The key phrase to our meditation at this
time is in the twelfth chapter of the
letter to the Hebrews and at verse twenty
-two, but ye are come unto
Mount Zion and unto the city of the
living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable
hosts of angels, to the general assembly and
church of the past born who are enrolled
in heaven, and to God the judge of
all, and to the spirit of just men
made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of
a new covenant, and to the blood of
sprinkling that speaketh better than that of Abel.
It is only the first clause of that
sentence which is taken as covering what we
have to say, although perhaps later we shall
proceed to other parts of the whole statement.
The words are ye are come and
for some of the time in which we
are together I believe it is the Lord's
will that we shall be occupied with the
heritage of faith.
It is understood by all who have read
and considered this document called the Letter to
the Hebrews that it is a most momentous
document in the history of God's counsels for
it sees the taking up of all that
is in the Old Testament, especially as to
Israel, and finding its full and final meaning
in Christ and in his church.
The letter or document covers a great deal
of ground.
It covers the three great sections of the
Old Testament from Genesis to Exodus
forming the first great section of the Bible,
from Exodus to the end of the book
of Judges, the second great section, and from
the book of Judges to the end of
the Old Testament at Malachi.
All those sections are taken up and are
covered by this comparatively short document and all
that is found in each one of them
and in all of them together is shown
to be gathered into, fulfilled, consummated in the
person and work of Christ and transmitted to
his church so that in Christ and by
Christ we have this immense heritage.
We inherit all.
There could hardly be a fuller and greater
contention in so small a fragment of only
three words ye are come.
This letter, I prefer to call it a
document because such it is in very truth
a document for the church's inheritance containing the
heritage of believers in this dispensation.
This document sets us on the divine road
with God, God
from eternity on the moon moving forward in
purpose.
Then it gives us a caravan of travelers
on that road.
Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Melchizedek, Joseph,
Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Barak, Samuel, David, the priests,
the kings, the prophets, they're all here in
the caravan on the road of God.
It touches upon some of the things that
we find on the journey such as the
tabernacle and its ordinances.
All pointing onward.
It says that all these who were of
this great divine caravan and on the road
of God from eternity to eternity were in
a quest, in a pursuit of an inheritance.
They looked.
They not only looked, but they searched.
They had left everything behind.
They were on the road in quest of
an inheritance.
The whole of the aspect of those ages
is forward.
Seekers.
Pursuers.
On track with God.
And then this letter tells us that we
are come to that which was the object
of their quest through all those ages.
We have the heritage for which they set
out.
They received that because God had some better
thing for us that they without us, apart
from us, should not be complete.
And what this letter says overall, that is,
that all, all that is no longer future,
it is present.
So far as entering into it is concerned,
it is present.
It is present to our apprehension.
Ye are come.
They were seeking, pursuing and coming.
Ye are come.
God started on his road.
These men joined with him.
God has reached the end of his road
and we are with him at the end
of the road.
Tremendous thing that is here in this document.
Ye are come.
We've arrived.
The caravan has arrived.
Ye are.
The whole of that heritage of faith.
For these were all men and women of
faith.
The whole of that heritage of faith is
now present for our entering in.
Ye are come.
Now that needs breaking up.
Take the first phase of it.
For in the first place, this document corresponds
to the first two chapters of Genesis.
That is quite patent.
How does Genesis begin?
In the beginning, God.
How does Hebrews begin?
God.
Who at sundry times and in divers manners
speaks.
In the beginning, God.
God.
In that particular, it corresponds to Genesis.
Then, in Genesis, God is revealed as the
great designer.
The great projector.
The great worker upon his design which he
has projected.
And the great perfecter of his work.
And God saw everything that he had made.
And God said, it is yours.
The letter to the Hebrews corresponds to that
in every particular.
It begins with God.
It shows God as the great designer.
The great projector.
The great worker.
And the great perfecter.
We shall see that as we proceed.
But the great point is this.
God completed the creation.
Then, having completed the creation, he planted a
garden.
That was subsequent to the whole creation.
And having planted a garden, he put man
into it.
Now, it does not say that God created
man in the garden.
It does say that God put man into
the garden.
Man was a part of the creation as
a whole.
The garden was subsequent to the whole creation
and to man.
Man in the garden is something within the
whole.
You may not see any value in that
for the moment, but you'll see before long.
That is not just an observation.
Man was put into, firstly, a completed work.
A completed work.
When everything was done, everything was prepared, then,
as a completed thing, it was provided for
man as his heritage.
His inheritance.
Let me repeat.
Man was put into a completed work to
possess it, to exploit it, to develop it.
And then, to build up a family corresponding
to and suited to the kind of world
into which he had been put.
It was a heritage provided by God for
man to be held and to be enjoyed
through faith in God.
Through faith in the divine benefactor.
For man was an heir of God.
Not in his own right, but by the
benefaction of God.
God centered everything in man.
Man was placed on a basis of potential
sonship.
And man was destined for glory.
If you could take all that, have it
all before you in mind and take it
into the letters of the Hebrews, what you
would find is this.
That what was material and temporal and palpable
in Genesis is in every particular present in
a spiritual way in this document.
We could not have a more glorious message,
more heart-ravaging message than that which comes
out of a contemplation of this spiritual correspondence
to God's activities in the creation.
Let us look at it again.
Everything for man's glorious destiny is first of
all wrought out by God himself.
Wrought out by God in Christ.
It is an accomplished thing.
A perfected work.
We use the phrase so lightly, the finished
work of Christ.
The finished work and the perfected man.
All, all established before man gets a look
in.
Man has no place, he did not have
any place at all in what God was
doing up to the point of God saying
it is very good.
Man had no place and no part in
it and he never has had and never
will have.
God independently took this whole matter into his
own hands and did it himself.
And when the thing was an accomplished act,
the creation, was there in its beauty and
glory and perfection, he gave it as an
inheritance to man.
He put man into that.
That is, dear friends, the great message of
this letter.
Indeed it is the great message of the
New Testament.
But it is the thing that is here
so patently and gloriously in Christ.
God has wholly, fully consummated the redemption, the
new creation.
And you and I have no part whatever
in making that.
But you and I are called to inherit
it.
The Arkham, the whole heritage.
It is presented to faith.
Good to God that we, the Lord's people,
more utterly apprehended this.
Nothing to add to it.
God has done it.
Everything, let me repeat, for man's glorious destiny.
A destiny which was determined before man was
made has been wrought out by God in
Christ before man comes on the scene.
God completed this heritage for man.
Glorious, perfect, potential, that is, containing unspeakably
wonderful and great possibility, eternal, a heritage of
light, of life, of rest, of peace, of
power, of victory.
All those things are implicit in the first
creation.
And then they are taken up in the
spiritual way and offered to us, to our
faith.
Not as something still to be done, but
something done.
God did speak life.
And God has given.
And what is true of that is true
in every other respect.
I do want to get home.
If I were to introduce a parenthesis here
by way of giving emphasis to the importance
of this matter, I should say again that
as we approach the end of the dispensation,
which we are doing most certainly and most
rapidly, God will seek to come back to
his full thought concerning a people.
And to bring a people back to his
full thought.
That he will finish the dispensation consummately.
If that is true, then a word like
this is apt of the time.
That you and I first of all and
the Lord's people, wherever they are, whosoever will,
shall enter into the wonderful rest and peace
and assurance and power and victory.
Light and life and liberty and glory of
the fact, the simple, basic, inclusive act that
God has in Christ encompassed all that is
bound up in man's glorious estimate and has
offered it to faith.
Wholly undercutting all this straining on the part
of Christians to try to add something to
what God has done.
To try to make effect of what God
has made effect.
To try in some way to do this
thing.
Make it good.
We've got to get adjusted over this matter.
The matter of our responsibility comes out presently.
But it does not and will not for
one moment take away from this that God
was true in the creation of this world.
That God did it all right of his
own hand.
Independently and self-sufficiently.
And then gave it as a heritage to
man simply on the basis of faith in
him as the great benefactor.
What is true in that connection is here
in the words shown to be exactly true
in the much higher realm of the material
in the temple.
In the spiritual and the eternal.
God has done that.
That is all gathered into this we dare
not call little phrase.
The Arkham.
You note the turn of everything at that
point on the little word but.
But, oh up to that point everything was
a quest.
Everything was a search.
Everything was a longing, an aspiration, an effort.
From the point of that but the whole
thing turns and says it's here.
All that is here present in the person
and work of the Lord Jesus offered to
you as a completed thing.
The whole thing is wrapped up and offered
to you like an object.
With all its immense meaning and potentiality it's
offered to us through faith.
Man was the heir of all God's work.
And this letter says heirs, heirs of God.
Then what was true of the man then
is spiritually true of the believer now.
The believer as the new creation man in
Christ is placed, is placed in the heritage.
He did not choose me but I chose
you.
I'm not going now to launch out on
all that there is in the word to
show that it was not of our choosing
or of our running or of our deciding
at all.
Any decision that ever we made regarding Christ
and his work did not take its rise
in ourselves.
It came from God.
Faith itself is the gift of God.
If we are the Lord's if we are
the Lord's it is not because at one
time the whole thing had its commencement in
what we call deciding for Christ.
Where did the deciding come from?
That was not the beginning.
There was something behind the deciding and we
well know it.
Placed in the heritage.
We have now may have come by various
ways and various means.
The history of our coming may be as
diverse and varied as the number of people
who have come.
But behind it all was the action of
sovereign grace.
We have to say today that we are
not where we are because we determined to
be.
Because we chose.
And because there was a moving on God's
part.
The initiative was with Him.
He pursued us.
He apprehended us.
He has placed us in His path.
Wonderful thing to know that God has put
us into Christ.
Created in Christ Jesus.
That is the phrase.
Created in Christ Jesus.
Man was placed in the heritage.
Then the garden became significant of several things.
The garden signifies firstly the defining, the defining
of man's existence.
That's one thing.
What I mean is and this is a
throwback upon what I said a little while
ago about the garden being subsequent to the
whole creation.
The garden represents or signifies the narrowing down
of everything to man's personal life and responsibility.
That is man was not just a kind
of general person roaming about the world.
It was not just a general idea.
Man a kind of freelance in the creation.
No.
God definitely defines something.
It is called God.
In the midst of the whole creation He
marks this out.
He hedges this about and He puts man
inside of that hedge inside of those gates.
And so defines man.
Defines man's life.
Narrows the whole matter of man's life down
to something quite concrete, quite definite.
Taking it away from generalities.
Putting it there, right at the center.
So that everything became immediate and personal where
man was concerned.
See, all this that God had done, all
this wonderful work that had been completed by
God and had God's blessing and approval upon
it had to be made something very concrete
where the man was concerned.
So we're about to put him into that
wonderful world and let him just wander about
and live out his life in some indefinite
way in a kind of general line of
things.
But no, God says all this must be
focused and the man must come into a
personal definite, immediate responsibility to what I have
done.
And the garden represents that something very immediate
and concrete of the relationship between the heritage
and the man.
Do you grasp that?
Perhaps if we follow that on with the
spiritual application it will become more clear.
You see, what God really said when he
put man in the garden right at the
center and heart of the creation was, this
is your personal matter.
This is your personal matter.
This all has to do with you and
you have to do personally with this whole
matter.
So it is, you see, with Christ and
his work in Christ personally and by Christ
vocationally or officially God has perfected the new
creation.
God has completed everything and entered into his
rest.
And we know concerning his and he has
pronounced his verdict very good.
My beloved, in whom I am well pleased.
God has reached his end and his rest
is all finished.
But now God says, look here, that's not
something of a general doctrine and teaching.
That's something that relates to you personally and
individually in an immediate way.
It's something that you have got to take
hold of as your personal heritage.
The whole question of responsibility comes in there,
you see.
It comes down upon the matter all this
God has done what have I done with
it?
What attitude have I taken toward it?
Now dear friend, this is more meaningful and
important than perhaps you are grasping.
And for the moment, the point may be
this.
You believe in what is called the finished
work of Christ.
That's a faith which lies at the very
root and foundation of your Christian faith.
The finished work of Christ.
You agree with all that I have said
about God independently doing this thing.
Right out from himself.
You agree that the new creation in Christ
personally has the approval of God upon it.
The expression of his prophesy.
Then why look so miserable?
Why all the time be going about with
forgive the phrase, that hang dog expression about,
about your salvation?
Whether you will ever arrive and get through
and come to glory?
I mean this.
When Adam was put in that garden and
looked round and said, is all this for
me?
Does all this belong to me?
Is this mine?
There was a man full of amazement.
Full of wonder.
Full of thankfulness.
Full of worship.
And probably the one expression every day.
Isn't it wonderful?
Just look, look at this.
Is it less so in Christ?
Is it less so in the new creation?
Is it less so in the spiritual than
in the temple?
One thing is effective about our apprehension.
About our faith, about our faith.
You see this document is the document of
faith.
First lost.
Something is effective about our faith apprehension.
Yes, we rebuke our hearts.
We, yes, we rebuke our hearts.
We, we are ashamed and well we should
be.
There ought dear friends to be more of
the wonder of it all.
More of the worship.
We ought to be people who know more
of the rest.
So God did not leave this thing in
kind of general terms.
He reduced it.
The whole new creation he reduced to a
very practical proposition when he made or planted
a garden and put man into that.
He said now look here.
This all has to do with you.
All has to do with you.
And you have to do with all this.
Wonderful.
So it is with Christ and his work.
That was the first significance of the garden.
The garden.
Why after the creation God proceeded to plant
a garden.
And then to put man not in the
whole thing in general but to reduce it
to concrete, concrete practical terms and say look
here.
This is not some abstract wide world remote
sort of thing.
This is something that comes very near to
you.
Second significance of the garden was that it
was to be man's home.
Man's home.
What a home it would have been if
man had made it his home.
He had to be turned out.
He lost his home.
What is home?
Well home to justify its name to be
true to its real meaning means to begin
with it is the place of rest.
The place of rest.
See Christ is our paradise.
Christ is God's way of making this great
universe redeemed concrete, concrete, practical, presenting to us.
And Christ is our home.
We're keeping true to the text of the
letter.
The whole letter of entering into rest is
one which the writer dwells upon very strongly
and very fully.
Entering into rest.
God entered into his rest.
God entered into his rest and he put
man right into the heart of that which
was his own rest and made that man's
home or made man's home at the heart
of that rest.
Come unto me all ye that labor.
To me, the heavy laden, I will give
you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from
me and you shall find rest unto your
souls.
That's only saying in other words he's our
home.
He's come home.
Our wanderings, our wanderings are circumvented.
He might have been a wanderer in the
great world but he was given a home.
Instead of being a wanderer he was given
a home.
God has done a great thing but he's
not just left us to wander about in
his great thing.
He's brought us to his son that his
son shall be our home in terms of
rest.
He is our rest because he is God's
rest.
Home, if it is what it is meant
to be true to the word is the
place of man's pleasure.
Pleasure.
He has pleasure there.
All his pleasant thoughts are bound up with
his home, his joy.
Well, these things need not take much time
in their spiritual application.
If Christ has really become our home in
terms of rest has he not become the
very centre and sphere of our delight, of
our pleasure?
You know how true that is in the
natural when a new home is being set
up?
Why, everything else, everything else is put up
with.
He got through as quickly as possible in
order to get that home.
Make that home.
The dominating thought and pleasure is that home.
Such should be, such should be our attitude
toward Christ in person and Christ's worth.
Our pleasure.
Our delight.
A home is not a lodging.
A home is an abiding place.
Lord Jesus in the days of his place
of course spoke much parabolically and I can
cannot think other than when he said in
my Father's house are many abiding places, mansions,
the old version says.
He was speaking in spiritual terms.
Literally mansions don't interest some of us a
little bit.
But to come to the place where we
can abide forever and go no more out
and find eternal satisfaction and rest.
That does appeal to us.
And where in all God's universe will that
be if it is not in Christ?
He is our abiding place and therefore therefore
the writer does introduce into this letter over
against the instability of these Jewish believers over
against their variableness.
Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and
forever.
It's a contrasting statement you see for they
they were not the same.
They had professed and moved away from their
profession.
They had taken a position and let it
go.
They had been drawn away persuaded away argued
away they were not settled.
But Jesus Christ is the apostle the same.
And isn't that something to rejoice in?
That he is not moving changing his position
variable.
He has the attributes of God with whom
there is no variableness.
Neither shadow casts what a pregnancy.
How many shadows come into light by the
the unreliableness of people never be sure of
it.
Neither shadow casts the place of a pregnancy.
All of that comes out later as we
go on.
So Christ should be all this to us
because he is all this to God.
God has come to rest.
God has come to settlement and certainty in
the person and work of his Son.
God finds all his pleasure in him and
all his interest in him.
All that.
And God has given him in all these
terms and senses to us as a heritage.
It's a challenge to faith, isn't it?
Is Christ to us rest our delight and
pleasure our abiding place our one absorbing interest?
That was what the Garden was to Adam
to begin with.
All that.
And it foreshadowed Christ.
He is our paradise.
The Garden makes signified man's vocation.
Man's vocation.
God gave it to man as a heritage
and told him to look after it.
To develop its potentialities to realize all its
possibilities.
Made it his life work.
First man now some of you don't pat
yourselves on the back but first man was
a gardener.
The first vocation in this world was gardening.
It was man's life work.
It was the avenue of his self-expression.
That could be used that phrase could be
used perfectly safely than in those situations of
that time in unfallen man self-expression because
God was his one interest.
It's perfectly safe to express yourself if the
Lord is everything inside to be expressed.
The way of his self-expression the way
of his own development.
For while things were perfect as to nature
they were not complete as to possibility either
in man or in the creation.
Perfect yet to be perfected in the sense
of brought to full stature.
And the garden was sphere and means of
man's coming to full development himself and bringing
out all that was there potentially of the
work of God.
What a field that opens dear friends doesn't
it where we and Christ are concerned.
Christ is our vocation.
Christ is the occasion of our expression of
all that is in us.
Christ is the means of our enlargement our
growth by exercise upon Christ.
See the principles are all there.
That is what is being said here in
this letter in other language in other ways
and forms but it's all here in substance
and meaning and principle.
This is the meaning of our being Christ.
He is our vocation.
Our vocation.
Our life work.
Our supreme interest.
Our means of our own spiritual development and
enlargement.
And for the present I must close with
this one other word.
The garden was man's probation.
The scene and sphere and occasion of his
testing and his proving.
Here responsibility is introduced.
Note the focal point of responsibility.
Responsibility was not to do anything for his
own salvation.
To provide anything to make up his glorious
heritage.
It was all complete.
He was put into it as a completed
perfected thing.
And then he was made responsible by what
was the focal point of responsibility into what
did the whole matter of responsibility become gathered
just on faith.
Faith.
Everything stood or fell as to his faith
attitude toward the great benefactor.
Whether he believed God.
Whether he trusted God.
And trusted him and believed him so utterly
that no other voice no other voice could
turn him aside.
The test of his faith in the one
who had given him this heritage.
Responsibility all comes back.
Isn't that the argument of the letter to
the Hebrews from first to last?
The great word of this letter is faith,
isn't it?
The great finale.
The summing up of everything.
At the end it's faith, faith, faith.
But it's been faith all the way through
from the beginning.
The great letter of faith.
It was tremendously said in this letter about
responsibility.
But when you focus this whole matter of
responsibility down and say, well what does it
amount to?
Believing God?
Having faith in God?
Faith of that kind.
Of that kind.
That shuts you up and into God.
It's a very, very energetic thing the faith
that is in this letter, isn't it?
It's a faith that repudiates.
Faith that forsakes.
Faith that leaves the whole world.
Look at what he says about the faith
of those men on this road.
Moses alone speaks on Moses' faith.
What did he do for him?
By faith he forsook.
He forsook.
And why did he forsake Egypt?
Because God's purpose was not there.
And faith drew him in the direction of
God's purpose.
And he forsook.
By faith.
Much more.
It's a tremendous thing this faith, but everything
hangs upon that.
Everything hangs upon that.
Responsibility, dear friends, is not that we have
got in some way to make our salvation.
To save ourselves.
To perfect ourselves.
Not at all.
God is the author and the perfecter of
faith, it says here.
But how is it going to be done?
Believe God.
And he comes back.
After all, is this true?
Is this true?
That this whole thing right on to glorification
is an accomplished act so far as God
is concerned?
It lies now in the perfect tense.
Whom?
He justifies them.
He also glorified the perfect tense.
Is it true?
That the whole thing so far as God
is concerned is finished?
And offered to me as a finished thing?
Oh, if only I could grasp that.
What relief.
What comfort.
What relaxing of strain and tension.
What rest.
What joy.
What strength.
To go out.
For that's what follows.
Go out with him without the camp bearing
his reproach.
You'll never be able to do it or
any of the other things that we are
bidden to do in this letter unless, unless
you have come to that settled assurance.
It's all right.
There's no question, no hazard, no risk at
all in this.
It's settled as it is.
All that remains is for me, I think,
to take it, believe it, hold on to
it, and go on with it.
Let us go on.