“THE THINGS THAT ARE NOT SEEN”
Andrew Martin
Hebrews 5: 5-10; 9: 11-15; 13: 20, 21
Our first scripture refers to the believer’s pathway down here, but it also refers to the fact that it is in view of another scene, in view of what is eternal. I had an impression to speak from these passages about “the things that are not seen” but which are eternal.
Paul in 2 Corinthians 4 had been speaking to the Corinthians about the experiences that we suffer down here, the pathway of the believer, but he says it is all working something: “For our momentary and light affliction works for us in surpassing measure an eternal weight of glory”. Paul’s afflictions were on account of the testimony; he was suffering for the Lord Jesus. We have afflictions, and it may be that some of our afflictions are on account of the knowledge of the Lord Jesus. We have afflictions also in common with mankind. Paul speaks of various circumstances earlier in the chapter. He says, “every way afflicted, but not straitened; seeing no apparent issue, but our way not entirely shut up; persecuted, but not abandoned; cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus”, v 8-10. He went through the circumstances of life, as a Christian in the true sense of that word; “always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus”. What was manifested in the life of Paul was the life of Jesus. He was a true Christian. A Christian is not what the word has become in the world. Men have taken it, as they do with all things of God, and twisted it for their own ends so that people will think a Christian may be simply a kind person. A Christian is one who not only follows the Lord Jesus but sets out in his life what was seen in the life of Jesus here; that is a true Christian. No wonder “the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch”, Acts 11: 26. Probably it was a name given to them in ridicule, but a Christian, beloved, is a very exalted person. We have a brother who sometimes reminds us that if you claim to be a Christian, you are claiming a very great thing. It would be a test as to whether you live up to it.
Well, Paul did. He lived up to this name and as a result he went through terrible experiences. He speaks elsewhere in these epistles of things that he suffered, most of which we do not read about in the Acts. He just endured them. They were part of what he was called to. The Lord Jesus had said, “I will shew to him how much he must suffer for my name”, Acts 9: 16. The Lord showed to Paul how much he must suffer for His name, but the Lord is very gracious and He is absolutely faithful, and if He was going to show Paul how much he would suffer for His name, He also showed him the glory. He speaks of “a man in Christ” in 2 Corinthians 12: 2. He says, “whether in the body or out of the body I know not”, but he was “caught up to the third heaven”. He was caught up to paradise, v 4. The Lord who was going to show His servant what he was going to suffer was not going to avoid showing him the glory that follows. And so Paul says, “our momentary and light affliction works for us in surpassing measure an eternal weight of glory”.
Now, when Paul wrote to the saints, I do not think he underestimated the afflictions the saints go through. When he wrote to the Romans he said, “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the coming glory to be revealed to us”, Rom 8: 18. I do not think he was telling the Romans that whatever they suffered was not very much. I think he was telling them that, however great their sufferings, the glory was greater. He had a sense of the magnificence of the glory that awaited the saints and he was saying here, “our momentary and light affliction works for us in surpassing measure an eternal weight of glory”. Well, beloved, many afflictions are experienced by the saints, many sorrows, many griefs. I suppose that for most of the believers I know, possibly the majority of the sufferings that they experience are sufferings in their spirits. There are many who are suffering greatly in their bodies, but I think “the sufferings of this present time” are often the sufferings that are carried in the spirits of the saints, and Paul says they work “an eternal weight of glory”. The glory is yet to come. And what kind of glory is it? It is “an eternal weight of glory”. That is almost a paradox, a “weight of glory”! But it is substantial and eternal. That is the great thing. The sufferings are for a time; the glory is eternal. And, beloved, when we are taken to be with the Lord, we are going to enter into something that is eternal, that will never diminish, and it is glorious. How precious to keep that in our hearts that the ever-faithful Saviour whom we know is not going to allow us to come short in any way as we enter into the glory. The sufferings are working “an eternal weight of glory”, and I think the apostle here found that the experience of the sufferings he endured was bringing into his soul a sense of what that glory would be, the glory of being eternally with Jesus. What a glory that will be, to be like Him! Well, it was just that touch, beloved, in that section. I may come back to this afterwards, but we have “an eternal weight of glory”; “the things” that are “not seen”, he goes on to say, are “eternal”.
Well, what are the things that are “not seen”? That takes us to Hebrews. In chapter 5 we have the Lord Jesus as “author of eternal salvation”. What does that mean? Does that mean that my sins have been forgiven and they will never be raised again? Well, that is a part of it. Salvation is a lot broader than that. You look at salvation in the Scriptures - and I do actually encourage everyone here, if you hear an expression that you do not fully understand, take it away and look into it. Look it up in the concordance or on your phone and see the references to salvation and the contexts in which they appear. We have salvation now. In a large measure salvation is available to us now. We are saved; we are saved from our sins. We are to be saved “out of the present evil world”, Gal 1: 4. How wonderful that is! The world is running on to judgment, and we are currently saved from it, we are brought out of it, we are to be apart from it. That is the believer’s portion, to be apart from “the present evil world”. We are saved “from the coming wrath” certainly, 1 Thess 1: 10. How precious that is! The effect of salvation is eternal. It is not something that just applies now but without eternal effect. The effect of our salvation is eternal, salvation from our condition, salvation from our place. The Lord Jesus will come. That is salvation, is it not? “Our commonwealth has its existence in the heavens, from which also we await the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour, who shall transform our body of humiliation into conformity to his body of glory”, Phil 3: 20, 21. How precious, beloved, to have that before us, the fulness of salvation when even these bodies will be changed. Will we not be glad to be rid of them? As you get older, you begin to realise what an encumbrance they are to you, but we have a Saviour, One who is going to “transform our body of humiliation”. That is the character of the body; it is a “body of humiliation”; it is indeed that. Into conformity to what? Will it just be made better? No, it is “into conformity to his body of glory”. You cannot get two greater contrasts, can you? “Our body of humiliation”; “his body of glory”, two absolute contrasts, and, you know, we are going to change from one to the other in an instant! Is it not wonderful to think of that, when the Lord comes that change will be eternal?
How is it all brought about? Let us look at this passage, shall we? The Lord Jesus was here as Man. We have referred to that. He did not seek a place for Himself; He could not have been a priest. This section of this book is dealing in large part with the question of priesthood and the Lord Jesus as priest. The Lord Jesus could not have been a priest here because He did not come from the tribe of Levi. He did not glorify Himself. You could stop the sentence there, you could say absolutely, Christ did not glorify Himself, but “the Christ also has not glorified himself to be made a high priest”: God did that. But it involved something. For the Lord Jesus to become a priest it involved terrible suffering. We are accustomed to His priestly service, are we not? We know what it is like when He helps us in times of trouble. He helps us in relation to God, in our links with God, but all that has cost the Lord Jesus a terrible price. “Who in the days of his flesh, having offered up both supplications and entreaties to him who was able to save him out of death”. It might be sufficient to say that, but the writer here brings in these additional details. We know from John’s presentation that death actually gave way before Him; He went in in the greatness of His power. That does not in any way detract from what it cost Him. The writer goes on “with strong crying and tears”. Think of that: our Saviour, our Lord Jesus, had to go through these things “and having been heard because of his piety”. The footnote says, ‘in that he feared’. “Having been heard because of his piety”; apart from the three dreadful hours on the cross, the Lord Jesus was always heard. He was always in keeping with the Father. He was “heard because of his piety”. What pleasure the Father had in hearing the Lord Jesus! What He said to Him! How He took account of Him! What did the Lord Jesus say to the Father? We have a few references. Think of that reference in Matthew’s account when the disciples were sent away in service, John the baptist sent a message questioning , “Art thou the coming one? or are we to wait for another?”, chap 11: 3. And we see Jesus alone, and His “works of power”, and He had been rejected in the cities where these “works of power had taken place” (Matt 11: 20); there He was alone, and what does He say to the Father, “I praise thee, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to babes. Yea, Father, for thus has it been well-pleasing in thy sight”, chap 11: 25, 26. What pleasure the Father had in hearing those words! And the Father heard the words of Jesus as He approached what was before Him, and He cried out, “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour”, the cry of a holy soul that recoiled from dealing with evil, the result being death. “But on account of this have I come to this hour. Father, glorify thy name”, John 12: 27, 28. The Father heard Him. “Him who was able to save him out of death” heard those words. He did not save Him from death; He saved Him “out of death”, “raised up from among the dead by the glory of the Father”, Rom 6: 4. What a wonderful triumph that was! No other was raised in that way. After His arising, others were raised. They are with the Lord now. We do not know much about them. But the resurrection of the Lord Jesus was a unique event, “the first-fruits, Christ; then those that are the Christ’s at his coming”, 1 Cor 15: 23. Every one of “those that are the Christ’s” is looking forward to that. Those who have their faith in the blessed Saviour and know that they belong to Him are among “those that are the Christ’s at his coming” and will have part in that wonderful resurrection soon to take place. “And having been perfected” the Lord Jesus as man has gone up into heaven. We cannot describe His present condition, but we know it is glorious. He has become “author of eternal salvation” “to all them that obey him”. How precious it is! He is there in glory; we have our link with Him there; He is still our Saviour; He is the Saviour in every respect, the “Saviour of the body” (Eph 5: 23); He is the Saviour of our souls; and He is there in glory, the One in whom we have our faith, and the One who fills our hearts who is capable of filling every heart. How precious to know that! He is “author of eternal salvation”. Eternally we will be in the gain of the salvation the Lord Jesus has secured.
In chapter 9 we have other references to the Lord Jesus and to His death; and more than His death, to the shedding of His precious blood. “How much rather shall the blood of the Christ, who by the eternal Spirit offered himself spotless to God, purify your conscience from dead works to worship the living God”. The writer here is going on to speak not only about the death of Jesus, but the shedding of His precious blood, the great basis that God has to come out in blessing. The great basis on which the heart of God can be made known is the shedding of the precious blood of Jesus. God takes account of that blood. He can see that on account of the shedding of the blood of Jesus every moral question between God and man has been addressed. God is free to proclaim His love so that we should come to enjoy His love on a righteous basis, and that basis is that the blood of Jesus has been shed.
“Who by the eternal Spirit”: I had not really in mind to say much about that but what I would say is that when Jesus died, He approached death on the same basis as that on which He had lived. The Lord Jesus lived here as a Man and everything He did was by the Holy Spirit, and when He died, that was no different. “Who by the eternal Spirit offered himself spotless to God”: His whole life had been an offering to God. By the Holy Spirit He gave His life to God in that sense and when He died, it was on the same basis that “by the eternal Spirit” He “offered himself spotless to God”. Think of the moral greatness of the Lord Jesus that in everything He did not act in His own power though He had the power to act. He had the power over His own spirit as a Man, but He acted always in accordance with the will of His God and Father and He acted by the Spirit here. What excellence we see, what a model we have, beloved!
Well, the writer goes on, “And for this reason he is mediator of a new covenant, so that, death having taken place … the called might receive the promise of the eternal inheritance”. The inheritance is a wonderful thing. We love to speak about the inheritance. What is it? An inheritance is something that becomes your possession. It is dependent on the death of one, and then it becomes your property. You know you have property, eternal property, and you can enter into it because the Lord Jesus has died. He has made it possible that you should come into your property. What is your property? Well, it is really to have part with Him, to have part in the assembly. What a great thing it is, association with Christ in the assembly. Someone once said you could almost define the inheritance in that way, association with Christ in the assembly. We have it here. The natural man cannot see it, cannot understand it, but we have it, and it is an “eternal inheritance”. We are sitting together here today, beloved; we will be sitting together in eternity. It is a wonderful thing: “has made us sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus”, Eph 2: 6. That is our inheritance. Well, beloved, it is open to us to enter into now. I am very fond of a description a brother, William Johnson, gave. He supposed that somebody left you a large estate; you might never have seen the estate, but it has been left to you and you go to see it for the first time. You find that at the gate that there is a little lodge, and it is very attractive; you go into this lodge and look around and you think, ‘This just suits me. I can stay here’. You might stay there for days, weeks, years, but you have not been to the mansion. You have not seen the real inheritance. The inheritance is ours to explore, the things that are freely given to us of God. This is our inheritance.
Another thing about the inheritance is that although you share it with the brethren, you share it with the Lord Jesus Himself. We are co-heirs with Christ, co-heirs! Think of all that He has inherited, and He is worthy of inheriting. He has done the work, has He not? He has suffered; He has settled everything before God. No wonder He has an inheritance! He is morally worthy of it; and the apostle says we are “heirs of God, and Christ’s joint heirs”, Rom 8: 17. What wonderful grace that is, and that is our “eternal inheritance”! But we can enter into it, and we touch these things in spirit, do we not? If the Lord leaves us here for a few more hours, we may well do so tomorrow morning at the Lord’s supper. I trust we will if we are left here. We trust that we have a taste of what is eternal. Now we enter into it in our spirits.
Meanwhile we are here and the writer in chapter 13 speaks about “the God of peace, who brought again from among the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, in the power of the blood of the eternal covenant”. The “eternal covenant”: this is a reference to Ezekiel, and what is said in Ezekiel is almost the same as in Revelation 21. In Ezekiel it says, “And my tabernacle shall be over them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people”, chap 37: 27. Revelation 21 is very similar: “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall tabernacle with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, their God”, v 3. In Revelation it continues to speak about things that will not exist: “and death shall not exist any more, nor grief, nor cry, nor distress shall exist any more, for the former things have passed away”, v 4. Mr Coates, the dear brother who wrote hymn 293 which we started with at the beginning of the reading, said those four things are a summary of the history of the world: “death”, “grief”, “cry”, “distress”, vol 13 p217. That is the history of the world, and all that will be gone in “the eternal covenant”. God is true to His word eternally, beloved. All that will be gone, and we will be brought through. We are brought through by One who is a shepherd, “the great shepherd of the sheep”. There is no need to put a name there. Who is “the great shepherd of the sheep”? I am sure every heart in this room would give the same answer: we know Him, the Lord Jesus. What a shepherd He is!
I have been thinking about the shepherds. Of course, the Lord Jesus is distinct. He is “the good shepherd”, and “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”, John 10: 11. The “great shepherd” is “brought again from among the dead”, and “the chief shepherd” is to be manifested in glory, 1 Pet 5: 4. The Lord Jesus, in whatever way you regard Him, acts in shepherd care to His own. How does He act? What does shepherd care mean? Well, it is interesting to look at the shepherds in the Bible. We had some remarks at home which led me to look at them quickly. The first shepherd we have was Abel. He was a shepherd and what marked Abel was that he held the sheep for God. He “offered to God a more excellent sacrifice”, Heb 11: 4. That is what he did; he said, ‘They are not mine; they are for God’. He offered them to God, precious thing! God took account of that. The Lord Jesus has done that; He would hold us for God. When we come to Jacob, we see that shepherding involves self-sacrifice. He says, ‘I have experienced the heat by day and the frost by night. I have done this for years’, Gen 31: 40. He experienced it. Whatever we say about Jacob’s spirit at that time, he knew what self-sacrifice was. He sacrificed himself for the sake of the flock. That is not going as far as the Lord Jesus laying down His life, but it is on the way. He sacrificed himself. Then we come to Moses; he was a shepherd. It says of Moses first that he “tended the flock”, Exod 3: 1. What a lovely word that is, to tend; the care that he expended. Maybe that was not always obvious. Sometimes some of us have experienced shepherd care, and we might have found that it has prevented us from doing what we want. It is all for our good, and this comes from a tender heart: he “tended the flock”. The next thing it says of Moses is that “he led the flock”. Where did he lead them? He led them “behind the wilderness”. He was leading them to where God was going to be made known. Think of Moses and all that flock! He had them with him and he saw that burning bush and God’s word came out, and God made Himself known to Moses in a way He had never made Himself known before.
It is a precious thing to take account of, “the great shepherd of the sheep”. He has tended us; He has led us; and through Him we come to know God in a way we could never have done otherwise: precious service of our Lord Jesus! Ultimately, we come to David, and David “fed them according to the integrity of his heart, and led them by the skilfulness of his hands”, Ps 78: 72. No wonder He is a great type of the Lord. He “fed them”, a well-nourished flock, and he “led them”. He also protected them; he guarded them. The Lord Jesus did that. He says, “those thou hast given me I have guarded, and not one of them has perished”, John 17: 12. He fed them and he led them. In a sense things headed up in David, but all point on to “the great shepherd”, the Lord Jesus Himself, and in His wonderful service He has done what no other shepherd could do, and He has established an “eternal covenant”.
I am just going to refer to 2 Corinthians 5 where we read. We have spoken of the Lord Jesus and all that He is doing and has done. We have spoken of His sufferings; we have spoken of His death; we have spoken of the shedding of His precious blood; we have spoken of His shepherd care for each one of us here; and we have spoken of the fact that He is going to come and take us all to be with Himself. Ultimately, when we see Him we will be like Him, 1 John 3: 2. We will not need these bodies then. “For we know that if our earthly tabernacle house be destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens”. What marks us here is decay. We deteriorate. Some of us were saying as we get older our bodies do not work as well as they used to. That is just the normal course of nature. But “we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens”. I trust that in everyone here of responsible years there is something that is entirely of God; there is a work of God; and we have it in these vessels, such as we are, but the vessels will not go through. “We have a building … eternal in the heavens”. We will be clothed with a body that is suited to, and capable of, housing that work. There will then be no discrepancy between the work of God that goes through and the vessel in which it is contained. Is that not wonderful? It is “eternal in the heavens”. That is our prospect, beloved. It will not be long; the Lord is coming soon; we are assured of that. The world can go on its way. It is proceeding on its terrible course, but we have a bright prospect. It is “eternal in the heavens”. Our Lord Jesus is there, and we will be with Him and we have that hope to maintain us in our pathway here. Though it be a path of trials, testings and tribulation, yet still we have our blessed Saviour.
May He bless the word!
Glasgow
28th February 2026