"Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of
grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help
in time of need."-HEBREWS iv. i6.
NEED! Time of need! Every hour we
live is a time of need; and we are safest and happiest
when we feel our needs most keenly. If you say that you
are rich, and increased in goods, and have need of
nothing, you are in the greatest destitution; but when you
know yourself to be wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and
naked, then the traveling merchantman is already standing
on your doorstep, knocking (Rev. iii. 17-20). It is when
the supply runs short, that Cana's King makes the vessels
brim with wine.
Have you been convinced of your need?
If not, it is quite likely that you will live and die
without a glimpse of the rich provision which God has made
to meet it. Of what use is it to talk of rich provisions
and sumptuous viands to those already satiated? But when
the soul, by the straits of its necessity, has been
brought to the verge of desperation, when we cry with the
lepers of old, "If we say we will enter into the
city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die
there; and if we sit still here, we die also", then
we are on the verge of discovering the rich provision that
awaits us (2 Kings vii. 8): all spiritual blessings in the
heavenlies (Eph. i. 3); and all things that pertain to
life and godliness (2 Pet. i. 3). There are two causes,
therefore, why many Christians are living such
impoverished lives: they have never realized their own
infinite need; and they have never availed themselves of
those infinite resources which hang within their reach,
like fruit from the stooping boughs of an orchard in
autumn.
Our needs are twofold. We need
mercy. This is our fundamental need. Mercy when we
are at our worst, yes, and at our best; mercy when the
pruning knife cuts deep, yes, and when we are covered with
foliage, flower, or fruit; mercy when we are broken and
sore vexed, yes, and when we stand on the paved sapphire
work upon the mountain summit to talk with God. The
greatest saint among us can no more exist without the
mercy of God than the ephemeral insects of a summer's noon
can live without the sun.
We need grace to help.
Help to walk through the valleys; and to walk on the high
places, where the chamois can hardly stand. Help to
suffer, to be still, to wait, to overcome, to make green
one tiny spot of garden ground in God's great tillage.
Help to live and to die.
Each Of these is met at the
throne. Come, let us go to it. It is not the great
white throne of judgment, but the rainbow-girt throne of
grace. "No," you cry, "never! I am a man of
unclean lips and heart; I dare not face him before whom
angels veil their faces; the fire of his awful purity will
leap out on me, shriveling and consuming. I exceedingly
fear and quake; or, if I muster courage enough to go once,
I shall never be able to go as often as I need, or to ask
for the common and trivial gifts required in daily
living." Hush, soul! thou mayest approach as often
and as boldly as thou wilt; for we have a great High
Priest, who is passed through the heavens, and not one who
cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.
A PRIEST.-Deep down in the heart of men
there is a strong and instinctive demand for a priest, to
be daysman and mediator, to lay one hand on man and the
other on God, and to go between them both. Wit and sarcasm
may launch their epithets on this primordial craving; but
they might as well try to extinguish by the same methods
the craving of the body for food, of the understanding for
truth, of the heart for love. And no religion is destined
to meet the deepest yearnings of the race, which does not
have glowing at the heart the provision of a priest to
stand before the throne of grace; as, of old, the priest
stood before the mercy seat, which was its literal
prefigurement under the dispensation of the Levitical law.
A curious proof of this human
craving for a priest is given in the book of Judges.
On the ridge of the hills of Ephraim stood the ancestral
home of a wealthy family, containing within its precincts
a private sanctuary, where though there were teraphim,
ephod, and vestments, yet there was no priest. Nothing,
however, could compensate for that fatal lack. And Micah
said to a Levite, who happened to pass by: "Dwell
with me, and be unto me a father and a priest." And
when he, nothing loath, consented, Micah comforted himself
by saying, "Now know I that the Lord will do me good,
seeing I have a Levite to my priest." But the same
feelings that actuated him were shared by a portion of the
tribe of Dan, on their way to colonize a remote part of
the country. They, too, must have a priest; and so, while
six hundred armed warriors stood around the gate, five men
stole through the court, broke into the little chapel,
carried off its images and other apparatus for worship,
bribed the priest, by the offer of higher wage, to
accompany them; and, long before the theft was discovered,
the whole party had resumed their journey, and were far
upon their way.
All families of mankind have
followed the same general programme. Wherever they
have built homes for themselves, they have erected the
wigwam, the pagoda, the parthenon, the obelisk guarded
temple, the Gothic minster fashioned after the model of
the forest glade, a leafy oracle petrified to stone; and
they have chosen one of themselves, set apart from
ordinary work, and sanctified by special rites to
minister, treading its floors, and pleading at its altars,
interceding for them in times of famine, pestilence, and
plague; blessing their arms as they went forth to fight,
and receiving their spoils of victory; making propitiation
for sin, and assuring of forgiveness.
This craving was most carefully
met in that venerable religion in which these Hebrew
Christians had been reared. The sons of Aaron were
the priests of Israel. They wore a special dress, ate
special food, and lived in special towns; whilst every
care was taken to accentuate their separation to transact
the spiritual concerns of the nation. For sixteen
centuries this system had prevailed, relying around it the
deepest and most sacred emotions; and, like ivy, entwining
itself around the oak of the national life. And, as we
have seen, it was no small privation for these new
converts to wrench themselves from such a system, and
accept a religion in which there was no visible temple,
ceremonial, or priest.
But here we learn that Jesus Christ is
the perfect answer to these instinctive cravings which
blindly pointed to him in all ages of human and Hebrew
history. This is the aim of these opening chapters, and by
two lines of proof we have been led to the same
conclusion. Before us stand two mighty columns: the one is
in chapters i. and ii. of this Epistle; the other is in
iii. and iv. They have a common base from which they
spring, the Sonship of Christ. The first column is called,
Christ superior to Angels; and this is the scroll around
its capital, that Jesus, as man's representative, has
entered into the glories promised in the eighth Psalm. The
second column is called, Christ superior to Moses; with
this scroll around its capital, that Jesus, as our
representative, has entered into the Rest of God. And each
of them helps to support a common chapiter, the Priesthood
of Christ. The first two chapters end with a description
of the merciful and faithful High Priest, who makes
reconciliation for the sins of the people (ii. I 7, I 8).
The next two chapters close with the words on which we are
dwelling now, concerning the Great High-Priest (iv. 14).
In the mouth of two witnesses every word is established.
We need no human priests. Their work is done, their office
is superseded, their functions are at an end. To arrogate
any priestly functions of sacrifice, of absolution, or of
imparting sacramental grace, is to intrude sacrilegiously
on ground which is sacred to the Son of God; and, however
royal such are in mien or intellect, they must be
withstood, as Azariah withstood Uzziah-saying, "It
appertaineth not unto thee to burn incense unto the Lord,
but to Jesus, our Great High-Priest; go out of his office,
for thou hast trespassed; neither shall it be for thine
honor from the Lord God."
A HIGH PRIEST. A Priest of priests,
able to sacrifice, not only for the people, but for all
the priests of his house; and alone responsible for the
rites of the great day of Atonement, when every other
priest was banished from the precincts of the Temple,
while the high priest, clad in simple white, made an
atonement for the sins of himself, his family, and his
people.
We have been made priests unto God; but
our priestly work consists in the offering of the incense
of prayer and praise, and the gifts of surrendered lives.
We have nothing to do with atonement for sin; which is
urgently required by us, not only for our sins as ordinary
members of the congregation, but for those which,
consciously or unconsciously, we commit in the exercise of
our priestly office. Our penitential tears need to be
sprinkled by the blood of Jesus; our holiest hours need to
be accepted through his merits; our noblest service would
condemn us, save for his atoning sacrifice.
A GREAT HIGH PRIEST. All other high
priests were inferior to him. He is as much superior to
the high priests as any one of them was to the priests of
his time. But this does not exhaust his greatness. He does
not belong to their line at all, but to an older, more
venerable, and grander one; of which that mysterious
personage was the founder, to whom Abraham, the father of
Israel, gave tithes and homage. "Declared of God a
High Priest after the order of Melchisedek." Nay,
further, his greatness is that of the Son of God, the
fellow and equal of Deity. He is as great as his infinite
nature and the divine appointment and his ideal of
ministry could make him.
PASSED THROUGH THE HEAVENS. Between the
holy place where the priest daily performed the service of
the sanctuary, and the inner shrine forbidden to all save
to the high priest once each year, there hung a veil of
blue. And of what was that blue veil the emblem, save of
those heavenly curtains, the work of God's fingers, which
hang between our mortal vision and the marvels of his
presence chamber? Once a year the high priest carried the
blood of propitiation through the blue veil of separation,
and sprinkled it upon the mercy seat; and in this
significant and solemn act he typified the entrance of our
blessed Lord into the immediate presence of God, bearing
the marks and emblems of his atoning death, and taking up
his position there as our Mediator and Intercessor, in
whom we are represented, and for whose sake we are
accepted and beloved.
TOUCHED WITH THE FEELING OF OUR
INFIRMITIES. He hates the sin, but loves the sinner. His
hatred to the one is measured by his cross; his love to
the other is infinite as his nature. And his love is not a
dreamy ecstasy; but practical, because all the machinery
of temptation was brought into Operation against him. It
would take too long to enumerate the points at which the
great adversary of souls assails us; but there is not a
sense, a faculty, a power, which may not be the avenue of
his attack. Through eye-gate, ear-gate, and thought-gate
his squadrons seek to pour. And, marvelous though it be,
yet our High Priest was tempted in all these points, in
body, soul, and spirit; though there was no faltering in
his holy resolution, no vacillation or shadow of turning,
no desire to yield. "The prince of this world cometh,
and hath nothing in me."
All his experiences are vividly present
to him still; and whenever we go to him, pleading for
mercy or help, he instantly knows just how much and where
we need it, and immediately his intercessions obtain for
us, and his hands bestow, the exact form of either we may
require. "He is touched." That sympathetic heart
is the metropolis to which each afferent nerve carries an
immediate thrill from the meanest and remotest members of
his body, bringing at once in return the very help and
grace which are required. Oh to live in touch with Christ!
always touching him, as of old the women touched his
garment's hem; and receiving responses, quick as the
lightning flash, and full of the healing, saving virtue of
God (Mark .28).
