theWord Commentaries

Bellett Short Musings on the Epistle to the Hebrews

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• August 1, 2024April 24, 2024
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Bellett Short Musings on the Epistle to the Hebrews

—> Contents <— DCox
Part 1 — Hebrews 1, 2
Part 2 — Hebrews 3, 4
Part 3 — Hebrews 5, 6
Part 4 — Hebrews 7
Part 5 — Hebrews 8
Part 6 — Hebrews 9 – 10:1-18
Part 7 — Heb. 10:19-39
Part 8 — Hebrews 11
Part 9 — Hebrews 12
Part 10 — Hebrews 13
Part 11 — Conclusion

Summary

This is an eleven chapter commentary on Hebrews. There is a chapter in this book for each chapter in Hebrews (13).
STEM Publishing: J. G. Bellett: Short Musings on the Epistle to the Hebrews

Sample Chapter Hebrews 11

Hebrews 11.

We have reached chapter 11. I think we observed that Heb. 10:35 was a connecting link between the two great thoughts of the epistle — that Christianity puts you inside the veil and outside the camp — that is, it undoes the work of Satan, which estranged you from God and made you at home in a corrupted world. The religion of the Lord Jesus just comes to upset his (Satan’s) work. Nothing can be more beautiful than the antithesis which thus shows itself between the serpent and the serpent’s bruiser.

The “great recompense of reward” shows itself in the life of faith that we are now going to read about. We are called, as John Bunyan says, “to play the man.”

If happy within we are to be fighting without. This chapter 11 shows us the elect of all ages “playing the man” in the power of this principle of confidence.

“Cast not away therefore your confidence,” for it thus shows that it has “great recompense of reward.” Faith is a principle that apprehends two different things of God. It views Him as a justifier of the ungodly, as in Romans 4; but here it apprehends God as “a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” The moment you apprehend God by a faith that does not work, you enter on a faith that does work. And while we rightly cherish a faith that saves our souls, let us not be indifferent to a faith that serves our Saviour. How boldly we sometimes assert our title, but do we value our inheritance? It is a poor wretched thing to boast in our title, and yet show that the heart is but little moved by the hope of the inheritance. Just so, if I boast of a justifying faith, it is a poor thing to be indifferent to the faith that we have here in chapter 11 — “Now faith is the confidence of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
Then you are told that it was the strength of all the worthies in old times, who through it “obtained a good report.” It is another proof that, as we have said, everything in this epistle is to set aside law. If I take up the law as the secret power of my soul to do anything for God I am not doing it for God but for myself. The law might chasten and scourge me and call on me to work out a title to life. But that would be serving myself. Faith sets law aside. Then, having established faith as a working principle he begins to unfold the different phases of it from the beginning. I believe verse 3 may have a reference to Adam. If Adam was a worshipper in the garden, it was by faith. He may have looked behind all the wonders that surrounded him, and apprehended the great Artificer.

More Commentaries on Hebrews

• Anderson – Types in Hebrews
• Bellett Short Musings on the Epistle to the Hebrews
• Coburn – Hebrews
• Expositor’s Bible Vol 45 Hebrews by T.C. Edwards
• Fortner Discovering Christ in Hebrews
• Grant Notes on the Epistle to the Hebrews
• Owen – Exposition of Hebrews

• 1
• 2
• >>

Now some say they can still worship God in nature; but when we left innocency we left creation as a temple and we cannot go back there. Nature was a temple to Adam; but if I go back to it, I go back to Cain. Here we come to Abel and to revelation. We are sinners; and revelation, which unfolds redemption, must build us a temple. You must take your place as worshipper in the temple that God in Christ has built for you.

Then we come to Enoch. Enoch’s was an ordinary kind of life; but he spent it with God.

We are told in Genesis that he walked with God, and here we are told that he pleased God. As the apostle says in 1 Thessalonians 4, “Ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God.” To walk with God is to please Him. Can anything be more welcome to us than the thought that we can give complacency to God? There was nothing in Enoch’s life to make history; but whatever condition of life may be ours, our business is to walk with God in it. It is beautiful thus to see an undistinguished life going before a life of great events. You may hear some say, “A poor, unnoticed thing am I, compared with some who have been distinguished in service for the Lord.” “Well,” let me reply, “you are an Enoch.”

Now Noah’s was a very distinguished life. Faith laid hold on the warning. Faith does not wait for the day of glory or the day of judgment to see glory or judgment. Faith in the prophet did not ask for his eyes to be opened. Faith here for one hundred and twenty years seemed to be a fool. Noah was building a ship for dry ground; and he may well have been the mockery of his neighbours; but he saw the thing that was invisible. How rebuking to us! Supposing you and I lived under the authority of coming glory: what fools we should be!

But I should not have passed over the word I took for my text. “He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” Again, I boldly say, you would not have had that definition of faith in Romans 4, “A rewarder of them that diligently seek him”! “Why, what legal language!” some would say if they read it in a book. Ah! but it is beautiful in its place. The faith of a saint is an intensely working thing. Will God be a debtor to any man? No; He will pay to those who sow bountifully.

Abraham’s life is next; and a picture of the varied exercises of faith. There was a magnificence in his faith — a victorious quality — a fine apprehension — all these qualities of faith come out in the life of Abraham. He went out blindfold; but the God of glory led him by the hand. So he came to the land; but to him not a foot of it was given. He must have the patience of faith; but whatever fell from the lips of God was welcome to Abraham. Abraham walked all his life in the power of the recollection of what he had seen under the hand of the God of glory.

Now supposing I tell you that the vision of Stephen has gone before every one of you. You need not be expecting the same vision that Stephen saw, but you have seen it in him. They may carry you to the stake; but you may say, “I have seen heaven opened over me, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” If you and I are simple, true-hearted people, we shall just go forth as Abraham did when he had seen the God of glory.

Then Sarah’s was another kind of faith. We must see God as a Quickener of the dead. Noah understood God so. The Israelites, under the blood-stained lintel, received Him in the same character. Death was there, and attached to every house in the land; but the Israelites knew God as the Quickener of the dead. That is what Noah, Abraham, Sarah, apprehended of God. If I make God less than a Quickener of the dead, I make myself more than a dead sinner. It is as a Quickener of the dead I must meet with Him.

The thirteenth is a beautiful verse. The first thing to do to a promise is to apprehend it — then to exercise faith about it — and then to receive it by the heart. They “embraced” them. Their hearts hugged them. How far has my heart hugged the promises? One knows his own “leanness.” But surely the closer we hug them the more blessedly we shall consent to be strangers and pilgrims in this world. This is a wonderful picture of a heart put into faith. Did they speak of strangership because of leaving Mesopotamia? No; but because they had not reached heaven. They might have found their way back. Abraham could tell it to Eliezer; but that would not have cured their strangership.

Supposing there were a change in your circumstances, would that cure your strangership? Not if you are among God’s people. Mesopotamia was no cure. Nothing could cure, end, or close their strangership but the inheritance. On they went to heaven; and God was not ashamed to be called their God.

In Hebrews 2 we read that Christ is not ashamed to call us brethren. Now, we read that God was not ashamed to call these strangers His people. Why is Christ “not ashamed to call them brethren”? Because they stand in one divine, eternal purpose with Him. One family embraces the elect and Christ. How could He be ashamed of such a people? And if you have fallen out with the world, God is not ashamed of you. For God Himself has fallen out with it, and He could not be ashamed of you, because you are one mind with Him. Therefore, when they said they were strangers, God called Himself their God. Our hearts are terribly rebuked here. How much lingers in them of striking alliance and making friendship with the world!

Then we see Abraham in another light.

Every hope of Abraham depended on Isaac. To give up Isaac seemed not only to become a bankrupt in the world, but to become a bankrupt in God. He might have said, “Am I to become a bankrupt in God and in Mesopotamia?” There could not have been a higher stretch in the believing principle. Have you ever feared God making you a bankrupt in Himself? Has He turned away never to return?

Well, he got him back in a figure, sealed as a fresh witness of resurrection. Do we ever lose anything by trusting God in the dark? If ever any one trusted Him in the dark it was Abraham.

After passing him we come to Isaac. Isaac showed his faith by blessing Esau and Jacob concerning things to come. This is the little, single bit of his life that the Spirit looks at. If we inspect his life, we shall find that that is the eminent work in it. That act shines out under the eye of God.

Jacob is more remarkable, as Noah had been more remarkable than Enoch. His was a very eventful life; but the only thing we get here is — “by faith he … blessed both the sons of Joseph.” This is exquisitely beautiful. It shows how much in christian life may be rubbish. I do not believe Jacob’s life was an exhibition of a servant of God. It was an exhibition of a saint who went astray, and whose whole life was occupied in getting back; and we do not get this act of faith till we come to the close, when he “blessed both the sons of Joseph.” There he came in contact with things unseen, and things that came across the current of nature. His life was the life of a man recovering himself; and just at the close he did this beautiful service of faith to God in the face of the resentments of his own heart and the appeal of his son Joseph.

But Joseph’s is a lovely life — a life of faith from the beginning. Joseph was a holy man throughout; but there was magnificent outshining of faith just at the close. He had his hand on the treasures of Egypt and his foot on the throne of Egypt; yet in the midst of all that he spoke of the departing of his brethren. That was seeing things invisible. That was the one thing the Spirit has signalised as an act of faith. Why did he talk in this way? He might have said, “Ah! I do not walk by sight. I know what is coming, and I tell you, you will go out of this land, and when you go, take me with you.”

The general course of his life was unblameable, yet we do find in his words as he was departing the finest utterance of faith. And now that is what you and I want. Do you want to be righteous only? You must be so; but will that constitute a life of faith? You must seek to get under the power of things hoped for — things unseen — the expectation of the Lord’s return; and till you do so in some energy you may be blameless, but you are not walking that life of faith by which “the elders obtained a good report.” Thus, so far we see faith as a working principle. Not the faith of the sinner, which is a no-working faith. The moment the no-working faith has made me a saint I must take up the working faith and live in the power of it.

But we must go on. We will not forget what we hinted — that the whole of Hebrews 11 depends on, and is the illustration of, Heb. 10:35. The stronger our faith is, the more our soul is in the possession of mighty, moral energy. This chapter shows how this principle of faith gained the day. Do not read it as if it were the praises of Noah, Abraham, Moses, and others. It is the praises of faith as illustrated in Noah, Abraham, Moses, and others. What a simple, blessed thing Christianity is! I stand in admiration of it when I see how the devil has wrought a two-fold mischief in putting us outside the veil — inside the camp; and how Christ has wrought a corresponding two-fold remedy. Do I rejoice in the thought that I have gained God though at the loss of the world? That is Christianity.
“By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child.” What is the meaning of that? It means that when he was born there was an expression in his countenance that faith read. “Beautiful to God” is the word. There was a certain beauty in him that awakened the faith of Amram and Jochebed; and they were obedient to it. Was there not a beauty in the face of the dying Stephen? Ought not his murderers to have been obedient to it? They stand in moral contrast to Moses’ parents. Under the finger of God they saw the purpose of God and hid the child.

Now in Moses we see a beautiful power of faith. It got a three-fold victory — three splendid victories, and the very victories you are called to.

First, his faith got the victory over the world. He was a foundling, picked up from the Nile and adopted as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. This was personal degradation translated into adopted magnificence. What did he do with it? He “refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.” What victory over the world that was! We like those things that put worldly honour on us. Moses would not have it; and sure I am faith is set to the same battlefield and challenged to get the like victory to this day.

Next we see Moses getting victory amid the trials and alarms of life. “By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king.” What a terrible thing the life of faith is to nature! You have got a victory today — you must stand again tomorrow. “That we may be able to withstand . . . . and having done all, to stand.” Here the pressure of life was coming on Moses after the attractions of life had got their answer.

Then, in the third instance, Moses had an answer for the claims of God. It is magnificent to see a soul braced in the power of a faith like this. “Through faith he kept the passover.” The destroying angel was going through the land, but the blood was on the lintel. From the very beginning grace has provided the sinner with an answer to the claims of God; and it is the simple office of faith to plead the answer. God provided the blood and faith used it. Christ is God’s provision. He is God’s great ordinance for salvation; and faith travels along with Him from the cross to the realms of glory.

More Commentaries on Hebrews

• Anderson – Types in Hebrews
• Bellett Short Musings on the Epistle to the Hebrews
• Coburn – Hebrews
• Expositor’s Bible Vol 45 Hebrews by T.C. Edwards
• Fortner Discovering Christ in Hebrews
• Grant Notes on the Epistle to the Hebrews
• Owen – Exposition of Hebrews

• 1
• 2
• >>

Then, “by faith they passed through the Red Sea” — “by faith the walls of Jericho fell down” — “by faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not.” And what more shall we say? It is the story that animates the whole of scripture. The story of grace and faith — grace on God’s part and faith on ours — gives animation to the whole book of God. We are never called outside the camp till we are inside the veil.

The early chapters of this epistle show the sinner his title to a home in God’s presence; and then you are to come forth from that home and let the world know that you are a stranger to it. That is the structure of this beautiful epistle. It tells us our title to be in God’s presence before it opens the calling that attaches to us. Before Abraham was called out to a land that he knew not, the “God of glory” appeared to him. Does he ever send a man a warfare at his own charges? Does He ever send you to fight with the world before you are at peace with Himself? Everything is for me from the moment I turn to God. I am called in God, to everything that is for me. I am come “unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,” etc. This is Hebrews 12. Before ever David was hunted as a partridge, he had the anointing oil of God upon him.

We must linger a little on the two closing verses. They are very weighty, precious, pregnant verses. These elders obtained a good report, but with the good report they did not obtain the promise. It reminds me of the prophet Malachi. “A book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord and that thought upon his name. And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts. in that day when I make up my jewels.” They are not His made-up jewels yet, but He has their names in His book, and He will make them up and display them as His jewels by-and-by. So with these elders. Why have they not yet obtained the promise? Because we must first come in, in the rich furniture of this evangelic dispensation, or all they had in their beggarly dispensation would never have done for them.

We find the word “better” constantly occurring in this epistle. “A better testament” — “a better covenant” — “some better thing for us” — “which speaketh better things than that of Abel.” And we find the word “perfect” in constant use also; because now everything is perfected. Everything is perfected that gives God rest, as we have already said, and God is not looking for any satisfaction beyond what Christ gives Him. He has His demand answered — His glory vindicated — His character displayed — and all in Christ.

Now what is this “better thing” in the last verse? If we had not brought in our Christ, so to speak, nothing would have been done. God having introduced Christ in this dispensation, all the old saints that hung on it are perfected. For in one light of it, we look at this epistle (as we will now do briefly and rapidly) as a treatise on perfection. Thus, in chapter 2 we read that it became the glory of God to give us a perfect Saviour; not merely my necessity, but God’s glory required it — “It became him” — consulting for His own glory. It became Him to give the sinner an author to begin salvation, and a captain to close it. The difference between an author and a captain is just the difference between Moses and Joshua. Moses was the author of salvation when he picked up the poor captives in Egypt; Joshua was the captain of salvation when he carried them across the Jordan right into the promised land. Christ is the One who carries us both through the Red Sea and the Jordan — the One who did the initial work of Moses, and the consummating work of Joshua.

Then in Hebrews 5 we read, “being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation.” Not moral perfection — we all know He was morally stainless — but perfection as “the author of salvation.” He would never have been perfect thus if He had not gone on to death; but as it behoved God to give us a perfect Saviour, so it behoved Christ to make Himself a perfect Saviour. Then in Heb. 6: “Let us go on unto perfection,” the apostle says, that is, let us “read our lesson on this subject.” Some read this as if they were to go on till they got no more sin in themselves. That has nothing to say to it. It is as if the apostle said, “I am going to read you a treatise on perfection, and you must come and learn it with me.”

Then he goes on with the subject in Hebrews 7. He says you cannot find this perfection in the law. “The law made nothing perfect.” You must look elsewhere. By the law here is not meant the ten commandments, but the Levitical ordinances. In the midst of these beggarly elements, you must look elsewhere for perfection. Hebrews 9 thus shows you that it is in Christ and tells you that the moment faith has touched the blood the conscience is purged, and Hebrews 10 tells you that the moment Christ touches you you are perfected forever. Not in moral stainlessness in the flesh — there is no such thing here.

The moment Christ touches the apostleship He perfects it. The moment He touches the priesthood He perfects it. The moment He touches the altar He perfects it. The moment He touches the throne He perfects it. And if He perfect these things He will, as to your conscience perfect you, a poor sinner. So this epistle is, in one great light, a treatise on perfection. God gave you a perfect Saviour — Christ made Himself a perfect Saviour. Let me go on to perfection. If I seek it in the law I am in a world of shadows. When I come to Christ I am in the midst of perfection. “And there I stand, poor worm,” as Gambold says.

Therefore these saints could not get the, inheritance till we came in laden with all the glories of this dispensation. But now they can share the inheritance with us when the full time comes.

What glories shine in this epistle! What glories fill the heavens because Christ is there! What glories attach to us because Christ has touched us! Is it no glory to have a purged conscience — to enter into the holiest with boldness — to say to Satan, “Who are you, that you should finger God’s treasure?” We creep and crawl when we should be getting into the midst of these glories and encouraging our hearts.

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