"The Holiest of ALL" part XCVI

BOLDNESS AND PATIENCE.
Hebrews 10: 35- 36 Cast not away therefore your boldness, which has great recompense of reward. For we have need of patience, that, having done the Will of God, you may receive the promise.

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

THE FOURTH WARNING
Hebrews 10: 26-39.
Against sinning willfully and drawing back.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

We know how often we have had the word boldness in our Epistle. If we hold fast our boldness ( 3: 6); Let us draw near with boldness to the Throne of Grace (4: 16); Having boldness to enter into the Holiest through the Blood of Jesus (10: 19). The boldness and confidence toward God is one of the strongest roots of the Christian life. Without it there is no strength to persevere, no power to draw near to the Throne of Grace in prayer, no liberty to enter into the full intimacy with God in the Holiest. And so the Hebrews are urged not to cast away their boldness, because it has great recompense of reward. In the vigor and joy of the Christian life, in the bright and joyous fellowship with God, in the courage for meeting the battle with the world and sin, the reward of boldness is great.

Cast not away your boldness. When I have my hands filled, and something more tempting is offered, I may either directly cast away what I have, or, by trying to take the new object into hands already full, may gradually lose hold of what I first held fast. Casting away our boldness always has its cause in something else that we allow to take its place in the heart. It may be sin, whether only rising in the heart or breaking out into an act, if it be not immediately confessed and cleansed away. It may be something in itself lawful, but which is allowed too large a share in our interest or affections. It may be something doubtful, so insignificant that it hardly appears worth considering, and yet which somehow robs us of perfect liberty in looking up into God's face. It may be care or fear, it may be self-effort, or self-seeking, self-trust; anything that is not in the perfect Will of God loosens our hold on the Boldness before God, and, ere we know, we have cast it away: it is lost.

But we must not only know how we lose it; we want as much to know how to keep and increase it. The texts we quoted tells us. Among the foundation Truths we had it: We have a High Priest able to sympathize, let us come with Boldness. And in the fuller teaching it came again: Having Boldness to enter through the Blood, let us draw near. The High Priest and the Blood--- these are the everlasting and unchanging ground of our confidence. It is as we consider Christ Jesus, and follow Him; as we grow in the Knowledge and the faith of His Blood, and enter through it into God's presence, that we shall hold fast our boldness with an ever firmer grasp. As with a True heart we draw near, and in the consciousness of our integrity, that in holiness and sincerity of God we are walking in the world, place ourselves in the Light of God, we shall receive even in this life something of the great recompense of reward the Boldness of faith ever brings.

Cast not away your boldness, for we have need of patience. Your boldness you cannot dispense with for a single moment; to the end of life it is your only strength. Cast it not away; remember that without patience, in the persevering exercise and daily renewal of faith, you cannot inherit the promise. Between the faith that accepts a promise, and the experience that fully inherits or receives it, there often lie years of discipline, teaching and training needed to fit and perfect you for the inward possession of what God has to give. Whether it be a promise to be realized in this world or the coming, you have need of patience. Therefore cast not away, never for a moment lose hold of, hold fast firm to the end, your boldness--- you have need of patience. In chapter 6 it was said: Be imitators of them who through faith and longsuffering inherited the promise. This is one of the great practical lessons of the Epistle. Without perseverance, endurance, steadfastness, faith is vain; the only proof that it is a living, saving faith, is that it holds fast its boldness firm unto the end.

You have need of patience, that, having done the Will of God, you may receive the promise. Doing the Will is the only Way to receive the promise. Doing the Will is to be the one thing that is to occupy us while we patiently wait. Between God's giving the promise to Abraham and his receiving its fulfillment there lay years of the obedience of faith. And each new act of obedience was crowned with new and larger blessing. Doing the Will was the proof of his faith, the occupation of his patience, the Way to his blessing. It was even so with our blessed Lord. Between the promise given Him of the Father and His inheriting it in the Resurrection and Ascension there lay--- what? His life of obedience: Lo, I am come to do Your Will, O God. With every Christ-like one who puts his Trust in the Living Christ, and enters the Holiest of All to live there, doing the Will of God must be the link that unites the end to the beginning. Between the faith that receives and then accepts the promise and the experience that fully inherits it, there may to us, too, be years of waiting and trial. These must be marked by the obedience of faith, by "patient continuance in well-doing," or we never can reach the promised end. If we see to the doing of God's Will, He will see to our inheriting the promise. The sure mark of true faith, the blessed exercise of life within the veil, the proof of the power of Christ, the obedient One within us, the blessedness of intimacy with God will all come with this--- doing His Will. To do the Will of God is the only Way to God and His presence. Therefore, day by day, hour by hour, let this be our motto: Patience, that having done the Will, you may inherit the promise.

1. We have been so little accustomed in our Christian life to give the doing of God's Will its right place, and there is so much misconception about it, as if it is not actually expected of us, that it will take time and trouble to get the heart under the complete mastery of the thought--- I am every moment to be doing nothing but the Will of God. Jesus Christ lived so. He, our Leader, will teach it us. He, our life, will live it in us. He, our High Priest, will by His Spirit, in this New and Living Way, bring us in very deed near to God.
2. Boldness, courage, bravery, the chief of the manly virtues. Patience, one of the loveliest of the gentler sisterhood of passive Graces. In each full Christ-like character the two must be combined. Cast not away your boldness, for--- you have need of patience. Boldness to undertake, patience to carry out the doing of God's Will.
3. O! believer, let the Truth enter deep into you--- boldly, patiently doing the Will is the only Way to inherit the promise.