Sermon Bible Commentary
Hebrews 13:20
The Great Pleas of a Great Prayer.
I. The name of God is the warrant for our largest hope. "The God of peace" wills to give to men something not altogether unlike the tranquillity which He Himself possesses. What is it that breaks human peace? Is it emotion, change, or any of the necessary conditions of our earthly life? By no means. It is possible to carry an unflickering flame through the wildest tempests, if only there be a sheltering hand round about it; and it is possible that my agitated and tremulous nature, blown upon by all the winds of heaven, may still burn straight upwards, undeviating from its steady aspiration, if only the hand of the Lord be about me. Just because God is the God of peace, it must be His desire to impart His own tranquillity to us. The sure way by which that deep calm within the breast can be received and retained is by His imparting to us just what the writer here asks for these Hebrews hearts ready for every good work and wills submitted to His will.
II. Note, secondly, how the raising of the Shepherd is the prophecy for the sheep. The principal thought implied here is that where the Shepherd goes the sheep follow. Christ's resurrection and session in glory at the right hand of God point the path and the goal for all His servants. In Him there is power to make each of us as pure, as sinless, as the Lord Himself in whom we trust. He rose, and sits crowned with glory and honour. "The God that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep," has pledged Himself thereby that the sheep, who imperfectly follow Him here when He goeth before them, shall find Him gone before them into the heavens, and there will "follow Him whithersoever He goeth," in the perfect likeness and perfect purity of the perfect kingdom.
III. The everlasting covenant is the teacher and pledge of our largest desires. It is not fashionable in modern theology to talk about God's covenant to us. Our forefathers used to have a great deal to say about it, and it became a technical word with them; and so this generation has very little to say about it, and seldom thinks of the great ideas that are contained in it. But is it not a grand thought, and a profoundly true one, that God, like some great monarch who deigns to grant a constitution to his people, has condescended to lay down conditions by which He will be bound, and on which we may reckon? Out of the illimitable possibilities of action, limited only by His own nature and all incapable of being foretold by us, He has marked a track on which He will go. If I may so say, across the great ocean of possible action He has buoyed out His course, and we may prick it down upon our charts, and be quite sure that we shall find Him there. Your desires can never be so outstretched as to go beyond the efficacy of the blood of Jesus Christ; and through the ages of time or eternity the everlasting covenant remains, to which it shall be our wisdom and blessedness to widen our hopes, to expand our desires, conform our wishes, and adapt our work.
A. Maclaren, Paul's Prayers,p. 80.
The Work of God.
I. Look at the aspect in which God is here presented. (1) A God of peace. Sin banished the peace which God sent His Son to restore; and when the world is won over to Christ, and the crowns of earth, like those of heaven, are laid at His feet, then shall God be known as the God, and our world shall be known as the abode of peace. (2) God has made peace, not peace at any price; it is peace at such a price as satisfied the utmost demands of His law, and fully vindicated His holiness in the sight of the universe. For see, by the cross where Jesus hung, mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace are embracing each other; and there the great God appears as just, and also the Justifier of all those that believe in Jesus.
II. He brought Christ from the dead. (1) In one sense the glory of His resurrection belongs to Christ Himself. His death was in a peculiar sense His own act. In no case do we lay down our lives. Who dies a natural death has his life taken from him; who commits suicide throws his away. But He who said, "I have power to lay down My life," also said, "I have power to take it up again." (2) Here our Lord's resurrection is attributed to God. His resurrection is the crown of His labours; the token of His acceptance; the fruit of His deed. The God of peace raises Him from the dead, not simply by His almighty power, but "through the blood of the everlasting covenant," His own blood, as if the blood that washes away our sins, sprinkled on His dead face, restored Him to life; sprinkled on the chains of death, dissolved them; sprinkled on the doors of the grave, threw them open. Most precious and potent blood! May it be sprinkled in red showers from God's hand on us! If that blood, in a sense, gave life to a dead Christ, shall it not impart life to us? Yes. Through its power, dead with Him to sin, crucified with Him to the flesh, and buried with Him in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we rise to newness of life.
T. Guthrie, The Way to Life,p. 117.
I. Notice the simple, human name Jesus. (1) Let us ever keep distinctly before us that suffering dying manhood as the only ground of acceptable sacrifice, and of full access and approach to God. The true humanity of our Lord is the basis of His work of atonement, of intercession, and of reconciliation. (2) Then, further, let us ever keep before our mind clear and plain that true manhood of Jesus as being the type and pattern of the devout life. He is the Author and Finisher of faith, the first example though not first in order of time, yet in order of nature and perfect in degree the pattern for us all, of the life which says, "The life that I live, I live by dependence upon God." (3) Then, again, let us see clearly set before us that exalted manhood as the pattern and pledge of the glory of the race. "We see Jesus, crowned with glory and honour." Pessimism shrivels at the sight, and we cannot entertain too lofty views of the possibilities of humanity and the certainties for all who put their trust in Him. If He be crowned with glory and honour, the vision is fulfilled, and the dream is a reality; and it shall be fulfilled in the rest of us who love Him.
II. Secondly, we have the name of office. Jesus is Christ. Is your Jesus merely the man who by the meek gentleness of his nature, the winning attractiveness of his persuasive speech, draws and conquers and stands manifested as the perfect example of the highest form of manhood, or is He the Christ in whom the hopes of a thousand generations are realised, and the promises of God fulfilled, and the smoking altars and the sacrificing priests of that ancient system and of heathenism everywhere find their answer, their meaning, their satisfaction, their abrogation? Is Jesus to you the Christ of God?
III. Lastly, we have the name of Divinity. Jesus the Christ is the Son of God. (1) The name declares timeless being; it declares that He is the very raying out of the Divine glory; it declares that He is the embodiment and type of the Divine essence; it declares that He by Himself purged our sins; it declares that He sitteth on the right hand of God. (2) Further, the name is employed in its contracted form to enhance the mystery and the mercy of His sharp sufferings and of His lowly endurance. "Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered." The fuller form is employed to enhance the depth of the guilt and the dreadfulness of the consequences of apostacy, as in the solemn words about "crucifying the Son of God afresh" and in the awful appeal to our own judgments to estimate of how sore punishment they are worthy who trample under foot the Son of God.
A. Maclaren, The God of the Amen,p. 8.
References: Hebrews 13:20. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. v., No. 277; S. A. Tipple, Echoes of Spoken Words,p. 19. Hebrews 13:20; Hebrews 13:21. A. Raleigh, The Way to the City,p. 175; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xx., No. 1186; vol. xxiii., No. 1368. Hebrews 13:20. R. W. Dale, The Jewish Temple and the Christian Church,p. 286.