicates, renders it absurd to suppose that on such a simple matter as the.position of the altar of incense the writer could have blundered. It would, to my mind, be just as reasonable to infer from some peculiarity of expression in Lord Macaulay, that the great historian had erroneously imagined that the Spanish Armada came against this country in the reign of Charles I., or to infer on similar grounds that Dr. Livingstone was under the impression that the island of Madagascar formed part of the African continent. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)

    The ark of the covenant

    Christ typified by the ark of the covenant

    I. THE ARK TYPIFIED THE DIGNITY AND PURITY OF CHRIST’S PERSON. It was made of incorruptible wood; was overlaid with pure gold; and had crowns of gold wrought round about it. Here is distinctly pointed out to us

    1. The holiness and incorruptibility of Christ’s human nature.

    2. The divinity of Jesus.

    3. The regal glory of Jesus.

    II. THE CONTENTS OF THE ARK TYPIFIED THE FULNESS AND WORK OF CHRIST.

    1. In it were the two tables of the law. In Jesus these laws were embodied. He had them in His heart. He exemplified them in their fullest extent.

    2. In it was the golden pot of manna. So in Jesus is the bread of life. “His flesh is meat indeed.” He is the soul’s satisfying portion.

    3. In it was Aaron’s rod that budded. Typifying Christ’s exalted and abiding priesthood.

    III. THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE ARK TYPIFIED THE VICTORIES OF CHRIST.

    1. The ark opened a passage through Jordan to the promised land. So by Christ a way has been opened through the grave to the heavenly Canaan.

    2. By the ark’s compassing the walls of Jericho they were thrown down. So Jesus by His Divine power spoiled the powers of darkness, and He shall finally overthrow all the bulwarks of Satan’s empire.

    3. The presence of the ark broke the idol Dagon to pieces. So shall the Saviour cast down all the idols of the heathen.

    IV. THE MOVEMENTS OF THE ARK TYPIFIED THE PROGRESS AND CONSUMMATION OF CHRIST’S KINGDOM. The ark was possessed by the Israelites, then it was in the hands of the Philistines, and finally it was laid up in Solomon’s temple. Thus Christ was first preached to the Jews, the gospel kingdom was first set up among them, afterwards it was extended to the Gentiles; and when consummated, it shall consist of all nations in the heavenly temple, there to be permanently glourious for ever and ever. Application: Learn

    1. The privilege you possess in having Christ the true ark with you. In it you have treasured up a fulness of all spiritual blessings.

    2. With believing reverence draw near to it, and receive mercy, enjoy fellowship with God, and obtain grace to help you in every time of need.

    3. Despisers of Christ must inevitably perish. (J. Burns, D. D.)

    The holy chest:

    What was the lesson taught by this wonderful article of tabernacle furniture? Are we not to look upon it as a picture of Jesus?

    I. Let us consider the OUTSIDE. What do we see? a chest most likely about three feet long, by eighteen inches wide, and eighteen inches deep. It is a box made of common wood, but covered with fine gold; and is not our Jesus both human and Divine? Both are there, and you cannot separate them; just as the ark was not perfect, though the right shape and size, till it was covered with fine gold, so Christ could not be Jesus without the gold of divinity. Still we do not overlook the wood, though it is covered with gold. It is sweet to know that Christ shares our nature. He passed over the cedar of angelic life, and took the common shittim, the tree of the wilderness. When we think of our sins, we are thankful that our Saviour was Divine, and therefore able to save to the uttermost; but when we think of our future, we are glad that we are to spend our eternity with the Man Christ Jesus. He is one of ourselves. Do you notice that at each corner there is a ring of gold? What are these rings for? To receive the staves which are passed through the rings. By these gold-covered staves the Levites carried the ark on their shoulders. The holy thing was portable; it went before, and led the people on their march. They were sure to be safe if they went where the ark led them. It would be a blessed thing if” the Church of God would be persuaded to go only where Christ would have gone. But what are these figures which stand at each end of the ark--winged creatures, whose faces are looking with such earnestness at the gold oh the top of the ark? These are the cherubim, the representatives of the angelic world. They gaze with interest upon the mercy-seat. Is it not Jesus who links heaven to earth? Upon what are the cherubim gazing so intently? Follow the direction of their eyes, and what see you? There is a spot of blood! Blood? Yes, blood. Blood on the pure gold? Yes, this ark is the meeting-place between God and man--the only place where the Holy God can be approached by Him who represents sinners.

    II. We will now lift the lid of the ark and look INSIDE. What do we see? “The golden pot.” A vessel of gold filled with manna! Does not this teach that in Christ we have spiritual food? Just as the manna fell all the time the children of Israel were in the wilderness, so Jesus is the bread of life to us, all the time we are on this side Jordan. Have another peep inside, and what meets your gaze? “The rod that budded” (Numbers 17:1-13.). What does this teach us? That in Christ is the true, God-chosen, God-honoured, God-prevalent priesthood. Look again. What see you now? “The tables of the covenant.” The stones upon which God wrote the law. Not the first tables: they were broken. Moses did not pick up the fragments and patch them together and put them in the ark. No, it was the new, unbroken tables which were put in the ark. And is not Christ Jesus our righteousness? Do we not glory in the fact that our Substitute was sinless? We have no righteousness to plead, but we have a perfect Saviour. Our efforts at reformation are but a clumsy piecing of the broken tables, but in Christ we have a perfect law. (T. Champness.)

    The golden pot

    The pot of manna

    I. THE MANNA (Exodus 16:11).

    II. THE GOLDEN POT IN WHICH IT WAS CONTAINED may be applied

    1. To the Divine Word; which is more precious than gold, and which is the “Word of Christ,” every part of which is full of Him.

    2. To the holy ordinances; where He is so strikingly exhibited.

    3. To the preached gospel; where Christ is the Alpha and Omega.

    4. To the believer’s heart.

    5. To the holiest place; where He ever dwells in all His glory, as the infinite source of all the blessedness of the heavenly world. Application:

    (1) Be thankful for this heavenly bread.

    (2) Receive it with all cordiality and joy.

    (3) Constantly seek it in those means where His presence and blessing are promised.

    (4) Despisers of Christ must starve and die. (J. Burns, D. D.)

    The cherubims of glory.--The cherubim and the mercy-seat

    I. We are taught by this sacred symbol, an ark thus constructed and accompanied, that THERE IS NOW, UNDER THE EVANGELICAL DISPENSATION, A RELATION BETWIXT LAW AND GRACE.

    1. The law was there because it is eternal, and must therefore harmonise with every dispensation of religion to man.

    2. The tables of the law are there in the ark, and connected with evangelical symbols representing the dispensation of mercy to mankind, because it was the violation of the law by which the dispensation of mercy was rendered necessary.

    3. But we see the tables of the law thus connected with evangelical symbols, to intimate to us another truth, that the grand end of the administration of grace to man is the re-establishment of the law’s dominion over him.

    4. This connection between the law and the mercy-seat indicates, finally, that the administration of grace is in every part consistent with law.

    II. There was not only a connection between the tables of the law and the mercy-seat, but over this mercy-seat the cherubims of glory were placed. We are therefore instructed in the fact, that THERE IS AN HARMONIOUS RELATION BETWIXT THE DISPENSATION OF GRACE TO MAN AND THE HEAVENLY WORLD.

    1. We may, therefore, observe, with respect to the angelic powers, of whom the cherubim were the emblems, that “they have an intellectual interest in this great subject.

    2. We may go farther, and say, that we have evidence from Scripture that the connection of the angelic world with the Christian system is not one of mere intellectual curiosity and gratification, but likewise of large and important moral benefit.

    3. There is another view in which we may regard the connection between the angelic world and the Church: they are angels and ministers; ministers to the Church, and ministers to individuals.

    III. THERE WAS THE PRESENCE OF GOD CROWNING THE WHOLE. In the sanctuary you have not only the ark of the covenant, the tables of the law, the mercy-seat, and the cherubim shadowing it, but the visible symbol of the Divine presence. God was there. And thus are we shown that all things are of Him, and by Him, and for Him. The tables of the law declared His will; the covenant sprang from His everlasting wisdom and love; the mercy-seat was His throne; the cherubim were His servants; the holiest of all was His “resting-place” (2 Chronicles 6:41). The people came to worship Him, and were dismissed with His blessing. As creation itself is from the will of God, so is redemption. All is the result of His benevolence. The whole plan of mercy sprang from the depths of His eternal love, and all its arrangements were fixed according to the treasures of His own knowledge and wisdom. This indicates, too, the necessity of Divine agency. As He originated the whole scheme of redemption, so must He be present with it to give it power and efficacy. (R. Watson.)

    Of which we cannot now speak particularly

    The inexpediency of dwelling on curious questions:

    Sundry other things there were about the tabernacle, the narration whereof might have delighted the reader. But St. Paul here is a moderator to himself: you are desirous to hear more, but it is expedient to cut them off. Wherein he may be a precedent to all teachers. Though the discussing of curious and intricate questions would more delight the auditory, yet we must not feed their humour that way. Let us give them but a taste of them, and a whole mouthful of sound and wholesome food. Some, peradventure, in this place would have said, Oh, Paul, why dost thou so slightly handle the things belonging to the tabernacle? Repeat, I pray thee, every particular to us; it doth us good to hear of them. Yet he doth not satisfy their itching ears in that. St. Paul hath more necessary matter. Let us especially be desirous to hear of Christ our High Priest and Bishop of our souls, of repentance, of faith in Him, of making our calling sure by good works, of the true sanctuary of heaven, than of those earthly things: these are more profitable for us. The Spirit of God passeth over sundry other things about the tabernacle, because He had more substantial points in hand tending to our salvation by Christ. (W. Jones, D. D.)

  • Hebrews 9:8 open_in_new

    The Holy Ghost thus signifying

    The overtones of Judaism:

    Musicians tell us that the quality of the voice in song depends upon its overtones; that is, the accordant notes which are heard sounding faintly above the fundamental tones.

    It is the same peculiarity which gives the silvery ring to some voices in speech. And so as we listen to the voices of the Law and of the Prophets, we find a wondrous, and, to some, a mysterious charm. But the ear that has been trained by the same master-skill that taught their lips, solves the secret of the spell, and catches with delight, through the deep thunder utterances, the glad overtones of the coming gospel. (Sarah F. Smiley.)

    The way into the holiest of all

    1. He expoundeth what the high priest’s going through the veil but once a year did mean, saying the Holy Ghost signified something thereby. Then

    (1) The Holy Ghost is the Author of these ordinances of Levi, and of matters appointed about that old tabernacle, as of the expressions of His own mind to the Church, and so He is very God.

    (2) The Holy Ghost is a distinct Person of the Godhead, exercising the proper actions of a person, subsisting by Himself; directing the ordinances of the Church, and interpreting the meaning of the types unto the Church.

    (3) The Church under the Law was not altogether ignorant of the spiritual signification of the Levitical ordinances, because the Holy Ghost was rhea teaching them the meaning.

    (4) Those rites and ceremonies were not so dark in themselves, as they could not be in any sort understood, but were expressions of the mind of God to the Church of that time.

    2. That which the Holy Ghost did signify was this: that the way unto the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing. (D. Dickson, M. A.)

    The mind of the Holy Spirit manifested in the institutions of religion

    I. THE DIVINE ORDINANCES AND INSTITUTIONS OF WORSHIP ARE FILLED WITH WISDOM SUFFICIENT FOR THE INSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH IN ALL THE MYSTERIES OF FAITH AND OBEDIENCE.

    II. IT IS OUR DUTY, WITH ALL HUMBLE DILIGENCE, TO INQUIRE INTO THE MIND OF THE HOLY GHOST IN ALL ORDINANCES AND INSTITUTIONS OF DIVINE WORSHIP. Want hereof lost the Church of Israel.

    III. ALTHOUGH THE LORD CHRIST WAS NOT ACTUALLY EXHIBITED IN THE FLESH UNDER THE OLD TESTAMENT, FOR HAD ACTUALLY OFFERED HIMSELF UNTO GOD FOR US, YET HAD RELIEVERS THEN AN ACCESS INTO THE GRACE AND FAVOUR OF GOD, THOUGH THE WAY, THE CAUSE AND MEANS OF IT WAS NOT MANIFESTLY DECLARED UNTO THEM.

    IV. THE DESIGN OF THE HOLY GHOST IN THE TABERNACLE, AND IN ALL ITS ORDINANCES AND INSTITUTIONS OF WORSHIP, WAS TO DIRECT THE FAITH OF BELIEVERS UNTO WHAT WAS SIGNIFIED BY THEM.

    V. TYPICAL INSTITUTIONS, ATTENDED DILIGENTLY UNTO, WERE SUFFICIENT TO DIRECT THE FAITH OF THE CHURCH UNTO THE EXPECTATION OF THE REAL EXPIATION OF SIN, AND. ACCEPTANCE WITH GOD THEREON.

    VI. THOUGH THE STANDING OF THE FIRST TABERNACLE WAS A GREAT MERCY AND PRIVILEGE, YET THE REMOVAL OF IT WAS A GREATER; FOR IT MADE WAY FOR THE BRINGING IN OF THAT WHICH WAS BETTER.

    VII. THE DIVINE WISDOM IN THE ECONOMY AND DISPOSAL OF THE REVELATION OF THE WAY INTO THE HOLIEST, OR OF GRACE AND ACCEPTANCE WITH HIMSELF, IS A BLESSED OBJECT OF OUR CONTEMPLATION.

    VIII. THE CLEAR MANIFESTATION OF THE WAY OF REDEMPTION, OF THE EXPIATION OF SIN, AND PEACE WITH GOD THEREON, IS THE GREAT PRIVILEGE OF THE GOSPEL.

    IX. THERE IS NO ACCESS INTO THE GRACIOUS PRESENCE OF GOD, BUT BY THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST ALONE. (John Owen, D. D.)

    An intimation of nearer warship:

    The idea is, that the exclusion from the inner part of the Jewish tabernacle, and the all but entire restriction of religious service to the outer part, signified “perfect intercourse with God not yet granted, the highest and therefore abiding form of religion a thing yet to come.” The writer would have his readers see, in the mere fact of such a division of the tabernacle into a first and second chamber, a Divine intimation that there was a higher boon, a nearer approach to, a more intimate fellowship with God in store for men, which for the present was denied. The first part of the tabernacle, he would say, is yours; the second in its spiritual significance belongs to the future, to the time of Messiah, when all things are to undergo renovation. To cling to legal worship then as something that must last for ever is to shut your ear to the voice of the sanctuary itself, by its very structure bearing witness to its own insufficiency, and saying to all who have ears to hear: “I am not for aye. I have a first and a second chamber, a near and a nearer to God. The first and the near is yours, oh, people of Israel, for daily use; the second and the nearer is as good as shut against you. When that which is perfect is come, the nearer will be accessible to all, and the veil and the place outside and all the services that now go on there will cease toy exist.” (A. B. Bruce, D. D.)

  • Hebrews 9:9 open_in_new

    Which was a figure

    Types:

    Prophecy is the prediction of the coming of the Redeemer in word; type is the prediction in act.

    (W. B. Pope, D. D.)

    The types are, indeed, pictures, but to understand the pictures it is necessary we should know something of the reality. The most perfect representation of a steam-engine to a South Sea savage would be wholly and hopelessly unintelligible to him simply because the reality, the outline of which was presented to him, was something hitherto unknown. But let the same drawing be shown to those who have seen the reality, such will have no difficulty in explaining the representation. And the greater the acquaintance with the reality, the greater will be the ability to explain the picture. (Andrew Jukes.)

    Sacrifices.
    Love in the ordinance of sacrifice

    I. If we look over the religious practice of all men in all ages, unquestionably the most remarkable fact, common to them all, is the practice of SACRIFICE. “What is its meaning? I find answer thus. Man’s Fall was from love into selfishness. All sacrifice is an abnegation of selfishness; a devoting something to God, which otherwise would belong to self. ‘All sacrifice is offering--bringing as a gift. Whether sin-offering, or thank-offering, or prayer, or thanksgiving, the essence of all these, which are equally sacrifices, is, the rendering up of ourselves or of that which is or seems to be ours, to God. And sacrifice is a direct recognition of One above us whom we wish thus to approach, and in approaching whom we must deny and go out of ourselves. The creature offered represents the person offering. From this, the transition is the simplest possible, if indeed it be strictly any transition at all, to regarding the death of that animal as representing the death which the offerer’s sin has merited; and the infliction of that death as representing the expiation of that sin. And throughout the nations unenlightened by a written revelation, these things were regarded as not only representing, but as actually being, the expiation required.

    II. In order to be acceptable to God, the self-sacrifice must be UNRESERVED and COMPLETE. It must be the perfect rendering up of the will to His will, of the being to His disposal, of the energies to His obedience. Now it must be obvious to us, that such full and entire rendering up to God is impossible on the part of man, whose will is corrupted by sin. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Who can bring entire and perfect obedience out of one whose very leading principle is that of disobedience--whose thoughts and desires are, however his outward conduct may beordered, in a continual state of rebellion against God? And accordingly the Law, in its typical enactments, set this plainly before the ancient Church.

    III. Every victim was to be WITHOUT BLEMISH. God would accept nothing which was corrupted, or imperfect, or contaminated.

    IV. Then again, if each man could not for himself fulfil this spiritual meaning of sacrifice--that sacrifice itself taught him something of a SUBSTITUTE for himself, who in his stead might be offered to God. And the Law, working on this, further continually familiarised the people with the idea of one such substitute for all. The lamb of the passover was chosen, one for each household. The daily morning and evening sacrifice was one lamb for the whole people of Israel. The great annual day of atonement witnessed one goat slain for a sin-offering for all the people.

    V. But there is plainly more than this--one important element in the meaning of sacrifice is yet unconsidered. Man, as sinful, rests under the just judgment of God. And the conflict of God’s will and his own will within him, if it end in his becoming united again to God, must obviously include the entire subjection of his own will, as in all other points so in this--the SUBMITTING TO THE PUNISHMENT OF SIN as part of God’s holy will. The animals offered in sacrifice were almost uniformly slain, and the remnants of them consumed by fire, which fire was the well-known symbol of the Divine wrath; which as uniformly, as we observed, were required to be without spot or blemish.

    VI. Again, in the substitution indicated by the sacrifice, if any adequate idea of reconciliation to God is to be conveyed, there must be represented a TRANSFERENCE OF GUILT from the offerer to the substitute. For this the Law also took especial care. To mention only one instance: in the ceremonies of the day of atonement two goats are to be offered, typifying the double result of the Redeemer’s sacrifice--His death for sin, and His life for righteousness; His dying for our sins, and rising again for our justification.

    VII. The next point is this: that some METHOD OF COMMUNICATION of its virtue, and its acceptableness to the offerers, should be indicated. Suppose the one atoning sacrifice represented as Offered; suppose God to be set forth as well pleased with it, and as accepting it: how was the offerer to apply these things to himself? In cases of offering for sin, and uncleanness, the blood of the slain animal was sprinkled or placed on the person of the offender for whom the victim was offered, or on the tabernacle or vessels which represented, in their use for holy things, the instrumentality of the whole people of Israel. In the great sacrifice first ordained, viz., that of the passover, this reconciliation by the imputation of blood shed in the offering was even more plainly pointed out. The blood was ordered to be sprinkled on the lintel and side-posts of the house-door of the family which offered the sacrifice; seeing which blood the destroying angel would pass over the house and would not touch them.

    VIII. But more than this participation was signified also by the ceremonial law. The offerers actually PARTOOK of the sacrifice. The substance of the victim actually passed into their bodies, and was assimilated into their substance, and thus the victim became identified with themselves--their flesh and their blood; and the union between the offerer and the offered became the closest possible.

    IX. The great and real sacrifice, when offered, is not only to reconcile man to God by the removal of guilt, but to possess a RENOVATING VIRTUE, by means of which man, unable before, shall be first enabled to offer himself, body, soul, and spirit, an offering acceptable to God. In other words, he is not only to be justified by the application of the atonement thus wrought to his person, but he is to be put into a process of SANCTIFICATION, whereby his whole body, soul, and spirit are to be made holy to the Lord. Did the Law in any way sybolise this, the ultimate object, as regards us, of what Christ has done for us? We may trace it in more ordinances than one. In the repeated washings and cleansings with water, of the priests, and all that belonged to the tabernacle service; in the inscription, “Holiness to the Lord,” on the forehead of the high priest; but above all in the fact that every sacrifice was ordered to be seasoned with salt--that preservative and restoring power, representing the Spirit of holiness, by which the believers are renovated onto the life Of God.

    X. The Law also set forth the Redeemer and His work by PERSONS as well as by ordinances. A more striking type of Him cannot be imagined than the

    Levitical high priest. It is an interesting question for us, though not the main question, how far these things may be supposed to have been patent to the Jewish worshipper of old--how far he took in his mind the idea of spiritual reconciliation by the sacrifice of a spotless Redeemer. The only answer to such an inquiry must be found in their own ancient interpretations of those remarkable prophecies which relate to the sufferings and atonement of Christ. And it is well kown that in commentaries of theirs, written probably before the Christian era, those passages such as the fifty-third of Isaiah are interpreted as prophecies of their future Messiah. We may also surmise the answer to such a question from the fact that John the Baptist could make use, when speaking to Jesus, himself a Jew, of such words respecting our Lord as theses” Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world.” From such facts as these, we are certainly justified in assuming that the meaning of the types in the Law was not altogether unknown to the pious Jew; though whether it influenced, or was intended to influence, his thoughts and the nature of his faith to any great extent, rosy well be doubted. It was perhaps enough for him to be taught, in distinction from all heathen nations, the utter inadequacy of sacrifice or offering to please God; and to be kept shut up under the ceremonial system, in a covenant with God of obedience and fidelity, in the abnegation, if he felt and lived God’s law, of all self-righteousness--waiting for the consolation of Israel; looking for the prophetic promises to be fulfilled in God’s good time. For he had not only types of Christ, but the voices of the prophets all point onward to the future Redeemer. (Dean Alford.)

  • Hebrews 9:10 open_in_new

    The time of reformation

    The gospel a time of reformation:

    Christ then reformed the Law for our sakes, and all things that were in the Old Testament; old things are passed away, and shall we ourselves remain unreformed?

    As Christ hath reformed the Law for our salvation, so let us suffer Him to reform us There is a formation, a deformation, and a reformation. The formation was at the first Creation of the world; then God put all things into a good form and order: “He beheld all that He had made, and lo it was good, yea, exceeding good.” After that came a deformation by the Fall of man, and that put all out of order again: upon that a reformation was made.

    1. By a general deluge that purged all the earth.

    2. By the patriarchs after the Flood.

    3. By Moses, when the Law was published in writing.

    4. By our Saviour Christ, and that is double: the one at His first coming, the other at the second.

    The Spirit of God here entreateth of the first. So that the time of the gospel is the time of reformation. Now especially ought Christians to endeavour a reformation. Every one will take on him to reform the Church: weavers and tailors will enterprise that. The Church is out of order; let that be reformed. But true reformation must begin at ourselves. He that will repair a house must begin at the foundation: so if ye will have a reformation, reform yourselves first: and in the reformation of yourselves begin with the heart: cast out the unclean lusts, the pride, envy, malice, covetousness; afterwards reform your eyes, tongues, hands, and all the members of your body: first wash the inside of the cup and platter, then the outside, else ye will be but whited tombs and painted sepulchres, as the Pharisees were: this is the best order in reforming. First let every man strive to reform himself, the vices whereunto himself is given. In the next place let him reform his family: after that, let every one in his place labour to reform the town wherein he dwells, to rid it of drunkards, of idle persons, to establish good orders in it for the credit of the gospel professed by us. This is the time of reformation, let us all in the fear of God reform ourselves: there shall not be a hair amiss on our head, but we will reform it: if we have a spotted coat or garment, we will reform it: and shall we ourselves remain unreformed? While the time of reformation lasts, let us reform ourselves: death may seize on us ere we be aware, and then it will be too late to reform. (W. Jones, D. D.)

    Reformation upon the gospel scheme

    I. STATE THE NOTION OF REFORMATION. All things were defective and out of order when our Saviour appeared to set up a new dispensation of grace. But Christ came to fulfil the ancient types, to throw off human impositions, to establish a more pure and spiritual worship and government, and to give a system of doctrines, which, by the power of His Spirit, should make a blessed alteration in the Church and in the world.

    II. SHOW THE ADVANTAGES OF THE GOSPEL SCHEME TO PROMOTE A REFORMATION IN THE HEART AND LIFE.

    1. It represents the atonement of Christ as the ground or basis of reformation.

    2. If gives us the most excellent plan of righteousness as the rule of reformation.

    3. It leads us to the best means and assistances for reformation.

    4. It affords us the strongest motives and encouragements to a reformation. How inviting and engaging are gospel displays of the Divine philanthropy!

    III. POINT OUT SOME PROPER METHODS OF IMPROVING THIS SCHEME FOR THE REFORMATION WE ARE AIMING AT.

    1. We should be deeply affected with a sense of the great degeneracies of the age which need to be reformed, and of the rich advantages of the gospel scheme which encourage our hopes of a reformation.

    2. We should be earnest in prayer to God for His Spirit to reform us.

    3. Every one should be seriously concerned about personal reformation upon the foot of the gospel scheme.

    4. We should take the best care and pains we are capable of, in our respective stations, to promote the reformation of others together with ourselves. (J. Guyse, D. D.)

  • Hebrews 9:11,12 open_in_new

    Christ … an High Priest of good things to come

    The Lord Jesus as a High Priest

    God never destroys for the sake of destroying, nor pulls down the old to leave a void in its place.

    The Divine method is to overcome evil by uplifting that which is good, and to remove the good, after it has served its purpose, by introducing that which is more excellent.

    I. Jesus Christ as a High Priest much excels in the GREATNESS AND PERFECTNESS OF THE TABERNACLE. Jesus Christ entered “by a greater and more perfect tabernacle.” By the tabernacle here we are to understand, say some, the expanse above, the stellar firmament, through which Christ entered into the holy place. But the ablest commentators understand by it the body of Jesus Christ. And the author of this Epistle furnishes a strong ground for that interpretation in Hebrews 10:20. A hint to the same purport is to be found in the text, for it is averred of this tabernacle that “it is not of this building,” that is, not of this creation. The humanity of the Lord Jesus is the beginning of a new creation. But it is not the visible body in itself that is intended by the tabernacle, as it is not the visible blood in itself that is meant by the “blood”; but human nature in the person of the Son of God, in which the Word has “tabernacled” among us, and by which He is the “beginning of the creation of God.”

    II. Jesus Christ as a High Priest much excels in the GREATNESS OF THE HOLY PLACE. There was no need for a special word in this place to denote the greatness of the holy place, as it follows naturally from the preceding words. “Christ, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, entered in once into the holy place”; and if the tabernacle were “greater and more perfect,” it follows of necessity that the holy place was so likewise. The same thought belongs to both. Christ entered through the tabernacle of His untainted humanity to a corresponding holy place; He went into the holy place of the eternal world; He entered into the holy of holies of the universe. But God never does anything hurriedly; so Christ, after receiving the keys of the invisible world, took forty days to appear to His disciples at different times, in order to assure their minds that all power is given unto Him in heaven and on earth, and that a clear way, which no one may block, is opened unto them from earth to heaven. Then He ascended, in quiet unruffled glory, to take His proper place as the minister of the sanctuary, and sat down on the right hand of Majesty on high. There is not a higher place in all heaven than where Jesus Christ is to-day in our nature. He is as high as God Himself could raise Him.

    III. Christ as a high priest excels in the PRECIOUSNESS OF THE BLOOD. The worth of the blood was owing to the worth of the life, and the worth of the life to the greatness of the Person. When a man is martyred, the soul does not die; nevertheless, the soul imparts worth to the life of the body, and confers immeasurably more importance on the death of a man than the death of a beast. But notwithstanding the greatness of the difference between man and an animal, it is only a difference of degrees. Man is but a creature as well as the animal. But the difference between man and God is as great as that between a creature and the Creator. And yet, in the person of Jesus Christ, the Creator has come into closer union with humanity than that between our souls and our bodies. Though, perhaps, it be not proper to say that God died, yet the one who died was God. The infinite Person of the Son was in the obedience; the infinite Person was in the suffering; the infinite Person was in the death: imparting boundless worth and merit to all, so as to be a “propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.” Because the Person is so great, the preciousness of the blood has filled all heaven, and has converted the throne of Majesty into a mercy-seat.

    IV. Jesus Christ excels as High Priest in the PERFECTNESS OF HIS WORK. The Jewish high priest was obliged to go to the holy place every year, because there was no effectual reconciliation; only the surface was a little washed, only temporal forgiveness was administered. But the sacrifice of Christ effected a thorough reconciliation--there is no need for a second attempt.

    V. Jesus Christ excels as High Priest in the NATURE AND EFFICACY OF THE REDEMPTION. He obtained eternal redemption or deliverance for us. This follows necessarily from the other part of the verse. As He went to the holy place in heaven, it must be that the redemption is eternal. There is not a higher court ever to reverse the verdict. The acquittal is from the throne of God Himself. (Lewis Edwards, D. D.)

    The superiority of Christ’s priesthood:

    The object of right worship has ever been the same, but its mode has undergone two great changes:

    1. From no sacrifice to many sacrifices.

    2. From many sacrifices to one--from the many mediations of

    Moses to the one mediation of Christ.

    I. CHRIST INTRODUCED HIGHER THINGS.

    1. A higher system of teaching. More spiritual, clear, and diffusive.

    2. A higher form of worship. More simple, personal, attractive, and free.

    3. A higher state of union. Marked by broader views, higher aims, more expansive benevolence.

    II. CHRIST OFFICIATES IN A HIGHER SANCTUARY.

    1. Heaven is a more extensive sanctuary. “Greater.” For all kindreds, &c.

    2. A more Divine sanctuary. “Not made with hands.”

    III. CHRIST PRESENTED A HIGHER SACRIFICE. His own life--the most precious of all.

    IV. CHRIST ACCOMPLISHED A HIGHER WORK. “Redemption” of forfeited rights and paralysed powers; redemption from guilt and spiritual influence of sin; impartation of pardon and purity to the condemned and corrupt; and all this eternal. (Homilist.)

    The priesthood of Christ

    I. CONSIDER THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST IN RELATION TO THE PAST--AND THE RETROSPECTIVE EFFICACY OF HIS WORK IN BEHALF OF THE WORSHIPPERS OF A FORMER AGE. To this view we are led by the whole course of the apostle’s argument in this chapter, and the various allusions to sacrificial rites contained in the Old Testament. The doctrine of propitiation is the harmonising doctrine of the whole Bible. It makes the narrative of patriarchal, Levitical, and prophetical life one history. The men who lived under these dispensations all felt their need of mercy, and with certain differences of outward circumstances, all sought for mercy in the same way. The fundamental articles of religion have been the same in every age of the world. Such is the antiquity of Christ’s priesthood. It reaches far back through all the religious economies under which fallen man has ever lived. Christ is that true Melchisedec who has neither beginning of life nor end of days. “He has obtained for us,” says the apostle, “eternal redemption.” Rolling ages impair not the earnestness of His intercession, nor multitudinous offences the worth of the plea He brings. “He ever liveth.” “He abideth a priest continually.”

    II. CONSIDER THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST AS FULFILLING AND ANSWERING THE INDISPENSABLE CONDITIONS IN ORDER TO THE COVENANT OF FORGIVENESS BEING PERFECT. The priest, in the Levitical sense, is a public person who deals with an offended God in the name of the guilty, by offering an appointed sacrifice for sin upon the altar.

    1. According to this definition, we see that in order to the desired reconciliation three things are necessary--a priest, a sacrifice, and an altar.

    (1) First, there must be a priest. There was no priest under the covenant with Adam upright, for this reason, there was no sacrifice. Man then was dealt with as innocent; he could come to God of himself. But the covenant with man fallen was altogether different; this was entered into with persons in a different moral state, and made for a totally different end. It was a covenant with sinners, with persons who had offended God and cast the words of the first covenant behind them. Hence the design of this new compact was to make peace, to reinstate man in the friendship of his Maker, and to repair the dishonour done to the Divine government. But to give effect to this covenant a mediating party was necessary. The prophet Zechariah expresses this necessity in that fine passage, “He shall be a priest upon His throne, and the council of peace shall be between them both.”

    (2) But, secondly, there must in effecting this sublime negotiation be also a sacrifice. “Gather My sons together to Me,” says the Psalmist, “those that have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.” The importance of this element of the priesthood will appear to you, if you consider that if a sinless mediator had been all that was required, there seems nothing to forbid that our high priest should have been an angel. But this appended condition of sacrifice, the irrevocable necessity of bloodshed in order to remitted guilt made the mediation of angels impossible; for are they not all spirits?--therefore, having no blood to shed. Hence, while there was blood to be shed which shut out angels, it must be sinless blood which shut out men. And yet the dictates of natural equity would suggest that the blood should be that of a man, and that he who should bear the penalties of a broken covenant should be of the same nature with the covenant breaker.

    (3) And then, again, in order to a perfect priesthood there must of necessity be an altar--an altar too of such infinite worth and preciousness that it should both sanctify and enhance the gift. Now, considering that the sacrifice offered up was nothing else than the human nature of Christ, consisting of a body rent, broken, and a pure, holy soul, agonised, bruised, smitten of God and afflicted, the only thing there could be to sanctify a gift in itself so sanctified is the Divine nature with which this holy sacrifice was united,

    2. Here, then, we have satisfactorily provided for the three pre-requisites for a perfect priesthood, namely, a priest, a sacrifice, and an altar. It should not lessen our confidence in this gospel priesthood, to find that all its constituent elements centre in the same glorious person--that the victim to be sacrificed is Christ, that the altar on which it is laid is Christ, that the priest who is to slay and offer and carry the blood into the most holy place is Christ; for if all these several parts be necessary to a perfect priesthood, how would it have vitiated the whole oblation to have encountered at any stage of its preparation a mixture of infirmity. If, for instance, a perfect sacrifice had been offered on a blemished altar, or if though the altar were unblemished, the offering must pass through the hands of a frail and erring priest. No, Christ will have none to lay hands on His work, none to join Him in it. The wine-press of humiliation shall be trodden by Himself alone. “By one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.”

    III. CONSIDER THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST IN RELATION TO ITS MORAL EFFICACY. The apostle, as you perceive, takes as the basis of his comparison the two principal functions of the priestly office under the old economy, namely, the oblation, or the offering of the sacrifice in a part outside the precincts of the temple, and the presentation, or the carrying of blood once a year into the holy of holies to he exhibited and sprinkled upon the mercy-seat. Our Lord suffering without the camp exactly corresponds to the first feature of this Levitical system, whilst His appearing for us continually in the presence of God as plainly answers to the second. And in both, argues the apostle, you cannot fail to discern the measureless superiority of the gospel priesthood. Look at the character of the sacrifice itself. “Not by the blood of goats, but by His own blood.” Two verses further he puts the contrast still more strongly--“If the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling,” &c. The sacrifices of the law had a double use; the one real, and the other typical; the one ceremonial, and the other spiritual; the one actual, as conferring upon the worshipper certain church rights and privileges, the other contingent as requiring a definite act of faith in the promise of the Mediator. Well, the ceremonial efficiency of this it was no part of the apostle’s argument to disparage. While the ancient ritual remained it served useful ends. They did sanctify to the purifying of the flesh. They enabled the excommunicated to join in public worship again, reinstated the sinner into the privileges and immunities of church fellowship, and as types reminded the worshipper of that higher union and fellowship from which he had become excluded by sin, and restoration to which would evidently require a nobler sacrifice and better blood; for how could the blood of bulls and goats ever take away sin? Hence the force of the apostle’s distinction in the text just quoted, between purifying the flesh and purging the conscience. Temple blood may admit you to temple worship, and an outward cleansing may get you an outward interest in the covenant; but if you aspire to peace, to a realised fellowship with God, to anything of the tranquillity or joy of service--in a word, if you desire to get a cleansing and a peace within, any rest for the smitten troubled heart, you will feel that something better than blood of bulls and goats is needed, and with adoring thankfulness will look up to that great High Priest, who, carrying with Him His own all-cleansing blood, hath entered into the most holy place. And this is the second point of contrast on which the apostle insists--on Christ passed into the holy place, that is into heaven, as distinguished from that part of the tabernacle which was within the veil. As one of the patterns of things in the heavens, this inner part into which the priest went was guarded with zealous sacredness. The people were not allowed to follow even with their eyes whilst he was in the act of passing through the veil. Directly he had passed the curtains were drawn as close as possible that even the most curious might not see what was going on within; whilst enshrined in the most sacred part of the holy place itself were preserved time-honoured pledges of the presence and protecting power of God. But Christ, argues the apostle, has passed into a place far holier than your holiest. The curtain which separates Him from human sight is the cloud spread before the eternal throne. Ask we a pledge of the Divine protection--a pledge that He will not forget His holy covenant--a pledge that no penitent and believing sinners are ever to be turned away--we have it in the fact that our Melchisedec stands before the throne, that He combines in Himself all the functions of an everlasting priesthood, being Himself the tabernacle of witness, Himself the altar of sacrifice, Himself the Priest to offer, Himself the Lamb to die; and in the exercise of this priesthood He stands in the midst of the throne, exhibits the sacrificial blood openly that God may see it and pardon, that angels may see it and wonder, that redeemed ones may see it and adore, that the trembling sinner may see it and trust. Consider then, says the apostle, consider Him in all the dignity of His nature, in all the perfections of His sacrifice, in all the mightiness of His pleadings before the everlasting throne, and you will feel that you have, as you ought to have, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, you have, and should feel that you should have, a merciful and faithful High Priest over the house of God, so that if you will draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, in humble but joyous hope, in childlike and tranquil confidence, in and through the merits of the crucified, you shall both obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need: (D. Moore, M. A.)

    The high priesthood of Christ

    The high priesthood of our Lord is a matter full of important consequences to us relating to His sacred Person and His work in our redemption. Of course the term is one derived from the Jewish ceremonial worship: and it is to the books in which that worship is ordained, that we must look for its explanation. I find the first ordinances respecting the high priest’s office in Exodus 28:1-43. There Moses is ordered to take to him Aaron his brother, and with many prescribed ceremonies and adornments to consecrate him as priest; i.e., as afterwards abundantly appears, as chief, or high priest. We need not follow these prescribed ceremonies, further than to cull out from them the general character of each portion of them, as applying to the office of our blessed Lord. As they were to be without blemish or deformity, as they were to be clothed in holy garments for glory and beauty, as they were not to defile themselves with any uncleanness, so was He, as the very first condition of this His office, holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. They, these priests of Israel, were like their brethren in outward form, but, unlike them, were not to be made unclean by things which rendered others unclean. And so Christ took on Him the likeness of sinful flesh, but did not become sinful: He partook of the infirmities of our nature to the full, but did not partake of its pollution. But, when the high priest is thus constituted and apparelled, what is the first matter of which we read, belonging to his special duty and office? Precious stones are to be taken, two sets: upon both the sets are to be graven the names of the tribes of the children of Israel: once, on two onyx stones, which are to be worn on the shoulders of the high priest: the other time, on twelve separate stones, whose names are specially detailed; and this last tablet is to be worn on his heart. We have here a double-feature of the office. The high priest is judge; the high priest is intercessor. And this too belongs to the reality of the high priesthood of Christ. All judgment is committed to Him. And thus judging, thus ordering His Church, He bears His people written on His heart. He can never forget them, for He represents them, and He loves them as Himself, and He bears them on Himself as a memorial before God continually. The next point which requires our notice is important, as introducing a whole class of duties which mainly constituted the high priest’s office (see Exodus 28:36-38). Here we have the high priest in a new character: that of one bearing the iniquity of others, who are made acceptable to God by that his hearing of their iniquity. The plate of pure gold--the “Holiness of the Lord” inscribed on it--must of course be taken as indicating, in connection with his bearing their iniquity, the acceptance before God, as holy, of the people of the Lord whom he represents. It will be enough at this part to say, that our blessed Redeemer here also fulfils the reality of which these high priests were a shadow. Not only does He carry His people engraven on His heart before God, but He presents them to God as holiness to Him, by virtue of His having Himself borne their iniquities.

    Take the apostle’s testimony to this in Ephesians 5:25. Then come, in the book of Exodus, the rites and ceremonies of the consecration, or setting apart of the priests to minister before God. Concerning these, one remark before all is suggested to us by the writer of this Epistle to the Hebrews:--viz., that no man took the office unto himself, but only those who were selected and consecrated by God, as was Aaron. The very name of the Lord by which we call Him, Messiah or Christ, signifies the Anointed. But we now come to that which was by far the larger portion of the duty of the priests of old, and of which we shall have much to say as concerning our great High Priest Himself. “Every high priest,” says our Epistle, “is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices.” This was the priest’s especial office; to minister for the people in the things concerning God, and to offer sacrifices for sin. Now almost every particular is explained by the writer of this Epistle to have immediate reference to our Lord: and of those not so mentioned several are so obvious as to be unmistakable by any intelligent Christian.

    1. First of all why all these ordinances of sacrifice at all? Why all this taking away of animal life, and this sprinkling of blood, ceremonies of a kind painful and revolting now to our minds and habits? All these sacrifices, thus divinely appointed, were ordained to signify greater and spiritual truths: “the Holy Ghost thus signifying,” as we have it written here: God having a matter to make known in His good time, which should be no type or shadow, but His own very truth: and that matter being, the death and satisfaction of our blessed Lord, His eternal Son. But let us follow this out, considering Him as our High Priest. “If He be a Priest,” says the writer of our epistle, “He must of necessity have something to offer.” And here we have God’s High Priest, whom He hath consecrated and sent into the world. By what offering shall He propitiate God towards those His people? Who shall shed the blood that may sprinkle our holy things and make them pure? Who shall go far, far away, bearing upon his head the iniquities of us all? Hear His answer--“Lo I come to do Thy will, O God.” He is spotless. He unites in Himself our whole nature: strike Him, and we are stricken: let His sacrifice be accepted, and we are cleared from guilt: let that blood of His be carried into the holy place of God’s presence in heaven, and an atonement is made for us. There are several ether, apparently minor, but really not less interesting points of comparison, between the high priests of old and our blessed High Priest and Redeemer. Their sacrifices were imperfect, and of no intrinsic value or avail. They therefore needed renewing continually, day by day. But His is perfect and all-sufficing. It needs only to be believed in, and applied by the obedience of living faith to the heart., Again: those high priests, by reason of their being mortal men, were continually renewed from time to time. None of them was permanent: they came as shadows, and so departed: theirs was no abiding priesthood, to which all men might look for atonement and acceptance. But the Son of God abideth for ever: “He dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over Him: in that He died, He died for sin once: in that He liveth, He liveth unto God.” For ever does the virtue of His blood endure: for ever does His holy priesthood avail. There is with Him no wearing out, no forgetting, no failure of earnestness, no vacillating affection, no exhausted pleading. He is for all, He is over all, He is sufficient for all, He cares for all. So then, once more--inasmuch as they were human high priests, they were fellows with their brethren. Was then theirs any advantage over Him? In that land of Judaea, under the shade of those walls of Jerusalem, you might perchance see the high priest holding conference with the erring or the penitent: might see the venerable man of God, on whose brow was His anointing, with the hand of the young offender laid in his, pleading eye to eye till the tears chased one another down the cheek glowing with shame: and then might trace the judge of Israel watching, reminding, building up the returning sinner in holiness. Shall we envy them? Were they better off than we? Ah no! The sympathising high priest on earth, what is he to the sympathising High Priest in heaven? Few indeed, and interrupted could be such interviews: narrow indeed and partial such sympathies. But our High Priest is not one who lacks leisure or power to receive all who come to Him at any time. It is for us, for the least among us, that the eternal Son of God is thus constituted a High Priest: for our sins, for our wants, for our daily feeling, and obeying, and approaching to God. It is to purge our conscience from dead works to serve the living God, that His holy blood was offered: to make us pure, upright, clear in purpose, and like to our God and Father. (Dean Alford.)

    Good things brought by Christ:

    Here we may see what they be that in truth deserve the name and title of good things, Not silver and gold, houses and lands. Christ at His coming brought none of these, yet He brought good things with Him, namely, remission of sins, faith and other graces of the Spirit. These indeed are worthy the name of good things. Forasmuch as our Priest bringeth such excellent things with Him, let Him be most welcome to us. David said of Ahimaaz, “he is a good man, and bringeth good tidings.” Much more let us say of Christ our High Priest, “He is a good man, He bringeth good tidings,” that by the blood of His Cross He hath reconciled us to God the Father, hath obtained a general pardon for all our sins, He hath prepared a place for us in His own kingdom; therefore let us receive Him with all joy. (W. Jones, D. D.)

    The body likened to a tabernacle

    As Christ’s body is a tabernacle, so is 2 Peter 1:14; 2 Corinthians 5:1).

    1. The name of a tent or tabernacle imports warfare. Soldiers have their tents.

    2. There is a between a tabernacle and a house; for a house is made of solid matter, wood, stone, &c. A tent is made of old clothes patched together. So our bodies are not made of the sun, of the stars, of the firmament, but of the earth, which is a brittle thing.

    3. A tent is weak, easily pierced through. So our body. A knife, a pin may prick it, a fly may choke it. A tent is quickly up and quickly down. So is our body. We come suddenly, and we are gone again in the turning of an hand, though it be the body of a wise Solomon, of a strong Samson, a fair Absolom, yet remember it is but a tent or tabernacle. The time is at hand, says St. Peter, when I must lay down this tabernacle. Now as the tabernacle in the time of the Law was kept neat, clean, and handsome, it might not be polluted with anything. So let us keep our bodies from all pollutions. (W. Jones, D. D.)

    He entered in once

    Our Lord’s entrance within the veil

    I. THE SACRIFICE OF HIS ENTERING.

    1. Unique.

    2. Substitutionary.

    3. Personal.

    4. Of transcendent value.

    II. THE MANNER OF HIS ENTRANCE.

    1. Once.

    2. Only once.

    3. In the fullest and most complete manner.

    III. THE OBJECTS OF HIS ENTRANCE.

    1. He made atonement within the veil.

    2. He enters there to appear for us.

    3. He is there to perfect us.

    4. He has entered in once that He may abide there.

    5. He is there to admit us to the same nearness.

    IV. THE GLORIES OF THIS ENTRANCE. “Having obtained eternal redemption.” When Aaron went in with the blood of bulls and goats, he had not obtained “eternal redemption”; he had only obtained a symbolic and temporary purification for the people, and that was all.

    1. Our Lord enters in because His work is all done.

    2. That which He had obtained was redemption. We do not fully know what the word “ redemption “ means, for we were born free; but if we could go back a few years, and mix with the negro slaves of America, they could have told us what redemption meant, if ever, by any good fortune, any one of them was able to buy his freedom. You that have groaned under the tyranny of sin, you know what redemption means in its spiritual sense, and you prize the ransom by which you have been made free. We are to-day redeemed from our far-off condition in reference to the Lord God: we do not now stand outside the veil. This is a great redemption. We are also delivered from guilt, for “He hath washed us from our sins in His own blood.” Also from the power of sin, its curse, its bondage, &c.

    3. And now think of the nature of that redemption; for here is a grand point. He has obtained “eternal” redemption. If you carefully study the verses around the text, you will find the word “ eternal” three times: there is “eternal redemption,” the “eternal Spirit,” and an “eternal inheritance.” Why is redemption said to be eternal? He has obtained eternal redemption--a redemption which entered into eternal consideration. Redemption isthe drift of creation, and the hinge of providence.

    4. When our Lord entered in, He had by His sacrifice also dealt with eternal things, and not with matters of merely passing importance. Sin, death, hell--these are not temporary things: the atonement deals with these, and hence it is an eternal redemption.

    5. Now, look forward into eternity. Behold the vista which has no end! Eternal redemption covers all the peril of this mortal life, and every danger beyond, if such there be. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

    The entrance of Christ into heaven

    I. The entrance of our Lord Jesus Christ as our High Priest into heaven, to appear in the presence of God for us, and to save us thereby unto the uttermost, was a thing so great and glorious, As COULD NOT BE ACCOMPLISHED BUT BY HIS OWN BLOOD. No other sacrifice was sufficient unto this end.

    II. Whatever difficulties lay in the way of Christ, as unto the accomplishment and perfection of the work of our redemption, HE WOULD NOW DECLINE THEM, NOR DESIST FROM HIS UNDERTAKING, WHATEVER IT COST HIM.

    III. THERE WAS A HOLY PLACE MEET TO RECEIVE THE LORD CHRIST, AFTER THE SACRIFICE OF HIMSELF; and a suitable reception for such a person, after so glorious a performance.

    IV. If the Lord Christ entered not into the holy place until he had finished His work, WE MAY NOT EXPECT AN ENTRANCE THEREINTO UNTIL WE HAVE FINISHED OURS. He fainted not until all was finished; and it is our duty to arm ourselves with the same mind.

    V. IT MUST BE A GLORIOUS EFFECT WHICH HAD SO GLORIOUS A CAUSE; and so it was, even “eternal redemption.”

    VI. THE NATURE OF OUR REDEMPTION, THE WAY OF ITS PROCUREMENT, WITH THE DUTIES REQUIRED OF US WITH RESPECT THEREUNTO, ARE GREATLY TO RE CONSIDERED BY US. (John Owen, D. D.)

    Christ’s work on earth and in heaven

    I. HIS WORK ON EARTH. “He obtained eternal redemption for us.”

    1. The blessing in question.

    (1) Redemption by our Lord Jesus Christ, or deliverance from the sentence of condemnation.

    (2) Redemption by power from the dominion of sin, from the vassalage of the world, and from the power of darkness.

    2. The extensiveness of the attribute. “Eternal redemption.”

    (1) Completely.

    (2) Absolutely.

    (3) Emphatically.

    3. Eternal in its procuring.

    4. Eternity of the benefit.

    (1) For men, in distinction from angels.

    (2) For believers.

    II. His APPEARANCE IN HEAVEN.

    1. Where did He enter? “Into the holy place”--heaven.

    2. With what did He enter? “With His own blood.

    3. How often did He enter? “Once.” (W. Jay.)

    Having obtained eternal redemption for us

    Redemption by Christ:

    Calvary is the central point to which, as all former ages, with a vague expectancy, had looked onward, so all subsequent ages look back, with hearts filled to the full with gratitude and love. In the redemption there won for us there are various points for us to notice.

    1. Firstly, it was by His own blood that Christ entered in once into the holy place. It was a sacrifice centring absolutely in Himself. Christ trod the winepress alone. His own blood was shed for the salvation of the world; none other could mingle with it.

    2. And Christ entered once into the holy place. We should mark this well. His death was the single act of One who need never repeat it.

    3. And the redemption thus won is as eternal for us as it is for Him who won it. This side of the grave we have to struggle, to do battle as soldiers of the Cross, “not as though we had already attained, either were already perfect” (Philippians 3:12). But we may have sure and certain hope of eternal life, and in this confidence may go forth conquering and to conquer. The redemption, as far as Christ’s work is concerned, has been made; and if we will but take the crown from Him who offers it to us, no power of earth, nor of hell, shall be able to wrest it from our keeping without our consent.

    4. And, lastly, Christ has obtained this eternal redemption for us. Without boastfulness or self-assertion, we may lay stress on that word, and remember that in it Christ associates with Himself the whole human family. We look back down the stream of time which has flowed on to the present. We think of all the lives that have been for a longer or shorter period borne upon that mighty river--lives known and unknown, a blessing or a curse to their generation. In all of these redemption has played its part. It has had an influence and a power on those lives, whether it has been accepted or not. It has been either their hope and encouragement, or it has been a solemn witness rising up to protest against every deed of sin and shame. Man cannot live in the knowledge and light of immortality won for him by Christ, and be the same as if he knew it not. For that knowledge he must be either infinitely the better or infinitely the worse. And, for our great and endless comfort, let us never forget that the redemption is offered to each individual soul; for Christ by His death made each one of us His own, having paid the price which our salvation costs. And that act of surpassing love has been performed as though no other soul but thine required this tremendous sacrifice. Will you, then, reject so great salvation? will you refuse the eternal redemption Christ has obtained for you? (C. W. H. Kenrick, M. A.)

    Our redemption

    I. Our redemption from captivity is effected by our Lord in two ways: BY PRICE AND BY POWER. By price paid into the hand of God as the moral Governor; by power exercised on Satan, sin, the world, and death.

    II. Our Lord obtained eternal redemption for us BY SACRIFICE. This implies reconciliation (Colossians 1:20-22; 2 Corinthians 5:18-21).

    III. Our Lord obtained eternal redemption for us BY SUFFERING PUNISHMENT. This refers to law and justice. (James Kidd, D. D.)

    Redemption:

    Once when I was revisiting my native village, I was going to a neighbouring town to preach, and saw a young man coming from a house with a waggon, in which was seated an old woman. I felt interested in them, and asked my companion who they were. I was told to look at the adjoining meadow and pasture, and at the great barns that were on the farm, as well as a good house. “Well,” said my companion, “that young man’s father drank that all up, and left his wife in the poorhouse. The young man went away and worked until he had got money enough to redeem that farm, and now it is his own, and he is taking his mother to church.” That is an illustration of redemption. In the first Adam we have lost all, but the second Adam has redeemed everything by His death. (D. L. Moody.)

    Release

    In the debtors’ prison at Sheffield, Howard found a cutler plying his trade who was in jail for thirty cents. The fees of the court amounted to over a pound, and this sum he had been for several years trying to earn. In another jail there was a man with a wife and five children, confined for court-fees of about five shillings, and jailer’s fees of about eightpence. This man was confined in the same apartment as robbers. All such debtors--and they were numerous in England--Howard released by paying their debts. (Cycloaedia of Biography.)

  • Hebrews 9:13,14 open_in_new

    How much more shall the blood of Christ?

    The sacrifice of Jesus Christ

    The sacrifice of our Lord admits of being considered from many different points of view. We may consider it as making atonement for our sins, and ask how any such transference and application of His merits to us, as is involved in this thought, is possible; or we may consider why any such atonement should have been necessary at all to satisfy the requirements of the Divine Righteousness in the moral government of the world. Both of these questions are legitimate, and the New Testament does in fact suggest answers to them. But there is another consideration, simpler perhaps than either of these, which is yet full of importance, and comes first in the order of thought; and that is, the nature of Christ’s sacrifice, considered not in its effect on us, but simply in itself: of what sort was Christ’s sacrifice, and wherein lay its acceptableness?

    I. HE OFFERED HIS SELF, HIS PERSON, HIS HUMAN LIFE TO GOD. This human life of ours is meant to move in various directions. It moves out to the interpretation and appropriation of nature; and so man gains in natural knowledge, and develops the resources of civilisation. It moves out again from each man towards his fellows, and so the bonds of humanity are knit, and society advances. It moves out also towards God, to present itself before Him, and enter into communion with Him. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.” All the faculties of man are thus to be directed not only towards nature, towards his fellow men, but also deliberately Godward, and that first of all. It is “ the first and great commandment.” This was the original law of man’s being. This is his ultimate goal in Christianity (Romans 12:1). This “reasonable service,” which St. Paul calls a “sacrifice,” though there be no death involved in it, is what is supremely exemplified in the human life of Jesus. It looked manward in love and ministry. “He went about doing good.” But first of all it looked Godward in self-oblation. “Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God.” Aye, even before “Thy will be done “ comes “ Thy name be hallowed.” For to please God, to present himself before God, to know God, this is the highest privilege and the primary duty of man.

    II. HE OFFERED HIMSELF “WITHOUT SPOT” OR “BLEMISH.” The metaphor is from the inspection of the victims prepared for sacrifice. In the Lamb of God the scrutiny of the all-seeing eye can detect no disqualifying flaw. A will always vigorous, single, unflagging; an intellect wholly unclouded and unsophisticated, of perfect receptivity and exquisite penetration; a heart of incomparable tenderness and force, which yet never moved out in uncontrolled passion; a perfect humanity which yet showed its perfection in unresisting dependence upon the movement of the Divine Spirit which filled it and directed it; a humanity rich and full in experiences, passing through all sorts of vicissitudes of circumstance, yet found as perfect in one situation as in another, in failure as in success; a humanity in which nothing approaching to moral decadence is to be detected, glorious in its issue as in its inception. He offered Himself to God without blemish. He fulfilled the ideal of humanity. He was the beloved Son in whom the Father--the great Scrutiniser of human oblations--was well pleased.

    III. THE SACRIFICE OF JESUS WAS A FULL, PERFECT, AND ADEQUATE SELF-OBLATION OF MAN TO GOD. It was perfectly “spiritual.” He, the pattern Man, gave to God an undivided allegiance, an absolute homage. When His mission on behalf of truth, and meekness, and righteousness involved the martyr’s death--He accepted the condition, and offered the shedding of His blood. But in God’s sight the shedding of the blood had no value except as the symbol of obedience carried to an extreme. It is a great, a strange mistake to suppose that the death of Christ was, as it were, the act of God. It was the act in which (on the contrary) rebellion against God, the sin of man, showed itself in its true and horrible colours. What God does is to bear with this, as He has foreseen it, to spare not His only Son, to exempt Him by no miracle from the consequences of His loyalty to truth and meekness and righteousness--under the conditions of a sinful world, as things were, its inevitable consequences. God foresees, God bears with this, and He overrules it to the purposes of our redemption. But throughout, as St. Auselm says, in the greatest Christian treatise on the Atonement, what God the Father enjoined upon the Incarnate Son was, primarily simple obedience; only as obedience in fact involved death, then, secondarily, did He enjoin upon Him to die. There are splendid instances in actual history, or imaginative history, of acts in which men have poured out their blood as a sacrifice for their fellow men. It is the deep moral feeling of Euripides which converts the unwilling sacrifice of Iphigenia in Aulis into a freewill offering for her country. “The whole of Greece, the truly great, is looking to me now,” she cries to her mother,… “for all the Greeks and not for thyself alone, didst thou bear me; therefore for Greece I offer my body.” So she gives herself to be sacrificed by the priest’s knife, and the goddess Artemis accepts the freewill offering--but not the actual life; for as the knife is falling, the place of the maiden is, by the intervention of the goddess, taken by a doe. And of the maiden it is said that the same day beheld her dead and alive again. This is a splendid thought. But it is the nobility of the victim which is supposed to move the compassion of the goddess rather than the simple worth of a human life, and the atmosphere of religious conception as to the Divine nature is still far cloudier than among the Jews. On the Jewish stage a cognate but more truly historical scene is described in Maccabees, where the heroic martyrs for the honour and liberty of the chosen people offer up their lives to God. “And I,” cries the youngest of the seven martyred brothers, “as nay brethren, offer up my body and life for the laws of our fathers, beseeching God that He would speedily be merciful unto our nation,… and that in me and my brethren the wrath of the Almighty which is justly brought upon all our nation may cease.” This is a self-sacrifice which comes very near to Isaiah’s conception of the vicarious self-oblation of Jehovah’s righteous servant. But it has still accompanying it some ring of the false thought of God as demanding for sin some positive quantity of expiatory death. Now when we describe the sacrifice of our Lord as perfectly spiritual, we mean that it carries with it, in all its silent implications and in the spoken words in which it found expression, the perfect truth about God and about man, as the flawless homage of the self-surrendering will. Jesus taught the perfect truth in words--the truth about God’s pure Fatherhood; the truth that what God asks of man, who is made for sonship, is not mere isolated acts of obedience or sacrifice, but simply and altogether the homage of an unqualified submission and dependence. He taught the truth about man’s sin, about his rebellion, about his need of conversion. He taught the truth about the unity of the human race--bidding men see that they may not live each for himself, but are bound to live each for all. He taught all this in words; He taught it in deeds, in His own human relation to the Father; in His own relation to mankind. He taught it most of all in His sacrifice. For when obedience was shown to involve death, tie spared not Himself, even as the Father spared Him not: He used no miraculous power to exempt Himself, though He declared that He possessed it. For us, in our manhood, before God He shed His blood. And this blood-shedding has, in God’s sight, a perfect value, because it is the expression of a flawless will, of truth unqualified--the truth about God’s claim on man, the truth about humanity’s proper homage, the truth about sin. And the self sacrifice of Jesus lives for evermore, over against all our lawlessness, our wilfulness, our slackness, our blindness, our self-sparing, as the perfect recognition in man’s name and nature of the righteous claim of God, and of the responsibility of man for man.

    IV. As THE SACRIFICE OF JESUS WAS PERFECTLY SPIRITUAL SO IT WAS OFFERED, NOT ONLY IN THE POWER OF THE PERFECT HUMANITY, BUT IN THE POWER ALSO OF THE ETERNAL SPIRIT. Truly was He acting in manhood, really under conditions of manhood: the sacrifice was genuinely human in its moral effort, in its moral and physical pain, in its genuine human faith. It was the Son of Man who offered Himself. But the mind and will expressed was also God’s mind, God’s will, and therefore the meaning and value of the act is unchangeable. It is true of all human action at its best that it has an eternal element. “The truly great have all one age.” But the eternal element, the movement of God which lies hid at all times at the roots of humanity, is obscured and clouded by human independence of God, that is, human sin. In Jesus every human act is also the act of God. He who was acting under human conditions was very God; and the Divine Spirit which indwelt His humanity, indwelt Him perfectly, and found in Him a faultless organ in which His will could be done. Nothing, then, in the acts or sacrifice of Jesus is merely temporary, or imperfect, or inadequate. It belongs to all ages. It is eternal. (Chas. Gore, M. A.)

    Gospel theology

    I. THE GOD OF THE GOSPEL IS A LIVING PERSONALITY. This revelation of God as “living” stands opposed to

    1. Heathen idolatry.

    2. Secular philosophy.

    3. Mere logical divinity.

    II. THE CHIEF END OF MAN’S EXISTENCE IS TO SERVE THE LIVING GOD.

    1. This implies

    (1) That He has a will concerning our activities.

    (2) A capacity on man’s part to understand and obey the will of

    God concerning him.

    2. There are three facts in relation to the service of God which we should always bear in mind, and which marks it off from all other service.

    (1) That acceptability does not depend either upon the kind, or the amount, or the results of our activity, but upon its principles.

    (2) That to serve God does not require that we should confine ourselves to any particular department of action.

    (3) That to serve God is the only way either to serve ourselves or others.

    III. MAN’S MORAL NATURE IS GENERALLY IN A STATE WHICH DISQUALIFIES HIM FOR THIS SERVICE.

    1. The conscience is polluted.

    2. The conscience is polluted through dead works.

    IV. THE GREAT END OF CHRIST’S MEDIATION IS TO REMOVE THIS MORAL DISQUALIFICATION FOR THE SERVICE OF THE LIVING GOD.

    1. By furnishing man with the most complete exhibition of what the service of the living God is.

    (1) A personal consecration.

    (2) A voluntary consecration.

    (3) A virtuous consecration.

    (4) A consecration Divinely inspired.

    2. By supplying the most effective means to generate in the heart the principle of true service--supreme love to God.

    3. By providing a medium which renders the service approvable to God.

    V. CHRIST’S MEDIATION FOR THIS PURPOSE IS MOST UNQUESTIONABLY EFFICACIOUS. “If the blood,” etc.

    1. The object in the one case to be realised is of unspeakably greater importance than the other.

    2. The means employed in the one case are immeasurably more costly than the other.

    3. The agent employed in the one case to apply the means is infinitely greater than in the other. (Homilist.)

    Christ the purifier of religion

    I. MAN’S CONSCIENCE NEEDS PURIFYING. TO perceive this, contemplate the Jewish ceremonial, and that will shadow forth the spiritual truth. The man who had touched a corpse, or the grave dust, was regarded as defiled--he felt defiled, he trembled to enter the presence of God. Paul says thisis the symbol of an eternal fact. The conscience feels the touch of death. It trembles in worship. Therefore it needs purifying from its dead works to serve the living God. The more bright and keen the conscience, the deeper and more awful is the feeling of death that cleaves to us.

    II. THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST THE PURIFYING POWER.

    1. A perfect and holy sacrifice. That awful expenditure of sinless agony is the only purification. The voice of condemnation pursues us through every path of life until it is hushed before the Cross. Then the death-stains of past sin are cleansed away. Then the spectral forms of the past are laid for ever. Then prayer loses its tremor, aspiration its sadness, praise its undertone of fear. We no more wish to escape from God, for we are made pure by the blood of Christ.

    2. A new spirit of devotion; for we need not only absolution but inspiration before we can serve God freely, lovingly, joyously. “He offered Himself”--not in fear, but voluntarily. Suffering, shame, death, stood in His path.He might have refused to endure them, and from the first turned aside: but daily He chose to bear the daily cross. “Through the Eternal Spirit.” His was not an offering from the human to avert the Divine anger, but an offering from Himself. There was the true spirit of worship when the Eternal Spirit became enshrined in Jesus. And through that Spirit He offered Himself.

    III. THE PURIFIED CONSCIENCE RISES TO LIVING WORSHIP.

    1. Living--in the reality of its spiritual emotions. The unpurged conscience is tempted to forget, to doubt, to deny God, or regard Him simply as some awful and mysterious power. The purified spirit feels Him near and can bear the glance of the Eternal without shrinking; for the dead past has been cleansed away by the blood of the Saviour. Thus prayer becomes real; it is no longer a vain cry breathed into the air; for the Spirit through which He offered Himself abides in us, constraining our devotion.

    2. Living--for it pervades the whole life. The worship of fear is limited to time and place. But cleansed and inspired by Christ we feel He is everywhere. In suffering we bear His will, and our sighs become prayers. In sorrow, when the heart is weary, we feel ourselves near to the heavenly Friend who is leading us to find in Him rest for the restless and sad. In joys, He who hallowed social gladness by His first miracle--and amid the friendships of life, He who made friendship holy is close to our hearts. In our falls and failures we hear His voice in the hope of rising out of the gloom to a higher and purer slate beyond it. (E. L. Hull, B. A.)

    The sacrifice of Christ

    I. THE SPECIAL CHARACTER OF THE CHRISTIAN SACRIFICE, the grand atonement on which we all rest, is, that it is not the blood of the inferior animals, as in the former dispensation; but the blood of Christ.

    1. It was the offering of a human being. The death of Christ, considering Him simply as a man, shows a justice in the visitation of sin, as much greater as human life is above the life of irrational animals.

    2. He was an innocent and spotless man. Here the value is heightened. It was not the case of one offender selected from many to be an example. He had no part in the offence.

    3. But that which carries the value of the offering to its true height, is, that it was “the blood of Christ”; of the whole and undivided Christ, who was both God and man. For, though a Divine nature could not bleed and die, a Divine person could.

    II. ITS SPECIAL EFFICACY. It cleanses not the flesh, but “purges the conscience from dead works, that we may serve the living God.” Two benefits are here marked as the foundation of, and leading to, all others.

    1. The purification of the conscience. The “ dead works,” here mentioned, are sins; and the guilt from which we are purified is in another place termed “the conscience of sins.” Sins are “dead works,” because they expose us to present condemnation, and finally to eternal death. By “ conscience” here is meant inward perception of such works as are chargeable upon us, with fearful apprehensions of the death they bring. But on this sacrifice you are to trust in order to salvation. To encourage you to this, think of the Father’s love. Think of the love of the Son. Can you doubt of that love while He is evidently set forth crucified before your eyes? Think of the value of this sacrifice. If you can conceive of anything more valuable, then doubt the efficacy of this, and fear to trust. Then trust in it. Venture in the same vessel which has carried so many over the stormy waves which now surround you, and who shout to you from the shore beyond, and bid you trust, and not be afraid.

    2. The second blessed consequence is, that we may “serve the living God.” There is the service of worship. We have free access to God, and our services are acceptable. There is the service of obedience. We are delivered from the bondage of sin, and all our powers are consecrated to God.

    Learn:

    1. The infinite evil of sin. It could not be forgiven without a Divine atonement.

    2. The awful character of Divine justice.

    3. The fulness of the blessings purchased by this sacrifice. The salvation corresponds with the sacrifice by which it was purchased, and comprehends every spiritual blessing, both in time and eternity. (R. Watson.)

    The character, agency, and efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice

    I. THE AGENCY THROUGH WHICH CHRIST’S SACRIFICE WAS PRESENTED, AND THE CHARACTER OF THAT SACRIFICE. Christ offered Himself to God, both in obedience and in suffering. His whole life was one season of oblation.

    II. THE EFFECTS OF THIS SACRIFICE. St. Paul’s representation rather embraces a point than extends itself to the whole of the effects of the atonement: the expression “ dead works,” denotes sinfulness in general, by which all our consciences are polluted, in opposition to those things by which spiritual uncleanness was removed. We have, then, simply to inquire into the truth and meaning of the assertion, that the blood of Jesus cleanseth the soul of the believer from sin, and thus qualifies him for the service of the living God. And, first of all, we have full warrant for affirming that so soon as there is faith in the heart, binding a man to Christ as a member of the head, the sins of all men are swept completely away, being not only forgiven, but actually forgotten by God. It is membership with Christ which gives its might and its majesty to the gospel. Faith admits me into the invisible Church of Christ, and the members of the invisible Church make up one sinless body in the sight of the Father--the perfect righteousness of the Head being considered as belonging equally to the meanest of the members. So that when I have faith in Christ, I am literally one with Christ, and then where are my sins? The countless iniquities of my youth I the multiform transgressions of my riper years! where are they? “I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgression, for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” Oh! how unlike is His forgiveness to that of men, who may forgive but cannot forget! Oh! the word of the Lord is--“the blood of Jesus Christ shall purge your conscience from dead works.”

    III. THIS “PURGING OF THE CONSCIENCE” IS PREPARATORY TO “SERVING THE LORD.” The man of whom much has been forgiven will love much, and loving without obeying is a paradox which never yet deformed practical Christianity. Like as Christ offered Himself through the Eternal Spirit unto God, so also must we through the same Spirit present ourselves as living sacrifices to the Most High. This is the service to which we are pledged; this is the consecration bound upon us by all that is most solemn in duty and glorious in hope. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

    The red heifer

    I. LET US DESCRIBE THE TYPE (see Numbers 19:1-22.). First, the type mentions ceremonial defilements, which were the symbols of the uncleanness caused by sin. The Israelites could very readily render themselves unclean, so as to be unfit to go up to the tabernacle of God. There were uncleannesses connected both with birth and with death, with meats and with drinks, with garments and with houses. A man might become unclean even in his sleep; so closely did the law track him into his most secret places, and surround his most unguarded hours. Even thus doth sin beset us. Like a dog at one’s heels, it is always with us! Like our shadow, it follows us, go where we may. Yea, and when the sun shines not, and shadows are gone, sin is still there. Whither shall we flee from its presence, and where shall we hide from its power? When we would do good, evil is present with us. How humbled we ought to be at the recollection of this! The Israelite became unclean even in the act of doing good; for assuredly it was a good deed to bury the dead. Alas, there is sin even in our holy things. The evil of our nature clingeth to all that we do. The touching of the dead not only made the man unclean, but he became a fountain of defilement. Pollution went forth from the polluted. Do you and I sufficiently remember how much of evil we are spreading when we are out of communion with God? Every ungenerous temper creates the like in others. We never cast a proud look without exciting resentment and bad feelings in others. Somebody or other will follow our example if we be slothful; and thus we may be doing great mischief even when we are doing nothing. This uncleanness prevented the man from going up to the worship of God, and it separated him from that great, permanent congregation which was called to dwell in God’s house by residing all around the holy place. He was, so to speak, excommunicated, suspended, at any rate, in his communion: he could bring no offering, he could not stand among the multitude and view the solemn worship, he was unclean, and must regard himself so. Do the children of God ever get here? Ah, so far as our consciences are concerned we too often come among the unclean. Until the pardoning blood speaks peace within your spirit, you cannot draw near unto God. We tremble, we find communion impossible until we are made clean. This much about the defilements described in the chapter; now concerning the cleansing which it mentions. The defilement was frequent, but the cleansing was always ready.. At a certain time all the people of Israel brought a red heifer to be used in the expiation. It was not at the expense of one person, or tribe, but the whole congregation brought the red cow to be slain. It was to be their sacrifice, and it was brought for them all. It was not led, however, up to the holy place for sacrifice, but it was brought forth without the camp, and there it was slaughtered in the presence of the priest, and wholly burnt with fire, not as a sacrifice upon the altar, but as a polluted thing which was to be made an end of outside the camp. Even as our Lord, though in Himself without spot, was made sin for us, and suffered without the camp, feeling the withdrawings of God, while He cried, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Then the ashes were collected and laid in a clean place accessible to the camp. Everybody knew where the ashes were, and whenever there was any uncleanness they went to this ash-heap and took away a small portion. Whenever the ashes were spent they brought another red heifer, and did the same as they had done before, that always there might be this purification for the unclean, There was no other method of purification from uncleanness but this. It is so with us. To-day the living water of the Divine Spirit’s sacred influences must take up the result of our Lord’s substitution, and this must be applied to our consciences. That which remaineth of Christ after the fire hath passed upon Him, ever the eternal merits, the enduring virtue of our great sacrifice, must be sprinkled upon us through the Spirit of our God. Then are we clean in conscience, but not till then.

    II. LET US MAGNIFY THE GREAT ANTITYPE. “For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purification of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ?” How much more? He doth not give us the measure, but leaves it with a note of interrogation. We shall never be able to tell how much more, for the difference between the blood of bulls and of goats and the blood of Christ, the difference between the ashes of a red cow and the eternal merits of the Lord Jesus, must be infinite. Let us help your judgments while we set forth the exceeding greatness of our mighty Expiator, by whom we are reconciled to God.

    1. First, then, our defilement is much greater, for the defilement spoken of in the text is on the conscience, We cannot have fellowship with God while there is a sense of unconfessed and unforgiven sin upon us. “Be ye reconciled to God” is a text for saints as well as for sinners: children may quarrel with a father as well as rebels with a king. There must be oneness of heart with God, or there is an end to communion, and therefore must the conscience be purged. The man who was unclean could have come up to the tabernacle if there had been no law to prevent it, and it is possible that he could have worshipped God in spirit, notwithstanding his ceremonial disqualification. The defilement was no barrier in itself except so far as it was typical; but sin on the conscience is a natural wall between God and the soul. You cannot get into loving communion until the conscience is at ease; therefore, I charge you, fly at once to Jesus for peace.

    2. Secondly, our sacrifice is greater in itself. I will not dwell upon each point of its greatness, but just notice that in the slaughter of the heifer blood was presented and sprinkled towards the holy place seven times, though it came not actually into it; so in the atonement through which we find peace of conscience there is blood, for “without shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.” Death was our doom, and death for death did Christ render unto the eternal God. It is by a sense of our Lord’s substitutionary death that the conscience becomes purged from dead works. Furthermore, the heifer itself was offered. After the blood was sprinkled towards the tabernacle by the priestly hand, the victim itself was utterly consumed. Read now our text: “Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered up Himself without spot unto God.” Our Lord Jesus Christ gave not merely His death, but His whole person, with all that appertained unto it, to be our substitutionary sacrifice. Oh, what a sacrifice is this! It is added that our Lord did this “by the eternal Spirit.” The heifer was not a spiritual but a carnal offering. The creature knew nothing of what was being done, it was the involuntary victim; but Christ was under the impulses of the Holy Ghost, which was poured upon Him, and He was moved by Him to render up Himself a sacrifice for sin. Hence somewhat of the greater efficacy of His death, for the willinghood of the sacrifice greatly enhanced its value. To give you another, and probably a better, interpretation of the words, there was an eternal spirit linked with the manhood of Christ our Lord, and by it He gave Himself unto God. He was God as well as man, and that eternal Godhead of His lent an infinite value to the sufferings of His human frame, so that He offered Himself as a whole Christ, in the energy of His eternal power and Godhead. One who is both God and man has given Himself as a sacrifice for us. Is not the sacrifice inconceivably greater in the fact than it is in the type? Ought it not most effectually to purge our conscience? After they had burnt the heifer they swept up the ashes. All that could be burnt had been consumed. Our Lord was made a sacrifice for sin, what remains of Him? Not a few ashes, but the whole Christ, which still remaineth, to die no more, but to abide for ever unchanged. He came uninjured through the fires, and now He ever liveth to make intercession for us. It is the application of His eternal merit which makes us clean, and is not that eternal merit inconceivably greater than the ashes of an heifer ever can be?

    3. As the defilement and the sacrifice were greater, so the purging is much greater. The purifying power of the blood of Christ must be much greater than the purging power of the water mixed with the ashes of the heifer. For that could not purge conscience from sin, but the application of the atonement can do it, and does do it. Now, what is all this business about? This slain heifer--I understand that, for it admitted the unclean Israelites to the courts of the Lord--but this Christ of God offering Himself without spot by the eternal Spirit--what is that for? The object of it is a service far higher: it is that we may be purged from dead works to serve the living God. The dead works are gone, God absolves you, you are clean, and you feel it. What then? Will you not abhor dead works for the future? Sin is death. Labour to keep from it. Inasmuch as you are delivered from the yoke of sin, go forth and serve God. Since He is the living God, and evidently hates death, and makes it to be an uncleanness to Him, get you to living things. Offer to God living prayers, and living tears, love Him with living love, trust Him with living faith, serve Him with living obedience. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

    Self-oblation the true idea of obedience:

    Christ offered up Himself. He was both Priest and Sacrifice. The atoning oblation was His perfect obedience, both in life and death, to the will of His Father. From Hebrews 10:5-7 we learn that the mystery of atonement began from the first act of humiliation, when He laid aside His glory, and was made in the likeness of men. It contains, therefore, His incarnation, His hope of earthly obedience, His spiritual and bodily sufferings, His death and resurrection. He overcame sin by His holiness, by perfect and perpetual obedience, by a spotless life, by His mastery in the wilderness, by His agony in the garden. His whole life was a part of the one sacrifice which, through the eternal Spirit, He offered to His Father; namely, the reasonable and spiritual sacrifice of a crucified will.

    I. First we may learn INTO WHAT RELATION TOWARDS GOD THE CHURCH HAS BEEN BROUGHT BY THE ATONEMENT OF CHRIST. The whole mystical body is offered up to the Father, as “a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.” Whatsoever was fulfilled by the Head is partaken of by the body. He was an oblation, and the Church is offered up in Him. Even now the Church is crucified, buried, raised and exalted to sit with Christ in heavenly places. In the same act of self-oblation He comprehended us, and offered us in Himself. And in this is our justification; namely, in our relation, as “a living sacrifice,” to God through Christ, for whose sake we, all fallen though we be, are accounted righteous in the court of heaven.

    II. The next truth we may learn is, THE NATURE OF THE HOLY SACRAMENTS. Under one aspect they are gifts of spiritual grace from God to us; under another they are acts of self-oblation on our part to God. They are the emphatic expressions and the efficient means of realising the great mystery of atonement in us. The faithful in early times, in the very act of offering up the living sacrifice of themselves, saw in the bread and wine of the eucharist an expressive symbol of self-oblation, and a fulfilment of the prophet’s words (Malachi 1:11). PRACTICAL INFERENCES:

    1. We may learn from this view of the great act of atonement, what is the nature of the faith by which we become partakers of it, or, in other words, by which we are justified. Plainly it is not a faith which indolently terminates in a belief that Christ died for us; or which intrusively assumes to itself the office of applying to its own needs the justifying grace of the atonement. “It is God that justifieth.” All that faith does at the outset, in man’s justification, is to receive God’s sovereign gift.

    2. We may thus learn what is the true point of sight from which to look at all the trials of life. We hear people perpetually lamenting, uttering passionate expressions of grief at visitations which, they say, have come on them unlooked for, and stunned them by their suddenness: one has lost his possessions, another his health, another his powers of sight or hearing, another “the desire of his eyes,” parents, children, husbands, wives, friends; each sorrowing for their own, and all alike viewing their affliction from the narrow point of their own isolated being: they seem to be hostile invasions of their peace; mutilations of the integrity of their lot; untimely disruptions of their fondest ties, and the like. Now all this loose and faithless language arises from our not recognising the great law to which all these are to be referred. It is no more than this: that God is disposing of what has been offered up to Him in sacrifice: as, for instance, when a father or mother bewails the taking away of a child, have they not forgotten he was ,not their own? Did they not offer him at the font? Did not God promise to receive their oblation? What has He done more than take them at their word? And so likewise, when any true servants of Christ are taken away, what is it but a token of His favourable acceptance of their self-oblation? While they were with us they were not ours, but His: they were permitted to abide with us, and to gladden our hearts awhile; but they were living sacrifices, and ever at the point of being caught up to heaven. And so, lastly, in all that befalls ourselves, we too are not our own, but His; all that we call ours is His; and when He takes it from us--first one loved treasure, then another, till He makes us poor, and naked, and solitary--let us not sorrow that we are stripped of all we love, but rather rejoice for that God accepts us: let us not think that we are left here, as it were, unreasonably alone, but remember that, by our bereavements, we are in part translated to the world unseen. He is calling us away, and sending on our treasures. The great law of sacrifice is embracing us, and must have its perfect work. Let us pray Him, therefore, to shed abroad in us the mind that was in Christ; that, our will being crucified, we may offer up ourselves to be disposed of as He sees best. (Archdeacon H. E. Manning.)

    The more excellent ministry:

    Stress must be laid on each of three particulars: Christ offered Himself; in offering Himself He presented a spotless offering; He offered Himself through an eternal spirit.

    I. First, then, Christ’s sacrifice possesses incomparable worth and virtue because the victim was HIMSELF. In this one fact is involved that Christ’s sacrifice possessed certain moral attributes altogether lacking in the Levitical sacrifices: voluntariness and beneficent intention, the freedom of a rational being with a mind of his own and capable of self-determination, the love of a gracious personality in whom the soul of goodness dwells. Christ’s sacrifice was an affair of mind and heart--in one word, of spirit.

    II. Christ’s sacrifice possesses incomparable worth and virtue, secondly, because in Himself He presented to God a SPOTLESS sacrifice--spotless in the moral sense. He was a perfectly holy, righteous Man, and He showed His moral purity precisely by being loyal and obedient even to the point of enduring death for righteousness’ sake. The victims under the law were spotless also, but merely in a physical sense. Christ’s spotlessness, on the contrary, was ethical, a quality belonging not to His body, but to His spirit.

    III. We are now prepared in some measure to understand the third ground of the value attached to Christ’s sacrifice; viz., that He offered Himself THROUGH AN ETERNAL SPIRIT. Putting aside for a moment the epithet “eternal,” we see that Christ’s sacrifice was one in which spirit was concerned, as opposed to the legal sacrifices in which flesh and blood only were concerned. It was a free, loving, holy spirit. But the writer, it is observable, omits mention of these moral qualities, and employs instead another epithet, which in the connection of thought it was more important to specify, and which there was little chance of his readers supplying for themselves. The epithet “ eternal” suggests the thought: the act performed by Jesus in offering Himself may, as a historical event, become old with the lapse of ages; but the spirit in which the act was done can never become a thing of the past. The blood shed was corruptible; but the spirit which found expression in Christ’s self-sacrifice is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, and in its eternal self-identity lends to the priestly deed imperishable merit and significance. This fitly chosen phrase thus makes the one sacrifice of Christ cover with its efficacy all prospective sin. But it does more than that. It is retrospective as well as prospective, and makes the sacrifice valid for the ages going before. For an eternal spirit is independent of time, and gives to acts done through its inspiration validity for all time. One virtue more must be ascribed to this magic phrase, “through an eternal spirit.” It helps us over the difficulty created by the fact that Christ’s real self-sacrifice took place on earth, and yet ideally belongs to the heavenly sanctuary. When we think of Christ’s sacrifice as offered through an eternal spirit, we see that we may place it where we please, in earth or in heaven, on Calvary or on high, as suits our purpose. Do you insist that Christ’s proper offering of Himself took place in the celestial sanctuary after the ascension, even as Aaron’s proper offering was the blood-sprinkling within the most holy place? I reply, Be it so; but it took place there through an eternal spirit which gave to it its value; and if we want to know what that spirit was, we must look to the earthly life of obedience and love culminating in the crucifixion, wherein it found its perfect manifestation. Through this eternal spirit Christ offered Himself before He came into the world, when He was in the world, after He left the world. It was as a spirit He offered Himself, as a self-conscious, free, moral personality; and His offering was a spirit revealed through a never-to-be-forgotten act of self-surrender, not the literal blood shed on Calvary, which in itself possessed no more intrinsic value than the blood of Levitical victims. Thus interpreted, the term “ spirit” unfolds the implicit significance of “Himself,” and gives us the rationale of all real value in sacrifice. It can have no value, we learn therefrom, unless mind, spirit be revealed in it. Death, blood, in its own place, may have theological significance, but not apart from spirit. It goes without saying that the idea of spirit is essentially ethical in its import. Voluntariness and beneficent intention enter into the very substance of Christ’s sacrifice. Another remark still may be added. In the light of the foregoing discussion we can see the vital significance of the death of Christ in connection with His priestly work. The least priestly act of the Levitical system becomes here the most important, the humble, non-sacerdotal first step the essence of the whole matter. Through the death of the Victim His spirit finds its culminating expression, and it is that spirit which constitutes the acceptableness of His sacrifice in the sight of God. On the epithet “eternal” attached to “spirit” it is not necessary further to enlarge. As the term “spirit” guarantees the real worth of Christ’s offering as opposed to the putative value of Levitical sacrifices, so the term “eternal” vindicates for it absolute worth. It lifts that offering above all limiting conditions of space and time, so that viewed sub specie asternitatis it may, as to its efficacy, be located at will at any point of time, and either in earth or in heaven. “Eternal” expresses the speculative element in the writer’s system of thought, as “ spirit” expresses the ethical. (A. B. Bruce, D. D.)

    Purge your conscience

    The purging of the conscience

    I. First, consider THE SAD HINDRANCE WHICH LIES IN THE WAY OF THE SERVICE OF GOD. The apostle does not say, purge your conscience from evil works, because he wanted to turn our minds to the type of defilement by death, and therefore he said, “dead works.” I think he had a further motive; for he was not altogether indicating wilful transgressions of the law, but those acts which are faulty because they are not performed as the result of spiritual life. I see a difference between sinful works and dead works which we may perhaps be able to bring into light as we go on. Suffice it to say for the moment, that sin is the corruption which follows necessarily upon spiritual death. First, the work is dead, and soon it rots into actual sin.

    1. Upon our consciences there rests, first of all, a sense of past sin. Even if a man wishes to serve God, yet until his conscience is purged, he feels a dread of God which prevents his doing so. He has sinned, and God is just, and therefore he is ill at ease.

    2. On the back of this comes the consciousness that we ourselves are sinful, and inclined to evil. We say rightly, “Who shall bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one.” We feel that we have not that perfect purity of heart and cleanness of hands which would fit us for the holy place; nor can we ever be saved from this fear, so as to take up our heavenly priesthood and serve God, till the precious blood of Christ shall be applied to the conscience, nor until we feel that in Christ we are accounted righteous.

    3. But, besides this consciousness of sin and sinfulness, we are conscious of a measure of deficient life. About us there is a body of death. Dead works are the things we most require to be purged from. Without going into what the world calls actual sin, we carry death about us, from which we daily cry to be delivered. For instance, our prayer in its form and fashion may be right enough, bat if it lacks earnestness, it will be a dead work. An alms given to the poor is good as a work of humanity, but it will be only a dead work if a desire to be seen of men is found at the bottom of it. Are not the sins of our holy things glaring before our consciences this day? Unless we are purged therefrom by the blood of Christ, who offered up Himself without spot to God, how can we serve this living God, and be as priests and kings unto Him? Once more: I told you that the Israelites were defiled by even touching a dead bone, and this teaches us the easiness of being polluted. We have to come into contact with evil in our daily dealings with ungodly men. Can we think of them, can we speak to them, can we trade with them, without incurring defilement? Nay, I go further: do we, as Christian men washed by Christ, ever associate with one another without a measure of defilement? Can we meet together at our homes and feel, when we separate, that everything we have said was seasoned with salt and ministered to edification? Is there not some taint about our purest friends; and does not the touch of that corruption which still remaineth, even in the regenerate, tend to, defile us?

    II. Now, I want to show, in the second place, WHAT IS THE TRUE PURGATION FROM THIS EVIL Under the law there were several methods of purification. These things did purify the flesh, so that the man who had formerly contracted impurity might mix with his fellow-men in the congregation of the Lord. Now, if these matters were so effectual for the purifying of the flesh, well does the apostle ask, “How much more shall the blood of Christ purge our conscience from dead works?” Why does he say, “How much more?”

    1. First, because it is more truly purifying. There was not truly anything of purification about the blood of bulls and of goats. When the Lord Jesus gave His body, soul, and spirit a sacrifice for sin, then in that deed there was a real atonement made, a true and effectual expiation was offered. Therefore he says “How much more?” if the shadow cleansed the flesh, how much more shall the substance cleanse the spirit?

    2. Moreover, our Lord Christ offered a much greater sacrifice. One reason why the precious blood has such power to put away sin is because it is the blood of Christ, that is, of God’s Anointed, God’s Messiah, the Sent One of the Most High. Notice, it is not put concerning Christ that His life is purifying, though it had a wonderful relation thereto; nor is it said that His prayers are purifying, albeit everything is ascribable unto the intercession of our risen Lord; nor is it said that His resurrection is purifying; but the whole stress is laid upon “the blood of Christ,” signifying thereby death, death as a victim, death with reference to sin. See in His agony and His death your joy and life. It is the blood of Christ that alone can make you fit to serve the living and true God. Note what it was that Christ offered, and be sure that you lay great stress upon it. “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself?” “What a, splendid word that is! Did He offer His blood? yes, but He offered “Himself. Did He offer His life? yes, but He specially offered “Himself.” Now, what is “Christ”? The “anointed of God.” In His wondrous complex nature He is God and man. He is Prophet, Priest, and King. He is--but time would fail me to tell you what He is; but whatever He is He offered Himself. The entire Christ was offered by Christ.

    3. It is said in our text that this offering of Himself was “without spot.” The sacrificial act by which He presented Himself was a faultless cue, without spot. There was nothing in what Christ was Himself, and nothing in the way in which He offered Himself, that could be objected to of God: it was “without spot.”

    4. Further, it is added that He did this “by the eternal Spirit.” His eternal Godhead gave to His offering of Himself an extreme value which otherwise could not have been attached to it. Observe, then, the sacrifice was a spiritual one. He entered with His whole heart into the substitution which involved obedience unto death. “For the joy that was set before Him He endured the cross.” It was by His Spirit that He offered up a true and real sacrifice; for He says, “I delight to do Thy will, O My God; yea, Thy law is within My heart.” But then you must not forget that this Spirit was Divine--“by the eternal Spirit.” The Spirit of Christ was an eternal Spirit, for itwas the Godhead. There was conjoined with His deity the natural life of a perfect Man; but the eternal Spirit was His highest Self. What limit can you set to the merit of One who by the eternal Spirit offered up Himself? What bound can there be to a sacrifice Divine? You can no more set a limit to our Lord’s sacrifice than to Godhead itself. Once more, I must call to your notice the use of that word “eternal,”--“who by the eternal Spirit”--for it gives to the offering of Christ an endless value. Now, all this tends to make us feel how clean are they who are purged by this sacrifice which our Lord offered once for all to God.

    5. Once more upon this point: as I have shown you that the sacrifice of Christ was more real and greater, so I want you to notice that it was better applied; for the ashes of an heifer mixed with water were sprinkled on the bodies of the unclean; the blood of bulls and of goats was sprinkled upon the flesh, but neither of them could reach the heart. It is not possible for a material thing to touch that which is immaterial; but the sufferings of Christ, offered up through His eternal Spirit, were not only of a corporeal but of a spiritual kind, and they reach, therefore, to the cleansing of our spirit. That precious blood comes home to us in this way: first, we understand somewhat of it. The Israelite, when he was purged by the ashes of the red cow, could only say to himself, “I am made clean by these ashes, because God has appointed that I shall be, but I do not know why.” But you and I can say that we are made clean through the blood of Christ, because there is in that blood an inherent efficacy; there is in the vicarious suffering of Christ on our behalf an inherent power to honour the law of God, and to put away sin. Then again, we appreciate and approve of this way of cleansing. The Israelite could not tell why the ashes of a red heifer -purified him; he did not object to it, but he could not express any great appreciation of the method. We, as we see our Lord suffering in our stead, fall at His feet in reverent wonder. We love the method of salvation by substitution; we approve of expiation by the Mediator. Further, it comes home to us in this way: we read in the Word of God that “he that believeth in Him hath everlasting life,” and we say to ourselves, “Then we have everlasting life, for we have believed in Him.” We read, “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin,” and our conscience whispers, “We are cleansed from all sin.” Conscience finds rest and peace, and our whole consciousness becomes that of a forgiven and accepted person, with whom God is well pleased.

    III. Consider THE KIND OF SERVICE WHICH WE NOW RENDER. After so much preparing, how shall we behave ourselves in the house of God? You should present unto the Lord the constant worship of living men. You see it is written, “Purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.” Are you not under bonds to serve Him? From this time forth you should not have a pulse that does not beat to His praise, nor a hair on your head that is unconsecrated to His name, nor a single moment of your time which is not used for His glory. Should not our service be rendered in the full strength of our new life? Let us have no more dead works, no more dead singing, no more dead praying, no more dead preaching, no more dead hearing. Let our religion be as warm, and constant, and natural as the flow of the blood in our veins. A living God must be served in a living way. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

    The purification of the conscience:

    The offerings in the temple could not have satisfied the conscience; the offerings of Christ do. There are two aspects of sin which trouble the conscience. Sin by religious teachers is thought of as disturbing our relations with God. It stops our convictions, and prevents His Fatherly grace from coming to us. Another aspect of sin takes a place among the forces in the life of man to swell the sum of evil examples, to make virtue more difficult, and vice more natural. No repentance can ever recall what we have done, or make it cease to be a source of evil in the world. There is danger in the other extreme, but Christ is able to deal with the conscience, and set us right in our relations with God. There are principally three proposals for setting the relation right. They are--by man’s contribution, by God’s acceptance, and by Christ’s transforming power. In the early ages of religion, when outward circumstances were held to be an indication of the favour or disfavour of God, the idea of propitiation took shape. They brought Him what they prized most, and supposed that He would prize it the same, and continued in this until the return of sunshine assured them that the Deity’s wrath was assuaged. On the other side, some imagine that sin lapses after a term of years, or that by a certain system disorder in some things is balanced by the order in others. It is not that twenty years ago a certain deed was done: it is that in your sin you disclosed something in you which remains in you still. Let the same circumstances recur and your weakness reappears. In a very different age there grew up another theory of setting man right with God. Man had received life and power from God, and had used them against Him, and so they thought on the principle of displaying compensation against that which has to be compensated for. Thus there grew up acceptation, a sort of diminutive of acceptation. God takes it as the best that can be given, and declares the account clear. But conscience will not accept such assurance. It still recognises sin clinging to it, and so long as that sin is there, conscience is not cleansed. The third proposal is in the transforming power of Christ. The blood of Christ cleanses the conscience. “If any man be in Christ,” says Paul, “he is a new creature.” Paul’s writings are full of similar verses, in which he expresses the reasonable and joyful satisfaction of conscience. He says that sin is forgiven to all men in Christ Jesus. The relation that ought to exist between God and the soul is then restored. (W. M. Macgregor, M. A.)

    Dead works

    Dead works

    1. Dead things stink. If we meet with a dead carcase by the way, we hold our noses: even so sins, blasphemy, profanations, pride, envy, hatred, malice, covetousness; these stink in the nostrils of God Almighty: therefore let them be detested by us.

    2. Dead men are forgotten. “I am as a dead man out of mind.” So let not our minds run on these dead works, on the profits of the world, the pleasures of the flesh: let these dead things be no more remembered.

    3. That which is dead must be buried: “Give me a place to bury my dead out of my sight,” as Abraham said to the sons of Heth (Genesis 23:4). Idolatry, blasphemy, all sins, are dead things, therefore let them be buried.

    4. Dead things are abhorred of us. We shun dead things by the way, we will not come near them: so let these dead works be abhorred of us.

    5. Dead things are heavy: a dead man. So these lie heavy on our consciences. Cain, Judas: they were not able to bear that intolerable burden. (W. Jones, D. D.)

  • Hebrews 9:15-28 open_in_new

    Mediator of the new testament

    The two mediators:

    I. Is WHAT RESPECTS JESUS AND MOSES ARE MEDIATORIALLY ALIKE.

    1. Both of Divine appointment.

    2. Both give to the world the notion of a covenant with God.

    3. Both proposed a covenant that was fundamentally the same.

    II. IN WHAT RESPECTS JESUS AND MOSES ARE MEDIATORIALLY DIFFERENT.

    1. There is a difference of natures.

    2. Jesus is a Mediator with individuals.

    3. Jesus is a Mediator giving to man the fullest possible knowledge of God.

    4. Jesus is a Mediator giving to man sufficiency of power. (D. Young, B. A.)

    The old and the new

    It was a part of the mission of the apostles not to transfer the allegiance of the Jews from one God to another, but to teach them how to serve the same God in a higher dispensation, under a noble disclosure of His character, and by new and better methods. It was to be the same heart and the same God; but there was a new and living way opened. The old was good, the new was better. The new was not an antagonism of the old, but only its outgrowth, related to it as the blossom and the fruit are to the root and the stalk. The old was local and national in its prime intents, and in its results. The new was for all ages. The old was a system of practices. It aimed at conduct--of course implying a good cause for conduct. The new is a system of principles, and yet not principles in a rigid philosphical sense, but principles that are great moral impulses or tendencies of the heart. The old built men for this world. Therefore it hardly looked beyond this world. The whole force of the new dispensation is derived from that which scarcely appeared at all in the old--its supereminent doctrine of the future. That is its very enginery. The aims of Christianity are supramundane. The motives are drawn from immortality-its joys, honours, promises, rewards. The old addressed the conscience through fear, and soon overreached its aim, losing some by under-action, and others--and the better natures--by over-action. What the law could not do, in that it was weak, it is declared, God sent His own Son to do. The new aims at the very springs of moral power in the soul, and that through love. It is a total change, it is an absolute difference, in this regard. The old was a dispensation of secular morals. It lived in the past. The new is a system of aspirations. It lives in the future. We are the children of the new testament, and not of the old. Woe be to us if, living in these later days, we find ourselves groping in the imperfections of the old testament, instead of springing up with all the vitality and supereminent manhood which belongs to the new testament. We are the children of a living Saviour. We are a brood over which He stretches His wings. We ought to have more than a creed which is only a modern representation of an old ordinance or institution. We ought to have something more than an ordinance. To be a disciple of the new testament is to have a living Head. It is to have a vital connection with that Head. It is to be conscious, while all nature speaks of God, and while all the exercises of religion assist indirectly, that the main power of a true religion in the soul is the soul’s connection with a living God. Ye are the children of the new and not of the old. Let your life mount up toward God. (H. W. Beecher.)

    They which are called

    Called

    To every one of you I say, you are called. You are called because you were baptized as infants, dedicated to the service of the gospel, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. You are called because you have been instructed from the days of childhood to the present hour to believe in the Lord Jesus. You are called because you are in a Christian land, surrounded by those who own that the gospel is the word of God, and having also many within your sight or hearing, who live according to the will of Christ. You are called by the ordinances of the Christian Church, by the voice of the Christian ministry; by the word and sacraments of Christ, and by the preaching of those pastors who address you by His commission, and in His name. This day, this hour I call you in His behalf; therefore you are called. This is your calling. May God give you grace to hear! May God help you to believe His promise! May God make you to enjoy His glory. (C. Girdlestone, M. A.)

    Effectual calling:

    God draws His people, not with force, as mere machines, but “with the cords of a man and with the bands of love.” The subject may be best unfolded by a familiar illustration. How was it that Jacob was drawn into Egypt? He was made to feel the pressure of a grievous famine; he was informed that there was plenty of corn in Egypt, and that his dearly-beloved Joseph was the lord of all that land, and that he disposed of the good things to whomsoever he would. He was told, moreover, that Joseph had expressly invited him, and had sent waggons for the conveyance of his family, together with abundant provisions for the way; and, finally, he was assured that, at the end of this journey, all the good of the land of Egypt should be his. Did he need, after this, to have a chain fastened round him m be dragged into Egypt? No; all that he needed was faith to believe the tidings; and when once he was persuaded of the truth of these things he was willing of himself to go into that good land. Thus God draws sinners. He causes them to feel their need of mercy; He informs them that Jesus Christ has all heaven at His disposal; that He has sent to invite them, assuring them of all that is needful by the way, and all the glory of heaven at the end. Thus a thorough belief of these truths bends the most stubborn heart, and overcomes the most reluctant mind. (C. Simeon.)

    A testament is of force after men are dead

    Christ’s testament

    I. CHRIST’S WILL IS EMBODIED IN A WRITTEN RECORD.

    1. The record gives a definite meaning and fixed character to the mind of Christ.

    2. The record gives to the mind of Christ an abiding existence among us.

    3. The written Word renders the will of Christ accessible to all.

    II. CHRIST’S WILL IS EMBODIED IN AN AUTHENTIC RECORD.

    III. CHRIST’S TESTAMENT IS A WRITTEN AND AUTHENTIC RECORD OF WHAT HE HAS BEQUEATHED TO MEN. There are great bequests for each of us. We are guilty--Christ has willed our forgiveness. We are enslaved--Christ has willed our freedom. We are sorrowful--Christ has willed our peace. We are dying--Christ has willed us life for ever.

    IV. CHRIST’S TESTAMENT HAS BEEN RATIFIED AND BROUGHT INTO FULL AND EVERLASTING OPERATION BY HIS OWN DEATH. (John Davies.)

    Christ’s testamentary covenant:

    It seems to us that St. Paul took advantage of the double meaning of the Greek word which he uses, and illustrates his subject the more copiously by employing it in one place for a “covenant,” and in another for a “testament”; and we shall possibly, as we advance, find reason to conclude, that the full sense of the passage is only to be evolved by our attaching to the word its double signification--by bearing in mind that a “covenant” and “testament” are alike designated by the word which the apostle employs. After all, there is not the wide difference which, at the first sight, we may suppose between a covenant and a testament. If I make a will, I may, in one sense, be said to covenant and agree to give certain things to certain parties upon the condition of my death; so that a testament is virtually a species of covenant. And if, on the other hand, two parties enter into a covenant, and the terms of this covenant require that one of them should die, you all see that, without any great forcing of language, the covenant may be considered as the testament or will of the sacrificed individual. God made a covenant with the Israelites, but then this covenant was ratified by the shedding of blood; in other words, there must be death to give the covenant its validity; and the covenant which required death in order to its completeness, might, as we have shown you, without anything overstrained in language, be designated a “testament.” So that under these limitations, and under these conditions, we can attach the name of a “testament” to that covenant which God made with Israel at Sinai. The exhibition which we are called upon to survey is that of our Saviour under the character of a testator; as the maker, that is, of a will, which could only become valid by the death of the party who made it. Now you will see at once that there is a peculiarity in this exhibition which marks it off from other representations of the scheme of human salvation. If Christ Jesus is displayed as bequeathing to the world legacies, which legacies could not be paid except after His death, then it may be said that it was the fact, the simple historical fact of His death, and not any merit which there was in that death, which entailed the large blessings on the race of mankind. And if by parity of reasoning the Redeemer is to be considered as a testator, or will-maker, does not the representation take away from the meritoriousness of His death, and, at least, show that it was not because His sufferings were expiatory and precious that such and such blessings have been obtained for us? A few words will suffice for the removal of this objection. If a man is worth £1,000 he may bequeath me that £1,000; and thus his death, considered as the mere separation of his soul from his body, will make me the owner of the money. But take the following case which is perfectly supposable: a criminal is sentenced to die, but is allowed, if he can, to find a substitute. He offers £1,000 for a substitute, and an individual comes forward and agrees on these terms to die in his stead. Now certainly this substitute may will away the £1,000, and yet nothing but his death entitles him to the £1,000. He might, for example, have long striven in vain to earn a livelihood for his family; he might then, calculating that his family would be more benefited by his death than his life, determine to sacrifice himself in order to procure for them the proper remuneration; and, without question, he might make a will which would secure to his children the property to which the value o! his death would alone give him right. He would thus unite the character of a testator and of a man who purchases, by dying, the goods which he bequeathes. Now this supposed case finds its precise counterpart in the matter of our redemption. “The blessings of the gospel could only be procured by the sufferings and death of the Mediator. Hence, unquestionably, the blessings which Christ bequeathed were blessings which His death, and nothing but His death, could give Him right to bestow; but, nevertheless, He might still be a testator, or still make a will. In dying He might bequeath what He was to obtain by dying; and thus real inconsistency, after all, there is none, between regarding Christ as the maker of the will, and at the same time as procuring by His death the blessings which He made over to His people. In what sense, then, did Christ make a testament or will, or what fidelity is there in such an account of the scheme of our redemption? Now we would, first of all, remark that there is nothing more frequent in Scripture than the speaking of true believers “as heirs of God,” or as brought into such a relationship to the Almighty that heaven becomes theirs by the rights of inheritance. Yon cannot fall immediately to observe that the correspondence is most exact between this account of the believer as an heir and the representation of Christ as a testator. In dying Christ made us heirs. But this is exactly what would have been done by a testament; and, therefore, it is not possible that the effects of Christ’s death should be more clearly represented than by the figure of Christ as a testator. But is there then, indeed, no registered will, no document to which we can refer as the testament of the Mediator? We shall not hesitate to say that there is not a single promise in the New Testament which ought not to be regarded as a line or codicil in the will of the Redeemer. If you ask us for a written testament we carry you along with us to the archives of the Bible, and we take cut of it declarations which ensure to the faithful the crown and the rapture, and we join them into one continuous discourse, and we say to you, Behold the last will of the Saviour. What, we further ask, is this but an exact parallel to that which would take place in the case of a testament? Suppose you were permitted to read a will made in your own favour; there might be the bequeathment of a rich and noble estate, there might be the coffers of wealth and the caskets of jewellery consigned to your possession; but you would never think that you had a right to the domain, and you would never be bold enough to put forward a claim to the gold and the pearl, unless you knew that the testator was dead, and that thereby a force had been given to the testament. So that the correspondence is most accurate between the promises of Scripture and the consignments of a will. Had Christ (if we may bring forward such an idea) while suspended on the Cross, and exhausting the wrath which had gone forth against a disloyal creation, dictated a testamentary document enumerating the blessings which He bequeathed to all who believe on His name, not until He had bowed the head, and yielded up the ghost, would this register of the legacy have lived, overpassing in its wealth all the thoughts of created intelligences, and given right to a single child of our race to look and hope for the heritage of the redeemed. A testament is but a combination of promises becoming valid by the death of the promiser, we give the truest description of the promises of the Bible when we define them as “the last will and testament of Christ our Lord.” Now we would refer for a moment to that connection which we show to subsist between a covenant and testament. The Father and the Son had, from all eternity, entered into a covenant; the Father engaging, on the performance of certain conditions, that blessings should be placed at the disposal of the Son for the seed of the apostate. The covenant between the persons of the Trinity engaged for the pardon and acceptance of all who, in every age, should believe on the Son. Hence, you must all perceive, that what was the covenant between the Father and Son was also a document in favour of man; but, certainly, the covenant could only become valid by death; that in the fulness of time the Son should die, being its grand and fundamental article. And if as a covenant it could only become valid by death, then as a document in favour of man it could only become valid by death; but that document in favour of a party, which only becomes valid by death, is, most strictly, a will or testament. So that by one and the same act Christ Jesus performed His covenant with the Father, and made His testament in favour of man; that, in short, which was a covenant considered relatively to God, was a testament considered relatively to man. It obtained blessings from God; it consigned blessings to man, and both equally through death. You cannot, therefore, view Christ as executing a covenant without also viewing Him as executing a testament. What tie gained as a covenanter He disposed of as a testator; and whilst we say of Him, as making an agreement with God, “Where a covenant is, there must be the death of the covenanter,” we say of Him, as bestowing gifts on men, “where a testament is, there must be the death of the testator.” (H. Melvill, B. D.)

    Christ’s last will and testament

    I. We have to inquire IN WHAT SENSE OR SENSES MAY WE SPEAK OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST AS A TESTATOR. What is involved in this idea? If a will is made, two things are implied--that there is something to leave: that there is some measure of interest felt in those who are mentioned as legatees.

    1. Now in the case of our Lord Jesus Christ, we see one who has large and royal possessions, and who has these absolutely at His own disposal. All things are described as the property of Christ. All things were made by Him and for Him. Jesus Christ has power and authority to bestow all gospel blessings and privileges upon His people. He gives them grace here; He will crown them with glory hereafter.

    2. And then, in making His will, Christ has distinctly in view those who are interested in its provisions--His friends, His relations those for whom, though they had no natural claim upon Him, the Saviour has bound Himself to provide. And we have the means of determining very exactly who these are. His friends are those who love Him, and who show their love by keeping His commandments.

    3. A testator, in making his last will and testament, so far as there is in it any different disposition of property, supersedes, renders null and void, any will that may have been previously made. So Jesus Christ disannulled the law of the old covenant by establishing the new. Let us see to it that we put in our claim under the last will and testament of Christ. Let us not expect to receive under the law what can only come to us as a matter of free grace, under the gospel.

    4. As in the case of a merely human testator, so in the case of Jesus Christ--where a testament is, for it to have force, for it to take effect, theremust needs be the death of the testator; “otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth.” In this particular instance there was need for the death of the testator on several different accounts. Among men it is the death of the testator which renders a testament effectual. And so this testament was confirmed and ratified by the death of Jesus Christ, and but for that death it could have had no force at all. And as after death a will may not be altered or revoked by the testator, but remains the expression of his mind to be carried out as exactly as possible, so it may not be interfered with by others. You may question its meaning, you may question whether it be the will of him who is declared to have drawn it up, you may question his right to make it, or make it in that precise form, yet, admitting it as a will, though it be only a human will, “no man disannulleth or addeth thereunto.” How much more truly is this the case with the testament, the will of Christ! And we must bear in mind, in the case of this testament, that there was a necessity for the death of Christ, which does not exist in the case of any ordinary testament. The death of Christ not merely rendered His will irrevocable, and afforded the heirs of promise a way of entering upon the enjoyment of their inheritance, as the death of every testator does, but there was this peculiarity--the very blessings which were disposed of by the will of Christ were secured and purchased by His death. A testator appoints executors in trust, who undertake, according to their ability, to see that all the provisions of his will are faithfully carried out. The Father and the Holy Ghost engage to carry out the will of Christ, and are ever actually doing so. But there is a high and important sense in which Christ is His own executor. “He ever liveth” to carry out those gracious designs which find changeless expression in His last will and testament. In the record of our Saviour’s visible residence among men, we are told only “ of all that Jesus began, both to do and to teach.”

    II. Having considered Christ as the testator, let US NOW LOOK AT THE GOSPEL AS THE “LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF CHRIST, We are presented with the will of Christ, not as so much mere hearsay--not as a vague and floating tradition--not as the “lingering echo” of His much-loved voice--not as a general and unaccredited expression of His intention: we haveit in a written record, an authentic document. It is necessary that a human will should be written. And though it has been determined that an oral will, under certain circumstances (as in the case of soldiers on actual service, or mariners at sea), is valid, if properly attested, yet that even must be reduced to a written form. And so have we the will of Christ embodied in words of human speech. Nor can we be too thankful that it has been so handed down to us. It is not enough that a will and testament be written, it must be attested; it must be proved to be authentic and genuine. It must be shown to be the will of that very person whose will it purports to be. This last will and testament of Christ is proved by much concurrent testimony. The gospel of the great salvation, “which at first began to be spoken by the Lord, was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him; God also bearing them witness, both by signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to His own will.” I feel that I am safe in affirming that the proof which sustains the testament of Christ is immeasurably stronger and more convincing than that which sustains any human and earthly will. There has been a practical proof of a twofold kind. For eighteen hundred years and more this will has been repeatedly disputed by the enemies of Christ. The wit and wisdom and science of the world have done all that they could do to invalidate it, but all these attempts have been in vain. For the same period the will has been proved by Christ’s friends. We might summon a great cloud of witnesses, all of whom could bear the testimony of personal experience. There is, in every testament, provision implied or expressed that it should, with all convenient speed, be published and made known. This is necessary, that the legatees may become aware of that which has been bequeathed to them, and be in a position to put in their claim. Christ has ordained and provided that His disciples should publish His will and testament to all the children of men. We are “put in trust with the gospel.” We are bound to publish the glad tidings in every direction. And we ought to ask ourselves how far we are discharging this obligation. This will and testament of Christ informs us of all that is provided for us. All that we enjoy, we enjoy under this will; all spiritual blessings and privileges come to us as they are bequeathed by the Lord Jesus Christ. This will of Christ is our sure and sufficient title to all that we possess as Christian believers. The provisions of a will constitute an absolute title as far as it goes. If you would invalidate my right to what is bequeathed, you must go back and question the right of him who bequeathed it. And so, does any one question us as to our right to the spiritual privileges and possessions we enjoy, we reply by pointing to the last will and testament of Christ, and any further question must be raised with Christ Himself. We must not look for our title to our own merit--to anything we are, or have done--but to the will trod testament of the Saviour. (T. M. Morris.)

    CHRIST’S WILL:

    I. THE ESTATE WHICH HE HAS LEFT BY IT.

    1. The pardon of all sin.

    2. The merit of His own most glorious righteousness.

    3. His own most Holy Spirit.

    4. But the most glorious part of the property bequeathed by Jesus to His people is that “inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away,” which is “reserved for them in heaven.”

    II. THE EVENT BY WHICH IT IS MADE OF FORCE. Because He hath “poured out His soul unto death,” that His heirs enter into possession of the property which He hath left them. Indeed, the death of Christ has a bearing on the privileges He has bequeathed among His people beyond what can be said with reference to man’s bequests. Man’s death must happen before his will can fake effect because, whilst he lives, he enjoys his property himself. But Christ’s death is, as it were, the purchase-money of the estate which He bequeaths. His death therefore was as essential to their enjoyment of these blessings as the payment of the sum demanded is to the possession of a piece of land.

    III. THE PERSONS INTERESTED IN ITS PROVISIONS.

    1. Convinced of sin.

    2. Men of faith.

    3. Men of grace. (A. Roberts, M. A.)

    The testament of Christ

    I. WHO IS THE TESTATOR? God’s everlasting Son, of the same essence, perfections, and glory with the Father.

    II. WHAT ARE THE LEGACIES CONVEYED BY THIS COVENANT? In their nature and number they are very great. The sum of them is expressed thus Revelation 21:7). They have the noblest spring and fountain with all its refreshing streams. In few words, the particular bequests in this great will of the Divine Testator, are complete deliverance from the legal consequences of sin--redemption from the curse of the law--the regeneration of our moral nature, and adoption into the household of faith--support under the trials of life--foretastes of eternal glory--and agood hope through grace which shall issue at length in the full possession of the heavenly kingdom, where every Divine and moral excellence will be perfected in the soul, and the rejoicing spirit for ever supremely happy before the throne of God.

    III. WHAT ARE THE TERMS ON WHICH THIS DIVINE TESTAMENT BESTOWS ITS BEQUESTS? In all deeds disposing of property among men, there are certain conditions to be observed, in order to establish the validity of the claim. In some cases, the estate is conveyed charged with various encumbrances; in others, the observance of sundry specified acts is necessary to the legal holding of the property. Some inherit by descent, others by favouritism of the testator. In the case before us all is of pure mercy and love. There are terms, but they are not hard. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is the sole condition of eternal life; but that faith is productive of holiness, of love, of obedience, and of all good works.

    IV. WHERE IS THE PROOF OF THE VALIDITY OF THIS TESTAMENT OF LOVE? There must be attestation in every case of a human will. In the conveyance of property there must be the seal. If we were to set up a claim to the right of any possession in a court of law, the case would break down if the seal of the party from whom we plead our title was not appended to the deed of conveyance. So, likewise, a will is of no effect, till proof be given of the decease of the testator. Our blessed Lord has made His death, resurrection, and ascension to glory, the seal of His will. To conclude, Have you any part or portion in this testament? Many are anxious to know if some aged and wealthy relative has remembered them in his will. In this will all are remembered, save those who wilfully exclude themselves. (Am. Nat. Preacher.)

    The dying will of Jesus Christ:

    Perhaps a consideration of the legal ideas of the time when the. Epistle to the Hebrews was written may help to explain this difficult passage. The idea of a will was derived by the Jews from the Romans, and they probably associated with it the various ideas which had grown up around the Roman will. Let us see what these were. The origin of the ordinary form of a Roman will, was the old testament per ms et libram, by which the father of the family (generally when on his death bed) sold his whole family and estate to some friend in whom he had confidence (called the heres), on trust to carry out his wishes (an obligation which apparently was not originally legally enforceable, though afterwards it was recognised by law). This form was still kept up, though probably at the time when the Epistle was written, the familiae emptor was not generally the same person as the heres. Still the familiae emptor represented the heres, and served to keep the theoretical nature of the transaction before all parties concerned, and the heres was looked upon not merely as a distributor of goods, but as the purchaser and master of the family. It is therefore suggested that the argument is somewhat as follows. By the first διαθήκη the Hebrews were purchased and became the bondsmen of the Law (an idea already rendered familiar to them by Exodus 15:16 and Psalms 74:2); but by a new διαθήκη our Lord purchased them with His blood (Acts 20:28), as the heres or familiae emptor purchased the inheritance, and having thus purchased the inheritance of the Law, became the new master of the bondsmen of the Law, and the mediator, or executor, of a new dispensation. But inasmuch as the right of the heres can only come into operation after the death of the testator (the Law), it is evident that, if the new dispensation has begun, the Law is dead and is no longer their master. In fact, the line of argument seems similar to that in Romans 7:1-4. (H. S. Keating.)

    The blood of the testament.

    The blood of Christ is the ruby gem of the ring of love. Infinite goodness finds its crown in the gift of Jesus for sinners. All God’s mercies shine like stars, but the coming of His own Son to bleed and die for rebel men is as the sun in the heavens of Divine grace, outshining and illuminating all.

    I. Of that death and of that blood we shall speak in a fourfold way; and first, we shall take the verse as it would most accurately be translated--the blood of Jesus Christ is THE BLOOD OF THE EVERLASTING COVENANT. There cannot be much doubt that the word rendered “ testament “ should be translated “covenant.” It is the word used for covenant in other passages, and though our translators have used the word “ testament,” many critics go the length of questioning whether the word can bear that meaning at all. I think they are too rigid in their criticism, and that it does bear that meaning in this very chapter; but, still, all must admit that the first, and most usual meaning of the word, is “covenant.” Therefore, we will begin with that reading, and consider the blood of Jesus as the blood of the covenant.

    1. The blood proves the intense earnestness of God in entering into covenant with man in a way of grace.

    2. It displayed the supreme love of God to man. Seeing that He entered into a contract of grace with man, He would let man see how His very heart went forth with every word of promise; and, therefore, He gave up that which was the centre of His heart, namely, Jesus Christ.

    3. The blood of the covenant, next, speaks to us and confirms the Divine faithfulness. The main object of thus sealing the covenant with blood is to cause it to be “ordered in all things and sure.”

    4. The blood of the everlasting covenant is a guarantee to us of its infinite provision. There can be nothing lacking for a soul redeemed by Christ between here and heaven; for He that spared not His own Son, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?

    5. This blood manifests the depth of the need which the covenant was meant to meet.

    II. Now, I take our translators’ own words--“THIS IS THE BLOOD OF THE TESTAMENT.”

    1. Jesus Christ has made a will, and He has left to His people large legacies by that will. Now, wills do not need to be sprinkled with blood, but wills do need that the testator should be dead, otherwise they are not of force. And so, first of all, the blood of Jesus Christ on Calvary is the blood of the testament, because it is a proof that He is dead, and therefore the testament is in force. If Jesus did not die, then the gospel is null and void not without the sprinkled blood does the promise of salvation become yea and amen.

    2. It is the blood of the testament, again, because it is the seal of His being seized and possessed of those goods which He has bequeathed to us: for, apart from His sacrifice, our Lord had no spiritual blessings to present to us. His death has filled the treasury of His grace.

    3. The blood of the testament, again, is a direction as to His legatees. We see who are benefited under His will. He must have left them to the guilty because He has left a will that is signed and sealed in blood, and blood is for the remission of sin.

    III. But now I must speak upon that blood from another point of view. IT WAS THE BLOOD OF CLEANSING. This blood of the covenant and of the testament is a blood of purification to us. Wherever it is accepted by faith it takes away all past guilt. And this is but the beginning of our purification, for that same blood applied by faith takes away from the pardoned sinner the impurity which had been generated in his nature by habit. He ceases to love the sin which ,once he delighted in: he begins to loathe that which was formerly his choice joy. A love of purity is born within his nature; he sighs to be perfect, and he groans to think there should be about him tendencies towards evil. Temptations which once were welcomed are now resisted; baits which were once most fascinating are an annoyance to his spirit. The precious blood when it touches the conscience removes all sense of guilt, and when it touches the heart it kills the ruling power of sin. The more fully the power of the blood is felt, the more does it kill the power of sin within the soul.

    IV. And then it is THE BLOOD OF DEDICATION. On the day when Moses sprinkled the blood of the covenant on the people, and on the book, it was meant to signify that they were a chosen people set apart unto God’s service. The blood made them holiness unto the Lord. Now, unless the blood is upon you, you are not saved; but if you are saved you are by that very fact set apart to be God’s servant. “Ye are not your own, ye are bought with a price.” “Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things as with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.” A saved man is a bought man; the property of Jesus. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

    The blood of sprinkling:

    This blood sprinkled on the people was a significant type and figure of the blood of our Saviour Christ, whereby the new testament is confirmed to us.

    1. That was the blood of goats and heifers; this of Christ the immaculate Lamb of God.

    2. Moses was the sprinkler of that blood: the Holy Ghost is the sprinkler of this.

    3. That was sprinkled on the face or garments of the people: this on our hearts and consciences.

    4. The aspertorium, the sprinkling stick, there was made of purple wool and hyssop: the aspertorium here is faith. With that doth the Spirit of God sprinkle on us the blood of Christ.

    5. That sprinkling did but sanctify the outward man: this the hid man of the heart.

    6. The force and power of that sprinkling lasted but a while: the efficacy of this sprinkling continueth for ever. Therefore let us all be desirous of this sprinkling. (W. Jones, D. D.)

  • Hebrews 9:22 open_in_new

    Without shedding of blood is no remission

    No remission without blood

    I. ESTABLISH THE FACT.

    1. The observances of the ceremonial law show that men were saved by blood under the Mosaic dispensation.

    2. The same way of salvation still obtains under the gospel. The typical sacrifices are indeed superseded by the one sacrifice of Christ. But it is through His sacrifice, and through it alone, that any man is saved.

    (1) This is capable of direct proof from Scripture (1Sa 2:17; 1 Samuel 2:25; Hebrews 10:26-27).

    (2) It may be yet further proved by arguments, which, though of an indirect nature, are not the less satisfactory than the foregoing, a. If salvation be not by blood the whole Mosaic ritual was absurd, b. If salvation be not by blood, the prophets grossly misrepresented their Messiah (Isaiah 53:1-12.; Daniel 9:24; Daniel 9:26; Zechariah 13:1; John 1:29).

    3. If salvation be not by blood, the declarations of the apostles, yea, and of Christ Himself, are fax more likely to mislead than to instruct the world. Christ expressly told His disciples that His “blood was shed for the remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28). And the apostles uniformly declare that God purchased the Church with His own blood (Acts 20:28); that our reconciliation to God (Ephesians 2:16; Colossians 1:20), and our justification before Him (Romans 5:9), together with our complete redemption (Ephesians 1:7; Revelation 5:9), are by blood, even by the blood of Christ, that spotless Lamb (1 Peter 1:19).

    II. IMPROVEMENT.

    1. The evil of sin.

    2. The folly of self-righteousness.

    3. The encouragement which the gospel affords to sinners.

    4. The wonderful love of Christ. (Theological Sketch-Book.)

    On the atonement

    I. The mercy of God, however dispensed to sinners, ARISES SOLELY FROM THE BENIGNITY OF HIS OWN NATURE. It is not to be considered as moved and excited by the means which they must use to obtain it. These are only the channel of its communication.

    II. GOD HAVING PROVIDED A PARTICULAR WAY IN WHICH HE WILL MANIFEST HIS GRACE, THAT WAY DERIVES ITS EFFICACY FROM HIS APPOINTMENT.

    III. We may remark, THAT THE METHOD IN WHICH GOD DISPENSES HIS MERCY DOES NOT SUPERSEDE THE NECESSITY OF REPENTANCE.

    IV. ON THE OTHER HAND, WE MUST ALSO OBSERVE, THAT OUR REPENTANCE DOES NOT SUPERSEDE THE NECESSITY OF FAITH.

    V. I PRESUME NOT EVEN TO ATTEMPT ANY EXPLANATION OF THE REASONS WHICH INDUCED THE ALMIGHTY TO CHOOSE THIS PARTICULAR MODE FOR THE DISPENSATION OF HIS MERCY TO SINNERS. It becomes us rather humbly to acknowledge our ignorance, and adore the depth both of the wisdom and goodness of God. He has ordained it, and let us be satisfied and thankful. We are permitted, however, to discover some reasons which prove the propriety of such a mode of dispensing mercy. It manifests exceedingly the grace of God, by showing that our salvation is wholly owing to it. Boasting is thus entirely excluded. And who can say whether it may not be suited to the Divine purity and justice, to confer salvation on man, only by subjecting him to the deepest humiliation, by constraining him to feel his own entire inability to save himself, and thus compelling him to ascribe his salvation solely to the Divine mercy? (J. Venn, M. A.)

    The atonement

    I. ITS NECESSITY arises

    1. From man’s sin, and its necessary consequences.

    2. Man’s utter incapability to atone for himself.

    3. The demands of the law cannot be relaxed with honour to the lawgiver.

    II. THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT. The person atoning must

    1. Be of superior dignity to the persons for whom the atonement is made.

    2. He must possess the same nature as the offender.

    3. He must have a right to dispose of his own life, and freely offer himself to this end.

    4. He must approve of the law, and recognise the justice of its claim.

    5. He must be free from all charges of personal guilt.

    6. He must answer all the demands of the law, and endure its curse.

    III. THE EFFECTS OF THE ATONEMENT.

    1. All the perfections of Jehovah have been illustriously displayed.

    2. The atonement leaves the impenitent without excuse.

    3. The atonement has rendered man’s salvation possible.

    Application:

    1. Let the subject of the atonement be Scripturally investigated, that it may be rightly understood.

    2. Let it be cordially received, by a hearty faith (Romans 10:9).

    3. Let a Scriptural knowledge, and a cordial reception of it, fill the soul with hope and joy.

    4. Let not the dying sinner reject the only way of salvation. (J. Burns, D. D.)

    On the atonement

    I. THE FACT OF HUMAN GUILT, AND MAN’S NEED OF MERCY. Remission signifies the forgiveness of a debt, or the withdrawal of the sentence of punishment, which has been pronounced upon a convicted offender.

    II. SIN IS REMISSABLE. It may be pardoned. Forgiveness is attainable. The guilt of sin can be cancelled, and the sentence of condemnation may be repealed.

    1. Upon this ground the sacrifices of the law were instituted. Every victim that bled, every sacrifice of blood upon the altar of the tabernacle and temple, was a conclusive testimony to the pardoning grace of God.

    2. The language of Scripture is quite decisive on this great question. It tells us that with the Lord there is mercy--that He is ready to forgive--slow to anger--plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon Him,

    3. Scripture facts prove the doctrine which our text includes. If there were no collateral proof, the mission of Christ into the world as the Prophet and Priest of the Church would be quite enough. He came to save sinners.

    4. We may also look at examples. Sin had been remitted, or forgiven. Paul says, “I obtained mercy.” The penitent thief was pardoned and taken to paradise the same day,

    III. WHILE SIN MAY BE PARDONED IT IS ONLY THROUGH THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD. Some impurities might, under the law, be removed by water and fire, but the stain of sin could be removed only by blood. It is on this principle that the plan of salvation by the death of Christ is placed, and on this that God, in fact, bestows remission of sins. (J. E. Everitt.)

    Remission of sins by substitution

    I. REMISSION OF SINS IS NECESSARY FOR THE RECONCILIATION OF MAN WITH GOD. It is the first necessity. Till sin is totally removed there can be no agreement between God, the Holy One, and man, His creature. Sin first separated them, and the alienation has grown with every generation where sin has reigned. And so long as sin is present, they must remain separate, both in purpose and action. You will see then, further, it is not a question of only forgiveness. God, in His sovereign mercy, might forgive the sin of our life--He does forgive it--but that does not take the sin away. The heart is still a sinful heart; it has forfeited its rights, and though God forgives, these rights are not restored. If, then, we are at any time to be reconciled with God, and be the recipients of His favour, it must be on the one condition that our consciences are purged from evil. Sin in its action will be removed only as sin in its source is taken away; and only as that is done can the soul have peace with God, or can God return to the soul. When sin is taken right away, there remains no barrier between the creature and his God. The soul, desiring to do right, loving the truth, desires to do what God would have it. The will of the creature, however feeble its action may be, is one with the will of God. Nothing remains, therefore, to prevent Him rendering the help of His favour and strength. And this, we are told, He will do.

    II. REMISSION OF SINS IS ONLY POSSIBLE BY SUBSTITUTION; THAT IS, ONE LIFE PAYING PENALTY FOR ANOTHER LIFE. This is the declaration of the sacrifices and services of the temple. It is not our province to explain, it is simply our duty to describe and tell, as well as we are able, God’s plan for removing sin away from us, so that we might receive His Divine gifts. The animal thus sacrificed was the substitution for the life of the offerer. He died, as it were, for sin, in the beast who had been put into his place. The penalty being thus paid, he was free from sin, and now could stand before God as one who had become reconciled to Him. But of course you will observe, in thus acting, the sinner acknowledges the authority and power of God. He has put aside his own thoughts and purposes, and has done God’s, thus indicating in the very act of sacrifice that there is a change of his heart. This finds its entire fulfilment in Jesus Christ. The fact was shadowed as a principle of the Divine purpose in redemption--without the shedding of blood, the substitution of life for sin, there could be no remission. We may and must look at His death on the Cross as the substitution of His life for the life of each one for whom He died. That death can have no other meaning, and when we put it side by side, as the apostle does here, with the Old Testament teaching, I don’t see how we can doubt God’s intention and method in the death of His Son. God’s purpose is thus revealed. Sin is not simply forgiven, but it is taken away. The soul is cleansed from its guilt; the conscience is cleared. When the time comes for it to stand stripped of the material and mortal nature of the present, in presence of the seen and known Eternal One, it will be purified, and fit in its sympathies, thoughts, and feelings for companionship with the absolutely holy God. Thus freed from sin, it will for ever be pure, no sin ever again finding place in it, because it will be with God and like God.

    III. Having stated the principle, WE SAY A WORD AS TO ITS APPLICATION. This substitution appropriated by faith secures our acceptance with God. Jesus died for and in the place of sinners; then are sinners freed from sin? Is there nothing more for us than to eat and drink and go on our way? It is not so. He died for sinners, it is true, but only for sinners who have, so to speak, presented Him to God as their sacrifice. (H. W. Beecher.)

    Spiritual blood-shedding

    I. SPIRITUAL BLOOD-SHEDDING OR SELF-SACRIFICE IS ESSENTIAL TO DELIVER OUR OWN SOULS FROM SIN.

    II. SPIRITUAL BLOOD-SHEDDING IS ESSENTIAL TO DELIVER THE SOULS OF OTHERS FROM SIN.

    1. The necessary qualification of a spiritual reformer.

    2. The spirit which has governed all genuine reformers.

    3. The power of Christ in prosecuting His mission. (Homilist.)

    The necessity of atonement

    Atonement always supposes a party offending and a party offended. It supposes that the offended holds the offender justly bound to suffer penal consequences as merited by the offence. The question proposed for present discussion regards the necessity of the atonement of Jesus Christ, in order to God’s remitting the sins of men. As a preliminary, we are constrained to protest against the adducing of any facts as bearing upon this question, which belong to the present gracious methods of God’s dealing with the human race. The question is, whether, in order to the adoption of those gracious methods, an atonement was not necessary? The evangelical doctrine of atonement is founded in the independent, essential mercy of God. It originated in His infinite mercy. It was an expedient, devised by boundless wisdom, and furnished by boundless love, to supersede the rigorous execution of justice. The forgiveness of sin essentially depends on the whole character of God, on His moral views and feelings respecting sin, and on the reasons which render its punishment necessary. It is here that we should look for all the obstacles, if there be any, which obstruct the exercise of grace, and oppose the remission of sin, and for all the reasons which render an atonement in behalf of sinful men, with a view to their receiving that blessed benefit, indispensable. Here, then, let us commence the discussion. The doctrine which I propose to illustrate and establish is contained in the following proposition: The great moral reasons which require the punishment of sin render the atonement necessary in order to its forgiveness.

    I. I am to show that there are GREAT MORAL REASONS WHICH REQUIRE THAT SIN SHOULD RE PUNISHED.

    1. God’s holiness and justice form the first moral reason. This is the “ground pillar and chief buttress” of my argument. If He is a holy and a righteous God, it is impossible that sin should pass unpunished. You ask me what is God’s holiness; what is His rectitude? His holiness is an essential part of His eternal character. It is His immutable disposition toward all points that involve morality. I would say it is His most perfect perception of right and wrong: it is His most perfect approbation of right; it is His most perfect abhorrence of wrong. And His justice is also inherent and essential. It is the disposition of His nature to act, in all worlds, on all occasions, in the most exact conformity to His moral sense. In heaven, earth, or hell, no being shall ever have ground of complaint, that in His treatment of him, God has forgotten His own holiness and justice.

    2. I proceed to state a second moral reason, intimately connected with the preceding, why sin should not be permitted to pass unpunished. It is necessary, as the means of leading intelligent beings to reverence and honour God as a Being essentially holy and righteous. We contend that even the benevolence of God demands that sin should not be permitted to pass unpunished. To Him the created universe looks up as the Parent of eternal holiness, order, and well being. These are to be found and enjoyed only in subjection to God, and in perfect, undeviating obedience to His laws. That He should enforce such subjection and obedience by holding the transgressor responsible for his misdeeds, and so administering His government as that sin shall not pass unpunished, is required by the best interests of the created system.

    II. THESE MORAL REASONS WINCH REQUIRE THE PUNISHMENT OF SIN, RENDER THE ATONEMENT NECESSARY IN ORDER TO ITS FORGIVENESS. NO substantial reason can be given why a Being infinitely benevolent as well as just, who has been pleased to ordain the redemption of guilty men, should not, when the ends of justice are satisfied, remit their doom. And these ends are most fully secured in the atonement. With an efficacy which to that heart which contemplates it in its just light must prove irresistible, the atonement exhibits God as a Being infinitely holy and righteous, regarding Himself as supremely worthy of the entire homage, love, and obedience of all moral existences, whose rectitude is such that He can give no other laws than those which are founded in eternal and immutable right, can administer no other government but that which is conducted on principles of justice and judgment, can hold no communion with rational beings who are unholy, cannot mark sin but to abhor it, and as the Sovereign Ruler, to manifest towards it His abhorrence, cannot pardon it without bearing testimony, heard with astonishment by heaven, earth, and hell, that it is an endless evil. And what inducements does the atonement hold out to moral agents to esteem, admire, adore, and obey, the Most High and Holy God, and to persevere in this exalted and exalting course? As the attainment of a supreme regard for holiness and an entire detestation of sin must produce the most pure and enduring happiness, what measure could so directly and so powerfully tend to promote and extend the highest happiness of the created system as the atonement? (John De Witt, D. D.)

    Atonement by blood

    It is asserted by historians that there is not a nation mentioned in history, the blood of whose citizens has not been poured out on its altars as an atonement for their sins, or to propitiate their deities. Even in this nineteenth century, it is said that there is a custom, carefully kept secret by Mussulmen, which shows they believe that “without shedding of blood is no remission of sin.” In time of great trouble and sorrow, when dreading the death of a favourite child, it is their custom to secretly kill a lamb and sacrifice it, crying, “Allah, take the life of this lamb for the life of my child.” The flesh of the lamb is then carefully removed, and given to religious beggars, while the skeleton is buried without breaking a bone. (C. W. Bibb.)

    The blood:

    The collector of railway tickets did not look to the character or education of the holder of the ticket, but to the ticket itself. In like manner the blood was a token which typically indicated the way they were to be saved. (D. L. Moody.)

    The doctrine of blood:

    Some people said they did not understand the doctrine of blood. It was very offensive to the natural man. He knew a man to say that whenever he heard a minister speak of the blood in his sermon, he took up his hat and quietly walked out. But just as the bitterest medicine cured, so the doctrine of blood found that man and he was saved. (D. L. Moody.)

    Without shedding of blood there is no remission:

    An aged Jew said: “I have fasted for seven and twenty hours, praying with all possible earnestness, and trembling too, and after all I feel that my sins have not been atoned for.” No; without shedding of blood there is no remission. “The only plank between the believer and destruction is the blood of the incarnate God.” To make light of the blood, therefore, is to make light of salvation, and miss it for ever. The patterns of things in the heavens

    Drama of heaven:

    The life of Jesus Christ was a celestial drama which has revealed to mankind the nature of heaven.

    1. The heavenly life is spoken of as a transparency. The densest thing we know is the pavement on which we walk. In heaven it is “transparent”; it is a pavement, but you can see through it like glass. You may recollect reading that a celebrated Roman once came before his fellow-citizens for their votes, saying that he Wished there was a window in his breast, so that they might see the purity of his motive and the goodness of his heart. An old Puritan minister, on recording this incident, adds, “Poor creature, were he to have had such a window, he would at once have prayed God to give him a shutter to hide his nature from his fellow-men.” Now, if you would take a part in heaven’s drama, you are to learn to be transparent, that is sincere. Your daily life is to be so much “above the board,” as we understand those words, that everybody can see, if they will but look with unprejudiced eye, that your words and actions are inspired by pure and honest motives.

    2. We are told that the pavement of heaven is of the most valuable material, of “pure gold.” if, therefore, we take part in the drama of heaven, let us see that our life rests on the purest foundation; let our character be as genuine as the purest gold. Though your outward dress be of the poorest material, see that your inward character is of pure gold. Cultivate within yourself a love for the good and the true, and become a man whose thoughts and feelings are inspirations of God. How beautiful is this peach, with its silken and crimson colour! yet is there not a hard bitter stone at the core? The world spends too much time now-a-days in seeking to be beautiful outside. Let us, who show the drama of heaven on the stage of the earth, seek to be beautiful within.

    3. From the description given by John we learn that the light of heaven is superb and effulgent. It is not the blaze of the sun, nor the brilliant flash of electricity; it is the light of the Lamb. By what rule do you walk? Is it by the maxims of society? The light which guides the inhabitants of heaven is -the spirit of the life of Jesus Christ; that sacred nature illumines heaven. The more men know the holy, loving God, whose human body was given for their redemption, the more will they abhor and forsake sin. The drama, therefore, which you and I have to play is to show men the character of God.

    4. Notice, next, the clothing of the inhabitants of the land of light and love. It is said that they wear white robes. White is the emblem of purity and innocence. In order to exhibit heaven’s drama on earth, we have to put on the white robes of Christian charity and self-denial. We are to wear the crown of a king, not the shackles of a slave. We should regulate our passions as a king is supposed to govern his kingdom--for the good of the whole. We have to dare to do pure deeds and to venture on humane exploits.

    5. Then remember that in the drama of heaven, you are to show the palms of victory which are waved in the hands of the white-robed in paradise. Let it be seen that you can fight on until you conquer. You may have fallen in past conflicts, but in this drama of heaven you are to show that while we live on earth, God can save us from our sins. I have not time to tell you all the other glorious characteristics of heaven, how we shall hunger no more and thirst no more. Heaven is a state of satisfaction; nothing will be wanting. This life is full of wants, real or imaginary. (W. Birch.)

    Into heaven itself

    On the ascension of Christ

    I. It is remarkable that the Jews, as we learn from Josephus and the writings of the Hebrew doctors, considered THE OUTER COURTS OF THE TABERNACLE AS SYMBOLICAL OF THE EARTH, AND THE HOLY OF HOLIES AS AN EMBLEM OF HEAVEN. When, therefore, our Lord had by the sacrifice of Himself upon the Cross made expiation “for the sins of the whole world,” it became Him, as the great High Priest of mankind, to enter into the holy of holies, not made with hands, even “into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.”

    II. It appears from many accounts, that while the high priest was making intercession in the most holy place, THE PEOPLE WERE WITHOUT, CONFESSING THEIR SINS, AND PROFESSING THEIR ALLEGIANCE TO THE ALMIGHTY. Among the uses which have been assigned to the golden bells, which were ordered to be suspended around the bottom of the pontifical robe, it has been supposed, with much probability, that they were to give notice when the high priest entered within the veil on this solemn business, that the people might behave with correspondent sobriety. In like manner, while our Master is in heaven, we in this earth, this outer court of God’s universal tabernacle, have our work to do. There are conditions of the covenant on our part to be fulfilled. Christ hath instructed His Church to live here, in the exercise of faith and repentance, of patience, devotion, and charity, while He is interceding for them with the Everlasting Father.

    III. It belonged exclusively to the priests, under the Mosaic dispensation, TO BLESS THE PEOPLE IN BEHALF OF GOD. In like manner, our High Priest hath received of the Father all gifts and blessings for His Church. With the voice of His ministers, He dispenses to the penitent assurances of the pardon of their sins. (Bp. Dehon.)

    The ancient holy of holies, a type of heaven

    1. The holy of holies was the dwelling-place of Jehovah, where He manifested Himself in visible glory. Even so in the upper sanctuary does Jehovah manifest the brightness of His glory to the innumerable hosts of holy angels and blessed spirits, by whom He is unceasingly worshipped.

    2. The ancient holy of holies was the most splendid and magnificent part of the tabernacle and temple. In this respect also it was but the type and shadow of heaven. “Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God! “ It is represented as the paradise of God, where grows the tree of life. It is spoken of as Mount Zion, the antitype of the earthly hill on which were erected the temple of Jehovah and the palace of Judah’s kings, and which David celebrated as “beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth.” It is described as a city, the New Jerusalem, the city of the great King, whose foundations are garnished with all manner of precious stones. A still more impressive idea of the unrivalled magnificence of heaven is given us when it is described as the peculiar workmanship of the Almighty--as a place which His infinite power has been exerted to beautify, and which His boundless beneficence has been called forth to gladden and bless. Unlike the holy places in the ancient tabernacle and temple, this sanctuary has not been “made with hands”; it was not erected by any creature, neither was it formed out of any pre-existent matter, but created immediately by God Himself. It is the “ true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not man”; the sanctuary, “not of this building”; the “city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”

    3. The ancient holy of holies was, by Divine appointment, entirely concealed from the view of those who worshipped in the outer courts. With the most vigilant care it was kept sacred from all intrusion. Even from the holy place where the priests were wont to minister, it was separated by a thick curtain or veil of curiously embroidered tapestry, while the holy place itself was hidden from the people at large, who worshipped in the courts without, by means of a second veil of a similar description. There can be no question that all these arrangements were primarily designed to be emblematic of the particular character of that dispensation with which they were directly connected, as “signifying that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing.” At the same time, however, they present us with a beautiful type of the physical concealment which invests the heaven of heavens. For “no man hath ascended up to heaven but He that came clown from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.” Between these, the outer courts of the temple, and that loftiest shrine of this vast universe, God has been pleased to stretch an impervious and impenetrable veil. It is a great and glorious reality; but it is only by the eye of faith that it can be described on “ this dim spot which men call earth.” Even with all the light which the gospel has shed upon it, it is a glory that yet remains to be revealed.

    4. In pursuing the analogy subsisting between the holy of holies and the heaven of heavens, it may be added that the office performed by the Jewish high priest in the former was a most significant emblem of the function to be discharged in the latter by Jesus, the anointed High Priest of our profession. (Peter Grant.)

    Encouragement from Christ glorified

    The ascension of our Lord into heaven is a subject not only of admiration, but also of infinite importance to us. Its consequences are countless in number, immeasurable in extent, and endless in duration. Man is actually in the highest glory of the divine majesty at the right hand of God, the same glory in which the blessed Son of God dwelt before He came into the world. It cannot but excite our admiring wonder to contemplate human nature so highly exalted. For “where He is, there shall we be also,” if we are His true disciples, and shall “behold His glory,” and be ourselves clothed with a body of resplendent light like that of the Lord. But when we compare what we ought to be, and what we really must become in order to our being permitted to follow Christ into His glorious kingdom, with what we actually are, we may be disposed to say, “Who then can be saved?” The great subject now before us comes to our relief in this awful question, cheering our anxious hearts with hope. “Christ,” saith the apostle, “entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.” “For us” means in our behalf, in order to take our part, to stand on our side. But who is this our Advocate? Is He likely to act in our favour with any effect? Is He likely to have influence with the Father? Has He any power of His own? Hath He yet done anything for us? That the influence of Christ with the Father is all-prevailing we cannot doubt, when we consider that He is the only, the beloved Son of God. We shall be strengthened in this confidence if we call to mind that the blessed God gave Him for the very purpose of saving us John 3:16). And not only this, but also He hath made a covenant engagement, wherein He has graciously promised to receive all those for whom His Son pleads. The desire then of accomplishing His own benevolent purpose, the gracious love which He has for us, and His unfailing truth and faithfulness, all combine to strengthen our assurance that He will favourably hear the intercession of His beloved Son in our behalf (John 16:26-27). Will not the consideration of this blessed truth encourage us to return to God, to “humble ourselves under His mighty hand,” to implore that mercy promised to us through Christ, and render His Father favourable to us? Yes, if we seem as far from God as earth is from heaven, sunk as low in sin as the utmost depths of the ocean, yet when we look up and see One at the right hand of God ready to take our part, we may feel a cheering hope (Hebrews 6:19-20; Hebrews 7:25). But has this our blessed Saviour any power of His own? (Matthew 28:18; Revelation 1:18; 1 Chronicles 2:9, 1 Chronicles 2:9-10; Hebrews 7:25; Philippians 2:12). Most important is this view of the Saviour’s almighty power to the anxious Christian, who is “ working out his own salvation with fear and trembling.” Thoughtless people, who are not engaged in the struggle against sin, may not perceive its importance. They do not feel deeply concerned about their salvation. They allow their enemies undisputed possession of their heart. Wherefore passively acquiescing in their dominion, they do not feel their claims. But let a man endeavor to “rule himself after God’s Word,” and he will immediately find that he has powerful enemies to resist (Romans 7:15; Romans 7:21-23). He finds strong tendencies to sin, dispositions, tempers, passions, disposing and urging him to unchristian language and ungodly practices, and withholding him from the due and faithful discharge of his duty. But looking to Christ, he finds that he has reason to thank God that “sin shall not have dominion over him.” And thus having felt that of himself he could do nothing, he finds himself enabled to say, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” But we shall feel greater confidence that the glorified Jesus will act in our behalf, if we’ can find that He hath already done anything for us. Now surely “the Lord hath done great things for us already.” He has come clown from heaven to earth for us men and for our salvation. He has endured the miseries of this sinful world for our sake. He has laid down His life for us. When we know that the blessed Son of God has clone and suffered so much for us, what can there be which He will not do for our sake? St. Paul puts this argument very strongly (Romans 5:6-9). Great therefore may be our hope when we think that we have One in heaven on cur side, whose peculiar care we are, who has taken upon Himself our nature, and dwells in our form; who has made our cause His own; One of all-prevailing influence with our heavenly Father, who graciously desires to listen to His intercession in our favour; One of infinite might and dominion; One who has already done and suffered great things for us, exercised mighty power, wisdom, and love for our protection, guidance, and salvation. As each person is able to see what this blessed Saviour has done for his soul, he will experience proportionate encouragement. (R. L. Cotton, D. D.)

    Presence of Christ incarnate in heaven

    The presence in heaven of Christ incarnate is perhaps the sublimest doctrine to which a rational faith can reach. It is an extension of His atoning life and death on earth, and the renewal of the eternal glory (once briefly suspended) with the Father in heaven. Considering also how it affects us in the present time by its immediate influence, as distinct, I mean, from His acts in the past and future, it is strange that it does not more often fill our thoughts. There is in the human breast an inextinguishable longing for present sympathy. Love cannot bear separation: it is not content with memory, or expectation! As the heart feels the burden of the passing hour, so does it for every hour want its portion of sympathy and love. Thus the presence in heaven of Christ in the glorified Body is a truth most fruitful in thoughts of the dignity of human life, and in ministries of comfort to those who walk upon the earth. I shall recall some passages in Scripture which throw light on the question of a body possibly existing in heaven, then of Christ’s Body in particular; and secondly, remark on the influence of His incarnate presence upon us:

    I. To BEGIN WITH THE FIRST CREATED BODY. If Adam had kept his estate of innocence, he would not have died, nor would he, we imagine, have continued for ever in Paradise, among the trees and beasts of the earth. We believe that he would have been translated in his body, glorified, to heaven. Enoch was thus removed, and afterwards Elijah. Next, coming to the Person of our blessed Lord. His Body after the resurrection was the same which had died, though the life to which He rose was not a return to that which had expired on the Cross. His Body was the same, but endued with new powers and living under other conditions. Again, angels declared that as He was taken up into heaven, so in like manner should He come. If so, in what state does He pass the interval between the ascension and the judgment, that is, the present time? Surely in the same spiritual, glorified Body. Moreover, He has been seen once, and heard once, since His ascension. Is it not too often the case, that Christ is regarded as existing in heaven only as God, in a certain omnipresent nature, as He was from all eternity? Do not men argue, that as a day will come when He shall put aside His mediation that is “when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father,” so also He will then escape from the confines of His humanity, and return to simple God? Is it sufficiently taken into account that His condition there is altered by His Incarnation, and if His condition, then His influence over us?

    II. To the evidence of Scripture and our Church formularies, I WILL ADD A FEW REMARKS ON SELF-EVIDENT SEASONS, WHY IT SHOULD BE SO. “The Word was made flesh”; the manhood of Christ was made perfect. He took not on Him the form of angels, but the seed of Abraham. It is a characteristic of human nature, that once man is man for ever. If then Christ is perfect Man, He is Man for ever. Not only that, but re, elation informs us that man will rise in the body, and live in his body for ever. If Christ has risen according to the laws which govern our resurrection (and this Scripture declares), He now lives, and will live for ever, in the Body with which He rose. What else is meant by Christ being the “first-fruits of them that slept,” “the first-Begotten of the dead,” and, in contradistinction from Adam, “The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit,” unless it be that Christ in His resurrection is the cause of our resurrection, and gives the law by which ours is determined? Once more, He is our Mediator. A mediator is one who represents both parties. In this case one party is God, the other is man. None can represent God but God, and Jesus is God; none can represent man but man, and Jesus is Man. If therefore we have need of a mediator in heaven now, He must be now, as heretofore, God and Man.

    III. I have now to speak of THE INFLUENCE WHICH THE PRESENCE OF CHRIST INCARNATE IN HEAVEN HAS UPON MAN BELOW; AND OF THE PRACTICAL DIFFERENCE WHICH THIS DOCTRINE CAUSES IN OUR ESTIMATE OF HIS WORK FOR US. IS Christ omnipresent? Some persons will answer broadly, “Yes,” and go on to say that it is a man’s faith which makes Him present everywhere--that no possible thing is needed but faith; therefore, that all attempts to give the Saviour’s grace a local habitation is wrong; that particular ordinances and outward means of grace are superfluous, therefore superstitious. On the other hand, it is the creed of the Church that Christ has ordained that virtue shall go forth from Him in special and particular channels; and these we call outward means of grace. The sacred enclosure, within which these streams of grace are dispersed, is the Church. Now there is of course great diversity between these two views; but does not the difference arise chiefly from the advocates of the former view losing sight of the continuous agency of the Man Jesus Christ, and thinking that His manhood is now absorbed in His divinity. Would it not clear away doubts and misgivings from many, who sincerely love Christ, if they considered this point; viz., our blessed Lord is still in His Body, and many of His blessings He dispenses through the Body, being the fruits of the great things which He did and suffered in the Body. So far as He dispenses these through the Body, His dispensation of grace is not omnipresent, but regulated by orders of time, place, and conditions, as His will ordains. The participation of Christ through faith and obedience is not diminished by the act, which has attached to a particular ordinance a special grace of intimate communion with Him in the Lord’s Supper. These particular ordinances are the mysterious pathways, down which the several rays, which issue from His glorified Body, travel to earth. Nor is it any objection to this view that the influence of His Body is spiritual. In ordinary language “body” means matter, and an immaterial body seems to be a contradiction of terms. We cannot explain it; but to some extent it is intelligible that a body should be present only spiritually. For instance, when our Saviour said to the nobleman, “Thy son liveth,” was He not present by that sick-bed, though His natural Body was elsewhere? And remember, while Christ acts by virtue of His Incarnation, and is to some extent guided in His operations by the laws of His human nature, yet the Body which acts, acts more mightily because of the Godhead which possesses it. Lastly, if Christ be not really and spiritually present in the ordinances which He has instituted, in a sense of more close and intimate communion than can be applied to the generally diffused mercy and power of God, then the idea of any Church is a fiction; then the very acts in which we have been engaged to-day are vain; the gifts of bread and wine, which Christ has bidden us prepare for His consecration of them, convey no grace, but are merely stimulants, by outward signs of the feelings of our hearts; then all means of grace whatever are solely our acts to God, not His acts towards us. How different is the truth! Angels in heaven see in His dispensations of grace within the Church signs of the power of Christ unto salvation, of which without the Church they would not be aware, “that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God.” Thus our acts of worship are not fictions, our sacraments are not representations. There is an electric current ever circulating from Christ Incarnate through the members of His Body, which is the Church. (C. W. Furse, M. A.)

    Christ the intercessor

    I. THE THINGS SUPPOSED BY THE ENTRANCE OF CHRIST INTO HEAVEN ARE THE SAME AS THOSE SUPPOSED BY THE ENTRANCE OF THE HIGH PRIEST INTO THE MOST HOLY PLACE; namely, that heaven and earth are at variance, that sin has occasioned the feud, that blood is the alone price of expiation, and that this price must be laid upon the altar of the Holy One before He will ever look kindly upon man again. The difference in the case of the two dispensations lies in the application of any permanent and satisfactory relief to the sinner’s conscience. And this higher form of mediation, argues the apostle, we have in Christ, whose blood is no more to be compared to the blood of bulls and goats than is the heaven into which He has carried that blood to be compared with the holy place of the tabernacle. Christ is gone, therefore, to appear in the presence of God for us; gone to display a memorial of that sacrifice by which He has obtained eternal redemption for us; gone to exhibit the living virtue of His own blood, and to claim the crowns of immortality for those for whom it was shed.

    II. Christ has gone to appear in the presence of God for us, says the text; that is, AS THE INTERCESSOR, THE ADVOCATE, THE GREAT UNDERTAKER OF HUMAN CAUSES IN THE COURT OF HEAVEN. Let us consider some of His special qualifications for so great a work.

    1. As, first, it is an intercession founded on right. Christ appearing as the slain man is a direct appeal to the righteousness of God. It is the pledge of a price paid, a ransom accepted, a claim substantiated, a covenant signed and sealed. Christ pleads His sufferings no doubt, but this He does not to move pity nor to ask favour, but just to assert His right over all the dispensations of mercy, His boundless and eternal prerogative to forgive.

    2. But, secondly, we should have comfort in this mediation of the ascended Saviour, from knowing that He orders all our spiritual affairs with consummate prudence. We often ask and have not, but we little think why. Our Intercessor has been asking for us the direct contrary of that which we have asked for ourselves. He saw that which we did not see, namely, that in the then temper of our minds and spirit the good sought would be no longer good.

    3. Further, there is that in the appearance of Christ in heaven which should suggest to His believing people the thought of an individual and personal remembrance. If any man sin--any one man--he has an advocate with the Father. That which I desire to realise, is that the eye, the thoughts, the solicitudes of Jesus are concentrated and fixed on me; my needs to supply, my infirmities to help, my cause to order, my decaying members to revive, my rising corruptions to subdue.

    4. But, once more, this appearance of Christ in heaven is an affectionate, earnest, deeply interested appearance. His heart is in the cause. He is a merciful High Priest as well as faithful. In undertaking the cause of believers He is not content to have an eye to see their afflictions, or an ear to listen to their complaints, or a tongue to promote their suit; but casts His lot in with them. He is afflicted in all their afflictions.

    5. He has gone to appear in the presence of God for us as the Conqueror. “Thou hast ascended on high; Thou hast led captivity captive; Thou hast received gifts for men.” He who died as a Lamb rose as a Lion. With the head of the spiritual Goliath in His hand, the Son of David entered the streets of the New Jerusalem, there to appear in the presence of God for us.

    6. Again, as a pledge and assurance that He both can and will order all things for the good of His Church, He appears in the presence of God for us. In describing His own session to the high priest, He tells him, “Ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power”; power to execute wrath, power to cast down every high thing and every strong thing and every opposing thing that could exalt itself against the knowledge of Himself; power to direct and save; power to reward and bless. Let me note one or two practical thoughts, in conclusion, with which to associate the entrance of our Forerunner into the most holy place, there to appear in the presence of God for us. Thus we cannot but be impressed with a sense of the exceeding great honour which is put upon our human nature, in that one, in our likeness, should be the object of highest adoration to all the heavenly world. We are made more than conquerors in Christ Jesus, because Christ Himself was more than conqueror over all the misery He came to remedy, and all the enemies He came to subdue. And this suggests a kindred thought--the honour reserved for ourselves in that future world. We have a portion in that flesh and blood which is so highly exalted, and which now appears in the presence of God for us. Our interest with our Divine Head is one. If Christ reign, we shall reign; if He be taken up into glory, we shall not be beyond the circle of its diffused and effulgent rays. Lastly, how should our Lord’s leaving us, to enter into the most holy place, remind us that we have no continuing city here. Christ did not sit down in heaven until He had finished His work on earth: and we must finish our work as Christ did His. He who now appears in the presence of God for us knew no rest, does not know it even now. He ever liveth to make intercession, to sprinkle consciences, to send down grace, to restrain the power of the evil one, to keep the feet of His saints, to suffer no weapon formed against them to prosper. This is Christ’s work in heaven now, and will be for a time, and times, and a half a time, till the end of redemption is come. Then will come the great Sabbath; the Sabbath that shall sanctify the risen natures, the Sabbath that shall release our Great High Priest from all further appearance for us in the holy place, even the everlasting rest that remaineth for the people of God. (D. Moore, M. A.)

    Christ the only Mediator:

    I. THE TEMPLE IN WHICH HE MINISTERS.

    II. THE MINISTRY WHICH IN THAT TEMPLE HE CONTINUES TO EXERCISE.

    1. The ministry of a sympathising friend.

    2. Rendering acceptable to God all our worship and service.

    III. THE INFLUENCE WHICH THE KNOWLEDGE OF THESE TRUTHS OUGHT TO EXERCISE ON OUR FAITH AND CONDUCT, “Let us hold fast our profession.”

    1. As respects the writing on which it is based.

    2. As regards the consolations which it affords.

    3. As regards the hopes which it naturally encourages. (W. Cadman, M. A.)

    The sacrifice, intercession, and sympathy of Christ in heaven

    The sacrifice and intercession of Christ are of course distinct in idea, but in fact are so united, that it is more convenient to consider them together. Sacrifice is intercession, not in word, but in act. It makes atonement for man to God; that is, sets God and man at-one. It comes between; that is, in the literal sense of the word, intercedes, mediates between the two, reconciles them; all of which terms apply with equal propriety to the one office as to the other, sacrifice and intercession. Minds unused to meditation on the continuance of these offices in heaven are inclined to the opinion that the whole work of the Atonement was concluded in the sacrifice of the Cross, and to so complete an extent that nothing remains for Christ to do till He returns to gather in His elect. Their thoughts linger around such texts as these, which at first sight seem to imply that at the moment in which the Saviour said, “It is finished,” His work was ended till the Judgment Day (Hebrews 10:12; 1 Peter 3:18). And all the passages in the Epistle to the Hebrews which draw out the contrast between the repeated sacrifices offered by the Jewish priests and the one oblation once made by Christ, favour the same opinion. The question is, do such words oppose the view that our great Mediator is ever working on behalf of men’s souls in heaven --My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Do they contradict the doctrine that Christ Jesus in His glorified body continues to exercise the virtue of His holy incarnation? Not in the least. The sacrifice once for all offered on the Cross is being perpetually represented and exhibited in heaven. This indeed is the meaning of the word in the text, inadequately translated “appear.” It is not merely that Christ stands and is seen before the Father’s throne; but He is arrayed in the vesture belonging to the Mediator, invested with all the symbols of His office as the Saviour of man, continually presenting to the eternal Father the sacrifice once for all made, interceding, pleading, advocating our cause. Hence it is, that in the Book of Revelation He is described as a “Lamb as it had been slain;” with the marks of death, the scars of the sacrifice upon Him, though His wounds are healed, and His body raised in glory. And it may be observed, once for all, that every description of His high-priesthood establishes the truth that it is exercised now continually in heaven. The great difference in this respect between the continual sacrifice offered day by day and year by year by the Jewish priests, and that offered by Christ, is that theirs was repeated, His is represented; theirs was begun afresh, as if nothing had yet been done; His is the oblation of the Body sacrificed once for all. There are some who say, and profess to believe, that it is enough to know that Christ once died for sinners; but they do not speak the language of the human heart. Does not the sense of sin pierce them even now? Does not the shame and dread of sin overwhelm at times even those for whom Christ died? Do they not spread their hands abroad in vain, and look out for help against themselves, and seek for some place where they may hide themselves from the confusion and reproach which their own hearts cast upon them?--that is, they need a present Mediator and Advocate. Again, the effect which the continued intercession of Christ must exercise over our destiny cannot be measured by any estimate of ours. His prayers are uttered night and day, hour by hour, whether men pray or whether they sleep. And then, as to their secondary effect, that is, their influence upon us--conceive how great a motive it is for men to pray, that their prayers may vibrate along the chords of His! Lastly, consider what comfort exists in the possession of the sympathy of Christ; and in the knowledge that He exists in the body of man, alive to all the human wants and natural infirmities of the heart. Has not the disciple to bear his cross; to rejoice in suffering; “to fill up what is behind of the afflictions of Christ in His flesh for His body’s sake which is the Church”; “‘to bear the marks of the Lord Jesus”; “to be crucified” with Him; to be “buried with Him”; “to be raised up together and made to sit together in heavenly places” in Him; to have “our vile body changed that it may be like unto His glorious body”? And all this while there is His painless sympathy with pain in the least as in the greatest things. Many a thought of trouble, too slight or too. Lender to be worth exposure to the nearest friends, is, we may believe, marked by Him and remembered in His prayer, especially if it be one (as all the most inexplicable troubles are) entangled with our own folly or sin. “For we have not an High it. You said in your prayer, “O Lord, I am vile, I come to Thee; I plead Thy promise that Thou wilt not cast me out; I give myself away in an everlasting surrender; I leave my soul at the very foot of the Cross!” And then you rose from your knees, murmuring, “Oh, I am no better; I feel just the same as before!” You saw that you had made a failure. Now, where was the lack? Simply in the particular of trust. You would not take Jesus at His word. When you have given yourself to Christ, leave yourself there, and go about your work as a child in His household. When He has undertaken your salvation, rest assured He will accomplish it, without any of your anxiety, or any of your help. There remains enough for you to do, with no concern for this part of the labour. Let me illustrate this posture of mind as well as I can. A shipmaster was once out for three nights in a storm; close by the harbour, he yet dared not attempt to go in, and the sea was too rough for the pilot to come aboard. Afraid to trust the less experienced sailors, he himself stood firmly at the helm. Human endurance almost gave way before the unwonted strain. Worn with toil, beating about; worn yet more with anxiety for his crew and cargo; he was well-nigh relinquishing the wheel, and letting all go awreck, when he saw the little boat coming with the pilot. At once that hardy sailor sprang on the deck, and with scarcely a word took the hehn in his hand. The captain went immediately below, for food and for rest; and especially for comfort to the passengers, who were weary with apprehension. Plainly now his duty was in the cabin; the pilot would care for the ship. Where had his burden gone? The master’s heart was as light as a schoolboy’s; he felt no pressure. The pilot, too, seemed perfectly unconcerned; he had no distress. The great load of anxiety had gone for ever; fallen in some way or other between them. Now turn this figure. We are anxious to save our soul, and are beginning to feel more and more certain that we cannot save it. Then comes Jesus, and undertakes to save it for us. We see how willing He is; we know how able He is; there we leave it. We let Him do it. We rest on His promise to do it. We just put that work in His hands to do all alone; and we go about doing something else; self-improvement, comfort to others, doing good of every sort. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)

    Faith convinced of the invisible

    I. No faith will carry us through the difficulties of our profession, from oppositions within and without, giving us constancy and perseverance therein unto the end, BUT THAT ONLY WHICH GIVES THE GOOD THINGS HOPED FOR A REAL SUBSISTENCE IN OUR MINDS AND SOULS. But when by mixing itself with the promise which is the foundation of hope, it gives us a taste of their goodness, an experience of their power, the inhabitation of their first-fruits, and a view of their glory, it will infallibly effect this blessed end.

    II. The peculiar specificial nature of faith, whereby it is differenced from all other powers, acts, and graces in the mind, lies in this, THAT IT MAKES A LIFE ON THINGS INVISIBLE. It is not only conversant about them, but mixeth itself with them, making them the spiritual nourishment of the soul (2 Corinthians 4:18).

    III. THE GLORY OF OUR RELIGION IS, THAT IT DEPENDS ON AND IS RESOLVED INTO VISIBLE THINGS. They are far more excellent and glorious than anything that sense can behold or reason discover (1 Corinthians 2:9).

    IV. GREAT OBJECTIONS ARE APT TO LIE AGAINST INVISIBLE THINGS, WHEN THEY ARE EXTERNALLY REVEALED. Man would desirously live the life of sense, or at least believe no more than what he can have a scientifical demonstration of. But by these means we cannot have an evidence of invisible things; at best, not such as may have an influence into our Christian profession. This is done by faith alone.

    1. Faith is that gracious power of the mind, whereby it firmly assents unto Divine revelations, upon the sole authority of God the revealer, as the first essential truth, and fountain of all truth.

    2. It is by faith that all objections against invisible things, their being and reality, are answered and refuted.

    3. Faith brings into the soul an experience of their power and efficacy, whereby it is cast into the mould of them, or made conformable unto them Romans 6:17; Ephesians 4:21-23). (John Owen, D. D.)

    Shadow and substance

    I. THE HOPE OF ATTAINING A PERFECT LIFE IS ONLY TO BE REALISED BY FAITH IN CHRIST.

    II. THE HOPE OF PERFECTING OUR LIFE-WORK CAN ONLY BE REALISED BY FAITH IN CHRIST.

    III. THE HOPE OF PERFECTING OUR HAPPINESS IS ONLY TO BE REALISED BY FAITH IN CHRIST. (R. Balgarnie, D. D.)

    Faith;

    First, then, this chapter shows us the different ways and modes of the working of faith. And secondly, it speaks to all characters of persons, showing the manner in which faith will affect particular characters. New men declare faith to be unreasonable. “Acting on trust! “ says a godless man, “how strange a mode of acting! Surely those who do it are trusting to some vague fancy or feeling, they scarce know what, and call it faith.” I answer, Although the thing which we believe, the object of faith, is most marvellous, yet faith itself, belief in the object, is no such strange or unusual thing. Every man constantly acts on faith, and the very man who laughs at another for acting on faith acts on faith himself every day.

    1. That man trusts his memory. He does not now see or feel what he did yesterday, yet he has no doubt it happened as he remembers it.

    2. Again, when a man reasons he trusts his reasoning powers; he knows one thing is true, and sees clearly that another follows from that. For example, he sees long shadows on the ground; then he knows the sun or moon is shining without looking round to see. But some one raises an objection. He says, “Very true; but in memory, reason, and daily life we trust ourselves; in religion we trust the word of another, and that is hard.” But there is no real difficulty. In this world we act on the evidence of others. What do we know without trusting others? Are there not towns and cities within fifty miles of us we never saw, yet we fully believe they are there. (E. Munro.)

    Faith:

    Out of the first clause let me observe--That a lively faith doth give such a reality and present being to things hoped for and yet to come, as if they were already actually enjoyed. And thus it is said of Abraham John 8:56).

    I. How DOES FAITH GIVE A SUBSISTENCE OR PRESENT BEING TO THINGS HOPED FOR? How can we be said to have that happiness which we do but expect?

    1. By a lively hope it doth as it were sip of the cup of blessing, and foretaste those eternal delights which God hath prepared for us, and affects the heart with the certain expectation of them, as if they were enjoyed. It appears by the effect of this hope, which is rejoicing with joy unspeakable and full of glory (1 Peter 1:8).

    2. Faith takes possession, and gives a being to the things hoped for in the promises. There is not only the union of hope, but a clear right and title; God hath passed over all those things to us in the covenant of grace. When we take hold of the promises, we take hold of the blessing promised by the root of it, until it flows up to full satisfaction. Hence those expressions, believers are said “to layhold of eternal life” (1 Timothy 6:12-19), by which their right is secured to them; “And he that heareth My words, and believeth in Me, hath eternal life” (John 5:24). Christ doth not only say, He shall have eternal life, but he hath a clear right and title to it, which is as sure as sense, though not as sweet. Faith gives us heaven, because in the promise it gives us a title to heaven; we are sure to have that to which we have a title; he hath a grant, God’s Word to assure him of it. He is said to haste an estate that hath the conveyance of it, but it is not necessary he should carry his land upon his back.

    3. We have it in our Head. That is a Christian’s tenure; he holds all in his head by Christ. Though he be not glorified in his own person, he is glorified in his Head, in Jesus Christ. Therefore as Christ’s glorification is past, so in a sense a believer’s glorification is past; the Head cannot rise, and ascend, and be glorified without the members (Ephesians 2:6).

    4. Faith gives being in the first-fruits. The Israelites had not only a right to Canaan given them by God, but had livery of Canaan, where the spies did not only make report of the goodness of the land, but brought the clusters of grapes with them; so doth God deal with a believing soul, not only give it a right, but give it some first-fruits. A believing soul hath the beginnings of that estate which it hopes for; some clusters of Eschol by way of foretaste in the midst of present miseries and difficulties. This is the great love of God to us, that He would give us something of heaven here upon earth, that He wil make us enter upon our happiness by degrees.

    II. THE BENEFIT AND ADVANTAGE OF THIS ACT, AND THE USE OF FAITH IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE.

    1. It is very necessary we should have such a faith as should substantiate our hopes, to check sensuality, for we find the corrupt heart of man is all for present satisfaction. And though the pleasures of sin be short and inconsiderable, yet because they are near at hand, they take more with us than the joys of heaven, which are future and absent.

    2. It gives strength and support to all the graces of the spiritual life. The great design of religion is to bring us to a neglect of present happiness, and to make the soul to look after a felicity yet to come; and the great instrument of religion, by which it promoteth this design, is faith, which is as the scaffold and ladder to the spiritual building.

    Use 1. To examine whether you have this kind of faith or no, which is the substance of things hoped for. To discover how little of this faith there is in the world, consider

    (1) Many men say they believe, but alas, what influence have their hopes upon them? Do they engage them as things present and sensible do?

    (2) You may discern it by your carriage in any trial and temptation. When heaven and the world come in competition, can you deny present carnal advantages upon the hopes of eternity? do you forsake all as knowing you shall have a thousand times better in another world?

    (3) If faith do substantiate your hopes, though you do not receive present satisfaction, you may discern it by this, you will entertain the promises with much respect and delight. Are they dear and precious to you? You would embrace the promises if you looked upon them as the root of the blessing.

    (4) You may discern it by this, the mind will often run upon your hopes. Where the thing is strongly expected, the end and aim of your expectation will still be present with you. Thoughts are the spies and messengers of the soul. Hope sends them out after the thing expected, and love after the thing beloved.

    (5) You may discern it by your weanedness from the world. They that know heaven to be their home reckon the world a strange country.

    (6) There will not be such a floating and instability in their expectation. You have already blessedness in the root, in the promises; and though there be not assurance, there will be an affiance, and repose of the mind upon God: if there be not rest in your souls, yet there will be a resting upon God, and a quiet expectation of the things hoped for. Faith is satisfied with the promise, and quietly hopes for the performance of it in God’s due time Lamentations 3:26).

    Use 2. To exhort you to work up faith to such an effect, that it may be the substance of things hoped for.

    (1) Work it up in a way of meditation. Let your minds be exercised in the contemplation of your hopes (Matthew 6:21).

    (2) Work it up in a way of argumentation. Faith is a reasoning grace (verse 19).

    (3) Work it up in a way of expectation. Look for it, long for it, wait for it Titus 2:13; Jude 1:21).

    (4) Work it up in a way of supplication. Put in thy claim--Lord! I take hold of the grace offered in the gospel; and desire the Lord to secure thy Psalms 73:24).

    (5) Work it up in a way of close and solemn application. In the Lord’s supper, there thou comest by some solemn rites to take possession of the privileges of the covenant, and by these rites and ceremonies which God hath appointed, to enter ourselves heirs to all the benefits purchased by Christ, and conveyed in the covenant, especially to the glory of heaven; there you come to take the cup of blessing as a pledge of the” new wine in your Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26:29). God here reacheth out to us by deed, our instrument, which was by promise due to every believing sinner before.

    (6) Work it up in your conversations by constant spiritual diligence. Is heaven sure, so sure as if we had it already, and shall I be idle? Oh what contriving, striving, fighting, is there to get a step higher in the world! How insatiable are men in the prosecution of their lusts I and shall I do nothing for heaven, and show no diligence in pursuing my great happiness!

    Use 3. To press you to get this faith. There are some means and duties that have a tendency hereunto.

    (1) There must be a serious consideration of God’s truth, as it is backed with His absolute power.

    (2) You must relieve faith by experiences: by considering what is past we may more easily believe that which is to come. (T. Manton, D. D.)

    Faith a substance

    I. FAITH IS A SUBSTANCE. I know this is not generally received, for such are the vague, carnal, infidel notions that are abroad in the world, that not a grace of the Holy Spirit is owned; and instead of faith being admitted to be a principle of grace, it is spoken of as nature’s actings, and is sometimes said to consist merely in the credence of a revealed fact. An opposite party, however, makes faith to consist in a crouching, a cringing, and a conformity to a crafty priesthood. Now I have no such faith as either of these. The one is the faith of the infidel; the other is the faith of heathenism. And they neither of them have any substance. I want a faith that will manifest itself as having substance. I have seen it printed that faith is nothing more than the credence of a revealed fact. But we know that infidels and devils have that sort of faith; for infidels credit thousands of revealed facts, and cannot deny them as matters of fact, yet they have no faith after all. Faith is a substance; and they who are taken up with shadows and vanities do not know the value of it. They cannot value it. They cannot possess it. Faith is a substance worth more than all the miser’s stores, than all the monarch’s revenue, than all the wealth of India. Faith is a substance that can never be frittered away. It overcomes all the world, repels all the devils in hell, and lays hold on eternal life. But, most probably, you will better understand what I mean by this substance of faith if I lead your attention to its origin and its object. Its origin: It grows not in nature’s garden. It is not the produce of the schools. It is not hereditary from father to son. It is far above that. Like every good gift, and every perfect gift, it cometh down from the Father of Lights. It is of the operation of the Holy Ghost, and its object will prove its substance. Its object is Christ; the Person of Christ; the official character of Christ; the perfect work of Christ; the covenant headship of Christ. And the faith of God’s elect fastens on all these. Further, the object of faith lies greatly in the enjoyment of Christ as well as in confidence in Him. And this will perhaps bring the nature of your faith to the test better than any other principle. I must have a Christ who will bring heaven to me on earth in the enjoyment of Him here. And this will prove whether your faith is a substance or not. The soul which possesses this living, saving faith, sighs, waits, and cannot be satisfied without the sensible enjoyment of the presence of Christ. That faith which is a substance hath a saving power communicated with it. Hence it is called, sometimes properly, sometimes improperly, a saving faith. Bring your faith up to this test again. It is spiritual faith--the substance of things hoped for, that discovers all that is in Christ; the wisdom, the righteousness, the sanctification, and the redemption that are in Him: the pardon, the peace, the justification, the joy, the security, the victories, the triumphs of all the Church of God in Christ, seen wholly in His Person.

    II. This saving faith which so discovers and appropriates Is SURE TO GO AND PLEAD BEFORE THE THRONE IN EXERCISE; “for whatsoever is not of faith is sin,” and cannot be acceptable before God; and there it pleads the merits, the name, the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ for acceptance, relying upon the declaration of the precious Lord Himself, “All things whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, believing, ye shall receive.” Now I pray you let us look closely into this substance, and raise the inquiry, Does it belong to me? “Faith is the substance of things hoped for.” Then the first part of the interrogation here would be, What are the things that I hope for? I know if I were to ask the worldling this question, he would reply that he thinks upon worldly prospects, emoluments, and personal gratifications. But not so the Christian; not so the household of faith. Well, now, if I might simplify this, and put it in the plainest possible manner, I should say that the believer hopes to know more and to enjoy more of Christ to-day than he did yesterday, or than ever he had done before. Faith is the substance of it. The believer in Jesus hopes to be more conformed to the image of Christ; “that as he has borne the image of the earthly, he shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” Faith is the substance of that. The believer in Jesus--the real Christian--hopes to attain to more intimacy with heaven and to have a measure of heaven began in the soul on earth. Let us inquire as regards experimental participation. There is such a thing as the joy of faith. There is such a thing as the triumph of faith. There is such a thing as the race of faith, and it is always a winning race. There are joys experienced in this substance which none but the possessor can know. I hasten on to mark its sanctifying operations. The apostle says concerning this, in his account of the progress of the gospel, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, that God “put no difference” between Jews and Gentiles, “purifying”--mark the expression--“purifying their hearts by faith.” That faith that will not purify the heart, is not the substance. It may illumine your head till you are giddy; it may enlighten your understanding till you are as proud as Lucifer; it may inflame your pride as a professor till you are as vain as the devil can wish you to be; but if it does not purify the heart, it is not of God--“purifying their hearts by faith.”

    III. I will now proceed to speak of THE WEALTH WHICH THIS FAITH REALISES. It is a substance. Now, most people are ready to travel a good many miles in order to learn how to acquire wealth. They forego much carnal ease to get riches. But, after all, they make a terrible mistake. This is not true wealth. Riches make to themselves wings, they fly away, and defy all control. But the wealth which faith realises is altogether of a different kind. It has no wings. It is not subject to thieves. It cannot be hoarded up and be useless to its possessor; for it is that good principle which works by love. And thus faith realises the inheritance both of grace and of glory, and by it the title deeds to both are clearly read and lodged in the bosom of Deity. Oh, happy man, who goes so far in the attainment of faith! The wealth which faith realises is an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for all who are kept by the power of God through faith. I am not fond of relating anecdotes in the pulpit, but I cannot refrain on the present occasion from telling you one which I heard from my dear father’s lips when I was a boy. It was of a godly man who possessed much wealth, and used it for the glory of God, but who lived to prove that he could not clip its wings. All flew away, and he was reduced to living in a furnished room, where he was supported entirely by the charity of his friends. One of his visitors who had been very kind to him, once asked him this question, “How is it that I find you to be as happy now as when you were in possession of all your wealth?” His immediate answer was, “When I possessed all this world’s goods I enjoyed God in all; and now I possess none I enjoy all in God.” Now that is faith; that is substance; a fine specimen, a fine witness of it. (J. Irons.)

    Faith

    1. Faith is the confidence--the firm persuasion--of things hoped for. In the ancient games the runner hoped to win the race, to wear the crown of pine or olive leaves around his brow, and to have his name handed down as victor to untold generations; so, in the confidence of this, he strained every nerve and sinew to reach the goal. That was natural faith. The student hopes to win the prize and find his name in the honours list, and he gives his days and nights to reading. The farmer ploughs the land and sows the field, in hope that in due season he shall put in the sickle and gather the harvest. The merchant and tradesman hope to gain a competency or to make a fortune, and put forth their efforts day by day. These are illustrations of natural faith. So it is with the faith that has to do with spiritual things. The Christian sets before him, not the crown of fading leaves, but the crown that shall never fade away, which the Lord will place upon the brow of all who endure unto the end. He seeks for the smile and approbation of the Saviour, for the treasures in heaven, for the bags which wax not old. This is spiritual faith.

    2. Faith is the demonstration of things not seen. Columbus believed that there was another world in the western hemisphere; he was as fully assured of its existence as if it had been demonstrated by mathematical proof. Yet he had not seen the new world; he had never looked upon its mighty rivers, or upon the broad expanse of its prairies and savannahs. He had not ever seen in the dim distance the peak of any of its mountains, or the outline of its coast. No navigator had told him, “I have seen the new world; I have cast anchor in its harbours; I have set foot upon it.” Yet, in the full conviction that there was another world, he toiled and waited many years, until his eye rested upon it and he landed on its shores. This was natural faith--the demonstration of things not seen. Some years ago the astronomers, Mr. Adams of Cambridge, and M. Leverries of Paris, were convinced that there must be a large planet that had never been seen through a telescope or marked down in any star-map; so they watched the midnight heavens in a certain direction until the planet came within the range of their glass. This was the way the planet Neptune was discovered. This was natural faith. It is even so with the faith that has to do with spiritual things. God is unseen; His glory is dimly reflected in His works. We see the work of His fingers in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. Creation is a book in which we may read, page after page, His handwriting, His own Divine autograph; but the Almighty Writer is unseen. In the flowers of the field we see the forms of beauty which He has pencilled and coloured and enamelled; the Divine Artist we see not. We stand and gaze with wonder and admiration upon a part of this beautiful temple of creation, but we see not the Divine Architect; yet, as in St. Paul’s Cathedral, we read of the architect, Sir Christopher Wren, “If you seek his monument, look around,” so we see in the skill and wisdom displayed in this glorious creation the monument of the Almighty Builder. We believe that God is, and that He is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. We believe in the great love which He has towards us, which He has revealed in Jesus Christ; that, like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him; that He watches over us by day and by night, that His ear is open to our prayer, His arm stretched out for our defence. We believe that He is present with us in the house of prayer, and we can say with the confidence of Jacob, “Surely the Lord is in this place,” &c. We believe that He has given to us exceeding great and precious promises, that we may be partakers of the Divine nature; and that, although the heaven and the earth pass away, not one of these promises will fail. We believe in an unseen Saviour, &c. (W. Bull, B. A.)

    Evangelical faith

    I. THE THINGS TOWARDS WHICH FAITH IS DIRECTED ARE INVISIBLE.

    II. SOME OF THE INVISIBLE THINGS ARE AT ONCE DESIRABLE AND ATTAINABLE.

    III. THOSE INVISIBLE THINGS, WHICH ARE DESIRABLE AND ATTAINABLE, FAITH MAKES POWERFUL IN THE PRESENT LIFE. (Homilist.)

    The value and importance of faith

    Faith is the source of all truly religious feeling, and the ground of all acceptable service. Without it we can neither come to God nor perform any work which is acceptable to Him.

    1. Faith is the condition of justification: “Being justified by faith”; “He that believeth is not condemned; he that believeth not is condemned already.”

    2. It is the source of spiritual life: “The just shall live by faith.” “He that believeth hath everlasting life; he that believeth not shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.”

    3. It puts us in possession of every Christian privilege.

    (1) The gift of the Spirit: “Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? … In whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy spirit of promise.”

    (2) Adoption into the Divine family: “To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name;” “Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.”

    (3) Peace with God and peace of mind: “Being justified by faith we have peace with God;” “He that believeth shall not make haste.” Joy in God: “In whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”

    4. It is the source of all Christian feeling and action. Our hearts are “purified by faith.” Our prayers to be acceptable must be offered “in faith.” If we would ask successfully, we must “ask in faith, nothing wavering.” (W. Landels, D. D.)

    What is faith:

    Faith has many workings, many results, many frets--and some select one of these and call it faith itself. But the text goes to the source when it says, “What faith is this.” The word here rendered “substance,” means properly the act of “standing under” so as to support something. Thus in philosophical writings it was applied to the essence which forms, as it were, the substratum of the attributes; that supposed absolute existence (of thing or person) in which all the properties and qualities, so to say, inhere, and have their consistence. In this way the word is once applied in Scripture, in the third verse of this Epistle, to the essence of God Himself, and the Divine Son is said to be “the express image of His person”--the very “impress,” as it might be otherwise rendered, “of His essence.” But there was another use of the word, in which it meant the act of the mind in standing under (so as to support, and bear the weight of) some statement or communication, making, as we say, a heavy demand upon the faculty of believing. It thus passes from the idea of “ substance” into that of “assurance” or “confidence.” It is thus used by St. Paul in two passages of the second Epistle to the Corinthians, where he speaks of his “confidence” in the readiness of their alms-giving, and again of the “confidence of his glorying,” though it be in weakness, about himself. And so, once again, in the third chapter of this Epistle to the Hebrews, we find the expression, “If we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end.” There can be no question as to the meaning of the word in the verse now before us. “Faith is the assurance of (confidence in) things hoped for.” Faith is that principle, that exercise of mind and soul, which has for its object things not seen but hoped for, and which, instead of sinking under them as too ponderous, whether from their difficulty or from their uncertainty, stands firm under them--supports and sustains their pressure--in other words, is assured of, confides in and relies on them. It is not the Christian only who lives by faith. Faith is no dreamy, imaginative, or mystical thing, which it is fanciful if not fanatical to talk of. The schoolboy who expects a holiday, to be earned by his diligence or forfeited by his misconduct, exercises faith in that expectation the husbandman who expects the harvest is exercising that “confidence in things hoped for” which is faith. The parent who anticipates the manhood of his child is an example of that “walking by faith” which only madmen and fools disparage or dispense with. When Christ bids us to be men of faith, He is not contradicting nature, He is not even introducing into the world a new principle of action; He is only applying a principle as old as Nature herself, to matters beyond and above nature, which it needed a new revelation from the God of nature to disclose and to prove to us. If this proof be given us, it becomes as reasonable to anticipate and to prepare for eternity as it is reasonable to anticipate and to prepare for a holiday or a harvest, a wedding, or a profession. “Faith is confidence in things hoped for”; and whether the expected future be a later day of this life, or a day which shall close this life and usher in an everlasting existence, the principle which takes account of that future is one and the same--only debased or elevated, profaned or consecrated, by the length of the vision and by the character of the object. We must walk by faith if we would not be the scorn and laughingstock of our generation. The only question is, What, for us, are those “things hoped for,” which faith makes its object? Are they the trifles of time, or are they the substances of eternity? Are they the amusements, the vanities, the luxuries, the ambitions, which make up the life of earth--or are they the grand, the satisfying, the everlasting realities which God has revealed to us in His Son Jesus Christ--such as the forgiveness of sins, peace with God, victory over evil, the communion of saints, a growing likeness to Christ, a death full of hope, and a blessed immortality in God’s presence? (Dean Vaughan.)

    Faith the substance and evidence:

    An unseen and heavenly world is required to correspond to our faith just as much as a material world to correspond to our senses. I stand in the midst of nature on some lovely spring morning. The fragrance of flowers from every bright and waving branch, dressed in pale and crimson, floats to me. The song of matin birds falls on my ear. All this beauty, melody, and richness are the correspondence to my nature of the material world through my senses. Now there are inward perceptions and intuitions just as real as these outward ones, and requiring spiritual realities to correspond with them, just as much as the eye requires the landscape, or as the ear asks for sounds of the winds and woods and streams, for the song of birds, or the dearer accents of the human voice. To meet and answer the very nature of man, a spiritual world, more refined modes of existence, action, happiness, must be, else his nature, satisfied and fed in one direction, and that the lowest, is belied and starved in another direction, and that the highest. But, without illustrating further, in this general way, the rooting of faith in the primary ground of our being, let me show the peculiar light in which the great doctrines and practical influences of religion are brought to us, by thus considering “faith” itself as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” And first the great doctrine or fact of the being of a God is one of the things that corresponds to our faith, of which faith itself, as a faculty of the soul, is the basis and evidence. We want no other reason for believing in God. Faith itself is the reason, and the best reason. “He that believeth hath the witness in himself.” We need nothing put under our faith to support that, any more than under our direct outward perceptions, our positive knowledge, the dictates of our consciences, or the affections of our hearts, going forth to fix upon their appropriate objects. Like them, it is a radical part of our very constitution--only a part which Christ has come specially to bring out, enrich, and ennoble with the truth he utters, and the actual objects he presents. To the man in whom this principle or sentiment of faith is thus enlivened by meditation, prayer, and the whole stimulus of the gospel, the Supreme One does not appear simply as a first Cause, an original Creator, far back out of our present reach, but as the perpetual Sustainer and Renewer of all things, to whom he joins with the angelic choir of the poet in singing, “Thy works are beautiful as on the first day.” His God is near him, nay, with him; breathes upon him in the freshness of the morning; folds him tenderly in the shades of night, and answers every entreating or confiding desire which he silently ejaculates, with peace, sanctity, assurance that can be felt; “the benediction from these covering heavens falling upon him like dew.” As, sailing in northern latitudes, the needle dips to an unseen power, so his heart inclines to the unseen power of heaven and earth. With an ever-quickening sense of the Divine Being, comes also, through this vitally unfolded power of faith, the feeling of a share in the permanence of that Being; a persuasion, and, so far as in the flesh such a thing can be, realisation of the immortality of the soul. As we believe in the world below because we have senses, and not because somebody attempts logically to prove it to us, so we believe in the world above by the inner perceptions of faith. In fine, the same faith, while convincing us of this durableness of our real life, redeems us from the bondage of death, to which many, all their lifetime, are subject. Thus the apostle declares of Christ, that he “ abolished death.” For just in the degree that, through a religious faith, the feeling of immortality grows in the soul, the death of the body loses power to disturb or alarm it. Principles and affections are developed, on which, we know and are inwardly assured, death cannot lay that icy finger which must chill every flowing drop in the circulation of animal life. The spirit, alive to its relations to God and to all pure beings, is conscious of nothing in common with the grave, has nothing that can be put into the grave save the temporary garment that it wears; and its mounting desires, its ardent love, its swelling hopes, its holy communings, are not stuff woven into the texture of that garment, but are as separable from it as the lamp from its clay vase, as the light of heaven from the clod it for a passing moment illumines. In fact, in this state of inward life, the ideas of the spirit and death, of dust and the soul, cannot be brought together, any more than can the ideas of virtue and colour, thought and material size. (C. A. Bartol.)

    Faith, the substance of things hoped for:

    It is a certain and evident fact that every one of us is living, every moment, in two worlds: a material world and a spiritual world. All nature, all with which our bodies only have to do is one; all thought and memory and hope, and the inner workings of the mind, all that lies far away out of sight, all beyond the grave, all that concerns other worlds than this, that is the other world. The spiritual world which we cannot see is as real as the material world which is always before us. The power which makes the spiritual world a fact, by which we realise it, is “faith.” And that power is one with which it has pleased God to endow us all for that end. And where that “ faith” is in full exercise, the unseen becomes more real than the seen--for the seen can only be when it is actually present, and must cease with our natural life, while the unseen, though invisible now, will soon be all that we shall see, and will last for ever. Hence, “faith,” which is the sight of the mind, is a far greater thing than the sight of the eyes; for it has to do with the inner nature of a man which he carries with him everywhere, which is always going on: and it takes in, and makes real and present, God and heaven, and all that God hath said and done, or will say and will do; and all the grandnesses of the eternity. It makes “substance” of all these things, and gives “evidence” of our hope that these substances are ours. If I had to define “faith” I should call it a loving trust, a loving, personal approbation, merging into a holy life. But what is the groundwork of faith? what is its warrant? what justifies you in believing all this? God’s voice. How does God’s voice speak to me? Partly in His word, partly in His works, partly in His whisperings to my soul. There are two things which must never be forgotten about “faith.” The one is that though faith is a reasonable and intellectual exercise of the mind, nevertheless it lies more in the heart than in the head. It is not written without a distinct point and sufficient reason, “The evil heart of unbelief.” How can you believe and sin? The belief comes from God only. And the second and most important consideration is that all “faith” is a gift. However much you may read and study and think, you will never obtain faith except by prayer. It lies in the sovereignty of God. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

    Faith a sign of human progress:

    Faith is really a sign of human progress. It is the first thing that distinguishes us from the beasts of the field. Let me use an illustration: If there is grass for the ox, the ox feeds; if there be none it dies. It knows nothing of tillage or preparation of the soil for its provender. It knows no future. So, in a measure, is it with the savage. In his rudest state he is only one step above the brute. He hunts for his food, or gathers the wild fruit of the earth. Then take the stage of human life next above this--the simple, wandering, pastoral life. The shepherd or herdsman has to shift his flock from one district to another. He looks forward but a very little. Then comes the agricultural life, in which some provision has to be made for the future. The field is ploughed and sown in prospect of the next year’s harvest. Then comes a more civilised age, that of building and teaching. The pious ecclesiastic lays the foundations of some grand cathedral, in which he has faith to believe that future generations will worship. The poet or the prophet speaks, content that men unborn shall acknowledge the truth of his message or his song. And this indicates the onward progress. According as a man is animated by some lofty purpose, so his view is wide and far-reaching. As he is simply selfish, and believes only in his present gains and in what serves his present purpose, so his view and place is small. It is faith, or trust in what is distant and unseen, which alone raises him and makes him great. (H. Jones, M. A.)

    Faith a well-worn word scarcely realised in meaning:

    These key-words of Scripture meet the same fate as do coins that have been long in circulation. They pass through so many fingers that the inscriptions get worn off them. We can all talk about faith and forgiveness and justifying and sanctifying, but how few of us have definite notions about what these words that come so easily from our lips mean. There is a vast deal of cloudy haze in the minds of average church and chapel goers as to what this wonder-working faith may really be. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

    Faith not blind confidence:

    Faith--true, living faith--is not mere blind confidence; it is confidence for a reason. (Hy. Dunn.)

    The repose of faith

    Faith might perhaps, not improperly, be denominated the repose of the intellect and the repose of the affections; i.e., the understanding perfectly admitting the Divine testimony and the heart confidently trusting the Divine assurances. (T. Binney)

    The evidence of things not seen

    Faith, the evidence of things not seen

    I. First, concerning the ACT. Faith is said to be “ the evidence.” It is a grace that representeth the things of religion with such clearness and perspicuity of argument, that a believer is compelled to subscribe to the truth and worth of them; as a man yieldeth, when he seeth clear evidence to the contrary. There are in faith four things:

    1. A clear light and apprehension. As soon as God converteth the soul, He puts light into it.

    2. Faith is a convictive light, that findeth us corrupt and ill-principled, and full of prejudices against the doctrine of the gospel; and it is the work of faith to root out of the soul those carnal prejudices, counsels, reasonings, and carnal excuses which shut out that doctrine which the gospel offereth to us.

    3. It is an overpowering and certain conviction, that is, such as dispossesseth us of our corrupt principles, and argueth us into a contrary opinion and belief.

    4. It is a practical conviction. He that believeth is so convinced of the truth and worth of these things, that he is resolved to pursue after them, to make preparation for his eternal condition.

    Use: To put us upon examination and trial, whether we have such a faith or no, as is an evidence or convincing light; you may try it by the parts of it. There is the assent of faith and the consent of faith; a clear light and firm assent, and a free consent to the worth of the things of God.

    1. There is a clearness and perspicuity in the light of faith, which doth not only exclude the grossly ignorant, but those that have no saving knowledge.

    2. We may know whether faith be an evidence by the firmness of our consent. If men were more convinced there would be a greater conformity in their practices to the rules of religion.

    II. I come to the OBJECT, “Things not seen.” Faith is an evidence, but what kind of evidence? of things that cannot be otherwise seen, which cloth not disparage the evidence, but declare the excellency of faith. “Not seen,” that is, not liable to the judgment of sense and reason. What are those “things not seen”? Things may either be invisible in regard of their nature, or of their distance and absence from us. Some things are invisible in their own nature--as God, angels, and spirits; and all the way and work of the Holy Ghost in and about the spiritual life. Other things are invisible in regard of their distance and absence; and so things past and to come are invisible; we cannot see them with our bodily eyes, but they are discovered to us by faith. In short, these “ things not seen,” are either matters of constant practical experience, which are not liable to outward sense, or principles of knowledge, which are not suitable to natural reason.

    1. Matters of practical experience. The blessings of religion as the enduring substance (Hebrews 10:34), the benefit of affliction, the rewards and supplies of the spiritual life, answers of prayer, they are things not seen in regard of the bodily eye and carnal feeling; but faith expects them with as much assurance as if they were corporeally present, and could be felt and handled, and is assuredly persuaded of them, as if they were before our eyes.

    2. Principles of knowledge. There are many mysteries in religion above reason; until nature put on the spectacles of faith, it cannot see them.

    That the evidence of faith is conversant about things unseen by sense or natural reason.

    1. Because much of religion is past, and we have bare testimony and revelation to warrant it; as the creation of the world out of nothing, the incarnation, life, and death of Christ; these are truths not liable to sense, and unlikely to reason--that God should become a man and die. Now upon the revelation of the word, the Spirit of God makes all evident to faith.

    2. Much of religion is yet to come, and therefore can only be discerned by faith. Fancy and nature cannot outsee time, and look beyond death (2 Peter 1:9); unless faith hold the candle to hope we cannot see heaven at so great a distance. Heaven and the glorious rewards of religion are yet to come; faith only can see heaven in the promises and look upon the gospel as travailing in birth with a great salvation.

    3. That of religion which is of actual and present enjoyment, sense or reason cannot discern the truth or worth of it; therefore faith is still the evidence of things unseen.

    If the object of faith be things unseen, then

    1. Christians should not murmur if God keep them low and bare, and they have nothing they can see to live upon. As long as they do their duty, they are in the hands of God’s providence.

    2. In the greatest extremity that can befall us there is work for faith, but no place for discouragement; your faith is never tried till then.

    3. A Christian is not to be valued by his enjoyments, but by his hopes. “He hath meat and drink which the world knows not of” (John 4:32).

    4. Christ may be out of sight, yet not out of mind.

    Reproof to those that are all for sense and for present appearance.

    1. Such as “do not believe without present feeling.

    2. Such as cannot wait upon God without present satisfaction.

    (1) This is a great dishonour to God, to trust Him no further than we see Him. You trust the ground with your corn, and can expect a crop out of the dry clods, though you do not see how it grows, nor which way it thrives in order to the harvest.

    (2) It is contrary to all the dispensations of God’s providence. Before He gives in any mercy there are usually some trials.

    (3) It is contrary to the nature of faith.

    (4) It will weaken our hands in duty when we look to every present discouragement. If faith be such an evidence of things not seen, then let us examine--have we this faith that can believe things not seen? This is the nature of true faith. Hope built upon outward probability is but carnal hope; but here is the faith and hope we live by, that which is carried out to things not seen with the bodily eye.

    Take these directions to discover it.

    1. How doth it work as to Christ now He is out of sight? Alas! to most Christians Christ is but a name, a fancy, or an empty conceit, such as the heathens had of their topical gods, or we of tutelar saints, some for this country and some for that. Do you pray as seeing Him at God’s right hand in heaven pleading your cause, and negotiating with God for you?

    2. How doth it work as to His coming to judgment? Is the awe of that day upon your hearts? and do you live as those that must give aa account even for every idle word, when the great God of recompenses shall descend from heaven with a shout?

    3. How can you comfort yourselves in the midst of all your straits and sorrows with the unseen glory of another world? Do not you faint in your duty, but bear up with that courage and constancy which becomes Christians (2 Corinthians 4:16). 4, How doth it work as to the threatenings of the Word? Can you mourn for a judgment in its causes, and foresee a storm when the clouds are but a gathering?

    5. How doth your heart work upon the promises in difficult cases? Thereby God tries you, and thereby you may try yourselves (John 6:5-6).

    6. You may try your assent to the promises by the adventures you make upon God’s word.

    7. You may know whether you have this faith, which evidenceth things to come, and find out the weakness or strength of it by observing the great disproportion that is in your affections to things of sense, and things of faith. It is true, a Christian is not all spirit, and therefore sensible things work more with the present state of men than things spiritual. But yet certainly in a child of God, one that believes, that hath the evidence of things not seen, there will be some suitableness.

    8. You may know whether you have this faith by your thoughts of the ways of God, when they are despised or opposed. Faith, which is the evidence of things not seen, can see a great deal of beauty in a despised way Of God, and glory in a crucified Christ; as the good thief upon the cross could see

    Christ as a king, when he hung dying on the cross in disgrace (Luke 23:42).

    To press you to get this faith, which is the evidence of things not seen, that you may believe that which God hath revealed in His Word, and that solely upon God’s authority and the account of His Word; to quicken you to get this faith, which is of such great use to you.

    1. Consider that all the difficulty in assenting to doctrines of Scripture was not only in the first age.

    2. Consider the benefit of a sound conviction. A clear evidence of the mysteries of salvation is a great ground of all reformation of life.

    3. The more faith depends upon the warrant of God’s Word the better; and the fewer sensible helps it hath, the more it is prized (John 20:29).

    4. Sensible things will not work, if we do not believe the Word; those that think Moses and the prophets are but a cold dispensation in comparison of this, if one should come from the dead, for then they would repent and turn to God, let them read (Luke 16:29-31).

    5. We have need now to look after this faith, which is the evidence of things not seen, because the great reigning and prevailing sin is infidelity and unbelief; which is seen by our cavilling at every strict truth, by our carelessness in the things of God, by the looseness and profaneness of those that would be accounted Christians.

    6. We ought to look to this faith, because none are so resolved in the great matters of faith, but they may be more resolved; no man doth so believe but he may believe more (1 John 5:13).

    Direction to get and increase this faith.

    1. Beg the illumination of the Spirit of God to show you the truth of the Word, and the good things offered therein. This evidence is from the Spirit; thereof Paul prays for the Ephesians (Ephesians 1:17-18).

    2. Employ your reason, serious consideration, and discourse. The devil throws the golden ball in our way, of honour, pleasure, and profit, to divert us from heavenly things; and the intention of the mind being diverted, the impressions of religion are weak and faint.

    3. Labour to get a heart purged from carnal affections. Where there is more purity there will be more clearness (Matthew 5:8). (T. Manton, D. D.)

    Faith:

    What a mighty thing as a motive-power this faith must be! If a man is possessed by it, that something can be done; in some sure sense, it is done already, and only waits its time to come into visible existence in the best way it can. Just as one of those noble groups John Rogers fashions for us is done the moment the conception of it has struck his heart with a pang of delight, though he may not have so much as the lump of clay for his beginning; while I might stand with the clay in my hand to doomsday, and not make what he does, because I could not have the “ Faith … the evidence of things not seen.” What cannot be done, cannot be of faith. There can be no real faith in the soul toward the impossible; but make sure that faith is there, and then you can form no conception of the surprises of power hidden in the heart of it. And, trying to make this thing clear to you, I know of no better way to begin, than by saying, that faith is never that airy nothing which often usurps its place, and for which I can find no better name than fancy--a feeling without fitness, an anticipation without an antecedent, an effect without a cause, a cipher without a unit. A mere fancy, to a pure faith, is as the “Arabian Nights” to the Sermon on the Mount. Then faith is not something standing clean at the other extreme from fancy, for which there is no better name than fatalism--a condition numbers are continually drifting into, who, from their very earnestness, are in no danger of being sucked into the whirlpools of fancy; men who glance at the world and life through the night-glass of Mr. Buckle; who look backward and there is eternity, and forward and there is eternity; and feel all about them, and conclude that they are in the grasp of a power beside which what they can do to help themselves is about what a chip can do on the curve at Niagara. And yet their nature may be far too bright and wholesome to permit them to feel that the drift of things is not on the whole for good. They will be ready even to admit that “our souls are organ-pipes of diverse stop and various pitch, each with its proper note thrilling beneath the self-same touch of God.” But, when a hard pinch comes, they smoke their pipe, and refer it to Allah, or cover their face and refer it to Allah; but never fight it out, inch by inch, with all their heart and soul, in the sure faith that things will be very much after all what they make them--that the Father worketh hitherto, and they work. And these two things--the fancy that things will come to pass because we dream them, and the fatalism that they will come to pass because we cannot avoid them--are never to be mistaken for faith. It is true that there is both a fancyand a fatalism that is perfectly sound and good--the fancy that clothes the future to an earnest lad with a sure hope; that keeps the world fresh and fair, as in nature like that of Leigh Hunt, when to most men it has become arid as desert dust;--the bloom and poetry, thank God, by which men are converted, and become as little children. And there is a fatalism that touches the very centre of the circle of faith--which Paul always had in his soul. When sounding out some mighty affirmation of the sovereignty of God, he would go right on, with a more perfect and trusting devotion to work in the line of it. Fancy and fatalism, are the strong handmaidens of faith; happy is the man whose faith they serve. But what, then, is faith? Can that be made clear? I think it can. A young man feels in his heart the conviction, that there in the future is waiting for him a great destiny. Yet that destiny depends on his courage, and that courage on his constancy; and it is only when each has opened into the other, that the three become that evidence of things not seen, on which he can die with his soul satisfied--though all the land he had to show for the one promise was a graveyard;and all the line for the other, a childless son. Another feels a conviction, that here at his hand is a great work to do--a nation to create out of a degraded mob, and to settle in a land where it can carry out his ideas and its own destiny. But the conviction can be nothing without courage; and courage, a mere rushing into the jaws of destruction, without constancy. Only when forty years had gone, and the steady soul had fought its fight, did conviction, courage, and constancy ripen into the full certainty which shone in the eyes of the dying statesman, as he stood on Nebo, and death was swallowed up in victory. And yet it is clear, that, while courage and constancy in these men was essential to their faith, faith again was essential to their courage and constancy. These were the meat and drink on which the faith depended; but the faith was the life for which the meat and drink were made. A dim, indefinable consciousness at first it was, that something was waiting in that direction, a treasure hid in that field somewhere, to be their own if they durst but sell all they had, and buy the field. Then, as bit by bit they paid the price in the pure gold of some new responsibility or sacrifice, the clear certainty took the place of the dim intimation, and faith became the evidence of things not seen. This is the way a true faith always comes. Conversing once with a most faithful woman, I found that the way she came to be what she is lay at first along the dark path, in which she had to take one little timid step at a time. But, as she went on, she found all the more reason to take another and another, until God led her by a way she knew not, and brought her into a large place. Yet it was a long while before any step did not make the most painful drafts on both her courage and constancy. And so the whole drift of what man has done for man and God is the story of such a leading--first a consciousness that the thing must be done, then a spark of courage to try and do it; then a constancy that endures to the end; and then, whatever the end may be--the prison or the palace, it is all the same--the soul has the evidence of things not seen, and goes singing into her rest. Now, then, we want to make sure of three things, then we shall know that this faith is our own

    1. That God is at work without me--that is, the Divine energy--as fresh and full before I came, as the sea is before the minnow comes.

    2. That He is at work through me--that is, the Divine intention--as certainly present in my life as it was in the life of Moses; and

    3. That what we do together is as sure to be a success as that we are striving to make it one. There may be more in the graveyard than there is in the home. In the moment toward which I have striven forty years with a tireless, passionate, hungry energy, my expectation may be cut off, while my eye is as bright and my step as firm as ever. It is no matter. The energy is as full, the intention as direct, and the accomplishment as sure, as though God had already made the pile complete. And when, with the conviction that t can do a worthy thing, and the courage to try and the constancy to keep on, I can cast myself, as Paul did, and Moses and Abraham, into the arms of a perfect assurance of this energy, intention, and accomplishment of the Eternal--feel, in every fibre of my nature, that in Him I live and move and have my being--I shall not fear, though the earth be removed, because

    “A faith like this for ever doth impart

    Authentic tidings of invisible things;
    Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power,
    And central peace, subsisting at the heart
    Of endless agitation.”

    (R. Collyer, D. D.)

    The evidence of things not seen

    I. THE OBJECT IS SOMETHING NOT SEEN. Things unseen are not only such things as are invisible, and such as cannot be received by the eye, but also such as are not perceivable by any of our senses. Neither are things insensible meant, but such as are above the reach of reason. So that things unseen are such as are neither perceivable by the sense nor reason, so as to have either an intuitive or demonstrative knowledge of them. These are such as are conveyed to the soul by Divine revelation, without which man could not have known them; and such propositions as the connection of the terms depend upon the will of God.

    II. FAITH IS THE EVIDENCE OF THESE THINGS UNSEEN; because we, having a certain knowledge of God’s veracity, and His revelation of these things, are as certainly persuaded of the truth of them; and give as firm assent unto them as if they were seen and intuitively and demonstratively known unto us. Yet here you must consider

    1. That though the things and propositions be above reason, yet this persuasion or firm assent and this certain knowledge of the Divine revelation are acts of reason, and in the book of reason are they written.

    2. That this object is of greater latitude than the former. For things hoped for, which are to come, are not seen; and not only they, but many things past and present.

    3. That the things not seen in this place are not all things not seen, but such as God hath revealed to be the matter and object of our Divine faith.

    4. That though substance and evidence may differ, yet both are a firm assent; but in respect of the things hoped for, may include a firm confidence and a certain expectation; for in respect of that object, that assent is more practical than this evidence which respects things unseen; so that here wants but little of a perfect definition.

    5. The faith here defined is Divine faith in general, not that which is called justifying as justifying, for that is but a particular branch of this general, looking at a particular object, which is Christ’s sacrifice and His intercession. (G. Lawson.)

    Faith proving and reproving:

    In the realm of the unseen faith examines and discriminates. Faith is not credulity. Faith is not the promiscuous acceptance of this, that, and everything which lies out of sight. Faith is the criterion and touchstone of things unseen. When one comes to her with a professed doctrine, saying, “In the world out of sight, the world of spirit and heaven, there exists such or such a truth, such or such a reality, such or such a being;” faith, the faculty by which we take account of the unseen, applies herself to the subject, puts it to the test of Scripture, asks its evidences and examines them, rejects the worthless, ratifies the true, and finally gives judgment upon the result and upon the issue. Faith has lived long enough to know--even from Scripture--how confident sometimes are “lying wonders,” how easy it is to find evidences for any folly, how far we might drift from the moorings of truth and duty if we gave heed to every doctrine which professed to rest (as St. Paul once expressed it)upon “spirit, or word, or letter as from us.” It is the office of Faith to test and to discriminate things unseen--to decide whether they belong to the revealed invisible, or to the conjectured, imagined, fancied invisible--and according to her judgment upon this question, so to determine the further question, Shall I accept, or shall I refuse? Faith takes God’s Word, and tests every professed truth by it. Faith is the touchstone of all matters lying in the region of spirit--she decides whether, for her, they are true or false, by seeing whether they agree, or whether they conflict, with her own one guide, which is the revelation, the inspiration, of God. This exercise of faith implies, then, one earlier. Before faith can test things unseen by the Word of God, she must have that Word, and she must know it. (Dean Vaughan.)

    Things not seen:

    “Things hoped for” are “things not seen.” St. Paul says in the 8th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, “Hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?” But the “unseen” is not coextensive with the “hoped for.” There are “things not seen” elsewhere than in the future. Faith is wider than hope. Faith has other spheres than futurity. Whatever is invisible, whether past or present or future, is an object of faith. Every fact in history is apprehended by faith. Every past event, every record of birth and death, of battle and revolution, of dynasty founded and fallen, of historical person and character, can be grasped, can be accepted, only by faith. To be assured that certain portions of this island were successively occupied by Roman, by Saxon, by Dane, by Norman--that the established religion of this country was once Pagan, once Romanist, once Puritan--that a sovereign of this country was executed at Whitehall and buried at Windsor--that there ever was such a person as Alexander or Caesar or Napoleon--is an exercise, a strong exercise, of faith. That which is not at this moment seen and handled and tasted--that storm or that Shipwreck or that fire which the public paper tells of as having happened a month ago or happened yesterday, but which we ourselves did not see happen and can only know of by testimony--belongs, for that reason, to the realm of faith. The province of faith is coextensive with “things not seen.” And those unseen things may be either future, or past, or present. It is idle to deny that there are such. If we spoke only of earthly existences, how many of these, of the most certain of these, are at this moment out of our sigh! The friend from whom you heard yesterday--the person dearest to you in the world, not now by your side--it is faith, it is not sight, which represents that existence to you as real.But which of us, of the most sceptical of us, denies the fact of spiritual existences, spiritual agencies, which are of necessity, not by accident, but essentially, not now only, but always, things unseen? Faculties, habits, feelings, affections, motives, principles, processes and conditions of thought, laws of cause and consequence, souls and spirits of the dead and living, beings above us, a God of creation and providence, a Father and Saviour and Comforter--in whatever degree, to whatever extent, we have information or conviction of any of these, however confidently or however tentatively we have hold upon any of these, it is faith, faith alone, which grasps or deals with them--they too belong to that vast realm of the unseen, for the contemplation of which faith is the one faculty--that faith which is not only the assurance of things hoped for, but also--it is a far larger and wider term--“the evidence of things not seen.” (Dean Vaughan.)

    The visions of faith:

    Faith is a certain image of eternity; all things are present to it; things past and things to come are all so before the eyes of faith, that he in whose eyes that candle is enkindled beholds heaven as present, and sees how blessed a thing it is to die in God’s favour, and to be chimed to our grave with the music of a good conscience. Faith converses with the angels, and antedates the hymns of glory. Every man that hath this grace is as certain that there are glories for him, if he persevere in his duty, as if he had heard and sung the thanksgiving-song for the blessed sentence of doomsday. (Bp. Jeremy Taylor.)

    The prospect of faith:

    Faith, having seated itself upon the high tower and mountain--God’s omnipotency and all-sufficiency--hath a great prospect. It can look over all the world, and look into another world too. (W. Bridge.)

    The tense of faith:

    Faith altereth the tenses, and putteth the future into the present tense. (J. Trapp.)

    Faith a telescope:

    Faith is to sight and reason what the telescope is to the naked eye. By the use of this wondrous instrument the most distant planets are now made known to us in detail. A map of Mars has been published showing canal-like seas, islands and large mountains or table-lands covered with snow. Faith brings the distant near, makes the spiritual the most real, and gives us to dwell in heavenly places. (H. O. Mackey.)

    Faith a corrective:

    Men who see the invisible, estimate the more correctly the things temporal and the things eternal. (T. B.Stephenson, LL. D.)

    Believing in the unseen:

    Dr. Parker, preaching when a dense fog prevailed, said “the fog had taught him to believe in the unseen world more than ever before. Close to him there were oak trees that were hidden the previous day by mist. But he knew them to be there. Men might say, ‘If they were there we could see them.’ But they are there and you cannot see them! A schoolbay would have laughed in his face if he had said the trees did not exist because the fog hid them. Yet there are men going on to old age who deny the unseen world because they cannot see it. But the trees are there and so are the angels!” (Christian World.)

    An appeal to the great names of the past:

    We know the power of any appeal to the great names of our secular history. There is no scholar, however humble or obscure, whose exhausted energy is not renewed when he is reminded of the famous students of former times. The honours which cluster and thicken, as the ages roll by, sound the names of great poets, artists, philosophers, statesmen, stimulate the enthusiasm and sustain the energy of those who, in distant times and countries, strive for the same glory. When nations are struggling for freedom, it is not living patriotism alone which gives strength to their arms and daring to their hopes--the memory of the patriots of other lands and of other centuries kindles enthusiasm and inspires heroic endurance. Defeated, while living, in their conflicts with tyranny, they triumph gloriously after death. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)

    By it the elders obtained a good report

    A good report obtained by faith

    I. THE FATHERS UNDER THE LAW HAD THE SAME KIND OF FAITH THAT WE HAVE. The same promises; upon the same terms; through the same merit of the blood of Christ.

    II. THE APOSTLES ASCRIBE THEIR RENOWN IN THE CHURCH TO THEIR FAITH. Though the private soldiers do worthily in the high places of the field, yet the general bears away the honour, he gets the battle and wins the day; so here, all graces have their use in the holy life, all do worthily in their order and place; love worketh, hope waiteth, patience endureth, zeal sparkleth, and obedience urgeth to duty; but faith bears away the prize, this is the chiefest pin and wheel in the whole frame of salvation. Partly because it is the grace of reception on our part, by which we receive all the influences of heaven, and partly because it directs and quickens all other graces. It feeds hope, it teaches patience to wait, it makes zeal to sparkle, it gives relief to self-denial, and encourageth obedience. Faith is like a silken string, which runs through the chain of pearl; or like the spirits that run with the blood throughout all the veins.

    III. THE FAITH OF THE ELDERS WAS AN ACTIVE FAITH, that discovered itself by good fruits and gracious actions; otherwise it could not have brought them into credit with the Church. God only knows the heart. It is actions that discover their faith, and the strength of their assent.

    IV. ONE OF THE REWARDS OF AN ACTIVE FAITH IS A GOOD REPORT.

    1. For the reasons of God’s ordination and appointment. I shall touch upon those that are of a chief regard and consideration.

    (1) That every necessary blessing may be adopted and taken into the covenant, and provision made against all inconveniences that may befal us in the way of religion. As the Psalmist saith of Zion (Psalms 48:12-13).

    (2) Because of the great inconveniences of reproach and infamy, either to God and religion itself, or to good men.

    (3) That God may retaliate with faith. Believers honour Him, therefore He will honour them (1 Samuel 2:30).

    (4) That this may be a bait to draw in others to a liking of His ways.

    2. In what manner doth the Lord dispense this privilege? And it is grounded upon an objection, that may be framed thus; the servants of God are often clouded with black reproaches, “They took away the spouse’s Song of Solomon 5:7), that is, her honour and name. David complains (Psalms 22:6). Therefore how doth God give in this recompense to the active faith? I answer, in several propositions.

    (1)The blessing is not absolutely complete in this life. As long as there is sin we are liable to shame. A good name is an outward pledge of eternal glory. When sin is abolished then may we expect perfect glory. In a mixed estate we must look for mixed dispensations.

    (2) The wicked are not competent judges when they judge of the faithful Luke 6:26). General applause can seldom be had without compliance, and without some sin; therefore it is spoken as a cursed thing to gratify all, and seek to draw respect from all. There is one rare instance in the third Epistle of John, verse12.

    (3) We have the approbation of their consciences, though not the commendation of their lips; and their hearts approve when their mouths slander; and we have their reverence, though not their praise.

    (4) There are some special seasons when God will vindicate His people from contempt. There is a resurrection of names as well as of persons.

    3. Whether in the exercise of faith we may eye a good report? is not this vain-glory? I answer in four things.

    (1) Our chief care must be to do the duty, and trust God with the blessing; this is the temper of a Christian.

    (2) If we expect it as a blessing of the covenant, we must rather look for it from God than from men, expect it as the gift of His grace for our encouragement in the ways of religion.

    (3) All the respect that we have to men is by a greater care of duty, to prevent undue surmises and suspicion (2 Corinthians 8:21).

    (4) The glory of God and the credit of religion must be at the utmost end of all (Matthew 5:16).

    Uses:

    1. Prize this blessing; it is a sweet encouragement to you in the work of God. I observe that usually men first make shipwreck of a good name, then of a good conscience.

    2. Be careful how you prejudice the good name of a believer; you cross God’s ordination. How ought you to tremble, when you go about to take off the crown which God hath put on their heads!

    3. To press you to this active faith. There is great reason for it upon these grounds.

    (1) Because there are so many censures abroad.

    (2) Because there are so few good works abroad. (T. Manton, D. D.)

    The renown of faith

    I. INSTANCES OR EXAMPLES ARE THE MOST POWERFUL CONFIRMATIONS OF PRACTICAL TRUTH.

    1. Who these “elders” were is put beyond dispute by the ensuing discourse. All true believers from the foundation of the world, or the giving of the first promise, unto the end of the dispensation of the Old Testament, are intended.

    2. This testimony was given them in the Scriptures; that is, it is so in particular of many of them, and of the rest in the general rules of it.

    II. THEY WHO HAVE A GOOD TESTIMONY FROM GOD SHALL NEVER WANT REPROACHES FROM THE WORLD.

    III. IT IS FAITH ALONE WHICH FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD WAS THE MEANS AND WAY OF OBTAINING ACCEPTANCE WITH GOD.

    IV. The faith of true believers from the beginning of the world, WAS FIXED ON THINGS FUTURE, HOPED FOR, AND INVISIBLE; THAT IS, ETERNAL LIFE AND GLORY IN AN ESPECIAL MANNER.

    V. That faith whereby men please God ACTS ITSELF IN A FIXED CONTEMPLATION ON THINGS FUTURE AND INVISIBLE, from whence it derives encouragement and strength to endure and abide firm in profession, against all opposition and persecutions.

    VI. HOWEVER MEN MAY BE DESPISED, VILIFIED, AND REPROACHED IN THE WORLD, YET IF THEY HAVE FAITH, IF THEY ARE TRUE BELIEVERS, THEY ARE ACCEPTED WITH GOD, AND HE WILL GIVE THEM A GOOD REPORT. (John Owen, D. D.)

    Faith and its exploits

    I. FAITH GREATENS MEN.

    II. FAITH MIGHTILY AFFECTS OUR ORDINARY HUMAN LIFE.

    III. FAITH IS POSSIBLE TO ALL CLASSES.

    IV. FAITH IS CONSISTENT WITH VERY DIFFERENT DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE.

    V. FAITH CAN MASTER INSUPERABLE DIFFICULTIES. Stormy seas forbid our passage; frowning fortifications bar our progress; mighty kingdoms defy our power; lions roar against us; fire lights its flaming barricade in our path; the sword, the armies of the alien, mockings, scourgings, bonds and imprisonment--all these menace our peace, darken our horizon, and try on us their power; but faith has conquered all these before, and it shall do as much again. Reckon on God’s faithfulness. Look not at the winds and waves, but at His character and will. Get alone with Him, steeping your heart and mind in His precious and exceeding great promises. Be obedient to the utmost limit of your light. Walk in the Spirit, one of whose fruits is faith. So shall you be deemed worthy to join this band, whose names and exploits run over from this page into the chronicles of eternity, and to share their glorious heritage. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)

    The best acquirement

    1. All obtain some kind of report.

    2. Some obtain a great report.

    3. All may obtain a good report.

    4. All ought to endeavour to obtain a good report.

    5. A good report is not easily and at once obtained.

    6. A good report is the best of all things that can be obtained. It is the only passport to heaven, and the only imperishable possession. (D. Thomas.)

    The faith of the ancient worthies:

    Christ crucified for us forms the great object of faith under the Christian dispensation. But the apostle’s words, no less than the facts of the case, forbid the supposition that all God’s testimony concerning His Son was embraced in the faith of these ancient worthies. In the case of Enoch, for example, the faith which the apostle’s argument attributes by implication to him is the general belief “that God is, and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” In Noah’s case no mention is made of any testimony or object of faith, except the Divine warning concerning the coming flood. In the case of Rahab, again, there is nothing in the book of Joshua, or in what the apostle says of her here, which can be construed as pointing to the Messiah. But supposing that in these cases, at least, their faith did not consciously embrace the Messiah, because the Messiah had not been revealed to it, it does not therefore follow either that they were saved in virtue of their faith as a meritorious act, or that they were saved independently of Christ. It is to be noticed, moreover, that the reason why their faith did not embrace so much as we are required to believe, was not because of anything defective in that faith, viewed as a mental act--the effects it produced forbid that supposition--but simply because of the want of a fuller revelation. They had not received the promise in its full and perfect form. Compared with that which we enjoy, their light was but as the dim dawn. And it is a striking testimony to the excellence of the principle, that a faith to which so little was revealed should sometimes so far surpass ours in the wonders which it wrought. Their faith is in fact a model for our own. It was proportioned to the degree of light which they possessed. They believed God’s Word in so far as God had spoken to them. It was not that they received only one part of the Divine testimony, and wilfully rejected another--true faith never does that, but receives with equal readiness and confidence whatsoever God says. To believe only so much of what God says as suits our wishes, or accords with our prejudices, or commends itself to our reason, is not to believe the Divine testimony. The result of our own judgment, or our own fancy, it is in no sense faith. He is in no sense a believer who receives only so much of God’s Word as pleases him, and gives the lie to all the rest. We insist the more on this because of the practical issues which it involves. Not only is our faith worthless, if it be not ready to give credence to all that God has said, but it will prove ineffectual for salvation, however much it may embrace, if it receive not the one truth which assures us of the freeness of the Divine love to us through Christ Jesus--that truth which constitutes the burden and substance of the gospel message. Even the faith of those earlier saints, limited as was the testimony presented to it, tended to this result. The revelations of God which they had received, declared or implied His righteousness and His friendship for man--a righteousness which would not allow sin to pass with impunity, and a friendship which promised mercy to those who would repent of sin and seek after God. Faith in these would naturally suggest to the believing soul the difficulty of their being exercised consistently with each other. But it would also convince them that, notwithstanding that difficulty, the Divine promise would be fulfilled. If the revelation given said how it was to be done, the same faith would receive its testimony. But if not--if the dim foreshadowing of the coming Saviour left them in ignorance of how God’s promise could be fulfilled consistently with His righteousness--faith would nevertheless assure them of its fulfilment, and calmly receive it and rely on it, leaving Him to determine how it was to be accomplished; for the province of faith is to receive what God says, simply because He says it, not to show how God’s Word can be true. In this way, we imagine, the faith of some of these earlier saints operated. Believing in God’s righteousness, and yet believing His promise to forgive and receive those who came to Him, they verbally and by sacrifice made confession of their sins and evil deserts, and yet trusted to Him to find a way of rendering the fulfilment of His promise consistent with His own righteousness. Thus their faith wrought in them reconciliation to, and trust in God, and thereby proved the means of their salvation. It will now appear how it is that, although they might be saved, without conscious and intelligent faith in Christ we cannot--how it is that the revelation we are favoured with places us in a position entirely different from theirs. It is because that revelation is a test of the true state of our minds in relation to God. Possessed of it, if we do not believe in Christ we reject the Divine testimony, and prove that we have no faith in anything which God says, but are still in a state of unbelief and rebellion and enmity. In fine, in the absence of a revelation, confidence in God and submission to His will were possible, though under the circumstances faith in Christ was impossible. Whereas, in possession of a revelation, the want of faith in Christ shuts us out from a state of confidence in God, and submission to His will, and must therefore debar us from the enjoyment of salvation. (W. Landels, D. D.)

    Antiquity of faith:

    The “for,” like so many “fors” in Scripture, rests upon a word or two unwritten. As if it were said, “A mighty grace”--“An ancient grace”--“A worldwide and an age-long grace”--“for by it”--or rather, “in it,” on the subject of it, on the strength of it--“the elders,” they of the old time, the saints and servants of God from the very beginning, “obtained a good report”; “were attested,” were borne witness of, received an approving testimony, from Him who alone is the faithful and true witness, God Himself in His holy Word. In many things they and we are widely separated. But this verse teaches us the unity of all ages and all countries in one single comprehensive principle. In this “faith,” the apostle says, to which I exhort you--his “faith” of which you will have so special a need in these coming days of trial and temptation--in this “faith” they lived and died to whom God in Scripture bore His emphatic testimony: in this, and no other--this same assurance of things not possessed but hoped for--this same discrimination of things not seen nor touched nor handled, yet existing in all the changeless reality of a world indestructible because immaterial, eternal because Divine. If we would ever know unity, we must seek it in the life of faith. Unbelief, like sin--unbelief, which is sin--is division, is disunion, at once. No two unbelievers, no two sinners, can be at one. Unity is to be found only in faith. Two men who are distinctly conscious of one God, one Lord, one Spirit--two men who are resolutely bent upon giving up everything contrary to the Divine Will as they read it--two men who are living holy lives in the pursuit of a life beyond death, everlasting and eternal--are at one with each other, whether they know it or not--for they are both living that life of faith in which the elders, like the men that are now, obtained a good report. (Dean Vaughan.)

    Faith the foundation and strength of character

    Character is man’s noblest possession, the accomplished design of renewing grace, the crown and glory of human life. By virtue of it a man takes rank with the peerage of heaven, and holds an estate in the general goodwill. It is much more true that character is power than that knowledge is power. History teaches us that moral forces are the real rulers of the world. The influence of wealth is feeble in comparison with the influence of tried worth. No one is shut out from obtaining this best of all distinctions, this most priceless of all possessions. Every one should aim to deserve a good report. The text admonishes us how it is to be obtained. “By faith” the elders attained that excellence of character which gave them favour in the sight of God and man. Faith is declared to be the foundation and strength of character.

    I. FAITH MAKES MEN MASTERS OF THEIR CIRCUMSTANCES. There are some persons who seem to have no character of their own. When hemmed in by moral restraints and moving in an atmosphere of religion, they exhibit a negative colourless goodness; but let them be thrown into a tide of dissipation and they yield without a struggle, and go with the multitude to do evil. The first truth, then, for faith to grasp is this: “I am a spiritual and immortal being, with power to choose my own lot, determine my own course, and form my own character. If I allow myself to be the sport of circumstances, I shall be unstable as water and never excel; but if I have faith in the invisible might of energy, and in the ultimate success of perseverance, I shall obtain the prize of my high calling.”

    II. NEXT COMES THE CONVICTION OF OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO GOD FOR THE USE OF THIS POWER. A great many wise decisions and virtuous struggles with temptation go to the building up of a good character. Human nature is a marshy soil for such a structure, and needs a great deal done under ground and out of sight before its ,stability can be secured. There must be a strong foundation of moral concrete, of conscientiousness. But this cannot be laid without frequent appeals to conscience, and its judgments will be wavering and obscure unless faith unstops the ear to hear the sanction of God’s voice. It is a sheet-anchor to a man in temptation, if he have sufficient faith in God’s presence and authority to make him say, “How shall I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” Again, faith in God as our omnipotent Father and the Judge of all, creates a habit of referring everything to conscience. Believe that for every opinion you adopt you will be called to answer before God, and you will be careful not to take up hastily with any, and not to hold them in the clenched fists of prejudice.

    III. MOST MEN WHO HAVE ATTAINED A GOOD REPORT HAVE HAD A DEFINITE PURPOSE IN LIFE, AND A CLEARLY DEFINED NOTION OF THE PLACE GOD INTENDED THEM TO FILL. Our forefathers had a deep impression of the Divine hand shaping the course of an ordinary man’s life; hence they spoke of his business or occupation as his “calling.” So long as a man’s trade is useful to the community, fitted to serve the comfort or refinement of society, he has as much reason to believe that God has called him to it as he has to believe that God designed the earth to bring forth food for man’s support. And, depend upon it, man will turn out all the better work, and do his duty with all the greater care, for believing that God accepts it as a service to Himself. In every walk of life we shall find scope for a career of usefulness and happiness, provided we buy up its opportunities. To begin with the duty lying nearest to us is the way to fulfil our mission.

    IV. FAITH IN THE IMPERISHABLE WORTH OF TRUTH is another most necessary element in the formation of an honourable character. Integrity in word and deed is the backbone of character, and loyal adherence to veracity its most prominent characteristic. Seldom has a finer eulogium been pronounced upon any man than was spoken by the late Duke of Wellington on the occasion of the death of Sir Robert Peel. He said: “I was long connected with him in public life. We were both in the councils of our sovereign together, and I had long the honour to enjoy his private friendship. In all the course of my acquaintance with him, I never knew a man in whose truth and justice I had greater confidence or in whom I saw a more invariable desire to promote the public service. In the whole course of my communication with him I never knew an instance in which he did not show the strongest attachment to truth; and I never saw, in the whole course of my life, the smallest reason for suspecting that he stated anything which he did not firmly believe to be the fact.”

    V. BY FAITH, FEELING THEIR OWN WEAKNESS, THE EXCELLENT OF THE EARTH LAID HOLD ON THE STRENGTH OF GOD. In reference to all the distinctive traits of Christian character, we may say without the slightest qualification, “Severed from Christ, and without faith in His helpful Spirit, you can do nothing.” These heavenly fruits of character do not grow on the wild olive-tree of humanity, but only after it has been grafted into the good olive-tree, the Lord Jesus Christ. They imply the possession of so much which a man who has only the prudential virtues, after the fashion of the world, is wholly destitute of. They imply faith in God’s omniscience and care and a hope of eternal glory; they imply convictions which have broken the heart, made it jealous for God’s honour, humbled it at the feet of Divine mercy, and inspired it with a love of peace and gentleness. Without these convictions and sentiments such traits of character are impossible. There is neither motive for them nor meaning in them. They are the fruits of the Spirit, and only possible, therefore, in those who have the Spirit. But in every age God has given His Holy Spirit to such as sought His aid. (E. W.Shalders, B. A.)

    The roll-call of the illustrious dead:

    Auvergne, a Breton warrior, called Grenadier of France, died fighting for his country. As a memorial, his comrades decided that his name should still stand on the rolls. It was regularly called, and a comrade answered for him, “Dead on the field.” So is Hebrews 11:1-40., a roll-call of the victorious dead, a regimental register of God’s heroes.

    The victories of faith

    In almost every capital of Europe there are varieties of triumphal arches or columns upon which are recorded the valiant deeds of the country’s generals, its emperors, or its monarchs. You will find, in one case, the thousand battles of a Napoleon recorded, and in another you find the victories of a Nelson pictured. It seems, therefore, but right that faith, which is the mightiest of the mighty, should have a pillar raised to its honour, upon which its valiant deeds should be recorded. The apostle undertook to raise the structure, and he erected a most magnificent pillar in the chapter before us. It recites the victories of faith. (C. H. Spurgeon.)