Turn again to the letter to the Hebrews, Chapter 2. At verse 1:
Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things that were heard,
Lest haply we drift away from them.
If you know anything about this letter at all, you know that it is the great letter of spiritual crisis. The writer compares what he has to say with the crisis of Israel at Kadesh-barnea, where they came, after so long a period of instruction, to the point where all was to mature into the realization of its purpose, or all was to fade out, so far as they were concerned. And they missed it all.
This writer gives quite a lot of his message to that particular application. Indeed, we would all agree that that was a very great crisis in the life and history of Israel. This letter really circles around a spiritual crisis comparable to that.
You know, there is here, throughout, the blending of two dominant notes: one of warning, the other of exhortation. Nine times in the letter we have this warning note, “lest.” “Lest” begins in the verse that we have just read: “lest haply we drift away.” It goes right on to Chapter 12.
The other note, which is struck ten times through the letter, is, “Let us. Let us. Let us.” “Lest.”
It is not our intention to trace the warning and the exhortation through the letter. Just note the fact that it is a crisis which continually arises in the history of the Lord’s people. It arose, as we have seen, with Israel in the wilderness.
Here, quite evidently, it had arisen at the time of the writing of this letter—a very serious crisis indeed for those to whom the letter was written. And it is the kind of crisis that arises from time to time.
It just amounts to this: taking this first verse of Chapter 2, there has been a deposit; there has been a giving. The Lord has revealed Himself to His people.
Now, after a sufficient period of probation and of testing in relation to that, the question arises: Are we going right on into the full meaning and value and realization of all that He has given, or are we going to drift away—to fail to enter in?
This is something that the Lord presses periodically. It came with Israel after forty years of testing in the wilderness. The point of interest is that most probably this letter was written about forty years after the Lord Jesus commenced to present all that we have here in Chapter 1—in the incarnation, in His presence in this world.
It was a crisis. The crisis had two particular points. One was as to all that the Lord had given, which He was never allowed just to pass without some very real effort, some entreaty, some warning, that all that He meant could be missed.
The other was the fact that very near to the time of the writing of this letter was Israel’s own great crisis. If the letter was written, as we have suggested, somewhere about the year A.D. 60, or in the sixties, we know that it was A.D. 70 when Israel and Jerusalem were completely shattered and scattered over the earth by the Roman destruction of their city, their country, and their temple.
All that it represented—the synagogues—these were to be finished. And now the test would be: What was the spiritual value of it all? Take away their meeting places, their public meetings, their public ministries, and all that on which they depended so much externally. Remove it all. That was imminent. What remains?
The Holy Spirit had these two things in mind in directing the writing of this marvelous letter. It was indeed a great crisis.
Who is to say that that second point will not be repeated worldwide, as it is taking place in quite a large part of the world today? The Lord may know of a day, not far away, when that will spread, and all those things which are the externals of Christianity, upon which Christians depend, will be swept away and no longer available.
We have had a little touch of it in our lifetime; many Christians have, in this very country. It could be very much more so, and very quickly. That crisis may be looming upon the near horizon.
So this letter is indeed a letter of crisis in both ways.
We ask: What were the causes of this crisis on the spiritual side? In the first place, I think there is no doubt about it: it was the cost of the way that these Christians had embarked upon and had been called upon to follow.
You read the letter again; you will see the suggestions, or the indications, that it was because the way was proving so hard. They had started upon the heavenly way—partakers of a heavenly calling. They had taken a position with Christ.
That position is hinted at at the end of the letter: “Let us go forth unto Him without the camp” (Hebrews 13:13).
To be outside of the religious camp, outside of the popular camp, outside of the traditional camp, is a hard place and a hard way. They had taken a position with the Lord, but were finding that it was a very testing way indeed. They were being tested on every point, in every possible way. It was a hard way—a hard way.
Reference is made to what they suffered as they took that position. Now, the suffering came largely from without.
We do not know where these believers were, whether they were in Jerusalem or in Rome. There is argument for both. But we can very well imagine that, if it were in Jerusalem, they were right up against a very, very severe testing of their position spiritually.
They were in the place where the Lord Himself was crucified, the place where Stephen had been martyred, where the believers had been scattered. If they were in Rome, only quite recently Claudius had issued his edict against the Christians, and they had been expelled, scattered, and martyred.
Whatever it was, it came from the outside in the beginning, and it was a hard and costly way. But it is significant to note that, before we are at the end of this letter, the writer—the Holy Spirit through the writer—speaks of all these sufferings as the child-training of a father.
My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord,
Nor faint when thou art reproved of Him;
For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.
Their sufferings may have come from devil-driven men, from the very devil himself, and yet they are in the hands of a Father. The Father has hold of those sufferings for the training of His children. That is impressive.
But it does not altogether ease the situation to know that. The sufferings are still sufferings, wherever they come from and whatever their nature is. Even if the Lord has hold of them, they are still sufferings.
Because of this costliness of the way, these believers were losing heart, becoming discouraged, and the crisis of their going on arose. Hence this tenfold repetition: “Let us. Let us. Let us go on.”
Perhaps also, in addition to that, it was occasioned by some disappointment that the Lord’s coming had so long delayed. I think that is hinted at, at one point at least, where it says, “Yet a very little while, He that cometh shall come” (Hebrews 10:37).
They were evidently a bit disappointed that all the promises of His coming, and the assurances that He was coming soon, had not matured. He delayed His coming. It was a real test of faith and patience over them.
We may know something about that too. Sometimes, you know, it loses its charm and its helpfulness to be told, “The Lord is coming.” You say, “Well, we have heard that so long, so often, and that is what people have looked for in every age. He has not come yet.”
Well, it began then, began then, and they were disappointed. Because of that disappointment, they were inclined to let go instead of go on.
There are hints also in this letter that the crisis was occasioned by the deceitfulness of the soul. I think Hebrews 4:12 hints at that:
For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword,
And piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit.
The deceitfulness of the soul—I think that will be borne out in what we have yet to say. You know, our own soul can lead us astray: our own soul desires, ambitions, and conceptions of what we feel and think ought to be.
There is a contrast in this letter between a realm of Christian life in the soul and a realm in the spirit. I think we could immediately, almost immediately, take that up for a minute or two.
There are other causes. What was the nature of it? That, I think, mainly—though not entirely—is a matter of contrast.
A new era had come in. A new economy, or order, had been introduced with Christ. Now, the changeover was tremendous: the change from the earthly to the heavenly.
With the Son of God from heaven, there had come in the heavenly order. From that time onward, the old earthly order—the things of God as we have them in the old economy of the Old Testament—ceased.
I do not think, dear friends, that we Christians at large have yet grasped the tremendous, immense significance of Stephen’s martyrdom. You know that he was a young man, full of faith, full of the Holy Spirit, did mighty things, and then was martyred.
Have you studied Stephen’s discourse? Have you seen that in that discourse, right there in Jerusalem, under the very shadow of the great temple and all its system, Stephen simply swept away the whole of the Old Testament regime?
Howbeit the Most High dwelleth not in houses made with hands.
Say that over against the temple at Jerusalem. See what you are going to meet. In that discourse, Stephen clearly declared that all that old system was finished with—finished with. The new heavenly system had come in.
And the Lord put His seal upon that as Stephen was passing from the earth himself. He saw the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. This is the only occasion, after Christ Himself, in the New Testament where that title occurs: Jesus, Son of Man—the Man at God’s right hand.
Everything now is heavenly. It has passed from earth. But what a testing position is a heavenly position.
It is a crisis. It creates a crisis. It is the very essence of a crisis: pull that down to earth; have something here, something on this earth, something here. Abandon that heavenly position, that heavenliness, by which those who so speak mean that which is so abstract and unreal. “Let us get down to earth, to reality.”
That was the nature of this crisis: the contrast between the heavenly and the earthly. They were at the point of leaving the heavenly for the earthly. Great warnings are connected with that, and all the exhortations: “Let us go on. Let us go on.”
There is a contrast between the tangible and the spiritual. The soul wants something that it can take hold of, can manipulate, can grasp. That is the soul: have something tangible.
There is all this talk about the spiritual and spirituality—how unreal it is. That is the crisis, is it not? The coming into this world of Christ changed the whole thing: not in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth. From this time, the whole thing is a spiritual thing.
But how they longed for the thing that was here to be grasped. That is a crisis.
There is the contrast between the temporal and the eternal. Do read this letter again with these things in mind. In this letter, there is always the forward look, the look to the end.
You come to that great chapter of faith, Chapter 11: it is the onward-looking faith. It is still on. “Let us, let us look off, let us run,” is the great summary of it all. It is still onward, still before us.
The eternal is the thing to govern. This life and all that is here is not the whole, by any means. It is all unto something that lies in eternity with Jesus Christ.
The eternal has invaded time, and the church is taken out of time into eternity. We belong to eternity, but the soul wants it now—now.
The only place for “now” in this letter is that now is the last hour of time. “Now, today is the acceptable time.” This is the last hour of time. That is the only “now” here.
It is the eternal that is everything. But how difficult for our souls to let go the now, the present, for the eternal. We are not made like that. Our whole being says, “Let us have it now. We must have it now.” It is not natural to us to live for an unknown future. Is that the right way to put it?
There is the contrast between the visible and the invisible. Of Moses, this writer says, “He endured, as seeing Him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:27).
Oh, but we must see. We must see it. The soul says that. Our whole nature says, “We must see it. We will see it today. We will see it here. We will see it.” It is something that our eyes can see, can behold—in other words, that we can grasp with our physical senses.
This letter is constructed upon the principle of the invisible. They, in the old dispensation, had it all visibly. They had an earthly tabernacle and priesthood, and all that belonged to them. But now the reality is in heaven; it is not seen.
That was but a shadow. The reality is unseen, but it is far more real. But it is unseen. That is the test of the soul. I am sure you know the meaning of this.
Well, all this constituted this crisis of whether they were going to choose this or that, the one or the other: something earthly for the heavenly; something tangible for the spiritual; something temporal for the eternal; something visible for the invisible.
It is quite evident, I think, in this letter, before you are through, that a division was coming about between these believers. They were dividing into two camps.
That is the point of the exhortation: “Forsaking not the assembling of ourselves together, as the custom of some is” (Hebrews 10:25). Some were saying, “We are not going on with that any further.” They were having their own meetings and their own circle, and not going on—not going on in this way.
A division was taking place: two companies. Here were those who had seen the heavenly calling, the heavenly vision, and were going on with it. There were those who, if they had seen it, were letting it go, were drifting away from it.
What a thoughtful word that is. It has a nautical meaning in the original, as you know. It is a picture of a ship approaching its moorings on the current and missing its moorings, drifting away and onto the rocks.
Lest we come up to this and miss it, and drift away. As with Israel at Kadesh-barnea, well, we should be warned. It is a warning; it is an exhortation.
It surely does, dear friends, touch us in our own individual lives, and it touches us as a company of the Lord’s people. It defines very much for us.
But may we all hear not only the warning—yes, the warning—but the constant note of exhortation: “Let us fear. Let us go on.”
The Lord help us.