"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.