TRUE GREATNESS (A READING AT DEFFORD 30 JULY 1935)

TRUE GREATNESS (A READING AT DEFFORD 30 JULY 1935)

Hebrews 1:1-3; Hebrews 4:14-16; Hebrews 7:4; Hebrews 8:1,2; Hebrews 10:19-22; Hebrews 13:20-22

CAC It was in my mind in suggesting these scriptures that God would have His people to be familiar with the thought of greatness. As we have before us what is truly great we become what God desires we should be, that is a great people. We all remember that Solomon, in speaking to God, speaks of the people whom He had chosen as “a great people”, and it seems to me that that is what God would effect by His grace and work, that we should be a great people and we become such, as I understand it, by being brought into the light and power of what is great as known in divine Persons. If we have had anything that has made us great in this world it is a thing that has to be refused. It is in that character that Moses is presented in this epistle where we are told that when he became great he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. It ^[p. 177] was when he had reached a very elevated point of greatness in relation to the world that something else came before him, faith began to operate in his soul and he began to recognise that God had a people identified with Christ. That is the view the Spirit of God takes of it, that he esteemed “the reproach of the Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he had respect to the recompense”. Now my impression is that “the recompense” is a present thing; that is that Moses in refusing a place in Pharaoh’s house had in mind “the recompense”, that what was in the mind of God to give was far greater than the greatness of Egypt, so that he refused the one in view of gaining the other.

Ques Did you say recompense was a present thing?

CAC I think that is the point. What is divinely great is a wonderful recompense for refusing the greatness of Egypt; it is a privilege to go up and to see the operation of heavenly things in the mount and to be able to minister to the pleasure of God. “He is faithful in all my house” (Numbers 12: 7), Jehovah said of him; that was the greatness which he had in recompense for refusing the greatness of Pharaoh’s house. It is greatness in relation to the house of God. Now I believe that is “the recompense” that God proposes for us, for young people and all of us. He proposes a greatness that far surpasses in kind any greatness that can be known in the world. God’s idea is that we should be great.

Rem Moses was not very great in his own eyes.

CAC That, I suppose, marks those that are truly great, because the greatness lies in knowing God and in being made acquainted with what is connected with His greatness. So that Moses, when he goes to write a song for the people, says, “Ascribe greatness unto our God!” Deuteronomy 32: 3.

^[p. 178] Ques Is that what you had in mind in the first scripture you read?

CAC That is what was in my mind, that the Son “set himself down on the right hand of the greatness on high”. It is very remarkable the writer does not say ‘at the right hand of God’, because what he wants to indicate is that His greatness was on high; it was a greatness, surely, in God, but he does not say in ‘God’, he says, “greatness on high”. I believe there is nothing so elevating or so enlarging as to get before us “the greatness on high”. It suggests, so far as I can see, the greatness that stands in relation to the most elevated thoughts of God; it is a “greatness on high”. Now the Son having set Himself down in such a place as that makes it available for us. It is a wonderful thought that the Son, a divine Person, has become Man and has taken up this place “at the right hand of the greatness on high” that what belongs to that place may be available for us. Nothing could be greater than that. So that the divine speaking to us today is from heaven. We must bear in mind that God is speaking from the full height and greatness of all in which He should be known to men; He is speaking according to the full height of that.

Ques Is that why we are told to “consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession”, Hebrews 3: 1?

CAC I think it is in view of that because such greatness attaches to the Apostle and a corresponding greatness attaches to the Priest and we are brought, as considering “the Apostle and High Priest of our confession” into the region of greatness, and are constituted a great people. It is the will of God we should be so.

Ques We get what you are referring to in relation to Moses and then Christ as seen over His house. Would that be the people of God down here (”whose house are we“) set up in the light of what is established in heaven?

CAC I think that is the idea and it is very elevating.

^[p. 179] There is a great house down here and we are to be great in the house. It is great because it is God’s house and because the Son, a great High Priest, is over it and we are called to be great as having our place there in relation to all that is truly great. That is the way God takes to emancipate His people; anything that is below the level of heaven is too low and too small for the people of God.

Ques Had Moses a sense of that when he said, “Is it not by thy going with us? so shall we be distinguished, I and thy people, from every people that is on the face of the earth”, Exodus 33: 16?

CAC Yes, he desires that the people might fully correspond with what was in God’s mind in relation to them. Now we know God not only as acting in grace to men here on earth and meeting their need as sinful creatures, but we know God as speaking from the elevation of what is in His own mind. It is the “greatness on high”. I think it is wonderful that it is a greatness that we can understand; it is not an unsearchable greatness but a greatness that is connected with the divine thoughts that are in respect to men, and the Son, a divine Person, having become Man has set Himself down in the most favourable relation to all that greatness which is in the mind and heart of God in relation to men. It is most elevating.

Ques Do we need to know the transition from David to Solomon in that David would bring Christ near to us, as you say, in all our need, and Solomon would be the light of His purpose connected with the house? I was thinking that David says, “Solomon my son is young and tender, and the house that is to be built for Jehovah must be exceeding great in fame and in beauty in all lands”, 1 Chronicles 22: 5.

CAC Yes, that is the idea. It is “exceeding great” and the house is great because it corresponds with heaven. That is what makes it great so that Solomon in his dedicatory prayer continually refers to heaven as the ^[p. 180] dwelling-place of Jehovah; but then he has in mind, clearly, that the house was to correspond with heaven. It is to correspond with heaven as the set place of God’s dwelling and that is the idea of the house of God. Even Jacob who had the first ray of light about the house said, “This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven”, Genesis 28: 17. It corresponds with heaven and in relation to men it is the gate of heaven. Men come into the house of God in that they have come inside the gate of heaven, and those who come there are a great people because they know God in the greatness of His thoughts and they know that those thoughts can never fall in the slightest degree below their own heavenly level.

Rem He can speak of the earth as His footstool.

CAC Yes, so the house only has value as it corresponds with heaven, and that is how Moses was made great — as he was enlightened as to a dwelling for God, a tabernacle. It was altogether apparent that if it were to represent what was in heaven he must go up, so he goes up (Stephen says he saw a model). We used to have people going about with models of the tabernacle. Moses was told to write because he saw the model in heaven, and there is nothing more striking than that God should introduce that thought amongst an earthly people, showing that while God was dealing with a people in the flesh what He was cherishing all the time was what is heavenly. Now it must come to pass, and our place is really in the house where everything is great, because it is great to divine Persons and great to heaven, and every person who is in that house is great because he has learnt to appreciate it and to serve in relation to it.

Ques Would the building with cedars of Lebanon bear out at all what you are saying?

CAC That is, they came from an elevated region. The apostle addresses the Hebrew saints as partakers of the ^[p. 181] heavenly calling though they were not very well formed, we might say, in the truth of the heavenly calling, but we derive our greatness from the calling. That is what makes the saints great.

Ques Would you go through the scriptures you referred to?

CAC Well, I was just thinking of this thought of greatness. You get in the first chapter, “the greatness on high”. The Son has taken His place in relation to all the greatness of God as expressed in His thoughts manward. There is reference to a place in heaven and to a place on earth which corresponds with the place in heaven. In the fourth chapter we get the fact that we have “a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast the confession”. That is, attention is called in this scripture and in other scriptures in the epistle to the greatness of Christ as Priest. We have before us the One who represents us before God sympathetically and He serves the pleasure of God in considering our weaknesses; He serves God in relation to that. He is great in the service which He takes up on our behalf, everything regarding our infirmities and our weaknesses. I do not think this has reference to our bodily weaknesses.

Ques What does it refer to?

CAC I think it refers to the human weakness which makes men shrink from suffering. That belongs to man’s nature; he shrinks from suffering.

Rem So you think if we are to be on the line of Moses choosing to suffer affliction along with the people of God we need a good deal of representing.

CAC I think that is the idea. To be identified with the thoughts of God involves reproach in this world. Moses esteemed it so; he took account of the fact that what was of God and what was of Christ is in reproach and so it involves suffering. The infirmities for which Christ is ^[p. 182] Priest are of that kind. We all shrink from suffering, and it is good to remember that the Lord Himself shrank from suffering and it is in that sense that He is “able to sympathise with our infirmities”. It is what attaches to man as such and the Lord took His part in that, so that He has met every kind of opposition and difficulty that can be encountered in standing for what is of God, and He has felt all the suffering involved in it. He felt it and He shrank from it; I think one might say that without hesitation. He said, “The reproaches of them that reproach thee have fallen upon me”, Psalm 69: 9. Did not He feel it? He felt it so much that He could say, “Reproach hath broken my heart”, Psalm 69: 20. Now none of us have gone to that length; we may have had a few pangs but we have not gone to that length. The Lord in the perfection of His humanity took His part in human weakness that shrinks from suffering, but He never surrendered the path of faithfulness to God by reason of the cause of the suffering. His path of faithfulness was unswerving though it led only to the cross. The Lord knows the human weakness that shrinks from suffering and it is that kind of weakness that He is sympathetic with. You may ask, ‘Does not the Lord care about our bodily suffering and ailments?’ I do not doubt at all that there is divine help from Christ for all those things, but that is not the point in Hebrews; the point is that we are standing here as confessors. “Let us hold fast the confession”, and the confession of what is of God is bound to bring reproach and reproach means suffering. What we want, and what God wants, I think we may say unhesitatingly, is that there should be a great Priest who represents us before Him in a priestly way as sympathetic with all the human weakness that would shrink from reproach.

Ques Is that involved in suffering to the uttermost?

CAC Yes, I think so. The Lord can accredit His disciples in Luke 22, “Ye are they who have persevered with me in my temptations”. What a wonderful thing it was for them to walk in company with the blessed Lord those three and a half years! Every day they saw Him coming up against some fresh trial, some fresh form of opposition and difficulty, and they saw how it affected Him. They could not be indifferent, as they observed Him, to the effect of the sorrow; it left its mark on His very countenance, but as they companied with Him they saw that He never faltered. At every moment and at every temptation He was always the overcomer; each was a great reality to Him but He was always the overcomer; and the disciples learnt to recognise in Him the power to overcome and the Lord has not forgotten it. He could say to the assembly in Laodicea, “I also have overcome”, Revelation 3: 21. This reference by the Lord in heavenly glory to His own path of suffering here is as touching as anything in Scripture, “I also have overcome”. He is touched with the feeling of our weaknesses; He knows how we shrink from reproach but He is there in the presence of the throne of grace serving God, because the idea of priesthood is the service of God. God told Aaron he was to minister to Him in the priest’s office, but whatever he did in regard to the people he was to serve God in doing it, and so we have a great Priest. Oh, how great He is!

Rem If we were not ascending in our spirits by reason of the pressure we would compromise.

CAC Yes. As we are conscious of the position of the Priest we are preserved from yielding, knowing that He is there representing us, and that we are represented there according to the greatness of the thoughts of God; therefore the throne is favourable to us. I take it that the mercy and the grace spoken of in the end of chapter 4 do not come from the Priest. I understand they come from the throne because the Priest is there. His presence there representatively secures the greatest advantage to us in relation to the ^[p. 184] throne, so that the throne is the spot in the universe where grace is supreme and the Priest is there on the throne. The Priest and the throne are in perfect accord. So from the highest spot in the universe there is a supply of grace and mercy for seasonable help, and so there is no surrender of the confession. You never weaken your confession so as to make it a little more acceptable to men; it is the consciousness of the position of this great Priest that gives us every assurance.

Ques Do the names on the shoulders and breastplate of the high priest involve what associates them with the thoughts of God here?

CAC Yes, the house was representative and in what is representative nothing falls below the divine level. He thinks of us according to the heavenly calling and He represents us before God according to the divine thought. Aaron was clothed with garments of glory and beauty; he represented the people in a divine way according to God’s thoughts, and we are ever represented by this great Priest who cherishes us according to the great thoughts of God. His very presence there makes the throne of grace, the place where grace is supreme, so favourable to us that a supply of mercy and grace ever comes to us; we get seasonable help. I would give way but the seasonable help comes according to the measure and greatness of the Priest.

Ques So if a brother is better in health at a critical moment (such as Paul) so as to be free in his spirit, do you think that would be the throne acting?

CAC I do. So do you not think it is well to connect the supply with the throne, and to get a sense that it is the throne of grace? Grace is supreme, no matter what weakness there is in me. If we were to leave Hebrews for a moment, we might even say the failure that is in me, but that is not the thought there, because failure in Hebrews is ^[p. 185] contemplated as turning back from all that is great and going back to the smallness of judaism.

Then it says in chapter 7, “Consider how great this personage was”. That is, he calls our attention to the greatness of Melchisedec as a type, a greater priest than Aaron for even Abraham paid him tithes. Attention is called to his greatness, which particularly lies in the fact that He lives. Christ lives in the power of a life that cannot be dissolved; that is His greatness. That is, the priestly office is taken up by Christ as in the power of indissoluble life. He is “always living to intercede for them”, Hebrews 7: 25. His greatness lies in the perpetuity of the service He renders. That is what makes it so great; it never fails for a moment.

Rem You thought that Melchisedec was brought in to bring out that great fact, but he is assimilated to the Son of God.

CAC Yes, He abides; He has “neither beginning of days nor end of life”. It is a hint of the Lord’s deity. He has “neither beginning of days nor end of life”, but the testimony of Scripture is that He lives. It does not say when he was born or when he died; all that Scripture says of him is that he lives, and that is true of Christ whose greatness is that He lives in the power of resurrection life, a life that can never be dissolved. What greatness! Our greatness, as in the calling, is set forth in the fact that “such a high priest became us, holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and become higher than the heavens”, Hebrews 7: 26. It brings us into the greatness of the calling. So we learn how great we are by considering the greatness of Christ: “Consider how great this personage was”.

Rem So in Revelation, in view of the breakdown of the assembly as a public vessel, the Lord Jesus presented Himself as the living One who became dead and is living to the ages of ages (Revelation 1: 17, 18).

CAC ^[p. 186] Yes. In the beginning of chapter 8 it says, “A summary of the things of which we are speaking is, We have such a one high priest who has sat down on the right hand of the throne of the greatness in the heavens”. The Spirit emphasises this thought of greatness, and greatness in the heavens. Now we have Christ as High Priest there, and in that exalted place in relation to all that is great He is also “minister of the holy places and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord has pitched, and not man”. Now it seems to me that in this way God leads us into the sense of the greatness of the true tabernacle which is here upon earth at this present time. We must understand that the true tabernacle is now pitched and that we are privileged to serve in it. The greatness of our place of service in the true tabernacle is the recompense we get for refusing the glory of the world. If there should be one who is suffering loss through confessing Christ and standing by what is of God and who has not got the recompense, one feels very sorry for him, because the divine thought is that there is a present recompense in relation to the service of the true tabernacle; there is a greatness in relation to the house of God which is the recompense for all that we may have surrendered in relation to the house of Pharaoh. We all have something to surrender in relation to that place in a small way as well as a great one. There was formerly no such thing as the true tabernacle or the house of God in any sense of spiritual reality, nor was there a priest great enough to be over it so as to govern it and by his influence bring it into correspondence with heaven. Now that is the thought of the house of God as I understand it. There is not a single thought in the house that does not correspond with heaven, and those thoughts are dominant in that house because Christ is over it as Son and as Priest. That is the idea of the house of God; it is, you might say, a divine sphere but looked at in a more intimate way than the ^[p. 187] kingdom. If you think of the king’s own house you would expect that things were more according to his pleasure there, and I think that is more the idea in the house of God, that God is known there, one might say, in a more personal and confiding intercourse with Him. Paul shows in 1 Timothy that God is known in the sphere of His own ordering in regard to His personal pleasure, and nothing can come into that sphere that is not governed and directed by the influence of Christ as the great Priest. Greatness is a wonderful thought and it is greatness that is open to us. We may have been going on as a people on earth thinking of our infirmities as poor needy creatures but what God proposes to us is that we should take up our privileges as being a great people. Solomon said they are a great people and they are great because they stand in relation to what is great. It does not give any place to man in the flesh; indeed, he is entirely excluded from that order of things. Flesh has no place in the house of God.

Rem The greatness is introduced by the angel in the message sent to Mary, “He shall be great”, Luke 1: 32.

CAC That is very precious, as Luke’s is the priestly gospel.

Rem He goes on to say, “Son of the Highest”.

CAC So that gives you the elevation, the thoughts of God. The Lord begins His priestly service at the age of twelve years. He is found in the temple having intercourse with those that are speaking of the things of God. He is listening to them and asking questions and He had to say to His mother, “Did ye not know that I ought to be occupied in my Father’s business?” A priestly Son at the age of twelve — how wonderful! How He was absorbed with the great things of God! Now that is the sphere into which He would bring us.

In chapter 10 we get the climax. He says, “Having therefore, brethren, boldness for entering into the holy of ^[p. 188] holies by the blood of Jesus, the new and living way which he has dedicated for us through the veil, that is, his flesh, and having a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, sprinkled as to our hearts from a wicked conscience, and washed as to our body with pure water”. An instruction may be given to you and leave you where it found you, but an exhortation, as this is, incites you to movement, and so Paul (I take it Paul is the writer although it does not say so) calls it an “exhortation”, that is, something that will stimulate and incite to movement. He says, “Let us approach”; that is, he incites us to movement, movement which stands in relation to the great Priest. Now I wonder whether we all know what it is to move spiritually in relation to the great Priest. God would have us to move as stimulated by this powerful exhortation. He says we have boldness “for entering into the holy of holies by the blood of Jesus”, that is, the life of flesh has been poured out. The witness of that is in the holiest. Then there is “the new and living way” — how remarkable that! He speaks of the “way” as if it were paved with divine love, “the new and living way”. It is the declaration of God in love by His blessed Son, and that way, paved with love, is the way in which we can move into the greatness and nearness of God, leaving behind everything that is imperfect, all that is connected with the flesh, and find ourselves in a region where the dominant thing is that of the great Priest over the house of God. Is not it great, brethren? and all is brought about “through the veil, that is, his flesh”. I take that to be a very comprehensive statement. I think it suggests every thought that was bound up in the incarnation of the Lord Jesus, involving His incarnation and death. “The veil, that is, his flesh” is a comprehensive statement developing, if we are able to take it in, all that God has secured through the incarnation of Christ, involving ^[p. 189] His death, and in the light of all that we draw near in greatness. Does the great Priest regard us as according to flesh? No indeed, He regards us as those who are perfected in perpetuity. We should deny the perfect sacrifice if we regarded the saints in any other way than in perpetuity, and we are sanctified, set apart according to the pleasure of God in holiness; that is how He regards us and we are His brethren. We are companions of the Christ and we are in God’s house; we are in His house now. These are great divine privileges and they are maintained in full height in perpetuity by the Priest. What an outlet it is from all our own weaknesses to apprehend that we have such a high Priest over the house of God who maintains everything according to its own height.

The thought of greatness which is very prominent in this epistle was before me, and there is no deliverance from the earthly system except by apprehending the greatness of christianity. We are lifted by the sense of greatness and we only serve God as we are in line with the Priest; there is no other service of God. We may fix it in our hearts that God is not, and cannot be, served at the present time by an earthly people; He can only be served by a heavenly people who have a heavenly Priest, for He cherishes the saints according to the great thoughts of God. That is the system of the service of all the sanctified company. We are all privileged to take our place in line with the Priest and if we do not, we do not approach at all; there is no other approach.

Rem I was wondering whether the way Aaron serves and the way his sons serve with him in divine service would typify this.

CAC I think that is so; that is the character of the service of God and we cannot take it on without the Priest; we are dependent on the great Priest. There is no such thought now as the service of God without Christ as Priest.

^[p. 190] Rem The priests are absolutely unique. They are far away and above the Levites or a ‘common person’.

CAC I am sure that is right. I feel impressed with this thought and it should help us greatly, especially the younger saints, to know our great company privilege, to know the greatness that belongs to our calling and that belongs to God and to Christ as Priest.

Ques Does the great Shepherd stand in relation to that?

CAC The great Shepherd of the sheep comes in, I suggest, in regard to the need of the sheep for care and for food. The great idea of the Shepherd would be protection and pasture. The Shepherd would preserve the sheep from the wolf according to chapter 10 of John, where the Lord lays down His life rather than leave the sheep to the wolf; then on the throne the Shepherd cares that the sheep should be pastured and we are constantly in and proving that protecting care. He is the great Shepherd of the sheep, as if He belonged to the sheep. We are constantly proving how He leads us into green pastures and beside still waters. He never brings us together but what we prove His shepherd care in feeding.