The Pulpit Commentary — Hebrews — Section 51

stood. A~ they looked back they looked _along a line illuminated by a special and heavenly light. The sacred books, the Scriptures which they have to search, are per- vaded by the recorded speeches and acts of Jehovah; so that if these speeches and acts be cu~ out, all the rest drops into incoherent fragments. Surely this description of God here gives us one of the rules whereby we are profitably to read the Old Testament. We h_ave in the Old Testament God speaking to the fathers-to the fathers in many genera• t10ns, to the fathers in different circumstances; we have words to Israel in its beginnings, words to it in its bondage, in its wilderness and tent-life, in its settlement, in its glory as a united kingdom, in its civil discord and separation, in its idolatries, in its time of desolation by foreigners, and its final exile. Hence the opportunities for warning and threatening on the one hand, and consolation and promise on the other. It must also be considered how God spoke to each generation of the fathers by men belonging to that generation. What was true of the fathers was true of the prophets ; one genera- tion goeth and another cometh. We must not measure the prophetic work by the ,vritings that have been preserved. There must have been many, many prophets beyond the few whose names we know, and some day all their faithfulness and useful- ness may be revealed. In any case, we can estimate the class from the specimens, and while we estimate we glorify the class, seeing what God can do through the agency of brother men-picked men, it is true, but still entirely men of like passions with our- selves; and thus, while we see the glory of the prophets, we see also their limitations. The prophet lives, speaks, dies, and his work is done. When he dies another living man must rise, who has a sensible contact with his fellow-man. New times bring new needs, and new needs have to be met by new voices. Prophecy is in many parts an,i s.fkr many fashions, it is spoken to many generations by many prophets; but note bebiml all the uniting force. It is one God who speaks in all and to all. There is vari•.•ty, advance, light, at the beginning, ever increasing toward the perfect day, but nowhere :i:::y discord, any contradiction. In studying the Old Testament it is wisdom tc feei Eure that there is harmony in its utterances, if only we can find that harmony out. III. Gon SPEAKING TO us BY ms SoN. Jesus,of course, was a Prophet; One who came from God, had the Spirit of God in him, and spoke the words of God. But he was not a prophet as his predecessors were. The marks of frailty, ignorance, and sin are on them. Man ward they may be faithful enough, speaking every word Jehovah has put in their mouths, whatever the peril, whatever the pain. But Godward, what a difference between the prophets of the Olcl Testament and Jesus! Jesus never speaks ont of such ignorance and despondency as does Elijah. The words of Isaiah in vi. 5-7, how strangely they would sound if imagined ascending from Jesus I God has spoken to us by a Son. The one ever-living Son, as contrasted with the many-dying prophets. The prophet had his day, a glorious day if he was faithful, but brief at the longest. The day of Jesus, as God's Speaker to men, is described in that later expression of the Epistle--" the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." Jesus ever liveth, not only to make intercession for us, but as the well-beloved Son of God, to speak to us the words of his Father. 'rhe words of Jesus, inwrought as they are with the very substance of the New Testament- are ever to be taken as the word of a being still living, still in contact with men still' makin(l"0 one in every company gathered together in his Name, still saying, " Lo, ' I am with you all the days, even to t he consumma.t1on• ofh t e age."Y- . Ver. 2.-Jesus Inheritor of all things. One position suggests another. The idea of ~onship naturally leads on to the idea of inheritance. Among the Israelites especially would this be so for inheritance is much spoken of in the Old Testament. The son look£ forward to lnherit and control the father's possessions, Thus, while the individual cannot defy death, the race can in a modified kind of way. And so this passiou of man for transmitting his property to his posterity is here used to begin that glorifying description of Jesus which runs through this J~pistle. Jesus is a Son, and if a Son, then an Heir. Moreover, inheritance is according to the father's possessions. Jesus is Heir of all thincrs because his Father is Maker of all things. We shall do well also, in con- sidering thi~ word "heir " inserted in th_is particul~r pla~e, ~o bear in mind t~e parab_le of the wicked husbandmen (Matt. xx1. 33). 'lhere 1s little doubt that 1t was 1n the mind of the writer, and the slightest hint to tho wise is enough. 'l'houghtful readers of the Epistle who knew their Gospels would bo quick enough to take the hint, OH, I, 1-14.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. u For when thus a mention had been made of God speaking in the prophet.a, and then speaking in the Son, there was obviously further suggested how these prophets had been treated, and finally how the Son himself had been treated. As to how the prophets were treated, read onward from eh. xi. 32. And now the Heir comes forward. Thus we are at once brought face to face with a claim. We are not allowed time to plume ourselves on privileges, in that, while former generations had only prophets to speak to them, we have a Son. 'l'he claim is the same, whether it be made throu"h the humblest of the prophets-even through a murmuring Jonah-or through Jes~s, the Son of God. It is a claim on us for the result of our work in the great inheritance. Jesus is Heir'of all things, therefore Heir of that little section in which we have been working. Let it also be recollected that Jesus, in being Heir of all things, makes us as children of God-joint-heirs. Every one who lives for Christ enriches all the sons of God. Jesus is Heir of all things that he may make believers in him sharers with him according to the widest of their capacities and opportunities. What a glorious picture of deep, exhaustless satisfaction is here, and how much beyond the dreams, generous as they are often reckoned to be, of an earthly communism 1-Y. Ver. 3.-Jesus as the Brightness of God's glory. I. THE GLORY OF GoD IS MANI- FESTED TO MEN. Our relations of dependence upon God are exalted by our perception of him upon whom we depend. It is not as if a hand stretched out of the unseen, laying before us our daily bread, and then withdrawing itself, as if it concerned us nothing to know the Giver provided only we got the gift. God is desirous that we should both know him, the Giver, and as much of his glory as it is possible for man to know. "The glory of God" could not have been an unfamiliar phrase to Hebrew Chris- tians. The glory of Jehovah appeared to the children of Israel just before the giving of the manna (Exod. xvi. 10). Also on Mount Sinai, at the giving of the Law. Also when the tabernacle wa.s completed the glory of Jehovah so filled it that Moses was not able to enter (Exod. xl. 35). When Solomon.built a house for Jehovah, the glory of Jehovah so filled the house that the priests could not stand to minister. Consider also the crowns of Isaiah and Ezekiel. Every created thing has its glory, and though there are times when that glory may be in retirement, yet there are other times when the glory comes forth into full manifestation. How !Jlnch more, then, must there be a suitable and sufficient manifestation of the glory of God himself I II. THE FULL MANIFESTATION OF GoD'S GLORY IS IN JESUS. The expression here, "brightness," or rather "effulgence," is in harmony with all those numerous passages in which light is connected with the revelation of God in Christ Jesus. 'l'he light which we see is but the expression of an invisible existence behind it. We spenk of the ro.ys of the sun; but what is the sun itself but condensed radiance? And so when wo come to Jesus and think of the light streaming forth from him upon human ignorance, misery, and despair, we are reminded by the way in which he is here spoken of that Jesus is not to be considered by himself. By him the invisible is made visible. 'l'bo love of the J<'ather becomes a radiant, communicable emotion in the incarnate life oftho Son. All those bursts of intolerable light which filled the tabernacle were but symbols of tho.t true light, the effulgencti of the Divine glory, which lighteth every man coming into the world, and which has dwelt among us in flesh as in a tabernacle. Blessed are those who can see this Divine effulgence, and discern the difference between it and the effulgence of other lights. Tbe dwellers in the immediate district where Jesus bad boen brought up never thought of explaining the wonders of his lifo by the fact that he was the cl1r11,rycza-µa of the Divine glory. Many thought it a sufficient explanation to say that he was Elijah, or J eremiah,',or one of the prophets. Consider in connection the words of Paul in 2 Cor. iv., where he speaks of the god of this world blinding the minds of unbelievers, so that there should not shine unto them the illumination of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the Image of God; and then he goes on to speak of how the God who commanded Jicrht to shine out of darkness has shined in our hearts, to illumi- nate them with the kno~ledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.-Y. Ver. 3.-Jesus as the express Image of the Divine substance. The more we ponder the various terms used for describing Jesus in the introduction to this Epistle, the more we see how the writer is striving to glorify Jesus by separating biw. from the common 42 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. toH, I, 1-14,