January
4
The words "once
more" indicate the removing of what can be shaken – that is, created
things – so that what cannot be shaken may remain (Hebrews 12:27 NIV).
In the destruction of
Jerusalem – toward which the Letter pointed – the whole earth was shaken so far
as Jewry was concerned. The Temple, as the focal point of that whole world,
crashed even with the ground. The priesthood, as gathered up in the
high-priestly order, passed away. The temple service ended, and the nation
ceased to be an integrated and unified people. These were things capable of
being removed. And yet how long they had stood! What forces they had withstood!
What confidence there was that they could never cease to be! How assured they
were that God was so bound up with it all that it could never be destroyed and
cease to be! How they fought and clung to it to the last terrible extremity!
But it was of no avail. God was no longer wanting the framework and earthly
system, which had taken so much room, and energy, and expenditure, before the
really spiritual was reached. The percentage of spiritual value was so small
after all, and spiritual interests lay so far along the labyrinthine ways of
religious machinery and tradition, that it was not worthwhile. The means to the
end was not immediate, that is, there was far too big a distance between the
means and the end. There was no immediate touch with the real
Divine requirement, and there was far too much that was intermediate. And so it
had to go, and, rather than preserve it, God Himself shook it.
What remained after the
shaking was just that, and that only, which was Christ in a spiritual and
heavenly way: Christ in heaven, and here by His Spirit, the gathering point, or
occasion of assembling; Christ in heaven the High Priest and Sacrifice; the
order of God's house here a purely spiritual and heavenly one – not formal,
arranged, imposed, imitated, or material. Order grows out of life, and if that
Life is Divine, and unchecked, Divine order will be spontaneous.
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