Will you please turn to Hebrews, the letter to the Hebrews? We will read from Hebrews 6:18-20.
By two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie,
we may have a strong encouragement, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us;
which we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast,
and entering into that which is within the veil;
where as a Forerunner Jesus entered for us, having become a high priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.
And in the same book, please turn to Hebrews 10:19-25.
Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus,
by the way which He dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh;
and having a great priest over the house of God;
let us draw near with a true heart in fullness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience: and having our body washed with pure water,
let us hold fast the confession of our hope that it waver not; for He is faithful that promised:
and let us consider one another to provoke unto love and good works;
not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more, as ye see the day drawing nigh.
Dear Lord, we want to thank Thee for Thy presence with us. In Thy presence is fullness of joy, and pleasures for evermore. So long as we continue in Thy presence, we do look to Thee to open Thy Word to us.
Make Thy Word a living, operative Word, that He may live in us and operate in us; that by Thy living Word, we may be transformed and conformed to Thy image. Hear our cry, we ask in Thy precious name. Amen.
Well, brothers and sisters, we have been fellowshipping together on this matter of spiritual exercise. I want to emphasize how important spiritual exercise is to our Christian life.
God has a purpose concerning us, and His purpose is holy, heavenly, and an on-high purpose. To that purpose He has called us. He has not only called us, but, thank God, He has made every provision for us that His calling might be fulfilled.
So, brothers and sisters, we cannot stop thanking God for what He has done for us. In His Word, He has told us very clearly that everything concerning life and godliness He has already provided for us, prepared for us, waiting for us to enter in.
But why is it that that glorious purpose of God concerning us is not fulfilled in our lives? We are supposed to live like Christ because Christ in us is the hope of glory. We are supposed to be transformed according to the image of God’s beloved Son, because God has already put His life in us.
He has also given us the Holy Spirit to see to it that this life will mature. So there is no problem on God’s side. If that is the case, the problem must be with us.
Thank God, even though He has provided everything for us, He is not forcing us. He wants us to cooperate, to respond to Him. That response, that cooperation from us, is spiritual exercise.
In other words, everything is provided, and now if you exercise your spirit, He will make everything real to you.
Brothers and sisters, I think this modern world has come to realize more and more how important physical exercise is. You eat and you rest, but you find this is not enough. You have to exercise in order to be healthy.
But we as Christians have a spiritual life to live, and unfortunately we neglect spiritual exercise. We exercise our body—thank God for that. I hope especially the young people will not forget that. We exercise our mind, our soul, to make us clever.
But, brothers and sisters, we have something more precious: we have a spirit, a new spirit, that is able to communicate with God, who is Spirit. He is waiting there to communicate all His mercy and grace to us, but it will not come unless you exercise your spirit.
When the Holy Spirit touches us, He touches our conscience. Our conscience needs to be exercised, to receive what the Holy Spirit has touched, and to submit, respond, and obey.
He gives us revelation and intuition in our spirit. But what He has shown us, He requires us to respond to and obey. He communicates Himself to us, and as He communicates, we need to look to Him with an open face, as it were, and allow Him to really fill us with His glory.
Recently, during the past three weeks, we have been considering the life-changing lessons in spiritual exercise. Now, it does not mean that in spiritual exercise you have only four life-changing lessons. As a matter of fact, spiritual exercise touches every aspect of our Christian life.
But we have to limit ourselves to a few of those most basic structural matters of the spiritual life. Without that structure, you do not have a firm, steady spiritual life.
We have fellowshipped concerning the first one: consecration. Because as He saves us, His love should constrain us to present our bodies to Him as a living sacrifice.
It does not mean that we offer ourselves to Him as a living sacrifice so that we may serve Him with our own strength, natural talents, energy, enthusiasm, or zeal. No. We offer ourselves to Him as a living sacrifice to allow Him to do whatever He wants with us.
To put it another way, we give Him our rights. We have no right to run our own life. We give our right to the One who has redeemed us, and He has every right to run our life, to do whatever He feels necessary to us. That is consecration.
Consecration involves cost. That is the reason why we need to sit down and count the cost. Are we willing to give up ourselves, deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow? It is costly.
But, brothers and sisters, when we consider how much it cost Him to save us, our cost is nothing. The thing is, we need to live a consecrated life. It is not something that you do once for all; it is something you do every day, and in an increasing manner.
This is something basic, structural, and daily.
If we really do consecrate ourselves to the Lord and try to live a life according to the will of God, then we meet a problem: How do we know that we are living according to the will of God?
We knew how to live in the past because we lived by our own natural life. We knew what we wanted to do. But now we want to live to please God. What is the will of God? We are confused because we discover that in us there are two lives.
The life of Christ lives in our spirit, but the life of self lives in our soul. Oftentimes we find the soul is more powerful than our spirit because the soul is old—old Adam, aged—while the spirit is new.
But the problem is, how do we know? There needs to be a dividing of the spirit and the soul. This dividing is not by our reasoning or by our introspection, because if you introspect, the more you introspect, the more you sink into the soul life.
It does not come from that. The only way it can be divided is Hebrews 4:12. We present ourselves as a living sacrifice, so we are now on the altar and allow the Holy Spirit to wield the living, operative Word of God, to penetrate and divide the soul and the spirit.
After that, we get another problem. I know what is the will of God, but I do not have the strength to do it. I know what I should do, but I cannot do it. I know what I should not do, but I am doing it.
So, as the Apostle Paul said:
O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?
We begin to come into the third life-changing experience, which is the breaking of the outward man and the release of the spirit. We find that in 2 Corinthians 4 and in John 12.
We are like an earthen vessel. We have a treasure within us, and for the light and radiance of the treasure to shine forth, the earthen vessel has to be broken. The earthen vessel is the outward man, and the treasure is Christ in our inward man.
We have covered these only lightly. We need to learn these lessons, each one of us, continuously.
Now this morning, we would like to go into the fourth life-changing lesson in spiritual exercise. This is life within the veil, or you may put it, life in the presence of God.
As a matter of fact, this is the objective of our spiritual pursuit. We want to live in the presence of God every day, day by day, moment by moment. We want to live a life that is within the veil, with nothing covering us from the face of our God.
This has been the search of people throughout the centuries. All over the world, people are searching for one thing, and that is union with God. How can we be united with God?
If you have read Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God, you know that it was formerly a very popular book among Christians. I am afraid today people probably have never read it. But Brother Lawrence had a little book called The Practice of the Presence of God. It is a classic.
Brother Lawrence lived from 1611 to 1691. He was a common person. At one time he was in the military, and then he was in a monastery. Whether he was in the military or in the monastery, he was a cook.
You know how busy a cook must be in the army, or even in the monastery. He was working amid all these sounds and clatterings and clangings of vessels. But he learned, by practice, a secret. He learned the secret of how to live always in the presence of God in spite of all circumstances.
He said he could enjoy the presence of God in the midst of his busy work as well as when he was alone, praying and meditating before God: the practice of the presence of God.
Now, our dear brother Watchman Nee, after he was saved, got that book. He read it and was convinced—convinced—that this was what he must have. So he began to try to practice the presence of God.
He tried to remember God all the time. But when he was busily engaged with other things, he forgot. He found it very difficult to remember the presence of God all the time.
I wonder whether you have the same experience. Perhaps you have never practiced the presence of God, and therefore you have not had such an experience. But in case you really start to practice it, what do you find?
You find that when you remember, it seems to work; but when you forget, the presence of God disappears. It is very difficult to do. Perhaps only a few monks can do that; I do not know.
So how can we really live a life that is always in God’s presence? How can we live from morning till night within the veil, as it were? This is the search of God’s people throughout the centuries.
In the Old Testament, you find that God delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt. What was the purpose God had in delivering them out of Egypt?
It is evident when He brought them to Sinai. First, He gave them the law, the Ten Commandments. Why? Because with the law He made that people His own possession, His own people.
Then, after He gave them the Ten Commandments, He asked them to build Him a tabernacle, because He said, “I want to dwell in your midst.”
“You are not holy enough to be My dwelling place. I cannot dwell among you sinners, among you who are unclean, because God is the Holy One. So make Me a tabernacle, that through the tabernacle, indirectly as it were, I will be able to dwell with you, to be present with you.”
So Moses began to build the tabernacle. The tabernacle was made in three parts. You have the outer court, which is the open court. Then, within the outer court, there is the holy place, where the priests serve. After the holy place, there is the holiest of all, where God dwells.
In the outer court, you have the brazen altar, where they put the sacrifice. It represents the cross of our Lord Jesus—how He was the sacrifice. He was the burnt offering, offered to God for acceptance. He was the sin offering to take away our sin before God.
In the holy place, you find three things: the golden candlestick, the golden table of bread, and the golden altar of incense. In other words, after you are saved by the brazen altar and washed in the brazen laver, then you are able to serve God in the holy place.
You are able to light the candlestick, to put on the showbread, and to offer incense at the altar. But after the holy place, there is the holy of holies. In the holy of holies there is only one thing: the ark.
Upon the ark is the mercy seat, and the glory of God rests upon the mercy seat. But between the holy place and the holiest of all, there is a heavy veil, like a door. It is a heavy veil to separate these two places.
Only the high priest, once a year, could go behind the veil to offer a sin offering for himself and for the people of Israel. Only once a year, and then he quickly withdrew.
The Bible tells us in Hebrews 9 that as long as the first tabernacle—that is, the holy place—exists, the way to the holiest of all has not been opened. Nobody can enter into the presence of God, because God is so holy.
Even the priests could serve before God, but they could not go into the presence of God, not to speak of living in the presence of God, because it was not open.
But thank God, as we read the New Testament, when you come to the book of Hebrews, you find that the veil was broken.
You remember when our Lord Jesus was crucified outside Jerusalem on the cross. When He died, He said, “It is finished.” The work was finished. At the very same time, the veil in the temple was rent from top to bottom.
We know that veil in the temple was a very heavy veil. But at the death of our Lord Jesus, the veil in the temple was rent. It was rent from top to bottom. In other words, it was not by human hands, because human hands would rend it from the bottom up.
But no, it was God Himself who broke that veil. Why? Because that veil, as we find in Hebrews 10, represents the flesh of our Lord Jesus.
John 1:14 says:
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us
(and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father),
full of grace and truth.
The Word is our Lord Jesus. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. That is what our Lord Jesus was. But the Word became flesh. In other words, this speaks of the incarnation of our Lord Jesus, how He came into this world to be a man. It is as if He tabernacled among men.
When He was on the earth, He lived such a perfect, beautiful, righteous, holy life. He knew no sin. He never yielded to temptation. He was always obedient to His Father. He lived as man should live according to the mind of God.
When you look at the veil, what a beautiful veil! But a veil has two sides. When you put the veil there, you separate the holy of holies from the holy place. One side of the veil faces the holy place; the other side faces the holiest of all.
When our Lord Jesus was on earth, He showed the world what a human life, in God’s mind, should be: such a beautiful life, such an obedient life, such a holy life.
But on the other hand, while He was on earth, on the other side of the veil, He was always in the presence of God. Even though He was on earth for thirty-three and a half years, He was always in the presence of His Father.
He said, “My Father is with Me.” He had never left the Father, except during those last three hours on the cross, when He cried:
My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
Why? Because He became the sin of the world. So the Father turned His face away from Him.
Brothers and sisters, He always saw the Father while He was on earth. But that caused a problem. If you only believe in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus and not the Calvary cross of our Lord Jesus, it creates a big problem.
If He lived thirty-three and a half years and then ascended to heaven on the Mount of Transfiguration—because they were talking about His departure—then He had every right to go back to the Father. But if He did, where would we be? Nobody else could ever see the face of God.
Thank God, He did not depart from the Mount of Transfiguration. He came down from the mountain and set His face towards Jerusalem. That is love.
You remember in John 16, when the Holy Spirit came, He would convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because the world does not believe in Him; of righteousness, because He went to the Father.
Now, is that not a strange thing? Of righteousness because He went to the Father. What does it mean? It means that He is righteous enough to go to the Father, but none else is righteous enough to do that. So that convicts us.
And of judgment, of course, the god of this world, Satan, is judged. So, brothers and sisters, our Lord Jesus must die. If He had just come and never died, He would have remained alone.
But thank God, He came to die, not for Himself, but for us. As He died, the veil was rent from top to bottom. In other words, a new and living way has been dedicated for us.
So, brothers and sisters, we are living at a time when the veil has already been broken, already been rent. We are privileged to enter into the holy of holies and to see the face of God day by day—not only to enter in, but to live there. What a privilege we have today.
Returning to what we have said before, the world is seeking one thing: to be united with God, to be in His presence, to live within the veil. That is the heart-searching of the world.
Look at the mystics. Generally speaking, we are all mystics. Why? Mystics are people who seek the presence of God, who seek to be united with God. That makes you a mystic, and that is what Christians are.
But there is a certain group called mystics. If you have ever read something about these mystics, you know it is very attractive. In a sense, many Christians who really knew the Lord received a lot from reading these mystics.
But unfortunately, when you really go into mysticism, there are certain serious faults.
You remember Madame Guyon? Especially when I was young, in China, an abridged version of Madame Guyon’s life—not her own autobiography—was translated into Chinese and spread over China. The editor took away the superstitions, and people really liked Madame Guyon.
You met many brothers and sisters who desired to be like Madame Guyon because she had such a wonderful, beautiful life. She lived during the time of Louis XIV. Her influence at that time was great. She was imprisoned for her belief.
She had a saying: “We are like a drop of water flowing gradually into the ocean. When you arrive at the ocean, that drop of water merges with the ocean. You are no more because you are one with the ocean.” That is the way she tried to describe union with God.
But do you notice something seriously wrong? When you maintain such a theology, it means you deify man.
Union with God does not mean that because you have His life, therefore you become God, part of God, or become deified. It is the deification of man.
Unfortunately, when people really go into mysticism, they fall into this trap. I will not tell you the name of a famous Christian, because if I name him, some of you may know him—we have read his books. Eventually, he fell into it.
He fell into the deification of man. He even studied the fathers, the so-called church fathers. Some of the first church fathers fell into that trap. They really taught the deification of man.
This is something we need to be careful about. Union with God is in Christ. We are united with God in Christ. The Bible never tells us union with God directly; it is union with God in Christ.
We receive the life of Christ, but God is always God and man is always man. This is the first error we need to be careful about.
The second error with the mystics is that their way of getting to God is from man to God, not from God to man. In other words, they try to reach God by their efforts instead of seeing that it is God who comes down, touches, and rescues us.
The whole theory of the mystics is man reaching to heaven, and not heaven reaching down to man. It is man’s work; it is not God’s work. That is an error, because we find that it is God’s work. It is grace.
We are saved by grace through faith. It is not of ourselves; it is the gift of God.
Third, because they do not know the dividing of the soul and spirit, the separation of soul and spirit, their efforts are so mixed.
You have to admire them for how they ill-treat themselves. They beat themselves. They lie on beds with nails. They ill-treat their body because they believe that sin and evil are in the body, because the body is matter, and matter is evil.
So they try to be holy by ill-treating their body. Even Martin Luther, a professor of rhetoric, when he was convicted of his sin and feared death, left his professorship and knocked at the door of an Augustinian monastery.
How he ill-treated his body! He was almost dying. We have to admire their determination, brothers and sisters, because we love our body too much. You have to admire them. But what they did was not God’s way.
We need to put our body under us, that is true, but not to ill-treat it as if evil is in the body. No.
Because of their earnestness, willingness, and zeal, they were really willing to suffer as much as they could stand. Thank God, God knows their heart. So oftentimes, eventually, God told them to give up those things, and they did.
Because of their searching for God, God did reveal Himself to them. But, brothers and sisters, this is something we need to be careful about. We should have that willingness to seek the Lord at any cost, but we should not be foolish in trying to accomplish it by ourselves.
We know that it is all by the mercy of God.
So, dear brothers and sisters, what should we do? Again, we find that God has already done it. How can we live within the veil? How can we live in the presence of God? Christ has already done it.
When you read Hebrews 10:19, it says, “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy place.” We have boldness to enter into the holy of holies. Where does the boldness come from?
It comes by the blood of Jesus. First of all, it is the blood of Jesus. Because He shed His blood, our sins have been forgiven. He has given us a right, a position, to come before God as our Father. That is where our boldness comes from.
Throughout our Christian life, we can never leave the blood of Jesus behind us, as if we have advanced so much that we need the blood of Jesus no more.
The closer you are to God, the more you realize how precious the blood of Jesus is. You need His blood more than at any other time because you realize how sinful, unrighteous, unholy, and dark you are.
You need the blood of Jesus all the time. Whenever the Lord shows you wherein you have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, you repent and claim the blood of the Lord Jesus. It is your provision throughout your whole Christian life. Therefore, you are always clean before God.
Number two: we have boldness to enter into the holy of holies because we have a way. The Lord Jesus has opened a new and living way. It is new; it has never been known before. And it is living—not dead, but living.
What is that new and living way? It is the new and living way dedicated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh. Because He broke His flesh on Calvary’s cross, the veil within the temple was rent and the door was opened for us to go in.
But remember, this is a way He has dedicated for us. Formerly, we had no way to go behind the veil. But now our Lord Jesus has opened a new and living way for us. He went in first, and then He said, “Follow Me.”
The way is there, but if you do not follow, you will not get there. That is our problem. Our Lord has broken His flesh for us, but we are not willing to break our flesh ourselves. We love ourselves too much, and that hinders us from walking in that way.
When you read the Word of God, you find the Lord again and again saying, “Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Me.” If you do not deny yourself, what does it mean? It means that you say to yourself, “I do not know you.”
We know ourselves too much, we love ourselves too much, and we think of ourselves too much. One day, by the grace of God, you tell yourself, “I do not know you. I do not care for you.” That is the cross you take up and follow the Lord.
If our flesh is not dealt with, there is no way to live in the presence of God. Here again, you find how important spiritual exercise is. You cannot take the Word of God just objectively.
Yes, you need to take the Word of God objectively by faith, and then you need to follow the Word of God subjectively by obedience.
Number three: as we try to walk in that way, we find that we have no strength. Do you think you have the strength to deny yourself? It is as if you are trying to lift yourself up by yourself. You cannot lift yourself up because it is you.
How can we do that? Thank God, we have the third provision: we have a High Priest who intercedes for us, who ever lives and intercedes for us, and He is able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him.
He is there to supply the willingness, the ability, the power, and the strength to take up our cross and follow.
So, brothers and sisters, when we see all these provisions before us, do not make this matter of life within the veil impossible, or something only a few mystics seek. It is an open secret for everybody.
Notice how the writer of Hebrews speaks to us: “Let us draw near.” Let us draw near with a true heart.
In other words, let us believe that it is possible. Let us believe that it is open. Let us desire to enter in. Let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith.
Christian life is a matter of faith. Faith is never in you. Faith is something outside of you. Look away from everything unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of faith. That is where faith comes from.
Having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience means that every time you have an evil conscience—you have sinned, something is wrong in your life—immediately apply the blood of the Lord to your heart, to cleanse you from an evil conscience.
Then you may live day by day, hour by hour, in cleanness of conscience. And having your body washed with pure water: here you have to think of Ephesians 5. The Lord Jesus uses the water of the Word to wash us day by day, that we may be able to serve Him.
It is like the brazen laver. The Word of God is like water. When the Word of God comes to you and is made alive, and you respond to it, He cleanses you.
“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope that it waver not.” Why? Because this is not an easy way. As you try to seek a life within the veil, to be in the presence of God all the time, you will find many failures.
Many times you find that even your conscience is not pure. Or you find that the world has contaminated you. You will fail again and again, but do not give up. Let us hold fast the confession.
We have a confession to make, and our confession is this: Jesus is Lord. He is able, and He is our living hope. We hold on to that and press on. Never give up, brothers and sisters.
For He is faithful who has promised. Our Lord is faithful.
In this way of living in the presence of God, we need one another. We are not able to go alone. This is why it says, “Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and good works.”
We need to help one another and encourage one another. In order to do that, we must not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as the custom of some is.
Unfortunately, some have made this a custom. What is a custom? A custom is something that you have done so often that it becomes regular. That is a custom, a habit.
Brothers and sisters, I plead with you: do not forsake the assembly of the saints. You may think that to assemble with the saints sometimes hurts you. Thank God for hurting you. This is what you need.
If you do not assemble with the saints, you may seem to be free from any hurt at home, with no discipline whatsoever—free. But, brothers and sisters, you are going down.
You will find yourself departing further and further away from the Lord. You do not know what a blessing the assembly is.
I have seen people who love the Lord, and then they got away and were all by themselves, still loving the Lord. But gradually, they turned their face away from the Lord and even fell into false teaching. Pitiful.
Do not forsake the assembly because, when you are assembling with brothers and sisters, they step upon you. Look at it as the cross the Holy Spirit has provided for you to teach you some valuable lessons.
We need to learn from one another as we need to learn from the Lord Himself. That is the exhortation we find in the writer of Hebrews.
Let us pray.
Dear Lord, correct our concept that to live in Thy presence within the veil is only for a few. Praise and thank Thee, knowing that Thou hast made every provision for every believer to enter in and to dwell there.
Lord, show us Thy way, that we may enter in. Enable us to really press on together unto the goal, that we may win Christ, that we may live a Christ-like life, and that we may fulfill Thy purpose. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.