"The Holiest of All" part LXXXV

WITH A TRUE HEART
Hebrews 10: 22. Let us draw near with, a true heart.

Continuing with the SECOND HALF- PRACTICAL
Hebrews Chapters 10: 19- 13: 25
Of a Life in the Power of the Great Salvation

In the NINTH SECTION
Hebrews 10: 19-25.
Of Life in the Holiest

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

We have been looking at the four great Blessings of the New required form of worship by which God encourages us to draw near to Him. We shall now see what the four chief things are that God seeks for in us as we come to Him. Of these the first is, a true (pure) heart.

In man's nature the heart is the central power. As the heart is so, so is the man. The desire and the choice, the love and the hatred of the heart prove what a man already is, and decides what he is to become. Just as we judge of a man's physical character, his size and strength and age and habits, by his outward appearance, so the heart gives the real inward man his character; and " the hidden man of the heart " is what God looks to. God has in Christ given us access to the Secret Place of His dwelling, to the Inner Sanctuary of His presence and His heart; no wonder that the first thing He asks, as He calls us to Him, is the heart--- a true heart; our inmost being must in Truth be yielded to Him, True (in purity-open, receptive of) to Him.

True religion is a thing of the heart, an inward Life. It is only as the desire of the heart is fixed upon God, the whole-heart seeking for God, giving its love and finding its joy in God, that a man can draw near to God. The heart of man was expressly planned and created and endowed with all its powers, that it might be capable of receiving and enjoying God and His Love. God's great quarrel with His people is that their heart is turned from Him. In chapter 3 we heard Him complain of the hardening of the heart, the wandering heart, the unbelieving heart. No wonder that the first requisite for entering the Holiest of All should be a true heart. It is only with the heart that religion, that Holiness, Godliness or God-likeness, that the Love and the Will of God can be KNOWN. God can ask for nothing else and nothing less than the heart--- than a true heart.

What the word true means we see from the use of it made previously (8: 2 and 9: 24), the True Tabernacle, and, the Holy Place, which are figures of the True. The first tabernacle was only a figure and a shadow of the True. There was, indeed, a religious service and worship, but it had no real abiding power; it could not make the worshiper perfect. The very image, the Substance and Reality, of the Heavenly things themselves, were only brought by Christ. And God now asks that, to correspond with the True Sanctuary, there shall be a True Heart. The old covenant, with its tabernacle and its worship, which was but a shadow (an external or physical, fleshly, earthy and insufficient because of this, this is also true of our earthy body of flesh, the tent our true self occupies ), could not put the heart of the Hebrews right. In the New Covenant God's first promise is, I WILL write My Law in the heart: a New Heart will I give you.(Jeremiah 31:33 note its called the house of Israel or the house of God) As He has given His Son, full of Grace and Truth, in the Authority and power of an Endless Life, to work all in us as the Mediator of a New Covenant of God's Grace, to write His Law in our hearts, He calls us to draw near with a True Heart.

God asks for the heart. Alas, how many Christians serve Him still with the service of the old covenant? Mans Religion is a thing of times and duties and remains an external religion a religion of failure. There are seasons for Bible-reading and praying and church-going. But when one notices how speedily and naturally and happily, as soon as it is freed from restraint, the heart turns to worldly things, one feels how little there is of the heart in it: it is not the worship of a true heart, of the whole-heart. The heart, with its life and love and joy, has not yet found God for in God is its highest good. Religion is much more a thing of the head and its activities, than of the heart and its life, of the human will and its power, than of that Spirit which God gives within us. When He imparts His Spirit within us to awaken our spirit from its slumber and rest and causes it to receive Himself again our heart becomes a True Heart of His Love, Grace and Truth.

The invitation comes: Let us draw near with a True Heart. Come out from among them, Let no one hold back for fear, my heart is not true. There is no way for obtaining the true heart, but by receiving it. God has given you, as his child, a New Heart--- a wonderful Gift, if you but knew it. Through ignorance or unbelief or disobedience it has grown feeble and withered; its beating can, nevertheless, still be felt. The Epistle, with its solemn warnings and its blessed teaching, has come to bring arousing and healing. Even as Christ said to the man with the withered hand, Stretch forth, He calls to you from His Throne in Heaven, Rise, and come and enter in with a True Heart. As you hesitate, and look within to feel and to find out if the heart is true, and in vain to do what is needed to make it true, He calls again, Stretch forth your hand. When He spoke that to him with the withered arm, whom He had called to rise up and stand before Him, the man felt the power of Jesus eye and voice, and he stretched it forth. Do you, likewise. Stretch forth, lift up, reach out that withered heart of yours, that has so been cherishing its own impotence,--- stretch forth, and it will be made whole. Yes, in the very act of obeying the call to enter in, it will prove itself a true heart--- a heart ready to receive and Obey and to Trust its blessed Lord, a heart ready to give up all and find its life in the secret of His presence. Yes, Jesus, the great Priest over the House of God, the Mediator of the New Covenant of God's Grace, with the New Heart Secured in Him, calls, Draw near with a True Heart.

During these last years God has been rousing His people to the pursuit of Holiness--- that is, to seek the entrance into the Holiest, a life in full of intimacy and true fellowship with Himself, the Holy One. In the teaching which He has been using to this end, two words have been very much in the foreground--- Consecration and Faith (on our part simply trusting Him, taking Him at His word). These are just what are here put first--- a True Heart and the fulness of Trusting unto faith ( its Christ' demonstrated Faithfulness we are to trust ). The True Heart is nothing but true consecration, the spirit that longs to live wholly for God, that gladly gives up everything that it may live wholly for Him, and that above all yields up the heart, as the key of the life, into His keeping and rule. True religion is an inward Life, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Let us enter in into the inner Sanctuary of God's Grace, Truth and Love, and the Spirit will enter into the inner Sanctuary of our love, into our heart. Let us draw near with a true heart--- longing, ready, utterly given up to desire and receive the promised Blessing. 

1. If you look at your own constitution, you see how the head and the heart are the two great centers of life and action. Much thought and study make the head weary. Strong emotion or excitement affects the heart. It is the heart God asks--- the power of desire and affection and will. The head and the heart are in partnership. God tells us that the heart must rule and lead, that it is the heart He wants. Our religion has been too much that of the head hearing and reading and thinking. Let us beware of allowing these to lead us astray. Let them stand aside at times. Let us give the heart time to assert its supremacy, in newness of receptivity. Let us draw near with a true heart.
2. A true heart true--- in what it says that It thinks of itself; true in what it says that it believes of God; true in what it professes to take from God and to give to Him.
3. It is the heart God wants to dwell in. It is in the state of the heart God wants to prove His power to Bless. It is In the heart the Love and the Joy of God are to be Known. Let us draw near with a True Heart.

I might add that it is with a True Heart that we  hear God through the Spirit of His Son by way of inspiration of revelation of Himself and His Son. Emphasis added is ours.