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.
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