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We Gentile believers, who have not been under the bonds of the law and have the NT Scriptures, should consider how great is our privilege above the believing Jews in the early days of Christianity. They had only Moses and the prophets; and these did not know the great and wonderful change which would take place after the cutting off of the Messiah—the parenthesis between the sixty-ninth and the seventieth week of Daniel’s prophecy (9:25-27). There was the exception of a few passing hints which only shone out after the True Light came—when the Spirit led beyond what they could previously bear.
That system ceased which had been ordained of God for Israel and had existed for fifteen centuries: “carnal ordinances” (Heb 9:10; Eph 2:15—NC), which men could see with their natural eyes, and in which every soul of Israel might take part. All that was now set aside (until the Millennial Kingdom - Jer 31:31-33; Eze 36:25-27—NC) by spiritual sacrifice and by the priesthood of every believer having become a priest (it’s been said that Jews have a priesthood, but Christians are a priesthood - 1Pe 2:5, 9; Rev 1:6; 5:10—NC), the Lord Jesus Himself being their great High Priest (Heb 4:14). It was no longer sights and sounds acting on the senses, but now eternal and unseen things discerned only by the eye of faith based upon the Word of God (2Co 4:18).
Hitherto Jerusalem had been the place where God had chosen to put His name (2Ch 6:6; Jhn 4:20); thither they were to bring their sacrifices and offerings, and there at the altar where He recorded His name He was to come and bless them (Ex 20:24). But under the new order of things how great the change! Jerusalem is no longer the place where men worship truly. “But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth” (Jn 4:21-23).
It is well for us to remember that these believers did not see this written till more than fifty years after Pentecost. Neither James, nor Peter, nor Paul when at first coming on the scene, unfolds as yet such a truth, so far as we now know. The time had not arrived till a later day for Paul to tell them, “Let us go forth outside the camp (the Jewish system) bearing His reproach” (Heb 13:13). This they were not yet prepared to do. Neither were they told till then, “We have an altar whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle” (Heb 13:10). This last thing the saints in Jerusalem had all been doing, and continued to do till the Epistle to the Hebrews was written, more than thirty years after Pentecost.
If we take these things into serious consideration, we shall the better understand how these saints could continue to follow Moses, “all zealous of the law” (out of ignorance, but saved– Act 21:20—NC), for so many years after the Cross. How many believers think that from the moment of the utterance of the Messiah’s dying words, “It is finished,” when “the vail of the temple was rent in twain,” there was an end, not merely in principle before God but in fact, of Judaism, material sacrifices, priest, temple, with all other legal ordinances?
In Acts 6:7 we read of a great crowd of priests obeying the faith; and believers who read it now jump to the conclusion that they then gave up all sacerdotal functions, because the Lord added them to the Church. But this is premature: there is no ground to believe it, but that they continued their service in the sanctuary. How slow most of us find it to apply a principle so new, strange and deep!
If we pay attention to Hebrews 8:13, we see that the first covenant which had “ordinances of divine service and a worldly sanctuary” (Heb 9:1) was becoming old and growing aged, hence “ready to vanish away” (Heb 8:13). Thus the Levitical regime had not yet disappeared; and it was made known to the Christian Jews only at the close, before the city and temple fell under public and divine judgement. A little later (A.D. 70), Jerusalem was destroyed and not one stone left on anther of the temple. Then Judaism finally passed away. Its death-blow had been given at the crucifixion.
During this interval God patiently bore with the “untoward generation” (Act 2:40; 17:30), delivering out from among them “daily such as should be saved” (Act 2:47). Up to this the Jewish saints continued to worship according to the law and the prophets; to which they superadded elementary Christian truth, putting new wine into the old skins (Mat 9:17). “They, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house” (Act 2:46). Here we see two things going on together. Their old reverence and attachment to the temple was evidently retained.
We know with certainty that up to Acts 21:20, or some twenty-seven years after Pentecost, the many myriads (or ten-thousands) who believed were all zealous for the law. Among these James, who was a pillar at Jerusalem (along with Peter and John – Gal 2:9—NC), and even Paul too who “had come with offerings and alms to his nation” (Acts 24:17—NC), who were not behind in deference to the Mosaic routine.
It was at James’ instigation that Paul agreed to prove his subjection to Moses, and that he had not, as had been calumniously reported, persuaded the Jews who dwelt among the Gentiles to forsake Moses and the customs, and the circumcision of their children. Hence Paul went, with the others who had a vow, into the temple, and had he not been hindered (Act 21:33), would have offered the offering which was ordained for the Nazarite. Clearly he had not learned the truths he was taught some years later after his arrest and first imprisonment (Act 21:17—26).
But can it be that these many thousands of believing Jews who were zealous for the law were guilty, when offering a lamb, of the terrible crime equivalent to “cutting off a dog’s neck”? Or would any one of them in offering an oblation be as if he offered swine’s blood (Isa 66:3)? No. This solely refers to the future day when the man of sin, Antichrist, sits there, and the temple is the scene of apostasy and defiance of Jehovah, and the sacrifices utterly abominable in His eyes. What has all this to do with the temple, where after Pentecost Peter and John use to go up stately for prayer (Act 3:1)? Is it possible for God to permit of such adhesion if the old ritual was so evil in the Jewish saints, without raising a voice against continuance in it for so many years?
So far from it indeed, that long after His devoted servant Paul was in prison for what many call building again the things he had “destroyed” (Gal 2:18), the Lord comes to him to comfort him without uttering one word of rebuke for what the advice of James brought upon him. “Be of good cheer, Paul,” says He, “for as thou has testified of Me at Jerusalem, so must thou at Rome.” Peter had earlier a vision to direct him to go outside the Jewish fold and learn that “what God had cleansed” was not common nor unclean (Act 10:15; 11:9). His preaching in Acts 3 does not rise above the earth: blessings for Israel if they would repent, “when times of refreshing would come from the presence of the Lord.” Peter clearly had much to learn (realize that a great deal of the New Testament had yet to be written by Paul, so they lacked much of what God’s will and desires were at that time—NC).
Had the teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews been given to the Jewish disciples in the early days of Christianity, they could not have continued on the old lines without being guilty of despising God’s Word and offending Him (by continuing in the Law—NC). How far it was agreeable to Him or accepted, we cannot say; but if itself is utterly offensive, it is unlike God to allow all the saints, apostles, prophets, etc., to continue sinning without remonstrance (complaint or reproof—NC). We see what the consequence must have been if, after abandoning the “shadows” for the “substance” (Col 2:17; Heb 10:34), in coming to the Savior, if they fell away from Him and went back to the shadows. It would be “crucifying for themselves the Son of God and putting Him to an open shame” (Heb 6:6).
Up to this time, the saints had evidently followed Moses, and, although believing in the Messiah, had failed to apprehend the results of His death, resurrection and ascension. They had not profited by the Jewish elements as read in the heavenly light. The time had now arrived when they must “leave the word of the beginning of Christ, and go on to what belongs to full growth.” (Heb 6:1). Theirs was now a heavenly calling. Jerusalem was not the place of worshiping the Father, revealed by the Son (Jhn 4:21, 23).
It was now their privilege to enter in spirit into the Holiest where Christ had control, as their great High Priest; into no figures of the true but heaven itself, the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched and not man. Thenceforth all the Jewish saints, like all believers, are invited to approach within the rent vail, having boldness to enter. Such a condition the blood of Jewish sacrifices never did nor could procure (Heb 10:11).
Blessed this was for those now by faith familiar with the old sacrifices, etc., to know them more than being fulfilled in Christ. But one must perceive what of divinely given courage it required, added to faith, in order to turn away from that which was dearer than life (the Law—NC) to a godly Jew; established as it had been by Jehovah’s judicial authority under which every transgression received a righteous retribution (punishment). No Gentile believer this day in leaving any of the sects or human organizations, which never were of God but of man’s device, can be compared with a Jew giving up what till then had God’s sanction and command in all its details. It is plain that the believing Jews added Christianity to their Judaism (Judeo-Christian, a term not accepted by the Jews but wrongfully accepted by Gentiles—NC), and most patiently did God deal with them (“winked at” or temporarily forgave without punishment—NC).
But it is no less plain with what warmth Paul writes to the Gentile Galatians who were adding the law to Christianity. How severe are his words! “O senseless Galatians, who bewitched you?” etc. (3:1). They were also observing Jewish festival “days and months and times and years” (still obeying the law, Gal 4:10—NC). To the Gentiles they were “beggarly elements” (4:9), a return in principle to idolatry from which they had been delivered.
But Christendom, not satisfied with Jewish festivals, had added to its calendar many pagan festivals with Christian names and so-called saints-day, some of them reprobate in character. Can we close our eyes to the manifest increase of ritualism everywhere? “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump,” as Paul told the Judaizing Galatians (5:2). We may and must be accused by the old serpent; but we ought not to be deceived, as the whole world will be.
–John Stephen Frecker Cox (1826-1907)
MJS daily devotional excerpt for October 24
“I proclaim not myself, but Christ Jesus as Lord and Master, and myself your bondsman for the sake of Jesus“ (2 Cor. 4:5).
All Christians are fit for heaven, but all too few are fit for earth. One of the true tests of one’s spiritual growth is in one’s influence: affecting others that they not only begin the Christian life but “grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18).
“We may be separated and yet not Christ-like; we may be orthodox and yet not spiritual; we may be ‘dead unto sin’ and yet not ‘alive unto God.’ We may have cut ourselves loose from every form of worldliness but in so doing we have become critical and self-righteous. We may be loyal defenders of the faith, yea, ready even to lay down our lives for it and in so doing become bitter and unloving.”
“We may often have a measure of the power of the Spirit, but if there is not a large measure of the Spirit as the Spirit of grace and love, the defect will be manifest in our work. We may be made the means of conversion, but we will never help people on to a higher standard of spiritual life, and when we pass away a great deal of our work will pass away too.”
“One may have a great zeal in God’s service, and may be used to influence many for good, and yet, when weighed in the balance of love, be found sadly wanting. In the heat of controversy or under unjust criticism, haste of temper, slowness to forgive and forget, quick words and sharp judgments, often reveal an easily wounded sensitiveness, which proves how little the Spirit of the Lord Jesus has full possession or real mastery of the life.”—Andrew Murray (May 9, 1828-1917)
That system ceased which had been ordained of God for Israel and had existed for fifteen centuries: “carnal ordinances” (Heb 9:10; Eph 2:15—NC), which men could see with their natural eyes, and in which every soul of Israel might take part. All that was now set aside (until the Millennial Kingdom - Jer 31:31-33; Eze 36:25-27—NC) by spiritual sacrifice and by the priesthood of every believer having become a priest (it’s been said that Jews have a priesthood, but Christians are a priesthood - 1Pe 2:5, 9; Rev 1:6; 5:10—NC), the Lord Jesus Himself being their great High Priest (Heb 4:14). It was no longer sights and sounds acting on the senses, but now eternal and unseen things discerned only by the eye of faith based upon the Word of God (2Co 4:18).
Hitherto Jerusalem had been the place where God had chosen to put His name (2Ch 6:6; Jhn 4:20); thither they were to bring their sacrifices and offerings, and there at the altar where He recorded His name He was to come and bless them (Ex 20:24). But under the new order of things how great the change! Jerusalem is no longer the place where men worship truly. “But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth” (Jn 4:21-23).
It is well for us to remember that these believers did not see this written till more than fifty years after Pentecost. Neither James, nor Peter, nor Paul when at first coming on the scene, unfolds as yet such a truth, so far as we now know. The time had not arrived till a later day for Paul to tell them, “Let us go forth outside the camp (the Jewish system) bearing His reproach” (Heb 13:13). This they were not yet prepared to do. Neither were they told till then, “We have an altar whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle” (Heb 13:10). This last thing the saints in Jerusalem had all been doing, and continued to do till the Epistle to the Hebrews was written, more than thirty years after Pentecost.
If we take these things into serious consideration, we shall the better understand how these saints could continue to follow Moses, “all zealous of the law” (out of ignorance, but saved– Act 21:20—NC), for so many years after the Cross. How many believers think that from the moment of the utterance of the Messiah’s dying words, “It is finished,” when “the vail of the temple was rent in twain,” there was an end, not merely in principle before God but in fact, of Judaism, material sacrifices, priest, temple, with all other legal ordinances?
In Acts 6:7 we read of a great crowd of priests obeying the faith; and believers who read it now jump to the conclusion that they then gave up all sacerdotal functions, because the Lord added them to the Church. But this is premature: there is no ground to believe it, but that they continued their service in the sanctuary. How slow most of us find it to apply a principle so new, strange and deep!
If we pay attention to Hebrews 8:13, we see that the first covenant which had “ordinances of divine service and a worldly sanctuary” (Heb 9:1) was becoming old and growing aged, hence “ready to vanish away” (Heb 8:13). Thus the Levitical regime had not yet disappeared; and it was made known to the Christian Jews only at the close, before the city and temple fell under public and divine judgement. A little later (A.D. 70), Jerusalem was destroyed and not one stone left on anther of the temple. Then Judaism finally passed away. Its death-blow had been given at the crucifixion.
During this interval God patiently bore with the “untoward generation” (Act 2:40; 17:30), delivering out from among them “daily such as should be saved” (Act 2:47). Up to this the Jewish saints continued to worship according to the law and the prophets; to which they superadded elementary Christian truth, putting new wine into the old skins (Mat 9:17). “They, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house” (Act 2:46). Here we see two things going on together. Their old reverence and attachment to the temple was evidently retained.
We know with certainty that up to Acts 21:20, or some twenty-seven years after Pentecost, the many myriads (or ten-thousands) who believed were all zealous for the law. Among these James, who was a pillar at Jerusalem (along with Peter and John – Gal 2:9—NC), and even Paul too who “had come with offerings and alms to his nation” (Acts 24:17—NC), who were not behind in deference to the Mosaic routine.
It was at James’ instigation that Paul agreed to prove his subjection to Moses, and that he had not, as had been calumniously reported, persuaded the Jews who dwelt among the Gentiles to forsake Moses and the customs, and the circumcision of their children. Hence Paul went, with the others who had a vow, into the temple, and had he not been hindered (Act 21:33), would have offered the offering which was ordained for the Nazarite. Clearly he had not learned the truths he was taught some years later after his arrest and first imprisonment (Act 21:17—26).
But can it be that these many thousands of believing Jews who were zealous for the law were guilty, when offering a lamb, of the terrible crime equivalent to “cutting off a dog’s neck”? Or would any one of them in offering an oblation be as if he offered swine’s blood (Isa 66:3)? No. This solely refers to the future day when the man of sin, Antichrist, sits there, and the temple is the scene of apostasy and defiance of Jehovah, and the sacrifices utterly abominable in His eyes. What has all this to do with the temple, where after Pentecost Peter and John use to go up stately for prayer (Act 3:1)? Is it possible for God to permit of such adhesion if the old ritual was so evil in the Jewish saints, without raising a voice against continuance in it for so many years?
So far from it indeed, that long after His devoted servant Paul was in prison for what many call building again the things he had “destroyed” (Gal 2:18), the Lord comes to him to comfort him without uttering one word of rebuke for what the advice of James brought upon him. “Be of good cheer, Paul,” says He, “for as thou has testified of Me at Jerusalem, so must thou at Rome.” Peter had earlier a vision to direct him to go outside the Jewish fold and learn that “what God had cleansed” was not common nor unclean (Act 10:15; 11:9). His preaching in Acts 3 does not rise above the earth: blessings for Israel if they would repent, “when times of refreshing would come from the presence of the Lord.” Peter clearly had much to learn (realize that a great deal of the New Testament had yet to be written by Paul, so they lacked much of what God’s will and desires were at that time—NC).
Had the teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews been given to the Jewish disciples in the early days of Christianity, they could not have continued on the old lines without being guilty of despising God’s Word and offending Him (by continuing in the Law—NC). How far it was agreeable to Him or accepted, we cannot say; but if itself is utterly offensive, it is unlike God to allow all the saints, apostles, prophets, etc., to continue sinning without remonstrance (complaint or reproof—NC). We see what the consequence must have been if, after abandoning the “shadows” for the “substance” (Col 2:17; Heb 10:34), in coming to the Savior, if they fell away from Him and went back to the shadows. It would be “crucifying for themselves the Son of God and putting Him to an open shame” (Heb 6:6).
Up to this time, the saints had evidently followed Moses, and, although believing in the Messiah, had failed to apprehend the results of His death, resurrection and ascension. They had not profited by the Jewish elements as read in the heavenly light. The time had now arrived when they must “leave the word of the beginning of Christ, and go on to what belongs to full growth.” (Heb 6:1). Theirs was now a heavenly calling. Jerusalem was not the place of worshiping the Father, revealed by the Son (Jhn 4:21, 23).
It was now their privilege to enter in spirit into the Holiest where Christ had control, as their great High Priest; into no figures of the true but heaven itself, the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched and not man. Thenceforth all the Jewish saints, like all believers, are invited to approach within the rent vail, having boldness to enter. Such a condition the blood of Jewish sacrifices never did nor could procure (Heb 10:11).
Blessed this was for those now by faith familiar with the old sacrifices, etc., to know them more than being fulfilled in Christ. But one must perceive what of divinely given courage it required, added to faith, in order to turn away from that which was dearer than life (the Law—NC) to a godly Jew; established as it had been by Jehovah’s judicial authority under which every transgression received a righteous retribution (punishment). No Gentile believer this day in leaving any of the sects or human organizations, which never were of God but of man’s device, can be compared with a Jew giving up what till then had God’s sanction and command in all its details. It is plain that the believing Jews added Christianity to their Judaism (Judeo-Christian, a term not accepted by the Jews but wrongfully accepted by Gentiles—NC), and most patiently did God deal with them (“winked at” or temporarily forgave without punishment—NC).
But it is no less plain with what warmth Paul writes to the Gentile Galatians who were adding the law to Christianity. How severe are his words! “O senseless Galatians, who bewitched you?” etc. (3:1). They were also observing Jewish festival “days and months and times and years” (still obeying the law, Gal 4:10—NC). To the Gentiles they were “beggarly elements” (4:9), a return in principle to idolatry from which they had been delivered.
But Christendom, not satisfied with Jewish festivals, had added to its calendar many pagan festivals with Christian names and so-called saints-day, some of them reprobate in character. Can we close our eyes to the manifest increase of ritualism everywhere? “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump,” as Paul told the Judaizing Galatians (5:2). We may and must be accused by the old serpent; but we ought not to be deceived, as the whole world will be.
–John Stephen Frecker Cox (1826-1907)
MJS daily devotional excerpt for October 24
“I proclaim not myself, but Christ Jesus as Lord and Master, and myself your bondsman for the sake of Jesus“ (2 Cor. 4:5).
All Christians are fit for heaven, but all too few are fit for earth. One of the true tests of one’s spiritual growth is in one’s influence: affecting others that they not only begin the Christian life but “grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18).
“We may be separated and yet not Christ-like; we may be orthodox and yet not spiritual; we may be ‘dead unto sin’ and yet not ‘alive unto God.’ We may have cut ourselves loose from every form of worldliness but in so doing we have become critical and self-righteous. We may be loyal defenders of the faith, yea, ready even to lay down our lives for it and in so doing become bitter and unloving.”
“We may often have a measure of the power of the Spirit, but if there is not a large measure of the Spirit as the Spirit of grace and love, the defect will be manifest in our work. We may be made the means of conversion, but we will never help people on to a higher standard of spiritual life, and when we pass away a great deal of our work will pass away too.”
“One may have a great zeal in God’s service, and may be used to influence many for good, and yet, when weighed in the balance of love, be found sadly wanting. In the heat of controversy or under unjust criticism, haste of temper, slowness to forgive and forget, quick words and sharp judgments, often reveal an easily wounded sensitiveness, which proves how little the Spirit of the Lord Jesus has full possession or real mastery of the life.”—Andrew Murray (May 9, 1828-1917)