God,
who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by
the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son”
(Heb. 1:1-2).
Although we
have heard very much of the document which goes by the name of the ‘Letter to
the Hebrews’, and may think we know something about it, and although many of its
terms and phrases are so familiar to our ears, I am convinced that the magnitude
of this letter has never yet been comprehended. It is a far greater document
than perhaps any of us realise. How immensely far-reaching and comprehensive it
is! In the presence of a new sense of that immensity, I venture to bring before
you a little more about it at this time.
Yes, it is a
document. But for the closing sentences, we would never know it was a letter. It
comprehends, as you know, all the spiritual meaning of at least four thousand
years, as contained in the Old Testament. It goes behind all history, behind all
temporal and earthly movements and events and systems and processes, and gathers
them all up in one inclusive issue — the inheritance of God’s Son.
Problems
Answered
This letter
resolves all the greatest problems that have ever perplexed the human mind or
troubled the human heart; all the problems of time and of eternity.
Is it the
problem of man? He has always been a problem; there has always hung over his
head a question — What is he? Who is he? Why is he? Where is he going? What is
his destiny? Those questions have occupied and exercised the mind and heart ever
since there was a man. This letter essays to answer all those questions, and
resolve all those problems: and the answer is Jesus Christ! In this letter, the
problem and question of man is answered in the Person of God’s Son.
Is it the great
question and problem of sin? That has troubled and fretted man from the earliest
time. What a problem sin is, and what a question sin is! What a story sin has
written! What a world sin has made of this world! And this letter essays to
solve that problem and to answer that question, and does so in exactly the same
way. The whole thing is taken up and answered, cleared up and solved, in the
Person of Jesus Christ.
Is it the
mystery of suffering? What a mystery suffering is, what a problem! What a
question hangs over human suffering! ‘Why?’ Again, this letter essays to tackle
and settle the whole question of suffering, and, once more, it does so in
precisely the same way, in the Person of Jesus Christ. The end of all that is
secured, settled and sealed in Him. And triumph over it, while it lasts, is
found in Him.
Is it the
strange and hard way of the life of believers? The pathway of the believer is a
strange, and often a hard way, full of perplexities, problems and mysteries.
Sometimes they bring us very low. Yes, the way of the believer’s life is fraught
with mysterious, perplexing adversities and difficulties. And often, out of
them, there arises a great question. Why? What does it all mean? What does God
mean by all this? What is God after in this way? Why has He not swept this all
aside, and caused the path of the believer to be free of this kind of thing?
Why? This letter essays to answer such questions, and the answer is here, clear
and strong. It is answered in the Person of Jesus Christ.
To touch on
those few problems, is to show something of the magnitude of this letter. If
what I have said is true, it is an immense document.
It is always a
very helpful way to understand any part of the Word of God, having read it, and
noted what it says, to stand back from it and ask the question — Why was that
written? What had the writer in mind? What was his object? He must have started
out with some clearly defined intention. He must have had something quite
definite in his mind, that led him to start to write. He did not just sit down
and write the thing that came into his head, or off his pen. He had an object;
he knew what he wanted to set forth and convey. He may have used many words,
metaphors and similes and what not; sometimes he may have diverged, as Paul so
often did — starting out, and then going off at a tangent, but coming back again
to his original intention, his primary thought and purpose. What was it that was
in the mind, in the heart of the writer, which he intended to get over?
The Infinite
Greatness of Christ
And if you
stand back from this letter, having read it carefully, and gathered up its
content, and ask that question (whoever the writer was, we don’t know, and
perhaps we were never intended to know; it does not matter): What had the writer
in mind? — the answer is almost obvious. The man who sat down to write this
letter had in his mind, as his intention, this one thing: to set forth before
his readers the infinite greatness of Jesus Christ; and, in so doing, to seek to
convey to them what an immense inheritance they have in Him.
We can never
appreciate our inheritance until we have recognised the greatness of the One who
gives it to us. Or, to put that round the other way: really to recognise and to
apprehend the greatness of the Giver, is to see how great the gift must be. And
that is what is here. We find here all the lines of Old Testament history; and
oh, how many lines there are in this letter! Just like a great skein of threads,
a mass of loose ends, without an end in themselves. Go through the letter and
see how many things are touched upon. What a variety of matters from the Old
Testament there is in this letter! All these lines converge upon, are brought
together in, and are ended by, Jesus Christ. That is no small thing.
So, you open
the letter, and you begin to read. The first inclusive movement, comprehending
all else is the presentation of the Son. If in our present consideration we get
no farther than this - and, even here, only a little way – if it could lead to
our having a larger apprehension of our Lord, a very great purpose will have
been served.
It is a sad
fact that many Christians are suffering because their Lord is too little. He is
too little for their problems; He is too little for their natures; He is too
little for their sins. Of course, they would not acknowledge that in theory, but
that is what it amounts to — that, for so many things, our Lord is not
sufficient, He is not adequate, He is not big enough. We are where we are just
because of that. If only there could come to us the power and illumination of
the Holy Spirit, a new and adequate apprehension of the greatness of Christ,
many things would recede, There would be comfort; there would be hope; there
would be deliverance; there would be salvation; there would be victory. May the
Lord do that.
Son of God
Let us look now
at this first great movement: the presentation of the Son. We have here at least
eight things said about Him. Firstly, He is God’s Son. In our Christian doctrine
and creed, of course, we accept that without a thought. But everything that
follows — all that is to be ours, all that is to be effected — simply comes out
of the fact that the One who has provided it is no less than God’s Own Son. As
the opening words tell us: “God has spoken in His Son.” In times past, He used
servants, and He used angels. They could not do it. They all stopped short; the
thread was left loose. And God said: “I will send My Son.” Remember the Son’s
own parable. God sent ‘servants’, but the thing was not done. “I will send My
beloved Son” (Luke 20:13). And, blessed be God, the Son, so this letter
says, and so we believe, has done what all the servants put together were never
able to do. We see the greatness of Sonship, as an inclusive and conclusive
thing with God.
Heir of all
Things
“Whom He
appointed heir of all things”. The Son was appointed by God “heir of all
things”; the inheritance of all that God ever made and intended, was secured
by God the Father irrevocably in His Son. In 1 Kings chapter 8, there is the
account of the bringing of the ark of the covenant of the Lord from Zion into
the temple; and you may have noticed that in verse 8 that there is an
alternative translation of the little phrase about the staves. In one
translation, it is: “the staves were so long that the ends of the staves were
seen from the holy place before the oracle; but they were not seen without”
(1 Kings 8:8). But there is another translation, which says: “And they drew
out the staves, so that the end of the staves were seen...” — which means
they took out the staves from the Ark, by which it had been carried all through
the journey, and put them up in a corner, and said: You are done with; we don’t
need you any more; the Ark has come to rest; there is no more journeying.
This letter to
the Hebrews, so called, sees Jesus, the Ark of the Covenant, finally at rest in
the heavenly sanctuary, and the staves are drawn out; we are come to the end.
And God has come to His end; all things are secured. No more going on; no more
questions of, "how will it end?" The journey is at an end in Him. It is all
secured in Him. That is what is said here. God has reached His end, come to His
rest in His Son; because His Son is the sworn, covenanted Heir of all things,
and He shall have all things. They are secured in Him.
The Full and
the Final Speech of God
God, who in
times past spoke this way and that, by this portion and that, by this man and
that, in fragments — nothing perfect — has, at the end, spoken. Nothing beyond
that; this is God’s final speech; the Son is God’s final speech. And it is not
just what the Son says, not just what Jesus said when He was on earth
that is the final speech of God — though of course that is true. But what is
here is that the Son in Himself, in His own Person, in what He is, is
God’s final speech. God has given a final presentation of His mind in His Son.
The hearing of the Son is something more than hearing what He says.
When we are
listening to a speaker, our hearing of his voice is the sum total of quite a
number of things. We are dependent upon the air, with all its sound waves and
vibrations; we are dependent upon that marvellous organism, the ear, with all
its thousands of mysterious little chords; we are dependent upon the nerves that
transmit the signals from the ear to the brain; and so on. An accumulation of
marvellous things is found in our hearing any sound at all; and it is the
accumulation of all these things that registers upon us, and takes effect and
makes us hear. That is the meaning of Christ as God’s final speech. You can hear
His sayings and His utterances, and yet not hear Him in that way. To hear
Him means that Christ registers an effect of Himself and His significance upon
your very being. So God has spoken, and, thank God, many have so heard.
The Instrument
and the Pattern of all Creation
He was the
instrument of creation — through Him the ages were made — and He was the pattern
of creation — for that is what this writer gives himself to make clear. By His
Son, God created all things; and, in so doing, He made the Son the pattern of
the creation. He was not making something in a detached and an objective way,
but He was making all things to include the very meaning of Christ.
We have often
said it, but perhaps we have not grasped it, because it is such an immense
thing, that, if we could read the whole universe of creation, with our spiritual
eyes enlightened, we should see in everything some trace of Christ. We should
see something that we can find in a spiritual way in Christ. That is too big for
any of us. But the Word of God makes it clear that, not only was He the
instrument and agent of creation, but He is the pattern of the creation. That
is, the whole creation, eventually, when redeemed, will take its character from
Christ, for He shall “fill all things” (Eph. 4:10). He will bring all
things to fulness.
The Image of
God, and the Sustainer of all Things
Further, He is
the impress and revelation of very God Himself — “the express image”, it
says; the very essence of God’s Being. That is the Son. It is too much for us —
altogether beyond us. We would think that that surely must be the end. But no!
Here it says: “He upholds all things by the word of His power”. It is
our Jesus Christ who is “upholding all things by the word of his power”.
This Jesus is sustaining and maintaining all things just by the word of His
power. Paul puts that in another way: “In Him all things hold together”
(Col. 1:17). He is the integrating, supporting, upholding, upbearing Son of God.
Oh, that we might know more of the word of His power in our own little lives.
I am not
straining, and trying to exaggerate. God knows, this is a test of faith, great
enough. That lies as the issue of this whole matter.
Purification
Made for Sins
And now, that
One, that mighty, majestic, all-glorious, wonderful Son, has “made
purification of sins”. “When He had made purification of sins, He sat
down at the right hand of the Majesty on high”. “Made purification of
sins”; well, if such a One has done it, surely that is a ground of
confidence, a ground of assurance; surely that begins to give a new and mightier
meaning to our salvation! If a lesser one had done it, we might doubt and have
questions. But all the lesser ones tried to do it, and failed. All through those
hundreds of years, lesser ones (high priests) were occupied with the matter of
the purification of sins, and reached no finality. Then this One came; God, in
the Person of His Son, in all His infinite meaning and greatness, came. May I
use the word? — He ‘tackled’ this problem of sin, and its purification; and, it
says, “made purification”! It is done because God Almighty has
done it through His Son. We are not surprised that the writer speaks of “so
great salvation” (Heb. 2:3). It takes its greatness from the greatness of
the Saviour Himself. The Mediator came, “made purification of sins”, and
“sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high”.
“Made Perfect”
Finally, He is
the One, so it shows here, who has reached the end of the road which God laid
out for man. God laid out a road for man to travel, the road to ultimate
perfection. Adam was not made perfect; he was made with the possibilities
of perfection, of enlargement. God set Adam on the road to that so much greater
fulness, but he did not go far enough; he dropped back, turned aside. God laid
out the road for man. Through the centuries, many, coming to that road, have
gone back, many have turned out of the way, although some have gone on as far as
they could go. But nothing was perfect, or perfected by any other. The end of
this letter shows: “These all died in faith, not having received the
promises... God having provided some better thing concerning us, that apart from
us they should not be made perfect” (Heb. 11:13,40).
Here is the One
who has reached the end of the road, who has been “made perfect”, it
says, “made perfect through suffering”. He has reached the end. He has
reached the end of that road of spiritual perfecting. Must I stay to explain the
word ‘perfection’? We often limit that word when we use it. We say: Oh I am not
perfect; don’t expect perfection from me! That is a limited conception of the
meaning of the word. It really means ‘complete’, ‘full’; with all the parts in
their place, and in their related place, and nothing missing. That is the
meaning of the word here. And He has reached the end of the road of perfection;
and that, moreover, as representative.
I believe we
need a new understanding of the spiritual pilgrimage of the Lord Jesus. We think
that because He was God’s Son, and because of what He was, His way was less
difficult than ours. He had certain powers that we have not. He had a nature
that we have not. We cannot understand the mystery of One such as He being
subjected to trials and difficulties and adversities, and being tested to
breaking-point, where it called for the intervention of heaven to get Him
through. He was brought there; He was brought to the point more than once where
even He would not have gone through, had not heaven intervened, and angels
ministered to Him. You say: I have never had that experience. Ah, but you have.
You may never have actually seen angels coming to minister to you; but there is
no believer who has gone this way, who has gone any distance, but knows in his
heart, “But for God and Heaven, I would not be here today.” My own testimony is
that it has required the intervention of heaven, more than once, to save me from
succumbing.
But what is
true of ourselves was far more true of Him. We do not understand this mystery,
but He had a spiritual pilgrimage, with far deeper testings and tryings than
ever you or I need, have, or will have. Yes, “in all points like as we” it is
true; but, for Him, with greater acuteness than for us. Through it all He has
been perfected — “made perfect”. “Though He was a Son, yet learned He
obedience by the things which He suffered; and having been made perfect
(having been made complete) He became... the author of eternal salvation”
(Heb. 5:8,9), “eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:12). He has reached the end of
the road of perfection for us. And He is the guarantee that God can do it
in us! That is the point. He is there like the ‘title deeds’ for faith; the
guarantee and the certainty that God, having got Him there, can get anybody
there. He can get you and me there at the end. He can make perfect His work in
us.
I come back to
what I said earlier. What you and I need is a greater apprehension and
appreciation of how great our Christ is. Unless that is so, our faith is not
going to survive the trials. When you come to the end of this letter, you find
it is all brought up to one thing: the matter of faith — the race of faith, the
walk of faith, the life of faith. It is all headed up into this one matter of
faith. And the Holy Spirit, in His wisdom, lays a sound and solid foundation for
faith by giving this marvellous presentation of the Saviour, who went the way of
faith. If we really see anew His greatness, it will be a tremendous stimulus to
faith, an incentive to “run with patience the race that is set before us”.
May the Lord
open our eyes to see this Son, in His great and wonderful magnitude!