I refer to the fact just to exemplify on the one hand the true bearing of the epistle, and what I believe will be discovered in it, and on the other hand to guard against the mistake of importing into it, or trying to extract from it, what is not there. Perfection cannot be improved upon. But this time is not yet come. It is no definition of what it is to believe, but a description of the qualities of faith. This then is brought before us. They must draw near to God, and that in a right manner. There were in the apostles' times, and should be in every age, Christian assemblies for the worship of God, and for mutual edification. That is, he sought carefully with tears the blessing given to Jacob; but there was no room left for repentance, simply in the sense of change of mind; for, I suppose, the word here has that sense, which sometimes, no doubt, it has. Every one can understand, when once we find that the word means almost always covenant," how great the temptation is to translate it so in but two other occurrences, especially as before and after it means "covenant" in the same passage. Now those who know him who hath said, Vengeance belongeth to me, I will recompense, must needs conclude, as the apostle does (Hebrews 10:31; Hebrews 10:31): It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. This supposes the people of God not actually settled in the land, but still pilgrims and strangers on the earth; and the epistle to the Hebrews, we have already seen, looks emphatically and exclusively at the people of God as not yet passed out of the wilderness; never as brought into the land, though it might be on the verge; just entering, but not actually entered. ", Having laid this as the first application of faith, the next question is when man fell, how was he to approach God? From the description he gives of the sin of apostasy. It is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." THE ONLY TRUE SACRIFICE ( Hebrews 10:1-10 ). They had looked for advance and triumph and peace and prosperity everywhere; on the contrary, they had come into reproach and shame, partly in their own persons, partly as becoming the companions of others who so suffered. Accordingly, this is an appeal to the hearts. 38 And my righteous ones will live by faith. Our being brought to God supposes, and is founded on the fact, that our sins are gone perfectly by His one offering; otherwise no madness is greater than indulging such a thought. He may be ashamed to be seen going to church. 10:26-31 For, if we deliberately sin after we have received full knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sin is left. Every morning and every evening a male lamb of one year old, without spot and blemish, was offered as a burnt-offering. It is Jesus Christ and him crucified for the forgiveness of sins who will save those who believe and repent, and who will return again in glory to judge the living and the dead. But the apostle takes all this difficulty by the horns, as good as telling them, that their having suffered all this was simply because it is the right road. 10:1-10 Because the law is only a pale shadow of the blessings which are to come and not a real image of these things, it can never really fit for the fellowship of God those who seek to draw near to his presence with the sacrifices which have to be brought year by year and which go on for ever. In all the covenants of scripture the man that makes it has never to die for any such end. A man can stand almost any attack on his body; the thing that beats him is a broken heart. As the rending of the Tabernacle veil opened the way to the presence of God, so the rending of the flesh of Christ revealed the full greatness of his love and opened up the way to him. His deliverance was strange; still more his decision and its results. Then there was the meal offering, which was the consecration of my service to God as I brought the grain that I had cultivated and grown. The prophecies, the hopes, all prefigured there in the Old Testament.He speaks here of the burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin. All he does is to interpret that will, and to apply it to what was wrought on the cross. Christians must be on their guard and persistent in prayer if they are to endure firmly to the end ( Luke 21:36 ; Colossians 4:2 ). And, finally, he sums up the superiority of Christ in this, that "they truly were many priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death: but he, because of his continuing for ever, hath the priesthood intransmissible." And they need not fear to cease being a Jew by becoming a Christian. Nowhere does the apostle give the smallest occasion for such a thought. (3) The Christians who received this epistle had already endured great hardship and suffering and should not throw all that away by becoming indifferent. that good portion which shall not be taken away from those who cleave to the Crucified, who is now exalted in heaven? (i) We must spur each other to noble living. For Jesus was the Messiah that God had promised in their scriptures. It is very likely that the writer to the Hebrews did not know any Hebrew at all and therefore it is the Septuagint that he uses. But it is not possible to repeat the Fifth or the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven; no one else will ever write anything like them. It is not mere rebelliousness against law; it is the wounding of love. He said, "You can't do that. (4.) The Old Testament is all about Jesus Christ. Eliphaz unwillingly paid Job a great tribute. For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. 6:9, 10 recall the former days in which, after you were illuminated, you endured a great struggle with sufferings: 33 partly while you were made # 1 Cor. He could know nothing of the mystery of the church, Christ's body, nor of her bridal hopes; but he did look for what is called here the "heavenly Jerusalem," that city "whose maker and builder is God." These things stand alone. "Inasmuch as not without an oath he was made priest: (for those priests were made without an oath" no oath ushers in the sons of Aaron "but he with an oath by him that said as to him, The Lord sware and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec:) by so much was Jesus made a surety of a better covenant.". They were to leave the dead to bury their dead; and they did so. Such is pre-eminently the bearing of this epistle to those who had no such frequent opportunities of profiting by his teaching as the Gentile churches. If we are ever to have fellowship with God, obedience is the only way. What mountain in the Old Testament so much speaks of grace, of God's merciful interference for His people when all was lost? There is no man who can live the Christian life and neglect the fellowship of the Church. The value of the studying of Leviticus and the studying of the law, to the Christian, is that it foreshadows the work of Jesus Christ, the offering of Jesus Christ, and the high priestly nature of Jesus Christ. In all the other passages of the epistle the meaning of the word is, that He took His seat, or simply sat down there. Dick Sheppard spent much of his life preaching in the open air to people who were either hostile or indifferent to the Church. Over a month, we're looking at verses 19 to 25. But whether the one or the other, all was by faith. The foundation is sacrifice; the Power is of the Holy Ghost. I ask my brethren here if they are looking to God strenuously, earnestly, for themselves and for their children, not to allow but to oppose as their adversary every thing that tends to weaken either of these truths, which are our highest privilege and our truest glory as Christians here below. Patience and perseverance are nearly the same. The answer is, by sacrifice. Thus does the apostle reason on it: "For if the blood of bulls and goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh" (which the Jew would not contest): "how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to do religious service to the living God? "By the which will" (not man's, which is sin, but God's) "we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.". Verse 37. "And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.". Their abject ruin placed them just in the circumstances that suited the God of all grace. Redemption was the first thought of God a counsel of His previous to the dealings with man which made the necessity of redemption felt. the sense of the word which had been used before), what would be the aim of the "also?" So then I said: 'So then I come--in the roll of the book it is written of me--to do, O God, your will."' "With Hebrews 10:19-39 the great central division of the sermon (Hebrews 5:11 to Hebrews 10:39) is drawn to a conclusion. that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise: The doing and the receiving Paul speaks of here are in the future, and both require the Christians patience and steadfastness in obedience to the will of God. Oh how happy is the man to whom God does not impute iniquity." In truth, the substratum was the same, and therefore it was not only quite lawful so to call it, but if he had not, the design would have been marred. (2.) It became God to give Him to die; for such was our estate by sin that nothing short of His atoning death could deliver us; but, having delivered us, God would make us to be heavenly. And of what did Christianity speak? At first it was (ver. His shadow was cast over the past history. We have the church, but even when the expression "church" occurs, it is the church altogether vaguely, as inHebrews 2:12; Hebrews 2:12, or viewed in the units that compose it not at all in its unity. The great exposition of Christ as priest and sacrifice is thus framed by parallel parenetic units . Have you come to mock me because of the fate that I have?" The Romans will do the last sad offices. Let us hold fast to the undeviating hope of our creed, for we can rely absolutely on him who made the promises; and let us put our minds to the task of spurring each other on in love and fine deeds. This warning passage is in a sense central to all the hortatory passages in Hebrews. What the wise men of antiquity, the Platos and Aristotles, never knew what the modern sages blunder about, without the slightest reason, after all the word of God has made the possession of every child of His. A high priest over the house of God, even this blessed Jesus, who presides over the church militant, and every member thereof on earth, and over the church triumphant in heaven. Have done the will of God By keeping the faith, and patiently suffering for it. And the apostle would that their work of watching might be done with joy, and not groaning for this would be unprofitable for the saints. 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