OUR LORD’S HEROIC ENDURANCE.
NO. 3327
A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7TH, 1912,
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
ON LORD’S-DAY EVENING, JULY 29TH, 1866.
“For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be weary, and faint in your minds” — Hebrews 12:3.
IF we regard the Christian as a racer contending for the great race, we see that he is subject to several dangers. He may give up the race and turn back unless everlasting mercy shall prevent so dreadful a calamity. He may leap out of the track, and leave for a time the only path that leads to victory and reward. Or he may be so clogged and hampered with weights that though he may run he may run altogether in vain. Or he may be tripped up and fall, and so others may pass him and take the prize of his high calling. But even if he shall fully have avoided all those dangers, if he shall keep to the course, if he shall be kept upon his feet, and if his racing should be of the best kind, yet there is still the possibility — for the best Christian is still flesh and blood — that he may faint.
A man when running for a prize exerts every nerve and sinew and muscle: he throws his whole being into the effort; if he may not pass his rival by several lengths, he will at least seek to pass him by a neck, and to this end he strains and strives even to the point of agony, if by any means he may attain unto the first place, and so win the reward. Now, while the body is in such a state of tension as that, it is possible that it may suddenly give way: that the overwrought frame may not be able to endure the toil and stress, and the man, with the best of intentions, may yet lack the power to carry them out. He may grow weary, and though just now he almost grasped the prize in the fond anticipation of hope, he may fall dead upon the ground like a stone through faintness. The apostle knew this, for I do not doubt that even he in his great fight with afflictions, when he had fought with beasts at Ephesus, and when he had passed through trials of every shape and form, he sometimes felt as if he might faint, and might after all be unsuccessful. Hence it is that, instead of merely exhorting us not to faint and bidding us not be weary, he does what is far better and more helpful, he supplies us with a double restorative whereby our strength may be recruited. Just as Antaeus is said to have revered his strength when he touched mother earth, and therefore he could not be killed until Hercules held him in the air and strangled him there, so is the Christian strengthened by the act which the Apostle Paul here speaks of — by touching Christ, by looking again to Jesus, by considering him: and the only possibility for the destruction of the Christian would be so to separate him from Christ that he would not be able to derive any strength from considering the great Apostle and High Priest of his profession. The apostle does as good as say this to us: “You are very likely to faint in your minds, and to grow weary in your spirit; so if you would prevent this, I recommend you to consider the Lord Jesus Christ, to think much of him, to have him constantly before your mind’s eye.” And he is very precise about this, for he not only bids us consider Christ, but he exhorts us to consider him under a very special aspect, that is, as a sufferer, and from one particular form of trial, namely, “suffering the contradiction of sinners against himself.”
It sins to me, as if the apostle felt that one of the most likely things to make Christians faint, would be the contradiction which they meet with from sinners. The persecution, the slander, ill-usage, bad return and recompense which they get from an ungodly world; and this would be likely to make them weary at heart in well-doing.
So he bids them look away to the Saviour, bravely enduring the same trials. “Consider him,” saith he, “who endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be weary and faint in your minds.”
I am not able to speak to you this evening as I fain would speak. I scarcely feel in the condition either of body or of mind suitable to the study and proclamation of so gracious a topic as the one before us, but in my weakness I desire also to consider him who was wearied and sat upon the well, and in speaking to you I would ask his help that my weakness may not rob you of the blessing.
I shall introduce the theme to your attention in this way: first, let us consider the contradiction of sinners which Christ endured; secondly, let us for a minute or two consider his endurance of it; and then, thirdly, coming to the fulness of the text, let us consider him who endured such contradiction.
The particular form of trial of which we are invited to think is,
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I. The Contradiction Of Ungodly Men Which The Saviour Endured.
Even early in his ministry he had to endure this. At the very first sermon which he preached in the synagogue of his own town, was he received with joy: No acclamations awaited him who spake as never man spoke, but the whole congregation gnashed upon him with their teeth, and had it not been for his supernatural escape, they would have taken him to the brow of the hill whereon the city was built, and have cast him down headlong. And yet it was not that he had said anything bitter against the town. It was not that he had inveighed against their favourite vices. It was only that he had committed that most unpardonable of all sins, namely, that he had preached the doctrine of divine predestination. They listened unto him well enough until he said, “Yea, and many widows there were in Israel, but unto none of them was the prophet sent except to the widow of Zarepta,” and when he thus declared the doctrine of divine sovereignty, when he spoke of the giving of the blessing to the Gentiles, who were the most unlikely individuals, then, it was that they gnashed their teeth, and would have cast him down headlong from the brow of the hill. Nothing, it seems, excites some men’s envy like the doctrines of grace. Throughout the whole of our Saviour’s life this, which we at the commencement, followed him. His speech teems with wisdom. He preeminently carried out his own teaching, “Be ye wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” It, is true his teaching was very bold, but at the same time it need not have irritated anyone. Those who thus took his teaching to themselves, and perceived that he spoke of them, might be irritated apart from that. I suppose that never did man put the truth in a better form, or after a fashion less likely to provoke prejudice, but the Pharisees were always contradicting him. They endeavoured to catch him in his speech. Sometimes it is puzzling questions about the law with some woman in the midst. At another time it is something about the government of the country. The Herodians joined with the Pharisees in the endeavour to embarrass, to perplex him, to catch him in his talk, to make him an offender for a word. They plotted to draw him out in speech, somehow or other, that they might get some sentence they could use against him. Never did they listen with candour, never regarded him with any honesty, but dogging his footsteps like bloodhounds, waiting for the first opportunity when they might rend him in pieces. So, during his lifetime, he endured such contradiction of sinners against himself.
And you know, besides this, how men of the baser sort, offered contradiction against Christ’s life. They said he was a drunken man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. They that sat in the gates spake against him, and he became the song of the drunkard. Reproaches fell upon, him, the reproaches of them who reproached without a cause. Our Lord Jesus Christ was thus perpetually, constantly, and wholly the butt of slander and of scorn. He was permanently standing in the pillory to be ill-treated by the hands of them whom his power had created, and whom his own love had spared! What a “contradiction of sinners against himself!”
But I think what was in the apostle’s mind especially, was that which came at the time when he was betrayed by Judas. Then, brethren, the old serpent vented his worst venom. They could not find witnesses that agreed together, though they found many false witnesses, yet even they, none of them agreed together, till they had at last suborned two, their evidence being words which the Saviour had used in a certain sense wrested to another sense in order to try to get it to be strong enough to stain the charge which they brought against him, which was neither more nor less than this: In Pilate’s court, the civil court, treason; in the court of Annas and Caiaphas, the ecclesiastical court, blasphemy. What a contradiction of sinners against himself was this: being Almighty God to be accused of blasphemy, and being truly the King of the Jews to be accused of treason! I wonder not that the apostle should have said, “Such contradiction of sinners!”
Just let us look, then, at this contradiction of sinners which, came upon him at the last, and I think you will see the grievousness of it when you observe, first, the grossness of the charges alleged against him. Before Pilate’s court it was no minor offence with which he was charged. It was treason — the highest offence in the category of the Roman law. He had made himself to be another king in opposition to Ceasar, who was the world’s monarch! This was a very gross charge to bring against the Saviour, and more especially because he, of all men, most be acquitted of anything like sedition. How often did her hide himself when multitudes who had been fed by his bounty would have made him a king. And how often when his own disciples were anticipating the coming of a great earthly kingdom, did he set himself directly in opposition to all their ideas, and taught them that he came to suffer rather than to reign, and that his kingdom was not of this world, not a kingdom that would teach Ceasar’s kingdom, nor an empire that would interfere with the kings on the earth. He was not only free from treason, but, was throughout his life such an opponent of it, such an abstainer from interfering with the politics of men at all, that to charge him with this was a gross and wantonly wicked charge.
As for blasphemy, his reverence of God was supreme, he had laid aside his own glory as Deity in order to honour his Father in man’s redemption, and was even now, when so vilely slandered, ready to be obedient even unto death. “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” is God’s witness to him, and yet his enemies say that he blasphemed the Infinite Jehovah!
Now, dear friends, I can conceive that some of you have been pure and unblemished in your lives, and yet suddenly you might find yourselves accused, not of a minor and trivial offence, and you say, “Oh! what a trial to be accused of this!” Well, consider him who endured just such contradiction, who was accused of a capital crime, and of blasphemy, in the same breath! Who are we that we should not be called Beelzabub when the Master of the house has been so named? Consider the contradiction of Christ in this respect, and it may give ye comfort.
Let me say further, while speaking of this contradiction of sinners, that it was not only a very gross charge, but we are sometimes apt to think that a charge which is unfounded is very cruel to us. I have heard people say sometimes, and I have laughed when I have heard them say it, “Sir, Mr. So-and-so has charged me with such and such a thing, but I am quite innocent. I should not have minded if I had been guilty.” Then I have thought, Ah! then you ought to have minded it, but being innocent you have no cause to mind it at all. But is it not so, that the more unfounded a charge is the more deeply does it seem to cut us from the very wantonness of its cruelty. Well, then, you know how innocent the Saviour was: the next, time you feel innocent when you are thus accused “consider him who endured such contradiction of sinners against himself,” and who had to suffer both gross charges and unfounded ones.
Moreover, these charges were sustained by words which had been deliberately wrested. And sometimes a man has to say to himself, “Now, I never said anything of the kind, and my enemies know I did not; they have let a word out here, and put another word in there, and have cruelly misrepresent me; they have made me say what I did not even think, and what I did think, and what I did say, their have so utterly altered that it is no longer mine.” Now, you are apt to grow very faint in your mind after such a thing as this occurs, but you will recollect that just such contradiction of sinners the Saviour endured. The only ground or presence upon which they brought these charges against him, was that he had uttered certain words concerning his body which were construed to relate to the temple. So, dear friends, do not be greatly troubled, as though it were, a strange thing that had happened to you. If your good words are taken out of your mouth, and mischief be made of them, bear it still without bitterness or retaliation, for so he also suffered the “contradiction of sinners against himself.”
There was too, certainly, a sting about these contradictions arising from the place where they were brought. They were brought before the court of judicature. It is not likely that any of us have had to smart in this direction, but we may have had to feel this: “I should not have minded if this contradiction had come against me at home in the family, but it has come in my business where it will injure me.” Or it may have been the reverse. Perhaps you have had to say: “I would not care if this man had said so-and-so in the outward world, but he has poisoned the very home of my joy and my peace.” Well, dear friends, the Saviour had his contradiction brought against him, and in a worse place, it seems to me, than home, or any of the resorts of commerce, for he was actually brought before the courts of his own native land, as well as before the courts of the foreign invader who was then dominating the country.
It is not likely that this will come to you in these times as God’s people, but, in the olden times the saints had often to attend before kings and princes for Christ’s sake, but if ever this should be your lot, you will then fall back upon this as your invigoration, and consider him who endured such contradiction of sinners against himself.
Above and beyond all this, however, in the contradiction which Christ endured was the malice which suggested it. They did not falsely accuse him out of mere error, but it was out of malice that had determined on the destruction of this innocent man. “Whether we can accuse him rightly or no,” said they, “it is not fit that such a fellow should live.” It was malice against one who had never done them a wrong, one who had healed their sick, and raised their dead; one who had scattered bounties with both his hands along their streets, and who had made their wilderness like Eden, and their desert like the garden of the Lord; who had gathered together the sheep without a shepherd that were scattered on every hill; had fed the hungry, had comforted the mourner, had proclaimed liberty to the captive; had shone upon the Holy Land and made it truly whole; had shone upon Palestine like a newly-risen sun, the Sun of Righteousness with healing beneath his wings. He might well say, “For which of these works do ye stone me? Ye have hated me without a cause.” Well, now, suppose that to be your case. Suppose you have to say, “I should not mind this charge, but I can see deliberate malice in it; my enemies seek to destroy me, and to pervert my way out of a diabolical hatred to my soul; they come upon me to eat up my flesh; they compass me like dogs to devour me; oh! how hard is my lot! “Come, Christian, come, consider him; consider him! Thou art in the same plight as thy Master. It always gives comfort to a common soldier to see the officers in the same position and enduring the same hardships as himself; with the shots flying everywhere round about them. And when I see the darts of wicked contradiction flying round our blessed Lord and King, I feel it would be a shame for me to have an easier or safer position than he knew.
I might thus dwell, for it is a very tempting subject, upon the contradiction of sinners which the Saviour endured, and I think a consideration of this would save us from being weary and faint in our minds. But we must pass on to the second point. We have now to consider —
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II. The Saviour’s Endurance of the contradiction of sin against himself. How did he endure this sore trouble? Brethren, he endured it with singular courage and holy equanimity. It is wonderful to see him in the first contradictions with which he met during his ministry — how calm he is. If we are made warm in temper, we are off our guard, and are but half men. The Saviour was never so taken. You observe him. They spin their webs like spiders, and they think to entangle him. So they would such poor flies as we are; but he looks on and sees it all, and then sweeps every cobweb away before him, and yet no angry word he answers.
Sometimes he makes them answer themselves, but then he turns it against themselves. Sometimes he makes them confess themselves defeated, and then with a solemn emphasis, so on the occasion when he said, “He that is without fault among you, let him cast the first stone,” and they, being condemned by their own consciences, went out, beginning at the eldest even to the youngest. All left and went, their way. At the last, however, you perceive that the contradiction of sinners is borne by the Saviour after this fashion — with entire silence! Never was there such silence as that — the grandest silence ever known. It is an awful silence! It seems to have in it something of contempt, but yet more of omnipotent patience. He will not answer. Why should he answer such as they are? He will not answer; if he answered it might be their doom, and therefore he spares them. “He is led as lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep, before, her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth!” Brethren, we are generally too fast with our tongues when anybody accuses us. I am afraid we are not always so quick to defend our Master, as we are to defend ourselves. If there be a false accusation in the newspapers one’s finger wants to be at the pen to answer it, which of all things is the most foolish. Let them write; let them write who will, till they have used up their ink, but the wise man answered them not a word. But we are always so ready if anybody brings a false accusation against us to say, “It is not so; thou liest,” or to make some sharp reply like that. Oh, that we could consider him who endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, and endured it with the holy patience of silence! There was a crest, and motto which some of the old Reformers used to use, and which I commend to any of you who are under this trial. It was an anvil with a number of hammers, all broken, lying around; and this was the motto when translated, “The anvil breaketh many hammers.“ And how does it do this? Not by striking again: oh, no! the anvil simply endures the blows: just keeps its place, and lets the hammers fall, fall, fall until they are broken upon their handles. And this is exactly what the Saviour did. They, the ancestors, were the hammers, he was the anvil; and who shall say that the anvil did not break the hammers in pieces, that the silence of the Saviour was not far more eloquent than all the clamour of the evil multitude? “He held his peace,” it is said of him. May it also be said of you and of me, and when we have to suffer the like trials, may we bear them, like the Saviour, in silence.
Yet the silence of the Saviour is not all. We ought to admire the patient serenity with which he so beautifully held his peace, but ought we not also to admire the way in which he unswervingly kept his course? Many a man would have turned either to the right hand or to the left, but the heroic Saviour keeps right on. Ah, beloved, how many of us would have given up the work altogether! We might have said, “I came to bless these men, and these reject me; they despise me; they ill-treat me; let them go then, unblest; these graceless people shall receive no boon at my hands.” But not so, our brave Lord. He came into the world to save sinners, and he kept on just at that one thing, and let no rebuffs turn him aside. The zeal of God’s house had eaten him up, and he kept straight on in the saving of sinners, and never turned back, let sinners do what they would in the way of contradicting him. He never wavered for one moment from his one life-object, the saving of their souls.
Now, let it be so with you so that you may be kept from growing weary. If in the Sunday-school a class seems unmanageable; if the boys cannot be taught; if the girls seem so giddy; if in the little village station the hearers seem, so dull, so inattentive, so careless, and so forgetful; if in any other sphere of labour you do not seem to be appreciated, but to meet with very serious rebuffs, never mind. These are nothing compared with the contradictions which the Saviour endured, and yet swerved he never, and therefore swerve not you. Let the diving life that is in you urge you constantly onwards. Make no provision for the flesh nor for the ease thereof. If indeed it be your life-work go and complete it; if you feel that God has called you to be the stern advocate of the right, go you onward, and vow still to go onward by the love of Christ, and let nothing stop you. If hunger can break through stone walls, much more shall a hunger to do the Master’s will. To a man who can dare and do because he feels that he is consecrated and destined to work, nothing is impossible. You, too, shall break through a wall. You, too, shall dash through a host. A man who believes that God has called him to work would tunnel through the globe itself ere he would be turned from his purpose, and would thread the stars on strings before he would be disappointed of his great life-work. Do you but feel this, and never turn aside, but remember how Christ endured such contradiction of sinners against himself.
And, once more, I think it is worth while to notice, that whilst the Saviour did not swerve, he did not even seem to pause. He did not stop to take breath. All these persons came rushing round him, and tried to push him out of his course, but he did not even stop, I say, to take breath. All that they did, did but rather quicken his pace, if possible, and made him still more set upon his great purpose. So let it be with us. We take far too much notice, I think, of some of our troubles and oppositions. I sometimes quote in your hearing those brave lines of Anne Askew. Poor soul! after having been racked to torture, many times, you still hear her singing, —
“I am not she to lyst,
My anchor to let fall:
For every drizzling myst
My ship’s substantiall.”
Such a substantial vessel did she seem to ride in that she was not going to let her anchor out. The being racked, as she cruelly was, was no “drizzling myst,” I think, but a very horrible tempest which might well make some of us afraid, even unto death, but then, we make so much of little things. Our fathers plucked up sycamore trees by the roots, but we are afraid if only one or two sere leaves blow wildly across our path. They spake unto mountains and said, “Be ye moved hence, and cast into the midst of the sea”; but we sit down and murmur over molehills as though they were: Alps, the summits of which we should never to able to reach. We are a puny race, I fear, but may the Lord feed us and we shall then grow stronger, and though it add not a cubit to our stature yet we shall grow spiritually, and we shall grow in, this way if we consider how Christ bore the mighty trials which came upon him. He was bowed down, he did stagger, and did sweat great drops of blood when he was under the deep depression of his own spirit, caused by our sins being laid upon him. Even a strong man may quail there, but before Herod or Pilate, or his Jewish accusers, or ribald and mocking man, he never showed a sign of faltering. No, not he; but he “endured such contradiction of sinners against himself.”
Consider Christ thus, then, and you need not be, and never will be, weary. But now, lastly; the great thing is —
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III. To Consider Him.
There is the point of the text. We are not only to consider the contradiction, and his endurance of it, but to consider him. To consider his endurance is well, but the striking point should be to consider the dignity of him who did thus endure. We are told by the historians of Alexander the Great that it very much cheered and assisted the troops in their long and weary marches from Persia, sometimes without water and without food, for many hours under a burning sun, that they always saw Alexander walking on foot, too. The Persian monarch would have been riding in some dainty chariot, or in the royal palanquin, reclining upon beds of down, fanned by hands unknown, and attended by his many fair damsels, but there was Alexander, covered with dust and splashed with mire, going through the ditches, climbing the hills, with his face all bronzed and browned. He would suffer hunger and thirst like the rest of them, and when the bowl of water is brought to the mighty monarch he passes it on to some common soldier who is even yet more thirsty than himself. It was said that one Macedonian was worth ten thousand Persians because the king was with them, and they would dash to battle and to death for such a monarch as that! Now consider Christ your King — the King of earth, before whom all other kings should renounce their diadems! Consider him, the King of heaven, whom to serve is the seraph’s highest glory. The King of Hell, before whom the fiends and dragons of the pit gnash their teeth in fear! He, even he, “endured such contradiction of sinners against himself!”
“Christ leads us through no darker rooms
Than he went through before.”
The dignity of the Saviour has invested suffering, and especially brave endurance, with great honour and glory. There is a halo round about our griefs since Jesus Christ endured them first.
It is not only in his greatness that I think he should impress us, but also in the perfection of his nature. He endured, and yet he was perfect. How then ought I to endure, who am so imperfect? He without a fault, smarts; a Son without sin, but not without the scourge. Consider him, then, thou imperfect one. When the coals are hot, thou mass of ore with so much of alloy about thee, consider that the pure gold felt the fire, and how much more shouldest thou? Consider, thou vessel defiled and filthy, the alabaster vase was washed in a sea of trouble, and how much more shall such an one as thou art be washed. If he who was all gold must needs go through the flame, how much more shalt thou?
Now, there is yet a further point out of which the apostle, I think, would have us dig some, delight, namely, that we are to consider him, not only in his character, but now, in his present position. It is true he endured such contradiction of sinners against himself. It is true he was delivered to be crucified. It is true, sorrowfully true, that he was despised and rejected of men. But what of it now? What of it, now? Oh, see him yonder! But your poor eyes cannot bear this dazzling sight! Brighter than the sun is his glory! Grander than; heaven itself is his splendour! There he sits, King of kings and Lord of lords! Where is the mockery now? The shame and the spittle — where are they now? The crown of thorns, the vinegar, the sponge, the nails — where are they now? All over glorious is our Lord. Now crowns become the victor’s brow, and on his head are many crowns. Christian, as he was so are you also in this world, and as he is so shall you also be. Christ’s triumph is the triumph of every true and right principle; it is the triumph of every true and right heart. You will have to suffer for it. There is no victory to be achieved nowadays except in the same way as the Saviour achieved it, namely, by suffering. But that is not Christ’s greatest triumph which he achieved on Golgotha? The triumphal chariot in which he subdued sin and death, and hell, was none other than his own cross. So, beloved, we must expect to conquer, but it must to by shame. You must expect to triumph, but it must be by being made to suffer, and by being despised. But you shall triumph after all. In the day when the trumpet soundeth, when —
“From beds of dust and silent clay,
To realms of everlasting day,”
every obscure and despised child of God shall awaken; then shall it be seen whom God delighteth to honour. You are in the minority now: you stand alone: you are mocked by cruel enemies, and the ribald world asks you, “Where is your God?”
You are by yourself now, a solitary protester in the midst of a multitude who are going away. But the tables shall be turned soon. You shall not then, be in a minority, but in a great majority, in the day when shouts of triumph shall be heard for the truth and for the right, and when shame and confusion of faith shall be the portion of those who are now the despisers. They shall then wonder and perish and ask the rocks to hide them and the hills to cover their confusion. He endured, and yet he mounted to his throne amidst the shouts of angels and acclamations of heaven. So also shall you, and therefore consider him in this light lest ye be weary and faint in your minds.
And then, last of all, you must consider that he who went through this to get to his crown is very man akin to us all. He loves us tenderly. He considers us now. He knows all the sorrows that tempt men, for he has felt the same. You are not alone; he is with you. Three you in the furnace? Nay, there is a fourth, and that fourth is the Son of God. Into your griefs he enters, for his own griefs have put into his hand a master-key to fit the wards of every human grief that ever can be known. He can comfort us with all consolation seeing that he himself has passed through all tribulation. He is never forgetful of you. He is with you now. If you smart he smarts. If you are despised, he suffers. “Paul, Paul, why persecutest thou me?” he cried. Why, it was but a few poor men and women being haled away to prison or to be scourged in the synagogue, but Christ takes it as being done to himself. “Why persecutest thou me?” Oh, Christian, with such nearness to Christ, and such sympathy flowing from him, be thee of good courage still; then hear him say, “In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them.” So may you lift up the hands that hang down, and confirm the feeble knees, and go on your way rejoicing in him!
I would to God you could all take home this text, but some of you cannot, and here is the sorrow of it, that you should live and die with such rare comforts at your door, but you cannot take them! Oh, sinners, flee to Christ. Put your trust in him, and you shall soon be able to find consolation in every part of his life and in every trait of his death-pang. God bless you very graciously, for his name’s sake. Amen.
EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON.
HEBREWS 12:1–17.
Verses 1, 2. Wherefore seeing we are also compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
We can have no doubt about the great truths which we believe, for we are compassed about with a cloud of witnesses. The former chapter gives us the names of many of these glorious bearers of testimony, who all by faith achieved great wonders and so bore witness to the truth of God. Having therefore no room for doubt let us throw our whole strength into our high calling, and run with patience having our eyes always fixed upon him, the beginner and finisher of our faith, who has run the race himself and won the prize, and now sits down on the right hand of the throne of God.
3, 4. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinner against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.
It has never come to a bloody sweat with you as with him, nor to death upon a cross, as in his case. Shall the disciple be above his master or the servant above his lord?
5, 6. And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you at unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
With doting parents it is not so: often him whom his mother loveth is allowed to do as he pleases and to escape chastening, but this is folly. The love of God is higher and wiser than the partialities of parents. “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth;” it is a token of his favour to us that he takes the trouble to remove our love of sin by sharp and bitter pain.
7–10. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons, for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastard, and not son. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.
What a bright light this sheds upon all affliction, that it is for our profit, that it is thereby we are made partakers of the holiness of God. Oh, blessed result from a little smart and bitter.
11–13. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.
Look at chastisement then in the divine light, and be comforted, be strengthened, be healed of the infirmity of your weakness, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.
14. Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:
“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” A man’s god is like himself, and until he become like God we cannot see God; we misunderstand God until we have been trained to imitate him.
15–17. Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled; lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.
It was done and could not be undone. Does it not seem strange that after speaking to us about being God’s sons and favoured with his love, yet even then, in that clear blaze of light, there comes in this caution against fornication and profanity. Ah me! how near a foul spot may be to lily-like whiteness. How Judas may sit side by side with favoured and true-hearted apostles, aye, and may be near the Master, too. “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” And, oh, friends, if at any time the pottage should seem very sweet and we should be very hungry, if the world’s gain should be almost necessary to our livelihood, and we are tempted to do an unrighteous thing to get it, let us take care, for Esau could not undo the terrible act of selling his birthright, neither could we if we were permitted to do so. God grant we may be spared from such a dreadful crime!