7/2/2025
As I amble my way through the study of the book of Hebrews, I become lost in the words and the meaning. I find myself reading and having to re-read just to understand the immensity of the sacrifice, His precious blood poured out for me. If there had been only me, He would have gladly done it. Jesus hanging on the cross for my sins, torn and beaten beyond human recognition, His eyes piercing mine, not in hatred or disdain, but in a love so amazing, so divine. The image is indelibly engraved in my memory. O that all would understand and surrender their lives to Him.
Andrew Murray in Holiest of All made this analogy: "We know what it means to wash our clothes in water, how they are plunged into it and saturated with it, until the water carries off all defilement. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin, because the Eternal Spirit imparts the very life and power of which that precious blood-shedding was the outcome and the fruit. This is the power that cleanses the conscience from dead works to serve the living God."
I have always been a fanatic about clean clothes. Mama used to tell me that I didn't need many clothes, just so they were clean. She used an expression - "make clean come." My mama had many expressions whether they'd be called cliches or idioms or dichos or sayings in Spanish. She could have published her own book of phrases and words to live by. She knew and understood scriptures as well, so there was no fooling her. She would have appreciated Murray's analogy between the washing with water and with blood. We are baptized in water, where we die to our sinful nature, and we are raised from the water into the newness of life, raised in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Water and blood, indelibly cleansed.
Murray also said "Just as Christ is the visible revelation on earth and in heaven of the invisible God, so the Holy Spirit again is the communication of the life and redemption of the unseen Christ." So many in the body of Christ do not understand the significance of or the meaning of a Triune God - the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost. So, you see, it is not only the unsaved who have questions. But then, we will always have questions in this life, because we are finite in understanding, and God is infinite wisdom. He is wisdom.
As I am studying Hebrews, I find myself walking through the Proverbs on my Daily Walk adventure. Proverbs 8 begins with the question, "Can't you hear the voice of wisdom? She is standing at the city gates and at every fork in the road, and at the door of every house. Listen to what she says." In verses 11 and 12 of the same chapter Solomon says, "For the value of wisdom is far above rubies; nothing can be compared with it. Wisdom and good judgment live together, for wisdom knows where to discover knowledge and understanding."
As I pray for my family and this nation, above all I pray that every person would come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, that they be filled with the knowledge of His will, that the eyes of their understanding would be enlightened, that all would know the hope to which they have been called. Paul put it so much more eloquently than I in Ephesians 1:15-23, and it is my prayer, my hope, as well:
"Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all."
Bringing things full circle, I will end with words from Andrew Murray in Holiest of All: "Oh let us believe the infinite mysteries with which we are surrounded. And above all, this mystery too, that within us, the blood of Christ, the Lamb of God - that mystery of mysteries - is being applied and kept in full action by the Eternal Spirit, cleansing us and revealing God's presence in us."
Now live for Him!
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