Open—Bill Prost
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2:38.
Our separate is.
Lord we all. It's All in all of you.
We are.
Sorry.
I.
Love.
Love, love, love, love.
Our soul.
Restore.
Exhaustion.
That's why.
I saw.
Joyride.
No, still shall be.
My soul shall.
Give.
Joy.
Ce Love.
Oh, oh, oh, three.
We pray.
Yes.
Would you turn with me, please to Hebrews chapter 4?
And perhaps we could read from.
Verse 9, Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 9.
There remaineth therefore arrest to the people of God.
For he that is entered into his rest he hath also. He also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Let us labor, therefore, to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.
For 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.
00:05:12
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.
Seeing then that we have a great high priest that is passed into, or perhaps more accurately.
Through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.
For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.
But was in all points tempted, like as we are, yet without sin.
Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace.
That we may obtain mercy and find grace to help.
In time of need.
It's not my thought to enter into an exposition of this chapter, but particularly to mention three things that are brought before us in the last few verses of this chapter.
And I would suggest that they tie in with what we've had before us so far in the readings.
And are very needful for our own souls.
As a bit of background, we know that the book of Hebrews was written.
To as the title of the book would suggest to Hebrew Christians, Jewish Christians, some of whom.
Had taken an outward profession, but perhaps without any inward reality.
And there is a voice to their consciences in this book.
About the dangers of resting on outward position with no inward reality.
But others were true believers, but who had failed to enter into all of the blessings of true Christianity.
Because they continued hanging on to those.
Trappings of Judaism which were so precious to them.
And so the object of the author of the book, very likely the apostle Paul, although he is not identified as such, the object of the book is to exercise those who were not real, but to bring those others into the full and complete blessing of their position in Christ, as opposed to what they had.
Under Judaism.
And one of the things that they wanted to do and needed was to enter into REST.
When the Lord Jesus came to this earth, those who recognized him as the Messiah.
We're looking for an immediate Kingdom. They were looking for the glorious Kingdom that would bring in all those blessings that had been promised in the Old Testament prophets, and they were expecting that to happen.
And as we know, when it was revealed to them that it was not going to be immediate, many of them were very, very disappointed.
And even the Lord's disciples could scarcely take it in that the Kingdom would have to be postponed.
Verse 9 here I believe can have a dual application.
Does there remain arrest to Israel on earth? Indeed there is. There is going to be a visible Kingdom in the Millennium. The Lord Jesus must have His rightful place in the world that cast him out. He must reign, it says in First Corinthians 15, until He hath put all things under his feet.
But can you and I take that up?
As belonging to the Church, I believe we can.
Our rest is not down here, it's up there.
There remaineth therefore arrest under the people of God.
00:10:01
But what does the next verse say? And verse 11, verses 10 and 11?
Oh, the Lord would have you and me to enter into that rest down here.
Allow me to say it. And sometimes my own heart is no different.
I see many dear believers today who fail to enter into rest.
Sometimes we don't walk in the sense of that rest and peace.
One of our old writers in the 1800s challenges our hearts and our consciences by saying.
As I go about my everyday life, do I have as much rest and peace in my soul as if I were on my deathbed?
That exercised my heart.
If I were on my deathbed today, I wouldn't be worried too much about what was going to happen tomorrow.
I wouldn't be worried about affairs down here, the cares of this life and everything to do with this world.
And the things that are needful down here would not be so much of A concern to me, would they? No, I trust that I would be thinking about what was ahead in the glory.
Reminds me of my beloved and I don't think it hurts to mention her name. My beloved aunt by marriage, Ruth Smith lately of Ottawa, ON, who went to be with the Lord at the age of 96 a few years ago, having lived all her life in the same home. Born there, lived there, took it over with her husband when her parents died.
And lived in that house.
Until she went to hospital for a few weeks with cancer and then subsequently into Hospice care.
I don't think it hurts to tell this story.
When she was riding from the hospital to the Hospice care, which was only a matter of half a dozen blocks away from the home where she had lived all her life, her grandson, who is a paramedic, was in the ambulance with her and he said to her grandma.
Would you like us to route the ambulance past the house on 32 Bellwood Ave. just so you could have one last look at?
Her words ring in my ears, yet although of course I wasn't there to hear them, they were repeated to me.
Her words were beautiful. She said. Oh no, Matthew, I'm not looking back, I'm looking forward.
Oh, how that thrilled my soul. I'm not looking back, I'm looking forward. She was living in the enjoyment of that rest. But can you and I walk through all the circumstances, all the difficulties of life, and enter into that rest? Yes, we can.
But what does the Lord bring before us? Verse 12, the first thing.
For the Word of God is quick and powerful. Why does that have to be brought before us? Oh, because in the latter end of or the end of verse 11 it says lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. And note that that doesn't necessarily mean only an unbeliever as to salvation.
As believers, as we had this morning, we can fail to believe in the goodness of God. We can fail to believe that He is for us in everything that comes into our lives.
So what does God bring before us? First and foremost, his precious Word.
I don't think it hurts to mention that some of us were talking about this at the breakfast table this morning.
And we reporting out the importance of the Word of God.
And how that feelings can go this way and that way. Yes, God has given us feelings. He's given us emotions.
And they are important, but in anything fundamental and serious.
God doesn't refers to our feelings, He refers us to his word because it never changes.
00:15:00
Our feelings go up and down, but his word never changes the.
When the two were on the way to Emmaus, you will recall that they were discouraged and cast down because evidently all of their hopes had been dashed to the ground. The one whom they looked for as their Messiah and who was going to set up the Kingdom and as they thought redeem Israel, had been crucified.
And to them, it was all over with.
And here was the risen savior walking with them. But what does he do? Does he immediately say, But it's I, Here I am. Look at my hands. I'm real. I'm risen. Oh no. What does he do?
Spends whatever time it took to walk between 7:00 and 8:00 miles and bring this before them, the word of God. They needed to see it from the scriptures and so it says. The Word of God here in verse 12 is quick and powerful and sharper than any two edged sword.
Piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit. What does that mean?
I believe most of us know that man is composed of three things.
Body, soul and spirit, or as Paul puts it in Thessalonians, spirit, soul and body.
We all know what the body is. It's the house in which the soul and the spirit live.
And as James tells us, the body without the spirit is dead. But the soul and spirit are different because the soul is what makes us individuals. It's the seat of the appetites and desires. It's the seat of the emotions, if we could put it that way.
But the Spirit is rather the God conscious part of our being, that part of us that recognizes that there is a God by which we relate to God, by which God speaks to us, by which God's spirit works. We get in Romans 8, the Spirit witnesses with our spirit that we are the sons of God, and so on.
But here the two are divided asunder by the word of God. What does that mean?
Oh, it means that sometimes the things that my soul desires can be affected by my old sinful self, and my soul can desire that which is contrary to what God would have me be occupied with. Even as a believer, I need the Word of God.
Permit me to reminisce a little. Sometimes we older ones do that a little too much. I hope I don't, but I can well remember, probably.
Good. 40 years ago now being at a meeting where our brother Gordon Hayhoe brought out.
The fact that in his younger years and that would have taken us back probably to 90 or 100 years ago.
He said the world, even though it was still the world in North America, was relatively Christian in its character. The Word of God was recognized as the basis of morality and law in society in Canada and the United States, and in a general way, at least outwardly, people recognize the morality of God's Word and walked by it.
So that the Christian did not in that sense.
Stick out so much.
But he said gradually the world has tangentially and on a tangent, moved further and further away from the Word of God.
So that the gap becomes wider and wider between what the world allows.
And what the believer should be doing.
And then he said, what is the answer? The answer is to be more and more familiar with God's Word. And so I would bring that before us because it's only the Word of God that will divide asunder between soul and spirit that will lead you and me to recognize what is of God and what is ultimately.
00:20:00
Part and parcel.
Satan's world? Excuse me?
It goes on to say and of the joints and marrow.
The marrow, as we know, is contained in the bones, and in order to get at the marrow you have to break the bone open.
Sometimes it takes something pretty hard to break a good stiff bone open, doesn't it? It does. They can be pretty hard, but the Word of God is able to separate things that need to be separated and how necessary it is.
And so I would say here too, it says that it is discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart that brings in, not merely what we say.
Or what we do, but the motive behind it. And the motive behind something is even more important than the act, because God can reward a right motive, but He can't reward a right act that is done with the wrong motive, because it's the motive that gives value to the ACT.
And sometimes I speak to my own heart. There can be thoughts and motives in my heart.
Which may express themselves in what looks on the surface like something pleasing to God.
And yet the motive of the heart is wrong.
Permit me to share with you something that I read a little while ago.
Which really reached my own heart and conscience. I trust a brother made this remark in our written ministry.
He said I need Christ at the bottom, meaning for salvation.
And if I don't have Christ at the bottom, I'm not even a Christian at all.
But he said at the top, I can have an outwardly blameless Christian life where there are no gross sins and no outwardly serious errors.
But between Christ at the bottom and an outwardly upright life at the top.
I can have 150 things that the world pours in and with all kinds of thoughts and intents that are not of God.
And then he said this will not do.
And it's true.
No, the Lord wants you and me as we had this morning, to live a life in communion with Him. He wants us to walk with Him, to enjoy that privilege as the Lord Jesus did, of being the perfect dependent man with no will of his own during the will of God, while enjoying in His heart that which will be ours up there.
If we need a further word to our conscience, verse 13 brings it in.
We often use this verse in the Gospel, and rightfully so. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight, for all things are naked and opened under the eyes of him with whom we have to do.
Absolutely, and to the unbeliever this ought to act as a serious voice.
If there's anyone here today that thinks he or she can hide from God, this verse shows us.
But does that include you and me? Turn back with me for a moment to Luke's Gospel chapter 12 for a verse.
Luke, chapter 12.
And verse two, well that will read the end of verse one. Luke 12, the end of verse one. Be wary of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known.
Everything will come out. For the unbeliever, it will be at the great white throne. For the believer, it will be at the judgment seat of Christ. It's going to have to come out those hidden recesses of the heart.
How good to get them out before the Lord now?
And have a clean sleep before him, so that there is not those, or there are not those hidden motives in the heart, which are contrary to the mind of God. The Word of God, by the Spirit of God, will do that. But let's go on. What else do we have here?
00:25:14
Something very precious in verse 14, and we won't go into it in a lot of detail. It's very well developed in the book of Hebrews and it was mentioned in the meeting this morning.
Seeing then that we have a great high priest.
That is past and it should read through the heavens.
Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession or confession it could be.
For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.
But was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin or sin apart.
The high priesthood of Christ. Now, it was brought out this morning, and blessedly so that you and I, every one of us who are true believers, are priests. We have the privilege to draw near, but we are here in this world. Where is our great high priest? He's passed through the heavens.
There to be in the presence of God for us. And what is he doing up there interceding for us?
In our infirmities.
Now notice.
And I know this is elementary. I hope this does not insult the spiritual intelligence of anyone. But infirmities are not sin. They can lead to sin, but they are not in themselves sin.
There are those here, I am sure, who have chronic illnesses and they can be a real burden to you. They're not sin, they're an infirmity.
There are those who have other infirmities, difficulties and problems in their lives that the Lord has allowed infirmities, things that can lead to sin, but are not sin in themselves.
They are things that come from without.
Those things can be very difficult.
And I think we all have to face it. There are times perhaps when we would look up.
As the Apostle Paul did with his thorn in the flesh.
And say, Lord, I don't really need this. I would be far better off without it. I could live a better Christian life. I could serve you better if I didn't have this infirmity.
Have we sometimes thought that?
And yet those infirmities are allowed of God, and we won't turn to it. But the beloved apostle Paul could say there in Second Corinthians.
After he'd been through the process, after he had asked the Lord three times to take away that thorn and three times over the Lord had said to him, no, Paul, I will give you whatever grace you need for it, but I am not taking it away. Paul gets to the point where he not only says.
OK, Lord, I submit, I will put up with it.
Is that what he said?
Let's turn to it Second Corinthians chapter 12.
What does he say there? Verse 10, Second Corinthians 12 and verse 10.
Therefore, I really take pleasure in infirmities. Oh my, that's quite something, isn't it?
In reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then am I strong.
Wonderful.
Isn't that something in the middle of verse nine? He says most gladly. Will I therefore?
Therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of God may rest upon me.
00:30:07
What a step forward in maturity as a Christian to glory in that which was seemingly such a hindrance to him. We don't know exactly what it was, but it was evidently something physical.
And yet Paul glories in it. Why? Because he had a great high priest up there.
Who interceded for him?
And one who had been through it all.
There isn't one thing that can come upon you and me.
In the pathway of faith that the Lord Jesus could not have been through apart from sin. Now we want to make it clear, just so we understand, I don't believe that the Lord Jesus ever suffered a physical infirmity. I don't believe he ever had a headache. I don't believe he ever had what we would call the flu. I don't believe he ever woke up in the morning.
And said I feel rotten this morning. As a sinless man that could not be. He was not subject to those things.
But he was capable of feeling from without all of the effects of sin. Why? To put away your sins and mine? No, but to be able to feel with you and me and be a merciful and faithful high priest. And he is up there interceding for us.
Sometimes we say we need to go to Him as our merciful and faithful High Priest, and that is blessedly true.
As our advocate, he acts without our going to him. That's first John 1:00 and 9:00, and then the beginning of the second chapter. But as our great high priest, I believe he also acts for us without our asking. He doesn't need us to ask to intercede for us. No, he does so.
In order to do what? To support us in those infirmities and.
To make them good to our souls to the point that we get the blessing from them rather than there being just a.
Shall I say it?
I hesitate to use the words, but I've heard people say it. This problem is just one big pain in the neck. Have we used those words, if not outwardly, at least in our own minds? I'm afraid I have.
But know the Lord says, I want to lift you above all that. And there is one who has been through it all and who put up with everything in the pathway of faith as we have in Psalm 16, not only in obedience to the will of God, but to be a merciful and faithful high priest. One more thing.
Verse 16 and this I would suggest is separate from his high priesthood. It's not the same.
Let us therefore come boldly unto our great High Priest. Know it does not say that unto the throne of grace.
That we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
That, I believe, is put there for those Hebrew believers, because what kind of a throne were they accustomed to in the Old Testament?
Some of them saw it, others knew about it from it being written in Exodus. They knew what Mount Sinai was. They knew. Excuse me?
About that mountain to which man could not approach, they knew about the earthquake and the fire and the Thunder, and the voice of God that accompanied the giving of the law. So that even a man like Moses, who was familiar with the presence of God, had to say, I exceedingly fear and quake. And they were used to a God who stood at a distance and who made strong demands.
On them demands to which they could never answer.
It was not by any means in the Old Testament primarily a throne of grace.
00:35:05
Now I hasten to say that there is a good deal of the grace of God in the Old Testament if you look for.
It was the grace of God that did not consume that whole nation. For when Moses was up in Mount Sinai getting that law, what did they presume to do down below?
Made a golden calf and worshiped it. How awful. And so the Lord did not deal with them according to the requirements of that law. But in the Old Testament there was no approach to God in his near, in the nearness that you and I have.
Does the apostle, if it was indeed the Apostle Paul, but whoever wrote the book of the Hebrews, why does he bring in here at the end the throne of grace?
I believe it is this, at least to my own soul.
In whatever state of soul you and I might be, whether we are going on well before the Lord, or whether, sad to say, we have gotten at a distance from Him. And it happens. It happens in my life, sad to say. But whatever may be my state of soul, perhaps I have even shall I say it.
Had a serious fall in my life and maybe the devil is whispering in your ear.
Or maybe in my ear and saying, look at what you did, to use common terminology, look how badly you messed up. You cannot ever go on for the Lord again. You cannot be restored. You cannot ever bear a Christian testimony again. You had better just throw it all overboard and go out into the world.
Because you have made such a mess that you have ruined your life.
Yes, things. We do have consequences. I don't deny that. And in the government of God there may be lifelong consequences. There were, for example, in David's life and others in the Old Testament, and they could be serious.
But.
Whatever state our soul is in, we all we should remember that if we come back to the throne of God, it's a throne of grace. I think it's Mr. Ballot puts it so beautifully in his ministry, he says.
No matter how deeply we have failed.
If we turn around and come back to the Lord Himself.
We are always, always going to find that we are dealing with love.
Isn't that beautiful?
Does love sometimes administer timely discipline? Yes, it does. Does love Passover sin? That wouldn't be true love.
Does grace.
Make an excuse for sin? Absolutely not. We read in Titus. Well, let's turn to it, because it's good to read it. Turn to the book of Titus for a moment, just right back there before the book of Hebrews, and notice what it says.
Titus two and verse 11.
For the grace of God that bring us salvation hath appeared to all men.
Teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world, looking for that blessed hope and so on. What teaches us that? The government of God?
If necessary, yes, but not primarily. Know what teaches us that? The grace of God.
And the grace of God, properly entered into and understood, is the strongest antidote.
To the believers falling into sin.
That's why Peter says at the end of his second epistle, Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
00:40:00
The subject of Peter's ministry is the government of God, first of all in the House of God and then in the world.
And you and I, as believers, are in the House of God. What is the strongest force in the House of God?
To maintain order, there a sense in our souls of the grace of God. And so it says, let us come boldly under the throne of grace.
You know, when we have sinned, we don't like to think of coming boldly to the Lord, do we? And in that sense we should come with a sense of our failure, that's proper. But at the same time, we don't come as they did in the Old Testament.
Wondering whether the Lord can forgive one more time or something like that? No, Come boldly under the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy.
Says and find grace to help in time of need. Or perhaps the thought more accurately is find timely help.
That is, God would have us rather come to the throne of grace as a preventative measure.
Rather than after the failure has occurred.
If you and I had a deeper sense in our souls of grace, we would not fall into that sin in the 1St place. If I have in my soul a sense of what my blessed Savior suffered in order to put away sin.
And if I have, on the other hand, the sense in my soul.
Of what my old sinful self is capable of.
I wouldn't trust myself.
And I may say as an older brother that I have had to learn that the hard way and others have to.
My brother told me recently.
He's not much younger than I am, and he told me years ago of speaking with our late brother Clarence Lundeen, whom I had the privilege of knowing pretty well too.
And he told of how they were chatting together and the younger brother.
Say, just a wee bit younger than I am.
Was talking to him and somehow the subject of sin came up and Clarence Lundin made what at that time for the younger brother was a somewhat cryptic remark. He said, You younger brothers, you don't really know what sin is.
What did he mean?
Did he mean that somehow the older brothers had worse old natures than the younger ones? No, that wasn't what he was talking about. What did he mean?
He meant, I believe, that there are sometimes those who grow up in Christian homes and who thus are kept from the depths of sin that exist in this world and perhaps do not realize, as I did, not what the old sinful self is capable of.
And I can well remember my father telling me, he said, if we do not know what depths of sin we are capable of, the Lord will sometimes put us through circumstances and bring us to the brink of a Cliff to make us realize how bad we really are. That's what Clarence Lundin meant, I believe.
He'd been there, done that, as we say, in modern language, and he was just alerting that younger brother, you may have to go that way too.
I don't know whether he did or not. We didn't go down that road. The point is, what do we get to learn through that? The grace of God. We learned that from which we were saved. We learned what we were saved from. We learned not to trust ourselves. We learned to walk as we had in the readings. Independence on the Lord. We learn what Paul had to learn, that when he was weak, then he was strong.
Because that thorn in the flesh kept him from being lifted up in pride. Because he'd been caught up to the 3rd heaven.
A privilege that, as far as we know, no other believer had ever had, and probably never has had.
It was preventative and verse 16 is meant to be preventative.
00:45:03
Yes, we can always go to that throne of grace, thank God. And it is a throne of grace. Let's never forget that. But it's meant to be resorted to in order that we might not fall into sin rather than having it happen afterward. Well, May God bless these thoughts to our hearts. They've been very precious to my own soul. I trust they can be made good to others too.