Category: 843 Acres

By Robert Murray M’Cheyne (1813-1843)

Consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession. — Hebrews 3.1

When a traveller passes very rapidly through a country, the eye has no time to rest upon the different objects in it, so that, when he comes to the end of his journey, no distinct impressions have been made upon his mind; he has only a confused notion of the country through which he has travelled. This explains how it is that death, judgment, eternity, make so little impression upon most men’s minds.

In the same way the devil tries to make the children of God doubt if there be a Providence. He hurries them away to the shop and market. Lose no time, he says, but make money. Therefore God cries, Stop, poor sinner, stop and think; and Jesus says, “Consider the lilies of the field how they grow; consider the ravens, which have neither storehouse nor barn.”

In the same way does the Devil try to make the children of God live uncomfortable and unholy lives. He beguiles them away from simply looking to Jesus: he hurries them away to look at a thousand other things, as he led Peter, walking on the sea, to look round at the waves. But God says, Look here, consider the Apostle and High Priest of your profession: look unto me, and be ye saved.

In the Old Testament, the name by which he is oftenest called is the Angel of the Lord, or the Messenger of the Covenant. God anointed him and sent him to the work. In the New Testament, over and over again Christ calls himself, the sent of God. “As thou hast sent me into the world, so have I sent them into the world, that the world may know that thou hast sent me.” “And these have known that thou hast sent me.” All this shows plainly that it is not the Son alone who is interested in the saving of poor sinners, but the Father also. “The Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.”

The atonement has been made, Christ has died, his sufferings are all past. And how is it that you do not enjoy peace? It is because you do not consider. “Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.” Consider: has Jesus died in the stead of guilty sinners, and do you heartily consent to take Jesus to be the man in your stead?

Today’s Reading
Song of Solomon 3 (Listen – 1:48)
Hebrews 3 (Listen – 2:25)

For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. — Hebrews 2.18

“External ambitions are never satisfied because there’s always something more to achieve,” observes David Brooks. The New York Times columnist recalls that a few years ago he came to a realization: “I was going to have to work harder to save my own soul.”

Striving is the term authors of the Scriptures give to pursuits of self salvation. The tuning pitch of the book of Hebrews is the presentation of Christ as the end of our striving. Where we will pursue ad infinitum, the first chapter of Hebrews teaches, Christ is sufficient:

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

If Christ were just all-powerful, we would have the answer we need but no path to access it—what can make limitless strength bow down? On the other hand, if Christ were just near to the brokenhearted, we would have the intimate grace and love we need, but no faculty to heal our brokenness or bring justice to our world.

This may be why the first two chapters of Hebrews echo the first two chapters of Genesis. In the first creation account God speaks the world into existence—power, radiance and glory writ large across the galaxies. In the second account God scrapes dirt with his hands and breathes life with his lungs—intimately knowing the frame of his beloved children. Where the first chapter of Hebrews says God is powerful, the second says he feels our pain.

“Shoreless Ocean,” A.W. Tozer writes of God, “who can sound Thee? Thine own eternity is round Thee, Majesty divine!” It is the power of grace—the heart of the Christian experience—that draws us to intimately know God’s power in our lives. Tozer reflects:

You and I are in little (our sins excepted) what God is in large. Being made in His image we have within us the capacity to know Him. In our sins we lack only the power…. For now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart’s happy exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead. That is where we begin, I say, but where we stop no man has yet discovered, for there is in the awful and mysterious depths of the Triune God neither limit nor end.

Today’s Reading
Song of Solomon 2 (Listen – 2:15)
Hebrews 2 (Listen – 2:47)

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. — Hebrews 1.3

On most days I don’t actually want God; I just want someone more powerful than I am to manipulate things into going my way. Wanting benefits from God versus wanting God is the difference between believing in God and experiencing God. In his sermon The Gospel and Your Self Timothy Keller explains:

If the distance between the earth and the sun (92 million miles) was reduced to the thickness of a sheet of paper, then the distance between the earth and the nearest star would be a stack of papers 70 feet high and the diameter of the galaxy would be a stack of paper 310 miles high. That’s how big the galaxy is. Yet the galaxy is nothing but a speck of dust, virtually, in the whole universe.

The Bible says Jesus Christ holds this universe together with the word of his power… Is this the kind of person you ask into your life to be your assistant?

The safest way to live the Christian life is to relegate God to creating individual comfort, success, and prosperity. This is why, Kierkegaard believes, we insulate ourselves from truly experiencing God:

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to under­stand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accord­ingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget every­thing except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?

The book of Hebrews provides both a promise—Christ is sufficient where everything else fails—and a confrontation—Christ is superlative and following him is consuming. “When God becomes real,” Dr. Keller concludes, “that gets into your heart as an irreducible, unavoidable, inescapable, permanent principle you’ll never be able to escape.”

The unending love, never-failing grace, impartial justice, and unspeakable holiness of God surrounds us in this broken world. The author of Hebrews rejoices, “You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands; they will perish, but you remain.”

Today’s Reading
Song of Solomon 1 (Listen – 2:16)
Hebrews 1 (Listen – 2:15)