I turn you again to the letter to
the Hebrews in chapter 2, verse
1.
Therefore we ought to give the more earnest
heed to the things that were heard lest
happily we drift away from them.
If you know anything about this letter at
all you know that it is the great
letter of spiritual crisis.
The writer compares what he has to say
with the crisis of Israel at Kadesh Barnea
where they came after so long a period
of instruction to the point where it was
all too mature into the realization of its
purpose or all to fade out so far
as they were concerned and they miss it
all.
This writer gives quite a lot of his
message to that particular application.
Indeed we would all agree that that was
a very great crisis in the life and
history of Israel.
This letter really circles around a spiritual crisis
comparable to that.
You know there is here throughout the blending
of two dominant notes, one of warning the
other of exhortation.
Nine times in the letter we have this
warning note, lest, lest, begins in the verse
that we have just read, lest happily we
drift away.
That goes right on to chapter 12.
The other note which is struck ten times
through the letter is let us, let us,
let us, lest.
It is not our intention to trace the
warning and the exhortation through the letter but
just to note the fact that it is
a crisis which continually arises in the history
of the Lord's people.
It arose as we have seen with Israel
in the wilderness.
Here quite evidently it had arisen at the
time of the writing of this letter.
A very serious crisis indeed for those to
whom the letter was written.
And it's the kind of crisis that arises
from time to time.
And it just amounts to this.
Taking this first verse of chapter two, there
has been a deposit.
There has been much given.
The Lord has revealed himself to his people.
Now after a period, a sufficient period, period
of probation and of testing in relation to
that, question arises, are we going right on
into the full meaning and value and realization
of all that he has given?
Or are we going to drift away, to
fail, to enter in?
Something that the Lord presses periodically.
It came with Israel after forty years of
testing in the wilderness.
It's a point of interest that most probably
this letter was written about forty years after
the Lord Jesus commenced to present all that
we have here in chapter one in the
incarnation, in his presence in this world.
It was a crisis.
The crisis had two particular points.
One as to all that the Lord had
given, which he would never allow to just
pass without some very real effort, some entreaty,
some warning that all that he meant could
be missed.
The other, the fact that very near to
the time of the writing of this letter
was Israel's own great crisis.
If the letter was written as we have
suggested somewhere about the year sixty A.D.
or in the sixties, we know that it
was seventy when Israel and Jerusalem were completely
shattered and scattered over the earth by the
Roman destruction of their city, their country, and
their temple, and all that it represented, the
synagogues, these were to be finished.
And now the test would be what of
the spiritual value of it all?
Take away their meeting places, and their public
meetings, and their public ministries, and all that
upon which they depended so much externally, remove
it all.
That was imminent.
What remains?
The Holy Spirit had these two things in
mind in directing the writing of this marvellous
letter.
It was indeed a great crisis.
Who is to say that that on the
second point will not be repeated worldwide as
it is taking place in quite a large
part of the world today?
The Lord may know a day not far
away when that will spread, and all those
things which are the externals of Christianity upon
which Christians depend will be swept away and
no longer available.
We've had a little touch of it in
our lifetime.
Many Christians have in this very country.
It could be very much more so.
And very quickly that crisis may be looming
upon the near horizon.
So this letter is indeed a letter of
crisis in both ways.
We ask what was the cause, or what
were the causes of this crisis?
On the spiritual side, firstly, I think there's
no doubt about it, it was the cost
of the way that these Christians had embarked
upon and had been called upon to follow.
You'll read the letter again, you will see
the suggestions or the indications that it was
because the way was proving so hard.
They had started, started upon the heavenly way,
partners in a heavenly calling.
They had taken a position with Christ.
That position is hinted at at the end
of the letter, so let us go to
him without the camp.
To be outside of the religious camp, outside
of the popular camp, outside of the traditional
camp is a hard place and a hard
way.
They had taken a position with the Lord,
but were finding that it was a very
testing way indeed.
They were being tested on every point, in
every possible way.
It was a hard way, a hard way.
References made to what they suffered as they
took that position.
Now, the suffering came largely from without.
We don't know where these believers were, whether
they were in Jerusalem or in Rome.
It was an argument for both.
But we can very well imagine that if
it were in Jerusalem, they were right up
against a very, very severe testing of their
position spiritually.
They were in the place where the Lord
himself was crucified, the place where Stephen had
been martyred, where the believers had been scattered.
If they were in Rome, it is only
quite recently that Claudius had issued his edict
against the Christians and they had been expelled
and scattered and martyred.
Whatever it was, it came from the outside
in the beginning and it was a hard
and costly way.
But it is significant to note that before
we are at the end of this letter,
the writer, the Holy Spirit through the writer,
speaks of all this suffering as the child
training of a father.
My son, despise not thou the chastening, the
child training of the Lord, for whom the
Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and so on.
Their sufferings may have come from devil-driven
men, from the very devil himself, and yet
they are in the hands of a father.
Father has hold of those sufferings for the
training of his children.
That's impressive.
But it doesn't altogether ease the situation to
know that.
The sufferings are still the sufferings.
Wherever they come from and whatever their nature
is, and even if the Lord has hold
of them, they are still sufferings.
And because of this costliness of the way
these believers were losing heart, becoming discouraged, and
the crisis of their going on arose, hence
this tenfold repetition, let us, let us, let
us go on.
Perhaps also in addition to that, it was
occasioned by some disappointment that the Lord's coming
was so long delayed.
I think that is hinted at, at one
point at least, where it says, yet a
little while, and he that cometh will come.
They were evidently a bit disappointed that all
the promises of his coming, and the assurances
that he was coming soon, had not matured,
and he delayed his coming.
There was a real test of faith and
patience over that.
We may know something about that too.
Sometimes, you know, it loses its charm and
its helpfulness to be told the Lord is
coming, and you say, well we've heard that
so long, so often, and that's what people
have looked for in every age, and he
hasn't come yet, and the hope fades.
Well, it began then, began then, and they
were disappointed, and because of that disappointment, inclined
to let go, instead of go on.
There are hints also in this letter, that
the crisis was occasioned by the deceitfulness of
the soul.
In chapter 4, verse 12, hints at that.
The word of God is quick and powerful,
sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to
the dividing of soul and spirit.
The deceitfulness of the soul.
I think that it'll be drawn out in
what we have yet to say.
To know our own souls can lead us
astray.
Our own soul desires and ambitions and conceptions
and what we feel and think ought to
be.
There's a contrast in this letter between a
realm of Christian life in the soul, and
a realm in the spirit.
I think we could immediately, almost immediately, take
that up for a minute or two.
The nature of this crisis.
There are the causes.
What was the nature of it?
That, I think mainly, if not entirely, is
a matter of contrasts.
Contrasts.
A new era had come in.
A new economy or order had been introduced
with Christ.
Now, the changeover was the change, the tremendous
change from the earthly to the heavenly.
With the Son of God from heaven, there
had come in the heavenly order.
And from that time onward, the old earthly
order of the things of God as we
have in the old economy of the Old
Testament ceased.
I don't think, dear friends, that we, or
Christians at large, have yet grasped the tremendous,
the immense significance of the martyr Stephen.
You know that he was a young man,
full of faith, full of the Holy Ghost,
did mighty things and then was martyred.
Have you studied Stephen's discourse?
Have you seen that in that discourse, right
there in Jerusalem, under the very shadow of
the great temple, and all its system of
many centuries, right there, Stephen simply wiped off
the slate, the whole of the Old Testament
regime.
God dwelleth not in temples made with hands,
said he.
Say that over against the temple at Jerusalem,
and see what you are going to meet.
In that discourse, Stephen clearly declared that all
that earthly system was finished with.
All finished with, and a new heavenly system
had come in, and the Lord put his
seal upon that as he was passing from
the earth himself.
He saw the heavenly Son of Man seated
at the right hand of God.
The only occasion after Christ himself in the
New Testament where that title occurs, of Jesus,
Son of Man, the Man, is at God's
right hand.
Everything now is heavenly.
It's passed from earth, but what a testing
position is a heavenly position.
It's a crisis.
It creates a crisis.
It's the very essence of a crisis.
Pull back down to earth.
Have something here.
Something on this earth.
Have something here.
Abandon that heavenly position.
That heavenliness by which those who so speak
mean that which is so abstract and unreal.
Let's get down to earth, to reality.
That was the nature of this crisis.
Contrast between the heavenly and the earthly.
They were at the point of leaving the
heavenly for the earthly.
Great warnings are connected with that.
And all the exhortations, let us go on,
let us go on.
Contrast between the tangible and the spiritual.
The soul wants something that it can take
hold of, can manipulate, can grasp.
That is the soul, to have something tangible.
And all this talk about the spiritual and
spirituality, how unreal it is.
That's the crisis, is it?
With the coming into this world of Christ,
the whole thing changed, not in this mountain,
nor in Jerusalem, but in spirit.
In spirit and in truth from this time,
the whole thing is a spiritual thing.
But how they longed for the thing that
was here, to be grasped.
That's the crisis.
The contrast between the temporal and the eternal.
Do you see how in this letter, and
oh, do read it again with these things
in mind, how in this letter there is
always the forward look.
The look to the end.
You come to that great chapter of faith.
Chapter 11, it's the onward looking faith.
It's still onward.
Let us, let us look off, let us
run, is the great summary of it all.
It's still onward, it's still before us.
The eternal is the thing to govern.
This life and all that is here is
not the whole by any means.
It's all unto something that lies in eternity.
With Jesus Christ, the eternal has invaded time,
and the church is taken out of time
into eternity.
We belong to eternity, but the soul wants
it now.
Now.
The only, the only place for now in
this letter is that now is the last
hour of time.
Now.
Today is the exact time.
This is the last hour of time, that's
the only now here.
It's the eternal that is everything.
But how difficult for our souls to let
go the now, the present.
For the eternal, we're not made like that.
Our whole being says, let's have it now.
We must have it now.
It's not natural to us to live for
an unknown future.
Is that the right way to put it?
Contrast between the visible and the invisible.
Of Moses, this writer says, he endured seeing
him who is invisible.
Oh, but we must see.
We must see it.
The soul says that.
Our whole nature says we must see it.
We must see it today.
We must see it here.
We must see it.
It's something that our eyes can see, can
behold.
In other words, that we can grasp with
our physical senses.
This letter is constructed upon the principle of
the invisible.
They in the old dispensation had it all
visibly.
They had an earthly tabernacle and priesthood and
all that belonged to them.
But now the reality is in heaven.
It's not seen.
That was but a shadow.
The reality is unseen, but it's far more
real.
But it's unseen.
That's the test of the soul.
I'm sure you know the meaning of this.
Well, all this constituted this crisis of whether
they were going to choose this or that,
the one or the other.
Go back to something earthly from the heavenly,
to something tangible from the spiritual, something temporal
from the eternal, something visible from the invisible.
And it is quite evident, I think, in
this letter before you through, that a division
was coming about between these believers.
They were dividing into two camps.
That is the point of the exhortation, forsaking
not the assembling of ourselves together as the
manner of some is.
Some were saying, we are not going on
with that any further.
And they were having their own meetings and
their own circles and not going on, not
going on in this way.
A division was taking place.
Two companies.
Here were those who had seen the heavenly
calling and the heavenly vision and were going
on with it.
Here were those who, if they had seen
it, were letting it go, were drifting away
from it.
And what a forceful word that is.
It has a nautical meaning in the original,
as you know.
It's the picture of a ship approaching its
moorings on the current and missing its moorings
and drifting away and onto the rocks.
Lest we come up to this and miss
it and drift away.
And as this royal Cadish Barnea were wrecked,
we should be wrecked.
It's a warning.
It's an exhortation.
It surely does, dear friends, touch us in
our own individual lives and it touches us
as a company of the Lord's people.
It defines very much for us.
But may we all hear not only the
warning, yes the warning, but the constant note
of exhortation.
Let us fear.
Let us go on.
The Lord help us.