Hebrews 8:5 Who serve to the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for… I. There comes to us all TIMES OF EXCEPTIONAL INSIGHT, of moral elevation, yes, of inspiration, when in a special way our spirits are touched by the spirit of truth and goodness — times when we are, so to speak, upon the mount, and see heavenly only things clearly, and a higher pattern of life is shown to us. These hours of vision may be associated with the utmost variety of circumstances giving occasion to them. It may be simply interruption of our ordinary work. We have been going on from day to day in the regular customary routine. Each day has been so filled with its multiplicity or engagements, its interests, its distraction, its pleasures, its annoyances, as to leave little leisure and less inclination for that quiet and serious thought in which we seek to see life steadily, and see it whole. We need to stand a little back from it, as an artist has to do to judge of the effect of the picture he is painting. And sometimes God compels a man to stand aside and look upon his life and his work from a little distance. He takes him apart from the multitude that He may open his ears to voices that cannot be heard amid the bustle of the crowd. In the confinement of his chamber his spirit chafes at first as he thinks of the great tide of men with eager interests which flows every morning citywards and ebbs at evening, and of all the busy life from which he is excluded; by-and-by a change has come over his spirit — the roar of that loud stunning ride sounds faint and far off; his interest in it has become strangely weakened; other visions are opening out before his mind; he is seeing deeper than the surface stir and bustle of life, its ambitions and its rivalries, into the meaning of life itself, its possibilities and its purpose. He is learning to see things in their true proportions, and is waking up to the discovery that he has been exaggerating terribly certain aspects of them. A diviner pattern of life is being shown to him — an ideal higher in its aims, its methods, and its motives; and when he comes back to take up again among men his daily tasks, surely it is with an earnest purpose to make all things according to the nobler pattern that has been shown him. But there are experiences tending towards similar results that enter much more frequently into life than such as that. To all men, and most of all to those who have youth and hope on their side, a period of leisure and recreation and contact with nature is not more a rest than an inspiration, a time of sanguine and earnest forecasting of the future, a time of forming of plans and contemplating ideals, of storing up impulse and stimulus, of girding up the loins of the mind with strenuous self-denying purpose. There are other times-sadder times — which have worked to the same effect: hours, not of elevation, but of deep depression, when we saw things after the pattern of the heavenly. It may have been an hour of stern self-rebuke, of humiliation and shame, when conscience justly scourged and spared not, or when you felt yourself baffled and helpless in the presence of a great perplexity; or the day you came back from standing beside a new-filled grave, and realised that the world was emptier and poorer than it had been a week before. Men looking up from deep places, it is said, see stars at noon-day; and sometimes it is when it is sighing its De Profundis that the soul catches its vision of God. There are countless hours of vision which we need not stay to classify. We wake up one day to feel as if all our previous knowledge of God had been but hearsay: we feel, "I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ears, but now mine eye seeth Thee." Life seems to begin anew from times like that. We have accepted truth upon the authority of others; the time comes when we say, "We see." The entrance of God's Word gives light, and so certifies itself. Our own hold of truth is never satisfactory until we thus see. The man who is to influence others must first himself see heavenly things upon the mount. II. These times of vision leave behind them RESPONSIBILITIES. "We cannot command those higher moments — at least not directly — not otherwise than by habitual obedience to the laws of Christ's spiritual kingdom. "To him that hath shall be given." The seeing may be special times; the acting out what we have seen belongs to our common life. That is the only possible way of keeping the vision clear — of retaining it as our lasting possession. For "'Tis the most difficult of tasks to keep Heights which the soul is competent to gain."It is so very easy to be a seer as well as a hearer, and not a doer, to be like the man who beholdeth his natural face in a glass, to whom there comes a bright perception of truth, which reveals him to himself, with all his blots and stains and flaws, and who assents to it, and goeth his way, and forgetteth what manner of man he is. It is possible to do even worse: to use that kind of experience — even visions and revelations of the Lord — for our own self-deception. It is one of the great dangers of what may be called the religious temperament, to care a great deal more about what it can see and feel upon the mount than about faithfulness in commonplace duty on the ordinary levels of life. It is a frequent temptation after we have been touched by admiration for some aspects of duty, and mate to thrill at the thought of seeing ourselves doing it — especially if we have been led to speak warmly about it — to indulge in a soft, self-complacent, feeling, as if we had really done it or were doing it, although we may not have touched it with one of our fingers. Is not this the difference between the man of mere emotion and the man of principle — between the man of feeling and the man of faith — that the one can be thrilled with high ideals, and can proceed to work them out while the glory is upon him, and continue only so long as the excitement or emotion lasts; while the other, who has hid in his heart that which he has seen, will toil on steadily along the dull, flat levels, keeping to the path of duty when the brightness has faded from the sky? It is a great thing, an unspeakable privilege, to have seen the beauty of the Lord that our heart and conscience have said to Jesus, "My Lord and my God"; and yet it is His word, "Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord! shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven" — not be that seeth and even prophesieth in My name, but he that maketh his life according to the pattern that hath been showed to him. (A. O. Johnston, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount. |
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