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  JESUS, OUR MAN IN GLORY
  by A. W. Tozer
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Tozer's exposition of Christ's ascended position and high-priestly office at
God's right hand, addressing the often-neglected evangelical teaching of Jesus's
current heavenly intercession. He emphasizes the importance of understanding
Christ's glorified ministry according to Hebrews.

  Chapters: 13

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. - Introduction
    2. - CHAPTER 1: Jesus, Our Man in Glory
    3. - CHAPTER 2: Jesus, God’s Final Revelation
    4. - CHAPTER 3: Jesus, Heir of All Things
    5. - CHAPTER 4: Jesus, God’s Express Image
    6. - CHAPTER 5: Jesus, Lord of the Angels
    7. - CHAPTER 6: Jesus, Standard of Righteousness
    8. - CHAPTER 7: Jesus, the Eternal Word
    9. - CHAPTER 8: Jesus, Keeper of God’s Promises
   10. - CHAPTER 9: Jesus, Like unto Melchizedek
   11. - CHAPTER 10: Jesus, One Face of One God
   12. - CHAPTER 11: Jesus, Mediator of the New Will
   13. - CHAPTER 12:  Jesus, Fulfillment of the Shadow

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  CHAPTER 1: - INTRODUCTION
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INTRODUCTION THOSE WHO HEARD A. W. TOZER only at the popular, mid¬20th century
Bible conferences considered him a topical preacher who dealt mainly with the
striking Bible texts. His congregations in Chicago and Toronto knew better! They
treasured his pastoral preaching from Sunday to Sunday, month by month, year
after year. His sermons were a thorough-going, depth, charged examination and
exploration of the Scriptures as the revealed and inspired Word of God. While in
his long pastorate in Chicago, Dr. Tozer felt that he was “comfortably started”
in the consideration of the Gospel of John after he had been preaching from the
book for more than two years! In Toronto, too, his congregation soon discovered
that their pastor’s insistent and incisive preaching was his own method of
potent Bible teaching. Not long before his death in 1963, Tozer completed a
Sunday morning series of 40 sermons from the book of Hebrews. When he began the
series, he made it plain to his listeners that the eternal glories of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, would glow forth in every message. He also said he took
exception to the remark of a ministerial friend that “most people find the book
of Hebrews pretty dull material.” The 12 chapters of this book, to be followed
in due course by a companion volume completing Tozer’s exposition of Hebrews,
area record of his findings. Clearly, he was right. The person and glory of
Jesus Christ shine forth through every part of this inspired letter to the
Hebrews.

Gerald B. Smith


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  CHAPTER 2: - CHAPTER 1: JESUS, OUR MAN IN GLORY
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HAVE YOU HEARD any sermons lately on the Bible truth that our risen Savior and
Lord is now our glorified Man and Mediator? That He is seated at the right hand
of the Majesty in the heavenlies? Few Christians are fully aware of Christ’s
high-priestly office at the throne. I suspect this is a neglected subject in
evangelical preaching and teaching. It is a major theme in the letter to the
Hebrews. The teaching is plain: Jesus is there, risen and glorified, at the
right hand of the Majesty on high, representing the believing children of God,
His church on earth. Here is one of the great Biblical encouragement’s to
acknowledge Jesus and to trust Him in His priestly ministry for us: Since we
have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God,
let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who
is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has-been
tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach
the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace
to help us in our time of need. (Hebrews 4:14-16) The Scriptures assure us that
there is a true tabernacle—a true sanctuary in heaven. Jesus our great High
Priest is busy there. In that heavenly sanctuary is a continuing and effective
altar. There is a mercy seat. Best of all, our Mediator and Advocate is there on
our behalf. What an amazing truth! Amazing—and yet how difficult it seems for us
to comprehend it and to count on it. In the light of God’s gracious revelation,
I can only ask in humility and chagrin, “Why are we so ineffective in
representing Him? Why are we so apathetic in living for Him and glorifying Him?”
Everything about Jesus is glorious It is well for us to confess often that
everything the Father has revealed concerning Jesus Christ is glorious. His
past—as we would humanly look on the past—is glorious, for He made all things
that were made. His work on earth as the Son of Man was glorious, for He
effected the plan of salvation through His death and resurrection. Then He
ascended into the heavenlies for His mediatorial ministries throughout this
present age. In view of what the Scriptures tell us of Jesus, it should be our
primary concern to show forth the eternal glories of this One who is our divine
Savior and Lord. In our world are dozens of different kinds of Christianities.
Certainly many of them do not seem to be busy and joyful in proclaiming the
unique glories of Jesus Christ as the eternal Son of God. Some brands of
Christianity will tell you very quickly that they are just trying to do a little
bit of good on behalf of neglected people and neglected causes. Others will
affirm that we can do more good by joining in the “contemporary dialogue” than
by continuing to proclaim the “old, old story of the cross.” But we stand with
the early Christian apostles. We believe that every Christian proclamation
should be to the glory and the praise of the One whom God raised up after He had
loosed the pains of death. I am happy to be identified with Peter and his
message at Pentecost: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by
miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you
yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and
foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing
him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony
of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. (Acts
2:22-24) Peter considered it important to affirm that the risen Christ is now
exalted at the right hand of God. He said that fact was the reason for the
coming of the Holy Spirit. Frankly, I am too busy serving Jesus to spend my time
and energy engaging in contemporary dialogue. We have a commission from heaven I
think I know what “contemporary dialogue” means. It means that all of those
intellectual preachers are busy reading the news magazines so they will be able
to comment on the world situation from their pulpits on Sunday mornings. But
that is not what God called me to do. He called me to preach the glories of
Christ. He commissioned me to tell my people there is a kingdom of God and a
throne in the heavens. And that we have One of our own representing us there.
That is what the early church was excited about. And I think our Lord may have
reason to ask why we are no longer very excited about it. The Christian church
in the first century was ablaze with this concept of the risen and victorious
Christ exalted at the right hand of the Father. Although it worshipped no other
man, it urged the worship of this glorified and exalted Man as God, because He
had always been the eternal Son, the second Person of the Godhead. Paul wrote to
Timothy: There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ
Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men—the testimony given in its
proper time. (1 Timothy 2:5-6) Consider with me some of the things we know about
the priesthood for which God anointed our Lord Jesus. Not only was He the
eternal Son, but He was also the glorified Man. Why should we ignore the reality
of such a priesthood and treat it as if it was some appendage to religious forms
and traditions? Priesthood in the Old Testament The true idea of the priesthood,
as it was developed in the Old Testament and fulfilled by our Lord Jesus Christ,
was ordained by God. It came from His mind and heart. It was dimly foreshadowed
in the lives of praying fathers, heads of their households, who assumed
responsibility and concern for their families. Job was a good example of this
kind of Old Testament family priest. Afraid his children might have sinned, he
prayed to God, asking Him to forgive and cleanse them. But the concept is much
more clearly embodied in the Levitical priesthood, ordained by God for Israel’s
forgiveness and cleansing. In its final perfection, the priesthood is portrayed
in Jesus Christ, our Lord. We must acknowledge that God’s concept of the
priesthood arose from man’s alienation from God. It is based on the fact that
man has strayed from God and is lost. This is a fundamental part of truth, just
as surely as hydrogen is a part of water. You can not have water without
hydrogen. Just as surely, you cannot have Bible truth without the teaching that
mankind has broken with God and fallen from his first created estate, where he
was made in God’s image. God’s concept and instructions are very plain. There
has been a moral breach. Sinning man has violated the laws of God. In other
words, man is a moral criminal before the bar of God. It is clear from the Bible
that a sinful man or woman cannot return to God’s favor and fellowship until
justice is satisfied, until the breach is healed. In an effort to heal the
breach, man has used many subtleties and rationalizations. But if he rejects the
cross of Christ, if he rejects God’s plan of salvation, if he rejects Christ’s
death and resurrection as the basis for atonement, there is no remaining ground
for redemption. Reconciliation is an impossibility. It is a part of my calling
and responsibility in the ministry to warn men and women that rejection of the
atoning work of Jesus Christ is fatal to the soul. With such rejection, the
efforts of the Savior and His intercession as great High Priest have no meaning.
Man is at fault Alienation was not God’s fault. It was man who alienated
himself. Man is away from God, like a little island that has pulled away from
the mainland. Drifting out to sea, it has lost the attraction of its original
position. So man has morally pulled away from God and from the attraction of
God’s fellowship. Man is alienated, without hope and without God in this world.
The important element in God’s concept of the priesthood is mediatorship. The
Old Testament priest provided a means of reconciliation between God and man. But
he had to be ordained of God. Otherwise, he was a false priest. In order to help
man, he had to be appointed by God. God, for His part, needs no help. There
never was an Old Testament priest who could help God. The work of the priest was
to offer a sacrifice, an atonement, so that alienated man could be forgiven and
cleansed. In the Levitical order, an offering had to be made to God by the
priest on behalf of the sinner. The priest was appointed to plead the case of
man before a righteous God. That ancient priestly system was not perfect. It was
only the shadow of a perfect, eternal priesthood to be brought about by the
Savior-Priest, Jesus Christ, the eternal Son. Every priest in the order of Levi
knew only too well his own sin. This was the point of the breakdown. When that
priest stood before God in the holiest place to present an atonement for the
sins of the people, he was face-to-face as well with the reality of his own
failures and shortcomings. In our own day, we recognize what this means to us as
liberated and forgiven believers. Singing the hymnody of Isaac Watts, we revel
in Christ’s atonement and God’s forgiveness: Not all the blood of beasts On
Jewish altars slain, Could give the guilty conscience peace, Or wash away the
stain. But Christ, the heavenly Lamb, Takes all our sins away; A sacrifice of
nobler name, And richer blood than they. The Old Testament priest knew that the
ritual of sacrifice could not completely atone for sins or change man’s sinful
nature. In that priestly system, God “covered” the sin until the time when
Christ would come. Christ, the Lamb of God, would completely bear away the sin
of the world. Jesus our Lord qualified completely to be our great High Priest.
He was ordained and appointed by God. He was the eternal Son of whom the Father
said, “You are a priest forever” (Psalms 110:4). He made reconciliation for the
people. He showed the only genuine compassion for lost mankind. The Scriptures
affirm that in these qualifications as priest, Jesus our Lord became the Author,
the Source, the Giver of eternal salvation. What Jesus’ manhood means to us Let
me review again what it means to us that Jesus was born into this world and
lived among us. I once heard a preachers that Jesus was man but not a man. I am
convinced that Jesus was both man and a man. He had, in the most real sense,
that substance and quality that is the essence of mankind. He was a man born of
a woman. Unless we understand this, I do not think we can be fully aware of what
it means for Jesus to be representing us—a Man representing us at the right hand
of the Majesty in the heavens. Suppose you and I were able right now to go to
the presence of the Father. If we could see the Spirit, who is God, and the
archangels and seraphim and strange creations out of the fire, we would see them
surrounding the throne. But to our delight and amazement, we would see a Man
there, human like we are—the Man Christ Jesus Himself! Jesus, the Man who is
also God, was raised as a victor from the dead and exalted to the right hand of
the Father. I think it is safe to say that during this age of the work and
witness of the Christian church on earth, Jesus would be the one visible Man in
that heavenly company at the throne. Of course, there are questions that
students of the Bible have discussed for many years. All of us do well to
confess that much about the glorious kingdom of God is yet unknown to us and
cannot now be comprehended. For instance, what about the righteous dead and
their place in the heavenlies? We might state our question like this: If the
risen and glorified Jesus is ministering there, what about the great number of
Christian men and women who, having died in the faith, have gone on to meet the
Lord? Where are they? First of all, and beyond any other consideration, we know
that they are safely sheltered in God’s heavenly realm. The apostle Paul
declares that it is “better by far” for the Christian to” depart and be with
Christ” (Philippians 1:23) than to continue in this world of sin and tears. At
death, only the physical body succumbs. For the believers in Christ, their
undying and immortal spirits have passed into a blessed spiritual abode prepared
by our God. Let us be assured that God is ever faithful in His gracious plan for
His creation and for His redeemed children. We surely know that all things are
not going to continue forever as we now know them. Paul in the first century
wrote advice and encouragement to the Thessalonian believers. He told them
plainly that he did not want them to be unaware of the state of those believers
whom he described as “asleep”—having passed into the presence of the Lord
through physical death. His message was one of distinct consolation. It
continues to shine as a word of hope for every believer: We believe that Jesus
died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who
have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we
who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly
not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down
from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the
trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who
are still alive and are left will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet
the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore
encourage each other with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:14-18) Plainly our
Creator-God and Redeemer still has many kingdom secrets not yet revealed to us.
But we do know that in that glad day of Christ’s coming, there will be great
transformations, all taking place with split-second speed. Concerning those
great changes, Paul wrote to the Corinthian Christians: The trumpet will sound,
the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable
must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. (1
Corinthians 15:52-53) Paul used the familiar analogy of plant life to describe
to the Corinthians the reality of the promised resurrection: What you sow does
not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that
will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives
it a body as he has determined.… So will it be with the resurrection of the
dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown
in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in
power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. . .Just as we
have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the
man from heaven.… When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable,
and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true:
“Death has been swallowed up in victory.” (1 Corinthians 15:36-38, 1 Corinthians
15:42-44, 1 Corinthians 15:49, 1 Corinthians 15:54) Surely it was this same
revelation by the Spirit of God that caused the writer Jude to exclaim: To him
who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious
presence without fault and with great joy—to the only God our Savior be glory,
majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages,
now and forevermore! Amen. (Jude 1:24-25) We rest upon God’s revelation that in
the heavenly world today, Jesus in His glorified body represents us at the
throne of God. Each of us who loves and serves Him has a right to the great
scriptural promises. In that great climactic event of the ages, our Lord will
come and we shall all be changed. He will present us before the eternal throne
with exceeding joy, glorified even as He is glorified!


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  CHAPTER 3: - CHAPTER 2: JESUS, GOD’S FINAL REVELATION
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It does not speak too well for our Christian testimony when God tells us that He
has sent His Son to be His final revelation in this world—and we act bored about
it! What a gracious gesture it was on God’s part. And the living God and Creator
continues to speak to the men and women of a lost race: In the past God spoke to
our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in
these last days he has spoken to us by his Son. (Hebrews 1:1-2) But it leaves us
with some questions to answer. Why is Christianity so boring to so many in our
day? Is Jesus Christ still dead? “Oh, no,” we are quick to reply. “He is a risen
Savior.” Perhaps, then He has lost His power and His authority? “Of course not,”
we respond. “He ascended to the right hand of the Majesty on high.” Then that
means He has left us to our own devices? Are we now on our own? “Not exactly,”
we answer with caution. “We really have not been in very close touch with Him
lately, but He is supposed to be our great High Priest at the heavenly throne.”
The key to our boredom That must be the key to our boredom with Christianity: we
have not been keeping in very close touch with our Man in glory. We have been
doing in our churches all those churchly things that we do. We have done them
with our own understanding and in our own energy. But without a bright and
conscious confirmation of God’s presence, a church service can be very deadly
and dull. We go to church and we look bored—even when we are supposed to be
singing God’s praises. We look bored because we are bored. If the truth were
known, we are bored with God, but we are too pious to admit it. I think God
would love it if some honest soul would begin his or her prayer by admitting,
“God, I am praying because I know I should, but the truth is I do not want to
pray. I am bored with the whole thing!” I doubt if the Lord would be angry at
such candor. Rather, I believe He would think, “Well, there is hope for that
person. That person is being truthful with Me. Most people are bored with Me and
will not admit it.” Some people believe we are living in a kind of vacuum. They
see this as an age in which God is not revealing Himself. They think this is an
interval between the time when God spoke to mankind and the time future when He
will again be a speaking God. Do you suppose they think God has become tired and
is resting for a while? No, the God who spoke in the past is speaking yet. He is
speaking through the revelation of the risen and ascended Christ, the eternal
Son. In all the history of God’s dealings with man, there has never been an
utter blackout of God’s voice. We should be thankful for this inspired letter to
the Hebrews. It indicates that what God is now saying to mankind through His Son
far surpasses anything in the world’s great varieties of human philosophies.
God’s Word is not an appeal to the reasoning mind of man. It is a matter to be
taken into the heart and soul. Hebrews is a book and a message and a revelation.
It stands high and lofty in its own strength because it is a fitting, forceful
portrait of the eternal Son, the great High Priest of God forever and forever. I
am sad because a large number of professing Christians who have tried to study
the letter have finally given up. They have turned away with the very human
comment, “This is too deep, too hard to understand.” We must approach the Word
expectantly I have always felt that when we read and study the Word of God we
should have great expectations. We should ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the
Person, the glory and the eternal ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps our
problem is in our approach. Perhaps we have simply read our Bibles as we might
read a piece of literature or a textbook. In today’s society, great numbers of
people seem unable to deal with God’s revelation in Christ. They run and hide,
just as Adam and Eve did. Today, however, they do not hide behind trees but
behind such things as philosophy and reason and even theology—believe it or not!
This attitude is hard to understand. In Jesus’ death for our sins, God is
offering far more than escape from a much-deserved hell. God is promising us an
amazing future, an eternal future. We do not see it and understand it as we
should because so much is wrong with our world. The effects o fsin are all
around us. The eternal purposes of God lie out yonder. I often wonder if we are
making it plain enough to our generation that there will be no other revelation
from God except as He speaks it through our Lord Jesus Christ. If we have ever
confessed that we need a Savior, this letter to the Hebrews should be an
arresting, compelling book for us. It is a great book of redemption with an
emphasis that all things in our lives must begin and end in God. As we study
God’s character and attributes, we will discover an important fact. Time and
space, matter and motion, life and law, form and order, all purpose and all
plan, all succession and all procession begin and end with God. All things move
out from God and return to Him again. I pray that God may open our eyes to see
and understand that whatever does not begin in God and end in God is not worthy
of any attention from man made in the image of God. We were made for God, to
worship and admire and enjoy and serve Him forever. God has always spoken to us
When the author of Hebrews wrote to declare that “in these last days” God was
speaking through His Son, he reminded us that for thousands of years God had
been speaking in many ways. Actually, there had been some 4,000 years of human
history during which God had been speaking to the human race. It was a race that
had separated itself from God, hiding in the Garden of Eden and holding itself
incognito ever since. For most people in the first century of the Christian era,
God was only a tradition. Some fondled their man-made gods. Some had ideas of
worship and even built altars. Some mumbled incantations and said prayers. But
they were alienated from the true God. Although they were made in the image of
God, they had rejected their Creator, casting in their lot with mortality. That
situation might have continued until man or nature or both failed and were no
more. But God in love and wisdom came once more. He came to speak, revealing
Himself this time through His eternal Son. It is because of the coming of Jesus
into the world that we now look back on the revelation in the Old Testament as
fragmentary and incomplete. We could say that the Old Testament is like a house
without doors and windows. Not until the carpenters cut in doors and windows can
that house become a worthy, satisfying residence. Years ago my family and I
enjoyed Christian fellowship with a Jewish medical doctor who had come to
personal faith in Jesus, the Savior and Messiah. He gladly discussed with me his
previous participation in Sabbath services in the synagogue. Often he had been
asked to read from the Old Testament Scriptures. “I often think back on those
years of reading from the Old Testament,” he told me. “I had the haunting sense
that it was good and true. I knew it explained the history of my people. But I
had the feeling that something was missing.” Then, with a beautiful, radiant
smile he added, “When I found Jesus as my personal Savior and Messiah, I found
Him to be the One to whom the Old Testament was in fact pointing. I found Him to
be the answer to my completion as a Jew, as a person and as a believer.” Whether
Jew or Gentile, we were made originally in God’s image, and the revelation of
God by His Spirit is a necessity. An understanding of the Word of God must come
from the same Spirit who provided its inspiration. The purpose of Hebrews The
letter to the Hebrews was written to confirm the early Jewish Christians in
their faith in Jesus, the Messiah-Savior. The writer takes a recurring theme
that Jesus Christ is better because He is superior. Jesus Christ is the ultimate
Word from God! This is a reassuring, strengthening message to us in our day.
Hebrews lets us know that while our Christian faith surely was foreshadowed in
and grew out of Judaism, it was not and is not dependent on Judaism. The words
of our Lord Jesus Christ, spoken while He was here on earth, still speak to us
with spiritual authority. At one time He reminded His disciples that new wine
must never be put in old, unelastic wineskins. The parable was patent: the old
religious forms and traditions could never contain the new wine He was
introducing. He was saying that a fixed gulf exists between vital Christianity
and the old forms of Judaism. The Judaism of the Old Testament, with its
appointed Mosaic order, had indeed mothered Christianity. But just as the child
progresses to maturity and independence, so the Christian faith and the
Christian evangel were independent of Judaism. Even if Judaism should cease to
exist, Christianity as a revelation from God would—and does—stand firmly upon
its own solid foundation. It rests upon the same living, speaking God that
Judaism rested on. It is important for us to understand that God, being one in
His nature, is always able to say the same thing to everyone who hears Him. He
does not have two different messages about grace or love or justice or holiness.
Whether it be from the Father or theSon or the Holy Spirit, the revelation will
always be the same. It points in the same direction, though using different ways
and different means and different persons. Begin in Genesis and continue through
the Old and New Testaments and you will perceive the uniformity. Yet there are
ever-widening elements in God’s revelation to mankind. In early Genesis the Lord
spoke in terms of a coming Messiah, foretelling a warfare between the serpent
and the Seed of the woman. He noted the victorious Champion-Redeemer who was to
come. The Lord told Eve in very plain words of future human pain in childbearing
and of woman’s status in the family. He told Adam of the curse upon the ground
and of inevitable death as the result of transgression. To Abel and to Cain He
revealed a system of sacrifice and through it a plan of forgiveness and
acceptance. God’s message to Noah was of grace and of the order of nature and
government. To Abraham He gave the promise of the coming Seed, the Redeemer who
would make an atonement for the race. To Moses, He gave the Law and told of the
coming Prophet who was to be like Moses and yet superior to him. Those were
God’s spoken messages “in the past.” God’s message to us Now, what is God saying
to His human creation in our day and time? In brief, He is saying, “Jesus Christ
is My beloved Son. Hear Him!” The reason many do not want to hear what God is
saying through Jesus to our generation is not hard to guess. God’s message in
Jesus is a moral pronouncement. It brings to light such elements as faith and
conscience and conduct, obedience and loyalty. Men and women reject this message
for the same reason they have rejected all of the Bible. They do not wish to be
under the authority of the moral Word of God. For centuries God spoke in many
ways. He inspired holy men to write portions of the message in a Book. People do
not like it and try their best to avoid it because God has made it the final
test of all morality, the final test of all Christian ethics. Some are taking
issue with the New Testament record. “How can you prove that Jesus actually said
that?” they challenge. Perhaps they are taking issue because they have come
across the unforgettable words of Jesus in John’s Gospel: As for the person who
hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to
judge the world, but to save it. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and
does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the
last day. (John 12:47-48) God is a living God and Jesus Christ, with all power
and all authority, is at the control panel, guiding and sustaining all things in
the universe. That concept is fundamental to the Christian faith. It is
necessary that we really and fully comprehend that our God is indeed the Majesty
in the heavens. Hebrews reassures us We can get this assurance from Hebrews,
read in the context of the total inspired record. And as we are assured of this,
we will have discovered a fundamental means of retaining our sanity in a
troubled world and in a selfish society. If we are going to keep our minds
restful at all, we will actually think God into His world—not dismiss Him from
His world, as many are trying to do. We will allow Him by faith to be in our
beings what He actually is in His world. The idea that God exists and that He is
sovereign in the heavens is absolutely fundamental to human morality. Our view
of human decency is also involved in this. Decency is that quality which is
proper or becoming. Human decency depends upon an adequate and wholesome concept
of God. Those who take the position that there is no God cannot possibly hold a
right and proper view of human nature. That is evident in God’s revelation.
There is not a man or woman anywhere who can hold an adequate view of our human
nature until he or she accepts the fact that we came from God and that we shall
return to God again. We who have admitted Jesus Christ into our lives as Savior
and Lord are happy indeed that we did so. In matters of health care, we are
familiar with the custom of a “second opinion.” If I go to a doctor and he or
she advises me to have surgery, I can leave that office and consult with another
specialist about my condition. Concerning our decision to receive Jesus Christ,
we surely would have been ill-advised to go out and try to get a second opinion!
Jesus Christ is God’s last word to us. There is no other. God has headed up all
of our help and forgiveness and blessing in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son.
In our dark day, God has given us Jesus as the Light of the world. Those who
refuse Him give themselves over to the outer darkness that will prevail
throughout the eternal ages. We may not like what the Great Physician tells us
about ourselves and our sin. But where else can we go? Peter supplied the answer
to that question. “`Lord,’ he said, `to whom shall we go? You have the words of
eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God’.” This is
the Savior whom God is offering. He is the eternal Son, equal to the Father in
His Godhead, co-eternal and of one substance with the Father. He is speaking. We
should listen!


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  CHAPTER 4: - CHAPTER 3: JESUS, HEIR OF ALL THINGS
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REBELLION AND SIN have left a monstrous blight upon the earth that God created.
But we who have come to trust this Creator God and the written revelation He has
left for us are convinced of two truths. One, heaven and earth are a unity,
designed and created by the one God. Two, this sovereign God did not make the
universe to be an everlasting contradiction; a day of restoration lies ahead.
When we approach the letter to the Hebrews, we discover a revealed truth within
the writer’s insistence that God has appointed Jesus, the eternal Son, “through
whom he made the universe,” as “heir of all things” (Hebrews 1:2). With that
expression, the writer is asking us to stretch our minds and expand our
understanding. See it again: God has appointed His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,
the One who made the worlds in space, to be the eternal heir of “all things.”
Perhaps in our day and age it does not sound very important that Christ is the
heir of all things. That is because we may be applying our own restricted
meaning to the words “all things.” We use the expression to denote the
circumstances of life as they come along, easy or hard, simple or complex. But
in these opening lines of the Hebrews letter the Holy Spirit is trying to give
us a particular and significant meaning for the “all things” that are committed
to Jesus Christ. “All things” equals the universe When the words all things are
used in the Bible as they are found here, they are the theological equivalent of
the word “universe” as used by the philosophers. Admittedly, this is not an easy
concept for us to grasp. We are not used to stretching our minds! The preachers
of our generation are failing us. They are not forcing us to crank up our minds
and to exercise our souls in the contemplation of God’s eternal themes. Too many
preachers are satisfied to dwell primarily on the escape element in
Christianity. I acknowledge that the escape element is real. No one is more sure
of it than I. I am going to escape a much-deserved hell because of Christ’s
death on the cross and His resurrection from the grave. But if we continue to
emphasize that truth to the exclusion of all else, Christian believers will
never fully grasp what the Scriptures are teaching us about all of the eternal
purposes of God. This same observation is true also of those who are intrigued
with just the social and ethical aspects of Christianity. These may be very
fulfilling and engaging, but if that is where we stop, we will never comprehend
the greater promises and the loftier plans of the God who loves us and who has
called us. We must get serious As I have said before, for a great number of
unthinking people Christianity has come down to this: a nice, simple, relaxing
way of having good clean fun, with the assurance that when this earthly life is
over we will still go to heaven. We need to take ourselves by the scruff of the
neck and vow, “I am going to think this thing through! I am going to pray
through and lay hold of God’s meaning for my life, for my witness and for my
future!” Our Lord is trying to show us His amazing and significant plans for our
eternal future. In our relationships down here on earth, we learn of a father
who has decided he will prepare an inheritance for his son. He is going to
arrange for his son to come into possession of all that is in his estate:
properties, bank accounts, stocks and bonds, possessions. The son will receive
title to the entire estate when the inheritance becomes effective. Think of it!
The son is coming into an inheritance none of which he ever owned or possessed.
But that is not the case with the title and possessions and authority and power
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Already He is Lord. As the risen, eternal Son, He is
seated in the heavenlies awaiting the day of universal consummation. In his
Gospel, the apostle John has introduced us to the eternal Son, who from the
beginning was the Word of God: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him
all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him
was life, and that life was the light of men. (John 1:1-4) Before there was an
atom or a molecule, before there was a star or a galaxy, before there was light
or motion, before there was matter or mass, the eternal Son was God. He was. He
existed. He would have been there even if there had not been accretion, for He
was the self-existent God. Therefore, all thing sin all places have always
belonged to Him. God has a master plan God is planning to do some wonderful and
spectacular things with His vast creation. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians,
gave us a little glimpse into the future of the redeemed: He has made known to
us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in
Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their
fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head,
even Christ. (Ephesians 1:9-10) The apostle is assuring us that even as an
architect builder gathers the necessary materials needed to fashion the
structure he has designed, so God will gather all things together. And how will
He do that? By “bringing all things in heaven and on earth together under one
head, even Christ.” If we will give the Scriptures attention, we will learn from
them that a great future day is coming in which God will prove the essential
unity of His creation. That spectacular display will be correlated and fulfilled
in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. God will make it plain that all things
have derived their form from Christ; they have received their meaning by the
power of His word; and they have maintained their place and order through Him.
Jesus Christ is God creating. Jesus Christ is God redeeming. Jesus Christ is God
completing and harmonizing. Jesus Christ is God bringing together all things
after the counsel of His own will. Not yet do we see it After that flight of
anticipation for a future still coming, I must admit that we earthbound
creatures do not yet see it or sense it like that. Let me speak again of our
acknowledged human shortcomings, even those that have to do with our faith. It
is very hard for us to envision the risen Christ Jesus as He is now glorified at
the right hand of the Majesty on high. At best “we see but a poor reflection” (1
Corinthians 13:12). At worst we are stone blind! Not always can we see the hand
of God in the things around us. We experience in this life only unfinished
segments of God’s great eternal plan. We do not see the hosts of heaven in the
“cloud of witnesses” around us. We do not see the “spirits of righteous men made
perfect” (Hebrews 12:23) or the beckoning row on row of principalities or the
shining ranks of powers throughout the universe. In this time of our
incompleteness, we do not comprehend the glory that will be ours in that future
day when leaning on the arm of our heavenly Bridegroom we are led into the
presence of the Father in heaven with exceeding joy. We do our best to exercise
faith. Yet we see the future consummation only dimly and imperfectly. The writer
to the Hebrews has tried to help us in the proper exercise of our faith. He has
done so with his amazing statement that our Lord Jesus Christ is the heir of all
things in God’s far-flung creation. It is a concept having to do with everything
that God has made in His vast universe. Everything has been ordered, created and
laid out so that it becomes the garment of Deity or the universal living
expression of Himself to the world. When we read that God has appointed Jesus,
the Son, to be the heir of all things, the reference is to the whole creation of
God as it will be seen in its future, ultimate perfection. We cannot believe
that God has left anything to chance in His creative scheme. That includes
everything from the tiniest blade of grass on earth to the mightiest galaxy in
the distant heavens above. All things—what is included? “Heir of all things.”
What does that phrase really include? It includes angels, seraphim, cherubim,
ransomed men and women of all ages, matter, mind, law, spirit, value, meaning.
It includes life and events on the varied levels of being. It includes all of
these and more—and God’s great interest embraces them all! Are you beginning to
gain a new appreciation of God’s great universal purpose? I am not simply
assuming the role of philosopher. The purpose of God is to bring together—to
acquaint all rational beings with all other segments within His complex
creation. I repeat that I believe in the essential unity of all God’s creation.
Thus, I believe a day is coming when each part of God’s creation will recognize
its own essential oneness with very other part. Toward that day the whole
creation is moving. When I wrote about this concept in an editorial in Alliance
Life, a reader hastened to accuse me of being pantheistic. I am not pantheistic.
And the essential unity of God’s creation is not pantheism. Pantheism teaches
that God is all things and that all things are God. According to pantheism, if
you want to know what God is you must come to know all things. Then, if you
could put all things in your arms, you would have God. Pantheism is
ridiculous—claiming and teaching that all things are God. God is imminent in His
universe. That I believe. But beyond that, He is transcendent above His universe
and infinitely separated from it, for He is the Creator God. Not a new concept
These basic concepts—the mysteries of creation and God’s unity forever displayed
in His works—are not new. They were believed by the great Christian souls and
minds of the earlier centuries. One of the notable Scottish Moravian authors was
James Montgomery. Out of his writing comes this beautiful poem expressing the
unity he sensed in God’s creation: The glorious universe around, The heavens
with all their train, Sun, moon and stars are firmly bound In one mysterious
chain. The earth, the ocean and the sky To form one world agree; Where all that
walk or swim or fly Compose one family. God in creation must display His wisdom
and His might; Where all His works with all His ways Harmoniously unite.
Montgomery’s use of the word harmoniously is impressive. It affirms that
finally, when sin has been purged from God’s universe, everything in creation
will be consummate with everything else. There will be universal cosmic harmony.
We are only too aware that the universe as we know it is in discord. On every
side sounds the raucous rattle of sin. But in that coming day sin will be purged
away and all things that walk, creep, crawl, swim or fly will be found to
comprise one family indeed. And the church, too Allow me one more point. I want
to say something about the body of Christian believers and this universal unity
that one day will be established in the person of Jesus Christ. If I could ask,
“Do you believe in the communion of saints?” what would be your reply? Would the
question make you uncomfortable? I suspect many Protestants would chide me right
here, feeling I was getting too close to doctrinal beliefs held by ecumenists or
perhaps by Catholics. I am not referring to ecumenicity and dreams of
organizational church union. I am gazing ahead in faith to God’s great day of
victory, harmony and unity, when sin is no longer present in the creation. In
that great coming day of consummation, the children of God—the believing family
of God—will experience a blessed harmony and communion of the Spirit. I surely
agree with the foresight of the English poet, John Brighton, who caught a
glimpse of a coming day of fellowship among the people of God. He wrote: In one
eternal bond of love, One fellowship of mind, The saints below and saints above
Their bliss and glory find. I believe that is scriptural. I do not think anyone
should throw out the great doctrine of the communion of saints just because the
ecumenists embrace it. Some day we will comprehend The unity of all things in
Christ is a concept every believer should lay hold of. When we witness the
future day of Christ’s triumph, when He returns and we reach the consummation of
all things, then we will fully comprehend the necessity for the “all things” in
God’s eternal plan. Many people are having their greatest battles over their
deepening sense of futility and uselessness. It is important that we grasp God’s
revelation that every one of us is essential to His great plan for the ages. You
will seek answers in vain from fellow men and women. Seek your answers rather
from God and His Word. He is sovereign; He is still running His world. God wants
us to know that He must have all the parts in order to compose His great eternal
symphony. He would have us assured that each one of us is indispensable to His
grand theme!


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  CHAPTER 5: - CHAPTER 4: JESUS, GOD’S EXPRESS IMAGE
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I WISH I COULD comprehend everything that the inspired Word is trying to reveal
in the statement that Jesus, the eternal Son, is the “radiance of God’s glory
and the exact representation of his being” (Hebrews 1:3). This much I do know
and understand: Jesus Christ is Himself God. As a believer and a disciple, I
rejoice that the risen, ascended Christ is now my High Priest and intercessor at
the heavenly throne. The writer to the Hebrews commands our attention with this
descriptive, striking language: In these last days has spoke to us by his Son,…
[who is] the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being,
sustaining all things by his powerful word. (Hebrews 1:2-3) We trust the
Scriptures because we believe they are inspired—God-breathed. Because we believe
them, we believe and confess that Jesus was very God of very God. Nothing
anywhere in this vast, complex world is as beautiful and as compelling as the
record of the Incarnation, the act by which God was made flesh to dwell among us
in our own human history. This Jesus, the Christ of God, who made the universe
and who sustains all things by his powerful word, was a tiny babe among us. He
was comforted to sleep when He whimpered in His mother’s arms. Great, indeed, is
the mystery of godliness. Yet, in this context, some things strange and tragic
have been happening in recent years within Christianity. For one, some ministers
have advised their congregations not to be greatly concerned if theologians
dispute the virgin birth of Jesus. The issue, they say, is not important. For
another thing, some professing Christians are saying they do not want to be
pinned down as to what they really believe about the uniqueness and reality of
the deity of Jesus, the Christ. We are convinced We live in a society where we
cannot always be sure that traditional definitions still hold. But I stand where
I always have stood. And the genuine believer, no matter where he may be found
in the world, humbly but surely is convinced about the person and position of
Jesus Christ. Such a believer lives with calm and confident assurance that Jesus
Christ is truly God and that He is everything the inspired writer said He is. He
is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.” This
view of Christ in Hebrews harmonizes with and supports what Paul said of Jesus
when he described Him as “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all
creation”(Colossians 1:15), in whom “all the fullness of the Deity lives in
bodily form” (Colossians 2:9). Bible-believing Christians stand together on
this. They may have differing opinions about the mode of baptism, church polity
or the return of the Lord. But they agree on the deity of the eternal Son. Jesus
Christ is of one Substance with the Father—begotten, not created (Nicene Creed).
In our defense of this truth we must be very careful and very bold—belligerent,
if need be. The more we study the words of our Lord Jesus Christ when He lived
on earth among us, the more certain we are about who He is. Some critics have
protested, “Jesus did not claim to be God, you know. He only said He was the Son
of Man.” It is true that Jesus used the term Son of Man frequently. If I can say
it reverently, He seemed proud or at least delighted that He was a man, the Son
of man. But He testified boldly, even among those who were His sworn enemies,
that He was God. He said with great forcefulness that He had come from the
Father in heaven and that He was equal with the Father. We know what we believe.
Let no one with soft words and charming persuasion argue us into admission that
Jesus Christ is any less than very God of very God. God became flesh in Jesus
Christ The writer of Hebrews was informing the persecuted, discouraged Jewish
Christians concerning God’s final and complete revelation in Jesus Christ. He
spoke of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Then he declared that Another had
come. Although made flesh, He was none other than this same God. Not the Father,
for God the Father was never incarnated and never will be. Rather, He is God the
eternal Son, the radiance of the Father’s glory and the exact representation of
His being. Something has happened to the word glory, especially as it relates to
the description of deity. Glory is one of those beautiful, awesome words that
have been dragged down until they have lost much of their meaning. The old
artists may have had something to do with it, depicting the glory of Jesus
Christ as a luminous halo—a shining neon hoop around His head. But the glory of
Jesus Christ was never a luminous ring around the head. It was never a misty
yellow light. We are inclined to irreverence I have a difficult time excusing
our careless and irreverent attitudes concerning our Lord and Savior. I feel
strongly that worshipping Christians should never be guilty of using a
theological word or expression in a popular or careless sense unless we explain
what we are doing. It is only proper when we speak of the glory of God the Son
to actually refer to that uniqueness of His person and character that excites
our admiration and wonder. To those who love this One and serve Him, His glory
does not mean yellow light or neon hoops. His true glory is that which causes
the heavenly beings to cover their faces in His presence. It brings forth their
worshipful praise: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts!” The glory of the
Lord is that forth-shining that gives Him universal praise. It demands love and
worship from His created beings. It makes Him known throughout His creation. It
is the character of God that is the glory of God. God is not glorified until men
and women think gloriously of Him. Yet it is not what people think of God that
matters. God once dwelt in light which no one could approach. But He desired to
speak, to express Himself. So He created the heavens and the earth, filling
earth with His creatures, including mankind. He expected man to respond to that
in Him which is glorious, admirable and excellent. That response from His
creation in love and worship is His glory. When we say that Christ is the
radiance of God’s glory, we are saying that Christ is the shining forth of all
that God is. Yes, He is the shining forth, the effulgence. When God expressed
Himself, it was in Christ Jesus. Christ was all and in all. He is the exact
representation of God’s person. “Exact representation,” “person” The word person
in this context is difficult of comprehension. Church history testifies to the
difficulties theologians have had with it. Sometimes the person of God has been
called substance. Sometimes it has been called essence. The Godhead cannot be
comprehended by the human mind. But the eternal God sustains, upholds, stands
beneath all that composes the vast created universe. And Jesus Christ has been
presented to us as the exact representation of God’s person—all that God is. The
words exact representation, of course, have their origin in the pressed-upon-wax
seal that authenticated a dignitary’s document or letter. The incarnate Jesus
Christ gives visible shape and authenticity to deity. When the invisible God
became visible, He was Jesus Christ. When the God who could not be see nor
touched came to dwell among us, He was Jesus Christ. I have not suggested this
picture of our Lord Jesus Christ as a kind of theological argument. I am simply
trying to state, in the best way I can, what the Holy Spirit has spoken through
the consecrated writer of the letter to the Hebrews. What is God like? What is
God like? Throughout the ages, that question has been asked by more people than
any other. Our little children are only a few years old when they come in their
innocent simplicity and inquire of us, “What is God like?” Philip the apostle
asked it for himself and for all mankind: “`Show us the Father and that will be
enough for us’“ (John 14:8). Philosophers repeatedly have asked the question.
Religionists and thinkers have wrestled with it for milleniums. Paul preached at
Athens and spoke of mankind’s quest for the “Unknown God.” He declared God’s
intention that mankind “`would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find
him, though he is not far from each one of us. “For in him we live and move and
have our being”’“ (Acts 17:27-28). Paul was speaking about the presence of God
in the universe—a Presence that becomes the living, vibrant voice of God causing
the human heart to reach out after Him. Alas! Man has not known where to reach
because of sin. Sin has blinded his eyes, dulled his hearing and made his heart
unresponsive. Sin has made man like a bird without a tongue. It has within
itself the instinct and the desire to sing, but not the ability. The poet Keats
expressed beautifully, even brilliantly, the fantasy of the nightingale that had
lost its tongue. Not being able to express the deep instinct to sing, the bird
died of an over-powering suffocation within. Eternity in our hearts God made
mankind in His own image. He “set eternity in the hearts of men” (Ecclesiastes
3:11). What a graphic picture! How much it explains ourselves to us! We are
creatures of time—time in our hands, our feet, our bodies—that causes us to grow
old and to die. Yet all the while we have eternity in our hearts! One of our
great woes as fallen people living in a fallen world is the constant warfare
between the eternity in our hearts and the time in our bodies. This is why we
can never be satisfied without God. This is why the question “What is God like?”
continues to spring from every one of us. God has set the values of eternity in
the hearts of every person made in His image. As human beings, we have ever
tried to satisfy ourselves by maintaining a quest, a search. We have not
forgotten that God was. We have only forgotten what God is like. Philosophy has
tried to give us answers. But the philosophical concepts concerning God have
always been contradictory. The philosopher is like a blind person trying to
paint someone’s portrait. The blind person can feel the face of his subject and
try to put some brush strokes on canvas. But the project is doomed before it is
begun. The best that philosophy can do is to feel the face of the universe in
some ways, then try to paint God as philosophy sees Him. Most philosophers
confess belief in a “presence” somewhere in the universe. Some call it a
“law”—or “energy” or “mind” or” essential virtue.” Thomas Edison said if he
lived long enough, he thought he could invent an instrument so sensitive that it
could find God. Edison was an acknowledged inventor. He had a great mind and he
may have been a philosopher. But Edison knew no more about God or what God is
like than the boy or girl who delivers the morning newspaper. Religions have no
answers The religions of the world have always endeavored to give answers
concerning God. The Pharisees, for example, declare that God is light. So they
worship the sun and fire and forms of light. Other religions have suggested that
God is conscience, or that He may be found in virtue. For some religions, there
is solace in the belief that God is a principle upholding the universe. There
are religions that teach that God is all justice. They live in terror. Others
say that God is all love. They become arrogant. Like the philosophers,
religionists have concepts and views, ideas and theories. In none of them has
mankind found satisfaction. Greek paganism had a pantheon of gods. They saw the
sun rising in the east and moving westward in a blaze of fire and called it
Apollo. They heard the wind roaring along the sea coast and named her Eos,
mother of the winds and the stars. They saw the waters of the ocean churning
themselves into foam and named him Neptune. They imagined a goddess hovering
over the fruitful fields of grain each year and gave her the name Ceres. Given
such a pagan outlook, there is no end to the fantasies of gods and goddesses. In
Romans 1 God has described the human condition that incubates such aberrations.
Men and women, intrigued by their sin, did not want the revelation of a living,
speaking God. They deliberately ignored the only true God, crowded Him out of
their lives. In His place they invented gods of their own: birds and animals and
reptiles. Often enough we have been warned that the morality of any nation or
civilization will follow its concepts of God. A parallel truth is less often
heard: When a church begins to think impurely and inadequately about God,
decline sets in. We must think nobly and speak worthily of God. Our God is
sovereign. We would do well to follow our old-fashioned forebears who knew what
it was to kneel in breathless, wondering adoration in the presence of the God
who is willing to claim us as His own through grace. Jesus is what God is like
Some are still asking, “What is God like?” God Himself has given us a final,
complete answer. Jesus said, “`Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father,’“
(John 14:9). For those of us who have put our faith in Jesus Christ, the quest
of the ages is over. Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, came to dwell among us,
being “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.”
For us, I say, the quest is over because God has now revealed Himself to us.
What Jesus is, the Father is. Whoever looks on the Lord Jesus Christ looks upon
all of God. Jesus is God thinking God’s thoughts. Jesus is God feeling the way
God feels. Jesus is God now doing what God does. In John’s Gospel, we have the
record of Jesus telling the people of His day that He could do nothing of
Himself. He said, “`The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he
sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does’“
(John 5:19). It was on the strength of such testimony that the Jewish leaders
wanted to stone Him for blasphemy. How strange it is that some of the modern
cults try to tell us that Jesus Christ never claimed to be God. Yet those who
heard Him 2,000 years ago wanted to kill Him on the spot because He claimed to
be one with the Father. In Jesus the revelation is complete God’s revelation of
Himself is complete in Jesus Christ, the Son. No longer need we ask, “What is
God like?” Jesus is God. He has translated God into terms we can understand. We
know how He feels toward a fallen woman: “`Neither do I condemn you,’ Jesus
declared. `Go now and leave your life of sin’“ (John 8:11). We know how He feels
toward fishermen and workmen and common people: “`Come, follow me,’ Jesus said,
`and I will make you fishers of men’“ (Mark 1:17). We know what God thinks of
babies and little children: “Jesus said, `Let the little children come to me,
and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as
these’“(Matthew 19:14). Jesus has been in our world. He spoke and taught about
all these things and about everything that concerns us. The record shows that
His listeners were amazed and astonished, almost to the point of being
frightened. “The crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one
who had authority” (Matthew 7:28-29). “`No one ever spoke the way this man
does’“ (John 7:46). When you read your New Testament and realize afresh the
attitudes and the utterances of our Lord Jesus Christ, you will know exactly how
God feels. Where can we look in all the vast creation around us to find anything
as beautiful—as utterly, awesomely, deeply beautiful—as the Incarnation? God
became flesh to dwell among us, to redeem us, to restore us, to save us
completely. Young or old or in between, we join in Lowell Mason’s hymn of
praise: O could I speak the matchless worth, O could I sound the glories forth
Which in my Savior shine, I’d soar and touch the heavenly strings, And vie with
Gabriel while he sings In notes almost divine. I’d sing the characters He bears,
And all the forms of love He wears, Exalted on His throne: In loftiest songs of
sweetest praise, I would to everlasting days Make all His glories known. There
is a closing stanza which anticipates the welcome we shall receive in heaven and
the everlasting career awaiting us there: Soon the delightful day will come When
my dear Lord will bring me home, And I shall see His face: Then with my Savior,
Brother, Friend, A blest eternity I’ll spend, Triumphant in His grace. The
convinced man who breathed those words was saying that Jesus is God! And the
world above and the poorer world beneath join in response: “Amen, amen! Jesus is
God!”


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  CHAPTER 6: - CHAPTER 5: JESUS, LORD OF THE ANGELS
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OUR PROTESTANT CHURCHES have never been very enthusiastic about the Bible
references to the many kind s of angels and angelic beings which make up the
Lord’s heavenly host. Because we do not see them, we generally do not discuss
them. There seem to be many Christians who are not sure what they should believe
about God’s heavenly messengers. In short, where the matter of Bible teaching
about angels is concerned, we have come into a sad state of neglect and
ignorance. Personally, I despise the cynical references to angels and the comic
jokes about them. The preacher who reported his guardian angel had had a hard
time keeping up with him as he sped over the highway spoke in bad taste and
probably in ignorance. If that is the best a preacher can say about the guardian
angels or God’s angelic host, he needs to go back to his Bible. The writer of
the letter to the Hebrews gives his readers a vivid, vital portrait of Jesus,
the eternal Son. He knows their familiarity, through the Old Testament, with the
concept and ministry of angels. He trades on that knowledge to point out the
overwhelming superiority of the victorious Jesus as He ministers in the heavenly
world above: Again, when God brings his first-born into the world, he says, “Let
all God’s angels worship him.” In speaking of the angels he says, “He makes his
angels winds, his servants flames of fire.” But about the Son he says, “Your
throne, O God, will last for ever and ever, and righteousness will be the
scepter of your kingdom.” (Hebrews 1:6-8) In this revealing comparison between
angels and the Messiah-Savior, Jesus Christ, we need to bear in mind that the
ministries of angels were very well known and highly respected among the Jews.
It should be of great significance to us, then, that the writer would assure
them that Jesus our Lord is infinitely above and superior to the brightest
angels who inhabit the kingdom of God. Never has there been a created angelic
being of whom it could be said, as it was said of Christ, He is “the radiance of
God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Hebrews 1:3). The
readers needed encouragement This full- orbed vision of the glories and
credentials of Jesus Christ was needed just then by the persecuted Hebrew
Christians. And to us in this 20th century of the Christian church, the same
revelation comes with God’s authority and meaning. The word that assured the
Hebrews reveals to us that the eternal Son was preeminent above Abraham, above
Moses, above Aaron and the priests of the Old Testament era. Much of our Bible
study tends to be one-sided. We choose to read what we like. We neglect those
portions that seem to have less interest for us. Do you agree? Among Protestant
Christians for several years there has been a rather mystifying psychology. Our
Roman Catholic neighbors in their hymnody and teaching have given considerable
recognition to the holy angels. Protestants seem to have reacted in a reverse
way. It is as though we have decided to say nothing at all about the angels. In
Old Testament times and in the early Christian church, there were churchmen and
scholars who gave much attention to matters relating to angelic hosts and their
appearance. When Paul spoke of the creation to the Colossians, he mentioned both
the visible and the invisible world, naming thrones, powers, rulers, authorities
(Colossians 1:16). Often these have been perceived of as ranks or degrees of
angelic beings and their authority and power. Paul mentioned the existence of
archangels in the heavens when he wrote to the Thessalonians. “The Lord himself
will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the
archangel” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). No, we are not prepared to argue against the
reality of either the visible or the invisible world. Because the religion of
the Hebrews was divinely given, it reflected the two worlds accurately. Science
demands measurable evidence Consider why we think like we do in today’s society.
We are participants in a new age—a scientific age, an atomic age, a space age.
We have been conditioned by our sciences. No longer have we any great sense of
wonder or appreciation for what God continues to do in His creation. Amid our
complex engineering and technological accomplishments, it is difficult for us to
look out on God’s world as we should. As believers in God and in His plan for
mankind, we must not yield to the philosophies that surround us. We have a
God-given message to proclaim to our generation: The world was made by Almighty
God. It bears the stamp of deity upon it and within it. An architect leaves his
stamp upon the great buildings he has designed. A notable artist leaves his mark
and personality on his paintings. The same principle applies to the visible and
invisible worlds. We call them two worlds, although probably they are but one.
God’s stamp as designer and creator is there, just as His own mark and
personality can be found throughout the sacred Scriptures. God has told us much
about His invisible world and kingdom. In that telling He has revealed many
things about the heavenly beings that do His will. Angels are an order of
transcendent beings. They are shown to be holy and they are shown to be sexless.
Jesus in His earthly ministry, speaking of the resurrection and the coming
kingdom, said that we will be without sexual identification in that heavenly
abode—”`like the angels’“ (Mark 12:25). But we will not become angels in the
life to come, contrary to what some have believed since childhood. God makes it
clear that we do not change from one species to another. We are redeemed human
beings, and we look forward in faith to the day of our resurrection and
glorification as redeemed human beings. Angels are one order of created being;
humans are another (Hebrews 2:16). Angels and Christians We are probably most
familiar with angels as a result of the Christmas story. They heralded Jesus’
birth. “Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel,
praising God …“ (Luke 2:13). Jesus Himself spoke of “legions” of angels. “`Do
you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal
more than twelve legions of angels?’“(Matthew 26:53). The writer to the Hebrews
refers to their number as “thousands upon thousands” (Hebrews 12:22). And David
the psalmist refers to “the chariots of God” as numbering “tens of thousands and
thousands of thousands” (Psalms 68:17). No one is able to answer conclusively
why God made the heavenly host so numerous. Going back into the Old Testament,
we note that angels apparently had some function at the creation. In His
conversation with Job, God spoke of laying earth’s “cornerstone” and remarked
that “all the angels shouted for joy” (Job 38:7). Angels figured in the giving
of the Law at Sinai. “The law,” wrote the apostle Paul, “was put into effect
through angels by a mediator”(Galatians 3:19). An angel—Gabriel by name—appeared
to the virgin Mary with the announcement that she would give birth to a Son whom
she was to name Jesus (Luke 1:26-31). In telling the story of Lazarus, the
destitute beggar, Jesus declared that “angels carried him to Abraham’s side”
(Luke 16:22). It is a picture almost reminiscent of the “ticker tape” parades
welcoming our nation’s heroes. That righteous beggar was escorted into the
precincts of heaven with the angels leading the procession. I am convinced that
the angels of God have a large role in preserving the righteous. Although most
of us do not talk about it, Jesus said of the children, “Their angels in heaven
always see the face of my Father in heaven” (Matthew 18:10). In all that Jesus
said about angels, no words are more significant for us members of a fallen race
than His statement that “there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God
over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:10). We read with tender feeling of Jesus’
agony and stress as He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. When He had prayed to
the point of exhaustion as He faced betrayal and the coming crucifixion, “an
angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him” (Luke 22:43). At Jesus’
resurrection, angels were much in evidence. An angel rolled the stone from the
tomb’s entrance. Angels announced to Jesus’ distraught followers the joyful
tidings of His resurrection. Anyone who wants to can put a film of unbelief over
his or her eyes and thus deny the existence and activity of angels. But in doing
so, he or she is denying clear biblical teaching. Some protest the discussion of
angels, saying, “Let’s be practical!” By which they mean, “Let’s limit our
considerations to three-dimensional, sense-perceived objects.” There is a day
coming when the answers to our questions will be plain. On that day we will
discover that the ministries of the angelic beings are indeed practical and very
real. I have never seen an angel Now, you probably are wondering how much
personal experience I have had with angelic beings. “Have I ever seen an angel?”
I have never seen an angel. Nor have I ever claimed to be a visionary person. My
calling has been to pray and study and to try to find from the Scriptures what
God is doing and what He has promised to do. I proclaim the teaching of the
Scriptures that the angels of God are busy in their special ministries. I base
that observation on the Word of God, not upon any facet of my own human
experience. The Bible does not tell any of us to spend our time trying to get in
touch with angels. It does tell us that angels exist and that they are busy.
Their activity is frequently mentioned in the Scriptures. I am not going to skip
over those references, ignoring them, as some do. At times we talk about the
providential care of God without really knowing what we say and what we mean.
Some Christians testify to “coincidences” in their lives—perhaps two very
important things occurring at just the right time and place. Hundreds of years
ago Thomas Aquinas wrote to the Christian church, saying, “The function of God’s
angels is to execute the plan of divine providence, even in earthly things.”
Then John Calvin followed with his teaching that “angels are the dispensers and
administrators of the divine beneficence toward us.” God has His own ways and
means of working out His plans on behalf of His believing children. We ought not
to ask the Lord for a printed list of rules about His providences and guidance.
As we trust in the Spirit, live in the Spirit and walk in the Spirit, we will
realize that God is always on our side. Angels in disguise This was true in my
own experience. After I had found the Lord as a youth, I was attending a church
that seemed to be of very little spiritual help to me. Actually, it was the kind
of church in which it would be easy to backslide. One Sunday morning I awoke in
a bad mood. “I am not going to church today!” I decided. So I went for a walk in
the country. I did not have any golf clubs to use as an excuse. Neither did I
tell the Lord I was going to worship amid the beauties of nature. I knew within
myself that I really was backsliding—going in the wrong direction that Sunday
morning. I turned aside to walk through a grassy field. In the middle of the
field my foot suddenly kicked something hidden in the grass—something red. I
stooped and picked up an old red-bound book. It looked as if it had been in the
rain, had dried out, had been rained on again and dried out again. The book was
not some old literary classic. It was not a discarded book of cheap fiction. It
was a Christian handbook: a thousand questions and answers for anyone interested
in Bible study. I opened it. And after I had scanned a few pages of biblical
teaching, I became impressed by the fact that I should have been in church with
other believers that morning. I threw the book back on the ground and started
for home, wondering who had put such a message directly in the way of a
discouraged Christian boy who was too gloomy to go to church. I am not saying
that the book was placed there by an angel or some other heavenly visitor in
just the right spot. In all likelihood it was dropped in that place by someone
who had chanced to pass through the field. But in the providence of God it was
that day the reminder I needed of the goodness and faithfulness of God in my
life. I recall still another personal experience during my early Christian life
as an unsettled young man. Actually, I was doing some “bumming around,” as we
used to say. I was away from home, away from the church and away from everything
that was right. I would spend weekends “riding the rods.” I had little money,
and I would hitch free rides on the freight trains, riding the rods under the
boxcars. The Lord chose a particular Sunday to teach me the lesson I had to
learn. I do not remember now which town was involved, but I was involved and so
was the Lord. The freight train slowed down, then braked to a stop. The car that
I was riding halted directly alongside a church yard. The train had hardly
stopped when the church bells began to ring. They rang more loudly and more
insistently than any bells I have heard before or since! I have sat under strong
preaching, but never has a preacher laid conviction on my soul like those church
bells did that Sunday morning. I do not know if they were Methodist or
Presbyterian or Anglican church bells. But they reminded me that I should not be
riding freight trains. Rather, I should be back where I belonged. And, believe
me, very soon I was back where I belonged—and straightened out spiritually, too!
How was all of that arranged? The right day, the right hour, the right place. If
I had walked up to the engineer to inquire if he was an angel, he probably would
have smiled, spit some tobacco juice over the cab window sill and replied, “Not
that I know of!” But this I am sure of: when that engineer put on those brakes,
it was by the providence of God that I would be halted practically in a church
yard, with the bells pleading, “Go back, young man! Go back, young man.” God
knows us well My point is that God knows us so well that He does a number of
little providential things at the very moment of our need. We think we have
planned and executed everything all by ourselves. We are not aware that it has
been God’s plan and that He has been out there ahead of us the whole time. It
was some years later, as I read Psalm 71 in the familiar King James Version,
that I noticed for the first time the words, “Thou hast given commandment to
save me” (Psalms 71:2). My heart has been warm ever since with that thought. God
has sent His Word throughout all of the earth to save me. You may be critical if
you wish. Do with that text as you will. You may even have some theological
problem with it. But God has “given commandment,” and these words are for me!
God saw me, a lonely, lost boy in rural western Pennsylvania and His commandment
went throughout His creation. I am convinced every angel in heaven heard it. And
I believed on the Son of God and turned myself over to Him for salvation!
Nothing can compare with this knowledge. God and His Word are on my side. The
living Word of God has charged Himself with the responsibility to forgive me, to
cleanse me, to perfect that which concerns me and to keep me in the way
everlasting. We are living in a world full of God’s created beings—many of them
not seen by us or those around us. We ought to thank God for the angels and for
God’s providential circumstances everyday. As one of the old saints long ago
remarked, “If you will thank God for your providences, you will never lack a
providence to thank God for!”


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  CHAPTER 7: - CHAPTER 6: JESUS, STANDARD OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
========================================================================

THE MESSAGE TO FIRST CENTURY Hebrew Christians was precise and direct: Let Jesus
Christ be your motivation to love righteousness and to hate iniquity. In our
present century our spiritual obligations and responsibilities are no different.
The character and attributes of Jesus, the eternal Son, have not changed and
will not change. But about the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, will last for
ever and ever, and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom. You have
loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you
above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.” (Hebrews 1:8-9)
Without excuse There is a tendency for people to relegate everything in the
realm of righteousness or iniquity to deity, whatever their concept of deity may
be. For the true Christian, however, our risen Lord made a promise to us before
His death and resurrection. That promise effectively removes our excuses and
makes us responsible: When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you
into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears,
and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking
from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is
mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it
known to you. (John 16:13-15) I will readily admit that we are not God. We
cannot do in ourselves what God can do. But God created us as human beings, and
if we have the anointing of the Holy Spirit and His presence in our lives, we
should be able to do what Jesus, the Son of Man, was able to do in His earthly
ministry. Please do not close this book and turn away when I tell you of my
persuasion. I am persuaded that our Lord Jesus, while He was on earth, did not
accomplish His powerful deeds in the strength of His deity. I believe He did
them in the strength and authority of His Spirit-anointed humanity. My reasoning
is this: If Jesus had come to earth and performed His ministry in the power of
His deity, what He did would have been accepted as a matter of course. Cannot
God do anything He wants to do? No one would have questioned His works as the
works of deity. But Jesus veiled His deity and ministered as a man. It is
noteworthy, however, that He did not begin His ministry—His deeds of authority
and power—until He had been anointed with the Holy Spirit. I know there are
erudite scholars and theological experts who will dispute my conclusion.
Nevertheless, I hold it true. Jesus Christ, in the power and authority of His
Spirit—anointed humanity, stilled the waves, quieted the winds, healed the sick,
gave sight to the blind, exercised complete authority over demons and raised the
dead. He did all the miraculous things He was moved to do among men not as God,
which would not have been miraculous at all, but as a Spirit-anointed man.
Remarkable! This is why I say that Jesus Christ has taken away our human excuses
forever. He limited Himself to the same power available to any one of us, the
power of the Holy Spirit. Review with me the message of the apostle Peter to
Cornelius and his Gentile household: God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the
Holy Spirit and power,… he went around doing good and healing all who were under
the power of the devil, because God was with him.(Acts 10:38) The letter to the
Hebrews says the anointing God placed upon Jesus was an anointing above His
fellows. It is my feeling that the “anointing above His fellows” was not given
because God chose to so anoint Him, but because He was willing. He could be
anointed to that extent! What did the anointing signify? Going back into the
Levitical priesthood, we discover a ritual of an anointing with a specially
prepared holy oil. Certain pungent herbs were beaten into the oil, making it
fragrant and aromatic. It was unique; Israel might not use that formula for any
other oil. When a priest was set apart and anointed, the oil was a vivid type of
the New Testament anointing of the Holy Spirit. The holy anointing oil could
only be used for the anointing of men with special ministries—priests, as I have
indicated, and kings and prophets. It was not intended for the carnal, sinful
person. In Leviticus we read of the consecration of Aaron as the first high
priest. The anointing oil and the blood from the altar are mentioned together:
“Moses took some of the anointing oil and some of the blood from the altar and
sprinkled them on Aaron and his garments. . . . So he consecrated Aaron and his
garments”(Leviticus 8:30). The fragrance of the anointing oil was unique. If
someone went near an Old Testament priest, he could say immediately, “I smell an
anointed man. I smell the holy oil!” The aroma, the pungency, the fragrance were
there. Such an anointing could not be kept a secret. In the New Testament, when
the Holy Spirit came, His presence fulfilled that whole list of fragrances found
in the holy anointing oil. When New Testament believers were anointed, that
anointing was evident. Read it in the book of Acts. “All of them were filled
with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:4). “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit
and spoke the word of God boldly”(Acts 4:31). “Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit,
looked up to heaven”(Acts 7:55). “While Peter was still speaking these words,
the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message” (Acts 10:44). The list goes
on. The Holy Spirit has not changed. His power and authority have not changed.
He is still the third Person of the eternal God head. He is among us to teach us
all we need to know about Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God. I am
suggesting—indeed, I am stating—that no one among us, man or woman, can be
genuinely anointed with the Holy Spirit and hope to keep it a secret. His or her
anointing will be evident. The anointing is no secret A Christian brother once
confided in me how he had tried to keep the fullness of the Spirit a secret
within his own life. He had made a commitment of his life to God in faith. In
answer to prayer, God had filled him with the Spirit. Within himself he said, “I
cannot tell anyone about this!” Three days passed. On the third day his wife
touched him on the arm and asked, “Everett, what has happened to you? Something
has happened to you!” And like a pent-up stream his testimony flowed out. He had
received an anointing of the Holy Spirit. The fragrance could not be hidden. His
wife knew it in the home. His life was changed. The spiritual graces and fruits
of the consecrated life cannot be hidden. It is an anointing with the oil of
gladness and joy. I am happy to tell everyone that the power of the Spirit is
glad power! Our Savior, Jesus Christ, lived His beautiful, holy life on earth
and did His healing, saving deeds of power in the strength of this oil of
gladness. We must admit that there was more of the holy oil of God on to head of
Jesus than on your head or mine—or on the head of anyone else who has ever
lived. That is not to say that God will withhold His best from anyone. But the
Spirit of God can only anoint in proportion to the willingness He finds in our
lives. In take case of Jesus, we are told that He had a special anointing
because He loved righteousness and hated iniquity. That surely gives us the clue
we need concerning the kind of persons we must be in order to receive the full
anointing and blessing from Almighty God. When Jesus was on earth, He was not
the passive, colorless, spineless person He is sometimes made out to be in
paintings and literature. He was a strong man, a man of iron will. He was able
to love with an intensity of love that burned Him up. He was able to hate with
the strongest degree of hatred against everything that was wrong and evil and
selfish and sinful. Invariably someone will object when I make a statement like
that. “I cannot believe such things about Jesus. I always thought it was a sin
to hate!” Study long and well the record and the teachings of Jesus while He was
on earth. In them lies the answer. It is a sin for the children of God not to
hate what ought to be hated. Our Lord Jesus loved righteousness, but He hated
iniquity. I think we can say He hated sin and wrong and evil perfectly! We must
hate some things If we are committed, consecrated Christians, truly disciples of
the crucified and risen Christ, there are something’s we must face. We cannot
love honesty without hating dishonesty. We cannot love purity without hating
impurity. We cannot love truth without hating lying and deceitfulness. If we
belong to Jesus Christ, we must hate evil even as He hated evil in every form.
The ability of Jesus Christ to hate that which was against God and to love that
which was full of God was the force that made Him able to receive the
anointing—the oil of gladness—in complete measure. On our human side, it is our
imperfection in loving the good and hating the evil that prevents us from
receiving the Holy Spirit in complete measure. God withholds from us because we
are unwilling to follow Jesus in His great poured-out love for what is right and
His pure and holy hatred of what is evil. Hate sin but love the sinner This
question always arises: “Did our Lord Jesus Christ hate sinners?” We already
know the answer. He loved the world. We know better than to think that Jesus
hated any sinner. Jesus never hated a sinner, but He hated the evil and
depravity that controlled the sinner. He did not hate the proud Pharisee, but He
detested the pride and self-righteousness of the Pharisee. He did not hate the
woman taken in adultery. But he acted against the harlotry that made her what
she was. Jesus hated the devil and He hated those evil spirits that He
challenged and drove out. We present-day Christians have been misled and
brainwashed, at least in a general way, by a generation of soft, pussycat
preachers. They would have us believe that to be good Christians we must be able
to purr softly and accept everything that comes along with Christian tolerance
and understanding. Such ministers never mention words like zeal and conviction
and commitment. They avoid phrases like “standing for the truth.” I am convinced
that a committed Christian will show a zealous concern for the cause of Christ.
He or she will live daily with a set of spiritual convictions taken from the
Bible. He or she will be one of the toughest to move—along with a God-given
humility—in his or her stand for Christ. Why, then, have Christian ministers so
largely departed from exhortations to love righteousness with a great,
overwhelming love, and to hate iniquity with a deep, compelling revulsion? Why
no persecution? People remark how favored the church is in this country. It does
not have to face persecution and rejection. If the truth were known, our freedom
from persecution is because we have taken the easy, the popular way. If we would
love righteousness until it became an overpowering passion, if we would renounce
everything that is evil, our day of popularity and pleasantness would quickly
end. The world would soon turn on us. We are too nice! We are too tolerant! We
are too anxious to be popular! We are too quick to make excuses for sin in its
many forms! If I could stir Christians around me to love God and hate sin, even
to the point of being a bit of a nuisance, I would rejoice. If some Christian
were to call me for counsel saying he or she is being persecuted for Jesus’
sake, I would say with feeling, “Thank God!” Vance Havner used to remark that
too many are running for something when they ought to be standing for something.
God’s people should be willing to stand! We have become so brainwashed in so
many ways that Christians are afraid to speak out against uncleanness in any
form. The enemy of our souls has persuaded us that Christianity should be a
rather casual thing—certainly not something to get excited about. Fellow
Christian, we only have a little time. We are not going to be here very long.
Our triune God demands that we engage in those things that will remain when the
world is on fire, for fire determines the value and quality of every person’s
work. I have shared these things with you because I am of the opinion that the
glad oil, the blessed anointing of the Holy Spirit, is not having opportunity to
flow freely among church members of our day. We can hardly expect any such
spiritual movement among those who proudly class themselves as liberals. They
reject the deity of Christ, the inspiration of the Bible and the divine
ministries of the Holy Spirit. How can the oil of God flow among and bless those
who do not believe in such an oil of gladness? But what about us of the
evangelical persuasion with our biblical approach to fundamental New Testament
truth and teaching? We must ask ourselves why the oil of God is not flowing very
noticeably around us. We have the truth. We believe in the anointing and the
unction. Why is the oil not flowing? We are tolerant of evil I think the reason
is that we are tolerant of evil. We allow what God hates because we want to be
known to the world as good-natured, agreeable Christians. Our stance indicates
that the last thing we would want anyone to say about us is that we are
narrow-minded. The way to spiritual power and favor with God is to be willing to
put away the weak compromises and the tempting evils to which we are prone to
cling. There is no Christian victory or blessing if we refuse to turn away from
the things that God hates. Even if your wife loves it, turn away from it. Even
if your husband loves it, turn away from it. Even if it is accepted in the whole
social class and system of which you are a part, turn away from it. Even if it
is something that has come to be accepted by our whole generation, turn away
from it if it is evil and wrong and an offense to our holy and righteous Savior.
I am being as frank and as searching as I can possibly be. I know that we lack
the courage and the gladness that should mark the committed people of God. And
that concerns me. Deep within the human will with which God has endowed us,
every Christian holds the key to his or her own spiritual attainment. If he or
she will not pay the price of being joyfully led by the Holy Spirit of God, if
he or she refuses to hate sin and evil and wrong, our churches might as well be
turned into lodges or clubs. O brother, sister! God has not given up loving us.
The Holy Spirit still is God’s faithful Spirit. Our Lord Jesus Christ is at the
right hand of the Majesty in heaven, representing us there, interceding for us.
God is asking us to stand in love and devotion to Him. The day is coming when
judgment fire tries every person’s work. The hay, wood and stubble of worldly
achievement will be consumed. God wants us to know the reward of gold and silver
and precious stones. Following Jesus Christ is serious business. Let us quit
being casual about heaven and hell and the judgment to come!


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  CHAPTER 8: - CHAPTER 7: JESUS, THE ETERNAL WORD
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THE INSPIRED MESSAGE nearly 2,000 years ago to the hard-pressed Hebrew
Christians was a moving appeal to place their full confidence in the power of
the Word of God. When God speaks, the writer said in effect, all must obey. The
writer declared: The word of God is living and active. Sharper than any
double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and
marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12) That
same message continues throughout the letter with reminders of the relationship
of God’s Word to the universe of which we are a part. We are told of God’s Word
sounding throughout all of God’s creation, keeping, sustaining, transforming.
The Word of God is more than just the Bible Christian believers make a great
mistake when they refer only to the Bible as the Word of God. True, the inspired
Bible is the Word of God speaking to our hearts and to our souls. But in
referring to the Word of God, we do not mean just the book—printed pages sewed
together with nylon thread. Rather, we mean the eternal expression of the mind
of God. We mean the world-filling breath of God! God’s Word and God’s revelation
are much more than just the Old and New Testament books. Nevertheless I
invariably rejoice as I discover deep in the urgent appeal of one of the Old
Testament prophets a sudden recognition of God’s speaking Word. For example,
notice this message from the prophet Jeremiah: “O land, land, land, hear the
word of the Lord!” (Jeremiah 22:29). Think what a change it would make in the
world if men and women suddenly paused to hear the Word of the Lord! The Word of
God being what it is, and God being who He is, and we humans being who we are, I
am sure that the most rewarding thing we could do would be to stop and listen to
the Word of God. Whether a man or a woman believes it or not, the Word of God is
one of the greatest of the realities he or she will face in a lifetime. He or
she may deny the Word and the presence of God, dismissing them both as unreal.
But the living, speaking Word of God cannot be escaped. Neither is it
negotiable. The true Christian church has always held that position. There is
not a man or woman on the face of the earth but will have to reckon with the
authority of the Word of God, either now or later. How surprised some of them
will be on that coming day of judgment when God’s eternal Word must be answered
to! God’s Word is the revelation of divine truth that God Himself has given to
us. It has come in the message and appeal of the sacred Scriptures. It comes in
the conviction visited on us by the Holy Spirit. It comes in the person of Jesus
Christ, God’s Son, the living Word of God. The Word of God is powerful Now,
about God’s power. In this nuclear age in which we live, we have come to think
of nuclear weapons when we think of ultimate power. Years ago, we used the word
nucleus all the time. A nucleus was the center. We never dreamed the word
“nuclear would take on so fearful a connotation as it now possesses. Christian
believers, of all people, should have a sensible view of the “nuclear threat.”
What is it that attracts neutrons so irrevocably to the nucleus of an atom? My
answer: the living breath of God speaking in His world. It is Jesus, the eternal
Son, the express image of God’s person, sustaining all things by His powerful
Word (Hebrews 1:3). “In him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). Few
liberals or modernists will agree with me in that view. They dispute God’s
sovereignty and His power. But they are scared. Given the world we live in, the
most assuring viewpoint a person can hold is the one I hold. The voice of God
fills His world, and Jesus Christ, the living Word, holds everything together.
God’s Word speaks to human life—this life so obviously mortal. God’s Word speaks
to human conscience—a conscience that is only too aware of sin. God’s Word
speaks to human sin, exposing its heinous, offensive nature. Here may be a
helpful thought for you. The Word of God is tuned to speak to man’s inner
conscience, but it does not accuse. It does not make charges against a person.
Rather, it demonstrates. And it convicts. There is a difference between accusing
and convicting. In court, when an alleged offender stands before the judge,
there is a specific charge of violation, there is an accuser and there is
evidence intended to back up the charge. Only if the judge is convinced by the
evidence and argument will he or she pronounce the alleged offender guilty. The
conviction of the Word of God is different. The Word of God does not single out
John Jones or Mary Smith. It does not face up to one or the other and say, “You
are a sinner.” Instead, it asserts that all have sinned. John Jones or Mary
Smith or any other man or woman will know that he or she is a sinner by the
living voice of God. Go to God’s Word and you will find that sin is the most
pressing, the most compelling, the most imperative problem inhuman life and
society. The most pressing problem is not sickness. It is not war. It is not
poverty. Sin is the basic problem because sin has to do with a person’s soul.
Sin does not relate merely to a person’s short years on this earth. It involves
that person’s eternal future and the world to come. No one has ever overstated
the seriousness of the sin question. It is a question that continues age after
age. It comes to every human being: “What am I going to do about sin?” That
question takes precedence over all other questions that we are called upon to
answer. Whether we are world famous or an unnamed member of the human race, we
must make confession concerning our relationship with sin. If each of us is
willing to be honest, we will answer, “I have been involved in sin. I have
played along with it. I have taken it to my bosom and it has stung me. The virus
of sin has entered my life stream. It has conditioned my mind; it has affected
my judgment. I confess I have been a deliberate collaborator with sin.” But sin
is more than a disease. It is a deformity of the spirit, an abnormality in that
part of human nature which is most like God’s. And sin is a capital crime as
well. It is treason against the great God Almighty who made the heavens and the
earth. Sin is a crime against the moral order of the universe. Each time a man
or woman strikes against God’s moral nature and kingdom, he or she acts against
the moral government of the entire universe. How does the balance sheet look?
Sinners are always trying to add things up to see how far they must go to deal
with the sin problem in their lives. But their moral conscience, if they would
honestly listen to it, informs them that only some great resource of merit
outside themselves can ever satisfy the obligation. They are head-over-heels in
moral debt to the God who made heaven and earth. Every human has a few things he
or she thinks are good enough to be put into the necessary fund of merit, but
they are never sufficient to pay the debt. One word describes the sinner. He or
she is a rebel, not just in rebellion against his or her own kind, but against
God and His kingdom. Suppose a rebellious criminal, locked in one of London’s
prisons, should ask for an audience with the queen. Such a person, who had
struck at the safety of all the queen symbolizes, would have to be pardoned
before any other arrangements were even contemplated. He would have to change
his lifestyle, for a rebel could not enter the presence of the queen. But
something else would be necessary. He would have to exchange his prison garb for
proper dress. Only if he were clean and groomed for the occasion could he expect
to be presented to the queen. That illustration, however imperfect, is a picture
of the sinner’s plight. If he or she is to stand in fellowship before a holy
God, the rebellion must end, there must be forgiveness and pardon, there must be
cleansing and the new garments of righteousness. The blood of Jesus Christ was
shed for this very purpose. The eternal Son of God has accomplished all this,
the just dying for the unjust—an awesome and amazing act by the One who made the
worlds and upholds all things by the word of His power. The writer of the letter
to the Hebrews attests that the Son, “after he had provided purification for
sins, . . . sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven” (Hebrews 1:3).
This is the basic, vital message of Christianity. This is the witness the
Christian church, if it is faithful to the revelation God has given it, is
proclaiming to the world. Christ Jesus came into the world for the humiliation
of death. He came to deal with the sin question as only God could deal with it.
In the Bible we have the ample record of that day, in the fullness of time, when
our Lord Jesus Christ hung between heaven and earth on Calvary’s cross. The
willing Lamb of God, who had come to bear away the sins of the world, was
fulfilling His mission. No one on earth could assist him. In those excruciating
hours, after evil men had nailed Him to the cross, the Father in heaven pulled
down the blinds; darkness prevailed. It was the eternal Son dying to purge our
sins. Alone He suffered. Alone He died. But in that suffering and death He
accomplished the sacrifice that has perpetual efficacy. A once-for-all sacrifice
I need to say something here about the wide difference of viewpoint in
Christendom concerning the full meaning of Jesus’ sacrifice. Protestant teaching
has always been unequivocal: the death of Christ was one finished sacrifice with
perpetual efficacy, never to be repeated. But I have read the writings of other
theologians who describe dramatically how the Savior dies over and over each
time the Mass is said, each time the sacrament is offered. One group insists the
sacrificial death of Christ happened once with perpetual efficacy. The other
teaches it to be a perpetual, oft-repeated act. If your Christ must die every
Sunday (or Saturday), then you must conclude that His sacrifice was effective
for only a week. But if Jesus Christ performed one efficacious act, alone, by
Himself, then that act is good for all time and eternity. Admittedly, there is a
vital difference between these two viewpoints. What do the Scriptures teach?
They teach that “Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the
unrighteous, to bring [us] to God” (1 Peter 3:18). Done once, that efficacious
sacrifice can never be repeated. The death and resurrection of Christ has
settled the sin question. In believing the good news, we are now forgiven and
cleansed—purified from our sins. There is more good news But our forgiveness and
cleansing by the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ is only part of the good
news. Jesus died, but He rose from the dead. And after His resurrection, He
ascended to be seated at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. In an era of
declining morality and open rebellion against God and against His Anointed One,
we can take great comfort in this revelation that a majestic, overruling
Presence resides in glory. The Majesty still fills the throne room of heaven.
The angels and archangels and seraphim and cherubim continue their celestial
praise of “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.” This is not some far-out
concept of some fringe cult. This is straight from the Word of God: When Jesus
“had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the
Majesty in heaven.” Jesus returned to the position He had occupied throughout
the long, long ages past. An earnest Christian worker and serious student of the
Bible, with whom I have had correspondence, laments the fact that our Christian
preaching and teaching does not more clearly identify the risen, ascended Jesus
as a Man. He has questioned preachers and Christian teachers, many of them well
known, “Do you believe that Jesus Christ, now at God’s right hand, is a man, or
some other being?” Very few of these Christian leaders purportedly believe that
Jesus is now a glorified Man. They believe Jesus was a man while He was here on
earth, but they tend to believe that He is a spirit now. After Jesus’
resurrection from the dead, He appeared to His disciples. He invited Thomas to
feel the wound marks in His flesh. What blessed meaning there is in His words to
the fearful disciples: “`Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me
and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have’“ (Luke
24:39). Whether modern men and women agree on the exaltation of the Man Christ
Jesus, we in the family of God have heard His words and we know the New
Testament witness: “`God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses
of the fact. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father
the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear’“ (Acts
2:32-33). The apostle Paul told Timothy, “There is one God and one mediator
between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all
men” (1 Timothy 2:5). This should be counted as a great victory for Christian
believers in our day. Jesus is a Man and He is enthroned at God’s right hand.
That is significant! We are joined to Jesus Jesus is not said to be the
victorious God—God is always victorious. How could the sovereign God be anything
but victorious? Rather, we take our position with those earliest Christian
believers who saw in Jesus a Man in the heavenlies. He is a victorious man, and
if we are in Him, we too can be victorious.


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  CHAPTER 9: - CHAPTER 8: JESUS, KEEPER OF GOD’S PROMISES
========================================================================

IS THERE ANYONE AMONG US, any human being, who has not experienced the sadness
and disappointment of a promise not kept? More than a few times we have heard an
apology, an excuse, perhaps a downright fabrication: “I’m sorry. I thought I
could do what I promised you, but I find it is not humanly possible.” That is
the language and the experience of human beings. Quite the opposite is our
experience when we relate with God. All of God’s promises are sure. They are as
reliable as His character. Here is how the writer of the letter to the Hebrews
puts it: When God made his promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater
for him to swear by, he swore by himself, saying, “I will surely bless you and
give you many descendants.” And so after waiting patiently, Abraham received
what was promised. (Hebrews 6:13-15) I must confess that in my ministry I keep
repeating some of the things I know about God and His faithful promises. Why do
I insist that all Christians should know for themselves the kind of God they
love and serve? It is because all the promises of God rest completely upon His
character. Why do I insist that all Christians should search the Scriptures and
learn as much as they can about this God who is dealing with them? It is because
their faith will only spring up naturally and joyfully as they find that our God
is trustworthy and fully able to perform every promise He has made. God is
unchanging This word concerning God’s total faithfulness is a vibrant, positive
message in the Hebrews letter. Those to whom it is primarily written were being
persecuted. They were suffering. The enemy of their souls was busy planting
doubts about God’s plans for them and God’s promises to them. Probably Satan was
sowing doubts about the very character of God who had revealed Himself in a new
covenant of grace, sealed in the blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God. Let me share a
conclusion I have come to in my study of the Scriptures. I have come to believe
that all the promises of God have been made to assure us weak and changeable
humans of God’s never-ending good will and concern. What God is today He will be
tomorrow. And all that God does will always be in accord with all that God is!
Our Lord will never have to send a message to us, saying, “I am not feeling well
today; therefore, I shall not be dealing with you today on the same basis as I
dealt with you yesterday.” You may not be feeling well physically today. Have
you learned to be thankful anyhow and to rejoice in the promises of God? God’s
eternal blessings do not depend on how you feel today. If my eternal hope rested
on how I felt physically, I might as well begin packing for a move to some other
region! Even if I do not feel heavenly, my feelings in no way change my heavenly
hope and prospect. I dare not relate even a fraction of my faith and hope to my
emotions of the moment and to how I feel today. My eternal hope depends on
“God’s well being—on whether God Himself is able to make good on His promises.
And about that there is no doubt. God does not play on our emotions Now that I
have brought up the subject of our human emotions, I should add this further
word. I do not know how familiar you are with the ways of God and the tender
movings of His Spirit. But I will tell you this quite frankly: God does not play
on our emotions to bring us to the point of spiritual decision. God’s Word,
which is God’s truth, and God’s Spirit unite to arouse our highest emotions.
Because He is God and worthy of our praise, we will find the ability to praise
Him and to glorify Him. Some religious and evangelistic techniques are directed
almost entirely to the emotions of those who are listening to the appeal. They
are psychology, not Spirit-directed conviction. They are unrelated to the sweet,
tender ways of the God of all mercy and all grace. I have to disagree with
religious appeal that supposes if someone in the audience can be moved to shed a
tear, a saint has been made. Or that if a husky listener can be touched
emotionally to the point that he must blow his nose as though it was Gabriel’s
trumpet, all will be well with his soul. I warn you that there is no connection
whatsoever between the human manipulation of our emotions, on the one hand, and,
on the other, the confirmation of God’s revealed truth in our beings through the
ministry of His Holy Spirit. When in our Christian experience our emotions are
raised, it must be the result of what God’s truth is doing for us. If that is
not so, it is not properly religious stirring at all. Jesus has supreme
authority Throughout this letter, the writer leaves us in no doubt concerning
the supreme authority vested in Jesus Christ, the eternal Son. Early on, he
states the thesis of the letter: Because the message concerning Jesus Christ is
true, we must give it our full and complete commitment. The Holy Scriptures are
like that. The Bible is frank, logical, honest. Certain things are true, the
Bible is saying, and here they are. And because those things are true, these are
your obligations. That is the way God has seen fit to work in His communication
with the men and women of this planet. In the past, there have been those who
have looked at what the Bible has to say, and they have reasoned like this: “No
argument. Christ carries the supreme authority of God. That leaves us no room to
be concerned, no reason to be disturbed. Everything is in God’s hands!” But
God’s Word declares that it is not quite that simple. God has made everyone of
us with a free will. He has made us capable of choosing or rejecting. For us to
ignore the authority that God has given to His Son is a grave offense, indeed.
Because of His love for us, God already has taken the initiative. He has left us
without room for human excuse. If God cannot get us concerned about His own
things and our shortcomings, He cannot do anything at all for us. If His grace
and mercy cannot move us, He cannot save us. This brings us right back to our
starting point. Our Christian hope and the promises of God all rest upon the
very character of the triune God. We are New Testament believers. We are saved
through the terms of a new covenant. That new covenant is based in the love and
grace of the One who created us and then gave His life for our redemption. Of
His own free will God has made a pledge and given us a covenant. A Christian is
a Christian and remains a Christian because of the bond between the persons of
the Godhead and himself or herself. Psalm 89 states the theme Note this theme in
Psalm 89. In that psalm, the Holy Spirit has dictated a plain message. He goes
far beyond the reference to King David. Rather, he is describing David’s greater
Son, even Jesus, the eternal Son and Lord of all. The reference is to the kind
of covenant a faithful God has made with the people of His choice. The
statements made by God to David’s progeny and David’s people are almost
unconditional. God does not make unconditional promises to our race, but these
in Psalm 89 are as nearly unconditional as any we will ever find. The Holy
Spirit is not speaking concerning the earthly David who would die. He is
speaking of a Son, of whom He says: He will call out to me, “You are my Father,
My God, the Rock my Savior.” I will also appoint him my firstborn, the most
exalted of the kings of the earth. I will maintain my love to him forever, and
my covenant with him will never fail. This Son could be none other than Jesus.
And the unfailing covenant God makes with Him is ours. It will never fail
because it is God who has promised, and God can be counted on. I hope what I
have been reviewing here is plain. A promise—any promise—is nothing in and of
itself. The value of the promise depends on the character of the one who makes
it. We know only too well the history of men and women. They make promises and
covenants, but often those promises and covenants are broken. They are not kept.
Why covenants fail There are a number of reasons why human covenants are not
kept. Sometimes the person making the covenant has no intention of keeping it.
It fails because of the duplicity of the one who promised. In other cases,
covenants fail through ignorance. A person makes a promise upon the basis of his
or her prospects. But things go badly—physically, financially, intellectually.
He or she is unable to fulfill the obligation. In still other instances,
covenants fail because human beings are changeable. A man promises but later
changes his mind. He refuses to live up to the terms of the covenant he made.
Covenants sometimes fail because the ones who made the promises die. Human
mortality causes covenants to become void. Men and women are well aware of their
failures and frailty. They know their weaknesses, their duplicity, their
tendency to be less than honest. So they add an oath to their covenant—an appeal
to Someone greater than themselves: “So help me, God!” I have always considered
it a little humorous that sinful men who cannot trust each other call on God or
the Holy Bible to witness that a sinful being is not going to tell a lie. I
suspect there is a chuckle in hell whenever a person in one of our courts
promises before God that he or she will “tell the truth, the whole truth and
nothing but the truth.” With all of that by way of background, let me tell you
my theory. I believe God made an accommodation and went along with our way of
doing things. When during Abraham’s time He made a promise to save His people,
God took an oath to confirm the covenant. And because He could call on no one
greater, He swore by Himself! Our faithful God has so sworn for all who will be
heirs of the promise. Shall we not trust Him? Are we going to trust God? Are we
going to commit our entire future to Him? What more assurance do we need than
the character of God Himself? It is God’s own eternal Person and His faithful
character that tell us our salvation is secured through the blood of Jesus
Christ, our Savior. It is because God is who He is that we can trust Him and be
assured that His covenant will never change. How rewarding it is to be able to
make a proclamation like this! Our forgiveness, our hope for salvation, our
confidence in the life to come rest upon God’s unchanging love and faithfulness.
I must confess in behalf of all of us that we humans are not as wise as God is.
For example, there are men and women forever wishing they might find someone
able to predict the future for them. No one can do so with accuracy. Also, we
frequently fail to live up to our promises. But there is no such failure with
God. He knows everything that can be known. He is perfect in wisdom. God never
has to excuse Himself with a “Well, my intentions were good, but I failed.” His
ability to deliver on His promises is tied directly to His omnipotence. If God
was not omnipotent, He would be unable to keep His promises. He could not give
any of us assurance of salvation. This attribute of God we call omnipotence does
not really mean that God can do anything. It means that He is the only Being who
can do anything He wills to do. We understand up to a point that God is perfect
in love and wisdom, in holiness and strength. Still, it is impossible for us to
comprehend what the Lord God means when He says, “I am the holy God.” We may,
however, come to the understanding that “holy” is the way God is, and that He
has made holiness the moral condition necessary to the health of His entire
universe. Because holiness is God’s being, He cannot lie. Because He is God, He
cannot violate the holy nature of His being. God does not will to lie. He does
not will to cheat. He does not will to deceive. He does not will to be false to
His own dear people. Or to put it positively, in the very perfection of His
character, God wills to be true to His children. Because He is perfect and
because He is holy, His believing children are safe. Confidently knowing that
the Lord God omnipotent reigns, and knowing that He is able to do all that He
wills to do, I have no more doubts. I am safely held in the arms of the all
powerful God. There is no better way to conclude a discussion like this than in
the definition of this omnipotent God given in Hebrews: Because God wanted to
make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was
promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two
unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled
to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. We have this
hope as an anchor for the soul firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary
behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf.
He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek. (Hebrews
7:17-20) We are in the midst of the storm of life. The believing saints of God
are on board the ship. Someone looks to the horizon and warns, “We are directly
in the path of the typhoon! We are as good as dead. We will surely be dashed to
pieces on the rocks!” But calmly someone else advises, “Look down, look down! We
have an anchor!” We look, but the depth is too great. We cannot see the anchor.
But the anchor is there. It grips the immovable rock and holds fast. Thus the
ship out rides the storm. The Holy Spirit has assured us that we have an Anchor
,steadfast and sure, that keeps the soul. Jesus—Savior, Redeemer and our great
High Priest—is that Anchor. He is the One who has gone before us. He has already
entered into the calm and quiet harbor, the inner sanctuary behind the curtain.
Where Jesus is now, there we will be—forever. The Spirit is saying to us, “Keep
on believing. Pursue holiness. Show diligence and hold full assurance of faith
to the very end. Follow those who through faith and patience inherit what has
been promised. “He is faithful!”


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  CHAPTER 10: - CHAPTER 9: JESUS, LIKE UNTO MELCHIZEDEK
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IT WAS NEVER IN THE MIND of God that a privileged priesthood of sinful,
imperfect men would attempt, following the death and triumphant resurrection of
our Lord Jesus Christ, to repair the veil and continue their office of mediation
between God and man. The letter to the Hebrews makes that fact very plain. When
Jesus rose from the dead, the Levitical priesthood, which had served Israel
under the Old Covenant, became redundant. God’s better plan for an eternal High
Priest and a sinless Mediator is also made plain in the letter to the Hebrews.
Jesus glorified at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens is now our High
Priest forever. His priesthood is not after the order of Aaron and Levi but
after the enduring priesthood of Melchizedek. Those are highlights in the
Hebrews message concerning the better covenant, the better priesthood and the
better hope resting upon the completed work of Jesus Christ for lost mankind. We
read: Jesus… has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.…
When there is a change of the priesthood, there must also be a change of the
law.… The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless(for the
law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw
near to God.… If there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place
would have been sought for another. (Hebrews 6:20; Hebrews 7:12, Hebrews
7:18-19; Hebrews 8:7) The mysterious Melchizedek Long before the time of Moses
and Aaron and the sons of Levi, the Genesis record notes the appearance of a
mysterious yet compelling personality, Melchizedek. Melchizedek was king of
Salem and priest of the most high God. When Abraham returned from the rescue of
Lot, his nephew, he was greeted and blessed by Melchizedek. And Abraham gave to
Mechizedek the tithe of all the goods he had recovered (Genesis 14:17-20). The
Genesis appearance of Melchizedek is brief and without explanation in Old
Testament history. More information is offered by the writer to the Hebrews.
When he notes that Melchizedek was “without father or mother, without genealogy,
without beginning of days or end of life” (Hebrews 7:3), the writer simply was
saying that Melchizedek had no “family tree,” no genealogical records through
which his origins could be traced. In short, we do not know where he came from.
Melchizedek is not mentioned again until Psalm 110. There he is referred to as
the type of an eternal priest of God who would yet appear in Israel’s national
development. Jews were very meticulous about genealogy. Each son or daughter of
Israel could trace his or her ancestry back to Abraham. It is only too apparent
that later generations in Israel did not know how to deal with the references to
Melchizedek, a priest whose lineage they could not trace. The reason all Jews so
jealously guarded their lineage, preserving these on permanent tablets, was
related to their hope of Messiah’s coming. They knew the prophecies. When
Messiah finally appeared, He would have to prove His line of descent from
Abraham through King David and on down to His own parents. In his New Testament
Gospel, Matthew conformed to Jewish custom, taking pains to furnish his readers
a full record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ. He begins with Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob, carries the lineage through David and Solomon to another Jacob,
concluding with “Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is
called Christ” (Matthew 1:16). Israel’s final hope In view of the importance
given to the Jewish records of ancestry, it is significant that all those
carefully preserved records were lost in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in
A.D. 70. So historians believe. Jesus had come as Redeemer and Messiah. Israel
rejected Him, crucifying Him on the cross. But there could be no other. No other
could have furnished the necessary proof of his descent from Abraham and David.
Jesus, the risen, ascended Son of God was and is Israel’s final hope. As we come
into a consideration of the things taught in this section of Hebrews, we must be
prepared to do some thinking. We live in a generation that wants everything
condensed and predigested. But here we must do some thinking. And in the end,
the understanding we achieve will be well worth the effort. In this part of his
letter, the writer sets out to make three things very plain to the troubled
Hebrew Christians of his day. First, he declares that the Mosaic law and the
Levitical priesthood were not established by God as permanent and perfect
institutions. Second, he makes it plain that the eternal and sinless Son came to
assure believers concerning His superior and enduring priesthood, confirmed by
His glorification at God’ s right hand. Third, he wants his readers to know that
the plan of salvation for sinful men and women does not rest upon earthly
offerings made by Levitical priests, but upon the eternal sacrifice and high
priestly mediation of Jesus, the eternal Son, who also was willing to become the
sacrificial Lamb of God. The comparisons made in this letter indicate that the
provisions of the Old Testament Mosaic law and the system of the Levitical
priesthood were interdependent. Thus, when the priesthood was eliminated, the
Mosaic law passed away also. The writer’s summary is clear: “The former
regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless (for the law made
nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to
God.” We are free in Christ Jesus What does all this mean to us in our Christian
lives, our Christian faith? Thankfully, it means that we do not stand under the
shadow of those laws given through Moses. We do not stand under the shadow of
the imperfections of the Old Testament Jewish priesthood and mediation. Instead,
we stand in the light and authority of Jesus Christ. He is superior to all Old
Testament priests. He has fulfilled the Law—dismissed it, if you will—by the
institution of the new covenant based on a superior sacrifice. This new
covenant, sealed in the blood of Jesus, our Savior and Mediator, introduces for
us a great spiritual freedom. We should rejoice daily. No one can lay the burden
of the old law upon us—a law that Israel was unable to fulfill. In his letter to
the church in Galatia, Paul dealt with this very problem. He states the
principle of God’s grace and righteousness through faith with telling effect. He
condemns those who followed the Galatian Christians around, trying to make Jews
out of them. “Stand firm, then,” he says, “and do not let yourselves be burdened
again by a yoke of slavery.… You who are trying to be justified by law have been
alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace” (Galatians 5:1,
Galatians 5:4). We who are Christian believers should thank God continually for
our New Testament guarantees of spiritual life and freedom in Christ! Our
sacrifice is not an animal offered by a priest as imperfect as we are. Our
sacrifice is the very Lamb of God, who was able and willing to offer Himself to
take away the sins of the world. Our altar is not the altar in old Jerusalem.
Our altar is Calvary, where Jesus offered Himself without spot to God through
the eternal Spirit. Our Holy of Holies is not that section of a temple made with
hands, secluded behind a protective veil. Our Holy of Holies is in heaven, where
the exalted Jesus sits at the right hand of the Majesty on high. Note the
comparisons Note the comparison of the two priesthoods. In the Old Testament,
every priest who ever served knew that he would ultimately be retired and die.
Each priest was temporal. But in our Lord Jesus Christ we have an eternal High
Priest. He has explored and conquered death. He will not die again. He will
continue as a priest forever, and He will never change! It is for that very
reason, the writer assures us, that Jesus is “able to save completely those who
come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them” (Hebrews
7:25). Before we move on from the subject of the passing of the Old Testament
priestly mediation, I want to mention the strange, anomalous event that took
place within the Jerusalem Temple as Jesus gave up His life on the cross. As He
“gave up his spirit”(John 19:30) outside Jerusalem, the very finger of God
Almighty reached into the temple’s most holy place, splitting, rending, tearing
the heavy hanging veil. That ancient veil was not just a curtain. It was a
special drape—a veil so thick and heavy that it took several men to pull it
aside. As Jesus died, the finger of God rent that veil which had housed the
earthly presence of the invisible God. Thus, God was indicating the beginning of
a new covenant and a new relationship between mankind and Himself. He was
demonstrating the passing of the old order and the transfer of authority,
efficacy and mediation to the new order. The priesthood, the priests, the old
covenants, the altars, the sacrifices—all that had been involved in the Old
Testament system of law—was done away with. God had eliminated it as useless,
powerless, without authority. In its place He instituted a new Sacrifice, the
Lamb of God, the eternal Son, Jesus Christ. God instituted as well a new and
efficacious altar, this one eternal in the heavens, where Jesus lives to
intercede for God’s believing children. The futile repair When the Temple veil
was torn top to bottom, tradition has it that the Levitical priests determined
they must repair that long-sacred partition. And they did. They sewed it
together as best they could. Not understanding that God had decreed a new order,
they took the earthly view by trying to continue the old system of sacrifices. I
hope I will not be accused of anti-Semitism when I cite certain Bible truths
indicating that even yet Jews do not really know why they worship. We
evangelicals have no sympathy for those who hate the Jews. In our understanding
of the Scriptures and God’s great plan, we recognize the worth of our Jewish
friends. We have a concern for their well being in an unfriendly world.
Moreover, we believe strongly in the future glory of Israel. We believe that
when God’s Messiah returns, Israel will minister again in faith and worship in
her own land. We believe in a day yet coming when a reborn Israel will shine
forth. The Word of God’s righteousness will go forth from Zion and the Word of
God from Jerusalem. But for the present, the living, beating life of Jewish
faith is gone. There is no altar. There is no Shekinah glory and Presence. There
is no efficacious sacrifice for sin. There is no mediatorial priest and no Holy
of Holies for him to enter on behalf of his people. All is gone—eliminated as
useless, powerless, without further authority. In its place God has instituted
and accepted a new sacrifice—the Lamb of God, the eternal Son. He has confirmed
a new and efficacious altar, this one eternal in the heavens, where Jesus ever
lives to make intercession for God’s believing children. He has ordained and
accepted a new High Priest, Jesus, the eternal Son, seating Him at His right
hand. Jesus lives eternally All that I have been saying may seem complex and
involved. This much we must understand: Jesus our Lord, God’s Christ and our
Savior, lives forevermore! As God is timeless and ageless, so also is Jesus
Christ. And Jesus lives to intercede for us! His eternal interest is to be our
surety. We sing of it with faith and joy: “Before the throne my Surety stands; /
My name is written in His hands.” And then we continue with the rest of those
stirring words from the vision and heart of Charles Wesley: The Father hears Him
pray, His dear anointed One; He cannot turn away The presence of His Son. His
Spirit answers to the blood And tells me I am born of God. It is Christ’s
unfailing intercession that makes it possible for us to tell each other that we
believe in the security of the saints of God. We believe there is a place of
security, not because there was some technicality that John Calvin might have
advanced, but because of the high priestly intercession of the eternal One who
cannot die. Day and night He offers our names before the Father in heaven. No
matter how weak we may be, we are kept because Jesus Christ is our eternal High
Priest in the heavens. How different is our vision of Jesus Christ from that of
the ones who put Him to death, saying, “That is the end of him!” Our vision is
of a risen, victorious, all-powerful and all-wise High Priest. Quietly,
triumphantly He pleads the worth and value of His own life and blood for the
preservation and victory of God’s believing children. Just consider, if you
will, the gracious implications of God’s guarantee. He declares in His Word that
Jesus, our Savior and Mediator, “is able to save completely those who come to
God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.” The King James
translation reads “is able to save to the uttermost. .. . “ There have been
preachers who changed the preposition to and made it from. They preached a
salvation with emphasis on what the individual sinner is saved from. I heartily
disagree with that emphasis! Our Lord has given an invitation that excludes no
one. “Whoever” is as broad as the human race. I do not believe God is concerned
at all about where we have come from. He is concerned with where we are going.
The decision we have made to go where we are going—to be with God forever—is
what pleases Him and causes the angels to rejoice. Some Christian workers have
made an entire career of dwelling on the negative aspects of the human, sinful
life—”from the uttermost.” “Let me tell you what a hopeless drunkard I was!”
“Attend the services and let me share what it is like to be a helpless drug
addict!” “Come and let me relate the awful, tragic time in my past when I was a
good-for-nothing wife-beater!” It is a gracious thing that God does for us in
His mercy and love when we are forgiven, regenerated and converted. It is indeed
a new birth! God saves us from what we were, whatever it was. But He expects us
to spend the rest of our lives praising Him, telling about the wonders of Christ
and His salvation. He wants us to spread the good news of the great eternal
future He has planned for us. He wants us to tell others of the eternal
habitation He is preparing for all who love and obey Him. A personal testimony
It is fitting that I close this chapter with a word of testimony. I trust it
will be helpful. I came to Christ and was converted when I was 17. My testimony
was just as dull as it is possible for a testimony to be. I had never been in
jail. I did not use tobacco in any form. I did not know anything about the use
of drugs. I had never taken to any kind of strong drink. I had never deserted my
wife—I had never been married! If you have seen me in later life, you might not
believe it, but I was a healthy, red-cheeked young man at the time the Lord
found me. There were some who considered me good looking. We had neighbors who
said, “Aiden is a fine boy!” If I had had to get up and tell people what I was
saved from, in the eyes of the curious world my testimony would not have been
worth two lines of type. But I was a sinner in the sight of God and I have found
Him faithful. What I was saved “to is much more important than what I was saved
“from . I have had a lifetime of telling and retelling everyone around me of the
goodness, kindness, mercy and grace of God. He has saved me to the uttermost. He
guarantees an eternity of fellowship and rejoicing with our Lord Jesus Christ
and the redeemed family of God. If you are doubtful or hesitant, I can only say:
Do not make the mistake of trying to match your time on earth against the
eternity that is your endless future. No matter who you are, all of your past is
time; your future is eternity. On Christ the solid rock you stand. All other
ground is sinking sand.


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  CHAPTER 11: - CHAPTER 10: JESUS, ONE FACE OF ONE GOD
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A PERSON CANNOT BE A Christian and deny that the living God has revealed Himself
to our sinful race as the sovereign Father, the eternal Son and the faithful
Spirit. Yet some professing Christians are so selfishly intrigued by their own
expressions of “following Jesus” that they seem unaware that their lives are
daily dependent on the promised ministration of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For
such as these—and actually for all of us in the Christian faith—the writer of
the letter to the Hebrews has set forth a compelling and revealing truth:
“Christ… through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God” (Hebrews
9:14). Salvation involves the entire Trinity How do we effectively teach this to
our “babes in Christ” who are prone to say, “I like what I know about Jesus.
Surely it is not necessary for me to go beyond that.” Our best answer, of
course, is a simple statement of Christian doctrine: The Bible makes it plain
that the redemption of our lost race was effected on our behalf by the eternal
Trinity—God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. We cannot
overestimate the full significance of that statement in terms of our redemption
and God’s atoning work. There likewise is no ground for a thoughtful, thankful
believer to deny that his or her salvation was wrought by the same eternal
Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is the whole emphasis of Hebrews 9:14.
And it is what I want to emphasize, too. None of us can ever be fully pleasing
to God if we are no twilling to be well taught in His Word. I want to be sure
that we know what being well taught in the Word means. It does not refer to
being well taught in religion. Rather, it is being well taught in the basic
concepts necessary to the Christian faith. One of these basic concepts is the
insistence that the crowning achievement of New Testament revelation is the
implantation within a believer of a force that impels him or her to act
righteously. God has promised this as confirmation that He is able to purge the
human conscience from dead religious works, freeing the believer to serve the
living God in joy and victory regardless of his or her circumstances in life.
The writer was not suggesting that these early Hebrew Christians, in a time of
crisis, lean on religious forms or depend on religious practices. He stressed
their need to grasp what God had done for them in a New Covenant centered in
Jesus Christ, Savior and Messiah. Which is more important? I am reminded that
one old saint was asked, “Which is the more important: reading God’s Word or
praying?” To which he replied, “Which is more important to a bird: the right
wing or the left?” The writer to the Hebrews was telling his readers—and telling
us—that Christians must believe all there is to be believed. They are to do all
that the Word commands them to do. Those two wings take the Christian up to God!
I sense a spirit of independence, if not rebellion, in the believer who states,
“I am not going to bother with the doctrines and the teachings. I am just going
to lean back and enjoy Jesus!” It is the path of least resistance. Although I do
not wish to scold anyone at this point, it is where many Christians need proper
encouragement and godly example. God has purposefully given us a mental capacity
with wide human boundaries. Beyond that, if we are justified, regenerated
believers, He has given us an entirely new spiritual capacity. God wants us to
believe, to think, to meditate, to consider His Word. He has promised that the
Holy Spirit is waiting to teach us. He has assured us concerning all of our
blessings in Jesus Christ. Hebrews 9:14 informs us that Christ, who is God the
Son through the divine Spirit, offered Himself to God, the heavenly Father. Thus
we have in the act of redemption the involvement of the Trinity, the Godhead.
Keep in mind that the persons of the Godhead cannot fulfill their ministries
separately. We may think of them separately, but they can never be separated.
The early church fathers recognized this wholeness of God’s person. They said we
must not divide the substance of the Trinity, though we recognize the three
persons. No contradictions Critics often have declared that the Bible
contradicts itself in matters relating to the Trinity. For example, Genesis
speaks of God’s creating the heavens and the earth. The New Testament declares
that the Word—God the Son—created all things. Still other references speak of
the Holy Spirit’s work in creation. These are not contradictions. Father, Son
and Spirit worked together in the miracles of creation, just as they worked
together in the planning and effecting of human redemption. The Father, Son and
Holy Spirit are consubstantial—going back to the statement of the early church
fathers. They are one in substance and cannot be separated. When Jesus was to
launch His earthly ministry, He went to John at the Jordan River to be baptized.
The record speaks of the Trinity’s involvement. As Jesus stood on the bank of
the river following His baptism, the Holy Spirit descended as a dove upon Him
and the voice of God the Father was heard from heaven saying “`This is my Son,
whom I love.’“ Similar references remind us of the Trinity’s involvement in the
glory of Christ’s resurrection. During His ministry, Jesus spoke of His coming
death. “`Destroy this temple,’“ Jesus said, referring to His body, “`and I will
raise it again in three days.’“ Jesus also declared that the Father would raise
Him up on the third day. We are accustomed to saying that the Father raised
Jesus from the dead. But in Romans 1 we read that the Spirit of God declared
Jesus to be the Son of God with power “by his resurrection from the dead.”
Throughout the Bible record, we have the ever-recurring instances of the persons
of the Godhead, the Trinity, working together in perfect harmony. I rejoice in
the scriptural assurances of the ministries of the holy Trinity. But I know
there are many who confess to problems with the concept of and the teaching
concerning the Trinity. If we are going to grasp and appreciate this truth, it
will mean diligence on our part. We may need to “pull the weeds” in order that
the truth will have soil in which to mature. Probably we all have wondered at
some time or another why our gardens do not produce red tomatoes and yellow corn
and green beans without great care and cultivation on our part. Left to
themselves, our garden plots will bring forth their own crops of weeds, thistles
and briars. This they will do without any help from anyone. Why? Because the
world has been upside down since Adam’s fall. God had to say to Adam, Cursed is
the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days
of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, … By the sweat of
your brow you will eat your food.…” (Genesis 3:17-18) A self-demonstrating truth
We are grateful to God for the historical insights of Genesis 3. Adam and Eve
fell from their first holy and lofty estate, sinning by transgressing the Word
of their God. That is a statement of fact. But even without the inspired record,
we know that the progeny of those first parents are sinners. It is a
self-demonstrating truth. The news in our morning paper is proof enough. Hatred
is everywhere. Greed surrounds us. Pride and arrogance and violence rule our
race. The issue is murder, war and a long list of continuing offenses against
one another and against God. The Scriptures tell us the whole story. Not only
have we sinned, but our moral revolt has alienated us from God. Some people
still like to protest God’s right to banish the transgressor from His presence
forever. They insist upon forming and holding their own humanistic views of God.
For that reason I say, let’s clear away some of these weeds! First, there is the
old idea that Jesus Christ, the Son, differs from God the Father. People
conceive Christ to be a loving Jesus on our side while an angry Father God is
against us. Never, never in all of history has there been any truth in that
notion. Christ, being God, is for us. The Father, being God, is for us. The Holy
Spirit, being God, is for us! That is one of the greatest thoughts we can ever
hope to think. That is why the Son came to die for us. That is why the risen
Son, our great High Priest, is at the right hand of the Majesty on high, praying
for us. Christ is our advocate above. The Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts is
the advocate within. There is no disagreement between Father, Son and Spirit
about the church, the body of Christ. I must confess that after I became a
believer it took sometime for me to overcome the feeling that the New Testament
was a book of love and the Old Testament a book of judgment. I have given the
proposition much time and study, and I am able to make a report. You should know
that there are three mentions of mercy in the Old Testament for every one found
in the New Testament! I find there is equally as much recorded in the Old
Testament about God’s grace and faithfulness as there is in the New. Go clear
back to Noah and you will find the record plain: “Noah found favor in the eyes
of the Lord” (Genesis 6:8). Favor, or grace, is an Old Testament quality. “The
Lord is compassionate and gracious, / slow to anger, abounding in love” (Psalms
103:8). On the other hand, judgment is a New Testament quality. Read the words
of Jesus in the Gospels. Read Peter’s warnings. Read the letter of Jude. Read
the Revelation. In the New Testament we learn of the terrible judgments God
intends to bring upon the world. God does not change Why do I mention these
things? Because God is a God of judgment, but He is also the God of all grace.
God is always the same. He will never change or falter. And when I say God I
refer to the Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I suspect that many preachers
and evangelists have left the false impression in our churches that Christ won
God over to our side by dying for us. We have been encouraged to think of the
Father as the angry God standing with the club of vengeance, about to destroy
sinning mankind. But suddenly Jesus rushes in and takes the blow, allowing us to
escape. That may be good drama, but it is poor theology! Here is the truth of
the matter. The Father in heaven so loved the world that He gave His only
begotten Son. It was the love of the Father that sent the Son into our world to
die for mankind. The Father and Son and Spirit were in perfect agreement that
the eternal Son should die for the sins of the world. We are not wrong to
believe—and proclaim—that while Mary’s Son, Jesus, died alone, terribly alone,
on that cross, the loving heart of God the Father was as deeply pained with
suffering as was the heart of the holy, dying Son. We must ask our Lord to help
us comprehend what it meant to the Trinity for the Son to die alone on the
cross. When the holy Father had to turn His back on the dying Son by the
necessity of divine justice, I believe the pain for the Father was as great as
the suffering of the Savior as He bore our sins in His body. When the soldier
drove that Roman spear into the side of Jesus, I believe it was felt in heaven.
There is another misconception that has been taught through the years. We have
been taught that only one person of the Trinity took part in the plan of
redemption. But Hebrews 9:14 tells us that Father, Son and Holy Spirit all had a
part. The Father received the offering of the Son through the Holy Spirit. And
what was the offering? It was the blameless and sinless Son, offered as the Lamb
of God, without spot and without blemish. The redemptive price was paid by the
Son to the Father through the Spirit. The personal application There has to be a
personal application of these truths. Redemption has flowed down to mankind from
the heart of God through His Son by the Spirit. But salvation, to be effective,
must be appropriated and confessed. Redemption is an objective thing. It is
something outside of us. Redemption is something that took place on a cross, but
salvation is something that takes place and becomes known inside of us!
Salvation is redemption appropriated by faith. The three persons of the Godhead
continue to call the lost to salvation. In the Gospels, we read that Jesus ate
and talked with sinners. He knew why He was there. He was not approving their
wickedness. He was there because it was His nature to offer help and forgiveness
and salvation. His critics and enemies saw Him there and asked, “What kind of a
religious person are you? How can you eat and talk with sinners?” Our Lord had
an answer. He told them three stories, which are really all one story. Jesus
told them of the 99 sheep in the fold and of the search by the shepherd for the
one that was lost. The shepherd would not rest until he had found the lost
sheep. Jesus told them of the woman who treasured a piece of jewelry made up of
10 silver coins. But one of the coins somehow turned up missing, so she got a
candle and a broom, and she searched the house everywhere. Suddenly her efforts
were rewarded. “I have found it!” she exclaimed with jubilance. Then Jesus told
them of the man who had two sons. The one we would call, in our day, a
delinquent. I have never understood why the father gave him his share of the
estate when he asked for it. But the father did, and the son set out and soon
had squandered all the money. Forsaken by his false friends, he had to feed pigs
in their stinking pen to earn something to eat. Finally he said to himself,
“What a fool I am! I will return home and be a servant to my father. At least I
will have food.” We all know the rest of the story. “I am unworthy!” the boy
confessed to his father. But his father forgave him and dressed him in new
garments. He threw a great feast and, amid much rejoicing, restored the boy to
his place in the family. The meaning of the three stories I read and studied
those three stores for a long while without being sure I knew what Jesus meant
to convey by them. I checked out the commentaries and the reference books; still
I was not sure of the meaning. So I sought God alone in earnest prayer to find
out what He was trying to say to us as a lost and alienated race. I share with
you what the Spirit of God taught me. Jesus was trying to make plain the
searching, seeking, loving ministries of the Trinity—the Godhead. That lost boy
was the lost world. That lost sheep was the lost world. That lost piece of
silver was the lost world. The picture that we must see, then, is the Father
looking for the lost son. It is also the Son, the good shepherd, looking for His
lost sheep. And it is the Holy Spirit, depicted by the woman with the light,
searching for the lost piece of silver. Add them up and you have God’s picture
of the Godhead working to redeem the human race. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are
always seeking the lost treasure. ““That is why I eat with sinners,” Jesus was
saying. “I am the Son, the Shepherd, looking for my lost sheep. My Father is
looking for His lost boy. The Holy Spirit is looking for His missing piece of
silver.” Father, Son and Holy Spirit are united in their search for the lost.
That is our answer for the would be critics. The Son of God gave the divine
offering of Himself, the Holy Spirit conveyed it, and the heavenly Father
received it! The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit—the divine Trinity—were
jointly engaged in the great and eternal business of seeking and saving lost men
and women.


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  CHAPTER 12: - CHAPTER 11: JESUS, MEDIATOR OF THE NEW WILL
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DID YOU KNOW THAT GOD has written a completely new will? And remembered you in
it? This will has been in effect ever since the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. It promises an eternal inheritance through God’s unbounded love and
faithfulness. Although it was a transaction that took place two millenniums ago,
many people remain unaware that God has included them in His will. The letter to
the Hebrews supplies us with the full details. Jesus Christ is Mediator of this
new will. His death enabled sinful mankind to be pardoned and to receive an
eternal inheritance. Here is what the writer to the Hebrew Christians has to say
about it: Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called
may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to
set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. In the case of a
will, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it.… In fact, the
law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the
shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.… Christ did not enter a man-made
sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to
appear for us in God’s presence. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again
and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with
blood that is not his own. Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since
the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of
the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as man is
destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed
once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not
to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. (Hebrews
9:15-16, Hebrews 9:22, Hebrews 9:24-28) This Scripture encompasses so much
instruction and so much meaning that we should stand back and view it from a
better perspective. It is necessary sometimes to do that with great paintings.
We can stand so close to the canvas that we note only the many little details,
seeing them out of proportion and perhaps missing entirely the true beauty and
meaning of the painting. I suggest we stand back from these verses and gaze in
wondering faith as we contemplate God’s grand design. Blood and life are
mysteriously related One thing that I notice immediately is the mysterious
relationship between blood and life. God had instructed Israel about this link.
“`The life of a creature is in the blood,’“ God said, “`and I have given it to
you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes
atonement for one’s life’“ (Leviticus 17:11). This instruction concerning blood
and the atonement was at the very heart of Israel’s religion and her
relationship with God. The blood was considered mysterious and sacred.
Israelites were never to ingest blood. The second thing I note is the
relationship between sin and death. As human beings, we do not know all there is
to know about death. There are religious groups who claim to believe in the
annihilation of the human soul and the end of all existence.(Annihilation means
to withdraw something from existence.) In the scriptural account of creation God
made something out of nothing. But there is no instance in Scripture where God
reverses the process of creation and calls an existing thing back into
nothingness. Nor is there the concept of annihilation in nature. It is hard,
then, to understand why some people want to introduce annihilation into the
kingdom of God. Matter can be—and regularly is—changed. But matter cannot be
annihilated. If I strike a wooden match and let it burn to ashes, I can pinch
the remaining ash into a smudge on my fingers, but I have not annihilated the
elements that were in that match. They merely changed form. Part of the match
went up in smoke. Part of it turned to ash. The part that became gaseous
continues to possess invisible form in the atmosphere. Only a change of
residence The living soul within each of us can never be subject to
annihilation. There is only a change of residence at the time of death. The soul
will change its location, but it will never cease to be. That is the crux of the
Bible teaching on the worth and infinite nature of the God-breathed human soul.
Consider this human situation—one many of us have witnessed at one time or
another. A mother lovingly holds a tiny baby in her arms, a baby who is alive,
cooing, alert, healthy. Then tragedy! Raging disease strikes down that same
baby. The mother holds the infant form in her arms, but she is sobbing in grief.
Death has robbed her of the object of her affection. A brief service of loving
memory will follow. In the tiny casket, the lifeless baby looks like a still,
white angel. What has happened? Annihilation? No! But there has been a change of
form and existence—for the parents, a shocking change. The soul within that
baby, the active mind, the intelligence, the cooing and laughter—all appear to
have passed away. The lifeless body will be laid tenderly in the earth, where it
finally will return to dust. But that living, individual soul will not be
annihilated. Never! The soul has changed its place of existence, but it has not
ceased to be. Death has two forms I am amazed by the number of people who do not
seem to know that the Bible speaks of two forms of death. We believe the Bible
when it says physical death is the reality facing every person born into the
world. But there is also a very evident condition among us described as
spiritual death. We trace it back to the Garden of Eden and the warning of God
to our first parents: “`You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you
must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat
of it you will surely die’“ (Genesis 2:16-17).Adam and Eve did not heed the
warning; they ate of the forbidden fruit. And on the day that they transgressed
the law of God in disobedience and self-will, they died spiritually. Death is
not annihilation. Death is not cessation of existence. Death is a changed
relationship in a different form of existence. When Satan, a creation of God,
rebelled in pride and disobedience, he was saying, “I will arise and put my
throne above the throne of God!” And right there Satan died. But he did not
cease to be. God expelled him from heaven and from fellowship with Himself. He
cast him down to earth. And after all these centuries, Satan is still around. He
was not annihilated, and his eternal judgment is still to come. Men and women
try to ignore the fact of spiritual death. The Scriptures do not. Paul has a
classic one-sentence commentary on the subject. He says the woman “who lives for
pleasure is dead even while she lives” (1 Timothy 5:6). She was not dead
physically, but spiritually she was cut off from God. Her form of existence was
such that she was not related to, but separated from, God. The apostle also
warns us that death is one of sin’s fearful consequences. Sin came into the
world and brought death with it. The soul that sins will die. So the Bible
declares. Sin ends at death Another thing we see in the Hebrews Scripture
earlier quoted is that God has a very simple way of dealing with sin. God
terminates sin in death! I lived in Chicago when the notorious killer gangster,
John Dillinger, was being hunted. The police printed pictures of Dillinger with
warnings about his violence with guns. Always he was shown with a cynical,
sarcastic smile on his face. But the final picture indicated that he had stopped
sinning. He was lying on his back, toes up. He was covered with a sheet.
Dillinger was dead. Sin ends at death. When a person dies, he or she will sin no
more. That is God’s way of ending sin. He lets death terminate it. God’s Word
makes it clear that the life touched and tainted with sin is a forfeited life.
The soul that sins shall die. The wonder that we will never fully understand is
that God wanted to save our forfeited lives. So He allowed the blood of the
divine Savior to be offered on our behalf. Notice that there must be a blood
atonement because blood and life have a vital, mysterious relationship. The
blood of Jesus Christ is of infinite value. The pouring out of blood indicates
the termination of life. Because the blood of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, the
Lamb of God, was poured out, our acts of sin may be pardoned. We need to give
this spiritual truth all the reverence and contemplation it deserves. Do we talk
too loosely about the price of our redemption? I confess that I cringe just a
little when I hear someone speak about Christ paying our debt—buying us back.
Sometimes we make it sound like nothing more than a business deal. But I do not
like to think of God redeeming us in the way we might redeem a cow or a horse at
some livestock show. In God’s plan for redeeming us there is something higher
and holier, more sweet and beautiful. In the Old Testament, the sacrifices and
offerings and the poured-out blood of animals were efficacious in ceremonial
symbolism. But the death of Jesus Christ was efficacious actually and eternally.
(“Efficacious is a word theologians like to use; it simply means that it works.
It is effective. You can count on it.) When Jesus poured out His blood on
Calvary, He guaranteed eternal redemption to all who would put their trust in
Him. The blood and the life are one. When the blood was poured out, when Jesus
Christ the eternal Son died, His death became vicarious. (Vicarious is another
word that needs a brief explanation. A vicarious act is one performed on behalf
of someone else. When Jesus died at Calvary, it was a vicarious death. Jesus
died on behalf of us all, the innocent One for the guilty many.) The atoning,
vicarious death of Jesus Christ for sinful humanity is at the very foundation of
the Christian faith. For those who think they can find a better way than God’s
way, it is not a popular teaching. But there is no other way. Jesus is the only
way. If you are a believing, trusting, joyful Christian, never let anyone rob
you of this assurance and consolation. Allow no one to edit or change this basic
truth—trying to make it more acceptable to philosophy or literature or art or
religion. Let this wonderful truth stand tall in its beauty and effectiveness
Christ died, and in the giving of His life, He died vicariously! God’s holiness
and justice are satisfied In Christ’s atoning death the holiness and justice of
God have been satisfied. God no longer holds anything against us, for we have
come to Him in faith. We have pleaded as our merit only the vicarious,
efficacious death of our Savior and Lord. And as we have believed, we have found
the power of death broken. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews assures us
that Jesus has become the mediator—the executor—of the new covenant, the new
testament in God’s grace and mercy. The word mediator comes from the verb “to
mediate.” A mediator is one who stands between two parties or two factions
needing to be reconciled. The Bible lets us know how far sinful mankind is from
a holy God. Sin has dug a vast separating gulf. Christ has become the Mediator.
By the giving of Himself in death, He stands between God and sinners. He shows
us that by His death He has made effective God’s testament, God’s will. That
contract into which God has entered guarantees reconciliation. We are reconciled
to God! God’s gracious new will—His contract—guarantees pardon. We may be
restored into the household of God by faith. Death made the will effective Let
me share with you another observation simple in concept but profound in this
context of our divine inheritance. As long as the Lord Jesus lived, God’s new
covenant and will for us could not become effective. It became immediately
effective the instant Christ died. The death of the Testator brought immediate
pardon, forgiveness, cleansing, fellowship and the promise of eternal life. Such
is the bountiful and enduring legacy that has come by faith to the believing
children of God as a result of Jesus’ Calvary death. I want to conclude by
pointing out something that will sound strange to any mortal human being. No man
ever died to make his will valid and then came back to earth as the executor of
his will. No one. Some other person always acts as executor and administrator of
the estate that has been left. But what no mortal has done, Jesus Christ, the
eternal Son of God, has achieved. He has accomplished this kind of enduring
administration and divine beneficence. Jesus died to activate the terms of the
will to all its beneficiaries; Jesus rose in victory from the grave to
administer the will. Is that not beautiful? Jesus did not turn God’s will over
to someone else to administer. He Himself became the Administrator. Many times
He declared, “I will be back. I will rise again on the third day!” He came back
from the dead. He rose on the third day .He lives to carry out for His people
all the terms of His will. We must continue to trust this Living One who is now
our great High Priest in the heavens. There is not a single argument in liberal
theology strong enough to pry us from our faith. We have a living hope in this
world, and that living hope is equally valid for the world to come. Oh, yes. I
should tell you exactly who are named in God’s new will. The answer is Christ’s
answer and invitation. Whosoever! “Whoever wishes, let him take the free gift.”
Amen.


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  CHAPTER 13: - CHAPTER 12:  JESUS, FULFILLMENT OF THE SHADOW
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IMAGINE WITH ME a capable housewife and cook preparing her dining room for
guests. She has set the cloth-covered table with her best china and silverware,
positioning everything precisely. She adds a centerpiece of cut flowers—a
delicate floral complement to the food we suppose will soon becoming. But
instead of the platter of savory beef and the dishes of steaming mashed potatoes
and other vegetables that we had anticipated, she brings a single loaf of bread
into the dining room. This she upends on the buffet, placing a strong light
behind it so that the loaf of bread casts its own distinct shadow over the table
service beyond it. We would have further reason to question the woman’s sanity
if at that point she called family and guests to the table, announcing cheerily,
“The shadow of the bread is ready. You may come!” Before I attempt a spiritual
application of that unlikely scenario, consider how the writer to the Hebrews
portrays the vast difference between the Old Testament “shadow” in the law and
the reality of God’s glory in the person of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord:
The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities
themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated
endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. If it
could, would they not have stopped being offered?… Then he said, “Here I am, I
have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. And
by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus
Christ once for all.… When this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice
for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. (Hebrews 10:1-2, Hebrews
10:9-10, Hebrews 10:12) The inspired writer is plainly repetitious in his effort
to fully contrast the Old Testament rituals, or shadows, with the perfections of
grace, mercy and love found in the radiant, eternal person of Jesus, the Christ.
This is a serious, sobering passage of Scripture, for it deals with the hope and
the glory of the human race. Shadow versus reality The Old Testament economy,
the law of Moses, the priesthood of imperfect men and the offering of sacrifices
for sin—all of these were appointed of God for a time. They represented as a
shadow the better things, the reality to come. The Old Testament rituals
contained the meaningful shadow of the promised Messiah-Redeemer. The writer is
telling us that the true Light of God had fallen across the person of Jesus, the
eternal Son. The shadow cast by that light and that Person was the temporary
economy of the Old Testament. We know very well the impossibility of trying to
survive on a shadow. It cannot be done. The shadow has been cast by the light,
but it has no being or substance of its own. If you are in need of nourishment,
the shadow of a loaf of bread is of no avail. It will provide no food. You will
continue to be hungry. You will say, “I have had enough of shadow. Bring me the
actual loaf of bread so I may eat and be satisfied!” So in those Old Testament
times, the shadow of good things to come was not enough. Men and women with whom
God was dealing had to live by looking forward in faith to the better promise,
the better hope, the reality to come. This is the glory and joy of the letter to
the Hebrews. Jesus has come to be Savior and Messiah and Lord. God’s Reality has
come! The shadow has been fulfilled. The radiance of God’s glory in the person
of Jesus Christ has made the shadow of no effect. When we find repetition in the
pages of our Bibles as we do in these early chapters of Hebrews, we know there
is a purpose behind it. As Christian believers, we have learned to trust the
divine wisdom and the leading of the Holy Spirit of God. The Spirit knows that
we do not quickly apprehend divine truth. We must read or hear it more than
once. God’s method of instruction is “Do and do, do and do, / rule on rule, rule
on rule; / a little here, a little there” (Isaiah 28:10)—until we have received
and learned and benefited. In this process of learning, God has some problems
with us. One problem is that we get bored. Thankfully, God is faithful and
persistent. He is not disposed to let us go. He keeps telling us to go on
learning, to go on believing, to go on rejoicing in His Word. He is God and we
can trust Him as He leads us and reveals His will to us. Now, on God’s side I
speak with reverence but with plainness when I say that God became tired of
those Old Testament rituals and sacrifices. It is not possible that the blood of
bulls and goats can purge away sin. God says as much through the prophet Isaiah:
The multitude of your sacrifices— what are they to me?” says the Lord. “I have
more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I
have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to
meet with me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts? (Isaiah
1:11-12) Our hearts must be in tune with God In effect, Isaiah was saying to the
people of Israel, “God grows weary of your sacrifices and offerings when your
hearts and minds are not in tune with Him!” Probably if we are sufficiently
thoughtful and concerned, this same message would cause us to reassess a popular
notion among us. We presume we are impressing high heaven by attending churches
in large numbers. Surely God is still asking, “Who told you to do this? When you
come before Me, who has required this of you? Bring no more vain oblations!” God
is bored with interminably repeated sacrifices and offerings that have no
meaning. He had initiated those rituals and sacrifices in Israel, but only as
temporary measures for the covering of sin until the Messiah-Redeemer should
come. When Israel no longer had a commitment in worship and no sense of the
importance of forgiveness and obedience, God said, “I cannot stand the empty
motions you go through. I hate your rituals and feasts. They are a trouble to
me. I am weary of them.” Ultimately, there came the word from the eternal Son,
repeated in Hebrews 10:5 : “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a
body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not
pleased. Then I said, `Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll— I have
come to do your will, O God.’“ This can be none other than Jesus, the eternal
Son, the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world. He has come to
carry out God’s gracious plan of redemption. Thus it is that by that will of God
“we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once
for all.” What have we done with this message? Have we really accepted this word
from God Himself? I am of the opinion that much in our Christian ritual and
liturgy does not come to grips with its basic meaning. I have listened to the
great musical renditions of Bach, Beethoven, Handel and others. The music
written for use in services such as the mass is sublime and the language
beautiful. But I cannot escape the feeling that something is missing. The
prayers and the appeals are there—”Lord, have mercy!” “Christ, have mercy!” They
are voiced again and again. Could it be that this prayer, this appeal to God for
mercy, is but the shadow of the truth? Do these prayers never approach to the
reality of saving faith and confident assurance in God’s promise and provision?
There must come a time when petition becomes reality and we shout, “It is done!
The great transaction is done! I am my Lord’s, and He is mine!” There has to be
a time and a place when we rejoice in faith that we are forgiven, that we have
been born again, that God has accomplished His plan. Right there we drive a
stake and say, “Thank you, Lord! I am forgiven. I am cleansed. I am pardoned. I
am a new person, born from above. Now put me to work. I am ready to witness.” I
confess that I am sad indeed for those multitudes in the great framework of
Sunday Christianity who know nothing beyond their plaintive and continuing
efforts to be forgiven and to find mercy. They must come to the time when it is
done, when they can stretch their hands toward heaven and say in triumphant
faith “It is finished!” Substance, not shadow This is the contrast between law
and grace. In Old Testament times, every priest ministered daily, offering the
same sacrifices that could not take away sin. Then came the revelation of the
new covenant and the eternal, once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the
assurance of complete forgiveness: When this priest had offered for all time one
sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time, he
waits for his enemies to be made his footstool, because by one sacrifice he has
made perfect forever those who are being made holy.… Therefore, brothers, since
we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new
and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since
we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a
sincere heart in full assurance of faith. (Hebrews 10:12-14, Hebrews 10:19-22)
Where could we find a more gracious picture of the privileges that belong to the
believing, trusting children of God? Notice that we have been provided a
consecrated way into the very presence of God! What a contrast to the Old
Testament picture of our first parents when they had sinned and failed in the
Garden of Eden. God had to say to them, “Get up and get out! “As they left that
beautiful estate and God’s presence, God placed “cherubim and a flaming sword
flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life” (Genesis 3:24). It
was the beginning of trials and sorrows for the human race, represented then by
Adam and Eve. They could never return. And it has been my feeling that the whole
race has harbored a yearning to go back to God’s presence, to return to Eden. I
do not mean that everyone in the race wants to be a Christian. Too many are
satisfied with the world, the flesh and the devil. But when you come to really
know men and women, you often will find a wistful yearning, a longing probably
not identified, to know what it meant for Adam and Eve to be able to dwell
contentedly in the presence of their God and Creator. In it all we see the
blinding effect of sin. Men and women do not really want to be good. They do not
want to submit to the will of God. Yet the longing for that Presence still is
there. But no one, unaided, has found a way back. Men and women everywhere have
tried. It is said that in India there are enough gods for each person to have
his or her own. Where is the tribe or nation without some god to worship or
appease? But the search for a way back has been an empty disappointment. And
then Jesus came to live among mankind. The inspired record has Him saying, `”I
have come to do your will, O God” (Hebrews 10:7). After His death and
resurrection, He opened a new and consecrated way back into the presence of God.
He blazed the trail as our divine Mediator. Through faith in Him, all who yearn
to may enter again the very presence of God. And there in that Presence, Jesus
is our great High Priest and Mediator. Because He wears our human nature, He
welcomes us, His brothers and sisters, to share His position in the heavenlies.
Jesus took our guilt, but … In this context we should consider our justification
and our acceptance by the living, holy God. In our Christian faith we understand
that God laid on Christ the iniquity of us all. Theologians sometimes call this
the “transfer of guilt,” and believe what the Bible says about it. In many
church circles today we are hearing about the “automatic” qualities attached to
Christianity. A whole generation is being taught that a profession of faith in
Christ brings automatic righteousness, automatic standing with God, automatic
pardon and automatic eternal life. “Jesus has done everything that needs to be
done,” goes the argument; “all you have to do is say you believe. Believe and be
justified! Believe and be accepted as righteous!” This idea of automatically
transferring the sinner’s guilt to Christ is a little too pat to please my
heart. The commonly held idea seems to be that I can be as vile as the inside of
a green, mucky sewer, but if and when I believe, the Lord drops a mantle of
judicial righteousness upon me and immediately I am accepted by God as perfectly
pure. It is my conclusion that a holy God would have to contradict Himself to
perform a transaction like that. How does God justify a sinful person? He does
so by taking the sinner’s nature into Christ, who is the perfect, righteous One.
His righteousness, in turn, goes to the sinner. Some teachers will argue for the
judicial impartation of righteousness alone. But when by faith the sinner’s
nature is taken into the very nature of Christ, His righteousness becomes a part
of the former sinner’s nature. Let me say it another way. I doubt very much that
there is any such thing in the mind of God as justification without
regeneration—new God—life imparted to the sinner. It is regeneration that unites
us to the nature of Jesus. Jesus being righteous imparts new God-life from His
own nature to us, and God is satisfied. In that sense, the idea of the transfer
of guilt is accurate. But we carry the concept too far until it becomes a
plainly mechanical thing, like a commercial transaction. There must be a vital,
living commitment. Righteousness is imparted to the believing sinner who is
united to Christ. It is not imparted to the sinner who simply stands outside and
receives a judicial notification that he has been “made righteous.” This adds
some important light. As believers, we are accepted in the beloved Son. We can
never be accepted out of the beloved Son. God is our hiding place Christian
believers have another privilege. We have seen that we have a moral right to
come to God—into His presence. We are accepted by Him because of Christ Jesus.
But we also have the right to hide in God and be safe. That, too, is our
privilege because Jesus, our great High Priest, perfectly represents us at God’s
right hand. When we are united to Christ, no one can take this right and
privilege away from us. We are safe! We are safe! Someone was quoted as saying,
“I do not want to hide from life. I want to face up to life every day.” Knowing
the nature of humankind, I would call such talk bold and brave. When the winter
temperature is 50 degrees below zero, it is brave, bold talk to say, “I do not
want to hide from the cold. I want to face it, whether I have the proper
clothing or not!” When we face the abrasive storms of life, it is ridiculous to
say, “I do not want a hiding place. I will face the storms.” What we are hiding
from is not life. We are hiding from a sinful world, from a sinister devil, from
vicious temptation. We are hiding in the only place there is to hide—in God. It
is our right and our privilege to know the perfect safety He has promised. The
trusting child of God is safe in Jesus Christ. When the lambs are safe in the
fold, the wolf can growl and snarl outside, but he cannot get into the fold.
When the child of God enters the Father’s house, the enemy of his or her soul
can roar and threaten, but he cannot enter. Such a shelter is our high
privilege! Jesus is enough In Old Testament terms—the shadow of reality—God
promised He would cover the sin of His people. In the New Testament covenant,
God declares He will put our sin away forever. This is a vastly different thing!
“Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will
appear a second time, not to bear sin {that is, without a sin offering},but to
bring salvation to those who are waiting for him” (Hebrews 9:28). God chose
eight and perhaps nine writers to provide us with the New Testament. These
inspired Scriptures agree that the symbolic shadows in the Old Testament have
given way to the new covenant of grace and pardon mediated through Jesus Christ,
who died and rose again. We look back with gratitude and love to His atoning
death at Calvary. We look forward in hope and expectancy to His second coming.
This all adds up to the fact that Jesus Christ is enough for all our needs. He
is our great High Priest and Intercessor in heaven. He is the worthy Lamb of
God, slain from the foundation of the world. By His blood He has consecrated
forever the way into God’s presence. He is our Man in glory. Let us thankfully
hide in Him and be safe!


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/jesus-our-man-in-glory/
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