JOY IN GRIEF
‘Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame.’
Hebrews 12:2
What made the ‘joy’ of the grief of our great Intercessor? Plainly it arose from three things—love, service, heaven.
I. It was love that brought Him to this earth, and laid Him upon that cross; love that could not be satisfied without the presence and the fellowship of those that He died to save.
II. And service—service to sinners; service to His Church; service to God.
III. And heaven—a heaven fuller than before; a heaven peopled with His friends; His own loved ones at His side; and a God glorified.
This made Christ’s joy—the ‘joy’ which rose superior to all His troubles, and which enabled Him to ‘endure the cross and despise the shame.’ So, like Him, bring into your ‘cross,’ or ‘shame,’ these three elements—love, service, heaven—and, and your ‘cross’ will be your life, and your ‘shame’ your glory!
Rev. James Vaughan.

SIN AND ITS PUNISHMENT
‘Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.’
Hebrews 12:6
Scripture tells us of God’s fatherly chastisements; and speaks of them, like human chastisements, as both deterrent and remedial.
I. They are spoken of as deterrent.—‘When Thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world shall learn righteousness.’ We can understand that the fate of Elymas, whom St. Paul struck with blindness, and the fate of the Corinthian adulterer, whom he ‘delivered to Satan,’ must have been of profound and far-stretching influence in the early Church. But how if God’s judgments are not recognised as coming from Him? If any human events may be ascribed to the avenging hand of God, should we not assign to this cause pestilence and war? But it is common experience that times of war and pestilence, so far from being times of learning righteousness, are times of exceptional forgetfulness of it. God’s judgments, like man’s judgments, avail to deter us from sin only so far as they are realised as the inevitable accompaniment and shadow of sin—its necessary consequence. A man who by some intimate knowledge has realised the shattered health of the debauchee and the drunkard’s paralysed will does gain a horror of those sins which speeds him on the path of temperance and chastity. A student of history, who has realised that the decay of nations has in past times been brought about by the decline of public spirit and the growth of private luxury, will lift a warning voice to his fellow-citizens, and for his own part will devote himself without reserve to the public good. But we must allow that the least effect of the Divine chastisements is their effect as deterrent, because it is so hard to realise.
II. The greater stress is laid in the Bible on the side most efficacious in our human punishments, their remedial power, when the sufferer recognises them as chastisements from the Father in heaven. But how can this recognition be brought about in hearts where there seems to be no love of God to appeal to? Sometimes, in God’s mercy, it is the suddenness, the unexpectedness, of the blow, or the sharpness of the punishment, that strikes home to the conscience as by the very hand of God, and creates the conviction that God is not mocked, which is the root of penitence. Many of us may know cases where the detection and prompt punishment of a first offence has stopped a career of wrong-doing. Sometimes it is sickness that, by laying a man low, gives him leisure to consider his ways and take stock of the meaning and purpose of his life. Or sometimes it is from quite other sources—from books, from the wonder of the world, from the quiet influence of a Christian life, that there comes to a man the revelation that what he had previously held to be merely accidental disappointments, accidental troubles, were, in truth, Divine punishments, sent to wean him from his selfishness; and he confesses, ‘It was good for me that I have been in trouble, that I might learn Thy law.’
III. As we compare human punishment, as it is administered in the family and the state, with the chastisements of God, this point emerges. A son sometimes, despite all his father can do, goes, as we say, to the bad. The chastisements of love prove of no effect; and what punishments the state may have had occasion to inflict are equally unavailing. Punishment in such a case becomes perpetual; there is banishment from the family circle, seclusion from society. What will happen if the chastisements of the heavenly Father and heavenly Law-giver are as fruitless? Does there survive in them also, when they are proved powerless to deter or to remedy, their fundamental character of retribution? Must they maintain, as against the sinner, a continual assertion of the law of righteousness? Or, to put the question in a shape in which we are more familiar with it: When all the penitent sinners are forgiven, is it in the will of the righteous and eternal God to punish eternally the impenitent? To that question the highest human reason has always given the answer Yes. The self-pleasing Sybarite may take another view, he may fall back on irresponsibility and predestination and say—
‘Some there are who tell
Of one who threatens he will toss to hell
The luckless pots he marr’d in making—pish,
He’s a good fellow, and ‘twill all be well.’
But Plato has no doubt. The sense of justice, as it is implanted in the human mind, demands that sin and suffering should go together. But then also the human reason has never forgotten that God is love as well as righteousness, and so it has cherished the hope that there must be, within the Divine armoury, weapons of punishment capable of piercing in to the most obdurate and impenetrable hearts, and arousing in them the saving consciousness of sin.
IV. The problem whether any human will can reduce itself to eternal incompatibility with the will of God, so as to be cast as ‘rubbish to the void,’ is not a problem for us. With Scripture before us, we cannot (as some have done) deny the possibility. The problem for us is so to fix our thoughts on God’s righteous law that we may never lose the sense of penitence, and so to fix our thoughts on God’s fatherly love that we may never lose the sense of sonship. ‘Father, I have sinned; I am no more worthy to be called Thy son; but I accept my chastisement; I am Thy son—save me.’
—Rev. Canon Beeching.
Illustration
‘What use does punishment serve in the family? Partly we mean it to be deterrent, both to the offending child and to the other members of the household; we want sin and sorrow to be associated in the child’s mind as cause and effect; but still more we wish it to exercise a remedial effect upon character, and this it helps to do, in its proper character as retribution, by enforcing respect for the law which has been broken. It calls fresh attention to the law of the family, emphasises it, vindicates it. And by itself punishment cannot accomplish more than this. Punishment cannot make any one hate wrong-doing, or feel reverence for law. That effect can only be produced by the character of the father who administers the chastisement; whose own love of right and hatred of wrong, and love of the wrong-doer and zeal for his highest welfare, are clearly distinguished in and through the chastisement he feels bound to inflict.’

DISCIPLINE AND LIFE
‘Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?’
Hebrews 12:9
You are all familiar with the fact that very frequently in the New Testament parallels between the earthly home and the earthly father with the heavenly home and the heavenly Father are set forth as illustrations.
I. The discipline of life.—It is that parallel that the sacred writer here makes use of. But he is thinking of something different. He is thinking of life in relationship to discipline. He says that all life begins with discipline, and that in all true life there must be a continuance of discipline till the end has been obtained. The earthly father must in the nature of the case, not because he does not love, but because he does love the child, exercise the law and order of discipline. The education in the hands of the earthly father may be a mistaken one. ‘They verily chastened us,’ not as it is recorded in the Authorised Version ‘after their own pleasure,’ but rather ‘They verily chastened us as it seemed good to them’—that is, according to the best of their ability. And yet that best might not be the highest best; still we give them credit for having chastened us as seemed good to them. In contrast with that he sets the Divine Father’s training and education.
II. A parallel and a contrast.—Now when you think of this parallel, which is also a parallel connected with a contrast, I think you will be first struck by the pathetic picture which the writer conjures up of the incompleteness of the earthly father’s education. It is so true that we are all ready to recognise that human instruction, human education, human providence exercised towards any of the growing children about us is so often faulty and mistaken.
III. The purpose of discipline.—And let me say this word. What a gain it is to every human being who will realise that he is under the educating hand of the Father of spirits. Whatever wisdom parents have they cannot penetrate into that chamber of the child’s spirit. The spirit remains very largely an enclosed thing, and it is in that spirit that the education must go on. I cannot reach the inner power. We want the education of the spirit, and that is precisely what we cannot reach. We can only remind our sons that there is that spiritual bond. They will bring also greater satisfaction to you if they remember that they are not only your sons, but the sons of Almighty Righteousness, Eternal Wisdom, and of the Divine Father.
IV. The two halves of life.—It is not only in the education of the spirit that the advantage of this recognition of the discipline of the father comes; it is also in this that the halves of life are brought so beautifully together. The conflict is between the domination of the thing physical and the thing spiritual. He is in conflict with you; you are only the father of his flesh, and yet, what you want is that he should realise not simply that your domination is that of the father, and due to the reverence that he is your offspring; you want him to be animated by a nobler spirit than that. But if you make him realise that he is a child of the Divine Father, then what follows? That Divine Father is educating. Where does His education come in? All through life. Therefore, shall we not rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? Do you wish to enter into the fulness of life? Remember the scientific man with his patience and observation. No chastening of the present seems to be joyous, but there is an afterwards, and it is faith in the afterwards, it is faith that duty accepted to-day means capacity afterwards. We shall find that in the hereafter we shall understand what life is, for there is fulness of joy at God’s right hand, but that fulness of joy can only be the part of those who have entered into the fulness of God’s will here, for this they will enter into the full understanding of His ways and works, and so the afterwards will yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have had the courage to be exercised by the disciplining hand of God in life.
Bishop W. Boyd Carpenter.
Illustration
‘A father’s dream for his son is not always realised. The moment comes when the father must wake up to see that what he has under his control is a being he cannot dictate to, hut who in some moment in his life will take his own choice and his own way. There is something very pathetic about the failure of earthly dreams of fatherhood and parenthood. But is there not something good in it after all? Is there not something which brings us to the principle which underlies the disappointment, to a reconciliation of the principles upon which life is built? This assertion of will and of choice on the child’s part, is it wholly bad? Do you not realise in it that you have made a profound mistake? You thought of playing providence to your child, to manipulate his character so that he would be trained for a career, and the day comes when you wake up to the fact that the lad has a mind and spirit of his own. There is a capacity for choice in this child’s mind. You have had your dreams, but the lad has had his dreams too. Is it wholly bad? Does it not teach you this—You are fathers of the flesh; the bond between you and the child is the bond which is for flesh and blood. But the child is not flesh and blood alone: he is dowered by the Almighty with His Gift of the Spirit, and his spirit must rise and must assert itself.’

HOLINESS OF LIFE
‘Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.’
Hebrews 12:14
Our subject is holiness; personal holiness which shows itself in the daily life; that personal possession of something which leads us day by day to live according to God’s laws.
I. A life of holiness is a life not ruled by the body but by the spirit.
II. How shall we obtain this holiness?—The right holiness of life is shown in the life of Christ. We are the possessors of the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we have received not only forgiveness of the past but cleansing. So the life of Christ is in our lives. We become partakers with Him and His Spirit dwelleth in us.
III. Our bounden duty.—It is bound upon us to aim at holiness and to possess it because we are not our own. Many so-called Christians are leading a sham life so far as their religion is concerned. Their religion lacks sincerity. We ought to be very circumspect in our daily lives, and to be regular attendants at the house of God and take careful observance of the Holy Sacrament.
IV. Yet it is not in externals that holiness lies.—There must be form, but we must never leave out the inward and spiritual grace. Jesus Christ defined His Church in these words: ‘the Kingdom of God is within you.’ Such is holiness. It is something within.
—Rev. H. Lionel James.

THE WARNING FROM ESAU
‘Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.’
Hebrews 12:16
Esau stands out as a solemn warning to us as one who was guilty of the profanity of bartering away his birthright.
I. What is our birthright?—To put it briefly, it is that salvation which is offered to us in and through Christ.
II. How we may sell our birthright.—Esau sold his birthright for one morsel of meat. Is not this what many do to-day?
( a) We think, for instance, of the many who fall, of the thousands upon thousands who are dragged down to hell, because of what we call ‘the drink.’
( b) Are there not others who sell their birthright for carnal, for sensual pleasure, for the lust of the flesh? We may not like to talk about these things, but this is the history of many a man to-day.
( c) And then there are some who sell their birthright for unbelief. There are some who have been brought up in the Christian faith who now tell us in a superior sort of way that they sympathise with such men as Darwin, Huxley, and Herbert Spencer; they tell us that they are not able to believe the truths of the Christian faith, that they are sceptics.
III. What will follow if we sell our birthright?—Esau for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. What follows? Time passes and he comes to his father to receive his blessing, but it is gone. Some one has said, that hell will be the truth known too late. That is, the one who like Esau has sold his birthright, the one who has rejected that salvation offered to him by Christ, will in the life to come, when he realises what he has done, suffer the anguish, it may be the eternal anguish, of the lost.
IV. There is hope.—There was no hope, humanly speaking, for Esau; but thanks be to God for the hope that there is for us; we know that Jesus Christ the Saviour is still able to save to the uttermost.
—Rev. Ernest Walters.
Illustration
‘There are some honest doubters, and we can sympathise with them; but very often we find that doubt, so called, is the result of some sin, some secret sin perhaps, which keeps one back from God. We do not want to believe in God because of this or that sin. The Bishop of St. Albans at the Anniversary Meeting of the Christian Evidence Society told a story of a man who came to him in doubt, and after a little conversation the bishop came to the conclusion that it was the man’s life that was at fault, and so he launched a bold bid and said, “Look here, my friend, be honest with me; tell me, do you not give way to some besetting sin?” And it was so; it was this that kept him back from God; he did not want to believe in God because of this sin. This is often the case: it is sin that keeps men back from God.’
(SECOND OUTLINE)
THE BIRTHRIGHT SOLD
There are thousands of Esaus living at the present time, the favourites of society, easy-going, generous-hearted, not burdened with any anxiety or care, living for to-day, for the flesh, and content to leave the soul alone. They sell their birthright.
Why did Esau part with his birthright?
I. There was a manifest want of appreciation of its value.—He said, ‘Behold, I am at the point to die,’ etc. Evidently he was in a very foolish and wrong state of mind when he could say that concerning his birthright. His privileges were of the highest value.
II. There was a want of consideration.—When Esau sold his birthright it was a thoughtless act, done under the influence of excitement. He did not think of the consequence of the deed. In this respect there are many like Esau; they don’t think, won’t think, carried on by the current of desire or passion.
III. There was a want of self-control.—Esau allowed his appetite to become his master, and, for the sake of satisfying that hunger, snatches the savoury pottage even at the cost of his birthright. What an illustration of the power of passion!
Illustration
‘ “Rob Esau of the Oriental garb in which his character is clothed in the sacred narrative, bring him to the platform of contemporary history, represent him to your own mind in the garment of to-day: What is he? Well, he stands before us as a genial, kind-hearted, somewhat passionate, but on the whole a popular country gentleman, fond of field sports, passionately addicted to hunting, keeping a good table and a good house, a man who enters heartily and thoroughly into the amusements of society, a man who makes these things the very end and aim of his life; not a man of very great mental culture, of no political aspirations, but a downright good country squire, and a man who does not trouble himself very much about religious matters.” ’

AFTERWARD
‘He found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.’
Hebrews 12:17
Every act has its afterward, and that is the New Testament criticism upon the Old Testament story of Esau. The facts of that story are familiar to you all.
I. There is an afterward that comes when every act must have its due, its appointed consequence, sure as echo follows sound. There are words we never can recall, acts that we have done that we ought not to have done, and that never, never can be undone.
II. There is an afterward dealing with the limits of earth.—We are reminded by God of what we find to be a business fact—that there are some things said and done which we never can, as we look back upon them, repent of in the sense that they can be unsaid or that they can be undone. Is not that your experience of life that every act has an afterward?
III. Think of the ‘afterward’ each time you are called upon to make a decision, each time you are called upon to resist a temptation. Have you got to make a decision to-day? Make it in the light of ‘afterward.’ When you look back you will find your decision irrevocable. Never risk the future for the sake of the present; never do as a lad what you may be sorry for as a man; never do as a girl what you will be sorry for as a woman. Learn that, in that sense, every act has its consequence which must follow, and there will come the New Testament criticism upon conduct which will be summed up in that word ‘afterward.’
IV. Thank God, there is a great afterward.—We ought to believe that life will not be all the same a hundred years hence, however we leave it now. We believe that there is an afterward, an after- and a to-ward, as the word means. We believe that for every act there is an after time, where there is a place of repentance, where it is possible to win back a blessing from One Who, unlike Isaac, has more blessings than one to bestow. Never does He shut the door in the face of a true penitent; but the act does, so much so that in all our actions, all our decisions, everything must be looked at with a view to this wonderful, solemn word which I will leave with you to-day—the word ‘afterward.’
Rev. Canon E. E. Holmes.
Illustration
‘There was a man in South Africa, a Cape merchant, who said that he had got all his money, he had made every farthing that he possessed, dishonestly, either by gambling or by cheating others; and he said: “What can I do? Where is my place of repentance? I cannot find the people I have injured, I cannot undo the harm that I have done however sorry I am for having done it.” He, in one sense, could find no place of repentance. Every act of his life was finding its “afterward.” ’