"The Holiest of All" part X

THE DANGER OF NEGLECTING SO GREAT SALVATION.
Hebrews 2: 1 - 4  Therefore we ought to give more earnest (abundant) heed to the things that were heard lest haply we drift away. For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward; How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation? which having at the first been spoken through the Lord, was confirmed to us by them that heard; God also bearing witness with them, both by signs and wonders, and by manifold powers, and by gifts (distributions) of the Holy Ghost, according to His own Will.
THE FIRST WARNING
Hebrews 2: 1-4.
To take heed to what the Son speaks.


BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

The first chapter has set before us the Divine Glory of Christ the Son, in whom God has spoken to us in these days. In the second the humanity and the humiliation of Jesus are to be Unfolded. Ere the writer proceeds to this, he pauses to sound a note of warning. He reminds his readers of the greater responsibility and greater danger in case of neglect, which greater privileges bring, and to urge them to take more earnest, more abundant heed to what God is speaking in and through His Son.

Therefore, this is the link between the teaching of chapter 1 with regard to the Godhead and Glory of the Son, and the warning that now comes. The everlasting God speaks to us in His Son; we surely ought to give more abundant heed.

More abundant heed: it is the same word as is used in chapter 6: 17. "God being minded to show more abundantly to the heirs of the promise, the immutability of His counsel." In what God speaks and does, it is all with the desire to show to us more abundantly, in full and overflowing measure, what the purpose of His heart is. It is for this He speaks in none less than His own Son. He has a right to claim that we meet Him with a corresponding wholeheartedness, and give more abundant heed to what He speaks. Nothing less will satisfy Him; nothing less, in the very nature of things, will satisfy us, because nothing less than man's more abundant heed is capable of receiving God's more abundant Grace. It is the lack of this taking more earnest heed, the lack of intense earnestness, giving God and the first place and the best powers of our life, which is at the root of the feebleness and sickness of the Christian life. God is speaking to us in His Son, therefore we ought to take more abundant heed.
Lest haply we drift away--- and perish more surely and more terribly than those who sinned under the Old Testament. There the word spoken, with its threatening, was steadfast, and every transgression was punished. How shall we escape, if we neglect so great Salvation? The Gospel does not, as so many think, lessen--- it  increases our danger. It does not diminish, but will terribly intensify, the soreness of the punishment in those who neglect it. Oh, let us sound out the warning: it is not only positive enmity or open sin that will be punished. No, simply "not taking earnest heed," just "drifting away" unconsciously with the current of worldliness and half hearted belief or faith, "neglecting" to give the great Salvation that supremacy, that entire devotion which it claims,--- it is this which will render escape impossible.

And why? How can we show men that it is right and meet that it should be so? And what is the motive that will stir men to take heed? The answer is in the one word: So great Salvation. The insight into the more abundant Glory, the Divine, the all-surpassing greatness of this Salvation, is what will compel men willingly and joyfully to give up all and buy this Pearl of great Price.

And wherein does the greatness of this Salvation consist? In this that it comes to us from and through THE TRIUNE GOD; the Holy Trinity is revealed as combining to Work out this Salvation for us. Listen. "So great salvation, which having at the first been spoken by the Lord, was confirmed to us by them that heard." Christ the Son, the brightness of the Father's Glory, and the express image of His substance, it was He in whom God spoke to us and speaks to us; it is He, the Redeemer, God and King, who Himself first preached the Kingdom which He established when He effected the cleansing of our sins, and sat down on the right hand of the Throne.

So great salvation! First spoken by the Lord, God also bearing witness both by signs and wonders, and by manifold powers. God the Father Himself set His seal from Heaven on the preaching of the word (of this revelation of the Gospel). The existence of His Church is His standing sign and wonder, the proof of His Divine power. Not to take heed, to neglect the great Salvation, is nothing less than despising God Himself.

God also bearing witness, by distributions of the Holy Ghost, according to His own Will. Not only did God bear witness to the great Salvation by signs and wonders and powers, but above all by the Holy Ghost sent from Heaven. The Holy Spirit is God come to dwell on earth, to strive and plead and testify in the hearts of men. There is no fellowship, no intimacy with the Father but through the Son, and no fellowship, no intimacy with the Son and His Salvation, but through the Holy Spirit in us. Let us enter the study of Christ's person and work in the Epistle in this faith. Yes, this is the greatness of the great Salvation--- in its offer THE THREE-ONE GOD comes to us. The Lord preached, the Father bore witness, the Holy Spirit came as the power of God to Work. What a Salvation! What sin to neglect it! May God reveal to us, as we study this Epistle,the Glory of the so great Salvation, that we may indeed more abundantly take heed to it.

1. To know the Son who speaks and reveals the Father; to know the Father to whom, and whose Love, the Son brings us in; to know the Holy Spirit with His wonderful gifts of Grace and power; to be restored to the image and fellowship in intimacy of the Holy Trinity: this is Salvation.
2. Let every thought of the Glory of Christ, and of God, and of the Spirit, and of the great Salvation leave this one impression: Take more abundant heed to what you hear! Meet God's abounding Grace with abounding desire to listen, believe and be receptive by faith.
3. To the preaching of Christ and the Apostles God bore witness. If this was needful then, how much more now, at this long distance from those days of Heavenly joy and power. Ask, for the study of the Word in the Epistle, that God bear witness of the Holy Ghost. Claim and expect it. Without this, even the teaching of the Apostles by Christ Himself availed little.
4. Once again. This is the greatness of Salvation; the everlasting Father in His Love speaks to me Himself in the Son. The Son shows and brings and gives me all the Father speaks; and I have the Holy Spirit in me, fitting me to hear and know and possess and enjoy all that the Father in the Son speaks and gives. Let us, above all, hold this fast that there is no divine witness, or assurance, or experience of the Salvation Christ effected,  except as the Holy Spirit, which came from Heaven, communicates and maintains it within us. Let us, therefore, take more abundant heed to the Holy Spirit in us, in whom the Father and the Son come to us.

"The Holiest of All" part IX

THE SON ON THE RIGHT HAND OP GOD.
Hebrews 1: 13 - 14  But of which of the angels has He said at any time, sit on My right hand, till I make your enemies the footstool of your feet (Ps. ex.). Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation?
FIRST SECTION
Hebrews 1: 4-14.
The Son of God more than the Angels.

By Andrew Murray

Sit on My right hand, till I make Your enemies the footstool of Your feet. These words we have from Psalm 110. Luther called it the chief of all the Psalms. The first verse, and the fourth about Melchizedek, contain the hidden mysteries, which we never should have understood without the exegesis ( explanation or interpretation ) of the Holy Spirit. It is from this Psalm that the expression, which is become one of the great articles of our faith, Sitting on the right hand of God, has been taken into the New Testament. Our Lord quoted the words when He taught (Matt 22: 41) how David, when he said, "YEHOVAH said to my Lord" had acknowledged that the Messiah who was to be His Son, would also be his Lord. Before Caiaphas (Matt. 26: 64) Christ spoke of Himself as "the Son of Man, sitting at the right hand of power." Mark ( 16: 19) in the narrative of the ascension, uses the words, "The Lord Jesus was received up into Heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God." At Pentecost (Acts 2: 35) Peter proved from this text that David had prophesied of the Messiah. Paul (1 Cor. 15: 25) applies the words to the final conquest of all the enemies of the Lord Jesus. And to the Ephesians (chap. 1: 20-22) he speaks of the, "working of the strength of God's might, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the Heavenlies." Our Epistle uses the expression five times. The words of David spoken through the Holy Spirit of what he could but very little have apprehended, became, through Jesus and the Apostles, the revelation of what is the highest Glory of Christ, and the greatest strength of our faith and hope.

The word suggests two thoughts. The one, that as Son of Man He is admitted to the perfect fellowship and equality with God; the other, that He is now possessor of the Divine nature, of universal authority and power. We are so familiar with the Truth, that its infinite magnificence hardly strikes us. God is a God who is, and must be, infinitely jealous of His honor: His Glory He will not give to another. When Jesus, the crucified Son of Man, takes His place at the right hand of the Majesty on High, it can only be because He is also the Son of God, because He is God. And it assures us that now the power and Dominion of God Himself are in His hands, to carry out the work of  Salvation through our Redemption to its full consummation, until all His enemies have been put under His feet, and He shall deliver up the Kingdom to the Father.

When the writer quotes the words, it is with the question: Of which of the angels has He said at any time? And He gives the answer: Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to do service for them who shall be heirs to Salvation? He would impress deep upon us the thought that angels, though they come from God's Throne, and are the instruments of His power, are still infinitely distinct from the Son. The Redemption from sin, the true fellowship with God, the Life and the Love of God they cannot communicate. It is the Son, sitting at the right hand of God, acting in the power of God, to whom we must look for the everlasting Redemption, for the true inward deliverance from sin, for the complete working of our Salvation. The angels, by contrast, all pointed us to the Son, seated as Man on the Throne, in proof of, and to impart, that perfect restoration to the fellowship/intimacy of the Most High in the Most Holy Place.

This is the Son in whom God speaks to us. The word, Sit on My right hand, is spoken in our hearing and in our behalf. In that word we have concentrated all God's speaking. See, He says, how I have exalted Him, your Brother, your Surety, your Head, to my right hand, in token of My perfect acceptance of His work; your perfect admittance to My presence and the enjoyment of all the power of the Heavenly Life; your full participation, in your inmost being, of what the Kingdom of Heaven is. Sit on My right hand: let the Word enter and master all our heart and life. I have said that it occurs five times in the Epistle. Compare these passages, and the others having reference to Christ's place in Heaven (see Ref. 1: 3), and observe how the great Truth we are to learn is this: the Knowledge of Jesus as having entered Heaven for us, and taken us in union with Himself into a Heavenly Life, is what will deliver the Christian from all that is low and feeble, and lift him to a life of joy and strength. To gaze upon the Heavenly Christ in the Father's presence, to whom all things are subject, will transform us into Heavenly Christians, dwelling all the day in God's presence, and overcoming every enemy. Yes, my Redeemer, seated at God's right hand--- if I only know Him aright and Trust Him as able to save completely He will make me more than conqueror.

If we would obtain this Blessed Knowledge of our Lord, and the Blessed Life in the experience of His power, Scripture has a prayer for us (Eph. 1:17-22), that we will do well to pray often: "That the God of our Lord Jesus would give us the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation, that we may know what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to that working of the strength of His might which He wrought in Christ, when He made Him to sit at His right hand in the Heavenlies". Let us pray for this spirit of Divine illumination; let us study and adore the strength of God's might that lifted Him to the Throne; and let us believe joyfully, that that power works in us every day to lift us up and enable us to live as those who are seated with Him in the Heavenlies. And let us sing without ceasing: Praised be God for such a Savior!

1. "Now the chief point Is this: We have such an High Priest who sat down on the right hand of the Throne of the Majesty on High" ( 8: 1). Yes, this is the chief point: Jesus in Heaven, keeping it open for me, drawing me to enter into the Holiest, and keeping me in it: sending Heaven into my heart.
2. "He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things." On earth everything is limited by space, time and matter, in Heaven all Is In a Divine, all-pervading power. As the light of the sun pervades all the air, the Light and Spirit of Heaven can fill all our heart. The Heavenly Christ fills all things.
3. See how they worship Him who sits on the Throne in Heaven (Rev. 5: 8-14, 7: 9-12), and let every thought of Jesus on the Throne lead to worship. It was as, during ten days, the disciples worshiped Him that had just sat down on the right hand of God, that they were filled with the Holy Ghost. The Pentecostal gift is ours: here is the place and the posture in which we shall enter into its full experience.

"The Holiest of All" part VIII

THE SON-THE EVERLASTING CREATOR.
Hebrews 1: 10 - 12 You, Lord, In the beginning have laid the foundation of the earth, and the Heavens are the work of Your hands: They shall perish; but You continue: And they all shall wax old as does a garment. And as a mantle shall You roll them up, as a garment, and they shall be changed: But You are the same, and Your years shall not fail ( Ps. 102: 26, 27).

FIRST SECTION
Hebrews 1: 4-14
The Son of God more than the Angels.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

Come and hearken once more to what the Divine message has to tell us of the Glory of the Son, in whom the Father speaks to us. Come and see how truly He is one with God, and shares with him all His Glory. The deeper our insight into the true Godhead of our Lord Jesus Christ, His perfect oneness with God, the more confident shall we be that He will, in His Divine power, make us partakers of His work, His Life, His indwelling.
We find Christ here set before us as the Creator, to whom all owes its existence, as the everlasting and unchangeable One, to whom alone, when all waxes old and perishes, can be said, You continue; You are the same; Your years shall not fail. In Isaiah God speaks of Himself: "Have you not heard, the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth faints not, neither is weary." In our text we see the Son as the Almighty Creator, the everlastingly unchangeable One, that we may know who it is through whom God speaks to us, and to whom He has intrusted the work of our Salvation.

The words are taken from Ps. 102. The ordinary reader would not think that the Messiah or the Son was here spoken of. But, taught by the Holy Spirit, our writer sees how all redemption is wrought only through the Son, and how, therefore, the building up of Zion and the appearing in His Glory (verse 16), the looking down from the Sanctuary and the loosing those who are appointed to death (verse  20), all points to the Son as Redeemer. And then what follows is true of Him too. It is: " You have laid the foundations of the earth, and
the Heavens are the work of Your hands: they shall perish, but You shall endure." God is the Almighty and everlasting: these are the attributes of Him to whom our Salvation is entrusted.

Listen, believer! Christ, your Redeemer, is the Almighty One. God saw that none but His Son could meet your need: have you so seen it, too, that this, His almighty power, has been claimed and appropriated for your daily life? Have you learned never to think of Him otherwise than as the One who calles the things that are not as though they were, and creates what otherwise could not be?

Christ, your Redeemer, is the everlasting and unchangeable One: have you heard Him speak? "I, Yehovah, change not; therefore you are not consumed," and learned to Trust Him as the One who is each moment to you all that He can be, and who will, without variation or shadow of turning, maintain in never ceasing power His Life within you? Oh! learn that God saw it needful to speak to you through none other than such a One as
could reach the heart and fill it with the power of His eternal Word. The Almighty Son, through whom God has created all things, who upholds and fills all things by the Word of His power; this is He who will even so, in the power of His Godhead, uphold and fill your whole life and being. Your Creator is your Redeemer! One great cause of feebleness and backsliding in the Christian life is the power of circumstances. We often say that temptations that come to us from our position in life, from the struggle to live, from the conduct of our fellow-men, draw us away from God, and are the cause of our falling into sin. If we but believed that our Redeemer is our Creator! He knows us; He appoints and orders our lot; nothing that comes to us but what He has in His hands. He has the power to make our circumstances, however difficult, a Heavenly discipline, a gain and a Blessing. He has taken them all up into the Life-plan He has for us as Redeemer. Did we but believe this, how we should gladly meet every event with the worship of an adoring faith. My Creator, who orders all, is my Redeemer, who Blesses all.

And now let me once again urge my reader to mark well the lesson this chapter is teaching us and the object it has in view. Let no one think, as I myself long thought, that, because we firmly believe in the Divinity of our Savior, this chapter, with its proof-texts, has no special message for our spiritual life, and that we may therefore hasten on to what the Epistle has to teach farther on. No, let us remember that this is the foundation chapter. The Divinity of Christ is the Rock on which we rest. It is in virtue of His Divinity that He effected a real cleansing and putting away of sin, that He can actually communicate and maintain the Divine Life in us, that He can enter into our inmost being, and dwell there. If we open our hearts and give them time to receive the full impression of the Truth, we shall see that all that we are to learn of the person and work of Christ has its value and its power from this that He is God. Our Creator, from whom we have our life it is He who alone can enter into us to give the New Life; it is He, Blessed be His name, who will do it now. As God, He is the hidden ground of all existence, and has the power to enter all and fill it with Himself. Every part of His work has the character and the power of a Divine work. If we would but believe that Christ the Son is God, is Yehovah, the Eternal, the Creator, how He would make our inner Life the proof of His Almighty power!

Paul said: "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the Knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord." Let us do so, too. In the Christian life the chief thing, the one thing needful, is the Knowledge of Christ. Not the intellectual apprehension of the Truth, but the Living experimental heart Knowledge that comes from faith and fellowship with Him, from Love and obedience. May it be ours!

1. God Is the incomprehensible One. In all your thoughts of Him, in all your efforts to know Him as revealed in Christ, remember the True Knowledge of God is something above sense and reason. As the Light reveals itself to the open eye that has been created for it, God reveals Himself to the longing heart. All the teaching of angels and prophets, of the words and the truths of the Bible, can but point the way: let God in Christ speak in your heart. Then shall you Know Him. Bow in adoring awe, and worship Christ. "Let all His saints worship Him. It is worship, not study, will prepare us to know Christ."
2. They shall perish: they all shall wax old: this is what the creature is, even though created by God, with every experience, even though coming from God. You continue; You are the same: this is our security and our joy. Christ my Redeemer is the unchangeable every moment the same, my Keeper and my Life.

"The Holiest of ALL" part VII

THE SON HIMSELF GOD.
Hebrews  1: 7 - 9  And of the angels He said, who makes His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire: (Ps. 104: 4). But of the Son He said, Your Throne, O God, is for ever and ever; and the sceptre of uprightness is the scepter of Your Kingdom. You have loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness above Your fellows (Ps. 45: 7, 8).

FIRST SECTION.
Hebrews 1: 4-14.
The Son of God more than the Angels.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

In contrast to what is said of the angels as servants, the Holy Spirit has said of the Son, You Throne, God, is for ever and ever. Christ is not only the Son, but is God. He is one with the Father: as Son He is partaker of the Father's own nature and being.

Christ is God: to many Christians this has been a dead article of faith, held fast and proved out of Scripture, but without any living influence on the soul. To the true believer it is one of the deepest and most precious Truths for the nourishment of the inner Life. Christ is God: the soul worships Him as the Almighty One, able to do a Divine work in the power of Divine omnipotence. Christ is God: even as God works in all nature from within, and in secret, so the soul Trusts Christ as the everywhere present and the Indwelling One, doing His saving work in the hidden depths of its being. Christ is God: in Him we come into Living contact with the person and Life of God Himself. The Truth lies at the foundation of our Epistle, and the Christian life it would build up: Christ is God.

Your Throne, God, is for ever and ever. As God, Christ is King: the Throne of Heaven belongs to Him. When an earthly father has begotten a son, they may be separated from each other by great distance, both in place and character, and know each other no more. In the Divine Being it is not so. The Father and the Son are inseparable, one in Life and Love; all that the Father is and has, the Son is and has too. The Father is ever in the Son, and the Son in the Father. God is on the Throne and Christ in Him: the Throne and the Kingdom are Christ's too.

For ever and ever. Christ is the King eternal. His dominion is an everlasting dominion. The full meaning of the
word eternal will become clear to us later on. Eternal is that which each moment and always exists in its full strength, immoveable, unchangeable. "We receive a Kingdom that cannot be moved," because our King is God, and His Kingdom for ever and ever. The rule of Christ our Priest-King, even now, in our souls, is in the power of an endless, an imperishable Life: the faith that receives this will experience it.

And the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of Your Kingdom. Christ is a righteous King: He is Melchizedek, the King of Righteousness. In His Kingdom all is righteousness and Holiness. There "Grace reigns through righteousness." It is the Kingdom of Heaven: in it the Will of God is done on earth as in Heaven. And when it is farther said, You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, we are reminded that
the righteousness is not only His as a Divine attribute, but His too as the fruit of His life on earth. There He was tested, and tried, and perfected, and found worthy as man to sit upon the Throne of God. The Throne which belonged to Him, as Son of God and heir of all things, He had as Son of Man to win. And now He reigns over His people, teaching them by His own example, enabling them by His own Spirit to fulfill all
righteousness. As the King of Righteousness He rules over a righteous people.

Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of joy above Your fellows. He is an anointed King. Therefore, because He loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore God anointed Him. When He ascended to Heaven, and sat down on the right hand of the Throne, He received from the Father anew and in fullest measure, as the Son of Man, the gift of the Holy Ghost to bestow on His people (Acts 2: 33). That Spirit was to Him the oil of joy, the joy that had been set before Him, the joy of His crowning day when He saw of the travail of His soul. An anointing above His fellows, for there was none like Him; God gave Him the Spirit without measure. And yet for His fellows, His redeemed, whom, as Head, He had made members of His body. They become partakers of His anointing and His joy. As He said, "The Lord has anointed Me to give the oil of joy." Christ, our King, our God, is anointed with the oil of joy, anointed, too, to give the oil of joy: His Kingdom is one of everlasting gladness, of joy unspeakable and full of Glory.

O you souls, redeemed by Christ, behold your God! The Son in whom the Father speaks. Let this be the chief thing you live for to know, to honor, to serve your God and King. This is the Son in whom God speaks to you in all the Divine mystery, but also in all the Divine power and blessing, which marks all God's speaking. Let our hearts open wide to receive the King God has given us.

And as often as we are tempted with the Hebrews to sloth or fear or unbelief, let this be our watchword and our strength: My Redeemer is God! In this faith let me worship Him. My Redeemer is God! let my whole heart be opened to Him, to receive, as a flower does the light of the sun, His secret, mighty, Divine working in me. My Redeemer is God! let me Trust this omnipotent Lord to work out in me His every promise, and to
set up His Throne of righteousness in my soul in a power that is above all we ask or think. My Redeemer is God! let me wait for Him, let me count upon Him, to reveal Himself in the Love that passes knowledge. Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: My Redeemer is God!

1. Who is God? And what is God to us? "He in whom we live and move and have our being." He is the Life of the uniuerse. And how wonderfully perfect all that Life is in nature. When we know this God as our Redeemer, "in whom we live and move and have our being" in a higher sense, what an assurance that He will make His New Life in us as wonderful and perfect.
2. "You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore"... This was His Way to the Throne; this Is the only Way for us, living and doing right, and hating everything that is sin.

"The Holiest of All" part VI

THE SON THE ONLY BEGOTTEN.
Hebrews 1: 5-6  For to which of the angels said he at any time, You are my Son, This day have I begotten thee ? (Ps. 2: 7). and again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to Me a Son? (2 Sam. 7: 14). And when He again brings in the firstborn into the world, He said, and let all the angels of God worship Him (Ps. 97: 7).
FIRST SECTION Hebrews 1: 4-14
The Son of God more than the Angels.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

It is because Christ is the Son of God that He is Higher than the angels, and that the New Testament is so much Higher than the Old. If we would grasp the teaching, and get the blessing of our Epistle, and indeed become partakers of the inner power and Glory of the Redemption Christ has brought, we must tarry here in deep humility until God reveals to us what it means, that His only Son has become our Savior. The infinite
excellence of the Son above the angels is the measure of the excellence of that Heavenly Life He brings and gives within us. The angels could tell of God and of life. The Son has, the Son is, that Life of God, and gives it. He that has the Son, has Life ( being one born out of spiritual death separation from God, into eternal Life through the Son, union with God ).

You are My Son, this day have I begotten You. The words are used in Acts 13: 33, of the resurrection of Christ. So the word firstborn in the next verse also has reference to the resurrection (Col. 1: 18; Rev. 1: 5). The Son was not only begotten of the Father in eternity, but begotten again in the resurrection. In the incarnation the union between the Divine and the human nature was only begun: it had to be perfected by Christ, in His human will, yielding Himself to God's Will even unto the death. In the resurrection (Rom. 1: 4; 1 Cor. 15: 1-4), "He was declared to be the Son of God with power" the full out birth of humanity into the perfected fellowship and equality with Deity was completed; the Son of Man was begotten into all the likeness and Glory of the Son of God. Thus Paul applies it (Acts 13: 33)  "God raised up Jesus, as also it is written in the second Psalm, You are My Son, this day have I begotten You." He then became the first begotten from the dead. ( This is also the Words of God spoken to our heart through Jesus Christ when by inspiration He reveals our having been in Him in His death, burial and resurrection from the dead, the secret things held within God's heart.)

And again, I will be to Him a Father, and He shall be to me a Son. The words were spoken to David of a son God should give to him, but with the clear indication that their meaning reached far beyond what any mere man could be. In the Son of Man, who in the resurrection was raised up in power, and declared to be the Son of God, they find their complete fulfilment.

And when He again brings in the firstborn into the world, He said, "let all the angels of God worship Him." The Psalm speaks of Yehovah coming to redeem His people: the Son is so one with the Father, that as the Father works only through Him, and can only be known in Him, the worship can only arise to God through Him too. The angels worship the deliverer as Yehovah.

Christ is the Son of God! What does this mean to us, and what is the blessing it brings our faith? It points us first to the great mystery that God has a Son. This is the mystery of Divine Love; and that in a double sense. Because God is Love He begets a Son, to whom He gives all He is and has Himself, in whose fellowship He finds His Life and delight, through whom He can reveal Himself, with whom He shares the worship of all His creatures. And because God is Love, this Son of God becomes the Son of Man, and the Son of Man, having been perfected for evermore, enters through death and resurrection into all the Glory that belonged to the Son of God. And now this Son of God is to us the revelation, the bearer, of the Love of the Divine Being. In Him the Love of God dwells in us; in Him we enter and rest in it. When God speaks to us in this His Son, it is the infinite Love imparting itself to us, becoming the inward Life of our life ( He being the All in all, the true Life that is alive for ever more and receptive of the promises spoken to the Son of His Love through whom we become receptive ones as heirs of promise.).

And if we ask how this can be done, our answer is the second great lesson taught us by the Truth that Christ is the Son of God! It was by being begotten of God, by a Divine birth, that Christ became the Son. In eternity it was a birth; in the resurrection it was a birth from the dead. And so it is only by a Divine birth that the Son, that the Love of God, can enter and possess us. It is by an eternal generation that the Son is God. In eternity there is no past; what God is and does is all in the infinite power of an ever-present Now. And so it is in the power of that eternal re-generation that the Father begets us in His Son (1 John 5: 1-18), and begets His Son in us; that the Father speaks the eternal Word to us and in us. The Word of God is the Son, coming from the heart of the Father, spoken into our hearts, and dwelling there. The Son is the Love of God; as the Son, so the Love of God is begotten within us, making us, by a New birth, partakers of its (His) own nature and blessedness.

If we would learn the lesson of the Epistle, and experience in our Christian life the full power of the everlasting Redemption, we must above all learn to know Jesus better. The general knowledge we had of Him before and at conversion is not enough for a strong and healthy growth. God desires that we come to a close friendship, to an intimate acquaintance, with His beloved Son, that we should be the Loving, happy witnesses of how completely He can save. Let us do so. Remembering that angels and prophets could only point to Him who was to come, that the words of Scripture, and even of Christ Himself, only profit as they waken the expectancy of something Higher, let us wait on God to speak in His Son to us. God's speaking in us will be a mighty act of creative power, a birth of His Love and Life within us.

O God ! Teach us that the blessed secret of a full Redemption which brings our Salvation is this Christ, our Savior, is the Son of God.

1. Christ, the Son of God's Love: in His heart and in mine.
2. "Let all the angels of God worship Him," All the servants around His Throne point to Him: it Is to Him we must look. And that in worship. It is worship, worship, worship, the Son must have. It is to the heart that worships Him He will make Himself known. Let our study of the Glory of Christ in the Epistle be all in the spirit of worship, all tend to make us fall down in adoring worship.
3. The Son is a Son only in the power of a Divine birth. And that not only in eternity, and in the resurrection, but in our heart too. This is the mystery of the Divine Life: let us bow in deep impotence and ignorance, and wait on God Almighty to reveal the Son in us.
4. The Son is the Word, because the Divine speaking is but another aspect of the Divine begetting. Speaking to us in His Son is all in the power of a Divine Life. The speaking, just as the begetting, is Love imparting and communicating itself in Divine power as an inward Life. It is by God speaking to us in the First Begotten that we are begotten of God.

Here we have the answer of the hidden thing that God held within His heart from before the creation of the world and that of man. Deuteronomy 29:29                                                                     
"The secret things belong to the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law."

"The Holiest of All" part V

FIRST SECTION   Hebrews 1: 4-14.
The Son of God more than the Angels.

THE SON A MORE EXCELLENT NAME. Hebrews 1: 4 - 5 Having become by so much better than the angels, as he has inherited, a more excellent name than they. For to which of the angels said He at any time,
You are My Son, This day have I begotten you? and again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to Me a Son?

Written by Andrew Murray

The superior excellence of the New Testament above the Old consists in this, that God has spoken to us, and wrought salvation for us in, His Son. Our whole Epistle is the unfolding of the Glory of the person and work of the Son. The more completely we apprehend this, and have our heart permeated by it, the better we shall apprehend the completeness of the salvation God has now provided for us. To know Jesus Christ in His Glory is the great need, the only safeguard, the sure growth of the Christian life.

There is often no better way of knowing a thing than by placing it in contrast with what is less perfect. Our Epistle would teach us the Glory of the New Testament by placing it in contrast with the Old, especially with those who were its great mediators and representatives. It will show us the superiority of Christ over the angels, over Moses, over Joshua, over Abraham and Levi and Aaron.

It begins with the angels. Having become so much better ( The word "better" is one of the key words of the Epistle. It occurs thirteen times.) than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than they. Though these words belong grammatically to the preceding verses, they are in reality the heading of what follows. They form the transition from the theme to the first part of the argument the excellence of Christ as Son of God above the angels. The Jews counted it one of their great privileges that the law was given by the ministration of angels (chapter 2: 2 ; Acts 7: 38, 53; Gal. 3: 19), Heavenly spirits, who came direct from the Throne of God. The manifestation of God had frequently been in the form of an angel "the angel of the Lord" had been Israel's leader. And yet great as was the privilege, it was as nothing to that of the New revelation. Angels were but creatures; they might show signs of heavenly power, and speak words of heavenly truth; as creatures, they could not bring down the Life of God itself, nor truly reach into the life of man. They had indeed as a title of honor been called "sons of God" (Ps. 29: 1, 79: 6); there is but One to whom it was said, You are my Son; this day I have begotten You. He alone, making us partakers of the very Life of God, could indeed bring God nigh to us, and us nigh to God.

It is the superiority of the Son to the angels the writer is going to prove in this first chapter by a series of quotations from Old Testament Scripture. We must not, however, only regard these as so many proof-texts for the divinity of our Savior, but as a divine revelation of the Glory of that divinity in its various aspects. At the very commencement of his argument he will prove how the Old Testament had all along borne witness to the Glory of God's Son, as the great thought that in God's revelation to man ever had the first place in God's heart.

Ere we proceed to study the texts themselves, it is of importance that we notice how the writer uses them. When our Lord on earth, or Paul, cites the Old Testament, they say: Moses says, or David says, or the prophets say. Our Epistle mostly quotes the words as coming from the lips of God Himself. In the seven quotations in our chapter it always is, "He said" Farther on we find more than once, "The Holy Ghost said" Scripture has two sides, the human and the divine. The knowledge of all that can illustrate the Scriptures as human compositions has its very great value. But it is of still more importance never to forget the divine side,
and to be full of the conviction that Scripture is indeed God's Word; that God Himself, through His Spirit, spoke in the prophets, and that it has the power of God dwelling in it.

This conviction will teach us two things, absolutely necessary to the profitable study of the Epistle. The one, that we recognise that these words of God contain a divine depth of meaning which the human mind never could have grasped or expounded. The wonderful exposition of Ps. 2  and the Son of God; of Ps. 8 and the human nature of Jesus; of Ps. 95 and the Rest of God; of Ps. 110 and the priesthood of Melchizedek; all prove to us how they were in breathed by that Spirit of Christ who knew what was to come, and how it was that same Spirit who alone could have taught our writer to apprehend and unfold their divine meaning.

The other lesson is this, that the divine thoughts, thus deposited in the Old Testament as a seed by the Holy Spirit and unfolded by that same Spirit in the New, still need the teaching of the Spirit to make them Life and Truth to us. It is God who must shine in our hearts to give the Knowledge of His Glory in the face of Jesus Christ, Christ is the Word, "that was God," that speaks to us as coming out of the depth of God's heart, a Living person; it is only the heart that yields to be led by the Holy Spirit that can expect to profit by the teaching of the word, and truly to know Christ in His divine saving power. The Truths of Christ's Sonship and Divinity and Priesthood and redemption were given in charge to the Holy Spirit;  He revealed them from time to time; He alone can reveal them to us. To the written words all have free access; our mind can see their purport; but their life and power and blessing, the Glory of the Son of God as a power of salvation this is given to none but those who wait humbly on God's Spirit to teach them ( first by inspiration of revelation in our heart then to our mind to understand and receive them as our own as we receive food and drink in of water).

1. The angels brought wonderful messages from God of old: but God is now drawing far nearer to us, and waiting to speak in a far more wonderful and blessed way, by revealing the eternal Word in our heart.
2. Words and wonders, these angels could bring. But to bring the Life and the Love of God, and give it in the heart this the Son alone can do. But He does it. Christ is the Divine Nature manifesting and communicating Himself; I have no contact with Christ or God in Him, but as I receive Him, as the Divine Nature imparting itself, as manifested in His human life, and will, and character.
3. If I were favored this day with the visit of an angel what a privilege I would count It. But Christ, the Son at the right hand, will not only visit, but will dwell In me, my soul, rise to your privileges: God speaks to you in His Son.

"The Holiest of All" part IV

THE SON-THE GLORY OF HIS WORK.
Hebrews 1: 3. Who, when He had made purification (effected cleansing) of sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on High.

Written by Pastor Andrew Murray

The description of the Glory of Christ's person is followed by that of the work of this Son in whom God speaks to us. God's words are deeds. It is in what Christ is and works that God speaks to us. In His divinity and incarnation we see what God has given us. In His life and death and ascension we see how the gift of God enters and acts in all our human life, how complete our salvation is, and what God now asks of us. All Christ's work is God's Word to us.

That work consists in two parts: the one on earth, the other in Heaven. Of the former it is said, When He had effected the cleansing of sins; of the latter, He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on High. In a healthy Christian life we must know and hold fast both parts of Christ's work. The work He did upon earth was but a beginning of the work He was to do in Heaven; in the latter the work on earth finds its perfection and its glory. As Priest He effected the cleansing of sins here below; as Priest-King He sits on the right hand of the Throne to apply His work, in Heavenly power to dispense its blessings, and maintain within us the Heavenly Life.

When He had effected the cleansing of sins. The cleansing of sins, as something effected by Christ ere He went to Heaven, is the foundation of all His work. Let us learn, at the very outset, that what God has to speak to us in Christ begins here: sin must be cleansed away. This is the root-thought of redemption. As long as we seek salvation chiefly from the desire of personal safety, or approach the study of Christ's person and work as the revelation of what is true and beautiful and good, we cannot enter fully into its power. It is the cleansing of sin God insists on; in a desire so intense that He gave His Son to die for it! It is in the intense desire after the
cleansing of sins, that, all the way through the Christian life, the spiritual capacity to approach and enter into the salvation of Christ will be found. It lies at the root of all. It is the secret of Christian perfection. It was only when He had effected this that Heaven opened to Him. The full acceptance of the cleansing of sins, as the meaning of the word will be unfolded later on, will be to us, too, the entrance into the Heavenly Life.

When He had effected the cleansing of sins, He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. There He Lives, opening up and keeping open the blessed access to God's presence and fellowship/intimacy for us; lifting us up into and maintaining us in its enjoyment; and in the power that prevails there, making the
Kingdom of Heaven a reality within the heart. It is the great object of the Epistle to bring home to us the Heavenly Glory of Christ as the ground of our confidence, the measure of our expectation, and the character of that inward salvation He imparts. That Christ as our Leader and Forerunner has rent asunder the veil, and in the power of His blood has taken possession and secured access into the Holiest of All, does not mean only that we are to enter Heaven when we die. The whole practical teaching of the Epistle is summed up and
applied in the one word: "We have boldness for entering in: let us draw nigh: let us enter in." Christ seated on the Throne in Heaven means our being actually brought, in the supernatural power which the coming down of the Holy Spirit supplies, into God's Holy presence, and Living there our daily life. It was because the Hebrews did not know this, because they had rested content with elementary truths about faith and conversion, and then the life in Heaven after death, that they had so signally failed. Truly to know Jesus at the right hand of God would be the healing of their diseases, the restoration to the joy and the strength of a life in accordance with their Heavenly calling.

The Church of our day is suffering from the same cause, and needs the same cure. It is so much easier to appropriate the work of Christ on earth than that in Heaven. It is so much easier to take in the doctrine of a Substitute and an atonement, of repentance and pardon, than of a High Priest bringing us into God's presence, and keeping us in Loving communion of intercourse with Him. It is not the blood-shedding upon earth only, it is the blood-sprinkling in Heaven, and the blood-sprinkling from Heaven on heart and conscience, that brings the power of the Heavenly Life into us. And it is this alone that makes us Christians, who not only seek to enter the gate, but who daily press on in the Living Way that leads ever deeper into the Holiest of All.

Let no one think that I speak of what is too high. I speak of what is your Heritage and Destiny. The same share you have in Jesus on the cross, you have in Jesus on the Throne. Be ready to sacrifice the earthly life for the Heavenly; to follow Christ fully in His separation from the world and His surrender to God's Will; and Christ in Heaven will prove in you the reality and the power of His Heavenly Priesthood. Let the cleansing of sins be to you, as it was to Christ, the entrance to the Holiest. He who effected the cleansing on earth, and applies it in person from Heaven, will assuredly lead you into all the fulness of blessing it has opened up for Him and for you.

1. Faith has in its foundation four great corner-stones on which the building rests the. Divinity of Christ, the Incarnation, the Atonement on the Cross, the Ascension to the Throne The last is the most wonderful, the crown of all the rest, the perfect revelation of what God has made Christ for us. And so in the Christian life it is the most important, the glorious fruit of all that goes before.
2. The Holy Spirit was sent after the ascension. Why? That He might witness to us of a Heavenly Christ, and bring the Kingdom of Heaven into our hearts and lives.
3. "Cleansing of sins." Some one says: "At this time I saw plainly that whatever the Lord would communicate and make known of Himself and the mystery of His Kingdom, He would do it in a Way of purity and holiness." There are two sides from which we can approach the Higher Truth of God's Word as to holiness and likeness to Jesus. The one is the desire to know all Scripture Truth fully, and to have our system of doctrine complete and perfect. The other is the deep, intense longing to be made free from sin, as free as God can make us in this life. It is only from this side that real access will be given into the Heavenly Life of Christ.

The Holiest of All and it's Introduction

Now we come to the Introduction. We are placing it here between parts III and IV as we've used the first as an
INTRODUCTION to what will follow by way of Revelation of the Ministry of Christ Jesus within the heart of those who have received Him by Faith or simply by Trusting God, by taking Him at His revealed Word spoken in our spirit.

ERE we enter upon the study of our Epistle, there are some questions on which it is desirable to have some Light. It is well to know what can be told as to its author, the Church to which it was addressed, the object the author had in view, and the plan he adopts to attain that object. The reader then knows something of what he is to expect, and has a point of view suggested from which to overlook the whole.

1. THE AUTHOR OF THE EPISTLE.
From the very earliest times there have been some among the Church Fathers who maintained that the Epistle was not written by Paul, while those who held the opposite view have admitted that they had no decisive evidence to offer to prove that authorship. All admit that the literary style is not that found in Paul's writings. And some say that the substance of the teaching differs too, and that the great Truth which he had been set apart to announce, that the Gentiles are fellow-heirs, and of the same Body, is entirely wanting. The Epistle speaks  as if salvation was for the Jew only: it is absolutely silent as to the existence of a heathen or Christian world outside the Church it addresses.

 On the other hand, it may be said that the Epistle contains so much of what had been specially revealed to Paul more than to others concerning the fulfillment of the law and Laws in Christ and its passing away, concerning the Glory of Christ seated on the Throne of Heaven and the lone power of faith, that it is almost impossible not to recognize his spirit in its teaching. What adds special weight to this view is that, while from the style it is certain that it cannot be the work of any other of our Bible writers, it appears strange that the history of the Church does not even mention the name of a man who had been favored with such special revelations from God as the Epistle bears witness to.

The difficulty has led from the earliest times to the supposition that Paul either wrote the letter to the Hebrews in their tongue, and that we only have it in the Greek translation, or that he gave the substance of its contents to someone who gave expression to them in his own peculiar style. The names have been suggested of Barnabas, of Luke (to whose style in the Acts there is considerable resemblance), of Aquila, of Apollos the
Alexandrian (eloquent and mighty in the Scriptures), and Clement of Rome. There is such an entire absence of material for forming a decision that we are compelled to rest in the certainty that the name of the author cannot be known. All the more we praise God that we know for certain that the Holy Spirit spoke in him who wrote, and that it is He who has given us in the Epistle one of the deepest and fullest revelations which the Bible
contains of the counsel of redemption, and the Glory of the Son who makes us partakers of it.

2. TO WHOM THE EPISTLE WAS WRITTEN.
The Jews had the name of Hebrews from Abraham, who, in Gen. 14: 13, is spoken of as "the Hebrew." It was counted a title of honor, as we see in Paul's, "an Hebrew of the Hebrews." Some have thought that, because no special place or church is mentioned, it was meant for all Christians among the Jews. But expressions as, "Pray that I may be restored to you the sooner," "With Timothy, if he come shortly, I will see you," compel us to think of some special community. The most probable view is that it was addressed, in the first place, to the Christian Jews in Jerusalem. From Acts 21: 20, we know that there were many thousands of them, who, while believing in Christ, yet clung to the temple and its worship. Nowhere were they in greater danger of yielding to the temptation of conformity to the spirit of the world around them, and losing the
boldness and the brightness of their Christian life; and no where would there be better opportunity of securing for the letter the widest possible circulation through all the scattered Christian Churches among the Jews. (This Peter also a tests too. And points to Paul's Epistles as recorded in 2 Peter 3:15-18.)

3. THE OBJECT OF THE EPISTLE.
What was it that led the writer to take his pen? The Epistle itself gives us the answer. The religious state of those to whom it was addressed was far from right or satisfactory. Some had grown "slothful," were "not giving earnest heed," were "neglecting the great salvation." They were no longer "holding fast their profession"  or "their confidence." The Christian life was feeble and ready to die. Others had "gone back," were in danger of "coming short of the promises," and, yielding to "willful sin," "drawing back to perdition." Still others were in danger of " refusing Him who speaks from heaven," of giving up their faith in Jesus. Expressions such as we have quoted, and others, indicate clearly that there had been much backsliding, and that the Church was in a state that needed most solemn and pointed warning.

Great stress has been laid upon the difficulties that arose in the mind of the Hebrews from the circumstances in which they were placed. They had hoped that their countrymen would speedily accept the Messiah: they had been signally disappointed. They still clung to the old worship; but felt more and more that, suspected and despised as they were, they could no longer be at home there. The prophecies appeared to fail them, both in regard to the power with which Christ should reign, and the Blessing He would bestow. To meet these difficulties, it is said, the Epistle seeks to open up the True Glory of the religion of Christ, and to show that all that they lost in the old worship was a hundredfold restored in the "something better" God had now provided. It seeks to solve the problem that troubled them in the light of the gospel. (The New dispensation of God's Grace as found in and through the Knowledge of Him with whom we have to do,)

There is doubtless a measure of truth in this view. And yet, the more I study the Epistle, the more confident I feel that this was not the chief trouble; the main difficulty lay in the want of religious earnestness. Their case was very much what has been the story of almost every Church, and what marks the state of the greater part of Christendom at the present day.

It was to meet this spirit of backsliding, to warn against the disease and its danger, and to make known the infallible cure, that our author takes up his pen. He saw that the one cause of all the feebleness and faithlessness was this: the want of the Knowledge and the faith of what Christ and His salvation Truly are. He sets himself to show them how wonderfully, how divinely, all the prophecies and types of the Old Testament
have their fulfillment in the salvation the Son of God has wrought for us and is to be found in us. He unceasingly places their weakness and Christ's person side by side : he is sure that, if they but know Christ, all will be well.

4. THE PLAN OF THE EPISTLE.
In what way does the writer propose to attain his object? In the opening verses we find the substance of his whole argument. God, who spoke to the fathers in the prophets, has now spoken to us in the Son. There have been two revelations of God to man. The first was through men; the second through the Son. As much more glorious as God's Son is than His servants, has the New Revelation more of Life and of Glory than the Old. He not only writes to prove the superiority of the New above the Old, but specially to show what that intrinsic excellence is which gives it that superiority. In the Knowledge of this its excellence, both faith and experience will find their strength.  The contents of the Epistle, taking its doctrinal and practical aspect together, may be summarized the Knowledge of the Son of God, the power of the Christian life.

The Epistle is divided into two parts. In the first, the doctrinal half (1: 1-10, 18), we have the Glory of the person and work of Christ set forth. In the second, or practical half (10: I9 ~ 13: 25), the Life is described which the Knowledge of Christ and His salvation will enable us to Live.
I have had the Epistle printed at the beginning of the book, with headings showing the contents of the different parts, with the view of inviting and helping the reader to make himself master of the writing as a whole. It is of great consequence that the student of God's word should not only seek his edification from individual texts or passages, but that each book should be to him a Living and connected organism, all alive with the Spirit that dwells in it. The more we thus take time and trouble to accept the great thoughts of God, the more will our life be brought to that unity and breadth, in which the purpose of God will be perfectly fulfilled.

The first three verses give us the summary of the doctrinal part.

Then follow twelve sections.
1. Christ, as Son of God, is more than the angels ( 1: 4 -14).
2. Jesus, as Son of Man, is more than the angels too. Reasons for His being made lower than the angels
( 2: 5 -18).
3. Christ Jesus more than Moses ( 3: 1-6).
4. Jesus, our High Priest, more than Aaron ( 4: I4 ~ 5: 10).
5. The New Priesthood after the order of Melchizedek ( 7 ).
6. The New Sanctuary and the New Covenant ( 8 ).
7. The power of Christ s blood to inaugurate the New Sanctuary and the New Covenant ( 9 ).
8. The New Way into the Holiest ( 10: 1-18 ).

Here commences the second, the practical, half, with its call to a life corresponding to our privileges.
9. Of entering the Holiest and dwelling there ( 10: 19-25 ).
10. Of the Fulness of Faith ( 11: 1-40 ).
11. Of the Patience of Hope ( 12: 1-13 ).
12. Of Love and Good Works ( 13: 1-25 ).

In this summary of contents I have not taken up the passages containing the solemn warnings by which the Epistle is characterized. They are so inserted that they could in each case be left out, without the argument suffering. In some cases, the connection would in fact be clearer. I have had this indicated in the printing, because I am sure that it is of importance, if we would thoroughly master the lesson given us, that we should
fully apprehend the danger which threatened, and in some right measure see how the only deliverance for Christians from all that weakens and hinders them, is the full Knowledge of the person and work of Jesus.

THE WARNINGS.
1. After the proof of Christ being more than the angels--- Not to neglect so great salvation ( 2: 1-4).
2. After the proof of Christ being more than Moses--- Not like Israel in the wilderness to come short of the promised rest ( 3- 4: 1 3).
3. After the mention of Christ being more than Aaron--- Against the danger of sloth, standing- still, and falling away ( 5: 2 - 6: 21).
4. After the call to enter the opened Holiest--- Against sinning willfully, and drawing back to perdition ( 10: 26-39).
5. After the exhortation to patience--- Against falling short of the grace of God and refusing Him who
speaks ( 12: 1 5-29).
6. The New Sanctuary and the New Covenant ( 8 ).
7. The power of Christ s blood to inaugurate the New Sanctuary and the New Covenant ( 9 ).
8. The New Way into the Holiest ( 10: 1-18).

Here commences the second, the practical, half, with its call to a life corresponding to our privileges.
9. Of entering the Holiest and dwelling there ( 10: 19-25 ).
10. Of the Fulness of Faith ( 11: 1-40).
11. Of the Patience of Hope ( 12: 1-13).
12. Of Love and Good Works ( 13: 1-25).

In this summary of contents I have not taken up the passages containing the solemn warnings by which the Epistle is characterized. They are so inserted that they could in each case be left out, without the argument suffering. In some cases, the connection would in fact be clearer. I have had this indicated in the printing, because I am sure that it is of importance, if we would thoroughly master the lesson given us, that we should
fully apprehend the danger which threatened, and in some right measure see how the only deliverance for Christians from all that weakens and hinders them, is the full Knowledge of the person and work of Jesus.

THE WARNINGS.
1. After the proof of Christ being more than the angels.--- Not to neglect so great salvation ( 2: 1-4).
2. After the proof of Christ being more than Moses--- Not like Israel in the wilderness to come short of the promised Rest ( 3- 4: 1 3).
3. After the mention of Christ being more than Aaron--- Against the danger of sloth, standing- still, and falling away ( 5: 11 - 4: 21).
4. After the call to enter the opened Holiest--- Against sinning willfully, and drawing back to perdition
( 10: 26-39).
5. After the exhortation to patience--- Against falling short of the grace of God and refusing Him who
speaks ( 12: 15-29).

The deeper our impression is of the danger that existed, the clearer will be our insight into the Truth that the only source of health and strength to the Church is the Knowledge of Christ Jesus.

5. THE EPISTLE AND THE CHURCH OF OUR DAYS.
There is one more point in which an Introduction can help the reader. It is to suggest the relation in which a book stands to the special needs of our present times.

In the Christian Church of our day the number of members is very large, whose experience corresponds exactly with that which the Epistle pictures and seeks to meet. How many Christians are there yet who, after the profession of faith in Christ, come to a standstill. "Taking more abundant heed to what they hear" "giving diligence to enter into the Rest of God" "pressing on to perfection" "running with patience the race" just these are the things which are so little found. So many rest contented with the thought that their sins are pardoned, and that they are in the path of Life, but know nothing of a personal attachment to Christ as their Leader, or of a faith that Lives in the invisible and walks with God. With many this is the consequence of the hopelessness that came from the failure of their utmost efforts to live as they desired. They struggled in their own strength; they know not Christ as the secret of strength; they lost heart, and went back. The profession of faith is not cast away; religious habits are kept up; but there is nothing to show that they have entered or are seeking to enter the Holiest to dwell there. The power of the world, the spirit of its literature, the temptations of business and pleasure, all unite to make up a religion in which it is sought to combine a comfortable hope for the future with the least possible amount of sacrifice in the present. The Epistle, with its warnings, is indeed a glass in which the Church of the present day may see and find itself.

But it is a glass too, thank God, in which we can also see the Glory of Jesus on the Throne of Heaven, in the power that can make our heart and Life Heavenly too. What the Hebrews needed is what we need. Not in ourselves or our efforts is salvation, but in Christ Jesus. To see Him, to consider Him, to look to Him, as He Lives in Heaven, that will bring the healing. As little as the Hebrews with the Old Testament, its God-given law, its temple service, and its prophecy, could withstand the temptation to "wax weary and grow  faint," can the New Testament, with a sound Church and Church doctrine, and its religious services, give us the True Life and power of godliness. It is Jesus Christ we must know better. It is He who Lives to-day in Heaven, who can lead us into the Heavenly sanctuary, and keep us there, who can give Heaven into our heart and life. The Knowledge of Jesus in His Heavenly Glory and His saving power; it is this our Churches and our Christians need. It is this the Epistle will bring us, if we yield to that Spirit who speaks in it, to reveal it in us. ( I have had the texts referring to the Heavenly place and work of our Lord printed in red. To direct attention to this, the central thought of our Epistle, that because Christ came from Heaven, and went back to Heaven, and opened Heaven for us, and does His work in the spirit and power of Heaven, Christians can live a supernatural, a Heavenly Life.)

Do to space we're not coping the referenced text from the book of Hebrews in this blog.

THE HOLIEST OF ALL part III

 THE THEME. Chapter 1: 1-3.
THE SON-THE GLORY OF HIS PERSON.
1: 2-3 God has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the effulgence (outshining ) of His glory, and the very image of His substance, and upholding all things by the word of His power.
BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

AN EXPOSITION OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS

FIRST HALF-DOCTRINAL.Chapter 1- 5: 18
The Son of God the Mediator of the Better Covenant.

We know that whatever a man sets his heart on exercises a mighty influence on the life, and leaves its stamp upon his character. He that follows after vanity becomes vain. He that trusts in a god of his own fancy will find his religion an illusion. He that sets his heart upon the Living God will find the Living God take possession and fill the heart. It is this that makes it of such infinite consequence that we should not only have a general idea of the Christ through whom God speaks to us, but should know Him aright and have our heart filled with all that God has revealed of Him. Our knowledge of Him will be the food of our faith, and as our faith is will be our experience of His saving power, and of the fellowship with God to which He leads. Let us listen to what we are taught of the Son in whom God speaks to us.

Whom He appointed Heir of all things. The great object and aim of God in creation was to have an inheritance for His Son, in which He might show forth His glory and find His blessedness. The Son is the Final Cause, the End of all things.

He is the Beginning too. Through whom He also made the worlds. He is the origin and Efficient Cause of all that exists. "Without Him nothing was made that was made." The place the Son had in the divine Being was such that God's relation to all that was outside of Himself was only through the Son. Of all that exists the end and the beginning meet in Him.

He is the Middle, too. Upholding all things by the word of His power. He bears all things, "all things consist in Him." As little as they were created without Him, can they exist without Him? He upholds them every moment by the Word of His power, even as by His Word they were created. This is the Son through whom God speaks to us.

What is it that makes Him worthy of taking this high place between the Creator and the creature? Because, as the Son, it is He alone in whom the unapproachable and utterly incomprehensible Glory of God is made manifest, through whom as Mediator the uncreated God, and the works of His hand, can come into contact and fellowship. His relation to creation rests on His relation to the Father. He is the out shining of God's Glory, and the express image of His substance. As we only know the sun by the light that shines from it, so is Christ the outshining, the revelation of God's Glory. As the light that shines from the sun is of the same nature with it, so the Son is of one nature with the Father God of God. And as a son bears the likeness of his father, because he has his life and nature from him, so the Son of God is the express image of His substance. He is of one substance with the Father His express image and has therefore Life in Himself, even as the Father has Life in Himself.

Someone may be tempted to think that these are theological mysteries too deep for the ordinary Christian, and not needful for our Christian faith and life. And they are inclined to ask, of what importance it can be to a simple believer to know all this? My brother, think not thus. It is all important that we know the glory of Jesus. The more the soul is filled with that glory, and worships Him in it, the more it will see with what confidence it can count upon Him to do a divine and supernatural work in us, and to lead us to an actual Living
fellowship or intimacy with God as our Father. Oh, let us not be so selfish and mean as to be content with the hope that Jesus saves us, while we are careless of having intimate personal acquaintance with Him. If not for our sake, then for God's sake, for the sake of His infinite Love and Grace, let us seek to know aright this blessed Son whom the Father has given us. Let us turn away from earth, let us meditate and gaze and worship, until He, who is the outshining of the divine Glory, shines into our very heart, and He, to whom the Father has given such a place as Creator and Upholder and Heir of all, take that place within us too, and be to us the beginning and the center and the end of all.

It is through this Son God speaks to us. Not through the words of the Son only, for they too are human words, and may, just like the inspired words of the prophets, bring in but little profit. It is through the Son the Living, mighty, divine Son, direct that God speaks: it is only in direct living contact with the Son that the words can profit. And the Son, not as we superficially think of Him, but the real divine Son as God has revealed Him, known and worshiped and waited on as the out shining of the divine glory, it is this Son of God, entering
into our heart and dwelling there, in whom God will speak to us, and in whom we shall be brought nigh to God. When Christ reveals the Father, it is not to the mind, to give us new thoughts about Him, but in the heart and Life, so that we know and experience the power in which God can dwell and work in man, restoring him to the enjoyment of that blessed fellowship of intimacy for which he was created, and which he lost by the fall. The great work of God in Heaven, the chief thought and longing of His heart is, in His Son, to reach your heart and speak to you. Oh, let it be the great work of your life, and the great longing of your heart, to know this Jesus; as a humble, meek disciple to bow at His feet, and let Him teach you of God and eternal Life.Yes, even now, let us bow before Him in the fourfold Glory in which the word has set Him before us. He is the Heir of all that God has. He is its Creator. He is the Up holder too. He is the Outshining of God's Glory, and the perfect Image of His substance. O my Savior! anything to know You better, and in You to have my God speak to me!

1. "No man knows the Son, save the Father, neither does any know the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son Wills to reveal Him." How dependent we are on the Father to know the Son; on the Son to know the Father. Let us acknowledge this dependency in deep humility, and believe in receptivity and wait In meekness of soul for the divine revealing.
2. There are times when there arises in the soul a deep longing to know God. External teaching does not satisfy. Treasure such longing as God's Love drawing. Turn from the world in stillness of soul, and exercise faith In the secret power that Jesus can exert in the heart. Become a disciple of Jesus, one who follows Him and learns of Him.
3. You who are Heir, Creator, Upholder of all, the brightness of the Father's Glory, the express Image of His substance, my Lord Jesus, reveal the Father to me, that I may know that God speaks to me.

 

Out of Heaven and Into Us

Written by Major W. Ian Thomas and taken from his book titled, "The Indwelling LIFE of CHRIST All of Him in All of Me. Number 14 on pages 51-55.

You are driving down the highway in your car, and you see a fellow standing next to his car which is parked beside the road. Out of the kindness of your heart you stop and say, "Can I help?"

You discover that his car is out of gas. It does not have what it takes to keep going.

You happen to have a tow-rope in your trunk, so you offer to tow his car to the next town where he can fill up, and he agrees.

After you make it to the gas station and his car is filled with gas, the man tells you, with great embarrassment, that he just realized he has no money or even a credit card to pay for the gas. Again, out of the generosity of your heart, you pay the bill. You pay a debt you did not owe because he owes a debt he cannot pay.


What does that sound like? Redemption! That is what happened for us on the cross.

There is a purpose behind your payment of that man's debt. What is it? To fill the tank and give the man what it takes for his car to go, so he can be on his way.

After you pay for the man's gas, he thanks you profusely, and you turn and walk away. As you get into your own car, you look back to wave good-by. To your astonishment, you see the man straining behind his car, pushing it.

So you go back to him. What will you say? Probably something with words similar to these: "Poor, silly, thoughtless, unreflecting, senseless man!"----just the way Paul addressed the Galatians (Galatians 3:1, AMP) for failing to live simply by faith in the power of the indwelling Christ through His Spirit.

When you and I received Christ as our Redeemer, He gave us, through His Holy Spirit, the fullness and power of His resurrection. He has given us everything we could ever need at any time, under any circumstance. He gave us a car with a full tank; have you instead been trying to push it?

Whenever the gasoline is gone, it is not time for new upholstery, new spark plugs, or new tires; it is time to fill up the tank! Likewise if our spiritual tank is empty, it is time to fill it. With what? With Christ.

The Lord Jesus came from Heaven to earth not just to get us out of hell and into Heaven----though He is the only One who can and does, if we let Him----but to get Himself our of Heaven and into us.

He gave Himself for us to give Himself to us, the gift of His Life, so that we may enjoy a wonderful, personal relationship with Him that never changes, because "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). Grasp this well, for otherwise your Christianity will remain boring, sterile, and impersonal. Christ Himself is the very Life-content of the Christ-like one in faith. He is oil for the lamp and gas for the car. Only He makes everything "tick."

Christ did not die simply that you might be saved from a bad conscience, or even to remove the stain of past failures, but to "clear the decks" for His divine activity through you.

THE HOLIEST OF ALL part II

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

 AN EXPOSITION OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS

THE THEME.
Chapter I: 1-3.
The Glory of the Son in His Person and Work.

THE SON MORE THAN THE PROPHETS.
Hebrews 1: 1-2 God, having of old time spoken to the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, has at the end of these days spoken to us in His Son.

We all know that there are two Testaments the Old and the New. These represent two dispensations, two modes of worship, two sorts of religions, two ways in which God has intercourse with man, and man draws nigh to God. The one was provisional, preparatory, and intended to pass away. What it gave and wrought was not meant to satisfy, but only to awaken the expectation of something better that was to come. The other was the fulfilment of what had been promised, and destined to last for ever, because it was itself a complete revelation of an everlasting redemption, of a salvation in the power of an endless Life.

In both Old and New Testament it was God who spoke. The prophets in the Old, and the Son in the New, were equally God's messengers. God spoke in the prophets no less truly than in the Son. But in the Old everything was external and through the mediation of men. God Himself could not yet enter and take possession of man and dwell in him. In the New all is more directly and immediately divine in an inward power and reality and Life, of which the Old had only the shadow and hope. The Son, who is God, brings us into the very presence of God.

And wherefore was it that God did not, could not, from the very beginning, reveal Himself in the Son? What need was there of these two ways of worshiping and serving Him? The answer is twofold--- If man were indeed intelligently and voluntarily to appropriate God's Love and redemption, he needed to be prepared for it. He needed first of all to know his own utter impotence and hopeless wretchedness. And so his heart had to be wakened up in true desire and expectancy to welcome and the intrinsic value of what God had to give.

When God speaks to us in Christ it is as the Father dwelling in the Son. " The words that I say to you, I speak not from Myself, but the Father abides in Me does the works." Just as God's speaking in Christ was an inward thing. So God will still speak to us in no other way. The external words of Christ, just like the words of the prophets, are to prepare us for, and point us to, that inner speaking in the heart by the Holy Spirit, which alone is Life and power. This is God's true speaking in His Son.

It is of the utmost consequence for our spiritual Life that we should rightly understand these two stages in God's dealing with man. In two ways, not in one; not in more than two; in two ways has God spoken.

They indicate what, in substance, is God's way with every Christian. ("The characteristics which before marked the revelation itself, now mark the human apprehension of the final revelation." WESTCOTT.)  There is, after his conversion, a time of preparation and testing, to see whether he willingly and whole heartily sacrifices all for the full blessing. If in this stage he perseveres in earnest effort and striving, he will be brought to learn the two lessons the Old Testament was meant to teach. He will become more deeply conscious of his own impotence, and the strong desire will be wakened after a better Life, to be found in the full revelation of Christ as able to save completely.When these two lessons are learned the lesson of despair of self and hope in God alone the soul is prepared, if it will yield itself in faith to the leading of the Holy Spirit, to enter truly into the New Testament Life of promise and found within the veil, in the very Holiest of All, as it is set forth in this Epistle. (The Gospel of God's Grace revealed no longer concealed.)

Where Christians, through defective instruction, or through neglect and sloth, do not understand God's Way for leading them on to perfection, the Christian Life will always remain full of feebleness and failure. It was thus with the Hebrew Christians, with their Galatian counter parts. They belonged to the New Testament, but their life was anything but the exhibition of the power and joy Christ came to reveal. They were far behind what many of the Old Testament saints had been; and the reason was this they knew not the Heavenly Character of the redemption Christ had brought. They knew not the Heavenly place in which He ministers, nor the Heavenly Blessing He dispenses, nor the Heavenly power in which He secures our enjoyment of these Blessings. They knew not the difference between the prophets and the Son; what it means that God has now spoken to us in His Son. The one object of the Epistle is to set before us the Heavenly Priesthood of Christ and the Heavenly Life to which He in His divine power gives us access. It is this gives the Epistle its inestimable value for all time, that it teaches us the Way out of the elementary stage of the Christian life to that of full and perfect access to God.

Let us grasp and hold firmly the difference between the two stages. In the one, the action of man is more prominent: God speaks in the prophets. In the other, the divine presence and power are more fully revealed: God speaks in the Son, who bears and brings the very Life of God, and brings us into Living contact with God Himself. In the one, it is the human words that occupy and influence and help us to seek God; in the other, the divine indwelling Word reveals its power within. In the one, it is multiplicity of thoughts and truths, of ordinances, of doctrines and efforts of works; in the other, the simplicity and the unity of the one Son of God, and faith in Him alone.

 How many have sought by study and meditation and acceptance of the words of the Bible to find God, and yet have failed. They knew not that these were but the finger-posts pointing to the Living Son, Words coming indeed from God, most needful and profitable, and yet not sufficient; only yielding in us their true blessing when they have brought us to hear God Himself speaking in His Son.

 1. Let none of us rest content with the lower stage. Let us see that personal fellowship/intimacy with God, through the Holy Spirit, is what Christ gives. God calls us to it: Christ Lives in Heaven to work it, through the Spirit He gives from Heaven.
2. One may know much of the Bible and the words of God, and yet remain feeble. What one needs is to Know the Living Word, in whom God speaks within, in Life and power. 
3. All the prophets point to the Son, as the true Prophet. Let us take them very definitely as our teachers, to reveal God in us.
4. When I speak a word, I desire all its meaning and force to enter into him whom I address. God has in these last days but one Word. He desires to have all that Word is and means enter in and Live in us. Let us open our hearts, and God will speak into it that one Word, This is My Son, in such a way that He will indeed be all our own.

How to find the Holiest of All

For sometime now we've been sharing from the book written by Andrew Murray titled "The Holiest of All" on our Facebook site. Doing so we've found within the Epistle to the Hebrews that Paul through another writers hand revealed the key to the mysteries that Paul wrote of in His prison Epistles and the Church Epistles. And because our Blog title tells us that God has only one Way into His Rest we feel that we should also share here the book "The Holiest of All". Then as the Lord leads add to the passages and chapters shared. Andrew Murray is not the only author that we've found expounding on the hidden Way or the secret often hidden within plain sight and so we may also share from them from time to time.

"THE HOLIEST OF ALL"

AN EXPOSITION OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS
BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

PREFACE
WHEN first I undertook the preparation of this exposition in Dutch for the Christian people among whom I labor, it was under a deep conviction that the Epistle just contained the instruction they needed. In reproducing it in English, this impression has been confirmed, and it is as if nothing could be written more exactly suited to the state of the whole Church of Christ in the present day. The great complaint of all who have the care of souls is the lack of whole-heartedness, of steadfastness, of perseverance and progress in the Christian life. Many, of whom one cannot but hope that they are true Christians, come to a standstill, and do not advance beyond the rudiments of Christian life and practice. And many more do not even remain stationary, but turn back to a life of worldliness, of formality, of indifference. And the question is continually
being asked, What is the want in our religion that, in so many cases, it gives no power to stand, to advance, to press on unto perfection? And what is the teaching that is needed to give that health and vigor to the Christian life that, through all adverse circumstances, it may be able to hold fast the beginning firm to the end.

The teaching of the Epistle is the divine answer to these questions. In every possible way it sets before us the Truth that it is only the full and penect knowledge of what Christ is and does for us that can bring us to a full and perfect Christian life. The knowledge of Christ Jesus that we need for conversion does not suffice for growth, for progress, for sanctification, for maturity. Just as there are two dispensations, the Old Testament and the New, and the saints of the Old, with all their faith and fear of God, could not obtain the more perfect Life of the New, so with the two stages in the Christian life of which the Epistle speaks. Those who, through sloth, remain babes in Christ, and do not press on to maturity, are ever in danger of hardening their heart, of coming short and falling away. Only those who hold fast the beginning firm to the end, who give diligence to enter the Rest, who press on to perfection, do in very deed inherit and enjoy the wonderful New Covenant blessings secured for us in Christ. And the great object of the Epistle is to show us that if we will but follow the Lord fully, and yield ourselves wholly to what God in Christ is ready to do, we shall find in the gospel and in Christ everything that we need for a Life of joy and strength and final victory.

The cure the Epistle has for all our failures and feebleness, the one preservative from all danger and disease, is the knowledge of the higher Truth concerning Jesus, the Knowledge of Him in His Heavenly Priesthood. In connection with this Truth, the writer has three great mysteries he seeks to unfold. The one is that the Heavenly Sanctuary has been opened to us, so that we may now come and take our place there, with Jesus in the very presence of God. The second, that the New and Living Way by which Jesus has entered, the Way of self-sacrifice and perfect obedience to God, is the Way in which we now may and must draw nigh. The third, that Jesus, as our Heavenly High Priest, is the minister of the Heavenly Sanctuary, and dispenses to us its blessings, the spirit and the power of the Heavenly Life in such a way that we can live in the world as those who are come to the Heavenly Jerusalem, and in whom the Spirit of Heaven is the Spirit of all their life and conduct; the Heavenly Priesthood of Jesus, Heaven opened to us day by day, our entering it by the New and Living Way, and Heaven entering us by the Holy Spirit. Such is the Gospel to the Hebrews the Epistle brings, such is the Life to which it reveals the Way and the strength. The Knowledge of the Heavenly character of Christ's person and work is what alone can make Heavenly Christians, who, amid all the difficulties and temptations of life on earth, can live as those whom the superior power of the upper world has possessed, and in whom it can always give the victory.

In offering these meditations now to a wider circle of readers, I do so with the prayer that it may please God to use them to inspire some of His children with new confidence in their blessed Lord, as they learn to Know Him better and give themselves up to expect and experience all that He is able to do for them and in them. I have not been afraid of continually repeating the one thought: Our one need is, to Know Jesus better; the one cure for all our feebleness, to look to Him on the Throne of Heaven, and really claim the Heavenly Life He waits to impart.

Just as I was about to write the Preface to the Dutch issue, in the first week of last year, I received from my beloved colleague as a New Year's text, with the wish that it might be my experience, the words: "Jesus takes with Him Peter and James and John, and brings them into a high mountain, apart by themselves, and He was transfigured before them." I at once passed the word on to my readers, and I do so again. May the
blessed Master take us with Himself into the high mountain, even the Mount Sion, where He sits as Priest-King upon the Throne in power, each of us apart by himself, and prepare us for the blessed vision of seeing Him transfigured before us, seeing Him in His Heavenly Glory. He will then still be to us the same Jesus we know now. And yet not the same; but His whole Being, bright with the Glory and the power of the Heavenly Life which He holds for us, and waits to impart day by day to them who forsake all to follow Him.

 In humble trust and prayer that it may be so, I commend all my readers to His blessed teaching and guidance.
ANDREW MURRAY.
13th September 1894.

This is the Preface of Andrew Murray's book with little or no editing by us and where used to bring the word or phrase up to our common day usage only and so this will be our standard throughout the text that is to follow.

FIRST HALF-DOCTRINAL.
Hebrews Chap. 1- 10: 18
The Son of God the Mediator of a Better Covenant.

THE THEME. Chapter 1: 1-3.
The Glory of the Son in His Person and Work.

 THE SON IN WHOM GOD HATH SPOKEN.
Hebrews 1: 1-2 God, having of old time spoken to the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, has at the end of these days spoken to us in His Son.

Now we'll show a more modern version of the (AV, KJV) from the CEV or Contemporary English Version:
Hebrews 1:1-2 Long ago in many ways and at many times God's prophets spoke His message to our ancestors. But now at last, God sent His Son to bring His message to us. God created the universe by His Son, and everything will someday belong to the Son.

God has spoken! The magnificent portal by which we enter into the temple in which God is to reveal His Glory to us! We are at once brought into the presence of God Himself. The one object of the Epistle is to lead us to God, to reveal God, to bring us into contact with Himself. Man was created for God. Sin separated man from God. Man feels his need, and seeks for God. This Epistle comes with the Gospel message of redemption, to teach us where and how to find God. Let all who thirst for God, for the Living God, draw nigh and listen.

God has spoken! Speaking is the vehicle of fellowship. It is a proof that the speaker considers him he addresses as capable of fellowship with himself; a token that he longs for that fellowship. Man was created for fellowship/intimacy with God. Sin interrupted it Nature speaks of God and His work, but of Himself, His heart, and His thoughts of Love towards us as sinners, nature cannot tell. In his deepest misery man seeks for God but how often, to all appearance, in vain. But, God be praised, not for always. The silence has been broken. God calls man back to fellowship/intimacy with Himself. God has spoken!

God has spoken! For a time, imperfectly and provisionally in the prophets, in preparation for the more perfect revelation of Himself. But now at length the joyful tidings are heard God has spoken in His Son! God, the infinite, incomprehensible, unseen One, has spoken! And that in His Son! Oh, the joy and the glory! who can measure it? "Hear! O heavens, and give ear! O earth, for the Lord has spoken."

God has spoken! When man speaks it is the revelation of himself, to make known the otherwise hidden thoughts and dispositions of his heart. When God, who dwells in Light that is inaccessible, speaks out of the heights of His Glory, it is that He may reveal Himself. He would have us know how He Loves us and longs for us, how He wants to save and to bless, how He would have us draw nigh and live in fellowship and intimacy with Himself.

God has spoken in His Son! The ministry of angels and prophets was only to prepare the way; it never could satisfy the heart either of God or man; the real power of the Life of God, the full experience of His nearness, the True deliverance from sin, the shedding abroad of the Love in the heart, this could not be communicated by the ministry of creatures. The Son Himself had to come as the Word of God to us, the
bearer of the Grace and Truth the Life and Love of the Father. The Son Himself had to come to bring us into living contact with the divine Being, to dwell in our heart, as He dwells in God's heart, to be in us God's Word as He is in God, and so to give us the Living experience of what it means that God speaks to us.
God has spoken! The words of a man carry weight according to the idea I have of his wisdom, his veracity, his power, his love. The words of God! Oh, who can express what they ought to be worth to us! Each word carries with it all the Life of God, all His saving power His Grace and Love. God speaking in His Son! Surely they who have begun to Know Him will be ready to cast aside everything for the sake of hearing Him.

God has spoken! The words of men have often exerted a wonderful and a mighty influence. But the Words of God they are creative deeds, they give what they speak. "He spoke, and it was done." When God speaks in His Son, He gives Him to us, not only for us and with us, but in us. He speaks the Son out of the depth of His heart into the depths of our heart. Men's words appeal to the mind or the will, the feelings or the passions. God speaks to that which is deeper than all, to the heart, that central depth within us whence are the issues of life. Let us believe the mighty, quickening power God's Word will have.

God has spoken! Speaking claims hearing. God asks but one thing; it is so simple and right; that we should
listen. Shall we not hearken, in holy reverence and worship, with whole-hearted attention and surrender, to what He would say to us in this Epistle too? We too shall know what the power and the joy is of God speaking to us in His Son. God is a Spirit. As such He has no other way of communicating to us His Life or His Love, but by entering our spirit and dwelling and working there. There He causes Christ to dwell, and there He speaks to us in Christ Words of redeeming Love and power which bring Life to us. The words of Christ can bring us no profit, except as they unfold to us what God is working in us, and direct us to what is to be revealed in our heart. It is the heart God wants; let us open the whole heart to listen and to long.

God has spoken in His Son! The Living Jesus, come forth from the fiery furnace of God's Holiness, from the burning glow of everlasting Love, He Himself is the Living Word. Let us seek in the study of this Epistle, in which His Glory is so wondrously revealed, to come into contact with Him, to receive Him into our hearts, to take Him as our life, that He may bring us to the Father. In the beginning God spoke: "Let there be light! and there was Light." Even so now He speaks with creative power in His Son, and the presence and the Light of Christ become the Life and the Light of the soul.

1. What trouble people take to learn a foreign language, to have access to its writers. Let no trouble be too great to understand the language of God, His Word, His Son. To learn a foreign language I get someone who knows it to teach me. The language of God is Heavenly, Spiritual, supernatural altogether divine; only the Holy Spirit can teach me to understand it, to think God's own thoughts. Let me take Him as my teacher.
2. "And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him." As personally and directly, even more wonderfully and effectually, will God speak to me in His Son; but deep, holy reverence, and an intense desire to know what God says, must be the spirit in which I study the Epistle and hearken to the blessed Son.
3. "Heavenly truth is nowhere spoken but by the voice of Christ, nor heard but by the power of Christ, living in the hearer." "He that is of God hears God's words." It is only he who yields himself to the New nature who can truly know what God's speaking in Christ is.
4. During Christ's life the Word of God was thrice heard. Each time it was: "This is My beloved Son: hear Him." "I have glorified Him." Let us allow God to speak this one word into our hearts My beloved Son. My God! speak to me in Your Son. Oh, speak that one word out of the depth of Your heart into the depth of my heart.
This is now the end of the first chapter and the preface of introduction, may we all grow in the Knowledge of Him as we've been in instructed to do. May God increase our Knowledge of Himself and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Once More on Grace and Good Works, What Ministry is

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.  (Ephesians 2:10)

In examining Grace and good works we are again seeing God's Grace is not only His willingness to forgive us through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, but it is also His resource for shaping and using our lives as believers.

God desires that we become amply engaged in good works, to glorify His name in the edifying of His people and the reaching of the lost. Although we are not saved by good works ("not of works, lest anyone should boast" — Ephesians 2:8-9), we are saved unto good works ("created in Christ Jesus for good works").

Our hope of abounding in good works rests upon the gracious working of God on our behalf. First, He remakes us through new birth into His Son: "created in Christ Jesus." Then, He continues to work on us, in us. We do not shape ourselves into an instrument that the Lord can use. God willingly takes that responsibility upon Himself.  "For we are His workmanship." God wants to shape our lives like a work of art, thoroughly crafting us in relationship to His purposes for each of our lives.

God's gracious work extends beyond new birth and subsequent fashioning. He even prepares the good works in which He wants us to eventually be engaged. "Created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand." Think of it. The Lord has already arranged the acts of service in which He intends for us to be occupied! Then, why are we not always involved in such good works? The answer is related to this phrase: "that we should walk in them." We do have a strategic responsibility in this process. We are to humbly and dependently walk with the Lord Jesus every day.

Jesus addressed this matter. "Then they said to Him, 'What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?' Jesus answered and said to them, 'This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent'" (John 6:28-29). Exercising faith (trust with obedience) in the Lord is what brings us into the workings of God for our lives. This involves believing in His plan, as revealed in His word. This includes trusting that His will is best for us. This comprises walking in reliance upon Him, allowing Him to guide us each day into the appropriate good works. Such a response brings service empowered by Grace, as seen in the early church. "And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great Grace was upon them all" (Acts 4:33).

What ministry is: SERVING THE LORD

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service."  (Romans 12:1)

THE FIRST thing for all of us to do is to present ourselves to God as alive from the dead, and our bodies as living sacrifices. The path of blessedness can be entered by no other gate. It is only as we refuse to be conformed to this world, and yield ourselves to be transformed by the free entrance of the Holy Spirit into our minds and hearts, that we can learn all that God will do for us. We are nothing; He is all. He is prepared to be and do all things in us, if only we will allow ourselves to be open to Him as the land lies open to the summer sun.

Those who really live the yielded life, do not need to ascertain God's Will by signs. They recognize it by the whisper of His voice and the touch of His hand. It is as we refuse to be molded by the world, and give ourselves up to the transfiguring Spirit of God, that we prove what is His good, acceptable, and perfect will. But more than that, we begin to live for others, and draw by faith from the fulness of God's Amazing Grace, that we may minister to them aright.

First, we understand what the Will of God is; then we present our bodies that it may fulfill itself through us; then we discover that it means goodwill to men, and we become the happy channels of heavenly ministry to those around us in one of the spheres enumerated in Romans 12:6-8 of this chapter. It is impossible to cherish jealousy, because the Head may use this member or that; it is equally impossible to be proud, because we have nothing that we have not received. Let us always remember that each has a special ministry to fulfill, and that we shall find in our daily lives the opportunity of fulfilling it. How many resemble the landowner of the Eastern story, who sold his property in order to go in search of diamonds, and lo! the man who purchased his property found it full of diamonds. Indeed it was the famous Golconda region. In the daily drudgery of life you will find your heavenly opportunity. How many who are pining for a great mission, will never be permitted to enter it, because they despise the low and narrow door of humble service to those in their immediate neighborhood.

But we can never realize these divine ideals of service merely by an external obedience. We must be constrained by a holy love to our Lord and to one another. What a despair these ideals would be apart from the Holy Spirit. That holy love comes from Him.

Many destroy the plans of God for their lives by pursuing their own goals and false desires because of the worldliness of their unredeemed minds. They jump in with both feet without first sitting under God listening. They run off before learning His ways and plans for the good works that He wants to do through them and thereby thwart the plans of God for His ministry to others. God does have only one way, that counts, for us all and it is up to us to wait upon the lord to learn from Him. We must know Him as a wife knows her husband and a husband knows his wife before we are able to be approved of God for His work of service to humanity that He has for us to do.

These are taken in part from Pastor Bob Hoekstra and F.B. Meyer's writings with editing by me.