Hebrews 11:35-36 Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance… We have here an exhibition of faith in one of its noblest forms. It is much for faith to commit itself to suffering, without casting about for a means of deliverance. But faith wins a victory that is greater still, at such times as release is actually presented, and it waives the temptation away. For the deliverance that is spoken of here is a thing that lies shaped and ready; it is held ever before them as a near and inviting opportunity. And the struggle in such cases is not merely to refrain from attempting an escape, but to reject the outlets that are already open, there to tempt and importune by one's very side, with the short road they offer back into life and liberty. I. Let us take the truth before us AS A CHARACTERISTIC OF THE SAVIOUR'S CONSECRATION. AS His people's Surety and His people's Example, at once the Foundation and the Pattern of all their obedience, it holds true in regard to Christ that " He accepted not deliverance." Is it not true that in our views of Christ and His Surety-work we are apt to limit ourselves to the initial condescension, and forget the life-long struggle? We are apt to fix our attention on the first grand compliance, when the covenant agreement was embraced. Then and thenceforward we regard His obedience as a matter of course — a matter, indeed, involving both continued surrender and continued suffering, but a matter whose cost He had counted, to whose endurance He was shut up, and from whose bitter experiences there was no opportunity of release. And most true it is that the endurance of a Saviour was a matter of course with Him, if what we mean is this, that all the faithfulness of all His mediatorial nature was pledged, and all the energies of His Divine will were directed to the prosecution and the final fulfilment of His task. But if we mean that He was committed to His work so securely as that there was no room for the temptation to recoil from it on His human side, and no battle with self in suppressing that temptation, then we are wrong. For the life-long temptation of Christ lay just here. Over and over again deliverance presented itself; its possibility was suggested by a power from without, its offer was responded to by the weak flesh within. And the victory was of faith — faith like our own — when the Saviour repelled it, and, having escape set before Him, accepted it not. He accepted not deliverance, that He might obtain the resurrection, and the resurrection was better than any deliverance. He laid down His life that He might take it again, and the life re-taken was more powerful and glorious — oh, how far! — than the life He originally laid down. II. WHAT WAS TRUE IN THE HISTORY OF THE MASTER IS TRUE IN THE HISTORY OF THE DISCIPLE; FAITH, ON OCCASION, MUST BE STRONG TO REFUSE, "ACCEPTING NOT DELIVERANCE." Doubtless the task given Christ to accomplish was different in many respects from the tasks given to us; and as His task was, so was His temptation to recoil from it — different in intensity, perhaps different, too, in kind. But, after all, the refusals have this great point in common, that in each ease there is the rejection of relief, because relief is to be purchased at the expense of duty. Making all due allowance for distinctions, in the saint's case, as in Christ's, there is abundant opportunity for the exercise of faith in the aspect we speak of, its manifestation and triumph in declinature. And perhaps never is faith so signal as when it reveals itself just in this way; never is its nature so pure and exalted as when it toils and endures, "not accepting deliverance." For it is not merely that you make a grace of necessity, and settle yourself down in submission to suffer, because you recognise the suffering you endure to be inevitable; that is something, nay, it is much by itself, for there are various ways of enduring the inevitable, and there are many who meet and experience it amiss. But the victory of faith that we speak of lies here, that when the cup of relief is actually brought near, and the relief that it offers is urged by the tempter, commended by the world, and pled for by all the self-indulgence that lies deep in the human heart — I say the victory of faith lies here, that you bid the proposal away from you, rejecting the outlet for conscience sake and for Christ's. Such is the principle; and on its special applications our daily experience sheds light. Perhaps the burden appointed you is the care of others. Interests may happen to be linked with your conduct, lives may happen to be left in your keeping, whose needs you are obliged to consult for, whose sufferings you are called to alleviate, whose very sins and infirmities you are bound to restrain. There by their side is your post, the opportunity which Providence has given you to use, the task which Providence has assigned you to pursue; and there are times when the work seems thankless, the success doubtful, and the the depressing and irksome. Are there not those whose life, in the appointment of God, seems largely a sacrifice to such claims; and when the temptation comes to absolve themselves, as come it may, through the sense of a seeming failure, the attractions of a pleasanter lot, or the possibility of shifting the responsibility on others, are not theirs the triumph and reward brought before us in the text, as they cleave to the post of self-denial allotted them, "not accepting deliverance"? Or perhaps the burden is more personal, and connects itself with circumstances in your own lot. Embarrassment in worldly affairs, — who knows not what possibilities of temptation lie here, in the retrieving of credit at the expense of truthfulness, and the purchase of relief by the sacrifice of honesty. Is not faith triumphant in declinature when it leads the sufferer at such seasons to resolve, "Let perplexities thicken, and circumstances hem, and disasters threaten as they may, I will abide by whatsoever things are pure, and refuse extrication till extrication is possible with honour, in the way which God discloses, on the terms of which conscience approves"; thus refusing deliverence? But why go farther? The instances are as various as the paths of obedience and suffering, which God in His providence appoints, and the victories possible are as manifold as the temptations to evade or deflect from them. (W. A. Gray.) Parallel Verses KJV: Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: |
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