Let Us Go On — T. Austin-Sparks

The Warning Against Drifting Away

I turn you again to the letter to the Hebrews in chapter 2 and verse 1. Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things that were heard lest happily we drift away from them. If you know anything about this letter at all you know that it is the great letter of spiritual crisis.

The writer compares what he has to say the crisis of Israel at Kadesh Barnea where they came after so long a period of instruction to the point was all too mature into the realization of its purpose or all fade out so far as they were concerned and they miss it all.

This writer gives quite a lot of his message that particular application. That was a very great crisis in the life and history of Israel. This letter really circles around a spiritual crisis comparable to that.

You know there is here throughout the blending of two dominant notes. One of warning the other of exhortation. Nine times in the letter we have this warning note less. Lest begins in the verse that we have just read.

Lest happily we drift away. That goes right on to chapter 12. The other note which is struck ten times through the letter is let us. Let us is not our intention to trace the warning and the exhortation through the letter but just to note the fact that it is a crisis which continually arises in the history of the Lord's people.

It arose as we have seen with Israel in the wilderness. Here quite evidently it had arisen at the time of the writing of this letter a very serious crisis indeed for those to whom the letter was written.

It's the kind of crisis that arises from time to time and it just amounts to this. Taking this first verse of chapter two there has been a deposit. There has been much The Lord has revealed himself to his people.

Now after a period, a sufficient period, period of probation and of testing in relation to that question arises are we going right on into the full meaning and value and realization of all that he has given or are we going to drift away, to fail, to enter in.

Israel's Crisis After Forty Years of Testing

Something that the Lord presses periodically. It came with Israel after forty years of testing in the wilderness. It's a point of interest that most probably this letter was written about forty years after the Lord Jesus commenced present all that we have here in chapter one in the incarnation in his presence in this world.

It was a crisis. The crisis had two particular points. One as to all that the Lord had given which he would never allow to just pass without some very real effort, some entreated, some warning that all that he meant could be missed.

The other the fact that very near to the time of the writing of this letter was Israel's own great crisis. If the letter was written as we have suggested somewhere about the year 60 AD or in the 60s we know that it was 70 when and Jerusalem were completely shattered and scattered over the earth by the Roman destruction of their city, their country and their temple and all that it represented, the synagogues, these were to be finished and now the test would be what of the spiritual value of it all.

Take away their meeting places and their public meetings and their public ministries and all that upon which they depended so much externally, remove it all. That was imminent, what remains. The Holy Spirit had these two things in mind in directing the writing of this marvellous letter.

It was indeed a great crisis. Who is to say that that on the second point will not be repeated worldwide as it is taking place in quite a large part of the world today. The Lord may know a day not far away that will spread and all those things which are the externals of Christianity upon which Christians depend will be swept away and no longer available.

We've had a little touch of it in our lifetime. Many Christians have in this very country. It could be very much more so and very quickly that crisis may be looming upon the near horizon. So this letter is indeed a letter of crisis in both ways.

The Cost of the Heavenly Way

We ask what was the cause or what were the causes of this crisis. On the spiritual side, firstly I think there's no doubt about it, it was the cost of the way this Christian had embarked upon and had been called upon to follow.

You'll read the letter again, you will see the suggestions or the indications that it was because the way was proving so hard. They had started, started upon the heavenly way, partners in a heavenly calling.

They had taken a position. That position is hinted at at the end of the letter, let us go to him without the camp. Outside of the religious camp, the popular camp, outside of the traditional camp is a hard place and a hard way.

They had taken a position with the Lord, but finding that it was a very testing way indeed. They were being tested on every point, in every possible way. References made to what they suffered as they took that position, the suffering came largely from without.

We don't know where these believers were, whether they were in Jerusalem or in Rome. It's argument for both. But we can very well imagine and if it were in Jerusalem, they were right up against a very very severe testing of their position spiritually.

They were in the place where the Lord himself was crucified, the place where Stephen had been martyred, where the believers had been scattered. If they were in Rome, quite recently that Claudius had issued his edict against the Christians and they had been expelled and martyred.

Whatever it was, it came from the outside in the beginning and it was a hard and costly way. But it is significant to note that before we are at the end of this letter, the writer, the Holy Spirit through the writer, speaks of all this suffering as the child training of a father.

My son despise not thou the chastening, the child training of the Lord, for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and so on. Their sufferings may have come from devil-driven men, from the very devil himself, and yet they're in the hands of a father.

Father has hold of those sufferings for the training of his children. That's impressive. But it doesn't altogether ease the situation to know that. The sufferings are still the sufferings. Wherever they come from and whatever their nature is, and even if the Lord has hold of them, they're still suffering.

And because of this costliness of the way these believers were losing heart, becoming discouraged, and the crisis of their going on, hence this tenfold repetition, let us, let us, let us go on. Also, in addition to that, it was occasioned by some disappointment that the Lord's coming was so long delayed.

Disappointment Over the Delayed Coming of Christ

I think that is hinted at, at one point at least, where it says, yet a little while, and he that cometh will come. They were evidently a bit disappointed that all the promises of his coming, and the assurances that he was coming soon, had not matured.

And he delayed his coming. There was a real test of faith and patience over that. We may know something about that too. Sometimes, you know, it loses its charm and its helpfulness to be told the Lord is coming.

You say, well we've heard that so long, so often, and that's what people have looked for in every age. He hasn't come yet, and the hope fades. Well, it began then, began then, and they were disappointed, and because of that disappointment, inclined to let go instead of go on.

The Deceitfulness of the Soul

There are hints also in this letter that the crisis was occasioned by the deceitfulness of the soul. In chapter 4, verse 12, hints at that. The word of God is quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing of soul and spirit.

The deceitfulness of the soul. I think that it'll be borne out in what we have yet to say. To know our own souls can lead us astray. Our own soul desires and ambitions and conceptions of what we feel and think ought to be.

There's a contrast in this letter between a realm of Christian life in the soul and a realm in the spirit. I think we could immediately, almost immediately, take that up for a minute or two. The nature of this crisis.

From the Earthly Order to the Heavenly Order

There are the causes. What was the nature of it? I think mainly, if not entirely, it's a matter of contrast. A new economy or order had been introduced with Christ. Now, the changeover was the change, the tremendous change from the earthly to the heavenly.

With the Son of God from heaven, there had come in the heavenly. And from that time onward, the old earthly order of the things of God as we have in the old economy of the Old Testament ceased. I don't think, dear friends, that we, or Christians at large, have yet grasped the tremendous, the immense significance of the martyr Stephen.

You know that he was a young man, full of faith, full of the Holy Ghost, did mighty things, and then was martyred. Have you studied Stephen's discourse? Have you seen that in that discourse, right there in Jerusalem, under the very shadow of the great temple and all its system of many centuries, right there, Stephen simply wiped off the slate the whole of the Old Testament regime.

God dwelleth not in temples made with hands, did he? Say that over against the temple at Jerusalem and see what you're going to meet. In that discourse, Stephen clearly declared that all that earthly system was finished with.

All finished with, and a new heavenly system had come in. The Lord put his seal upon that as he was passing from the earth himself. He saw the heavenly Son of Man seated at the right hand. The only occasion after Christ himself in the New Testament where that title occurs, of Jesus, Son of Man.

Everything now is heavenly. It's passed from earth, but what a test it is, a heavenly position. It's a crisis. It creates a crisis. It's the very essence of a crisis. Pull back down to earth. Have something here, something on this earth.

Abandon that heavenliness by which those who so speak mean that which is so abstract and unreal. Let's get down. That was the nature of this crisis between the heavenly and the earthly. They were at the point of leaving the heavenly for the earthly.

Great warnings are connected with that, and all the exhortations, let us go on, let us go on. Contrast between the tangible and the spiritual. The soul wants something that it can take hold of, can manipulate, can grasp.

The soul is tangible, and all this talk about the spiritual and spirituality, how unreal it is. That's the crisis. Coming into this world of Christ, the whole thing changed, not in this mountain or in Jerusalem, but in spirit, in spirit, and in truth from this time, the whole thing is a spiritual thing.

But how they long for the things here to be grasped, the crisis. The contrast between the temporal and the eternal. Do you see how in this letter, and oh, do read it again with these things in mind, how in this letter there is always the forward look, the look to the end.

The Eternal, Invisible Reality of Christian Faith

You come to that great chapter of faith, chapter 11, it's the onward-looking faith. It's still onward. Let us, let us look off, let us run, is the great summary of it all. It's still onward, it's still before us.

The eternal is the thing to govern. This life and all that is here is not the whole by any means. It's all unto something that lies in eternity. With Jesus Christ, the eternal has invaded time. The church is taken out of time.

We belong to eternity. The only place for now in this letter is that now is the last. Today is the accepted time. This is the last hour of time. That's the only now here. It's the eternal that is everything.

But how difficult for our souls to let go the now for the eternal. We're not made like that. Our whole being says, let's have it now. It's not unknown future. Is that the right way to put it? Contrast between the visible and the invisible.

Of Moses, this writer says, he endured the seeing him who is invisible. Oh, but we must see. Soul says that. Our whole nature says we must see it. We must see it today. We must see it here. We must see it.

It's something that our eyes can see, can behold. In other words, that we can grasp with our physical senses. Constructed upon the principle of the invisible. They in the old dispensation had it all visibly.

They had an earthly tabernacle and priesthood and all that belonged to them. But now the reality is in heaven. It's not seen. That was but a shadow. The reality is unseen, but it's far more real. But it's unseen.

That's the test of the soul. I'm sure you know the meaning of this. Well, all this constituted this crisis of whether they were going to choose this or that. The one or the other. Go back to something earthly from the heavenly, to something tangible from the spiritual, something temporal from the eternal, something visible from the invisible.

Drifting Away and the Division Among Believers

It is quite evident, I think, in this letter before you through, that a division was coming about between these believers. They were dividing into two camps. That is the point of the exhortation, forsaking not the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is.

Some were saying we are not going on with that any further. And they were having their own meetings and their own and not going on, not going on in this way. A division was taking place. Two companies.

Here were those who had seen the heavenly calling and the heavenly vision and were going on with it. Here were those who, if they had seen it, were letting it go, were drifting away from it. What a forceful word that is.

It has a nautical meaning in the original, as you know. It is the picture of a ship approaching its moorings on the current, missing its moorings and drifting away and onto the rocks. Lest we come up to this and miss it and drift away.

And as Israel at Kadesh Bar near, we should be right. It is a warning. It is an exhortation. It surely does, dear friends, touch us in our own individual lives and it touches us as a company of the Lord's people.

It defines very much for us. But may we all hear not only the warning, yes the warning, but the constant note of exhortation. Let us fear. Let us go on. The Lord help us.