Bible Commentaries
Hebrews 4

Verses 9-10

The Sabbath Rest

There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest hath himself also rested from his works, as God did from his.— Hebrews 4:9-10.

1. Among man’s deepest feelings is a longing for rest. Not deeply felt in the freshness and ardour of early life, it recurs from time to time, and grows stronger with advancing years. Nothing in life fully satisfies this longing. Labours, distresses, disappointments, anxieties never allow the desired repose. Few there are whose hearts have not sometimes echoed the Psalmist’s words, “Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest!” Many since Job have felt something of his longing to be where “the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.”

Is there to be no satisfaction ever of this deep human craving? Holy Scripture meets it as it meets all others. It tells of a rest of God above creation from the beginning of time; it intimated man’s part and interest in it by the weekly Sabbath which he was to keep with God. But this was, after all, but a symbol and earnest of something unattained. At length a fuller realization of the longed-for rest was held out to the chosen people, and the Promised Land was pictured beforehand in the colours of an earthly Paradise. Forfeited when first offered, through the people’s unworthiness (representing by a historical parable the bar to man’s entrance into the eternal rest), it was attained at last. But the true rest still came not. Canaan, like the Sabbath, proved but a symbol of something unattained. Yet the old longing for rest went on, and inspired men went on proclaiming it as attainable and still to come. The irrepressible craving, the suggestive symbols, the prophetic anticipations, are all fulfilled in Christ. He, when He had passed with us through this earthly scene of labour, entered, with our nature, into that eternal rest of God, to prepare a place for us, having by His atonement removed the bar to human entrance. Through our faith in Him we are assured that our deep-seated craving for satisfaction as yet unattained, which we express by the term “rest,” is a true inward prophecy, and that, though we find it not here, we may through Him, if we are faithful, confidently expect it there, where “beyond these voices there is peace.”

2. The Hebrew Christians to whom this Epistle was addressed were familiar, as Gentiles could not be, with the observance of a weekly Sabbath or rest day: and the word “Sabbatism”—which is the exact expression of the passage—would at once suggest to them the enjoyment of a holy rest. They were also familiar, as Gentiles could not be, with the designation “People of God” as a title of Israel; and as Christians they had learned, though slowly and with difficulty, that under the New Dispensation of grace, not Israel after the flesh, but a holy people redeemed and called out of all nations, was made nigh to God in Christ Jesus. The people of God during the present “age” is the Church of God. As St. Paul puts it: “We are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.”

For this people “a Sabbatism remains.” The word “remains” must be construed in harmony with the strain of the Epistle, which shows that many things of the Old Covenant had waxed old and were vanishing away, but better things remained for the people or Church of God in Christ Jesus. Shadows departed, but the substances remained, and among the “better things” of the new day which had dawned there was the entrance on a rest surpassing in its fulness and sacredness all that was reached in the old times of Moses and Joshua, and even of David.

The text is the climax of an argument which may be set out as follows:—

I. God gave the perfect pattern of rest when He rested from the work of Creation.

II. In Old Testament times man failed through unbelief to attain to the rest to which God called him.

III. Christ made good man’s failure when He rested from Redemption as God did from Creation.

IV. The Gospel offers Christ’s rest to believers.

I

The Divine Pattern of Rest

1. The term rendered “rest” means literally a keeping of a Sabbath. And this refers us at once to the rest of the seventh day. When we read in the Old Testament that, at the end of the creative act, God rested on the seventh day, and blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, the thing that comes into view is not a Divine nature wearied with toil and needing repose; it is a Divine nature which has fully accomplished its intent, expressed its purpose, done what it meant to do, and rests from its working because it has embodied its ideal in its work. It is the proclamation: “This creation of Mine is all that I meant it to be—finished and perfect”; not the acknowledgment of an exhaustion of the creative energy which needs to reinvigorate its strength by repose after its mighty effort. The rest of God is the expression of the perfect Divine complacency in the perfect Divine work.

2. The rest of God, so far from being inactivity, is full of work. When Christ was telling these Jews the principles of the Sabbath day, He said to them: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” The creative act is finished and God rests; but God, in resting, works; even as God, in working, rests. Preservation is a continued creation. The energy of the Divine power is as mightily at work here now sustaining us in life as it was when He flung forth stars and systems like sparks from a forge, and willed the universe into being. God rests; and in His rest, up to the present hour and for ever, God works. True, He is not now sending forth, so far as we know, suns, or systems, or fresh types of being. But His power is ever at work, repairing, renewing, and sustaining the fabric of the vast machinery of the universe. No sparrow falls to the ground without Him. The cry of the young lion and the lowing of the oxen in the pastures attract His instant regard. “In Him all things consist.”

3. God’s rest is thus the pattern and pledge of man’s rest. And when we turn to that marvellous apocalypse of the past which in so many respects answers to the apocalypse of the future given us by the Apostle John, we find that, whereas we are expressly told of the evening and morning of each of the other days of creation, there is no reference to the dawn or close of God’s rest-day; and we are left to infer that it is impervious to time, independent of duration, unlimited, and eternal; that the ages of human story are but hours in the rest-day of Jehovah; and that, in point of fact, we spend our years in the Sabbath-keeping of God. But, better than all, it would appear that we are invited to enter into it and share it; as a child living by the placid waters of a vast fresh-water lake may dip into them its cup, and drink and drink again, without making any appreciable diminution of its volume or ripple on its expanse.

It is true we cannot possess that changeless tranquillity which knows no variations of purpose or of desire, but we can possess the stable repose of that fixed nature which knows one object, and one alone. We cannot possess that energy which, after all work, is fresh and unbroken; but we can possess that tranquillity which in all toil is not troubled, and after all work is ready for double service. We cannot possess that unwavering fire of a Divine nature which burns in love without flickering, which knows without learning, which wills without irresolution and without the act of decision; but we can come to love deeply, tranquilly, perpetually; we can come to know without questioning, without doubts, without darkness, in firm confidence of stable assurance, and so know with something like the knowledge of Him who knows things as they are; and we can come to will and resolve so strongly, so fixedly, so wisely, that there shall be no change of purpose or any vacillation of desire. In these ways, in shadow and copy, we can be like even the apparently incommunicable tranquillity which, like an atmosphere that knows no tempests, belongs to and encircles the throne of God.

I hear a troubled soul say, “Is it possible that I may be so delivered that the peace of God shall keep me amid sorrows, evils, and injustice?” Many of God’s children do not know how much there is for them in the new covenant. There is a reserve in the trust of many—they trust their souls but not their bodies; for eternal safety but not for temporal things; for the past and for heaven. All their difficulty has reference to that short space between. If they could only put in God’s hands the piece that lies between! A wonderful deliverance! Sorrow and worry are found in two things—not getting your own way, and fear of futurity. A man said he had in life suffered from many troubles, but most of them never came! We must have confidence in our Father’s care and love. What a relief to your poor heart; no care, no worry! “He that believeth shall not make haste.” Is it possible? Yes: you may have it; may now enter in. A little child is lost in a forest; at last his father finds him and takes him by the hand. He finds rest from anxiety before he gets home—anxiety about the way home. His mind is full of other things; he has rest from the moment he puts his hand in his father’s. Put yours in your Father’s, and you shall have rest—in difficulties, in trials, nothing, nothing can work evil for you. 1 [Note: John Brash: Memorials and Correspondence, 218.]

The Apostle clearly and largely proves unto them: That it is the end of all ceremonies and shadows to direct them to Jesus Christ the substance, and that the rest of Sabbaths and Canaan should teach them to look for a further rest, which indeed is their happiness. My text is his conclusion after divers arguments to that end, a conclusion so useful to a believer, as containing the ground of all his comforts, the end of all his duty and sufferings, the life and sum of all Gospel promises and Christian privileges, that you may easily be satisfied why I have made it the subject of my present discourse. What more welcome to men under personal afflictions, tiring duty, successions of sufferings, than rest! What more welcome news to men under public calamities, unpleasing employments, plundering losses, sad tidings, etc. (which is the common case), than this of rest! Hearers, I pray God your attention, intention of spirit, entertainment and improvement of it, be but half answerable to the verity, necessity, and excellency of this subject: and then you will have cause to bless God while you live that ever you heard it; as I have, that; ever I studied it. 2 [Note: R. Baxter, The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, chap. i.]

II

Israel’s Failure to Reach Rest

The history of Israel from the beginning consists of continued renewals of the promise on the part of God and persistent rejections on the part of Israel, ending in the hardening of their hearts. Every time the promise is renewed, it is presented in a higher and more spiritual form. Every rejection inevitably leads to grosser views and more hopeless unbelief. So entirely false is the fable of the Sibyl! God does not burn some of the leaves when His promises have been rejected, and come back with fewer offers at a higher price. His method is to offer more and better on the same conditions. But it is the nature of unbelief to cause the heart to wax gross, to blind the spiritual vision, until in the end the rich spiritual promises of God and the earthly dark unbelief of the sinner stand in extremest contrast.

1. At first the promise is presented in the negative form of rest from labour. Even the Creator condescended thus to rest. But what such rest can be to God it were vain for man to try to conceive. We know that, as soon as the foundations of the world were laid and the work of creation was ended, God ceased from this form of activity. But when this negative rest had been attained, it was far from realizing God’s idea of rest either for Himself or for man. For, though these works of God, the material universe, were finished from the laying of the world’s foundations to the crowning of the edifice, God still speaks of another rest, and threatens to shut some men out for their unbelief. Our Lord told the Pharisees, whose notion of the Sabbath was the negative one, that He desired His sabbath-rest to be like that of His Father, who “worketh hitherto.” The Jewish Sabbath, it appears, therefore, is the most elementary form of God’s promised rest.

2. The promise is next presented as the rest of Canaan. This is a stage in advance in the development of the idea. It is not mere abstention from secular labour, and the consecration of inactivity. The rest now consists in the enjoyment of material prosperity, the proud consciousness of national power, the growth of a peculiar civilization, the rise of great men and eminent saints, and all this won by Israel under the leadership of Joshua (their Jesus, who was in this respect a type of ours). But even in this second garden of Eden, Israel did not attain to God’s rest. Worldliness became their snare. But God still called to them by the mouth of the Psalmist, long after they had entered on the possession of Canaan. This only proves that the true rest was still unattained, and God’s promise not yet fulfilled. The form which the rest of God now assumed is not expressly stated in this passage. But we have not far to go in search of it. The 1st Psalm, which is the introduction to all the Psalms, declares the blessedness of contemplation. The Sabbath is seldom mentioned by the Psalmist. Its place is taken by the sanctuary, in which rest of soul is found in meditating on God’s law and beholding the Lord’s beauty. The call has become urgent. “To-day!” It is the last invitation. It lingers in the ears in ever fainter voice of prophet after prophet, until the prophet’s face turns towards the east to announce the break of dawn and the coming of the perfect rest in Jesus Christ.

3. God’s promise was never fulfilled to the Israelites, because of their unbelief. But shall their unbelief make the faithfulness of God of none effect? God forbid. The gifts and calling of God are without repentance. The promise that has failed of fulfilment in the lower form must find its accomplishment in the higher. Even a prayer is the more heard for every delay. God’s mill grinds slowly, but for that reason grinds small. What is the inference? Surely it is that the sabbath-rest still remains for the true people of God. This sabbath-rest St. Paul prayed that the true Israel, who glory, not in their circumcision but in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, might receive: “Peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.”

I have just returned from the “Morning Lands” of history. I have visited Rome, Athens, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Cairo, Memphis, and all these cities of the dead. Egypt is in ruins, Greece is in ruins, Rome is in ruins. Oh, what terrible evidence has passed before my own eyes, since the first of last January, that all human empires decay and die! These were the great cities of wealth, art, philosophy, commerce and empire, but they are now in ruins, which alone makes them objects of human interest to inquisitive pilgrims in these days. They all cry to me, “Your rest is not in these things, your rest is not here.” 1 [Note: Hugh Price Hughes.]

There is a way (which the vulture’s eye hath not seen) in which a man may pursue what the pursuers of fame pursue, and yet find neither purgatory nor the worst alternative; but that secret path is the path of increased toil and dizzy climbing. The man who, while putting forth all his mental energy, wishes to find rest to his soul, must fight ten where the other fights only one. But with this difference, that he is sure to win. This is true. I believe some men have as truly vanquished fame, as others covetousness or pleasure. One is as hard as the other. One is as easy as the other. Religion can so lift a man up that the rain and floods can’t shake his house. But even so much religion won’t give a man leisure, though it gives him peace. The world can’t understand the believer’s life. With a worldling “drive” is either distraction or pain or oblivion. Not so with the believer. He may be “pressed out of measure beyond strength,” but he is at rest. “Ye shall find rest unto your souls.” 1 [Note: Letters of James Smetham, 166.]

III

The Rest that Christ Realized

1. Among the exegetes there is a division whether Hebrews 4:10 is to be understood generically: “Whosoever has entered into his rest has ceased from his works,” or specifically of Christ: “He who entered upon God’s rest, Himself entered upon rest from His own works.” Note (1) the definite phrase, “He who entered” (not as R.V., “he that is entered”); (2) the emphatic pronoun, “Himself”; (3) the historic tense, “entered upon rest” (not as R.V., “hath rested”); (4) the implied contrast with Joshua ( Hebrews 5:8); (5) that otherwise there is no mention of Jesus’ experience or achievements between ch. Hebrews 3:1 and ch. Hebrews 4:14; and (6) that otherwise read the verse offers no logical support to Hebrews 4:9, but interpreted thus supplies the ground on which the sabbath-rest is offered to Christ’s followers. For these reasons it seems better to read the verse as stating that, just as after His work of creating the world was finished God rested from creative activity, so now that His work of redeeming the race is completed Jesus rests from redemptive activity.

After the creative act there came the Sabbath, when God ceased from His work, and pronounced it very good; so, after the redemptive act, there came the Sabbath to the Redeemer. He lay, during the seventh day, in the grave of Joseph, not because He was exhausted or inactive, but because redemption was finished, and there was no more for Him to do. He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on High; and that majestic session is a symptom neither of fatigue nor of indolence. He ever liveth to make intercession; He works with His servants, confirming their words with signs; He walks amid the seven golden candlesticks. And yet He rests as a man may rest who has arisen from his ordinary life to effect some great deed of emancipation and deliverance; but having accomplished it, returns again to the ordinary routine of his former life, glad and satisfied in His heart.

2. The rest that Jesus realized was not for Himself alone, but for all who are identified with Him in mystic fellowship. He opened the way to all believers into that rest which the generations struggled after. He could stretch forth His hands and say, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” It is this that distinguishes Christ among the teachers, philanthropists, and deliverers of the ages, that He gives men the blessings of life and rest which they need, rather than endless “prescriptions” as to how such are to be obtained. In other words, He offered them His own life and peace; and thus, by making them partakers of His Divine nature and subjects of His law, He taught them to be like Himself, meek and lowly in heart, and thus to find perfect rest unto their souls. Restlessness was the direct penalty of separation from God in the first place; rest is the direct outcome of re-union with God in the person of Jesus Christ.

Yet let us draw a little nearer, and see more immediately from the pure fountain of the Scriptures what further excellences this Rest affordeth. And the Lord hide us in the clefts of the rock, and cover us with the hands of indulgent grace while we approach to take this view! And the Lord grant we may put off from our feet the shoes of unreverence and fleshly conceivings, while we stand upon this holy ground! And first, it is a most singular honour and ornament, in the style of the saints’ rest, to be called the “purchased possession”; that it is the fruit of the blood of the Son of God; yea, the chief fruit: yea, the end and perfection of all the fruits and efficacy of that blood. Surely love is the most precious ingredient in the whole composition; and of all the flowers that grow in the garden of love, can there be brought one more sweet and beautiful to the garland, than this blood? Greater love than this there is not, to lay down the life of the lover. And to have this our Redeemer ever before our eyes, and the liveliest sense and freshest remembrance of that dying, bleeding love still upon our souls, oh, how will it fill our souls with perpetual ravishments! 1 [Note: R. Baxter, The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, chap. vii.]

Canst thou not see

That there remains another rest for thee?

Not this alone

Which comes to all His own—

Which comes to all who hide

Beneath the shadow of the Crucified.

There is a rest which still He waits to give—

A rest wherein we all may daily live—

The rest whereby,

As in His death, by faith, we die,

So He will live in us,

And living thus

Will change our death to life—a life no longer ours,

But His, renewed with resurrection powers.

O now receive

The calm, deep peace which comes as we believe

That all the works, and zeal, and strife,

With which we sometime sought to fill our life,

Are vain and dead, at best:

Thus shalt thou understand, and enter into rest. 2 [Note: E. H. Divall, A Believer’s Rest, 106.]

IV

The Rest that Remaineth

1. This rest is an inward and present possession. The fundamental idea of the Sabbath is rest; and this is the idea which the Apostle makes most prominent in this place, because he uses “Sabbatism” interchangeably with a word which signifies “cessation” or “repose.” But it can never be granted that mere physical or animal rest was the sole or even the chief thing enjoined by the Sabbath law under any dispensation. It was the rest of man in God, a rest like that of God, a rest which in man’s unfallen state was enjoyed by his working on the same plan and resting in the same spirit with God, and in his fallen state could be recovered only by his return in his whole being to harmony with God and rest in Him. The only Sabbath-keeping on earth that has ever deserved the name is release from the labours and burdens of the soul, and from the labours and burdens of the body as a help to the higher rest. The true Sabbath is entering into God’s rest, into participation of His blessedness, and it draws with it the surmounting of every hindrance to this result. It is resting from everything that would hinder rest in God, and then it is the enjoying of this rest in Him.

Our experience here tells of its partial attainment. We have ourselves, not only in spiritual but in other matters, been conscious of approaching it. There have been times, rare but most enchanting, when heart and hand, thought and shaping of thought, conception and conquest, imagination and execution, have gone together, with swiftness, with splendid harmony, with joys as fresh, as young as morning. What has once been, though imperfect, in experience, may be an eternal and a perfect possession, and will be an eternal and perfect possession when we are made perfect. It is the rest of the children of God; and it is a rest which means, which indeed is, eternal work and perfect work, eternal loving and perfect loving.

If the question were raised: Is man made for toil or for rest? the answer would be a mixed and qualified one. He is appointed to toil, he is destined to rest: one is his condition, the other is his end. If man is made in God’s image, he is made to share in God’s condition: and both Christian revelation and heathen conjecture unite in conceiving of Deity as in repose, eternally acting, yet in eternal rest. 1 [Note: T. T. Munger.]

2. We enter into this rest by faith and obedience.

(1) The faith by which a man possesses himself of this is not the mere acknowledgment that God is addressing him and summoning him heavenward, but the practical, obedient, venturous trust by which he mixes (v. 2) the word which he hears with his personal conscious life in its inner springs first, and then in its streams of conduct. By this trust the believer learns to desist from the fruitless labours which the guilt-stricken attempt in order to merit the pardon of their sins, to effect the cleansing of their souls, to attain to the ideal of restored character. He lives before God, and serves Him with calmer rest as his hallowed desires accord more fully with his sacred duties and these with the will of God.

Then grief expires, and pain and strife,

’Tis nature all and all delight.

It is in the life of faith, when a soul learns to trust God for victory over sin, and yields itself entirely, as to its circumstances and duties, to live just where and how He wills, that it enters the rest. It lives in the promise, in the will, in the power of God. This is the rest into which it enters, not through death, but through faith, or rather, not through the death of the body, but the death to self in the death of Christ through faith. For indeed we have had good tidings preached unto us, even as also they; but the word of hearing did not profit them, because it was not united by faith with those that heard. The one reason why they did not enter Canaan was their unbelief. The land was waiting; the rest was provided; God Himself would bring them in and give them rest. One thing was lacking: they did not believe, and so did not yield themselves to God to do it for them what He had promised. Unbelief closes the heart against God, withdraws the life from God’s power; in the very nature of things unbelief renders the word of promise of none effect. A gospel of rest is preached to us as it was to them. We have in Scripture the most precious assurances of a rest for the soul to be found under the yoke of Jesus, of a peace of God which passeth all understanding, of a peace and a joy in the soul which nothing can take away. But when they are not believed they cannot be enjoyed: faith is in its very nature a resting in the promise and the promiser until He fulfil it in us. Only faith can enter into rest. The fulness of faith enters into the full rest. 1 [Note: A. Murray, The Holiest of All, 144.]

(2) We must labour to enter into rest. We must will the will of God. So long as the will of God, whether in the Bible or in providence, is going in one direction and our will in another, rest is impossible. Can there be rest in an earthly household when the children are ever chafing against the regulations and control of their parents? How much less can we be at rest if we harbour an incessant spirit of insubordination and questioning, contradicting and resisting the will of God? That will must be done on earth as it is in heaven. None can stay His hand, or say, What doest Thou? It will be done with us, or in spite of us. If we resist it, the yoke against which we rebel will only rub a sore place on our skin; but we must still carry it. How much wiser, then, meekly to yield to it, and submit ourselves under the mighty hand of God, saying, “Not my will, but Thine be done!” The man who has learnt the secret of Christ in saying a perpetual “Yes” to the will of God; whose life is a strain of rich music to the theme, “Even so, Father”; whose will follows the current of the will of God, as the smoke from our chimneys permits itself to be wafted by the winds of autumn—that man may find rest unto his soul.

Resignation sitteth down with the lowly in the dust; it saith, “I will be simple in myself, and understand, lest my understanding should exalt itself, and sin; I will lie down in the courts of my God at His feet, that I may serve my Lord in that which He commandeth me: I will know nothing myself, that the commandment of my Lord may lead and guide me, and that I may only do what God doth through me, and will have done by me: I will sleep in myself until the Lord awaken me with His Spirit, and if He will not, then will I cry out eternally in Him in silence and wait His commands.” 1 [Note: Jacob Behmen.]

One of her perplexities hitherto had been a doubt whether the “mountains of difficulties” were to be taken as occasions for submission to God’s will, or whether they were piled up in order to try her patience and her resolve, and were to be surmounted by some initiative of her own. She now began to interpret God’s will in the latter sense. “I must take some things,” she wrote on Whitsunday 1851, “as few as I can, to enable me to live. I must take them, they will not be given me; take them in a true spirit of doing Thy will, not of snatching them for my own will. I must do without some things, as many as I can, which I could not have without causing more suffering than I am obliged to cause any way.” 2 [Note: Sir Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, i. 107.]

3. This present rest of soul, realized through trust, conducts the diligent into the perfect rest wherein the Man and Leader, Christ, already dwells. This aspect of the Divine rest is exhibited in the word used first in Hebrews 4:9, and rendered in the Revised Version by “sabbath rest.” The Talmud records: “The Israelites said, Lord of all the world, show us a type of the world to come. God answered them, That type is the sabbath.” Augustine notices that, in Genesis, to the seventh day, the day of God’s rest, are set no limits of evening and morning. The sabbath-rest is to be perfect, endless, unchanging, indefeasible: the true and ideal rest which corresponds to what God designed for man and what man desires from God.

July 30 th, 1892.—Lord Northbrook, the Mondragones, and Mrs. Arkwright are with us. The first-named asked me after dinner whether I had ever heard the last words of Stonewall Jackson: “Let us cross the river and rest under the shade.” 1 [Note: M. E. Grant Duff, Notes from a Diary, 1892–95, i. 77.]

Those who die in the fear of God and in the faith of Christ do not really taste death; to them there is no death, but only a change of place, a change of state; they pass at once into some new life, with all their powers, all their feelings unchanged; still the same living, thinking, active beings, which they were here on earth. I say active.… Rest they may: rest they will, if they need rest. But what is the true rest? Not idleness, but peace of mind. To rest from sin, from sorrow, from fear, from doubt, from care; this is true rest. Above all, to rest from the worst weariness of all—knowing one’s duty, and yet not being able to do it. That is true rest; the rest of God, who works for ever, and yet is at rest for ever; as the stars over our heads move for ever, thousands of miles a day, and yet are at perfect rest, because they move orderly, harmoniously, fulfilling the law which God has given them. Perfect rest, in perfect work; that surely is the rest of blessed spirits, till the final consummation of all things, when Christ shall have made up the number of His elect. 2 [Note: Charles Kingsley: Memorials and Letters, ii. 355.]

4. Through Christ the heavenly rest is as sure as it is desirable. How dim, after all, was the conception of heaven among the prophets of the Old Testament, and how it seemed sometimes to meet, and sometimes to elude, the aspirations of the psalmist. But now the “sure and certain hope” of heaven is a commonplace of religion which every child can tell, and it is so because we know of Christ in heaven in His true humanity, and we have His unmistakable promise, “I go to prepare a place for you.” Surely this is enough. We cannot know what heaven is except as the perfection of that which we have upon earth. All that we need to know is that there shall be perfect peace—peace with self, peace with men, peace with God. If ever the human imagination has dared to go beyond this in painting heaven, either to the ear or to the eye, it has always materialized and degraded the very conception of heaven itself. No, it is enough for us to know that heaven is perfect happiness because Christ is there; and to know that in His many mansions He has a place for each one of us. In that foresight there is a wonderful rest amidst all the trials and the sorrows of life. It has given peace to the sufferer in the hour of his agony: to the penitent in the weariness of his struggle; to the soul which is athirst for light in its darkness and for righteousness in the face of evil. Man, as I have said, can never rest in the present. His whole life here, we grant, is a series of hopes and disenchantments. But what matters that if there is a sure and certain hope in the hereafter? and how can that hope fail if Christ in heaven is preparing a place for us?

O birds from out the east, O birds from out the west,

Have you found that happy city in all your weary quest?

Tell me, tell me, from earth’s wanderings may the heart find glad surcease,

Can ye show me, as an earnest, any olive branch of peace?

I am weary of life’s troubles, of its sin and toil and care,

I am faithless, crushing in my heart so many a fruitless prayer,

O birds from out the east, O birds from out the west,

Can ye tell me of that city, the name of which is Rest?

O little birds fly east again—O little birds fly west:

Ye have found no happy city in all your weary quest,

Still shall ye find no spot of rest wherever ye may stray,

And still like you the human soul must wing its weary way.

There sleepeth no such city within the wide world’s bound,

Nor hath the dreaming fancy yet its blissful portals found,

We are but children crying here upon a mother’s breast,

For life and peace and blessedness, and for eternal Rest.

Bless God, I hear a still small voice above life’s clamorous din

Saying, “Faint not, O weary one, thou yet may’st enter in,

That city is prepared for those who well do win the fight,

Who tread the winepress till its blood hath washed their garments white.

Within it is no darkness, nor any baleful flower

Shall there oppress thy weeping eyes with stupefying power,

It lieth calm within the light of God’s, peace-giving breast,

Its walks are called Salvation, the city’s name is Rest.”

The Sabbath Rest

Literature

Arnold (T.), Sermons, i. 112.

Brooke (S. A.), Short Sermons, 91.

Cairns (J.), Christ the Morning Star, 325.

Carroll (B. H.), Sermons, 444.

Edwards (T. C.), The Epistle to the Hebrews, 58.

Hunt (A. N.), Sermons for the Christian Year, iii. 147.

Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, New Ser., i. 321.

Lee (F. G.), Miscellaneous Sermons, 277.

Maclaren (A.), Sermons Preached in Manchester, ii. 281.

Meyer (F. B.), The Way into the Holiest, 68.

Murray (A.), The Holiest of All, 151.

Oosterzee (J. J. van), The Year of Salvation, ii. 233.

Radford (J. G.), The Eternal Inheritance, 77.

Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, iii. (1857), No. 133.

Symonds (A. R.), Fifty Sermons, 244.

Christian World Pulpit, xxi. 321 (A. Barry); lvii. 184 (H. Price Hughes).

Clergyman’s Magazine, 3rd Ser., viii. (1894) 1.

Sunday Magazine, 1881, p. 194 (D. Fraser).

Verse 16

The Throne of Grace

Let us therefore draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help us in time of need.— Hebrews 4:16.

In the closing sentences of this chapter the writer winds up the long exhortation to steadfastness by an inspiring allusion to the sympathy of the great High Priest, who has passed out of this time-world, through the veil of the visible heavens, into the celestial-world; and he takes care that his last word shall be of a cheering character, and also so manages that the conclusion of this hortatory section shall form a suitable introduction to the next part of his discourse. For the third time Christ is designated a High Priest and there are ascribed to Him, as such, attributes which are to form the theme of the next great division of the Epistle, wherein the priestly office of Christ is elaborately discussed. The writer re-invites the attention of his readers to the High Priest of their confession, and in doing so uses words every one of which contains an assertion which he means to prove or illustrate, and which being proved will serve the great end of the whole Epistle—the instruction and confirmation of the ignorant and tempted.

Then, when he has, by brief, pregnant phrase, hinted the thoughts he means to prove, the writer proceeds to address to his readers an exhortation, which is repeated at the close of the long discussion on the priesthood of Christ, to which these sentences are the prelude. In doing so, he gives prominence to that feature of Christ’s priestly character of which alone he has as yet spoken explicitly—His power to sympathize, acquired and guaranteed by His experience of temptation. He presents Christ to view as the Sympathetic One in golden words which may be regarded as an inscription on the breast-plate of the High Priest of humanity. To this strong assertion of Christ’s power to sympathize is fitly appended the final exhortation: “Let us therefore draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and grace for seasonable succour.”

I

Confidence of Approach

“Let us draw near with boldness.”

1. The word “boldness” is somewhat incongruous; it neither conveys the original nor does it correspond to our sense of propriety. The thought would be far more beautifully and far more naturally represented by a more literal translation—“Let us come with frank confidence” to the throne of grace. The word literally means, if we go to the etymology of it, “speaking everything.” You can easily understand how naturally that becomes an expression for the unembarrassed, unrestrained, full outpouring of a heart. You cannot pour out your heart in the fullest confidence to a person you do not respect, but if you are with some one you entirely trust, how swiftly the words flow, and how very easy it is to tell out the whole heart. Just so with this great word of the writer of this Epistle, descriptive of the temper and disposition with which men are to go to God—with confidence, full, cheerful, and unembarrassed, and expressing itself in full trust, exactly as we have it in one of the Psalms: “Ye people, pour out your heart before him.” Yes, let it all flow out, just as you would do to husband or wife, or lover or friend, or the chosen companion to whom you can tell everything.

2. We need not, however, discard the familiar word “boldness”; it is enough if we know what kind of boldness it is. Not the boldness of presumption; for if we would “serve God acceptably” it must be “with reverence and godly fear.” Not the boldness of self-will; but ever praying—“Father, Thy will.” Not the boldness of selfmerit; but saying, with Daniel, “We do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousnesses, but for thy great mercies.” It is the boldness of reliance on God’s own nature and promise. He has bidden us pray, assured response, and promised help. He means what He says. So we may come with reliance, though with reverence; with earnestness, though with submission; with confidence, though with penitence; with the boldness of a child telling all its griefs and wants to a pitying parent—the boldness Jesus encouraged in the parable of the importunate widow, and rewarded in the case of the Syrophenician mother.

Prayer in the fullest sense—the prayer that is wrought in us by the Spirit and presented by the Christ of God; prayer that wins the King’s ear—is the last triumph of the life of grace. Prayer in the noblest sense implies a concentration of all man’s united energies. Coleridge shortly before his death said these words to a friend who has recorded them: “I do not account a solemn faith in God as a real object to be the most arduous act of the reason and the will. Oh, no, my dear sir, it is to pray with all my heart and strength, with the reason and with the will, to believe that God will listen to your voice through Christ, and verily do the thing He pleaseth thereupon. This is the last, the greatest achievement of the Christian’s warfare on earth. ‘Teach us to pray, O Lord.’ Here he burst into a flood of tears, and begged me to pray for him.” The highest energy the human heart is capable of is to pray, like St. Paul, with the spirit and the understanding. But few may reach this victory, and it is deeply consoling to remember that it is a Throne of Grace before which we kneel, and that though our prayers may be marred and faultful, yet our Mediator interprets them in the ears of our loving Father, while the Spirit helps our infirmities and gives life and power to the failing, dying heart. 1 [Note: W. Robertson Nicoll, Sunday Evening, 339.]

To come boldly, it is to come frequently. At morning, at noon, and at night will I pray. We use to count them bold beggars that come often to our door. To come boldly, it is to ask for great things when we come. That is the bold beggar, that will not only ask, but also choose the thing that he asketh. 2 [Note: Bunyan.]

II

The Throne of Grace

“Let us draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace.”

1. The word “throne” commonly suggests power, majesty, sovereignty, wealth; but God’s throne is here described as one of grace. His generosity is as boundless as His wealth. He bestows blessing not upon the ground of desert or according to any measure of merit, but according to “the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.” Having, in the fulness of His benevolence, not “spared his own Son, but delivered him up for us all,” He stands ready with Him and through Him, “freely to give us all things.” He is the God of love, the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort and consolation, who daily loadeth us with benefits, who preventeth us with the blessings of His goodness, and who in the riches of His grace hath abounded towards us in all wisdom and prudence. It is to give prominence to this aspect of the character of God that the writer represents Him here as seated on a throne of grace. Mercy no less belongs to Him than majesty. If He is the God of glory, He is also the God of all grace. The throne, therefore, on which He sits is represented as a throne of grace—a throne which rests on grace, which is upholden by mercy, and from which blessing flows forth in a free and plenteous stream to the unworthy, the wretched and the lost. The glory that surrounds God’s throne, as He manifests Himself to His creatures, is a glory before which the highest of them veil their faces; they are unable to gaze on its exceeding lustre; but the form in which it arranges itself is that of a rainbow, the token of mercy and the pledge of blessing, so that even the guilty and the fallen can approach with confidence to ask of Him who sits on that throne mercy and favour.

Mercy is that eternal principle of God’s nature which leads Him, even at the cost of infinite self-sacrifice, to seek the temporal good and eternal salvation of those who have opposed themselves to His will. In the words of Martensen: “Viewed in relation to sin, eternal love is compassionate grace.” God’s continued impartation of natural life is a foreshadowing, in a lower sphere, of what He desires to do for His creatures in the higher sphere—the communication of spiritual and eternal life through Jesus Christ. When He bids us love our enemies, He only bids us follow His own example. 1 [Note: A. H. Strong, Systematic Theology, i. 289.]

2. And what is grace? Grace, of course, is the New Testament word for the undeserved favour and loving regard of God to man considered as weak, sinful, and unworthy; it is love which has its own motive, apart from any regard to worthiness in the object upon which it falls. Grace is its own real impulse and motive, and grace is set in Scripture as the opposite of desert; it is of grace, not of works, and so forth. It is set as the antagonist of sin and unrighteousness and all evil, and so runs up to the idea that it expresses the unmerited, self-originated, loving regard of God to us poor miserable creatures, who, if dealt with on the ground of right and retribution, would receive something very different indeed. But this text says that the throne of grace is the throne of God. The throne is based and established, as it were, in grace, out of which this undeserved love flows in broad, full streams. Whatever else there may be in the Divine nature, the ruling sovereign element in Deity is unmerited love and mercy and kindly regard to us poor, ignorant, sinful creatures, which keeps pouring itself out over all the world. God is King, and the kingly thing in God is infinite grace. Then we can scarcely but bring into connexion with this grand idea the other phases which the Old Testament gives to the same thought. Read such words as these: “Justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne”—“God sitteth on the throne of his holiness”—“The throne of thy glory.” Yes, the throne of justice and of judgment. White and sparkling—cold and repellent. The throne of glory—flashing and dazzling, coruscating and blinding, glittering and shimmering, ready to smite the diseased eye. “The throne of his holiness.” Yes, lofty, far up there, towering above us in its pure completeness, and we poor creatures, being ourselves blinded and dazed, and far away from Him, down amidst the lowlands and materialities, and all that majesty in the heavens—the justice and judgment, the holiness and glory—all that is only the envelope and wrappage; the living centre and heart of it is a pure, lambent glow of tenderness, and the throne is truly the throne of grace. The “throne” gives us all ideas of majesty, sovereignty, dominion, infinitude, greatness. The thought that it is “the throne of grace” sheathes all these in the softest, tenderest, most blessed folds of love—unmerited, free, spontaneous—simply because He is God, and not on account of any goodness in us.

“Less and less, I think, grows the consciousness of seeking God. Greater and greater grows the certainty that He is seeking us and giving Himself to us to the complete measure of our present capacity. That is Love, not that we loved Him, but that He loved us. I am sure that we ought to dwell far more upon God’s love for us than on our love for Him. There is such a thing as putting ourselves in the way of God’s overflowing love and letting it break upon us till the response of love to Him comes, not by struggle, not even by deliberation, but by necessity, as the echo comes when the sound strikes the rock. And this, which must have been true wherever the soul of God and the soul of man have lived, is perfectly and finally manifest in the Christhood of which it is the heart and soul. 1 [Note: Phillips Brooks: Memories of His Life, 606.]

(1) It is the opinion of some that, in the phrase “the throne of grace,” an allusion is made to the so-called mercy-seat in the Jewish temple, on which God is represented as sitting enthroned, and where He heard the supplications of His people presented by the high priest, when He accepted their oblations, and from which He dispensed to them the blessings that they needed. For this, however, there seems no sufficient reason. The writer has no call here to refer to the mercy-seat; and it is unlikely that, in seeking to raise the minds of his readers to the elevation of specifically spiritual worship through Christ, he would clothe his sentiments in language borrowed from the outward Jewish worship; to say nothing of the fact that “mercy-seat” is a rendering which has nothing in the original to justify it, and that Jehovah is nowhere represented as “sitting enthroned on it,” but rather as sitting on a throne upborne by the cherubim, from which He looked down on the blood-sprinkled lid which covered, and, as it were, hid from view, the covenant broken by Israel, and demanding the punishment of the transgressors.

(2) Others have thought that this throne of grace is the mediatorial throne on which Christ sits, not the throne of God the Father. But though it is undoubtedly true that our Lord is now exalted to the throne of heaven, where He sits possessed of all power and authority, it does not appear that it is of this that our author is speaking here. His subject leads him to contemplate the priestly office and work of Christ rather than the regal, and the light in which we are taught to regard Him here is not so much that of the Being to whom we are to come as that of the Medium through which we are to come. As He has procured eternal redemption for us, and as He appears in the presence of God for us, we have access with confidence to the Most High. Through Him we have the introduction or privilege of entrance to the Father. Access to the throne of grace, then, is access to God the Father, as seated on that throne. Such language is of course figurative: it describes God after the manner of men. But it does describe Him to us; it is not a merely ornamental figure, it is a figure designed vividly, and in a manner calculated to impress our minds, to convey to us certain ideas concerning God in His relation to us, ideas which it is of importance that we should receive, as intimately connected with the furtherance in us of a true and spiritual religion.

I suppose if I were more simple-minded I should have been thinking over my faults and failures, desiring to do better, making good resolutions. But I don’t do that. I do desire, with all my heart, to do better. I know how faltering, how near the ground my flight is. But these formal, occasional repentances are useless things; resolutions do little but reveal one’s weakness more patently. What I try to do is simply to uplift my heart with all its hopes and weaknesses to God, to try to put my hand in His, to pray that I may use the chances He gives me, and interpret the sorrows He may send me. He knows me utterly and entirely, my faults and my strength. I cannot fly from Him though I take the wings of the morning. I only pray that I may not harden my heart; that I may be sought and found; that I may have the courage I need. All that I have of good He has given me; and as for the evil, He knows best why I am tempted, why I fall, though I would not. There is no strength like the abasement of weakness; no power like a childlike confidence. 1 [Note: A. C. Benson, The Upton Letters, 317.]

“Holy of Holies,” awful name—

Where, in a still retreat,

The Presence of the Godhead dwelt,

Upon the mercy-seat:

Veiled from the eye in darkness dim,

Enthroned between the cherubim.

Once in the year, within the veil,

In mystic robes arrayed,

The High Priest entered, and with blood

An expiation made:

But blood of victims could not cleanse

And purge the guilt of man’s offence.

O Great Redeemer! God and Man,

Victim and Priest in one;

Thou, entering Heaven with Thine own Blood,

Didst once for all atone;

Thou hast removed the awful cloud,

Which once the oracle did shroud.

Now a bright Rainbow o’er the Throne

Sheds lustre from above,

Where showers of Judgment mildly shine,

Gilded by beams of Love;

Thy Blood, O Lamb of God, is there,

Pleading for us with ceaseless Prayer.

Cleansed by that Blood, we now approach

Boldly the Throne of Grace:

O may we, following the Lamb,

Come to that Holy Place;

Lord, who for us didst deign to bleed,

Be Thou our help in time of need! 1 [Note: Christopher Wordsworth.]

3. To the throne we should come with hearts that harbour no treason; to the throne we should come with large petitions as those who expect greatly; to the throne we should come with the deepest sincerity and earnestness, remembering how high and wonderful a thing it is to enter the brightness of its radiance. But knowing its own flaws, its faultiness, its feebleness, the spirit rests on the thought that the throne is a throne of grace. Often and often we can approach it only with broken words, with wandering hearts, with ignorant desires, with passionate sobs and sighs. There is One who is there to interpret with loving tenderness our tears, our dim longings for deliverance and purity. Often we can come only defiled within and without. We come to the throne with defects of faith, defects of knowledge, defects of life, but they may all be overlooked and forgiven. We come with griefs we cannot name, but we come to Him whose eyes behold with compassion our most intimate and secret and shameful miseries. We are living in a year of grace and we are living under the reign of grace. Those who approach an earthly throne may be troubled infinitely by some breach of custom or etiquette, but the place of our sanctuary, our glorious high throne from the beginning, is a throne of grace.

We are called to the throne of grace, not to the throne of law. Rocky Sinai once was the throne of law, when God came to Paran with ten thousand of His holy ones. Who desired to draw near to that throne? Even Israel might not. Bounds were set about the mount, and if but a beast touched the mount, it was stoned or thrust through with a dart. O ye self-righteous ones who hope that you can obey the law, and think that you can be saved by it, look to the flames that Moses saw, and shrink, and tremble, and despair. To that throne we do not come now, for through Jesus the case is changed. We are still on praying ground and pleading terms with God, and the throne to which we are bidden to come, and of which we speak at this time, is the throne of grace. It is the throne set up on purpose for the dispensation of grace; a throne from which every utterance is an utterance of grace; the sceptre that is stretched out from it is the silver sceptre of grace; the decrees proclaimed from it are purposes of grace; the gifts that are scattered adown its golden steps are gifts of grace; and He that sits upon the throne is grace itself. It is the throne of grace itself. It is the throne of grace to which we approach when we pray. 1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.]

The way is open to the throne of grace,

Draw near, and in the name of Jesus plead;

It was for sinners that He shed His blood,

Looking to Him, come now with all thy need.

The Father waits to hear thy humble prayer,

And Jesus speaks, Ask and thou shalt receive;

Most gracious is the call, the promise great,

Full blessing will be thine if thou believe!

III

The Blessings Obtained

“That we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help us in time of need.”

1. Our chief and comprehensive request at the throne of grace must ever be mercy and grace. The first prayer of penitence is, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” He who atoned for sin is before the throne to plead for sinners. Grace includes more than mercy. It is seasonable succour at all times. If mercy forgives our failings, grace helps us not to fail. We need mercy to pardon, grace to purify; mercy to give life, grace to nourish it; mercy to rescue us, grace to guide us; mercy to lay the foundation of the temple, grace to complete it to the top-stone. Grace every day, in all circumstances: in prosperity, lest we forget God; in adversity, lest we distrust Him; in temptation, lest we fall; in conflict, lest we yield; in anguish, lest we faint. Our great encouragement is that on the throne is One who has known the need of help from God, from angels, and from men.

There are two who are unfit for showing mercy: he who has never been tried; and he who, having been tempted, has fallen under temptation. The young, untempted, and upright, are often severe judges. They are for sanguinary punishment: they are for expelling offenders from the bosom of society. The old, on the contrary, who have fallen much, are lenient: but it is a leniency which often talks thus: Men must be men—a young man must sow his wild oats and reform. So young ardent Saul, untried by doubt, persecuted the Christians with severity, and Saul the king, on the contrary, having fallen himself, weakly permitted Agag to escape punishment. David, again, when his own sin was narrated to him under another name, was unrelenting in his indignation: “The man that hath done this thing shall surely die.” None of these was qualified for showing mercy aright. Unthinkingly we should say that to have erred would make a man lenient; it is not so. That truth is taught with deep significance in one of the incidents of the Redeemer’s life. There stood in His presence a tempted woman, covered with the confusion of recent conviction. And there stood beside her the sanctimonious religionists of that day, waiting like hell-hounds to be let loose upon their prey. Calm words came from the lips of Him who “spake as never man spake,” and whose heart felt as never man felt. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.” A memorable lesson of eternal truth. Sinners are not fit to judge of sin—their justice is revenge, their mercy is feebleness. He alone can judge of sin—he alone can attemper the sense of what is due to the offended Law with the remembrance of that which is due to human frailty—he alone is fit for showing manly mercy, who has, like his Master, felt the power of temptation in its might, and come scathless through the trial. “In all points tempted— yet without sin”; therefore, to Him you may “boldly go to find mercy.” 1 [Note: F. W. Robertson.]

2. There is no fellowship with God possible on the footing of what people call “disinterested communion.” No, we have always to go to Him to get something from Him. The question is, What do we expect to get? The text tells us. It is not temporal blessings, not the answers to foolish desires, not the taking away of thorns in the flesh, but mercy and grace to help—inward and spiritual blessings. But what are these? The one expresses the heart of God, the other expresses the hand of God. We may obtain mercy as suppliants coming boldly, confidently, frankly, with faith in the Great High Priest, to the throne of grace. There we get the full heart of God. We stand before Him in our filth, in our weakness, with conscience gnawing at us in the sense of many infirmities, many a sin and shortcoming and omission, and on the throne, so to speak, is a shoot of tender love from God’s heart to us, and we get for all our weakness and sin pity and pardon, and find mercy of the Lord in that day. And then in getting the full heart of God, with all its Divine abundance of pardoning grace, and tender, gracious pity, we get, of course, the full hand of God to obtain mercy, and find grace, the bestowment of the needful blessings, the obtaining of grace in time of need, the right grace. There are no blunders in the equipment with which He supplies us. He does not give me the parcel that was meant for you; there is no error in the delivery. He does not send His soldiers to the North Pole equipped for warfare in Africa. He does not give this man a blessing that the man’s circumstances would not require. No; God cannot err. The right grace will be most surely given to us to help us in time of need, or, as the words may perhaps be more vigorously and correctly translated, find grace for timely aid, grace punctually and precisely at the very nick of time, at the very exact time determined by heaven’s chronometer, not by ours. It will not come as quickly as impatience might think it ought; it will not come so soon as to prevent an agony of prayer; it will not come in time enough for our impatience, for murmuring, for presumptuous desires; but it will come in time to do all that is needed.

You remember the narrative of that great final battle on the plains of Waterloo. For long weary days brave men died by the thousands; the afternoon of the last day was wearing rapidly away, the thin red living line getting thinner and thinner, the squares smaller and smaller at each returning charge—but at last, just before the daylight faded, just before endurance could do no more, there comes old Blücher at last and gives the order, and the whole line bore down upon the enemy and scattered them. Ah, help came at the right time, not so soon that the courage of our brave soldiers had not been tested, but before despair had settled upon the ranks, and in time for a great and perfect victory. “Let us therefore draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help us in time of need.” 1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

An old Scottish divine, Robert Walker, makes some apt observations on finding grace to help us in time of need. The grace, he remarks, that we are encouraged to ask is grace for present need, and not present grace for future supposed necessities. It is no uncommon thing for serious people who suspect their own sincerity to forecast some trial of the severest kind, and to pass judgment upon themselves, according to the present state and temper of their minds with respect to that supposed trial. What shall I think of myself? saith one; it is required of a disciple of Jesus, that he take up his cross; but so feeble am I, that my nature shrinks at the remotest prospect of suffering. Alas! saith another, instead of desiring “to depart, and to be with Christ,” death is to me the “king of terrors”: when I think of dissolution, my heart dies within me; what shall I do when the fatal period is come? By such unwarrantable experiments do many perplex and discourage their souls, and weaken their hands for present duty. I call them unwarrantable experiments, because they are not only beside the Scripture rule but directly contrary to it. Our Lord hath commanded us to “take no thought for the morrow,” but to leave the morrow to take thought for the things of itself; because “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Grace to suffer is for a suffering season; grace to die is for dying moments: then, but not before, is the time of need. Are you solicitous about grace for future emergencies? Let me ask you, I pray, have you got all the grace you need for present duty? If you think you have, I can, without further inquiry, assure you that you are mistaken. At this very moment you need grace to cure your anxiety and distrust, to check your impatience and presumptuous curiosity. Cast your care upon God for every needful support when you shall be called to suffer and die; and come to His throne for grace that may enable you to live to some good and useful purpose in the meantime. Till the present time cease to be a time of need, it is indecent, it is foolish, to look beyond it, and to distress yourselves with a premature anxiety about the morrow. 1 [Note: Robert Walker, Sermons on Practical Subjects, 225.]

Wants and needs are different things. We often want what we do not need, and need what we do not want. We distinguish between young wants and needs, and “know how to give good gifts to our children.” Is not the infinite Mind wise enough, and the infinite Love strong enough, to subordinate our wants to our needs and disappoint us in the short run, if need be, to develop and delight us in the long one? Real needs override incidental wants; we cannot always have what we please, if we are to have what God pleases—and what is best for us. To want what God wishes, is a swift way to have His wishes come true, and to have our real needs amply supplied. 2 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 24.]

Jesus calls on us to claim God as a helper as He did, and then with that help to resist evil as He did; to contend against trial in His solitary reliance on His Father; to win inward vigour, inward peace, by living for work and dying for love; not to be indifferent, dreaming, but to hunger for righteousness, to strive to enter in at the strait gate, to lay down our life for the sheep, to rise incessantly out of dreams into daylight. God will not make us do that by miracle. But He will be in it when we begin it, or desire to begin it, as our help and strength, a very present power. Not the weakening help or the degrading strength which by taking everything out of our hands leaves us undeveloped and unexercised, but the help which is inspiration, and the strength which flows from encouragement; nay, more, which flows from the consciousness of being loved, from knowledge of the glorious character of Him who loves, and from the mighty motives which the knowledge that we shall gain perfection wakes within us to enkindle work, to sweeten trial, to enlarge thought, and to fill work, thought, and trial with healthy joy. In one word, God does not make us grow into His likeness, He helps us through the laws of our nature to grow into it ourselves. 3 [Note: Stopford A. Brooke.]

The Throne of Grace

Literature

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