God’s Intervention: a Divine Act

Here then in chapter twelve within these verses is the great, great divide between the “Not” and the “But” as concentrated in this one letter. Other letters are very far reaching, very great and comprehensive; but in this letter, the particular meaning is that all that lies on the two sides of the Cross is concentrated in this letter called the Letter to the Hebrews.

Now you will notice [and I am not dealing with the detail of these verses, only with the general statement], under the not—“ye are not come to...”—under that “not,” you have the constituting of the former Israel. You are taken to Sinai, and at Sinai the former Israel was constituted a nation. They were a people, a rabble, a multitude before, and a mixed multitude at that; but now here at Sinai, they are constituted the ancient Israel, the former Israel. They were Hebrews made into Israel. First Hebrews, Jews, now Israel as a nation. I know the name Israel goes back before that as to the person. It goes back to Jacob’s new name and his family, but here they are constituted as a nation out from the nations, separate from the nations, distinct among the nations, a nation called collectively Israel.

This is something new in history, something new among the nations, something new in this world on this earth. It is a new beginning of God,—God’s act, God’s doing. I need only to take time to quote the Scriptures: “I have chosen you,” says the Lord. “You are My people,” implying, “You are the result of My action in history.”

The first word in this Book of Hebrews is “God,” and that word always stands right at the head of every new movement of God. What does it say in Genesis? “In the beginning God...”—God in action at the beginning. It is God taking the initiative; and this people Israel is the result of Divine intervention in the history of this world with a Divine action, God’s Own prerogative, wholly, completely, uniquely of Himself. God in creation, a new beginning, that is the Old.

Then you come to the New, and the New opens with the Gospel by John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”—“In the beginning God”!—But this is another new movement. “A new creation” is here indicated, pinpointed, and it is described. “In the beginning God created... man” (Genesis 1:1, 26). But here in John a new humanity, mankind, is brought into view under a “Not” and a “But.” “Which were born, not of bloods, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

“Not of bloods”? In the Greek text, “bloods” is in the plural. Why is it in the plural? All right, we will not assay to tackle our liberal theologians, but the Holy Spirit is always very exact and correct, and the Holy Spirit causes it to be put in a way that you almost overlook it, so that you are hardly struck by it, and He puts it this way, “not of bloods,” not of Joseph and Mary. That is the mingling of bloods, is it not?! That is the ordinary, natural mankind, the mingling of bloods, two sexes. “Not of bloods”—this is a direct application to the virgin birth. Not of all that (two sexes), “but of God”!

As the people of God, we are not born that way. You are never born a Christian. You are never born naturally a child of God. You never inherit Divine life by natural birth. Well, that goes without saying, but we are “born of God.” We are God’s act! It is God’s act to produce a new mankind, a new and different humanity never produced by the will of man, never produced along natural lines at all, “but of God” a new humanity, a spiritual race. Not a natural race at all, but a spiritual race.

So then, what is the implication both of this letter, comprehensively, and of the New Testament, as a whole. What is it?—a new Israel, that is what this letter is saying to Hebrews: not those Hebrews of history, a new Israel has come in.

I think you ought to note, if you have not, it is a very simple thing, of course, everybody should be familiar with it; but I am very glad to notice that in a late translation and interpretation of the Bible called “The Amplified,” I am very glad and happy to note that wherever the name “Christ” is mentioned in the New Testament, this Amplified links the name and word “Christ” with “Messiah.” It puts them together: they are one because, as you know, “Messiah” is the Hebrew of which “Christ” is only the Greek, meaning the same, “The Lord’s Anointed.” Keep that in mind. The Christ is the Messiah. The Messiah in the history of Hebrew mentality, concept and expectation, the Messiah of the old Israel is the Christ of a new Israel. One name, same name, same meaning, but carried over now; and so wherever you read the word “Christ” in your New Testament, do not forget the hyphen, say “Christ-Messiah.”

It is most impressive as you read that version: every time you come on the mention of “Christ” and then it says, “Messiah.” Do you see the meaning? Do you see the significance? Do you see what this is driving at? It is a new Israel because this is, shall we say, a “new” Messiah? Is that quite correct? It is the One Messiah, it is the old Messiah; and here this letter is saying that all of the old Israel’s hopes, expectations, conceptions, of their coming Messiah—all they ever had associated with that name of the Coming Messiah, is taken up in Christ, comprehended in Christ. He comprehends and fulfills it and goes beyond their conception; and, as we shall see, beyond their acceptance.

Well, it is a new Israel, not that one of their limited, narrow, exclusive conception, mentality, or even expectations. It is much, much greater and much bigger than all that which the old Israel ever hoped for, looked for, prayed for, expected. It is much bigger indeed, and we will come back to that in a minute. It is a new Israel beginning with the [and I must use the word, though it is not quite right] “new” Messiah, the Christ, the “Christos,” the Anointed One.

Now this, as we have said, is a new act of God. A new act of God is the Messiah, the Christ, and a new act of God is the new Israel; and there are two governing, dominating features and factors in this new Israel as the act of God. There are two aspects. One is the Resurrection of Christ, God’s act, God’s unique act, for the Resurrection is God’s specific, peculiar act in history. It is the act of God. God raised Him! God raised Him! This is not resuscitation: this is resurrection; and, of course, God saw to it that there was no doubt whatsoever that He died, that He was dead. So far as He, as a man, was concerned, He was dead and buried. And if you are in the grave for three days and three nights, you have pretty good ground to conclude that that person is dead. All right! No resuscitation, no breathilizing, no! nothing of that. He is dead. He died, and now only God... only God and the intervention of God can make for anything further. He is God’s Act, in His Resurrection.

But then, the other aspect of this act of God is Pentecost. Pentecost was God’s act. God did it! It is the intervention of God by the Third Person of the Trinity, the intervention of God in history to bring as from death this new race. I do wish that all people who are so interested in this word “Pentecost” would recognize really what Pentecost was. They limit it to this and that and something else. The Lord save us from this restricted conception. Pentecost is the act of God in bringing to birth a new, altogether new, humanity. It is God producing a new kind of humanity, unique, different. It is God’s act! Resurrection and Pentecost are one thing as God’s act, firstly in the One Son and then in the sons to be. That is all very simple I know, but I am working on toward my object.

The Growing Light:—Increasing Understanding of this New Dispensation

Now then, you come back to your New Testament, and especially to begin with the Book of the Acts; and what have you in the Book of the Acts? The gradual dawning upon the apostles (yes, upon the apostles) and then upon the believers of what has happened, of what the meaning of Christ was. It is dawning, it is the faint rays seemingly of a new day just coming up over the horizon and shooting across the sky, and in their consciousness there is something happening. Notice, in the beginning, they still continue to go up to the temple, in the ordinances of the temple, the ritual of the temple, the time of prayer at the temple. They are still going up, but something is happening, something is spreading over their sky, and that fades out. It fades out. They are losing that attachment. They are losing that mentality. They are meeting in homes, they are meeting wherever they can: they are not meeting in the temple any longer. No, it is not a sudden thing that happened so that they can make a sudden break. I say it is the dawning of the meaning of a new day. It is so real, so clear; they do not put it into any system of teaching and say, “You must come out of that denomination. You must come out of that system. You must leave that order of things.” No, it is just happening. Something is happening, and they are finding themselves out. And note this that I am going to say: first of all, it is not a physical separation. No, first of all, it is an inward spiritual separation. I will put it this way, they find themselves out before they are out. They find that they no longer belong. No one has ever told them that they must leave their denomination, their church, their mission, their organization. No, something has happened inside.

You know, in the old creation, God commenced from the outside: in the new, always from the inside, and in this spiritual dispensation it is that you just find yourself somewhere, perhaps where you never intended to be. Peter never intended to be in the house of Cornelius. He quarreled and argued with the Lord about the house of Cornelius, “No, Lord, not so.” All right, Peter, what has happened to you? Do you not know what has happened to you? You are going to know, and Peter does come to know. He will write later on about the spiritual house of God. Do you see what I mean? Something has dawned, has broken. It is a new day, and the dawn has come in, and the light is growing, growing. That is the first movement.

Dear friends, do take hold of this. This is an organic thing. It is a movement of life within. It is not legal, “Ye must” or “Ye must not.”—“You must leave this and leave that in order to come to God’s fulness.” It is not that at all. I say, stay there until you cannot for your very life’s sake, for your very walk with God, for your very knowledge of the Holy Spirit within. Stay, stay. “Come out-ism” is a dangerous thing. That is not how it was. It was from the inside. It is the way of the Holy Spirit, the initiative of God, the act of God, the dawning of a new awareness that “Something is happening to me because it is happening in me.” I know what that means. I have had crises like that. I have had crises like that when I knew that something had happened to create a divide, and “Now, Lord, what am I to do? If I take action, look what will happen.” And so I stuck and on a false pretext went on. At the end of some months, I found myself like this—I was not in it. “No, that is not where I am finding the Lord. That is not where life is,” and I have gone back to the Lord and I have said, “Lord, what am I to do?” He said, “So many months ago, I took you out in spirit. Now perhaps you will have to follow in body.” Oh, do not put a teaching on that. Do not take hold of that and crystallize it into a doctrine. It is a spiritual movement because this is a spiritual dispensation.

That commenced, as I have said, at the beginning of the Book of the Acts, and before you are through with that book, what will you find? You will find that the light has been growing and growing; and you will find in the letters that are compassed by that book the growing revelation of what? The growing revelation of what has happened, of what the meaning of the resurrection of Christ and the advent of the Holy Spirit really meant. It is a growing revelation not of some new thing, as a thing, but of what was at the beginning, at the root of things.

So God is moving (so to speak) backward, in order to move onward; and you have this growing revelation under these two words, “Not—But.”—This is an inward thing: “Not—But.” The Day is moving on. It will come to its glorious consummation when what happened at the beginning is found in the consummation of the “New Jerusalem, coming down from above”—the sum of this new thing that happened with the coming of the Lord Jesus. And we will be coming back to that in Hebrews later on. But you are marking the way, the growing light, transforming the mentality.

Oh, I have the New Testament, all of it, in mind as I am speaking. The growing Light—increasing the understanding of what this new dispensation means: the light within growing. You will have many, many exact statements in the growing light which has grown from the day when Paul first had Christ revealed in him. Paul did not have it all at once. As he says, it was “the growing light.” It was growing all the time, and he will say presently: “The Jerusalem which is beneath is in bondage. Cast out the bondwoman.” Not that Jerusalem, “but the Jerusalem which is above is our mother.” You see the language and what it means?!

Remember what the Letter to the Galatians is about? Is it not along this line of contrast between the “not” and the “but”: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.” And is it not impressive that right at the end of that letter, in Galatians 6:16, Paul uses this significant phrase: “the Israel of God,” the whole Israel of God, the new Israel? Yes, and that throws light upon the whole letter. You see, one Israel is gone, the old Israel is gone. That is the argument of the letter, and that is why Paul got into such trouble. That is why this letter is such a battleground. That Israel no more, but now another with its Jerusalem headquarters above, its birthplace above, a new Israel entirely. Dear friends, this is a very vital point in our consideration, or in what the Lord is trying to say to us—we must recognize the new dimensions of God in this that has now come in on the “But” side.

What was the tragedy of the old Israel? Of course, the tragedy of the old Israel, finally, is their dismissal. Their dismissal: “The kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.” That happened! and it stands today. The kingdom of heaven taken away—not for that Israel, but for another! The tragedy of Israel is that they are dismissed from the dispensation, or the dispensational movement of God. This has lasted for two thousand years. How many more years we do not know, probably, not so long, but you leave that alone.

Here I am going to upset a lot of you: you leave Israel alone for the time being. You will only get into terrible confusion if you get down on this earth with an earth touch in these things. Some of us have lived through things,—we remember the Kaiser (forgive me, that is not an attack upon any nation or people) but we do remember him going to Jerusalem and having a new door broken into the wall of Jerusalem so that he never went in through any of the old gates of that city. No, but because of who he thought he was, a new gate must be broken in the wall for him. And some people fitted that into prophecy and said, “Therefore, the Kaiser is... the Messiah!?” All right, was he? And when General Allenby entered Jerusalem and brought the Turkish rule to an end, the prophetic school laid hold of it, brought it down to earth and said, “The end of the time of the Gentiles has come.” How long ago was that? Was it the end? And then there was a dear man of God who got caught up in this kind of thing and went from Belgium to Rome to see Mussolini to say to him, “You are the last Cæsar to reconstitute the Roman Empire.” Whereupon Mussolini had a great statue made of himself as the last Cæsar and put a great relief map of the revived Roman Empire with ten kingdoms behind his statue. The last Cæsar of the revived Roman Empire? Need we say anymore? You see, you go on like that and it leads to confusion if you come down onto this earth. Leave it alone and see what God is doing, and God is doing a spiritual thing, not a temporal thing.

I could take an hour to enlarge upon that last phrase, “not a temporal thing.” Do you see, in the sovereign activities of God, that now He is confounding and confusing and breaking down all temporal representations of His heavenly kingdom?! Men are trying to set up local churches after New Testament order. You have never had more confusion in local churches than you have today. They are trying to set up things, constitute things, Christian movements, Christian institutions, Christian organizations, and they are all in confusion and do not know what to do with one another. You may think that is an exaggeration, but you see what I mean? —God is breathing upon every temporal representation in order to have a spiritual expression of Christ! That is the heart of what we are saying, and that is what is here.

Now I was saying, we must recognize the spiritual dimensions of this that has come in with Christ and this into which we have come. The spiritual dimensions are diverted from Israel’s tragedy, because Israel’s tragedy is that of being set aside in this dispensation. But why? Have you ever wondered why Israel has been set aside? The answer is in one word—exclusive-ism. “We are the people. Truth begins and ends with us. You will never be able to get anywhere with God if you are not circumcised. Except ye be circumcised, ye cannot be saved. The nations are dogs, are dirt. [Poor Jonah, poor Jonah was caught in this.] We are the people. We are the beginning and the end of all God’s Word. You have got to come on to our ground, be on our ground, or you are out.” Dear friends, you never will be on God’s ground if you do not come up out of that.

Exclusive-ism—God never meant that when He took Israel out of the nations, made them a distinct people, constituted them His Own peculiar people. He never meant that. He only meant to plant them in the nations to show the nations what a God He is, WHAT A GREAT GOD HE IS; and this startled and stunned Jonah that God could ever think in mercy upon anybody outside of Israel, that God could ever think in mercy upon Nineveh.

And so you have this exclusive-ism all the way through, and that is the trouble in the New Testament with the Lord Jesus: it is the exclusive-ism of Judaism, that is the battleground. The battle in the life of the Apostle Paul was that. He was hammering at this brick wall of Jewish exclusive-ism, and all his sufferings are because of that.

This new Israel is so much greater than the old because Christ, this Messiah, is so much greater than their conception of a Messiah. We have got to recognize the immense dimensions of the new Israel and resist exclusive-ism where Christ is concerned, as we would resist a plague. I am not talking about fundamental truths and the personality of Christ; I am talking about the greatness of this One Who is introduced in Hebrews: “God, ...hath at the end of these days spoken in His Son, Whom He appointed Heir of...” an exclusive party? —No, “of all things.” That is Paul’s great word all the way through: “all things, ...all things, ...all things,” and in the end, “to sum up all things in Christ.” And if I need to safeguard, I am not talking about universalism. I am talking about God’s ultimate realm and sphere where it will be nothing but Christ. The rest will be outside altogether; wherever that outside is, it will be outside and not inside. “For without...”—that is the last word of Revelation, “For without are the dogs, (and so on), and everyone loving and making a lie.” That is false, that is out, that is gone.

The Meaning of Sonship: Superior Is Christ

Now, what is the governing concept here in this letter right at the beginning? It is that God hath spoken at the end of these times “in Son.” There is no article—“in Son.” What is the meaning of Son or sonship?—Always fulness. Always fulness! The fulness of the Father is in the Son, Divinely conceived. The Son is the fulness of the Father: the Firstborn is the fulness and takes up all that is of and in the Father. Fulness! Then, as we have said, sonship is finality, finality; and then as to this letter, as to the whole revelation of sonship as here revealed, explained through this letter, and in the first chapters particularly, superiority! Using that word in its right sense, superiority. Do you notice the superiority of this Son, “appointed Heir of all things”? Do you also notice the catalogue here of things?

SUPERIOR to Moses. Superior to Joshua. If Joshua had brought them into the rest, there would be no more: he did not, therefore, he never reached finality. This One, this Son, superior to Moses, superior to Joshua.

SUPERIOR to angels. To angels? Yes, superior to angels, and think of the angelic ministries right through the Bible, their ministries, visitations, deliverances, activities. One angel in one night by a breath of his nostrils wiping out a whole, mighty army that was besieging Jerusalem, one angel. Think of all that was mediated by angels. This letter is arguing about the angels who ministered the old covenant. Yes, this Son is superior to angels.

SUPERIOR to Aaron and all his system and economy of priesthood. All that system comes under the “not.” The tabernacle that was. This letter says there was a tabernacle. Past tense. There was a tabernacle and there was a Holy of Holies and there was a Holy Place. Superior is Christ to all that, and what a place it had.

SUPERIOR to the old covenant, and this letter deals with the old covenant and “the days come,” quoting Jeremiah 31:31, “...the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant.” This letter has a lot to say about the new covenant.

SUPERIOR to all the sacrifices, millions upon millions of sacrifices slain through the generations, and the river and ocean of blood of those sacrifices immeasurable, covering centuries. How vast! One Sacrifice only, One Shedding of Blood only, Superior to the whole lot, Superior to the hundreds of years of sacrifices and blood shedding, and this One Single Sacrifice, Shedding of Blood, Superior to the whole lot.

NOT—BUT. This is what we have come to, and this is the substance of the Letter to the Hebrews. How great then is sonship in Christ! How much vaster than any traditional or historical expression, representation, system, order, economy.—This is what we have come to in Christ!

The Quest of Right Standing with God

Now I must close somewhere, but first let me ask: what is the consummate issue of all this? Can we bring all that we have said, and all that can be said, and could be said down to one, inclusive, comprehensive issue? We can, and although I do not know about you (you may have doubts as I have about some translations, new translations of the New Testament), but I do thank God for this Amplified. I do, because at this very point it has helped.

You see, I have studied theology. I have studied Christian doctrine. I know the doctrines of grace. I know the Letter to the Romans. I think I do: at any rate, I am fairly well-acquainted with what is there and of what the theologians and the doctrinaires have said about it. And when you mention the Letter to the Romans, of course, Luther and all the rest spring into view with their phrase “justified by faith,”—“righteousness... by faith.” Oh, I tell you, friends, theology strikes me cold. It may not you. It may mean more to you, but to me as one who has had to deal with all this theology and doctrine and system of Christianity in its doctrines, and so on, it is awfully wearisome. Theology is a very wearisome thing, you know, (a deadly thing, I think) but here this Amplified version has come to my rescue.

When I heard and read the word “righteousness,” what did it mean? Well, in the Old Testament, the symbol of righteousness is brass. Brass? Oh, how hard is brass, how cold is brass, I am not interested in “brass.” Are you following what I mean? And that is what that word came to mean to me, even in the New Testament. Oh, a glorious teaching, but I am not talking about the teaching, I am talking about the phraseology, the terminology. What is it that is represented there? Now here my Amplified version has rescued me. Oh, I am basking in the sunlight of this, every day now rejoicing in this. What does it say? Wherever that word “righteousness” or “justified” occurs in the “Amplified New Testament,” you have: “Right standing with God.”—“Right standing with God.” Dismiss your theology. That is it.

Right standing with God has been the quest of humanity from the beginning. It does not matter where you go in the darkest heathenism, amongst the most ignorant, unenlightened realms of humanity, right through all the strata, the one thing, whether man will put it into words or not, whether it is in his phraseology or vocabulary, the one thing deep down in every human creature is to be in right standing with God. All these heathen rites, sacrifices, rituals, after all, they are trying to find a place of right standing with, well, they say “God,” even though they have no right conception of Who God is or what God is. “Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship,” said Paul, “Him (THE UNKNOWN GOD), declare I unto you.”

I remember very early in my Christian life I tackled a monumental book, Professor Edward Caird’s “History of Religion and the Greek Philosophists.” [Do not tackle that, I nearly “spun round.”] But in this magnum opus, Caird concentrated it all into one statement: “There is not a human being on this earth, of any race whatever, who does not have a consciousness of standing in relation to some supreme object of worship whom he calls god.” Is that true? Of course it is. Every person has a consciousness of standing in relation to a supreme object of reverence, and he calls that object “god.” He does not know anything about that object, but he just calls it god. Now then, here we are, the quest of humanity all through history, whether or not man has greater or lesser enlightenment and understanding, whether man has little, none, or much enlightenment and understanding, the quest within is to be on good terms with this object called God, to be in right standing with God.

Now we ought to start all over again with the beginning of Hebrews. Here is the One, the Son, and the great thing about this Son, the glorious thing about this Son is that He is in right standing with God. All this other in the past was an attempt to get in right standing with God, and it never did, it was a failure. But here is the Son, first of all, inclusively, comprehensively, the Beloved of the Father, the Beloved Son. “My Beloved Son.” Dear ones, could you have terms that more gloriously express right standing with God?! Think on that. Dwell on that. And then the letter goes on to say, “bringing many sons to glory”; and all the rest of the letter, which we leave now, is the way of right standing with God in the Son.

Glorious letter! How great! comprehensive! wonderful! this letter is, and that is only the fringe of it. We will get more into it later if the Lord wills, but I think you have really got enough for the time being. The Lord help us, we pray...

Oh, send Thy Spirit, Lord, now unto me, unto each one, that He may touch our eyes, make us see, make us see. Oh Lord, that the result of this hour in Thy Word would be, might be, that this people will really be able to say, not mentally but in the heart, “I have seen the Lord, I have in some new, more wonderful way seen God’s Son, seen what God is doing,” and that we are able, Lord, to understand now what we are—God’s new and final Israel. Teach us more of what that means, but set Thy seal upon this time.

Now, Lord, there is a little interval, and immediately when this is closed now, these people are going to turn and talk about all sorts of things. Save us, Lord: the whole value of this can go in five minutes if we are not very watchful in setting a seal against our lips, having the door of our heart kept. Lord, help us for we are not here just for meetings and messages: we are here for life crises. You precipitate them, Lord, for Thy Name’s Sake, Amen.