In pursuing the prophetic fragments, as we have called them, in the New Testament (for prophecy breaks out incidentally in the Gospels and Epistles), we find they very much abound in the Hebrews, so we must linger for several meditations on this Epistle. We will meditate to-day on the first four chapters, and we shall find them very full of prophetic intimations. I will read a few passages in them, in which we shall find Adam and Joshua put together. There is a great kindredness between the places they hold in the book of God. We will read now, in chap. 2., from the 5th to the 10th verse; and in chap. 4., from the 4th verse to the end.
The leading characteristic business of the Epistle to the Hebrews is to present the Lord Jesus as He now is, in heaven. It distinctly looks at Him as ascended. He is ascended, but it is in the character of the Lamb of God. He is glorified in the highest heavens, but is as the Purger of our sins; and the Spirit is summoning one glory after another, to pass under the review of our souls. It is not the business of the Spirit in this Epistle to conduct us to His future glories. Several classes of glories belong to the Lord Jesus. His personal glory is that in which we find Him to be perfect God, as well as perfect man. His moral glory is seen when He walked as an obedient Jew in all the paths of human activity. His official glories in heaven are now revealed to faith, and by-and-bye His millennial glories will find their exhibition on the earth. In looking at the glories of Christ you span, or bridge the two eternities. If you look at the eternity that is past, you see His personal glory as co-ordinate with the Father and the Holy Ghost. When He was down here on the earth, you see His moral glories. Now, in heaven, you see His official glories; and by-and-bye, be it the glory of a King, a Judge, or the Head of His body,—the form of glory may change, but you are only traveling from glory to glory with Christ. Now the business of the Hebrews is to present Him in His official glories, as the Purger of our sins; the High Priest of our profession; the Executor of the new covenant; the One who sits there as having perfectly done the will of God. There He is, and He has a title to display Himself there in this galaxy or constellation of glories. Among these glories is this, He is the Lord, or expectant Heir of the world to come. You will ask, is He not now the Heir? No; He is the Heir-expectant, expecting till His enemies are made His footstool. You could not properly say a person was the heir till he had stepped into the inheritance. If it was uncertain that another might not step in instead of him, he would be the heir-presumptive. If he was sure of it in due time, he would be the heir-expectant; that is the Lord Jesus. And the business of Psa. 8, is to present Him in this character. We cannot occupy ourselves too much with the Lord Jesus. Descriptions are better than definitions. Take for instance the millennium. When the Spirit comes to speak of it He describes it as the " tithes of refreshing," the " kingdom of the Father," " the restitution of all things;" and our Lord speaks of it as the " regeneration."' Now I ask your sensibilities, are not descriptions much better than names? The Spirit does not merely talk to me of the millennium in name, but describes the thing to me. I welcome such a style as that. Now here, the beautiful thing that Christ is expecting is called " the world to come." It is a world to come, not merely because it is future, but because there has never been anything like, it seen yet. It will be a kind of second Genesis. Genesis is the old creation. The-world to come will be the new creation. It is the regeneration, which the Lord speaks of, “When the Son of man shall sit on the throne of His glory."
When we come to look a little further, in Heb. 2, we find the path which led the-Lord to the world to comer It is a totally different path from that which led Adam to the garden of Eden. Adam entered the garden simply by creation. The Lord God breathed into him the breath of life, and put him into the lordship of everything. It was a great coronation day to Adam. The day of his espousals followed, and he was installed in the garden in full delight. But Adam got there simply by this act of grace in the Creator. The Lord Jesus got into the very same thing in the world to come, but by an entirely different path. He was " made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death;—that He, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man." That was the path by which He found His way into the world to come. Before He could survey His monarchy He must bow Himself to death, He must " lie a prisoner in the grave " and then be lifted up to His coronation. The apostle takes up the oracle of the psalmist, and does not add to it, but unfolds and interprets it to our thoughts. The apostle is God's second letter to us. I might write you a letter, and if there was anything difficult in it I might write you another. Now the apostle's letter is God's interpretation of the psalmist's description of Christ's brilliant occupation of the world to come. The Spirit in the apostle engrafts our Jesus on Psa. 8 He introduces into it our dead and risen and glorified Christ. The One humbled a while is set over the works of God's hands. And then I ask you, Is He to go alone into that world to come? Why then did He die? Must He have died to go there Himself? Every thought resents it! Why then did He die but that He might bring the sons of glory into this beautiful world to come. What do I want now, as a poor sinner, but to deposit myself in the hands of Christ, as an old writer says, " Let Christ see to it." I commit myself to Christ and it becomes His business not mine, and He conducts me to the world of glory. When we meditate on this what a blessed thing is before us! Marking the path of the Son of Man, through death and resurrection, into His dominions. There is material in the book of God to keep our souls in an eternal rapture. But then we want souls to be enraptured. We are not straightened in Him but in ourselves.
If I were to linger a little on John 1, I should find it connected with all this. John 1, illustrates this simple truth, that the Lamb of God is the Creator anew. This chapter just shows me the same thing. The Creator anew enters on the world to come as the Lamb of God. Not merely as the Omnipotent One, who could call light out of darkness; that was creative power. But everything now stands in the blood of Christ, and is therefore infallible. It is a purchased thing. If I look at Adam in Eden, I see God laying out His power, but not Himself. But the God-man has laid down His life for the world to come, and will any one tell me that the thing which Christ has purchased with His own blood is a forfeitable thing? Christ has laid Himself out on it, spent Himself upon it, and the power of the serpent can never reach it. It is impregnable, unassailable, invulnerable. And this introduces that word must. " Some must enter therein " (chap. 4:6). God has appointed that others shall be there with Him. And now we come to Joshua, and we find that he did no more for Israel than God did for Adam. He put them into Canaan and everything depended on their fidelity—the same title of legal fidelity as Adam's—and they lost it. If God had given Adam an infallible creation, He would never have spoken of the world to come. So, the land of Israel was a forfeitable thing, and " there remaineth therefore a rest;" that rest is " the world to come." Christ has not got there yet. Acts 3, tells me the heavens must retain Him till the times of restitution. So, here I get Christ retained in the heavens. That which Adam lost, and Joshua lost, in the hands of Christ is infallibly secure. All the promises of God in Him are Yea and Amen. The moment a promise gets into Christ's hands, to be ministered from Him to me, that moment that promise is sure. There is a Sabbatism that remains for the people of God, and some must enter therein, In Adam and Joshua all was lost. There is not a hand capable of holding a single blessing, but the once bleeding, infallible hand of the Lamb of God. Let any promise get there, and it is sure and infallible. Let any glory get there and it is unclouded forever.
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