Heb. 4:9-16
This chapter shows us not only the painstaking of God's interest in us and care for us, but also that that interest is taken in us by One who knows the path we are treading. He has trodden it Himself, and so it leads our hearts to rest quietly in Him and wait on Him who has our interests so thoroughly at heart.
In John 13, the dealing of the Lord with souls is restorative. Here it is more preventive, and with the purpose of establishing our souls in the fact that there is a rest remaining for us. It is a rest that can never be disturbed, and He has made provision for carrying us on safely until we reach it.
When we understand what is in this world, and what we are in ourselves, how fearful the heart becomes. It only finds the answer to these fears in turning to Him whose grace has anticipated and fully met them. How blessed to know, then, that there is not only a rest, but a rest that cannot be disturbed, and that is reserved for us. And we rejoice, too, in the thought of God then having everything suited to Himself. It is not only our rest, it is the rest of God.
Now, through grace, we enjoy rest of conscience and rest of heart in Christ. He comes to us with both, even here. It is, however, rest in Christ, not in anything that is around us. He does not promise us rest in our surroundings. The moment we look upward we can rest entirely there. Here, with any loved earthly object, the thought intrudes that something may come to take it away from me. My joy is a thing that I may lose tomorrow. But the activity of the grace of God is to establish the hearts of weak and feeble ones in the blessed fact that there is a rest remaining there that cannot be disturbed. First, He removes any difficulties from their minds as to the rest already given them, and then assures them that there is a rest that remaineth for the people of God.
Sometimes saints of God may think that there is not much justice here, but that all will be right one day when we get up there. Though this may be in a certain sense true, it is not enough; at least, not if it promotes a thought of indifference as to the present moment. God would teach us the importance of the present time, and appreciation of the provision that He has made for us in it. There is the grace of the Lord which we are called to lay hold upon now. It is the tendency of our hearts to try to get out of the circumstances we are in-to hope for some change that will carry us into some path easier to nature than the one we are placed in-instead of making use of God's grace to enable us to walk where we are, so as to please Him. Of course I am not speaking of wrong circumstances; if we are in such, the only thing is to look to God to deliver us out of them at once.
The Lord's interest in us is shown in the verses we have read. He has not only established us in the sense of His favor as to the forgiveness of our sins, and the knowledge that a rest, God's rest, is remaining for us at the end of our course, but He also is greatly concerned how we go on until we arrive at that rest. So the Apostle
says: "The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do."
As soon as we accept this truth, what is the effect of it on our souls? The heart is inclined to answer, Who could maintain that standard of acceptability in the midst of such circumstances as these? The tendency, then, is to lower the standard of what God expects of His people, because of the difficulties of the way. But I repeat, that the first thing is to get a firm hold of the greatness of this grace of God wherein we stand; then 1 so well understand His grace that I can welcome this statement that His word is "quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword," and that "all things are naked and opened" unto His eyes. Do you think I can welcome such words unless I understand His grace? When I have the sense that God is watching every step of my path, the tendency is to say, "Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?" Psalm 139:7.
God, however, knows my need and feebleness. I learn through His Word that there is One living at God's right hand for me-One whose strength meets my feebleness-so that I can welcome God's dealings with me. I learn God's thoughts about me, but I do not seek to get away from Him, because it is His grace that detains me in His presence while He deals with me.
He knows exactly where we are and what we are passing through, and He is not one who underrates the difficulties of the way. We know what it is if someone comes to sympathize with us in trial who cannot adequately enter into our feelings; it is never thus with the Lord. He enters fully into the very depths of our sorrows. Our great High Priest is on "the throne of grace." How well He knows what suits me! How perfectly He enters into my need! As He ministers to us His sympathy and power, does not each one of our hearts say, "That comes from One who understands me-from One who knows all about me?"
Have you not ever been struck by Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the temple? As you dwell upon it, you get the sense that here is a man who feels that the greatest good he can desire for his people is that they may find that God has an ear for them. And when you read Psalm 107, you acknowledge how right Solomon was, and that he estimated truly when he judged that when men were in difficulties their greatest boon would be to have God's ear-that when they should cry unto the Lord, and He would deliver them and save them out of their distresses. The theme of Solomon's prayer is this: that man's greatest blessing consists in being connected with the greatness of God, and that his greatest benefit is for God to give assurance of His ear.
As to Solomon, God more than answers his prayer. He goes far beyond it. Solomon prays that God's "eyes may be open toward this house night and day." God answers, "Mine eyes and My heart shall be there perpetually." Is that not a wonderful answer? When in their difficulties and their trials, when even in the consciousness that their own folly had brought them into such straits, yet they might turn to Him whose eyes would be there continually.
Our hearts, too, must confess that the greatest benefit God can give us down here is the consciousness that, in all we pass through, we have His ear. God's thought is first to establish us in grace, and then to instill in us an acute awareness that all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. What a word for us! Have we the sense, day by day and hour by hour, that we have to do with God? How simple it makes things, and yet how serious!
Notice in Hebrews 12 the number of ways in which the grace of Christ comes into the heart; it points out one thing after another. God brings a number of admonitions to bear on the hearts of those who were ready to turn aside. What were their difficulties? Well, they had come out from Judaism with expectations savoring rather of the future kingdom and glory than of the daily cross of Jesus Christ. They expected to find in their present association with Christ a path on earth which did not come to pass, and so they were disappointed and discouraged. Hesitating in their steps, these questioned in their hearts whether the path they were treading was of God; and they were ready to turn back. God sees what a dangerous moment it is for them-the moment of hesitance and of being cast down-and how the enemy watched for it. See how beautifully He brings in Esau just at the very moment when his history would be a warning to them.
How does He warn them? Well, the question is, Under what circumstances was it that Esau sold his birthright? It was in a moment of pressure and weariness; he says, so to speak, "I am at the point of death, and what profit shall this birthright be to me?"and he settles for the present. A mess of pottage found him in these circumstances, and he took it. Now remember Esau, says the Apostle; look what happened then in a time of weakness and hesitance, and take warning. And for your encouragement, you have not come to mount Sinai, the place of law, but to mount Zion, the place where grace was brought in. And is grace presented in a way that makes us indifferent as to our path here? Not at all. It is, "we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire." Is this being indifferent or careless?
This is a test to many souls. They do not like the thought of God's being a consuming fire, and they say, Oh, that is God apart from Christ. It is not at all; it is "our God." God is holy, and He will have His people be "partakers of His holiness." In Lev. 9:24, the holiness of God accepts by fire what they had done, but in Lev. 10:2, the same holiness refuses by fire the presumption that disregards its claim. God is holy and God ever remains the same, and thank God that He does. He never changes in His love for us, and it is also an immense mercy that He never changes in His holiness.
God knows how to bring Himself before us maintaining both these scriptures. He separated Moses to His service when He sent Him from the burning bush to be the deliverer of Israel. That was to be the aspect of God's holiness that was to be engraved upon his soul in his service. But if I am not established in grace, it is not a bit of comfort to me, rather the reverse, that God has His eye upon me and is dealing with me as I go along down here. I shall be like Jonah; I shall seek to flee from God's presence. He knew that his prophetic character would go, and that he should be made to look small before the Ninevites. But you know his history, and how God had to have His own way with him to get him back to the true path, and to bring him to the point of saying, No one will do for me but God; "Salvation is of the Lord."
If we have to do with this wonderful grace of God, we can welcome the fact that everything about us is open to the eye of God. When David hears God's words of grace, he goes in and sits before the Lord, and that forms his prayer. God had revealed wonderful things to him, and he says, "Therefore hath Thy servant found in his heart to pray this prayer unto Thee." Who taught him his prayer? It was as he heard God pour out His heart in blessing for David, that David's heart answered to God's. And that is what true prayer is.
God does not underrate our difficulties, and He does not overrate our strength; He does not take us to be what we are not. But as we face the gravity of what it is to be in this evil world, we find the provision that God has made for us to go through it. I cannot do without drawing upon all this grace. There is no superfluous provision made. The question is, Are we willing to put ourselves in God's hands and ask Him to have His own way with us? We are not called to anything that God does not give us grace to walk in. Are we ready to say with Peter, "Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come unto Thee on the water"?and are we prepared to hear Him say, "Come"? The only "if" in the question was "if it be Thou." Our poor hearts have fifty other "ifs", but the only one for the eye of faith is “if it be Thou." And He said, "Come."
Anyone really seeking to follow the Lord must expect Him to say, "Come." It does not depend on anything in ourselves; it is all on the one "if" and His word "Come." And we are not to take one or two steps and then to sink. No; we are to go on. Why did Peter sink? Because evidently there was lurking in his heart the thought, Look, Peter, here you are walking on the water! Can a man go on quietly walking on the water, quietly maintaining what is for the Lord amid adverse surroundings? Provision has been made for our doing so by One who knows all that is around us.
Now if these things are true, if this painstaking provision and love are true, what should be the effect upon us? It leaves us without excuse.
I have looked at this subject in a suggestive way, desiring that God's grace may lead our hearts on into the consideration of His care for us along our pathway-into a deeper understanding of that grace which has made such full provision for our need and weakness, that we are able to go on unmoved, even amidst difficulties and trials.