Lord, we do now adjust ourselves to the
deepest truth, that only thou thyself
can make us understand thine own things.
It is not possible for the natural man
to understand the things of the Spirit of
God.
Only the Spirit of God can give that
understanding.
And unless thou here in this very hour
dost do that with every one of us,
we have come in vain.
Lord, do thou the speaking.
Beyond all human instrumentality, may we be given
to hear the Lord speaking in our heart.
That will be fruitful.
We pray that it may be so.
In the name of our Lord Jesus, amen.
Will you turn again to that letter from
which we have already read, the letter to
the Hebrews, in chapter 2?
Therefore we ought to give the more earnest
heed to the things that were heard, lest
happily we drift away from them.
For if the words spoken through angels proved
steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a
just recompense of reward, how shall we escape,
if we neglect so great salvation, which, having
at the first been spoken through the Lord,
was confirmed unto us by them that have
God also bearing witness with them, both by
signs and wonders, and by manifold powers, and
by gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to
his own will?
Will you turn to the end of the
letter, chapter 12, and verse 25?
See that ye refuse not him that speaketh.
For if they escaped not when they refused
him that warned them on earth, much more
shall not we escape who turn away from
him that warneth from heaven, whose voice then
shook the earth.
But now he hath promised, saying, Yet once
more will I make to tremble not the
earth only, but also the heaven.
This word, yet once more, signifies the removing
of those things that are shaken, as of
things that have been made, that those things
which are not shaken may remain.
Wherefore, receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken,
let us have grace whereby we may offer
service well-pleasing to God with reverence and
awe, for our God is a consuming fire.
Those words, of course, sound very terrible.
They are almost like holding a threat over
people, and you might feel that they are
not too encouraging a beginning for a time
like this.
I have read them with one object, and
I think they constitute a very good starting
point for such a consideration as is before
us at this time.
No one will question the solemnity of those
words.
There is something almost terrible about them.
When you hear them, you say, Well, you
cannot, you dare not, fail to recognize that
we are in the presence of something very
serious.
There is something very serious on hand when
such words have to be spoken.
We are not in the presence of some
just light, superficial, pleasant matter
and interest.
We are evidently in the presence of something
momentous, something which, if on the one side
can be put into such a language of
fear, fear.
For it says, let us fear a fear,
a warning, solemn and terrible warning, possibility
of something awful happening.
If on the one side it is like
that, you do not talk like that about
anything unless it is something of tremendous value,
something of very glorious possibility and consequence.
To miss that something is said to be
the most terrible thing that could happen.
Therefore, it must be something tremendously important.
Now, I am not exaggerating, I am not
making that up.
There you are.
I started at the beginning of the letter.
Let us fear less.
I have gone right over to near the
end of the letter.
And the same words or similar words occur
again as summing up and in between the
beginning and the end, you just have any
number of these earnest entreaties, these solemn warnings,
examples taken out of the life of others
who did not give heed and go through.
And what happened in their case?
You have all these exhortations, entreaties, admonitions, warnings,
beseeching, and we shall come on to those
in particular probably before we are at the
end of these gatherings.
What is it all about?
Now, therefore, friends, I suggest to you that
this letter must be a very vital letter.
If that is the nature of it, the
realm of it, if that is the portent,
something tremendous in view for Christians which can
be missed.
That is what it is all about.
I, this afternoon, will occupy my time mainly
in talking about the letter.
Later we will get into the letter itself
probably and talk about it.
Now, you see, when you have language like
that, when someone is speaking in this way
and it is put on record and turns
out to be, allow me to put it
in this way, not man writing or speaking
but God, you surely must be in the
presence of a crisis.
It must be a crisis that is on
hand.
That is, a terminal point on which and
at which tremendous issues are at stake, one
way or another.
When you hear something has got to happen,
it is the ultimate that is brought to
bear upon this moment, this situation.
Now, we know, of course, that this letter
itself took its rise from a crisis.
But it is impressive to realize that not
only was it related to a historic crisis,
but the Holy Spirit took hold of that
and introduced the ultimate crisis, built upon that
the ultimate issue.
Perhaps you need that explained.
The historic crisis was this.
This letter was written probably about approximately two
years before that full scattering for the whole
of this age of the Jewish people, the
destruction of Jerusalem which the Lord Jesus had
foretold.
Things, notice in our reading, which were in
the first place spoken by the Lord himself.
Give the more earnest heed.
And some of the things which were spoken
by him related to this crisis.
He said, the day is coming when they
will cast up around you their siege.
They will leave not one stone upon another.
That whole terrible twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew's
gospel, spoken by the Lord, was bearing upon
the thing that was now within a year
or two of actual fulfillment.
When the Roman legions besieged Jerusalem, brought
it to starvation, destroyed its temple, so that
literally according to a Jewish historian, they did
not leave one stone upon another.
It is on record that as they went
about their work, they literally leveled the whole
thing to the ground.
And the temple finished, all the temple worship
finished, priesthood finished, the sacrifices finished.
The people scattered to the ends of the
earth, never to be recovered again in the
dispensation.
It has been like that according to the
Lord's word.
Your house is left unto you desolate.
It has been like that these two thousand
years.
That's the historic crisis that is here.
The shaking of the things of the earth
that can be shaken.
Now the Holy Spirit takes hold of the
historic and superimposes upon that something bigger.
Shaking of the heavens also.
The heavenly things.
This is Jewish Christianity.
Now look, Christianity as a whole will be
shaken at the end.
This is an end of one phase.
Another phase is coming when everything in Christianity
will be shaken, shaken to its foundation.
This tremendous two-fold crisis is the occasion
of this letter.
Why did the Lord cause this person, whoever
he was, we won't debate who he was,
to write this letter at that time?
And this is where it comes to us.
With just as much force it ought to
come as it came to the Jews at
that time, or was intended to do.
The time will come.
It is fixed in the counsels of God
when everything in this creation and in this
universe is going to be subject to a
tremendous force.
Tremendous shaking.
It's going to happen.
Peter speaks about it in terms of the
atomic age as you know.
Seeing that all these things shall be dissolved.
The elements on fire and so on.
It's coming.
Now the issue is this.
When that comes, if that comes, what that
we have will abide the shaking.
What will go through it all and survive?
Unshaken.
What have we got that let the greatest
shaking in this universe come to never be
moved?
Will never go.
That will come out all right.
Unshaken.
A kingdom which cannot be shaken.
What have you got like that?
Now this letter was written to these Hebrew
Christians.
It was a great effort of the Lord
to get their feet established upon ground that
could never be shaken.
You see, they were wavering.
They were wavering.
They were already being shaken.
They were being moved from their steadfastness.
Some of them were thinking of going back
to the old associations and the old Jewish
system.
Like this.
The Lord inspired this letter with the one
objective of getting them established.
So established.
When this terrific storm broke, these winds were
let loose.
They carried away, carried away, so many and
so much, there would be that which would
stand the storm and abide.
And as I have said, he used the
historic as the occasion for bringing in the
eternal.
He leads on to this for all Christians.
Now dear friends, there are two things about
that that are important for our notice.
One is this, that you cannot, you cannot
settle that matter when the storm breaks.
If you have ever been in a storm,
a real good storm, you know very well
that that's not the time to get things
settled.
If you haven't got them settled before then,
you are just going to be all at
sea indeed.
The forces would be too much to cope
with.
Far too much to cope with.
You would just be thrown all over the
place.
An emergency is not the time to quietly
get down to our foundations.
We are caught up in things too much.
It's like that.
It's not all settled beforehand.
If you don't know where you are beforehand,
when this thing breaks, you'll not be able
to see to it then.
That's important to recognize.
Therefore, this letter would say, in the light
of testings which will come, in view of
that which is bound to break upon us
sometime, now's the time to make sure that
our position is an absolutely sound one, an
absolutely true one.
That there is nothing doubtful about our position
at all, no question about it.
We know where we are.
We are not at the mercy of other
people's judgments and ideas and what not.
We know the Lord.
We know the Lord for ourselves.
We know where we are.
Let everything go to pieces.
We know.
Now that is a thing that has got
to be settled.
And it cannot be settled when everything is
going to pieces.
But the other thing that is important, and
I sound very serious, don't I?
But it's very important that we should recognize
that it may not be necessary for the
great ultimate upheaval and chaos and cataclysm to
take place in order to bring that issue
out.
Is not this the heart of every trial
that comes into the Christian life?
Any day, any day, a temptation or an
adversity, some suffering, something that just is calculated
to throw you all over the place.
Now, in any such experience, the question arises,
what have I got of the Lord that's
going to get me through this?
What have I really got now of the
Lord that will stand me instead in this
crisis?
Maybe something in any day life, family matter,
a business matter, a church matter, a personal
matter, something that is most testing, unsettling, upsetting.
It comes like a shock or a blow
could knock you to pieces.
What have you got of the Lord that
is going to see you through it, that
will not go with the wind, will not
be carried away in this hour of trial?
It will stand.
It will remain.
Now, that is the issue of this book,
you see.
Whether it's a historic crisis in the life
of Israel or Jure or in the ultimate
experience of the church and its coming and
its already come to multitudes of the Lord's
people on this earth.
That's the position today.
In a large part of this world, the
test is, what have we got that will
see us through this, this terrible time?
It's the question for many today in the
East, but it's the ever present question.
And that is the message of this book.
And so it has to be solemn, it
has to be serious, it has to use
words like these.
Let us give, we ought to give, we
ought to give more earnest heed to the
things that were heard, lest happily we drift
from them.
Now, that is a poor way of interpreting
the original language.
Our English language just so often fails to
give us the real sense of the words
which were originally used.
Here it is, lest happily we drift away
from them.
And the picture there in the original language
is the picture of a ship.
A ship in rough water with strong currents
and heavy winds.
And that ship is having a very difficult
time, and it is trying to make calm
water.
There are moorings there in the harbor, moorings
there.
Only she can make those moorings and lay
hold on those moorings and get moored up.
She's all right, but here she comes.
And those responsible are a bit careless about
it.
And just as she comes up on the
moorings, they are too careless to grasp them,
to lay hold on them, and to fasten
them.
And she drifts past, and she drifts past.
That's actually the picture behind the Greek words
here.
We ought to give them more earnest heed,
lest, you see, on this strong adverse current,
these conditions of trial, through not being