"The Holiest of All" part LXXI

THE POWER OF CHRIST'S DEATH RATIFYING THE COVENANT.
Hebrews 9: 15-17  And for this cause he is the mediator of a new covenant, that a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant, they that have been called may receive the promise of the eternal Inheritance. For where a testament Is, there must of necessity be the death of him that made it. For a testament Is of force where there hath been death: for doth it ever avail while he that made it liveth?

Continuing with the SEVENTH SECTION
Hebrews 9: 1-28.
The Power of Christ's Blood to inaugurate the New Sanctuary and the New Covenant.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY


Remember how in chapter 8 we found two names given to our Lord Jesus, indicating the twofold work He does, with God in Heaven and in our heart on earth. As a Minister of the Sanctuary, He is in God's presence, Ministering the Grace of the Sanctuary to us, and giving us the enjoyment of that presence ( ie. essence within the heart of man ). As Mediator of the New Covenant, (a Living New Life imparting) He works in our heart on earth, giving God's Law (the moral law or ten commandments and the Beatitudes of Christ and Love) within us, as the Law of the Spirit of His own Life, and fitting us for the worship and fellowship of the Sanctuary. In the first half of this chapter we have had the exposition of how Christ, as Minister of the Sanctuary, Opened and entered into it through His own Blood, and there Ministers the Everlasting Redemption. He does it by Cleansing our conscience, in the power of that Blood that has prevailed to Open Heaven, to enter in Boldly and Freely to serve the Living God. In the second half of the chapter he now proceeds to speak of Christ as the Mediator of the New Covenant. With the same Blood with which He dedicated the Sanctuary He has dedicated the Covenant too.

And for this cause He is the Mediator of a New Covenant, that they that have been called may receive the promise of the Eternal Inheritance. The word promise reminds us of what was said of the Better Covenant, enacted upon Better promises. The word inheritance of the oath of God and the inheriting the promise through faith. The word eternal of all we have heard of our Melchizedek, as a Priest forever, who does all His work in the Authority and power of an Endless Life. Christ has become a Mediator of this New Covenant, that the promise of the Eternal Inheritance, that Blessed heritage of Eternal Life even now made manifest in the promise of the Law written in the heart and full personal intimacy with God, might be our portion; it is the work of the Mediator to ensure our inheriting the promises. But this could not be till a death had taken place for the Redemption of the transgressions that were under the first commandment and then the first covenant. The first covenant had its sanction in God's appointment; the New Covenant could not take its place until the first had met with full satisfaction for its claims. There was no way for this, for the Redemption of the transgressions it had seen and condemned, but by a death of the transgressor. All the writer had meant in speaking of the blood, he now includes in the expression, a death. The change of the expression reminds us how the two are one. The blood is through the death; the death is for the blood. The Blood-shedding and the death are the Redemption, the ransom, that by sin-bearing and atonement deliver from transgressions and their power. All the transgressions of the old covenant had been treasured up; the death of Christ gave Satisfaction to all that that covenant could claim, and brought release
( the fulfillment of the righteous requirements ). So the Mediator of the New Covenant begins an entirely New Economy ( dispensation of Grace ), with sin put away by the sacrifice of Himself, and an Open path to the beginning of a New Life in the Grace and favor and Authority and power of God.

Now follow two verses which have caused no little difficulty. In English we have for one word in Greek two words of entirely different meaning. The word "covenant", a treaty between two parties, and "testament ', the Last Will by which one party leaves his property to another, are the same in Greek. Through the whole of Scripture the word may always best be translated "covenant", with the exception of the two following verses. Here the argument renders the meaning "testament"  or "Will" necessary. For where a testament is, there must of necessity be the death of him that made it. For a testament is of force where there has been death: for does it ever avail while he that made it lives? It is as if the author sets aside for a moment, led to it by what he had just said of them who receive the Eternal Inheritance, to use the other meaning of the Greek word in order to prove how, in every connection, a death is indispensable. He had spoken of Christ's death as the sacrifice by which the Covenant was ratified. To confirm the thought he adds: "When one who has made a testament dies, he passes away, and the heir takes his place,--- even so Jesus, the Heir of all things, in His death gave up all, that we might stand in His place, and inherit all."

Would God that our hearts might take it in. A death having taken place! Now the Covenant is sure. The Redemption of past transgressions is sure; we may now claim and take the promise of the Eternal Inheritance. A death having taken place! Now the testament avails. The maker of the testament has died, to put us in complete possession of all He had and all He won for us. And, praise God! He Lives again, as no other maker of a testament ever lives, to put us in full possession of the inheritance, and to be Himself its chiefest measure and joy; as Minister of the True Sanctuary to keep us in God's presence; as Mediator of the New Covenant to keep our heart in the full enjoyment of all its Blessings.

1. Everyone can understand how absolutely a Last Will or testament needs a death. This must help us to believe that a Covenant needs It as much for the redemption of transgressions. As sure as the death of a maker of a testament puts the heir In complete possession of the promise, so surely has the death of the Mediator made a perfect Redemption from all transgression.
2. Let us get firmly hold of this: In virtue of His death the first covenant could be set aside and the second dedicated with His Blood. The second Covenant has entirely to do with keeping our heart and life In a right state for entering the Sanctuary and abiding there. Let me believe It can and shall be fulfilled.

"THE HOLIEST OF ALL" part LXX

THE POWER OF THE BLOOD TO FIT FOR THE SERVICE OF THE LIVING GOD.
Hebrews 9: 14  How much more shall the Blood of Christ cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the Living God?

Continuing with the SEVENTH SECTION
Hebrews 9: 1-28.
The Power of Christ's Blood to inaugurate the New Sanctuary and the New Covenant.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

We must not regard the cleansing in the Blood of Christ as the end, the final aim, of redemption. It is only the beginning, the means to a higher end the fitness for the service of the Living God. It is the restoration to the intimacy and fellowship with Him who has Life and gives Life. The Blood gives cleansing from dead works, the works of the law and the Law and of self, with its own efforts; it brings us to a Living Relation to the Living God. God and His intimacy, a life in His Love and service, the Living God and the enjoyment of His presence,--- this is the aim of Redemption.


The Living God! This name was used in the Old Testament as a contrast to the dead idols of the heathen. In the New Testament it points us to the danger of our forming an image of God, not in wood or stone, but in our mind and imagination a thought-image, in which there is neither life nor truth. What we need first of all is that we believe that God IS, that our faith realize Him as the Living One, who is all that He IS, in the Authority and power of an infinite Life and energy. He is the Living God, Life giving God! He speaks and hears. He feels and acts. He has the Authority and the power to make us know that He is near to us, and that He receives us when we come near to Him. The Knowledge of the Living God is the ground of a Living Trusting and faith, a Living fellowship of intimacy, a Living Life imparting service. As the Living God, He is all, and does all and fills all the ever-present, ever-working God.


It was thus with the priests of the Hebrews. They were set apart by the sprinkling of blood (Exodus 29: 19, 20). The object of this was (Deuteronomy 10: 8) to fit them to stand before the Lord, to minister to Him, to bless in His name. One great reason why many Christians never enter into the full joy and power of redemption, into the life within the veil, is that they seek it for themselves. They follow the forms of the old Hebrew ways of worship that was a pattern of the Better that it spoke of. Let us beware lest we seek the access into the Holiest, the joy of unclouded fellowship with God, the power of the Blood to cleanse, only for the sake of our advance in Holiness or in happiness. The whole appointment of the sanctuary and the priests was that there might be men who could come before God to minister to Him, and then go out and Bless their fellowmen. Christ entered through His Blood within the veil, to go and serve; to be a Minister of the Sanctuary in the power of the Blood, by which He could cleanse others and admit them too within the veil. To Know the power of the Blood to cleanse and admit within the veil, and give us part in the Priests Ministry of Blessing men: this will come as we seek it as fitness to serve the Living God.


How much more shall the Blood of Christ Cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the Living God? The cleansing is for service. There was a great difference between the people in the outer court and the priests within the tabernacle. The former saw the blood sprinkled on the altar, and trusted for forgiveness; the blood was not applied to their persons. The priests were sprinkled with the blood; that gave them access to the sanctuary to serve God there. We still have outer-court Christians, who look at Calvary, and trust for forgiveness, but know nothing of the access to God which the more direct and powerful application of the Blood from Heaven by the Holy Spirit gives. Oh! Let us give ourselves to be Priests, wholly separated to the service of God, wholly given up to God, for Him to work in us and through us what perishing men need,--- our consecration to this service will urge us mightily to claim an ever mightier experience of the Blood, because we shall feel that nothing less than a full entrance into, and a True abiding in God's presence, can fit us for God's working through us. The more we see and approve that the object of the cleansing must only be for service, the more shall we see and experience that the power for service is only in the cleansing. ("The Blood contains that which makes white (Revelation 7: 14). Not only the man, but his garments are made white. This is more than cleansing. It is the word used regarding Christ's transfiguration garments (Matthew 17: 2); the angel robes (Matthew 28: 3); the heavenly clothing (Revelation 4: 4); the judgment Throne (Revelation 20: 11, whiter than snow, white as the garments of Christ. What potency, what excellency, what virtue does this Blood contain! How it beautifies! How it glorifies!" H. BONAR )

How much more shall the Blood Cleanse from dead works to serve the Living God! If we experience in ourselves, or in those around us, that there is little of the power and presence of the Living God in our religious service, we have here the reason. If we find that in that service dead works still prevail, and that in prayer and preaching, in home life and work around us, the duties of the religious life are performed without the Authority and power of the Life and Spirit of God, let us learn the lesson--- it is only the effectual cleansing, through the Eternal Spirit, of the Blood that has been taken into the Holiest, that can fit us to serve the Living God. That Blood, witnessed to by the Holy Spirit, brings us into the Holiest, and makes God to us a Living God, Life imparting God! That Blood brings the Life of the Holiest into our hearts, cleanses our conscience from every dead work, from every attempt and every hope to do anything in our own strength, gives the consciousness that we are now ransomed and set free and empowered from Heaven to serve the God of Heaven in the Authority and power of an Endless Life that comes from Heaven. The Blood of Christ does indeed cleanse us to serve the Living God!


1. How vain it would have been for anyone to seek the priestly consecration with blood, and the entrance into the sanctuary, if he were not to do the priest's service. Let us give up that vain attempt, the ministry of Aaron. Let us seek the power of the Blood to serve the Living God, as His ministers to our fellow-men, The whole inward Life of our High Priest, which He imparts to us, consisted of these two things: it is a Life in the Will of God, and in self-sacrificing Love to men.
2. The priests honored the blood sprinkled on them by boldly entering the tabernacle. Oh! Let us honor the Blood of the Lamb by believing that it gives the power for Life in the Holiest, in the service of the Living God!
3. Conscience tells me what I must think of myself. The Blood tells me what God thinks of me. A conscience cleansed with the Blood is a conscience that glories in this, that in Holiness and In sincerity of God we behave ourselves in the world.
4. Oh! To realize it! Christ went Into the Holiest, not for Himself, but for us. And we go in, too, by His Blood and in His Spirit, not only for ourselves but for others.

"THE HOLIEST OF ALL" part LXIX

THROUGH THE ETERNAL SPIRIT.
Hebrews 9: 14  How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the Living God?

Continuing with the SEVENTH SECTION
Hebrews 9: 1-28.
The Power of Christ's Blood to inaugurate the New Sanctuary and the New Covenant.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY


One might well ask for the reason why the Blood of Christ, which has such infinite power in conquering sin and death and in Opening Heaven to Christ and to us, does not exercise a mightier influence even in earnest Christians, in cleansing our heart and lifting us into a life in the joy of God's presence. The first answer must be, that we seek too little for a real insight into its Divine and Infinite intrinsic worth. The Blood of the Heavenly Son, shed in the Power of the Eternal Spirit, could not but again return heavenward: as God's Spirit leads us by faith to gaze on its Authority and power in Heaven, and to see how through all Heaven its Power is manifest, we shall learn to expect and to receive its working to keep us in God's presence, in an Authority and power above all that thought can conceive. The same Eternal Spirit, through whom the Blood-shedding took place, will effect in us the Bloods-sprinkling too, and make us indeed partakers of what it has accomplished in God's presence above.

This is are lesson of the utmost consequence. If the Blood is His who offered Himself to God through the Eternal Spirit, if it is in the Power and Life of that Spirit that the Blood was brought into Heaven, and now has its place there, we may be sure that that Spirit will ever work with and in that Blood. There are three that bear witness on earth: the Spirit and the water and the Blood. The Spirit and the Blood must and will ever go together. We must not limit our faith in the Power of the Blood in our heart to what we can understand. Our faith must ever be enlarging, to expect that the Holy Spirit, according to His hidden but almighty and uninterrupted working, can maintain the Heavenly efficacy of the Blood in a way to us inconceivable. Just as Christ is the visible revelation on earth and in heaven of the invisible God, so the Holy Spirit again is the communication of the Life and Redemption of the unseen Christ. The Holy Spirit is the power of the inner Life. Within us, down in the to ourselves inaccessible depths of our being, He is able, as the Eternal Spirit, to maintain, in them that yield to Him, the Divine Power of the Blood to cleanse from sin and to give abiding access to the presence of God. Let him who would know to the full the mighty, the Divine, the inexpressible Power and Blessing the Blood each moment can bring in him, remember, it was through the Eternal Spirit it was shed.


In connection with this there is still another lesson. The Spirit not only applies the Power of the Blood, but in doing so He reveals its spiritual meaning. The Blood has its value, not from the mere act of physical suffering and death, but from the inner Life and disposition that animated (New Life impartation that is found in) Christ in shedding it. It is the Blood of the Lamb who offered Himself without blemish to God, with which our heart is brought into a Divine and Living contact. Self-offering, self-sacrifice, was the disposition of which the Blood was the expression, and from which alone it had its worth. Where the Eternal Spirit communicates the Power of the Blood, He communicates this disposition. Christ humbled Himself and became Obedient to death. Therefore as the Lamb of God, who gave His Blood, He was the embodiment of meekness, and humility, and submissive surrender to God's Will. It was our pride and self-will that was the very root and life of sin in us, in our flesh: as we are now washed in the Blood of the Lamb, His Spirit of meekness and submissiveness and obedience will work in us, because the same Eternal Spirit, through which the Blood was shed, applies it in our hearts. We know what it means to wash our clothes in water, how they are plunged into it and saturated with it, until the water carries off all defilement. The Blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin, because the Eternal Spirit imparts the very Life and power of which that precious Blood-shedding was the outcome and the fruit. This is the power that cleanses the conscience from dead works to serve the Living God. Not the Blood only, as shed upon earth, as the first object of our faith for pardon, but the Blood as shed through the Eternal Spirit, and Glorified in the Spirit Life of Heaven, brings us truly into the inner Sanctuary, and empowers us to serve Him as the Living God. "As nothing but the Eternal Spirit could have overcome or redeemed fallen nature, as Christ took it upon Him, so nothing can possibly overcome or redeem the fallen soul or body of any child of Adam, but that same overcoming and Redeeming Spirit, really Living and acting in it, in the same manner as it did in the humanity of Christ."

 We live in the dispensation of the Spirit of Grace--- the Spirit of God's Son, who has been sent for this into our heart. It is the dispensation of the inner Life, in which we are brought into the inner Sanctuary, the secret of His presence, and the inner Sanctuary is found within us,--- in that secret inner place which none but God's Spirit can search out ( and restore us to our former undefiled condition within us, our awakened spirit). In that hidden depth is the House God had prepared for Himself; there, in the inner man, the Holy Spirit will reveal, in a way that our senses and reason cannot apprehend, the Power of Christ's Blood to Cleanse and bring God nigh. Oh! Let us believe the infinite mysteries with which we are surrounded. And above all, this mystery too, that within us, the Blood of Christ, the Lamb of God--- that mystery of mysteries--- is being applied and kept in full action by the Eternal Spirit, cleansing us (our spirit being the inner man of the heart) and revealing God's presence in us.


1. What a mystery!  What blessedness! A heart sprinkled with the Blood of the Son of God!  To walk before God day by day with the Blood of His Son upon us!  To know that the Lamb of God sees us washed In His own blood! Oh, we need, let us ask, the Eternal Spirit to make all this clear to us.
2. If our faith Is only to believe what our reason can make clear to us no wonder the power of the Blood effects so little. Let us have faith, not In what we understand, but let us have faith In God, and the Heavenly, the Inexpressibly glorious realities, of the Blood and Spirit of the Son. By allowing the Eternal Spirit to cause us to become receptive of the mysteries hid in Christ Jesus.
3. What a tender, careful, holy fear comes upon a soul that Lives In the full and Living consciousness of the Blessed reality a heart sprinkled with the Blood of the Lamb.
4. Beware of trying to comprehend all that the Blood means, or of being discouraged when you fail of doing so. The Blood in Heaven is a Divine and inscrutable (hard to understand) mystery and power: be content to believe in Its efficacy. When the Holy Spirit comes Into the heart in power, He applies the Blood in a power far beyond what we can think or understand.

"THE HOLIEST OF ALL" part LXVIII

THE POWER OF CHRIST'S BLOOD TO CLEANSE THE CONSCIENCE.
Hebrews 9: 13-14  For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling them that have been defiled, sanctify unto the cleanness of the flesh: How much more shall the Blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, Cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the Living God?

Continuing with the SEVENTH SECTION
Hebrews 9: 1-28.
The Power of Christ's Blood to inaugurate the New Sanctuary and the New Covenant.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

 The high priest went into the Holiest once a year ( behind the second veil in the temple man built ), not without blood. Christ, the High Priest of good things to come, entered the greater and more perfect Holiest of All through His own Blood, Opening up to us in very deed the Way into God's presence. The entrance of the high priest on earth effected a certain external and temporary cleansing and limited access. The Blood of Christ which has the Power to Open Heaven, is able to effect, in its Heavenly, Eternal Power, a Heavenly, a Divine Cleansing in the heart. (That is to say in every receptive receiver by Christ's faith the absolute cleanings of his heart and of the ( from a guilty) conscience forevermore.)

To illustrate this, we are referred to Numbers 19 and the cleansing with the ashes of the heifer. Anyone who had touched a dead body was unclean, and had to be excluded from the camp. To meet the need, the ashes of a heifer that had been sacrificed, and of which the blood had been sprinkled towards the tabernacle, were mingled with water, and sprinkled on the one who had been defiled (sinned). The sprinkling restored him to his place and privileges; with a clear conscience he could now take part in the life and worship of God's people. The question is asked--- If the blood of a sacrifice had such power, how much more shall the Blood of Christ Cleanse your conscience to serve the Living God? The infinite efficacy of Christ's Blood, and the infinite Eternal Blessedness of the Cleansing it effects, can only be measured by what that Blood really is.

The Power of Christ's Blood consists in two things. The one element that gives the Blood its value is, the Holy Obedience of which its outpouring was the proof; the Blood of Christ who offered Himself without spot to God. He came to live the life of man, such as God had meant Him to be, in creating Him. He gave up His Will to God, He pleased not Himself but sought only God's pleasure, He yielded His whole life that God might reveal Himself in it as He pleased: He offered Himself to God ( with the aid of the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of Christ within our hearts this too becomes our one desire as well). He took and filled the place the creature was meant to fill. And that without spot. His Self-sacrifice was Complete and Perfect, and His Blood, even as the blood of a man, was, in God's sight, inexpressibly precious. It was the embodiment of a perfect obedience. The other element is, that the Eternal Spirit was in the Life of that Blood. It was through the Eternal Spirit He offered Himself. It was the Word that became flesh, the Eternal Son of God who was made man. It was the Life of God that dwelt in Him. That Life gave His Blood, each drop of it, an infinite eternal intrinsic value. The blood of a man is of more worth than that of a sheep. The blood of a king or a great general is counted of more value than hundreds of common soldiers. The Blood of the Son of God!--- It is in vain the mind seeks for some expression of its value; all we can say is, it is His own Blood, the precious Blood of the Son of God!

It was this twofold infinite worth of the Blood that gave it such mighty Power first, in opening the grave, and then in Opening Heaven. It was this gave it the Victory over all the powers of death and hell beneath, and gave Him the Victor's place on High on the Throne of God. And now, when that Blood, from out of the Heavenly Sanctuary, is sprinkled on the conscience by the Heavenly High Priest how much more with what an infinitely Effectual Cleansing, must not our conscience be cleansed.
 
We know what conscience is. It tells us what we are. Conscience deals not only with past merit or guilt but especially with present integrity or falsehood. A conscience fully Cleansed with the Blood of Christ, fully conscious of its cleansing power, has the sense of guilt and demerit removed to an infinite distance ( into the sea there to be remembered of NO more, and NOT be brought up or mentioned ever again forevermore ). And no less is it delivered from that haunting sense of insincerity and double-heartedness, which renders boldness of access to God an impossibility. It can look up to God without the shadow of a cloud. The Light of God's face, to which the Blood gave our Surety access, shines clear on the conscience, and through it on the heart. The conscience is not a separate part of our heart or inner nature, which can be in a different state from what the whole is. By no means. Just as a sensibility to bodily evil pervades the whole body, so the conscience is the sense which pervades our whole spiritual nature, and at once notices and reports what is wrong or right in our state. Hence it is when the conscience is Cleansed or Perfected, the heart is Cleansed and Perfected too. And so it is in the heart that the power the Blood has in Heaven is communicated here on earth. The Blood that brought Christ into God's presence, brings us, and our whole inner being, there too.

Oh, let us realize it. The power of the Blood in which Christ entered Heaven, is the power in which He enters our hearts. The infinite intrinsic value and the sufficiency it has with God, to meet His Holy requirements, in its sufficiency to meet the requirements of our heart and life. It is the Blood of the Eternal Covenant. Its three great promises--- pardon and peace in God's forgetting sin; purity and power in having the Law of Life (restored to us and) in our heart; the presence of God set Open to us, are not only Secured to us by the Blood, but the Blood has its part too in communicating them. In the power of the Holy Spirit the Blood effects a mighty, Divine and Eternal Cleansing, full of Heavenly Life and energy. The Spirit that was in Christ, when He shed the Blood, makes us partakers of its power. His Victory over sin, His perfect obedience, His access to the Father,--- the soul that fully Knows the Cleansing of the Blood in its power will Know these Blessings too.


1. The Blood that cleanses my conscience is the Blood that gave Christ access into the Holiest. If I truly desire, if I know and honor and trust the Blood, it will give me access too.
2. How completely every vestige of an evil conscience can be taken away and kept away by the redeeming power of this precious Blood! Let us believe that our High Priest, whose entrance into the Sanctuary and whose Ministry there, is all In the power of the Blood, will make it true to us.
3. This cleansing is what is elsewhere spoken of as Christ's washing us in His Blood. A piece of linen that is to be washed is steeped and saturated until every stain be taken out. As we in faith and patience allow the Blood to possess our whole inner being, we shall know what it means that it washes whiter than snow.

A special note: This is the reason that many so called "Christians" don't experience the Christ- Likeness Life and why the wrath of God will be so great upon the earth and all who have through ignorance trampled under foot the Cross and Blood of Christ, they carry on their own heads this wrath.

"THE HOLIEST OF ALL" part LXVII

THE POWER OF CHRIST'S BLOOD TO OPEN THE HOLIEST
Hebrews 9: 12. But Christ, through His own Blood, entered in once for all into the Holy Place, having obtained Eternal Redemption.

Continuing with the SEVENTH SECTION
Hebrews 9: 1-28.
The Power of Christ's Blood to inaugurate the New Sanctuary and the New Covenant.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

Through His own Blood. We have seen our great High Priest on the Throne of God, a Priest after the order of Melchizedek, in the Authority and the power of an Endless Life. When He rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven, it was according to that working of the strength of His might, whereby God had raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand. He entered God's presence as the Living One who was dead, and behold, He Lives forevermore. And yet, strange to say, it was not enough that He should present Himself at the gate of Heaven as the Conqueror of death and hell, and ask admission. He had to take with Him His own Blood, as it had been shed upon earth, as the power by which alone, as the Surety of sinners, in deed all of humanity, He could claim access to the presence of God. Through His own Blood Christ entered the Holiest of All.

And what does this word, His own Blood, mean? To Moses God had said that He gave the blood upon the altar to be an atonement, because the blood is the life. That is, the Living Blood in the body is the life of that body. And the shed blood? That means death. More than that, it means an unnatural, a violent death. There are only two ways in which this unnatural blood shedding comes: by malice or by justice. We have the two together in the words: Whoso sheds mans blood, by man shall his blood be shed. In the death of Christ the malice of men and the Righteousness of God met. He was slain, a Sacrifice to the evil passions of men, because He resisted unto blood, striving against sin. He was slain, a Sacrifice to God, because He was the Lamb of God that toke away the sin of the world. Death is inseparably connected with sin, and the curse which God pronounced upon it (Genesis 2: 16-17). When Jesus, as the Second Adam, tasted death for all; when, in Gethsemane, He with strong crying and tears besought His Father that the cup might pass from Him; when on the cross He cried, My God! My God! Why have You forsaken Me? He tasted death in all its bitterness, both as the terrible fruit of sin, the Revelation of what sin is in its very nature, and as the Penalty God had attached to it. He died, as Scripture says, the just for the unjust; He bore our sin; His Blood was shed for us; He gave His life as Ransom for many. And the word "Blood" in this Epistle includes all that is meant by the death of Christ; the Blood is the expression and embodiment of His Obedience unto death, of His death for our sins, of the atonement which He made for us as the victims on the altar, as our Substitute sacrificed.

It is this Blood now, of whose power our Epistle says such wondrous things. It was in the Blood of the Eternal Covenant that God brought again our Lord Jesus from the dead; the Blood was the power of the resurrection. It was through His Blood He cleansed the Heavenly things themselves and entered the Holiest on our behalf. In those Heavenly places our sin was in God's book, our sin had as a thick cloud darkened (covered or veiled) God's presence (Psalm 97: 2); for the sake of the Blood the sin was blotted out (as with an ink blotter, it was removed never to be again), and access given to Him, and in Him to us, to appear before the very face of God. And now, in the Vision of the Heavenly Glory to which HE has given us Access, as we have it later in the Epistle, we find in Heaven not only God the Judge of all, and Christ the Mediator of the New Covenant, but also the Blood of sprinkling that speaks of the Better things than that of Abel. Everywhere we see, besides and along with Jesus Christ, the Living One Himself, in His Resurrection, in His entering Heaven, in His sitting on the Throne, as a separate existence and power, the Blood, the symbol of the death in which we have our Ransom and Redemption.

Through His own Blood. Let us especially note how the Blood is connected with the Heavenly Priesthood of Christ. We are too apt to think only of the fulfillment of the type of Aaron (an externality priesthood of works), the blood-shedding on earth. The Epistle does not speak of it. Where it mentions the Blood, it is in connection with the Resurrection and the Entrance into Heaven, as it works in the Authority and the power of an Endless Life. It is as the Holy Spirit reveals this to the soul, the Heavenly power of the Blood, as Ministered by our Melchizedek (the spiritual perfection in the Knowledge of HIM ), the Minister of the Heavenly Sanctuary, that we see what a power that Blood must have, as so sprinkled on us from Heaven, in the power of the Holy Spirit, at once to give us a real, actual, Living Access into the presence of God.

 His own Blood. I know of no word in the Bible or in human speech that contains such mysteries! In it are concentrated the mysteries of the incarnation, in which our God took flesh and Blood; of the obedience unto death, in which the Blood was shed; of the Love that passes Knowledge, that purchased us with His own Blood; of the Victory over every enemy, and the everlasting Redemption; of the Resurrection and the Entrance into Heaven; of the atonement and the Reconciliation and the Justification that came through it; of the cleansing and perfecting of the conscience (from the shame and guilt of sin and sins effect ), of the sprinkling of the heart and the Sanctifying of the people. Through that Blood Christ Entered once for all into Heaven; through that Blood we enter too, and have our home in the Holiest of All. As the Holy Spirit from Heaven, now dwelling in us, imparts to us the Boldness the Blood gives, and the Love into which it Opens the Way, our whole inner being will be brought under its power, and the cleansing of the Blood in its full extent be our experience.


1. "As in Heaven so in earth." We have more interest than we think In Knowing what the Blood has wrought in Heaven. As we enter by the Spirit into its power there, will our faith Receive its power within us.
2. The inner sanctuary deeper, nearer in to God. He that seeks after this will have the inner Sanctuary Opened within Himself. The inner life, the law within the heart, in the inward parts, a deepening sense of the Life of God in the soul will be given to such a one.
3. There are in Scripture two aspects of Christ's death that of atonement and that of intimacy. He died for us, for our sin, that we might not die. What our Substitute did in bearing the curse of sin, we cannot do, we need not do. He died to sin, and we died with Him and in Him. The Blood is the Divine expression for the former aspect: His own Blood is the power and the worth of His death taken up and presented and forever preserved in its energy and action before God. The sprinkling with the Blood includes the transition to the second aspect. As the Blood, as a Heavenly reality, through the Holy Spirit works in us, the very disposition that animated ( to produce Life Eternal ). Jesus in the shedding of it will be imparted to us.
4. Christ can bring us into the Holiest In no other Way than He went in Himself, through His own Blood. Oh, seek to know the power of Christ's Blood.

"THE HOLIEST OF ALL" part LXVI

THE OPENING UP OF THE HOLIEST.
Hebrews 9: 11-12  But Christ having become a High Priest of the good things to come, through the greater and more perfect Tabernacle, that is to say, not of this creation, Nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own Blood, entered in once for all into the Holy Place, having obtained Eternal Redemption.

Continuing with the SEVENTH SECTION
Hebrews 9: 1-28.
The Power of Christ s Blood in the opening of the New Sanctuary and the New Covenant.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

In studying the meaning of the Mosaic ritual, there are specially four things, through which the Holy Spirit shadows forth to us the mysteries of redemption, the good things to come of the new dispensation that the Hebrews were to look for. These are THE PRIEST, THE SANCTUARY, THE BLOOD, and THE WAY INTO THE HOLIEST. We have these four things here together. There is Christ the High Priest of the good things to come, there is the greater and more perfect Tabernacle, there is His own Blood, and there is His entering in into the Holiest. As we apprehend the Authority and power of these things, we shall know the meaning of His having obtained Eternal Redemption. Let us hear what the Holy Spirit speaks of the Opening up the Holiest, and the wonderful path in which that was effected.

The writer uses a very remarkable expression, Christ through the Greater and More Perfect Tabernacle, entered into the Holiest. The two compartments of the Sanctuary are the symbols of two states of life, two degrees of fellowship and intimacy with God. The Epistle teaches us that Christ knew this difference in His own life experience, and, in entering into and Opening up the Higher one for us, passed through the lower. He entered into the Holiest through the Greater and More Perfect Tabernacle, through the experience of this Spiritual Reality of which the tabernacle was the shadow. The Holiest is God's immediate presence, the Holy Place a drawing near to God with now no veil between. The flesh, man's fallen nature in its weakness and its exposure to all the consequences of sin, is the veil. Christ has dedicated for us a New and Living Way through the veil, that is to say, His flesh. When He came in the likeness of sinful flesh, that life in flesh, with its liability to temptation, and its weaknesses, with its possibility of suffering and death, with its life of faith and prayer and tears, with its need of learning obedience and being made perfect, with its subjection to the law (given by commandment, Genesis 2: 16-17) and its penalty (curse), the Law (given through Moses as found in Leviticus through Deuteronomy) and its curses, was the Holy Place, the first tabernacle, through which He had to pass to have the veil rent in His death, so to enter in and appear before God. Christ lived with His people in the Old Testament; He passed through the first tabernacle as a spiritual experience in perfect reality (Genesis thru Acts 7; 1 Corinthians 15: 1-4); it was only with His resurrection and ascension the New Testament began.

Yes, Christ passed from the Holy Place into the Holiest of All. When He died the veil was rent in twain; the two compartments were made one (Matthew 27: 51, Mark 15: 37). The priest who was in the Holy Place could see, could enter into the Holiest. All that was in the Holiest, the Light of God's presence between the cherubim, could shine unhindered into the Holy Place. In Christ the veil of the flesh was rent asunder and taken away (Psalm 97:2). The free access to God was Opened up, not only as a thing of right and title in virtue of our pardon, but as a thing of Authority and power and Living Reality. You are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be the Spirit of Christ dwells in you. When the veil was rent and Christ entered in, the two abodes, what had been the dwelling of God, and what had been the dwelling of the priests, were thrown into one. The eyes and the hearts of men might freely and boldly look up and rise up and greet their God and Father; in Christ they have their place before Him. All the Light and Love and Holiness of the Most Holy shone into the Holy Place. The Spirit of God, as He was received by Christ from God the Father on His ascension, passed into the worshipers. The Pentecostal Gift brought, from above, the Higher Life into which the Blessed Son has entered; the Holy Spirit made the Light and Love and Holiness of the Inner Sanctuary not only a Vision, a Revelation, but a possession and an experience.

The veil of the flesh has been rent; Christ has entered once for all, having obtained Everlasting Redemption; the Dwelling of God and man has been thrown into one; the Spirit of Heaven has been given to signify to us, and to give us the Living experience, that the Way into the Holiest has been made manifest. Our entering in, our dwelling in God's presence in the Light and nearness of intimacy and Holiness of the Most Holy, is a  spiritual, a Heavenly Reality (Ephesians 4: 1-4). It can only be apprehended by the tender, by the perfect conscience, which the Holy Spirit gives to him who is willing to give up all to be saved completely, by the perfect whose senses are exercised to discern good and evil, the receptive one who is One with Him. But to all who are willing to pass through the rent veil of Christ's flesh, to die with Him as He died, and Live with Him as He now lives, the Holy Spirit will show it; the Way into the Holiest is Opened up.

Christ having come, entered in once for all. Four thousand years after man's loss of fellowship with God in paradise had to pass. Fifteen hundred years the veil had to hang with its solemn injunction not to draw near. Thirty-three years the Son of God Himself had to live on this side of the veil. But at length, once for all and forever, the Way was Opened. Fear not, O! Christian, to whom these things appear too High, fear not. Be faithful, through faith and longsuffering we inherit the promises. Persevere in the faith of what Christ has accomplished once for all. He entered in, the Second Adam, in whom our life is, whose members we are. Persevere in the faith of the infinite meaning of that great transaction. And to you, too, will come a day when, in your experience, you shall enter, and go out no more forever.

1. This entering In and Opening up of the Holiest was solely and entirely on our behalf, that we might live and serve there. Therefore the practical part of the Epistle commences at once, therefore, having Boldness to enter into the Holiest, let us draw nigh. That is the summing up of the whole Epistle. God is not content that we should serve Him with a veil between. Let us know clearly which of the two positions we occupy as Christ- Like ones within or Christians--- still without (outside) the veil.
2. "After I had lived for thirteen years in the Holy Place, seeking to serve God there, it pleased Him, who dwells between the cherubim, to call me to pass through the veil, and to enter the Holiest of All, through the blood of Jesus."

"THE HOLIEST OF ALL" part LXV

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE WAY INTO THE HOLIEST.
Hebrews 9: 8-10  The Holy Ghost thus signifying, that the way into the Holy Place had not yet been made manifest, while as the first tabernacle is yet standing; Which is a parable for the time now present; according to which are offered both gifts and sacrifices that cannot, as touching the conscience, make the worshiper perfect, being only (with meats and drinks and divers washings and externality or works of the flesh) carnal ordinances, Imposed until a time of reformation (Redemption).

Continuing with the SEVENTH SECTION
Hebrews 9: 1-28.
The Power of Christ s Blood to inaugurate the New Sanctuary and the New Covenant.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

We said that the Holiest of All, or, as it is literally, the Holiness of Holinesses, was the very embodiment of the Holiness of God, the place of His presence. The Holy Spirit especially bears the epithet Holy, because He is the bearer of the Divine Holiness to impart it to man--- He is the Spirit of Holiness. It will appear no more than natural that there should be a close connection between the Sanctuary as the Revelation of God's Holiness, and the Holy Spirit as the Revealer. This is what we are taught here: the whole construction of the tabernacle and the appointment of the high priest's entrance once a year was so ordered by the Holy Spirit as to be a great object-lesson in which the Truth was taught that so long as the veil hung there, the Way into the Holiest was not yet open. The Holy Spirit signifying that the Way into the Holiest was not yet opened. The words teach us that the Truth about the Way into the Holiest was entirely in charge of the Holy Spirit. It was He who devised and revealed to Moses the Heavenly pattern. It was He who ordered the veil as the token that the Way was not open. It was He who, by the yearly entrance of the high priest, gave the prophecy that it would one day be Opened. It was He who prepared a Body for Him (Genesis 3: 15), and later on filled Him who was to be the Opener of the Way. It was He, the Eternal Spirit, through whom Christ offered Himself as the sacrifice with whose Blood He might enter in. It was He, the Spirit of Holiness (Romans 1: 4), through whom Christ was raised from the dead and exalted to the Throne of God. It was the Holy Spirit who, when the Way had been Opened, came out from the Holiest of All on the day of Pentecost, to impart to men the Life and the power of the Glorified Christ. It is He who to-day still presides over the Way into the Holiest, leading in all who are willing to dwell there.

The lesson for our spiritual life is one of deep suggestiveness and our receptivity contained within the mysteries (secrets) of God. The Holy Spirit has charge of the Way into the Holiest; both while that Way is not yet manifest and when it is Opened up (revealed within the receptive one, who is of faith). He alone has the Knowledge and the Authority with its respective power to Reveal this mystery. For it is still a spiritual mystery. Though everything that Scripture reveals of it can be studied and understood by any man of intelligence, and a clear conception can be formed, or an exposition given of what it means, the Living Power of the Truth, the actual experience of entering in through the Opened veil into the presence of God, can only be communicated and wrought in the Life within by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit alone can Reveal in the heart what the Way means, both where it is not yet made manifest, and where it is. He can work in a man the deep conviction that he does, or does not know, the true nearness of God in his own experience.

We have seen that the two compartments of the tabernacle represent two degrees of nearness to God, two dispensations of God's Grace, or two stages in the Christian life, a lower and a higher. Into the Holy Place every priest might come daily to do there the service God had appointed. Into the Most Holy he might not enter till Christ had Opened it for all believers who become receptive or receivers of the secret. Many believers never in experience enter into this Life of the Inner Sanctuary, the more complete and abiding nearness to God. They have, in the outer court, seen the altar, and received the pardon of sin; they have entered upon the service of God, they seek to do His Will, but the joy of His presence as their abiding portion they know not. And very often they do not Know that there is a Better Life, that there is an entering within the veil, a real dwelling in the secret of God's presence; the need that the Holy Spirit signifies to them, to work in them the conviction that to them the Way into the Holiest has not yet been made manifest, to them. They need,--- Oh! let us, "if" we have not yet entered in, let us give ourselves to pray for--- the discovery that there is an inner chamber; that there is still the veil of the flesh, the life of the carnal Christian, that prevents the access; that only the possession of the Pentecostal Blessing, the Spirit that came from the Throne when Jesus had rent the veil, that reveals Him and links to Him, is what will bring us in.

When He has signified this to us, and we yield ourselves to the full conviction that we are still without the veil, and strong desire has been awakened at any cost to enter in, the same Spirit who at Pentecost, when our High Priest had just entered with His Blood, came forth from the Holiest of All, will come to us in Authority with power and bring us in too. As He reveals Jesus Himself as having gone in for us; as He makes us willing for that Perfect Surrender, in which nothing less than the direct and continual intimacy with God can satisfy us; our hearts will open to the wondrous mystery, that what is impossible to men is possible with God, and that God of His free Grace and in His mighty power does indeed grant it to His child, even now in Christ, to dwell with Him in unbroken communion.

O God! Let the Holy Spirit witness to every reader who needs it, that to him the Way into the Holiest has not yet been made manifest; and to everyone who is ready for it, that in Christ the Way into the Holiest is indeed Open. With Pentecost, and the participation it brought of the Spirit of the glorified Jesus, began True Christ-Likeness as One with God a Christianity, as a ministration of the Spirit. The enjoyment of the Pentecostal Gift, as the communication of the Heavenly Life and the abiding presence of Jesus the Glorified One, in all its Pentecostal freshness and fulness, is the only power that can enable us to Live within the veil, in the Living experience that the Way into the Holiest has now been Opened. It is the Spirit dwelling in us will fit us for dwelling in God's presence.

1. Shall we any longer fear and doubt? The Father in Heaven beckoning us into His presence; the Son, our Brother, Prophet, Priest, and King, pointing to the Way He Opened for us and the Holy Spirit within us to be our Light and strength, to enable us to walk in that Way shall we fear? No, let us hear the voice that gives the power: Rise up and walk. Enter in.
2. Do get it very clear that the two compartments are two stages in religious life and worship and service. The one when the power of the rent veil is not yet understood; the other where the Holy Spirit has brought us In.

"THE HOLIEST OF ALL" part LXIV

Hebrews 9: 1-7  Now even the first covenant had ordinances of divine service, and its sanctuary, a sanctuary of this world (earthy). For there was a tabernacle prepared, the first, wherein were the candle stick, and the table, and the showbread; which is called the Holy Place. And after the second veil, the tabernacle which is called the Holy of Holiest. Having a golden censer, and the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein was a golden pot holding the manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant; And above it cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy-seat; of which things we cannot now speak severally. Now these things having been thus prepared, the priests go in continually into the first tabernacle, accomplishing the services; But into the second, the high priest alone, once in the year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people.

Now beginning the SEVENTH SECTION
Hebrews 9: 1-28
The Power of Christ s Blood to Inaugurate the New Sanctuary and the New Covenant.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

In chapter 7 the Eternal Priesthood of Jesus has been revealed to us. In chapter 8 we have seen Him, as Priest seated on the Throne of Heaven in His twofold work. He is the Minister of the Sanctuary in the Heavens. He is the Mediator of the New Covenant in the heart of man on earth. We thus Know the Priest and the Sanctuary in which He Ministers; we are now invited in this chapter to look at the Blood which He presents, and what it effects. The word Blood has not yet been used: in this chapter we have it twelve times. In the first half (1-14) we have its efficacy in Opening the Most Holy place, and in Sprinkling our conscience to enter there; then (15-22) in dedicating the New Covenant, and Cleansing all connected with it; and after that again in Opening Heaven and putting away all sin (23-28).

The first portion begins with a description of the worldly (dealing with the externality of man or the earthiness of mans flesh, the fleshly priesthood of Aaron's order) sanctuary, the tabernacle and its furniture, of which things, the writer says, we cannot now speak severally. Just as he said, in chapter 8: 1, This is the chief point: we have such an High Priest, so here too, in speaking of the Sanctuary, he has one great thought which he wishes to press home. The tabernacle was so constructed by Moses, after the Heavenly pattern, as especially to shadow forth one Great Truth. In that Truth lies the Mystery (secret) and the Glory of the New Testament (Deuteronomy 29: 29), the Authority and power and joy of the Christ-like one or a Christian life. That Truth is found in the Opening of the Way into the Holiest, the Access into the Presence of God.

We read: There was a tabernacle prepared, the first, which is called the Holy Place. And after the second veil, the tabernacle which is called the Holy of Holiest. The priests go in continually into the first tabernacle, accomplishing the service; but into the second, the high priest alone, once in the year, not without blood. The one thing the writer wishes to direct our attention to is the difference and the relationship between the two compartments into which the tabernacle was divided, and the meaning of the veil that separated them (Psalm 97: 2; Romans 11: 33).

The inner Sanctuary was called the Holiest of All, or, as it is in Hebrew, the Holiness of Holinesses. It was the highest embodiment there could be of Holiness; it was the place where the God Most Holy dwelt. His Holy presence filled it. No man might enter there on pain of death but the high priest, and even he only once a year. In the Holy Place, separated from the Most Holy by a heavy veil, the priests entered and served. The Truths embodied in the house thus made after a Heavenly pattern were very simple. In the Most Holy God dwelt, but man might not enter. In the Holy Place man might enter to serve God, but God dwelt not there. The veil was the symbol of separation between a Holy God and sin-fulled man: they cannot dwell together (Isaiah 44). The tabernacle thus expressed the union of two apparently conflicting Truths. God called man to come and worship and serve Him, and yet he might not come too near (Isaiah 55: 6-9): the veil kept him at a distance. His worship in the tabernacle testified to his longing for the restoration to the intimacy found in fellowship with God he had lost in paradise, but also to his unfitness for it, and his inability to attain it. The two Truths find their reason and their harmony in the Holiness of God, that Highest attribute of the Divine Being. In it Righteousness and Love are combined. Love calls the sinner near; Righteousness keeps him back. The Holy One bids the Hebrews to build Him a house in which He will dwell, but forbids them entering His presence there. The entrance of the high priest once a year for a few moments was a faint foreshadowing that the time would come when Access to the Holiest would be given. In the fulness of time Righteousness and Love would be revealed in their perfect Harmony in Him, in whom those types and shadows would find their fulfillment.

The first and second tabernacles are the symbols of two degrees of the Divine nearness, two stages of Access to God's Presence, two modes of fellowship with God, two ways of serving Him. The one, to which the high priest had access only once a year, is the promise of what would one day come to be in Christ: the nearer, the more direct and immediate approach into the presence and intimacy with God. The other is the symbol of the service of God as at a distance with a veil between, without the full Light of His countenance. The one thing the writer wants us to learn is the difference between the two stages, and the Way by which God leads us from the lower (earthy, sand of the sea, the broad path of least resistance) to the Higher (spiritual, stars of heaven, the narrow path of death to self-will).

1. Of which things we cannot now speak severally, one by one. There is a time for doing this too. But when souls are to be led on into the perfection of Christ and His work, we must turn then from the multiplicity of truths to the simplicity and unity of one Truth, that Christ has Opened Heaven. Let this be our one question, What has the Heavenly High Priest effected for me?
2. I know what Christ has done. I need to know what He had to do. There was a Holy Place into which man might enter. There was a Most Holy into which he might not enter. The veil shut him out. And Christ's one work was to tear down that veil, and give us the right and the fitness to enter, yes to dwell always in that heretofore inaccessible place. The mystery of the rent veil, of the opened entrance Into the Holiest, is the one thing we need to learn.

"THE HOLIEST OF ALL" part LXIII

THE INITIAL BLESSING OF THE NEW COVENANT THE PARDON OF SIN.
Hebrews 8: 12 - 13 For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins will I remember no more. In that He said, A New Covenant, He has made the first old. But that which is becoming old and waxed aged is nigh to vanishing away.

Continuing with the last part of SIXTH SECTION.
Hebrews 8: 1-13
The New Sanctuary and the New Covenant.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

Of the Blessings of the New Covenant, the one which is here mentioned last is in reality the first. For I will be merciful--- this is what precedes, and is the ground of the renewal of the heart and intimacy with God through our fellowship. Pardon is the door; Holiness of heart and Life the pathway; the presence of God the Blessedness of the True Christian life. The first leads to the second, the first and second to the third. To live in God's presence and intimacy of fellowship two things must be clear: the thought of sin must be put away out of God's heart, and the love of sin out of our heart and consciousness. These two blessings are together Secured in the New Covenant. First, the forgiveness of sins is complete, that He remembers them no more forever (they are put into the sea of forgetfulness forever); they never more enter into God's heart (we're not to remind Him of them again ever for to do so nullifies the first and puts Him to shame). And, second, the renewal of our heart and will so complete, that the Law of God is written there by the Holy Spirit, so that the Will of God is our will.

The three Blessings--- the pardon of sin, purity of heart, and the presence of God are so enjoined, that as our views and our acceptance of one is feeble, our hold on the others will suffer. In Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant they are offered and Secured to us in their fulness, in the Authority and power of an Endless Life. But our experience of this depends upon our Knowledge, our faith, our surrender. And it is because our understanding and acceptance and experience of the two first blessings is so defective that our intimacy and fellowship with God, our entrance into the Holy presence, and our abiding there, is still so much in Old Testament failure--- But they continued not. Let us realize this.

Take the first of the three Covenant Blessings: I will be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins will I remember no more. In more than one respect the Christian's thought of what this pardon is may be defective. With some it is nothing more than the remission of punishment. They think only of acquittal; they know not that it implies acceptance, complete restoration in Grace, to the Heart and the Home of the Father. They are content with pardon, as the escape from a great danger; of the surrender to, and the Life abiding in the Love that pardoned, they Know LITTLE. With others the thought of pardon is mostly connected with individual or with daily sin. They have no conception of the Entire and Eternal putting away of sin out of God's sight and thought, which is assured to us in the words: Their sins will I remember no more. And with still others, whose views may be more accurate, the pardon of God exercises so little power, because it has been accepted more with the mind than the heart. They consent to and claim what God's word says of it; but have never, mostly owing to the want of any deep sense of sin, or any powerful workings of the Holy Spirit, realized the overwhelming Glory of God's mercy as they come to himself to Receive from His own mouth the pardon of their sins. In all these cases the farther Blessings are scarce understood or sought, or if claimed, their full meaning and power are never known.

It is even so with the second Covenant Blessing. There are not a few who know indeed what the greatness of God's pardoning Love is, who yet never reach out to claim it, as equally sure, the greatness of His Sanctifying Grace. The necessity of daily sinning, the impossibility of living for one day without actual transgression is such a deeply-rooted conviction, and there is such confidence that God's word teaches it, that the mind cannot for a moment enter into what the word has said of the radical difference between the old covenant and the New in this respect. The confounding the freedom from any sinful tendency, and freedom in the Authority and power of Christ's indwelling from actual sinning, even with the sinful tendency still remaining, is so universal, that every attempt to press home the promise of the Law written in the heart, in its contrast to the Old Testament life, is regarded as dangerous and unattainable. The wonderful promise is leveled down to the ordinary experience of the ordinary Christian life. No wonder then that the crowning promise, They shall not every man teach his brother, Know the Lord, with its direct teaching of the Holy Spirit, and its direct intimacy and fellowship with God through the Spirit, is neither valued nor claimed, and the entrance through the rent veil into the Holiest of All and the presence of God postponed to another world or time.

Let us pray the Father to give us enlightened eyes of the heart to know what is the hope of His calling, to a life in His Love and Will, and what the riches of the Glory of His inheritance in the saints is,--- the direct and full access to His presence and intimacy in fellowship, and what the exceeding greatness of His power in us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and set Him on His own right hand (Paul's prayer found in Ephesians 1: 15-23 Oh! The wonders of Joy when first we actually receive and accept this inspiration of revelation.). Let us believe that that exaltation of Christ out of the dead to His Throne, and the assurance that that same mighty power works in us, means, even for this earth, a Life of Heavenly power and joy, of Holiness and happiness which it has not entered into the heart to conceive. Jesus, the Priest-King on the Throne, is the Surety of the Covenant. Let us, like Him, yield ourselves to that death to sin and to self, out of which God raised Him. Let us sink into the death of emptiness and nothingness and helplessness; let us, as dead, wait for the mighty operation of God. He who gave Jesus as Mediator of the New Covenant, and Surety for its Promises, will reveal Him, and fulfill them in us, will bring us in Him within the veil, and give us our Life there in the secret of His Blessed presence.

1. The Pardon of sin is the door, the entrance to the Father's Home. The Law in the heart is the life and walk there, the fitness to draw nigh to God. Direct intimacy and fellowship with God; this is the Blessedness to be found in God' s presence.
2. All of the three Blessings in Him the Surety of the Covenant. In Him our justification and the assurance that our sins no more come up before Him. In Him our Sanctification, with the Holy Spirit breathing His Will into our heart. In Him our complete Redemption, the fitness to dwell in God's presence for evermore.

"THE HOLIEST OF ALL" part LXII

THE CROWNING BLESSING OF THE NEW COVENANT FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD.
Hebrews 8: 10-11 And I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:  And they shall not teach every man his fellow-citizen, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: For all shall Know Me, from the least to the greatest of them.

Continuing with the SIXTH SECTION
Hebrews 8:1-13.
The New Sanctuary and the New Covenant.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

GOD created man to find his Blessedness in Himself (Genesis 1: 26-27; 28-29). This is the nobility and the greatness of man, that he has a heart capable of intimacy and fellowship (partnership) with God, a heart so great that nothing less than God can really satisfy it. This is held out to him as his highest Blessedness through Eternity (1 Chronicles 28: 9; Jeremiah 24: 7; 1 John 5: 20).

There is but one thing can hinder the fellowship of intimacy, and that is sin. Where there is no sin, the creature lives in the Creator as naturally as a bird in the air, or a fish in the water. For this reason the two promises of the New Covenant go together as cause and effect: I will write My Law in their hearts, and, I will be to them God, and they shall Know Me. The deliverance from the evil, wandering heart, will be followed by close personal access to God. They shall not teach every man his brother, Know the Lord: for all shall Know Me, from the least to the greatest of them.

Personal, direct fellowship with God: this is the crowning Blessing of the New Covenant, to which the Epistle to the Hebrews very specially points the way. In Israel only the priests might enter the Holy Place: thence they went out again to teach the people. Into the Most Holy only the high priest might come. In Christ every believer who becomes a receptive one has access to the Holiest of All. Christ has Redeemed us, not to bring us to Himself, but to bring us to God. He is the door, in which we are not to remain standing, but through which we are invited to enter into God Himself, into His heart and His Love. God, having spoken in past times in the prophets, has now spoken in His Son; in Him there is an immediate Living Intimacy of fellowship with the Living God. All that the Epistle has to teach of the rending of the veil, and our Boldness in the Blood, and the entrance into the Holiest of All--- it has all to do with this one thing, direct personal Living Intimacy and fellowship with the Living God. As the Minister of the True Sanctuary Jesus sends the Spirit from thence to do the work He has in our heart as Mediator of the Covenant, and prepares us to enter the Sanctuary. As Mediator of the Covenant He then reveals Himself more fully as the Minister of the Sanctuary, who does indeed bring us near to God.

And how does He do this? In the Way in which He Himself entered there, the Way of Obedience. I will write My Law in their hearts, and they shall Know Me. The Law written on the heart is the condition of our Intimacy and fellowship (partnership) with God. "Without Holiness no man shall see the Lord." "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." " Your Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven."  To be brought by the Heavenly High Priest within the veil, and dwell before God's face, we must learn to do His Will on earth as it is done in Heaven. This is the True Heavenly- mindedness that renders us capable of Intimacy and True fellowship with the God of Heaven. Union with God's Will was the Way by which Jesus entered. Union with God's Will is the Way by which Jesus brings us into the Love and the joy of the Father.

And how, again, do we obtain this double Blessedness--- of the Law written in the heart, and the entrance into God's presence is in Christ Jesus? This It is God must do it. It is He who swore to Abraham--- Blessing I will Bless. It is He who swore to our High Priest--- You are a Priest forever. It is God Himself who will fulfill His Oath. Jesus is not now on the Throne to take the place of God, to be to us instead of God. Truly no; He brings us to God. Through Him we draw near to God, that God may perfect His Work in us. Our first access to God in the pardon of sin, ere yet we know what the access of abiding fellowship is, has this one sole object that God may Reveal His Son in us, so that we look up to and Love and serve the Father (the word "Father" means: one who imparts or infuses his nature into us), even as the Son did. And so the one thing required of us is, that we bow in total subjecting of ourselves and abide and live in deep dependency and humility before God. However clearly we see the blessed Truth of the promises of the New Covenant, how ever earnestly we desire them, however firmly we think we grasp them as faith, all will not avail--- God Himself must do it. God Himself must admit us to His presence, and make His face to shine upon us. And as the path to this, God Himself must write His Law in our hearts, give us the New nature through His Authority and with the power of the Holy Spirit, that He works both to Will and to do of His good pleasure. God Himself must by the Holy Ghost so shed abroad His Love in our hearts, that to Love becomes as natural to us as it is for the dove to be gentle. God has promised on His Oath to do this for us, in Christ Jesus is the Surety of the New Covenant. It is God who strengthens us mightily by His Spirit, then gives Christ to dwell in our hearts by faith; it is in God that we are rooted in Love; and then--- this is the full entrance into His presence in the Holiest of All--- then filled with all the fulness of God.

Once again, how do we obtain this double Blessedness of the Law of God written in the heart, and the presence of God filling our life? There is no way but utterly ceasing from ourselves, dying to self, and waiting in absolute dependency and deep humility upon God. Christ's Priesthood is not of earth but of Heaven. All means and ordinances, all thoughts and purposes in man are but the shadows of the heavenly things. It is from God in Heaven that the Heavenly Life must come, through Christ who brings us near to Him. And Christ cannot bring us near to God, cannot make our drawing near acceptable in any other way than by working in our heart a Faith (His Faith and faithfulness), and Love, and Obedience which are pleasing to Him; that is, by His fulfilling, as Mediator of the New Covenant, its promises within us. This brings us to the True Knowledge of God.

1. If you would realize the need of absolute dependency upon God, and His direct operation, I know not of anything that will be more helpful than to read what William Law says on humility, meekness, patience, and resignation to God's will, as the one only and infallible Way to God. See "The Spirit of Love", Part II., Third Dialogue (WHOLLY FOR GOD, pars. 29-38).
2. When He had effected the cleansing of sins, He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on High. The removal of sins consciousness is the path to God's presence with Christ and with us.

A Note by us here: Adam by rebellion or disobedience to God's command moved mankind from God's Light, Glory and Love into darkness of sin (Genesis 2:16-17) Jesus came to reverse that action through the required path of death of mans fallen nature to sin contained in our flesh and cancel out that nature by redeeming us from its curse which is now law that holds man under its penalty. Its the removal from the conscience of man the knowledge of good and evil which kept Israel and man, the gentiles, under bondage of works or self efforts or self-sufficiency and religion based on a sin consciousness that Jesus was crucified for "for cursed is everyone nailed to a tree."

"THE HOLIEST OF ALL" part LXI

THE CENTRAL BLESSING OF THE NEW COVENANT THE LAW WRITTEN IN THE HEART.
Hebrews 8: 10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after these days, says the Lord;
I will put My Laws Into their mind, and on their hearts also will I write them.

The Continuation of the SIXTH SECTION
Hebrews 8:1-13.
The New Sanctuary and the New Covenant.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

We have seen what the fault was of the old covenant, But they continued not in My Covenant. We have seen that the one object of the New Covenant is to repair the fault of the old. There is henceforth no more need of the word, But they continued not. The one distinguishing characteristic of the New Covenant is to be, there is Grace for those who enter it to continue. The great mark of the Priest after the order of Melchizedek is--- He abides continually. The great mark of each of His people is meant to be too--- His abiding continually.

But are we not, some one will say, all living under the New Covenant, and yet is not the ordinary experience of Christians still the same as of old, But they continued not? Alas, it is so. And how, then, with the provision of the covenant? Is it really to be taken so literally? And if so, has not the New Covenant failed just as the old did, of securing the continual obedience God desired? The answer will be found in what we have more than once pointed out The Hebrews were Christians (after the day of Pentecost) under the New Covenant, but with their life in the old. The New Covenant does not do violence to man's will. It is only where the heart sees and believes by receptivity what God has promised, and is ready at any cost to claim and possess it, that any Blessing can be realized. With most Christians there is not even the intellectual belief that God means His promise literally. They are so sure that their views of man's sinfulness and the necessity of always sinning are correct, that the teaching of God's word in regard to His purpose to make an end of the but they continued not can never enter the mind. Others there are who accept the Truth, but through unbelief enter not into the full possession. And the whole state of the Church of Christ is such that but few live in the full experience of what the covenant means.


Let us meditate on its promises, and specially on its chief promise, its central Blessing, I will put My Laws in their mind, and write them in their hearts, in the adoring faith of our great High Priest upon the Throne, who as Mediator of the New Covenant is its Surety that every word will be made True. It is in Him, whom He has by Oath appointed Priest in the Authority and power of an Endless Life, that God says: This is the covenant I will make after these days: I will put My Laws into their mind and write them in their hearts. In chapter 7 verse 16, we saw what the difference is between an external Law (the priesthood of Aaron) and an inner Life (the Priesthood after the order of Melchizedek). The one is impotent, the other mighty. And we saw how even God's Law (given through Moses and Aaron) failed of securing obedience, because the heart was not right. The promise of the New Covenant is to convert the external Law into an inner Life, to put it so in the heart that it shall be its inmost Life, so that, as naturally as the heart wills and lives and acts on earth, it shall will and live and do what God demands. Why does an acorn so spontaneously grow up into an oak? Because the law of the oak is written in the heart of the acorn. The life of every creature acts with delight in accordance with the Law of its Creator, that is, its inner nature. God and His Holiness, Christ and His Holy Spirit, if they belong to us, must be as near to us, as essentially within us, as truly inherent in our own life, as our own thinking, willing, and feeling. And so God promises that He will put His Law in our minds and write it in our hearts, in such a Way that it shall be our inner nature, our very Life, and we shall act according to it as naturally as we think or live. Yes, He will do it. So that we can say, even as His Son did, Your Law is within My heart; I delight to do Your Will, O God.

This is the covenant I will make, says the Lord. God has given His own Son with an Oath to be of that Covenant the Surety! And of that Covenant He, the High Priest upon the Throne, is the Mediator! Oh, what think you? Will God fail in the very thing the Covenant was devised to provide? Will He disappoint us in the one thing in which, as it deals with our experience, the New Covenant is to be Better than the old? In the one thing His heart and our heart longs for, to serve Him in Righteousness and Holiness all the days of our life, is this one thing the very thing we are not to realize? God forbid. He has said--- This is the Covenant I will make; and His Will is do it.

Let us look up to the Mediator of the Covenant, our High Priest upon the Throne in the Heavens. When He was with His disciples on earth, the Law was not yet put into their hearts. How often they failed in humility and love and boldness. But when He sat down upon the Throne, He sent the Holy Spirit from Heaven in their hearts, and all was New. They were full of humility and Love and great Boldness. The Law of God was in their hearts as the power of a Life that Knew, and Loved, and did His Will. Christ dwelt in their hearts by faith. The Authority with the power of the Endless Life from the Throne of God had taken possession of them. Oh, let us not doubt. Let us plead God's promise, I will make a New Covenant. Let us Trust God's Son, the Surety of the Covenant, and Receive God's Spirit--- we shall be brought into the Covenant, and into the Sanctuary together, and have Grace to continue, to abiding continually. ("IF" we faint or waver not away from the Hope of this great promise.)

1. Just as truly us there Is a Sanctuary above, there Is a Sanctuary within. In the old sanctuary the chief object in the Holiest of All was the Law, in the ark covered by the mercy-seat sprinkled with blood. It is the Law now written In the heart sprinkled with the Blood that makes it a Sanctuary. It is the heart that is thus made a Sanctuary that enters the True Sanctuary.
2. Is not the reason that some who seek earnestly, fail of the Blessing, that they seek to grasp it in their own power, and do not yield to the Holy Spirit to work it in them. It is God who says, I will make the covenant. He must by His mighty Authority with power do the operation and do It in each heart. Our place is deep dependency, with patient waiting, and implicit reliance on His mighty power.
3. Remember that all He has to do as Mediator of the New Covenant, He does because He is Minister of the True Sanctuary. He sends out of the Sanctuary the Spirit of Heaven into our hearts it is this that puts God's Law within us.
4. The whole Law Is fulfilled in one word: You shall Love. Where the Love of God is shed abroad In the heart by the Holy Ghost, the Law of Love Is written in the heart.
6. The soul of man has no other near or far from God, but as its will unites with God's Will, and works with It (God's Will).

"THE HOLIEST OF ALL" part LX

THE PRIEST-KING, THE MEDIATOR OP THE NEW COVENANT.
Hebrews 8: 6-9  But now has He (the Lord Jesus Christ) obtained a Ministry the more excellent (above or better than that of Aaron's and his family line of priest's), by how much also He Is the Mediator of a Better Covenant, which has been enacted upon Better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then would no place have been sought for a second. For finding fault with them, He said, Behold the days come, says the Lord, "That I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers; In the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth out of the land of Egypt; For they continued not In My covenant, and I regarded them not," said the Lord.

The Continuation of the SIXTH SECTION
Hebrews 8:1-13.
The New Sanctuary and the New Covenant.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

In our chapter there are two titles given to our Priest-King, describing two functions which He discharges. The first is, a Minister of the Sanctuary, the other, the Mediator of the Better Covenant. The Epistle, having mentioned the Sanctuary in which Christ Ministers, is about to proceed in the next chapter with the work that Christ did in Opening and entering the Sanctuary with His own Blood. He does not, without good reason, first interpose here the member of the New Covenant and Christ's work as its Mediator. The two designations, Minister of the Sanctuary, Mediator of the New Covenant, represent two aspects of Christ's work which are the complement of each other, and which are each necessary to the right understanding of the other. The Sanctuary is God's dwelling; the Minister of the Sanctuary has specially to do with bringing us near to God, and the Blessedness we find there. The Covenant deals with our relation and duty towards God; the Mediator of the Covenant has specially to do with our preparation for entering the Sanctuary, and being made fit to meet God.

In chapter 8 we heard that Jesus is the Surety of a Better Covenant. We said there that a covenant is meant to define the mutual relation of the two contracting parties, and to secure the fulfillment of their engagements to each other. In the passage from Jeremiah quoted in our chapter we are told that the Covenant God made with Israel, when He brought them up out of Egypt, was not faultless, and that therefore a second was needed. The fault or insufficiency of the first is its weakness and unprofitableness ( 8: 18) would be avoided in the New. A different provision would be made. The fault of the old covenant is stated to be (verse 9): They continued not in My Covenant, and I regarded them not. Israel began well, and accepted the covenant, and promised obedience. But they continued not. There was no power to continue; no power to conquer temptation, or the evil heart; to remain faithful. Against this the New Covenant would provide, because it is Better, enacted in Better promises. It would, by the Blood of Christ, provide such an actual putting away and cleansing of sin that God would actually remember them no more forever. With this He would, by His Holy Spirit, so put His Laws into their [Israel as a nation but now for the time being as an individual] (our) heart that they (we) should delight in doing them. God would Himself work both to Will and to Do. And then, in this Authority with the power of Christ's Blood and the renewal of the Holy Spirit, they would no longer be dependent on men for their knowledge of God, but have direct access and direct intercourse with Him. They would, in spiritual reality, draw neat to God in the Holiest of All.

This is the New, the Better Covenant, of which Jesus was to be the Mediator. It is easy now to see of what importance it is that the Epistle should here introduce this name and function of our blessed Lord, the Mediator of the New Covenant. When the message comes to us of drawing near to God, of entering into the Holiest and abiding there, the thought always comes that our sinful, faithless hearts render it impossible. It would be very easy, we say, and very blessed to dwell all the day consciously in God's presence, if we could all the day remain occupied with spiritual things. But we cannot--- our earthly duties render unbroken communion an impossibility. And if it be said that, if we trust this to Jesus, He will care for us, even when we have to be occupied with earthly things, the answer comes again: But oh, the sinfulness of our heart! Ere we know, tempers and dispositions come which must bring a dark-cloud; to abide always in the Light of God, not only to enter God's presence, but to continue there it is not possible, with natural earthy man!

Come and listen closely. But they continued not in My covenant. This is the experience of the old covenant, to which there now can be an end. The whole provision of the New Covenant is to fit us for continuing in it, for abiding continually. It is indeed true that the Sanctuary is the dwelling-place of the Holy One, the Holiest of All, and that sinning clouds (Psalm 97: 2; lamentations 3: 42-44; Isaiah 44: 22)  God's presence. There must be correspondence, harmony, between the Sanctuary, with the God that dwells there, and the worshiper. But it is for this very purpose that Jesus, the Minister of the True Sanctuary, is also the Mediator of the New Covenant. He engages so to reveal the Authority and power of His Blood and the Boldness of access it gives us, so to put God's Law into our heart in that Authority and power of an Endless Life in which He does all His Priestly work, so to fit us to Know the Lord, that we shall indeed know that as Minister of the Sanctuary He does in very Truth Secure our entrance and our abiding there. The work done by Jesus in the Heavenly Sanctuary must have its counterpart in the heart that is to enter that Sanctuary. And because it is one Jesus who is both Minister of the New Sanctuary and Mediator of the New Covenant, we may be confident that He will do His work in our heart as effectually as He does it in Heaven. And, therefore, the deeper our insight into the perfection of His work in Heaven above, the more confident our expectation may be to be receptive of the perfection in our life within. This is our being Blessed of God beyond measure and is the true Blessings that all are to seek of Him.

1. Let us pray God very earnestly that as we now proceed to study the Better Promises of the Better Covenant, our hearts may be opened to receive them in all their fulness.
2. "No omnipotence can make you partaker of the life of the outward world without having the life of this outward world born in your own creaturely being. And therefore no omnipotence can make you a partaker of the Beatific Life in presence of the Holy Trinity, unless that life stands in the same triune state within you that it does without you."
3. A Heavenly Sanctuary and a Heavenly High Priest ash for a Heavenly Christ-like One, Christian and a Heavenly heart. And this is what the New Covenant promises, and the Mediator of the New Covenant gives through Grace indeed.

"THE HOLIEST OF ALL" part LIX

THE PRIEST-KING, THE MINISTER OF THE TRUE SANCTUARY.
Hebrews 8: 1-5  Now In the things which we are saying the chief point is this: We have such a High Priest, who sat down on the right hand of the Throne of the Majesty in the Heavens, a Minister of the Sanctuary, and of the True Tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices: wherefore it is necessary that this High Priest also have somewhat to offer. Now if He were on earth, He would not be a priest at all, seeing there are those who offer the gifts according to the Law (the Law of Moses); Who serve that which is a copy and shadow of the Heavenly things, even as Moses is warned of God when he is about to make the tabernacle: for, See, said He, that you make all things according to the pattern which was shown you in the mount.

Continuing with the SIXTH SECTION
Hebrews 8: 1-13
The New Sanctuary and the New Covenant.

BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY

The chief point is this: We have such a High Priest, who sat down at the right hand (the position of Authority and power) of the Throne of the Majesty in the Heavens. Thus the writer had summed up his teaching. He has now one more thought to add, revealing still more distinctly and fully the work our Lord does for us in Heaven. He is a Minister of the Sanctuary, and of the True Tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man. The Heavens, with the Heavenly Life of Christ there, are here shown to be the true counterpart of the tabernacle Moses built, and He, the Priest-King on the Throne, is seen to be the Minister of the Sanctuary, of the True Tabernacle which God pitched and not man.

He then proceeds to remind us, that as every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices, so Christ must have something to offer too. Now if He were on earth, He would not be a priest at all, seeing there are priests according to the Law. Christ belongs to an entirely different sphere or order. With the body which He offered on earth, and the Blood He shed, He has passed away out of the visible into the invisible realm of Spiritual Worship and Life. Heaven is the sphere of His Ministry. When God said to Moses, to make all according to the pattern shown him in the mount, to serve as a shadow of the Heavenly things; in the very appointment of the tabernacle, there was the indication that it was but a copy and promise of the True Tabernacle, with its Heavenly Sanctuary. The Heavens where Jesus sits on the Throne, they are where the True Tabernacle; and the High Priest on the Throne is at the same time the Minister of the Sanctuary.

A Minister of the Sanctuary. The King is still a servant. All the ministry or service of the priests in the tabernacle had its fulfillment in Him. The priests served in the tabernacle day by day, ordered everything for the service of God according to His Will; as representatives of the people they received the assurance of God's favor, and brought them out God's blessing. Jesus is the Minister of the Heavenly Sanctuary. He represents us there. He has Opened up the Way, and brought us in, and sends into our hearts the Life and Spirit of the True Sanctuary; without ceasing He maintains the cleansing of His precious Blood in our conscience, and, in the Authority and power of an Endless Life, enables us to worship in spirit and in Truth, and to live our earthly life in the presence and the Grace of God. As the exalted Priest-King He does it all in an infinite, a Divine Authority and power. As the Minister of the Sanctuary, He does it with all the sympathy and the gentle forbearance which we have seen to mark Him as made like to His brethren in all things.

A priest must have a sanctuary in which he dwells, to receive all who come to seek his God. Our great High Priest has His Sanctuary in the Heavens; there He dwells, there we find Him; there He receives us, there He introduces us to meet God; there He proves that He is a Priest who abides continually, and who gives those who come to God through Him the one who has the Authority with power to do it too--- to abide continually in His presence. The nearness to God and the intimacy of fellowship with Him I cannot partake of except through my heart. My heart is my life, is myself; my only Blessedness is in the State of the heart. And therefore Jesus as High Priest cannot do His Priestly work of bringing me near to God except as He dwells in my heart by the Authority and power of the Holy Spirit. All our thought, and faith, and adoration of Him in Heaven brings us back to the richness of the Glory of the Mystery--- Christ in you. He is Priest with the full Authority and Power of an Endless Life, a Priest whose presence, Authority and Power are known and enjoyed in the Life of the heart.

These are indeed spiritual mysteries of which we speak--- things hard to be understood of those who, through sloth or worldliness, are dull of hearing. Oh, let us not imagine that these are things which reason can grasp or hold; they are a supernatural wisdom, a Divine Revelation which none can receive but those who receive it from the Spirit of God. Let us remember that it is God, who has pitched this tabernacle; that it cost the Son of God a life of humility and suffering, cost Him His death and blood, to open it for us; that it needed the almighty authority with the power of God in the resurrection and ascension to bring Him there; that it needed ten days unceasing prayer, and the coming of the Blessed Spirit at Pentecost, before the High Priest could impart even to His elect circle the power of the Life within the veil. And let us then pause to think that it is no wonder if most Christians rest content with the easier and more external worship as typified by Aaron, and never press on unto perfection, in the full Knowledge of our Melchizedek and the mystery of the Heavenly Life into which He leads them. Let us, above all, remember that it was through death, through the offering up of Himself, that Jesus entered in, and Opened the Way for us to follow and then abide. To enter in demands a very entire renunciation of the world and of self, a very real and true participation in Christ's humbling of Himself and becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross--- in His death to sin. And it demands no less a very real experience of the mighty operation of the Authority and power of God, which raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His right hand. But let us praise God, too, that for every soul who truly wills it, our almighty Priest-King, able to save completely, will surely give it.

1. How many Christians think of Heaven, as the place where Jesus is, as the place to which they have a title, and where they hope to go when they die. But they think not of Heaven as a Life, and of God's nearness as an experience for every hour of our dally walk. And how many who think of Jesus as the blessed One in whom they are there, by imputation, but know not of Him as lifting them and their whole life into Heaven, and, by the Holy Spirit, bringing Heaven Into them.
2. Every priest has his temple, where he receives the worshipers, and leads them to find the God they seek. Jesus must have a temple too. The Heavens are the True Sanctuary. Do not attempt to separate between the Priest and the place of His dwelling. As His Life in Heaven is the Life of our heart, we know the authority and the power of His Priesthood.