CONFIDENCE AND REJOICING OF HOPE - Alexander Maclaren

‘… If we.old fast the confidence and the reining of the hope firm unto the end.’ — Hebrews 3:6.

Two of the favourite thoughts of this letter are included in these words. There are none of the New Testament writers who give so frequent and earnest warnings against the danger of falling away from the Christian profession as does the writer of this letter, and there are none of them who set the power and the blessedness of hope as a Christian virtue in so many attractive lights. The reason for the prominence of these two thoughts in the letter is, of course, largely the circumstances of the persons to whom it was addressed. They were Hebrew Christians, in constant danger of being drawn away from their Christian profession by the seductions of Judaism— the system from which they had passed, and which still exercised a power over them. These peculiarities, of course, have ceased to operate with regard to us, but the lessons contained in the words are of permanent value.

Note, then —

The characteristics of the Christian life as set forth here.

They are two, confidence and rejoicing. Now the word which is translated ‘confidence’ literally means frank, outspoken speech, and comes to mean, secondarily, the boldness which finds expression in such speech. It is employed here, not without some reminiscence of its original meaning, but mainly in that secondary meaning which is expressed partially, and only partially, by the word in our translation, ‘confidence.’ A terrified Christian is an anomaly; a timid Christian is a monster. If he is a true Christian he ought to be elevated by his Christianity high above fears of all sorts and to walk so unembarrassed and unhedged in by dread and nervous anxieties and sorrows and apprehensions that his tongue is not tied, but that he can speak out all that is in him, both to God and to man. And then the other word rendered ‘rejoicing’ is in the original even more emphatic than that rendering. It means ‘boasting’ or ‘glorying,’ and conveys the notion of a triumphant exultation which finds words coming to it naturally and irrepressibly, and cannot but speak out its gladness and triumph.

So these two qualities, courage and exultation, are the very key-notes and marks of Christian men and women, who live up to their privileges and understand what it is that they say they believe. What is there for a man to be afraid of if he has God at his back and heaven in front of him? Circumstances? My own weak heart? Temptations? Of course there is a wholesome fear of all these which is beneficial because it sobers us and makes us watchful, and which he is a fool who flings away? ‘Be not high-minded, but fear’ is only the other side of the exhortation. ‘Cast not away courage,’ for the fear which apprehends danger and acknowledges weakness is the usher that leads in the Confidence that creates boldness, and will not be afraid. ‘What time I am afraid’ — and I shall often be — ‘I will trust in Thee,’ and then I may fling all fear behind my back and walk dreading nought.

Dear brethren, do we recognise it to be our duty to be brave? Does it ever enter into our minds that courage is part of the Christian character, and do we set ourselves to cultivate it accordingly?

But we have also to take into account the natural expression of this courageous temper which lies in the word — viz., frank outspokenness to God.

There are a great many of us who never turn our hearts inside out to God. Although we call ourselves Christians our prayers do not closely fit our real feelings. We pray about the things that we think it proper to pray about: about the things which we have always been in the habit of hearing good people pray about, whether we much care to have them or not. And these little annoyances that buzz about us like mosquitoes and fret so much of our lives, we never say a word to Him about them. No wonder that our hollow prayers are unanswered. If we were bolder with the boldness that this text tells us is our duty, we should turn ourselves inside out to God, and say, ‘Search me, O Lord; try me and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.’

And then, if in anything like the degree in which the facts of the case warrant all Christian people in having it, we had that courage, there would go along with it a wonderful slitting of the cords that tie our tongues to one another about our faith. What an extraordinary thing it is that so many professing Christians have no sort of compulsion to tell anybody what they are, and do not feel as if there was any necessity laid upon them to speak to others of the Saviour that they have found! Why, if the vessel is full it will run over and light will radiate and heat will pour itself out. If there be life in the heart the blood will be pumped through the veins. And so, if we had the courage of our profession we should all be eloquent in the right times and places and to the right persons in the praise of the Master. Courage and a triumphant exulting joy are the marks and signs of a true Christian. Put that picture side by side with what we see in others, and with what we ourselves are and do. Many of us have got the length of thinking that it is a sign of grace to be sad and timid, and anxious and afraid to say, ‘I know in whom I have believed.’ And there are very few of us who have got the length of walking in the light; and ‘always,’ as the Apostle says, being ‘confident’ and bold. That unbroken courage is within reach of us all, and the hand that grasps it is the hand of unfaltering faith or confidence.

The foundation of this Christian courage and triumphant exultation. Both the chief words in the text, I believe, are intended to be qualified by that expression, ‘of the hope,’ which follows the last of them. The confidence is the confidence ‘of the hope,’ and so is the ‘rejoicing.’ That is to say, the ground upon which there can be reared this fair structure of a Christian life all radiant and exultant with courage and triumph is the great hope which Christ sets before us, and which in Himself is brought into contact with our hearts and minds. The hope of the gospel is the basis upon which the courage and the exultation rest.

When a vessel is sunk at sea, how do they float it again? They take great caissons, and fasten them to the sunken hull, and pump them full of air, and their buoyancy lifts it up from the ocean bed, and brings it up into the sunshine again. Fasten your sunken and sad hearts to that great hope that floats upon the surface, and it will lift you from the depths, and bring you into the sunshine. Think of the hope which you and I profess to have! How can sorrow and dumpish dismality live in the presence of such a solid and radiant thing? What would become of our anxieties, real and deep as they are? What would become of our domestic sorrows, painful and heartrending as they are for some of us, if once we walked in the sunshine of that perpetual hope? Who cares about the rough stones, and the sharp, jagged thorns upon the road, or even much about the blood upon his naked feet, when he can see the prize hanging yonder at the winning-post? If we had that immortal crown, and that blessed peaceful hope that ‘we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is,’ always blazing as a reality at the end of every dirty alley down which we have to go, and every dreary road along which we have to travel, how the dirt and the dreariness would be forgotten, and we should ‘press toward the mark’ with courage and with triumph! Think and realise to yourselves, dear friends, the contents of your hope, if you are Christian people — fellowship with Jesus Christ, the knitting of all broken ties that it will be for our joy and peace to have re- knit; the absence of all trouble that has served for discipline; the rod being broken when the child has grown to be a man; the rest and peace, the wisdom and power, the larger service and closer fellowship with the dear Lord, which are waiting certainly for every one of us. And then, if you can, grumble about the road, or be sad or cast down ‘by reason of the greatness of the way.’ ‘We are saved by hope’; and if only we can make real to ourselves the facts which hope based upon Christ reveals as absolute certainties for us all, the clouds will scatter and the darkness will pass before the shining of the true Light.

Lastly, the effort that is needed to keep hold of the hope.

The writer uses very emphatic words. He not only speaks about holding it fast, but about doing so unto ‘the end,’ duplicating, as it were, the idea of effort in the grasp, and declaring that that effort is to be continuous until the time when hope is lost in fruition. Now I need not remind you — we can all remind ourselves if we think — of the many outward difficulties and hindrances that rise to the vigour and vitality of this Christian hope. These may be so dealt with by us that they become subservient to its vitality and vigour, but by reason of our weakness, they often draw us away from Christ, and become distractions instead of helps. These are perpetually at work in order to make the Christian hope less vivid, to blur the outlines and dim the colours of the picture which it paints. Our own weaknesses and worldlinesses and clinging loves that twine themselves round creatures of earth, make it hard for us to soar in devout contemplation high enough to leave the mists below and see the blue and the sun. We are all short- sighted in spiritual matters, and cannot see the things that are afar off, and the fact that they are far off makes them unreal to many of us. Therefore, unless there be constant effort directed to retain the vividness of our impression of the things that are unseen, the vulgar, intrusive, flashing brightnesses of the poor, paltry present will dim them all to our eyes. Whilst, then, there is constant need for effort, and without it we shall certainly lose our apprehension of the unseen blessedness, to hope in which is our very life, a great deal can be done by making direct efforts to cultivate these graces of which I have been speaking, and that from which they come. Though by no means altogether so, it is very much a matter of will and resolution whether Christian people shall be brave and exultant, or whether they shall go mourning all their days, and never taking up the privileges which they possess. If you were to say every morning, ‘Now I am going to try to-day to keep myself up on the high level, the overhead railway, and to travel there,’ you would find it possible to do it. A man cannot make himself glad by saying, ‘Now I am determined I will be glad,’ but the moods and changing emotions of our Christian life which reposes upon facts that do not change, are very largely under our own control, and it is generally our own fault if we find our confidence oozing out at our finger-ends, and an unnameable and vague sadness, of which we scarcely know the cause, wrapping our souls like a chill November mist. One honest and vigorous resolution would rend the mist, in nine cases out of ten, and we should find that it was all the product of the undrained ditches in our own hearts.

But whilst a great deal can be done by a dead lift of resolution, and by governing our feelings and keeping a tight hand upon our emotions, far more can be done by the simpler, and in some respects easier, and certainly more effectual, way of keeping our eyes fixed upon the Person and the facts on which our hope is grounded, and from which our courage flows. That is to say, look at Jesus Christ, and keep by His side, and look into His eyes until you can see love gleaming in them, and touch His pierced hands until you can feel the power trickling from His fingers into your weakness, and rest on the assurances of His faithful word until the unseen and far-off good that He has promised is more real than the little goods close beside you. You can cultivate hope most effectually by gazing upon the things unseen, and above all, on the Person who ‘is our Hope.’ If only we will keep ourselves By faith, love, aspiration, communion of thought, and feeling, and desire, near to Him, He will stand beside us, and repeat to us the old word that was so frequent upon His lips, ‘Fear not,’ and courage will come. He will say, too, as He did in the hour of deepest sorrow, ‘These things have I spoken unto you that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full’; and our triumphant exultation will rise like water in a reservoir when a pure river flows into it. He will say, too, ‘What and where I am, there shall also My servant be’; and the living hope that comes from union with Him will make us victors over all ‘that is at enmity with joy,’ and all that is sad, frowning, threatening, and perilous in our present life.

So, dear brethren, we are saved by Hope, and this Hope that we have ‘has passed within the veil’ with our great High Priest, and there we can anchor our souls and fear not shipwreck, but ride out every storm.