“Thou Remainest”
“Thou Remainest”
(Notes of address on Heb 2: 11)
It appears to me that in recent matters God has had an object before Him. That object I believe has been to bring back the saints to what is involved in first principles. We were too self-occupied and had an outward company before us. As I see them, the principles are two:
1. Everything here must pass away;
2. God Himself will remain.
Time is but an incident in the history of God’s purposes, and though eternal issues are contained in it as to us, yet we should not make too much of it. As a worn-out garment all that belongs to this order of things is to pass away, to make room for that which abides. Eternity and stability are in God. The saints are seen connected with the ‘passing-away order of things’, in this epistle, but they are also seen in connection with God, and it is important for us to be in the truth of the latter, lest self-occupation or depression come in. I have no doubt that when a saint is called to leave this world by death there is very little before his soul but God. At such a time, things and persons take their right place and value, and since (if the Lord should delay His coming) we must all come to this one judgment as to things and persons, it is of all moment that we should be living in the truth of it now. Growth is, I judge, only to be found in this that God is getting His true place in my soul, and that because He is, things and persons are also getting theirs, I do not think that there is soul-growth, if this is not the case. God must be not only supreme, God must be all.
It was good to bring these principles before these Hebrew Christians, because in a peculiar way the earth and their blessing as saints on it, were once Israel’s portion from God. But it is also good for us to be reminded of them, because there is always a tendency in us to form a little world of our own. A little world it will necessarily be, with a very inadequate (if any) view of “the world to come, whereof we speak” (v 5), wherein all shall be subjected to the Son of man. The Hebrew saints had started in the path of faith. He reminds them of it. “Call to mind”, he says, “the earlier days”, chap 10: 32. But what had come in with them is what may be frequently found among the saints today. When God loses His place in the soul is it a wonder that there were hands hanging down, and there were feeble knees? Though they were yet treading the wilderness path (and being “persuaded better things” of them (chap 6: 9), he does not fear that they will ever turn out of it), still there was a very weak state of things among them—that of babes, needing milk and not strong meat, chaps 5: 12; 12: 12. Moreover, as a proof of decline, they had once taken “joyfully the spoiling of their goods, knowing that ye have for yourselves a better substance and an abiding one”, chap 10: 34. Did they now wish to have back those things which they once gladly gave up? Faith in its activities was waning, and he therefore recalls them to its exploits, as they were seen in those who had preceded them in this path (chap 11), the “cloud of witnesses” to what God was for His people. This is the whole point—God remains, and the key to chap 11 and our help now is to endure, “as seeing him who is invisible”, chap 11: 27. If all go “Thou remainest”, chap 1: 11.
The apostle was learning, experimentally, and resting in, for the joy of his soul, the value of these first principles which he here brings before the saints. His confidence was in God. God had begun with Paul in his soul’s wilderness history, and God would be at the termination of the wilderness history also. There could be no change in God, but he saw that everything else must go. Made as he was, “a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men”—“a fool for Christ’s sake”—Paul knew that everything here was just about to be laid aside as a worn-out garment, by Him who had called every one of these things into being. “As a vesture shalt thou fold them up and they shall be changed”. God, who removed them, would still remain, and would remain the same, “but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail”. “They shall perish, but thou remainest”, chap 1: 11 NT.
The saints get their rest here, a rest which nothing else can give them. They rest in the fact that come what may God remains, and that He remains the same. In chapter 1 God is seen in the activity of His grace meeting the question of our sins, and onward in the epistle He is seen in the activity of the same blessed grace providing for our sustainment amidst all the infirmities of His people in the wilderness. He effects all through the Son, for God who hath wrought in divers manners in times past, is now speaking to us in a new way “by his Son”, chap 1: 2. The Son hath wrought for God, and for our blessing, and He is “not ashamed to call them brethren” (chap 2: 11), but will presently introduce us thus: “Behold I and the children which God hath given me”. When the Spirit speaks all is traced to God in our history, from first to last. He is “The Alpha and the Omega … who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty”, Rev 1: 8 NT. As an outward company we may be shaken, and all that is human must go—will God change?
“THOU remainest”. Blessed resource for the soul! While it is true that “no man hath seen God at any time”, it is also true that “the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1: 18), and that God dwells in us by His Spirit. It is in and through Christ that all this has become the portion of the soul—for thus only God is known, and all comes back to what God is for me. It is “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever”. All that we know of God we know through Him, and in the power of the Spirit who dwells in us, “For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God”, 1 Cor 2: 10. The things which “can be shaken” must pass away, in order to make room for the things that “cannot be shaken”. But we, receiving “a kingdom which cannot be moved” are connected with all that is stable, chap 12: 27-28. Now, what is our comfort, as it was set before them by Paul, for chastening is also added to their history? What is our comfort when those who were once our leaders as theirs have fallen asleep, chaps 12 and 13: 7? It is in God Himself. God is not changed, and He would bring us in moments like these to prove the value of first principles—“God and the word of his grace”—these abide. He hath said, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee”, so that we may boldly say, “the Lord is my helper, I will not fear what man shall do unto me”, chap 13: 5-6.
“Thou remainest”—the abiding blessed resource of faith. It was God who had comforted the cast down Paul, many and many a time (see 2 Cor 1: 3, 4, 9), and, my hearers, we want to know more of what it is not only to be willing to let everything go, but desirous to let everything go, in order to find that God is enough, Jude 21. May we be daily learning then the blessedness of our portion (1), God by His Spirit in us, and (2), God in the activity of His grace for us, because nothing will change in Him, and this is the right ground to be on, in order to value rightly all that is of God, and all that are for God on the earth. I think that everything else is valueless, whether persons or things. “They shall perish, but thou remainest”.
From Words of Encouragement—vol 2, 1896
