"The Holiest of ALL" part CXVIII

OF FALLING SHOUT OF THE GRACE OF GOD.
Hebrews 12:15-17  Looking carefully lest there be any man that falls short of the Grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby the many be denied; Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his own birthright. For you know that even when he afterward desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected (for he found no place for repentance), though he sought it diligently with tears.

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

Now in THE FIFTH WARNING
Hebrews 12:14-29
To beware of Sin and rejection of Jesus.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

Take heed, lest there be in anyone of you an evil heart of unbelief, was the Warning in chapter 3. And in chapter 4, Let us fear lest anyone come short of the Rest. And in chapter 10, Let us consider one another, Exhorting one another. Here it is the same thought--- Looking carefully--- the word really means taking oversight--- lest there be any man: each is not only to care for himself, but for his brother too; lest there be any man--- there must not, through our lack of faithfulness, be one--- that falls short of the Grace of God. Here we have again the great danger against which this Epistle Warns us earnestly. It is the terrible complaint from which every congregation suffers. There are so many who, just as the Hebrews left Egypt, but came short of the promised Rest, for a time make an earnest Christian profession, and yet come short of the Grace of God--- receive the Grace of God in its beginnings in vain: never truly become possessed of it and by it. As it was true of the Galatians, with all their zeal for religion and its forms, so of these too: You are fallen away from Grace (Galatians 5:4). The running of the race with patience; holiness, or even the earnest pursuit of it; the joy and the power and the fruit of the Christ-like life--- all are wanting as many remain content to remain but babes. Let us look carefully lest anyone fall short of the Grace of God.

Three things are mentioned as causes and marks of this falling short of Grace. Lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby the many be defiled. The root of bitterness may refer to a person, who by wrong conduct or doctrine causes trouble, and leads others astray. Or it may refer to the error itself, some mode of thought or behavior by which the many are defiled. The spirit of the world; too great interest in temporal things; bitterness in religious differences; being led by the carnal reason more than by God's word or Spirit; giving way to sin; any of these things may be the root of bitterness, in regard to which the call sounds: Be careful, look around, and watch, come out from among them and be holy as "I AM Holy".

Lest there be any fornicator. Here a special sin is mentioned. Each church as a whole must watch against this sin, not waiting till it is found, but looking carefully, and doing everything to prevent, lest there be any. Christians must maintain in society the high moral tone which refuses to condone sin in either high or low. In all its members, and among its young people, it must be a witness for purity of life and lips and heart. And to all who are fallen it must seek, in the power of the Gospel, to offer the helping hand of love. Lest there be any fornicator.

Or profane person, as Esau, who for one mess of meat, sold his own birthright. We have seen that faith is ever the separation from the visible. Abraham and Isaac and Jacob sacrificed all to become heirs of the Heavenly city of the future, and the Heavenly Blessing. Esau lived in the present: for a momentary (worldly lust, appetite of the flesh, them realm ruled by sin emphasis added) satisfaction he parted with his blessing, the promise of God, and his inheritance in the future. And even so there are multiple numbers who are called Christians, and yet are profane. There is nothing sacred or holy in their spirit or life. They are absorbed in the present of the possessions and pleasures of the world (the footstool under the foot of the Lord, which man is to subdue emphasis added). To speak of their pursuit of holiness would be a mockery. Let us think of such, and mourn and pray and labor for them. Looking carefully lest there be any one of you a profane person, like Esau.


For you know when he afterward desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected (for he found no place for repentance), though he sought it diligently with tears. We remember the yet afterward of faith. What a contrast here, the afterward of the worldling. For the present with its pleasures, the Divine birthright, the promise of God, and the future inheritance is neglected (the better thing that Adam forsook by eating of the fruit emphasis added). And when it is too late, when the heart is shriveled up, and the power of the Will and the power of faith is lost, the thought of something better is awakened--- but, alas, it is found to be too late! Many shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able, when once the Master of the house is risen up, and has shut the door! He afterward desired to inherit, but was rejected!

Looking carefully, lest any man fall short of the Grace of God. What a solemn thing the Christian life is, the race for life we have to run! With what dangers we are surrounded! Our daily needs and our daily food may be our destruction. It was eating that lost for Esau his birthright. It was eating that lost Adam and his seed the Kingdom of God. It was in refusing to eat, when Satan tempted Him in the wilderness, that Jesus won back Heaven for us. In our home, in our body, in our daily need, the temptations to ease and enjoyment, to sloth and standing still are ever around us and in us; let us take heed lest we fall short. Let us look carefully, and see if there are not others around us who are fainting and turning back, and let us count it our duty and privilege to care for them. Let us beseech the Grace of God to give us power in faith and love to be the deliverer of our people and our brethren. If we feel powerless to speak to others or to influence them, let us lay ourselves before God with the cry that He would use us to save some: He can fill us with His Spirit and His Love, He can infuse us with His very nature as our restored Father.


1. Looking carefully--- the word is the same as bishop, overseer. Lest any man. We are all to watch over each other. Do we really take the state of Christians to heart? Do we indeed look around carefully and lovingly, to consider what can be done? Consider Jesus! consider one another!--- the two commands are inseparable.
2. Afterward, he was rejected!  My brother, if you have escaped this danger, I beseech you, by the mercy of God, think of those who are in It, and say to God that you will do anything He wishes you to save them from that terrible fats.

"The Holiest of ALL" part CXVII

FOLLOW AFTER SANCTIFICATION.
Hebrews  12: 14  Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord.

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

Now in THE FIFTH WARNING
Hebrews 12:14-29
To beware of Sin and rejection of Jesus.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

The Section on Patience in Tribulation (the Patience of Hope), is concluded, and their now remains the subject of Love and Good Works. It is as if the writer began here what he gives in chapter 13, but was led into his last Warning by the thought of so many who fail in the pursuit of Holiness and fall back. When the Warning is concluded he returns to his subject in chapter 13.(This is a parenthetical similar to that found in Romans between chapters 8 and 12 where he deals with the Hebrews past, present, and future chapters 9, 10, and 11 respectfully. emphasis added)

Follow after peace with all men, and Sanctification. My relation to my fellow-men is most intimately one with my relation to God. In the Beatitudes we have mercy and purity following each other: Blessed are the merciful,--- Blessed are the pure in heart. The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable. Where there is no peace with men, peace with God cannot be enjoyed. Paul writes: If it be possible, as much as lies in you, be at peace with all men. In our summons to dwell in the Holiest, we remember how the call to trusting faith, Let us draw near, was at once followed by that to Love, Let us consider one another, to provoke to love and good works. (Special note is due here as many have been miss lead to believing that good works means self effort when in actuality it means trusting God to do all His workings as promised both in us and for us. These are workings that only God can do and when allowed will do as they are His Will in His Grace. Such things as sanctification, righteousness, holiness and godliness all are a part of our Salvation. emphasis added)

Follow after Sanctification, literally, " Holy-making." We know this word. Holiness is the highest Glory of God, and so holy making is the being taken up into His intimacy and fellowship, and being made partakers of His Holiness. It is receiving into our nature and character the spirit of that Heavenliness and Holiness in which He dwells. Follow Holy-making, without which no man shall see the Lord. Holy-making is the spiritual preparation, the inner capacity for meeting the Lord, and being at home with Him. The passages in this Epistle and the Epistles of Paul's writing, in which we have already had the word, will be our best instruction as to the Way in which we are to follow after Holiness.

He that Sanctifies, and they who are sanctified, are all of one. It is Jesus who makes Holy. Of God are you in Him, who is made of God to us sanctification. It is the Living Christ who is our Sanctification; the more deeply we enter into His life on earth, His obedience, His doing God's will, His giving Himself up to God alone, the more we have this His resurrected and ascended Life abiding in us, the Holier shall we be. Holiness is the losing of self and being clothed upon with the Spirit and Likeness of Jesus.

Jesus spoke: I come to do Your Will, O God. In which Will we have been Sanctified. By one offering He has perfected forever them that are Sanctified. The more deeply I enter into this Truth, or rather the Truth enters into my heart it enters my life, that the Sacrifice of Jesus is the crowning act of His perfect surrender to God's Will and giving up everything to be one with Him, and that it is in His doing of that Will, that I have been sanctified --- the clearer will my insight grow that Holiness is the actual Living in the Will of God with my will, having the Will of God the moving power of my life. Jesus doing the Will of God, and Sanctifying me in His Will, has taken me up into His Will, and planted me forever in it. As I live in Living union with His Will, doing it and rejoicing in it, that Holy Will becomes my Holiness. It was in the doing of God's Will, and Glorifying God thereby, that He was prepared for the Glory; the Heavenly Life, which He sends  by His Spirit into my heart, is a Living Life in which God's Will is always and perfectly done; to Live in God's Will is the True following after Sanctification.

Having boldness to enter into the Holiest--- the Holiness of Holinesses--- let us draw near. The Holiest into which we have been taken in to dwell, and the Holiness which is to become our characteristic, are closely linked. There, where God dwells in His Holiness--- even there, is the dwelling of the Sanctified ones, who enter in by Living faith. There is the place where we are made Holy, where the Son who Sanctifies, and the Will in which we are Sanctified, and the presence of the Holy One, all are met and Known in power. He who does not know what it is to enter in, and tarry and worship in the Holiest, to separate himself from the world and its fellowship, to hold communion with the Holy One, will seek in vain by his prayers or efforts to become holy. Holiness is found nowhere but with God in the Holiest of All. Union with Jesus the Son who Sanctifies us, union with the Will in which we have been Sanctified by loving and doing it, union with God Himself in the Holiest of all,--- in these is the power of Sanctification.


Then comes a fourth thought: the Son, and the Will, and the presence; and--- the rod of God. He chastens us for our profit, that we may be made partakers of His Holiness. Blessed be God that it is not only in spiritual things that we are to seek our help in the pursuit of Holiness, but that everything that meets us in providence can help it too. There is not a trial or difficulty, not a disappointment or vexation, but is God's chosen instrument for making us Holy. Our life in Jesus, in the Will of God, in the Holiest, is all one with our Life in the Body and in the world. It became God to perfect His Son through suffering; the very least of our daily crosses God will use to free us of our self-will, to draw us from the world, to point us to the example and Spirit of Jesus. Follow after Sanctification; everything in Heaven and earth can help you in this pursuit.

Follow after peace with all men, and Sanctification, without which no man shall see the Lord. Seeing the Lord! What Blessedness and what Glory to the soul that has once learned to love Him! As the bride puts on her beautiful garments, to meet him she loves and to whom she is to be united, the call comes to us to put on our Holy garments, to array ourselves in the beauty of Holiness to meet our Lord. Let our whole heart respond in the prayer: Lord! make me Holy, that I may be found ready to meet you when You come. When He comes to remove His Body in preparation for the banquet feast before the Bride is to be revealed which now remains veiled from view.

1. This Sanctification is as much by faith as Justification. Both are received in union with Christ: the Peace of the one and the power of the other are found in the abiding union through an abiding habit of  trusting His Living Faith.
2. Follow after--- the same words as in Philippians 3:12, 14, I press on, "If" that I may apprehend; I press on toward the goal. It Is the thought of the race pressing on after Holiness, fellowship with God, with Jesus, with God's Will.

"The Holiest of ALL" part CXVI

YET AFTERWARD.
Hebrews 12:11-13   All chastening seems for the present to be not joyous, but grievous: yet afterward it bears peaceable fruit to them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of Righteousness. Wherefore, lift up the hands that hang down, and the palsied knees; And; make a straight path for your feet, that that which is lame be not put out of joint, but rather be healed.

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

In the ELEVENTH SECTION
Hebrews 12:1-13.
The Patience of Hope.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

He chastens us for our profit, that we may be partakers of His Holiness. That word was the summing up of all that there was to say of affliction. Suffering was to be God's messenger to lead us into, not a place or a position, but a Life and an experience, into fitness for and Inner union of being conjoined with the Holiest of All, and the Most Holy One who dwells there. Higher honor have none of God's servants than this one, unwelcome and rejected though it so often be that by way of chosen attitude. By all that is sacred and worthy of desire, the word would have us Know and Believe then receive affliction is a Blessing. And yet it does not ignore the fact that the chastisement causes pain. As an old believer said, when speaking of one of the promises, Yes, it is blessedly true; but still it hurts. Therefore, our writer continues, All chastening for the present seems to be grievous: yet afterward it yields Peaceable Fruit to them that have been exercised thereby, even the Fruit of Righteousness. To the flesh which judges by what is present and by its senses, it is distinctly, often terribly, grievous. Faith which lives in the future and unseen, rejoices in the assurance not only of deliverance, but of the Heavenly Blessing it brings. Even our obedience.

For the present--- yet afterward. These two expressions contain the great contrast between time and eternity, of the visible and the invisible, of sorrow and of joy, of sense and of faith, of backsliding and of progress to perfection. For the present: to be guided by it, and sacrifice all for its gratification, is the sin and the folly and death in which we live by nature. Yet afterward: to throw eternity into the balance, and judge everything by that: this is what even the patriarchs did; this is what Christ taught us, when, for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross; this is what our trusting His faith can teach us in every trial. With that yet afterward of the Peaceable Fruit of Righteousness, the Light of Eternity and its reward shines on the least as on the greatest of our trials, and makes each one the seed of an everlasting harvest, of which we pluck the fruits even here. And so Light arises upon the command, Count it all joy when you fall into manifold temptations. We read it in the light of what Paul said of himself, As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. When the hurricane is sweeping the ocean into mountain-high waves, down in the deep waters all is serene and quiet the disturbance is only on the surface. And even so the joy of Eternity can keep a soul in perfect peace amid abounding afflictions. For the present is swallowed up in the yet afterward of a Living Faith.

Now there follows, on the strength of what has been said of God's Love and His Blessing, the call to the Hebrews (this same call is for the gentiles who have chosen the better way and have come out from among them, the worldly emphasis added)  to rise up out of their dejection and despair, and gird themselves for the race in the Way in which Jesus leads us to God. Wherefore lift up the hands that hang down, and the palsied knees; and make straight paths for your feet. Take courage, he says, and gird yourselves for the race--- without it the prize can never be won. Lift up hands and knees, choose the straight path for your feet, rouse your whole being, and with your eye once more on Jesus, and in the trusting faith He inspires, follow Him in the path of endurance. See the mistake you made when you thought your trials were an excuse for despondency; accept God's message, that they are the very proof of His Love, the very means of His Grace, the very mark of His own Son. Accept them as a part of your Christian manhood and perfection. Rise up and stand forth as men ready for the race.


That that which is lame be not put out of joint, but rather be healed. That which is lame would, if they continued in their despising state, go from worse to worse and be put entirely out of joint,--- far rather let it be healed. As they lifted up the hands and knees, and roused themselves to enter the straight path, the lame would be healed,--- the courage of trusting and believing faith would give new strength,--- the faith of Jesus would give perfect soundness. Yes, to faith in Jesus the Blessing still comes as to the man of old: Immediately his feet and his ankle bones received strength. And he, leaping up, stood, and began to walk; and he entered into the temple, talking, and leaping, and praising God.

But rather be healed. Is there anyone among my readers who feels that his life is not what it should be, whom the cares and troubles of this life have hindered, and who feels half hopeless as to the possibility of running the race as Jesus the Leader would have--- let him learn from this word what he needs. Let him take courage and rouse himself. Lift up the feeble hands and knees, and make straight path; turn at once boldly to the course, the way Jesus has marked. Yield, surrender, consecrate yourself to be His wholly and forever. This is the first step. And then, as in the name of Jesus, in the faith of all God has spoken in His Son in this Blessed Epistle of a complete Salvation and a Perfect Savior, you rise and step on to the course, you too will know what healing is. Leaping and praising God, you too can enter into the Temple, the Holiest of All, to praise your God, and abide with Him, your mighty Keeper. Despising Christian! There is healing--- choose it, take it. Looking to Jesus, rise, and run the race.


1. Yet afterward. The great word that hope is ever using, as it points to what is still hidden, but surely coming. The section of Patience of Hope began with patience, and ends here with this note of abounding hopefulness--- Yet afterward.
2. The state of absolute resignation to the Will of God, and of a naked Truth in trusting, believing and receptive faith in His infinite Love, is the highest perfection of which the soul is capable. Seek for this with the simplicity of a little child, judging everything by the Heavenly Standard of value, as it helps to bring us nearer to God.
3. Be healed. Let all who complain of hands that hang down and palsied knees, of limbs that are lame or out of joint, hear the voice of Jesus: I say to you, Arise, and walk.

"The Holiest of ALL" part CXV

CHASTENING AND HOLINESS.
Hebrews  12: 7-10  It is for chastening that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father chastens not? But if you are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers, then are you bastards, and not sons. Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they truly for a few days chastened us as seemed good to them; but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His Holiness.

In the ELEVENTH SECTION
Hebrews 12: 1-13.
The Patience of Hope.

In the Second Half ---Practical
Hebrews 10:19 - 13:25

By Rev. Andrew Murray

We live in a world full of suffering. A great part of the daily life of many is made up of little trials and vexations. A sharp word; an unkind judgment; neglect or ingratitude from someone from whom we did not expect it; the carelessness of a servant; the temper of a husband or wife; the loss accruing through the neglect or unfaithfulness of others; the disappointment of our wishes; the accidents that vex us--- all these things in our daily life often come to us with far greater temptation and danger than times of persecution for the faith brought to the martyrs and those who went on before. By their littleness and their frequency and their suddenness, they surprise and conquer us ere we know. If Christianity is to be a success, if Christ is to Save Completely, there must be a provision, sufficient and efficacious, to prevent suffering from causing discouragement or defeat, to transform it into Blessing and help.

If it can enable us to rejoice in tribulation, to glory in infirmities, and to pass unharmed through trials, it will indeed be the religion man needs in a world of suffering. He that has this secret, whereby what have been hindrances become helps, and his very enemies are made to serve him, is well on the way to being the Christian, the Christ like one, and the disciple God would have him be.

God has made such a provision. First of all, He gives His own Son, as the Chief of sufferers, to show us how close the relation is between suffering and His Love, suffering and the victory over sin, suffering and perfection of character, suffering and Glory. Yes more, to provide us with One, who can sympathize, who can teach us how to suffer, and who, as the Conqueror of sin through suffering, can breathe His own Life and Strength into us. And thus He comes as our Father, to shed His Heavenly Light on our afflictions, and to teach us the lessons our portion contains. They are these. Chastening is a part of a Father's training, and one of the marks of son-ship. Submission to chastening forms and proves the truly childlike character. God's chastening makes us partakers of God's Holiness. See how these three thoughts are brought out here.

Chastening is a very needful part of a father's training. It is for chastening that you endure; all suffering is a Divine chastening. God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father chastens not? Our own childhood and fatherhood teaches us this truth; discipline, chastening, and reproof, in whatever form, is an indispensable part of our education; where a child needs it a father may not withhold it. In the Will of God, and in the very nature of things, sin and suffering go together, and even Love can cause suffering for the greater good of casting out the sin. Let the child of God learn the lesson suffering is chastening, the chastening of Love. We ought to spare no pains to learn this lesson well; we ought to repeat and repeat it, until we can say--- Now, I know it perfectly: every trial, small or great, I will look upon at once as a messenger of God's Love. If you thus meet it, whether it comes through men or yourself or more directly from above, as God's appointment, you are in the right attitude for bearing and being Blessed by it.

Submission to chastening forms and proves the truly child like spirit required for the entrance into God's Kingdom. Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and Live? When the Lamb of God came to this earth to suffer God's Will, it was that He might teach us what the place is that becomes the creature, and the child--- absolute subjection to the Perfect Will of Love. He came to show that the thing that makes life worth having is to have it to given up to God, and to prove that humility and resignation are the Sacrifices God delights in, and the sure, the only path to God. No religion or worship of God can be acceptable to Him but as He sees in it conformity to the Life and Spirit of His Son. We can only please Him as we are like-minded to Christ. Learn, O child of God! The unspeakable privilege in suffering, of giving up your will to God, even as Jesus did, of adoring His wisdom and goodness, and entering deeper into the child's spirit and the child's place--- to reverence and submit (is the fear of God). Chastening is one of the marks of sonship. If you are without chastening, then are you are bastards and not sons. Suffering is not in itself a sign of sonship. An enemy or a criminal may be scourged; even a slave chastened as well as a son. But to him who is a son, chastening reminds him of his place, and calls him to meet this part of a son's heritage in the spirit and with the hope of a son (an heir)--- with the assurance that it will draw him nearer and lock him closer to the Father.

Chastening makes us partakers of God's Holiness. He chastens us for our profit, that we may be partakers of His Holiness. What a New Light on suffering and chastening! He that makes Holy and they that are made Holy, are all of one. We have entrance into the Holiest of All. In the which Will we have been made Holy. He has made the people Holy by His Blood. And now comes our suffering--- shall we not welcome it when He sends it with such a message--- to break open our inner being, and awaken our desire, and make us partakers in our inmost Life of that true Holiness Jesus gives, of that Holiness into which we enter in God's presence. Yes, welcome suffering, if it leads us, through subjection to God's Will and Love, into His Holiness as our due and just portion.

1. What can teach us to welcome suffering? A heart set upon His Holiness. Suffering is meant by God to make us Holy. No one can welcome suffering except as he welcomes the Holiness it brings.
2. That state is best, which exercises the highest trusting faith in and fullest resignation to God.
3. " Receive every inward and outward trouble with both your hands, as a true opportunity of dying to self, and entering into fellowship with your self-denying Savior."

"The Holiest of ALL" part CXIV

FAINT NOT.
Hebrews 12:3 - 5 For consider Him that has endured such gainsaying of sinners against themselves, that you wax not weary, fainting in your souls. You have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin: And you have forgotten the exhortation, which reasons with you as with sons, My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord, Nor faint when you are reproved of him; For whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.

Now in the ELEVENTH SECTION
Hebrews 12:1-13.
The Patience of Hope.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

It is ever still the danger of discouragement and backsliding that the writer seeks to avert. In these verses we find the words, Faint not, twice used, and twice the way is pointed out to be kept from it. The first time the word is used in connection with the considering of Jesus, our Example and Leader. The second time, with the teaching, that it is God from whom all affliction comes. In affliction, look to Jesus as our Forerunner, who was Himself so tried; to God as our Father, who has appointed the trial, as the safeguard against fainting.(The world runs in the other direction and seeks only a cushy love an easy way into the kingdom of God, Jesus said  that it suffers violence and that the violent try to take it by force. Jesus on the other hand asks us to take His yoke upon ourselves and then to learn of Him as His load is easy and His burden is light. The burden is light because He has already carried the load and walked the path and then we're to trust Him, is to walk the same path because we trust Him. emphasis added)

For consider Him that has endured such gainsaying of sinners against Himself, that we wax not weary, fainting in your souls. We have previously had the injunction (3:1): Consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our profession--- that was pointed to the work He did and does for us. Here it is: Consider Him in His sufferance and patient endurance. The thought that He suffered like you, that you are suffering like Him, will give courage and patience. Consider Him. It will remind you how necessary suffering is. If He could not be perfected without it, how much more are we. If suffering wrought such Blessing in Him, how surely is it in us too, for whose sake He was made perfect, to whom God has given Him as a Leader in the path that leads through suffering to Glory. We may be sure of it, all that is most precious in a Christlike ones character--- the virtues that were Perfected in Him through suffering, the meekness and lowliness of heart, the gentleness and patience and submission of the Lamb of God, will come to us too if we will but consider Him. Looking to Jesus, the suffering One, will bring us the comfort of His sympathy, the faith needed, the courage of His victory, the Blessed consciousness of conformity to Him. You have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin: the thought of His Blood in Gethsemane and on Calvary, and the insignificance of our own suffering, will urge us to endure and resist. And we shall neither wax weary nor faint.

Have we forgotten the exhortation, which reasons with us as with sons, My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord. The words from Proverbs warns against a double danger. On the one hand, we may regard lightly the chastening of the Lord, and think too little of it. We may seek to bear up against it with human wisdom; looking upon it as the lot of all, counting ourselves too manly to bow before it, trusting to time and fortune to bring a change. We fail to recognize the hand of God in it; we do not accept it as indeed God's chastening, and lose all the teaching and the Blessing it was meant to bring. My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord. (This is the violence spoken of above as it is in resistance to the Will of God, for all mankind. As all are from the book of Acts, now on a level playing field an are required to come under the rule of the New Law of God revealed here in, the New Covenant of Grace which is written in mans heart and on mans mind when first they believe or hear the true Gospel. emphasis added)

Neither, here is the other danger--- faint when you are reproved of Him. Be not discouraged or downcast as if the chastening was too heavy, more than you deserved or are able to bear. Beware above everything, in your Christian life, of casting away your boldness, of becoming impatient, of losing courage. It is trial and vexation, care and anxiety, persecution or reproach that often causes this. Learn to-day the secret of never suffering loss in the soul by the sufferings of life--- yes, rather, of always making them your greatest gain. Link them to God and to Jesus. It is God who sends them. He sent them to Jesus and perfected Him through them. He sends them to us in the same Love, and will make them your highest gain. "Receive every inward and outward trouble, every disappointment, pain, uneasiness, temptation, darkness, desolation, with both your hands, as a true opportunity and Blessed occasion of dying to self, and entering into a fuller fellowship with your Self-denying, suffering Savior."

                               For whom the Lord Loves He chastens,
                               And scourges every son whom He receives.
Sufferings are for chastening. And chastening is from Love, a token of God's Fatherly care. We live in a world full of trial and suffering. Thousands of God's children have complained that their circumstances were too unfavorable for a life of full devotion, of close intercourse with God, of pressing on to perfection. The duties and difficulties, the cares and troubles of life, render it impossible, they say, to live a fully consecrated life. Would God that they might learn the lessons of His word! Every trial comes from God as a call to come away from the world to Him, to Trust Him, to believe in and to receive His Love. In every trial He will give strength and Blessing. Let but this Truth be accepted, in every trial, small or great: first of all and at once recognize God's hand in it. Say at once: My Father has allowed this to come; I welcome it from Him; my first care is to Glorify Him in it; He will make it a Blessing. We may be sure of this; let us by His faith rejoice in it. The true Salvation God has provided for us, the Blessed Life in the New and Living Way into the Holiest, through Jesus Christ, has such Authority and power that it can enable us amid every trial to be more than a conqueror through Him that Loves us. "Give up yourself absolutely and entirely to God in Christ Jesus, as into the hands of infinite Love; firmly believing this great and infallible Truth, that God has no Will towards you, but that of infinite Love, and infinite desire to make you Partakers of His Divine nature; and that it is as absolutely impossible for the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ to refuse all that good, and life, and Salvation which you want, as it is for you to take it by your own power." (To a tempt to take it by our own power is the violence spoken of above, as it is based in unbelief and is thereby hostile to all God's Divine Will and purposes here revealed. This violence is seen in our religion ceremonies, customs, holidays, holy-days and religious institutions of our day as most are a product of mans imagination. emphasis added)

1. Consider Him. Christians would only understand that God's word says, that it is impossible for them to have the true Christian life unless they keep their eye daily, unceasingly fixed on Jesus. Not a step in the race is safe if they are not looking to Jesus.
2. Consider Him. But is it possible--- is it not too great a strain, an unnatural life to be always looking to Jesus? With men it is impossible; with God all things are possible. And all things are possible to him that believe unto reception. By trusting faith.
3. Yes, but is such a faith possible? Bless God it is indeed. This Is the open secret of the Higher Christian, Christ like Life----Jesus revealing Himself so that the soul can so little forget Him as it forgets to breathe or to see----Jesus so taking possession of the soul by the Holy Spirit and so dwelling within it, that faith never ceases going out of Him who is above. Lord, reveal Yourself to us! The soul that, be it amid effort and failure, begins and gives itself to consider Jesus in separate acts of faith will be led on, and in due time receive this deeper Blessing--- a heart in which, by the Holy Spirit, looking to Jesus is its spontaneous and most natural exercise.

"The Holiest of ALL" part CXIII

LOOKING UNTO JESUS.
Hebrews 12: 2  Let us run with, patience the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the author (leader, captain, and chief) and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

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

In the ELEVENTH SECTION
Hebrews 12:1-13.
The Patience of Hope.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

The practical and the contemplative Christian life are often spoken of as if they were at variance. Here we see them in their perfect harmony. Let us run--- where we have intense exertion, claiming body and soul; looking to Jesus--- there we have the inner life of the spirit, a heart always fixed on Jesus in trust and worship, drawing inspiration and strength from His example and His Love, His Faith, His Truth and His Grace. Let us run, looking to Jesus. Let all that we have learned of Him in this Epistles, all the faith and joy with which we have seen and considered Him the fulness of, bear this fruit: let us with patience, perseverance, run the race.

Looking to Jesus, the Leader and Perfecter of our trusting into His faith. Jesus is the Leader of our Salvation ( 2:10), the Forerunner, who has entered within the veil first for us, leaving behind His track and footsteps for us to walk in. This is the New and Living Way which, through obedience and death, leads to us to our Newness of Life and to God. And so He is the Leader of our faith, too. He leads in the Way of faith, He walked in it Himself, He opened it for us, He reveals it to us and in us, He draws and helps us in it. The old saints had given us examples of trust; Jesus is the Leader of our faith, the faith that through death enters into resurrection Life and the Holiest of All, that Better and Perfect thing which God has provided for us.

The Leader and Perfecter of our faith, Jesus is the Perfecter of our faith. He perfected it in His own person, by acting it out to its fullest possibility, when in the darkness of death He entrusted His Spirit into His Father's hands. He perfected it when He was Himself perfected by it, and proved that faith is the Highest Perfection, because it gives God room to be all in all. He perfected it when, having perfected us in Himself, He became the perfect object for our trusting in His faith. He perfects it in us, because He who is the Perfect object of our trusting unto faith is in the Living One, who Lives and Works in us in the Authority and power of our Endless Life. He is the Perfecter of faith--- the faith that looks to Him the Perfect One and the Perfecter, and is the secret of our Christian perfection. He has not only perfected Himself and us, He perfects our faith too. Let us entrust our trust to Him above everything; He will make it His care, the Chief and most Blessed Work of His Spirit to develop His faith in us. Let us run, looking to Jesus; in His life on earth the Leader, in His Glory on the Throne the Perfecter, of our faith. Let us look to Jesus. There is life in a look, and power too; the life and the power of a Divine transformation, in which, as we behold, we are changed into the same image from glory to Glory, for we shall see His as He IS.

Let us run, looking to Jesus, who for the joy that was set before Him. Like Moses, He had respect unto the recompense of the reward. He triumphed over suffering and death by the faith that lives in the future and the unseen. It was in this faith He lived and endured and conquered. Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising shame, and has sat down on the right hand of the Throne of God. Let us look to Jesus in His path on earth, and on His Throne in Glory. In His path on earth, as He endured the cross, He is the Leader of our faith, only in the path in which He walked Himself. In His life of self-denial and humility, of obedience and death, He showed us that there is no way to God but that of Self-Sacrifice, resisting the world and self unto death; no way of deliverance from fallen nature but by dying to it. He is the Perfecter of our trusting onto faith, as He sits on the Throne. Looking to Him we see what the sure reward is of dying with Him, what the Divine Authority and power and Glory are to which He invites our trust and the committal of our souls, what the Heavenly Life is that His Spirit will bring  into our hearts. Let every thought of Him on the Throne remind us of the path that brought Him there and brings us too; and every thought again of Him in that path of trial lift our hearts in Loving, Faith, Truth and Grace , steady gaze to the Throne, where He reigns, to communicate to us, in unbroken continuity, the Authority and power of His Glorified Life, His Complete and Eternal Salvation.

Yes, let us run, looking to Jesus. Looking, not to ourselves or our sins, but to Him who has put away sin forever. Not to ourselves or our trust, whether in its weakness or its strength, but to Him whose presence is the Life of our faith. Not to the world or its temptations, but to Him who has said: Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. Not to Satan or his threats, but to Him who has brought him to naught. Not to men, their fear of sin or their favor, but to Jesus, the God-Man, Immanuel, God with us, our Brother and our High Priest- King. Looking to Jesus and Jesus alone.

Looking to Him always and in all things. In trial and trouble, as in joy and prosperity; in solitude and repose, as in company and business; in religious worship, as in daily life;--- always, only, looking to Jesus. Looking to Him, to see what He is, to hear what He speaks, to do what He says, to follow where He leads, to trust for all He waits to give. Looking to Him and His love, till my heart burns with that love. Looking to Him, till His eye meets mine, and I know that He watches over me. Looking to Him in the power of His love and Spirit, knowing that He Himself is drawing me to Himself, leading and perfecting in me His faith. Looking to Him, to be changed into His likeness from glory to Glory. Let us run the race with patience, looking to Jesus.

1. "Looking to Jesus, with the look of faith, because our salvation is In Him alone; with the look of true Love, because He alone can satisfy our heart; with the look of strong desire, longing to Know Him Better; with the look of soul devotion, waiting only to Know His Will; with the look of gladness, because we Know He Loves us; with the look of wonder and admiration, because He is the Brightness (day star) of the Father's Glory, our Lord and our God."
2. Let us say it once again: the whole secret of the Christian life consists in the personal relationship with Jesus. Not what Jesus has done or does for me can be my salvation, except as He Himself has my heart, and binds me to Himself in dependency and attachment, and Trust and Love.
3. Let us run. The Gospel is intensely practical. It means for every day, let us live like men who are running a race for life, and laying aside everything that can in the least hinder us. We judge everything by this one standard: can it help me in the race.
 

"The Holiest of ALL" part CXII

LET US RUN WITH PATIENCE THE RACE.
Hebrews 12:1  Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight, and the sin which does so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.

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

In the ELEVENTH SECTION
Hebrews 12:1-13.
The Patience of Hope.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

This Epistle has taught us that one of the greatest dangers in the Christian life is the remaining stationary, and not advancing beyond the beginnings of Christ. It leads almost inevitably to slothfulness, backsliding and sin. The great virtue this Epistle has sought to inculcate, next to trust and faith, is patience, the perseverance and long-suffering that holds fast the beginning firm to the end, and diligently presses on to perfection. After having shown us, in his wonderful picture gallery, what the fulness of faith is, he now calls us, in view of all the trials life may bring, and with them the temptation to grow disheartened and faint, to patience as the virtue by which His faith developed in us is to prove its persistence and secure its reward. True religion is not only drawing near to God once in the Holiest, but is a life to be renewed there every day; it is not only the entrance upon the New and Living Way, but a continually abiding life and walk in it. It is running a race with patience. We have seen what our New Life in the Holiest is, in the place where the Authority and power of the Eternal Life enters and possesses us. Let us now look at that Life in its visible manifestation as a race we run, and learn what is needed to run well and win the crown. Received at the Beama set where Christ awards His crown as a wreath to those who have run the race well having stayed the course set before them.


Therefore, let us, Seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, run the race. The first encouragement to run the race with patience is to yield ourselves to the influence of the cloud of witnesses that encompass us, and to follow their example of trust unto faith and patience. We had the word "witness" five times in the previous chapter: through trusting faith they received witness. And so they become witnesses to its power and the good pleasure of God it brings to the soul. They all with one accord, Abel and Enoch and Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Moses and the prophets, as with one heart and mouth witness to us: Be of good courage, fear not; be strong in trusting faith, and persevere. The victory and the reward are sure and glorious. We are one with them and they with us. They could not be perfected without us; in us is to be perfected what they began. They held fast the promise when all was dark: they plead with us, now with whom the full Light has come, to hold fast the faith firm to the end.

Therefore let us also, even as they, lay aside every weight, and the sin which does so easily beset us. Here is our second lesson. One of the first thoughts connected with a race is the laying aside of everything that can hinder. In the food he eats and the clothing he wears how resolutely the runner puts aside everything, the most lawful and pleasant, that is not absolutely necessary to his success. Sacrifice, self-denial, giving up, laying aside, is the very first prerequisite on the course. Alas, it is this that has made the Christian life of our days the very opposite of running a race. The great study is, both in our religious teaching and practical life, to find out how to make the best of both worlds, how to enjoy as much as possible of the wealth and the pleasure and the honor which the world offers. With many Christians, if their conversion ever was an entering through a strait gate, their life since never was, in any sense, a laying aside of  everything that might hinder their spiritual growth. They never heeded the word: He that forsakes not all that he hates cannot be My disciple. But this is what we are called to as indispensable: Laying aside every weight, and the sin which does so easily beset us. Yes, laying aside every sin--- however little it seems, however much it be our special weakness--- it may not be spared. Sin must be laid aside, if we are to run the race. It is a race for Holiness and Perfection, for the Will of God and His Graciousness; how could we dream of running the race without laying aside the sin which does so easily beset us.

Therefore, let us run the race set before us. A race means, this is our third lesson, concentration of purpose and will, strenuous and determined effort. It means that a man while he is on the course gives himself wholly to one--- thing running with all his might. It means that for the time being he forgets everything for the all-absorbing desire--- to gain the prize. The Christian course means this all through life: a whole-hearted surrender of oneself, to put aside everything for the sake of God and His Graciousness. The men who enter the course are separated from the crowd of idle spectators: they each of them can say, One thing I do--- they run.

Let us run with patience the race. You were running well, who did hinder you? This was as true of the Hebrews as of the Galatians: many, many had gone back. Alas, alas, is it not true of multitudes of Christians in our day? They began well, everything was so hopeful; but it would be utterly untrue to say of them to-day that they are running a race for Eternal Life. And there is no way for us, and those for whom we labor, to be saved this terrible fate but for us to learn the lesson which this word Patience (endurance, The word is the same as endured, in verses 2, 3, 7, perseverance), is meant to teach us. Under the inspiring influence of the cloud of witnesses, to lay aside every weight and sin, to enter and begin the race is not enough--- we must run with patience. Day by day, our separation from the world and sin, our giving up of every weight and every sin, must be renewed. Day by day our desire and our will to live Wholly for God must be reaffirmed. Day by day we must wait on God afresh, to receive Grace with all our heart and all our strength; with undivided purpose and in the Boldness of faith, still to run in the race for God. Therefore let us also run the race with patience.

1. Get clear hold of the three elements of success in a race: self-denial, that gives up everything that hinders; decision, that puts the whole heart Into the work, and runs; patience, that day by day afresh enters the course.
2. It is the heart of him that runs that is the power that urges him on. Whether it be for a prize or a pleasure--- his heart is the driving power. The Holy Spirit is the only power that can keep our heart daily fresh and bright in the race.
3. The New and Living Way. The race is but another aspect of it, to bring out the thought of devotion and earnestness and energy.

"The Holiest of ALL" part CXI

SOME BETTER THING FOR US.
Hebrews 11: 39-40  And these all, having had witness borne to them through their faith, received not the promise, God having provided some better thing concerning us, that apart from us, they should not be made perfect.

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

In the TENTH SECTION
Hebrews 11: 1-40.
The Fulness of Faith.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

In these closing verses we have the summing up of this chapter. The superior excellence of the New Testament is stated to be this, that we have some Better thing, something Perfect, which the saints had waited for but had never seen. We are told of them what it was that they had, and what they had not. These all, having had witness borne of them through their trusting of Him, received not the promise. They received not the promise. There were indeed certain promises of which they received the fulfillment (see 6:15; 11:33). But the great promise of Jesus Christ and His redemption and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the Better Promises of the Better Covenant, these they received not. They died in trust, not having received the promises, but having seen them from afar and embraced them. They saw, and rejoiced in the promises, into the full possession of which it is our privilege to enter. ( But by one way and that way has herein been revealed to all for their acceptance and receiving. emphasis added)

They received them not, but they had witness borne to them through their trusting of Him who had promised (see 11: 2, 4, 6). The Living God, who had given them the promise, and was waiting His own time for the fulfillment, gave them witness through they're trust that they were pleasing to Him. The witness borne to Abel that he was righteous, and to Enoch that he pleased God, was given to them all. God was not ashamed to be called their God, and to let them know it. With all the difference between their trusting and ours, in regard to the clearness of the revelation and the actual possession of the promise, in this their trusting was one with ours of--- the unseen God revealed Himself to them and was their God.

They received not the promise, God having provided some Better thing concerning us, that they apart from us should not be made perfect. The two words here, Better and Perfect, are the words which characterize the New dispensation, the time of the fulfillment of the promise. We said before, the word "Better" occurs thirteen times. Christ has inherited a Better name; He has brought us a Better hope; He is the Surety of a Better Covenant enacted in Better Promises; in Him we have the Better country of Canaan unseen and the Better substance and a city not yet seen. To them God spoke in the prophets; to us in the Son. To them was offered the Rest of Canaan; to us the Rest of God. Their high priest was a man who died; ours is a Priest forever, in the Authority and power of an Endless Life. Their sanctuary was on earth, and even that had its veil; ours is the True Sanctuary, with the veil taken away. Theirs was the old covenant, in which there was no power to continue as it was based on a outward external working of mans doing; ours is the New, with the heart made New by the Spirit and the inward workings of God. Theirs was the blood of bulls and of goats, ours is the far Better Blood of Jesus. Theirs was a sanctifying cleanness of the flesh; ours is the cleansing of the heart from the evil conscience. Theirs a worship which made nothing perfect; in ours we are perfected forevermore. Their worship was a witness that the way into the Holiest was not yet open; ours is the Blessed experience that in the New and Living Way we have Living access into the very presence and the Faithfulness, Love, Grace and Truth of the Father. God has indeed provided some Better thing for us.

That apart from us they should not be made perfect. The Better thing God has provided is Perfection. The word Perfect is used fourteen times in this Epistle (see 5:14). The Levitical Law with its ordinances made nothing perfect. Jesus was Himself, in His obedience and suffering, made perfect in His human nature, in His will and life and character, that He might have a true, new, perfect human life to communicate to us. As the Son Perfected forevermore He is our High Priest, who having Perfected us forever in His Sacrifice, now brings us, in the communication of that Perfection, into real, inner, Living, Loving contact with God. And so He is the Perfecter of our faith (our having passed through the veil of His flesh and Blood with His resurrection now within us emphasis added); makes us His Perfect ones, who press on to perfection. And our life on earth is meant to be the Blessed experience that God Perfects us in every good thing to do His Will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight. Apart from us they might not be made perfect; to us the Blessing of some Better thing, of being made Perfect, has come.

My fellow-Christians, the old saints had only the promise; we have the thing promised, the Divine Reality, the full inheritance of what were to them only the good things to come. The promise was sufficient to make them live a wonderful life of trusting in His faithfulness. What ought not the effect to be in our lives of having obtained the promises, having entered on the possession of that of which the mere promise stirred them so? As much greater as deliverance is than the hope of it, as a Divine Possession is than the promise of it, so much Greater is the Better, the perfect thing God has provided for us, so much Greater ought to be the joy and the holiness and the nearness to God, and the power of our lives. Is it so?


If not, the reason must be plain. We do not accept the possession with the intensity with which they accepted the promise. Our whole Epistle was written to expose this evil, and to set before us the Glory of the Better, the Perfect thing God has Provided for us in Christ. Shall we not listen to the witness of the heroes of our faith in the days when the sun had not yet risen, and let ourselves be ashamed out of our worldliness and sloth? We are to renounce the power of sin and that of its hold on us, then see its death grip released from us as we begin to live in Christ and He now Living within us in the Holy Spirit. If we will but yield ourselves to the Glorious Perfection Truths of our Epistle, the Perfection of our High Priest and His Work, and press on into it, He to whom it has been given to work His Work in us in the Authority and power of an Endless Life, and so to save completely, will reveal in us the Better and Perfect thing as we have never yet known it. By trusting they obtained not the promises. By our trusting in His Faithfulness will, He will produce faith and the fulfillment of every promise will be made true in us in the power of the Pentecostal Spirit, who comes from the Throne of our Great High Priest.

1. Wherefore holy brethren, partakers of a Heavenly calling, Consider Jesus. It is He who has done all: it is He who, as much, must do all now. It is He makes the Holiest of All, and the entrance into it, and the life there to serve the Living God, a Living continual reality. If hitherto you have been living without the veil, do believe God has provided some Better thing for you too.
2. He does this in the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. Christ Redeemed us, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through our trusting onto faith and obedience. The Holy Spirit is the all-inclusive Blessing of the Better Covenant. It is His to bring Jesus and Heaven and the power of an Endless Life Into us, and keep us in it.
3. May God reveal to us what Abraham's going out from his country, what Moses' choice of suffering and reproach, the Hebrew's leaving Egypt means. If we are ready to forsake all, we shall inherit all by way of the cross and death to sin the world and self.

"The Holiest of ALL" part CX

FAITH, AND ITS POWER OF ENDURANCE.
Hebrews  11: 35-38  And others were tortured, not accepting their deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: And others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword: they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins: being destitute, afflicted, evil entreated (Of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves, and the holes of the earth.

Continuing no in the SECOND HALF-PRACTICAL.
Hebrews Chapters  10: 19 - 13: 25.
Of a Life in the Power of the Great Salvation.

In the TENTH SECTION
Hebrews 11: 1-40.
The Fulness of Faith.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

Our trusting onto His Faithfulness has a twofold victory. In one case, it conquers the enemy or the difficulty by securing its removal and destruction. In the other, there is no deliverance from the trouble, and yet our trusting conquers in the power it receives to endure, and to prove that its spirit is superior to all that men or devils can do. The triumphs of His faith are often seen as remarkably in those who obtain no deliverance from the threatened evil of sin (those held by its false power), as in those who do. After the mention of the heroes whose trust was rewarded with success, we have here the mention of those who, in the midst of suffering that was not removed, proved that their trust in His faithfulness lifted them up above all the pains with which earth could threaten them. They were tortured, not accepting their deliverance when offered them at the price of their faithfulness, that they might obtain the Better resurrection. Spiritual and Eternal realities were by their trusting made onto faith so clear and near that they reckoned not the sufferings of this present time worthy to be compared with the Glory which shall be revealed. The triumph of that trusting onto faith is seen as much in bearing a temporary defeat as securing a victory. The victory of the vanquished is often the highest achievement over the stronghold of sin in all its forms.


In these men and women, leaders in the noble army of the martyrs, rejected and despised by the world, God sees the Heavenly Beauty of their trusting in His faithfulness that honors Him, and that counts His Will, His Grace, and His Righteousness, as more than all earthly happiness. By their trusting Him they had such a sight of God and His good pleasure, that they could with joy sacrifice everything to secure it. By their trust they could, for the joy set before them, in the assurance of a Heavenly Recompense, count all the pleasures of earth as less than nothing. It is one of the highest and noblest exercises of trusting in His faithfulness to suffer aright. And the Blessing that comes through suffering is one of the richest rewards that our simple trust can win.

God has given us these examples of those who by their trusting in His Faithfulness triumphed over the extremities of suffering, that we might from them learn how to bear our lesser trials. Their trust in extra ordinary suffering must strengthen ours in the ordinary. It is in the little common trials of daily life that every believer can follow in the footsteps of these saints, in the footsteps of the great Leader of our Salvation. By trust alone are we able to bear suffering, great or small, aright, to God's glory or our own welfare.

Yes, by our trusting alone in God's Faithfulness. Our trust sees it in the Light of God and Eternity; its short pain, its everlasting gain; its impotence to hurt the soul, its power to purify and to bless it. It sees Him who allows it, with us in the fire, as a refiner watching our purging and perfecting, as a helper of our strength and comfort. It sees that the forming of a character like that of the Son of man and of God, maintaining at every cost the Father's Will and honor, is more than all the world can give. It sees that to be made partaker of His Holiness, to have the humility and weakness and gentleness of the Lamb of God in wrought into us, and like Him to be made perfect in suffering, is the Spirit of Heaven, and it counts nothing too great to gain this treasure. To develop His Faith in us which for this faith alone, but by faith most surely, we can, in the midst of the deepest suffering, be more than conquerors as He removes sins last stronghold in an over us.

We live in a world of suffering and over run by evil. What a privilege that suffering, instead of unfitting or excluding us, is God's special invitation, to trust and glorify Him. As we read of all that the men of trust had done, more than one has thought of his own unfavorable circumstances and his feeble strength; never could his trusting reach to the achievements of the men who are set before him as an example. What a privilege that there is no suffering so great and depressing, so little and harassing, but can be a school for the developing of our faith, a Heavenly instruction in the Blessed art of making God all; of proving that, for God's Will and our total submission to it, we are willing to bear all. Faith transfigures our trust and brings us to suffering, makes it transparent with the Love of God, the presence of Jesus, the Beauty of Holiness and the perfecting of Godliness (or Christ's likeness in us our restored humanity), the Blessing of Heaven.

As long as we live under the influence of the world and the flesh held in bondage by sin, all this appears but as a beautiful thought, without reality or possibility. Our Epistle is speaking to those whom it has led into the Holiest of All, who are walking in the New and Living Way of the Will of God, of the Obedience and the self-sacrifice and the death of Jesus. It is as we tarry in God's presence, and seek, above everything, His Righteousness, His Holiness and His Will, that we shall look at things as God does, and regard suffering in His Light. Let this be our aim. Our passage gives new confirmation to the one lesson: By His faith alone! Would you please God, would you conquer sin and the world, would you be holy and perfect, would you live as the heir of Heaven and Eternity,--- then live as a man of faith, meet every trial in the spirit of a joyful faith in God's Faithfulness; every trial will make you more meet for, and bring you nearer to, God's Blessed presence.

1. In the Old Testament prosperity was promised. And yet trust could endure adversity. In the New, we are taught to expect adversity: the cross is the symbol of our death to self-will and its sin nature; the Man of Sorrows Is our Leader; how much more ought we to be able to endure.
2. Let every suffering one, everyone who is bound to a sick-bed or bowed down under some cross, learn to believe that in the affliction we can greatly Glorify God by His Faithfulness and promise to see us through, and that by our trusting Him we can become teachers and helpers of others, fulfilling, by example and intercession, In our measure, a very blessed part of the work of the Body of Christ.

"The Holiest of ALL" part CIX

FAITH, AND ITS POWER OF ACHIEVEMENT.
Hebrews 11: 32-35  And what shall I more say? For the time will fall me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah; of David and Samuel and the prophets: Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword from weakness were made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned to flight armies of aliens: Women received their dead by a resurrection.

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

In the TENTH SECTION
Hebrews 11: 1-40.
The Fulness of Faith.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

With the entrance into Canaan and the fall of Jericho the first period of the Hebrews history closes. It would take too much time for the writer to proceed as he had done; he now mentions a few of the most prominent names from among the Judges, the Kings, and the Prophets, and then passes on to a general view of the very wonderful proofs that trusting in God's faithfulness had given of what it could do or suffer. His desire is to take the veil from the heart of the Hebrews, and show them, what so many who know Scripture history will never see, that under and behind and within all the outward events recorded, there lives, as the vital Principle, in the Faithfulness of God. The history is, on the one hand, the record of what God has done through and for those who have trusted Him; on the other, the proof that in God's leading of His people, the one token of His presence and working was always the Spirit of Faith which He gave. Faith in exercise is the breaking out of the Divine Life within, the very substance of things hoped for, the proof of the presence of things not seen.

In mentioning the great achievements of the trusting ones, our writer gives three separate trios. In the first we find mentioned what the heroes who trusted in His Faithfulness of faith had accomplished. In combat with their enemies, they subdued kingdoms; in ruling the people and opposing evil, they wrought righteousness; in dealing with God, they obtained promises. In the second, personal deliverance from wild beasts, from the powers of nature, from the violence of men, is in the foreground. They Stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword. In the third, we have the experience of the power of trusting in His faithfulness for personal strengthening: From weakness were made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned to flight armies of aliens. And then there is added one thing more: Women received their dead by a resurrection. By trusting women conquered the power of death. There is no power on earth that can stand before the power of God's Faithfulness, because the power of His faith is the power of God working in us.

The memory of the heroes and heroins of olden times may be most instructive, if we regard them in their true light. One thing that impresses us is, how little God has promised a faith that it will be freed from difficulty and danger. It would be as easy for God to prevent the enemy coming as to give the victory over him. To do this would be infinite loss; God's faithfulness and our trusting in Him would never be called into exercise; man would never learn to know either his God or himself as His child. Every trial accomplishes a double purpose. It gives us the opportunity of honoring God by the trust with which we wait on Him. And it gives God the opportunity of showing how faithful He is in watching over His child, and how truly He is working for him and in him. It is in trial that all the heart of the child is drawn out towards the Father, in dependency and humility and of trust. It is in trial that God can reveal in the opened and receptive heart of His child all the tenderness and all the saving power of His Love. Without trial there could be no school of trusting faith, no growth of spiritual character, no strength of will given up to God and clinging to Him. Let us bless God for every trial, small or great: it gives us a grand opportunity for putting the crown upon the head of God, and of being made fit that He crowns us too, as one having run the race and NOT stalled, quite or turned back.

Another thought of no less importance, that comes as we think of the achievements of trust in the history of the Hebrews, is how closely they were all identified with the public welfare, with lives devoted to the cause of God and the people. Selfishness is the death of trust and faith. How can you believe who take honor one of another? As long as we seek to be strong in our trusting, for the sake of our own comfort and goodness, and the possession of power, even if we dream of using it all for others, when once we obtain it, we shall fail. It is the soul that at once, in its weakness, gives itself up for the sake of God and others, that will find in that Self-sacrifice is the need and the right to claim God's mighty help through His Faithfulness. Gideon and Barak, David and Samuel, they were all men whose names and whose trust would never have been known, but that they lived for their nation and God's cause in it, that they were God's chosen instruments for doing His redeeming work in His people.(Here we have to mention that His people are made up of two classes, the Hebrews and the Gentiles, as both now have equal standing on a level playing field and the same right to come through the same gate or door into His presence, the death of all self-will and to all the foods of deceptive riches of the spirit of the world. Through the gate of the cross, flesh and Blood of Christ found as being in Christ Jesus: in Him hanging on the tree, in His death, in His burial and resurrection and our total acceptance of the fact and Truth which had been hidden from plain sight to all but those who by choice have chosen the Way of God's Divine Plain gained acceptance by Him. emphasis added)

The sphere of God's special revelation is now no longer just for the Hebrews, but the world. What a work there is to be done in it! Among the Hebrews and their stronghold of Judaism a stumbling-block for them and those seeking to be counted as one with them, Christians and heathen, in church, mission and school, in temperance and purity of work, in the great fight against iniquity, lawlessness and worldliness in every shape, in larger and smaller circles what room, what need for the heroes of trusting faith to subdue kingdoms, to work righteousness, to obtain the promises! Let each of us offer himself to God for the struggle. And as we trust we can surely conquer. In this connection let us cease to seek a trusting in our own interests: let us lose ourselves to the receptivity of God's working in our souls. We shall lose ourselves to find ourselves back in God and His Grace, Love, Truth and Faithfulness.

1. Wherefore, having- boldness to enter into the Holiest, let us draw near in fulness of His faith. Live the life of faith in the Holiest with God: then your whole life on earth will be one of trusting His Faithfulness.
2. Give yourself wholly to God and His faith within will give the confidence to ask that God give Himself wholly to you.
3. In the little things of daily life we need trust as much as in larger interests. Trusting counts nothing insignificant, because nothing is good in which God is not. Trust yields itself to God for Him most literally and completely to be All in ALL. This allows God the freedom to do all that He desires within us again to the infusing of His nature in our souls.
4. Remember the real value of strong trust is to gain victories through God, to live for the salvation of souls and the extension of His kingdom.

"The Holiest of ALL" part CVIII

ISRAEL, AND REDEMPTION BY FAITH.
Hebrews  11: 27 - 31   By faith he (Moses) forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing Him (Christ) who is invisible. By faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of the blood, that the destroyer of the firstborn should not touch them. By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land: which the Egyptians assaying to do were swallowed up. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they had been compassed about for seven days. By faith Rahab the harlot perished not with them that were disobedient (the gentiles within the walled city), having received the spies with peace.

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

In the TENTH SECTION
Hebrews 11: 1-40.
The Fulness of Faith.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

In these verses we have, in five examples, from the history of the Hebrews on their way from Egypt to Canaan, the truth confirmed anew that in all that God does in redemption, on man's part trusting is the beginning and ending. Whether we look at His revelation as a whole, or at its individual parts, everywhere the one thing He asks, the one thing that pleases Him, the one thing that secures His blessing--- is our trust. In the five times repeated by the word faith we see that in the greatest variety of circumstances and duties the first of all duties always is--- trust in the invisible One. Oh that we might at length learn the lesson: as there is one God, and one redemption, so there is but One Way to Him and to it--- is trust in Him. As absolute and universal and undisputed as is the sole supremacy of God, is to be the supremacy of our trusting in God, and God can become within us what He is in the universe, what He is in His very nature--- the all in all.

The history of the Hebrews, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit of God, is a real type and figure of the life of Christ in the soul. In the illustrations taken from the beginning of that history, we have some of the chief steps of the Christian life strikingly illustrated. By trusting Moses, with the Hebrews, left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king who would pursue them. That is ever the first step--- coming out, being separate, parting with sin, bidding farewell to Egypt, the land of our birth, and not fearing the wrath of Satan or the world. It is by nothing but by trusting that this can be done, definitely and perseveringly. But our trusting can enable us to do it, as it did Moses. For he endured, as seeing Him (Christ) who is invisible. Here is the mighty power of His faith in the heart of believers; it sees what others cannot see. It sees, amid the thousand things others see and are guided by, something infinitely greater--- it sees God. No wonder it leads a man to act differently from other men. On everything it looks at, the bright Light of Eternity, of God, is shining. No wonder that under the inspiration of that Vision it can do mighty deeds, for it sees God as its helper and strength.

Let me here say to every believer that just as, in any pursuit, the eye by practice can be trained to see what others cannot see, so the eye of our trust can be trained to see God everywhere. Abide in His presence till the heart is filled with His Grace and Faith, Recognize Him in every thing that happens. Seek to walk in the Light of His countenance. Seeing the Invisible will make it easy to forsake the world and do the Will of God.

By trusting he kept, with the Hebrews, the passover and the sprinkling of blood, that the destroyer should not touch them. When our trust is ready for the first step, the forsaking of Egypt, God meets it with His Divine provision, and faith finds perfect safety and rest under the shelter of the Blood. And if the Hebrews thus honored God's word and trusted in the blood of a lamb--- oh, shall we not ten thousand times more honor the Blood of the Lamb, and believe and claim that Eternal Salvation it brings us. We have been taught its wonderful power in conquering sin and death, in Opening Heaven, in Cleansing and Perfecting our conscience and heart, and bringing us near to God; let us open our whole being to the power of the Blood that cleanses from all sin. Let our trusting His faithfulness rejoice in the invisible God and the precious Blood of the Lamb of God.

By trusting they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land. On the sprinkling of the Blood there follows the entrance on a New Life, the surrender to be led by God in a Way that we know not, through difficulties to us insurmountable. By trusting they passed through between the waters in a way man had never trod, in a way that their pursuers in vain sought to follow. Where nature fails our trusting triumphs, for it follows in a Way where God leads.

By trusting and obedience the walls of Jericho fell down. The strength of the enemy, in which he trusted, in view of the impotence of God's people, availed nothing before the power of God's faithfulness. When shall we learn, in quiet patience and perseverance, to wait upon God our seven days too, the Circle of a completed time, until He gives the possession of the promised Rest (the Canaan of Christ's Rest ). Let our trusting claim it; we are the children of a God who does impossibilities; we are called to a life of surrendered trust that expects and receives them. Let our life be--- a life of trusting in God's faithfulness to fulfill His promised end.

By trusting Rahab perished not. Salvation by trust was not for the Hebrews only but for the heathen too. By trusting Rahab was not only saved, but became one of the ancestors of Jesus, and one of the cloud of witnesses that tell of the blessedness of trusting. With one accord they call to us: Have trust in God, all things are possible to him that believes. Let trust be all with us, and God will be all. Let God be all and He will do all.

By trusting obedience. Let this be the motto of our life. In every need and perplexity, with every desire and prayer, with every work and trial, with every thought of ourselves and of God, let this be the one thing we seek ever to breathe a Living trust in a Living God and His Faithfulness. Once again I say: As absolute and universal and undisputed as is the supremacy of God, is to be the supremacy of His faith in our heart and life. We can only have as much of God in our heart as we have of His Grace and Faith. And because God is All, and must be All to us, His faith in our heart must be all too.


1. The old saints had less light than we how is it they had more trust than so many? It Is because we trust in the light we have, as we hold it in our mind and reason. They were thrown upon God and trusted Him. Let us but give ourselves over to the perfect life Jesus has revealed what power of His faith would give us.
2. But notice everywhere how it was only in obedience trusting could act. In leaving Egypt, and sprinkling the blood, and passing through the Red Sea, and going round Jericho, and Rahab's deliverance it was all, wholly and entirely, in obedience that trust acted and triumphed.
3, Faith is the power of the will choosing God's Will, entering into it and yielding to it. Would you be strong In such trust to stand perfect in all the Will of God.

"The Holiest of ALL" part CVII

MOSES, AND THE DECISION OF FAITH.
Hebrews 11: 24 - 26  By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; Choosing rather to be evilly entreated with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; Accounting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he looked unto the recompense of reward.

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

Now in the TENTH SECTION
Hebrews  11: 1-40.
The Fulness of Faith.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

We all live by trusting in a God of some kind, when this trust is placed in the right source it becomes His faithfulness that we trust. What we love and live in we believe in. He that trusts and yields himself to the visible and the temporal lives an earthly, fleshly life dealing with and touching only the external world. He that looks to the unseen and the eternal, and joins himself to it, lives a Divine, a Heavenly Life a born again spiritual person. Between these two forms of trusting and faith has ever to make its choice. The clearer and more deliberate, the more conscious the decision is for the unseen, the more will the trusting become a faith in God and God will strengthen and reward this kind of faith. The great difficulty in making the right choice lies in the fact that, by the victory which things seen and sensible gained in paradise (the land of Canaan found in Christ Jesus and therefore Heavenly emphasis added), our eyes have been blinded to, and the things of time, even where we acknowledge them to be of less value, have acquired, in virtue of their continual presence and their pressing claims, superior power. The great work faith has to do, and the best school for its growth and strength, is the choice of the unseen.

Of this choice Moses is a striking illustration. Just see what there was on the one side. The lust of the flesh: the pleasures of sin for a season. The lust of the eye: the riches of Egypt. The pride of life: to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. And, on the other side, to be evilly entreated, to bear reproach. And what was it that enabled him to make a wise choice? He saw that to be evilly entreated with the Hebrews of God is to have God as his portion and defense. He bore the reproach of Christ, in the power of the Spirit of Christ from Heaven, lifting his heart above earth. Even as Christ, for the joy set before Him,endured the cross, so he looked to the recompense of the reward. Faith in the blessing of God on the people of God; union in spirit with the Christ of God; the assurance of a coming world, with its Glories being far greater than the rewards and the judgments of earth;--- no wonder that all this guided and strengthened him to the choice he made--- the Better part never to be taken away.

We are studying this chapter in its connection with this Epistle, and its teaching as to a life under the leadership of Christ--- a life in the New and Living Way of conformity to Him, leading into the Holiest of God's presence. We long to know how we can grow strong, and live in the full exercise of a faith that inherits the promise and enters into the Rest of God. Moses witness is clear: Let trusting prove itself in choosing, once for all and for always, at any cost, the unseen--- the reward will be sure and large because our trust becomes God's FAITH. In Abraham we saw this choice when there was no special opposition or persecution. This is the feature in Moses choice we must notice: with the danger threatening us of being evilly entreated, and bearing reproach, and having to face the loss of all, our trusting must not hesitate or halt. To be evilly entreated with God's people, to bear Christ's reproach, and count these greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt (i.e....the world, and its religions ),--- this is what our trusting will become in Christ's faith an enables a man to do, this is the spiritual discipline which makes faith strong. Faith looks at everything in the Light and greater Truth of Eternity, judging of it as one will do when the judgment day is past, and the glory begun; everything is seen in its True Value, and Sacrifice and Suffering and loses and trials are welcomed as the teachings and training in which the glad decision, and the firm will, and the strong character, and the victory of faith are attained.

We have here the great cause of the weakness of faith in our days. There is no separation from the world. So many Christians seek to have as much of its pleasure and honor and riches as they possibly can, consistently with their profession of religion. In such an atmosphere faith is stifled. Many hardly believe, or never remember, that the world, with its arts and culture and prosperity, amid all its religious professions, is still the same world that rejected Christ and is still rejecting Him. The disciple who would be as his Lord, " not of the world, even as He was not of the world, "seeks to say with Paul, " Far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." (Or may we put it this way, through which the world's lusts has been crucified in me and I to the influences of the spirit of the world. For we battle daily to keep it under to power of God's working in me. emphasis added)

How wonderful is the place Moses occupies in the Kingdom of God. A pattern of Jesus as a prophet, as a mediator, as an intercessor, in his meekness and his faithfulness, there are few of God's servants that stand higher. And what fitted him to take this place? Just this--- the choice to give up everything for the reproach of Christ. Christian, would you live in the Grace of God, and enter into His tent to meet Him as Moses did? Would you be an instrument and a power of Blessing, a man strong in faith?--- Seek to be perfectly Separated from the spirit of the world, refuse its pleasure and honor and riches; count the contempt of God's people and the reproach of Christ your treasures. Ask for the enlightening of the Holy Spirit to teach you what true conformity to Christ is, in your relation to the world, its culture, its possessions, its friendship. Beware of judging of what is lawful by any human standard: Christ alone can teach you what it means to forsake all, to sell all, to deny yourself, and take up His cross, and follow Him through the gate on into the presence of God. Count all things loss to be conformed to Him. It was in bearing the reproach of Christ becomes our character like that of Moses was formed. This is the sure path of our trusting in the faith of God unto power and to blessing.

Follow as Moses did, accounting the reproach of Christ your riches, and you shall share with him the recompense of the reward. Let us therefore go forth to Him, bearing His reproach. Are you one of the willing to forsake all the world and its religion has to offer in order to pass through the veil and receive the sprinkled Blood of Christ upon your heart and mind? Or are you one who have turned your back toward Him as the Hebrews did as recorded in the book of Acts no less than three times and by so doing refused so great a salvation? Are you one with the Hebrews to whom this epistle was written who have once tasted the righteousness of God and through neglect become slothful while still attending some kind of religious ceremony or custom of church attendance and through that practice have forsaken the LORD and His Blood? If so it is to you we have addressed our efforts to help awaken you to your choice of pitfalls and short comings, repent and turn back to God and seek Him with all that maybe in yourself and come out of your stupor. emphasis added

1. Examine very carefully where your danger lies. Is it the friendship and honor of men? Is it the pleasure, or the spirit of the world? Is it the cares of the world? Whatever it be, give it up. It is only an unworldly spirit that can be strong in faith.
2. What is the faith that enables a man to bear all and to sacrifice all? Nothing but an eye that sees into the true nature and value of things, that judges of them as God does. Yes, rather that we see God to be all, and the creature nothing except as it leads to Him.
3. Exercise yourself in this faith by retirement into solitude and intimacy with the invisible. Beware of too free intercourse with the literature of this world: its spirit entering into you. The world knows not God: make your choice and maintain it.

"The Holiest of ALL" part CVI

FAITH BLESSING THE CHILDREN.
Hebrews 11: 20-23  By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, even concerning things to come. By faith Jacob, when he was a-dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph; and worshiped, leaning upon the top of his staff. By faith Joseph, when his end was near, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones. By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months by his parents, because they saw he was a goodly child; and they were not afraid of the king's commandment.

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

In the TENTH SECTION
Hebrews 11: 1-40.
The Fulness of Faith.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

It is remarkable how much, both in this chapter and throughout all Scripture, trust has to do with the relationship of parents and children. In nature the life of the parents is imparted to the children. In the spiritual world it may be so too; the intercourse of trust with God reaches the children too; the man of strong trusting is a blessing to his children. We have seen in Noah and Abraham and Sarah how largely their trusting was turned into faith by God and how God then had to do with their children. And here we find four more examples.

By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau. His blessing on his children was the manifestation of his trusting in the promise of God to his father and himself, and the transmission of the blessing to them. By personal knowledge of God's faithfulness Jacob/Israel blessed each of the sons of Israel, giving each of them their place in the future that was coming. By the same personal knowledge Joseph made mention of the departure of the children of Israel saying, " I die, but God will surely visit you, and bring you up out of this land." By faith Moses was hid three months by his parents, because they saw he was a goodly child. Their trusting in the destiny they knew was waiting for the children of Israel (the Hebrews, in the material or external since, the Israel of God in the since as being spiritual, as having passed through death into Life), and in the mercy of God watching over His people, gave them the courage not to fear the king's commandment. In all these cases their trusting became faith and was the secret inspiration of their treatment of their children, and the source of blessing. God's Faith and faithfulness never confines itself to the person of the believer himself, but takes in his house and children.

And how is it that the Christian parent can secure this longed-for blessing for his children? There is but one answer: By trusting God's faithfulness. Our life must be all trusting--- that is, the unseen things must be our life, yes, rather, the unseen God must become our life. The blessing and the Authority and power are His; and it is as we have more of God in our life and in our home, there will be the hidden power resting on our children. Faith does not only mean a Knowing that there is a Covenant promise for our children, and a requesting of it in prayer. This is an exercise of God's faithfulness, and has its great value. But the chief thing is the Life; trust is the making way for God and giving Him first place in our life. And when at times the vision tarries, and the promise appears to fail, trust understands this as only a call to more trusting God more completely and more confidently. As we hold fast our confidence firm to the end, as in patience and long-suffering we become strong in God's faith, giving glory back to God, we shall Know for certain that we shall inherit this promise too. I will be your God and the God of your seed. (Those who have placed their total care and trust in the Faithfulness of God having passed through death into Newness of Life in Christ Jesus. emphasis added)

From the patriarchs we learn what the atmosphere and what the soil is in which there grows such a trust that blesses the children. They were living in the land of promise as strangers and pilgrims, or in Egypt as strangers and pilgrims too, longing for the return to the land and a city not yet known of man. Their whole life was hope in God and what He would do. They were men whom God had taken hold of, to prove in their history how gloriously He would fulfill His promise. And they had nothing to live on but God. It is a law of nature that no body can be in two places at the sametime. This is just as true of the heart. When God took Abraham and his seed out of their country, it was that the land of promise, the land of separation from men and the spirit of the world, of separation unto God (a land not yet in their possession a city not made by mans hands eternal.. emphasis added), might be to them the training-school to develop a trusting in His faithfulness. They went out from the fellowship of home and family, to live in the intimacy of God. It was there they learned by His faithfulness to bless the children.

Separation from the world, a being set apart unto God, the denial of self and its life, the imitation of Abraham in his going out, of Christ in His Self-sacrifice,--- this is the only Way to the Land of promise where the faith-life flourishes. To live wholly for God, to hope alone in God, always to walk with God, in all things to hearken to God,--- this is the New and Living Way into the Inner Sanctuary, in which Jesus our High Priest leads us. What the land of promise was to the patriarchs, as the place for the life of separation and obedience and trusting His faithfulness, that the Holiest of All is to us. That is the place of which God has said to us: Get out of your land, to a place that I will show to you, and I will bless you,--- that is the only place where our trust can grow freely to become faith, and God can prove all His power in us, so that we, like they, can be a display of what God can do. And that is the place where our trust will in full measure be a Blessing to our children.(This is the Canaan Land flowing with milk and honey found only in Christ Jesus our High Priest-King. emphasis added)

It is only by His faith that we can be blessed. God is Willing to Bless us to larger circles than our own house. He is calling for vessels, empty vessels not a few, in which He can multiply His Blessing. He is the only fountain of Blessing; as our trusting grows into faith and yields to God, and allows Him to be all, His Blessing will flow. Let the Christian who would be a blessing be a man of trust first as a receptive one,--- that is, a man who has nothing and is nothing in or of himself, and in whom God has free scope to do His Will and Divine work, and the Blessing will not be wanting. Oh! that God might have the place that belongs to Him in this His own world. And if that may not yet be--- oh, that He might have that place in the hearts of His people. And if it is as if even that will not yet be--- oh, let Him have His proper place, my reader, in your heart and in mine. Let our trust become His faith, then we can see and consent and prove that God is all, and He will prove that He is a God of Blessing for you and all around you.

1. Parent, teacher, worker, the secret of blessing in the work, the power to influence, is simple trusting. Not simply the trust in some promise at times, but the habit of a Holy trusting in God's faith that makes God the All of our life. Have trust in the faithfulness found in God as the God of your life, the God who maintains His Life and presence within you then He will work through you.
2. How blessed to be an instrument in the hands of God, with which He works out His purpose; to be a vessel He fills with His Love.
3. Learn to regard yourself as set to be a blessing, and let trusting have its perfect working unto faith and love mark your whole life.