Walter Thomas Turpin
Hebrews 13:12-13
Will you turn with me to another side of this very same truth in Hebrews 13? It is presented to my thoughts and heart just at this moment. It will serve as an illustration of the principle I am seeking to press upon you.
Verse 12: “Wherefore Jesus also,” (I ask your particular attention to this scripture) “that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth, therefore, unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.”
Now observe, [we read earlier that] He tells you He has a place up there in the heavens — mansions — the very best place conceivable, or that our hearts could possibly desire; and that it is His being there gives character to it, and definiteness to it, and that He wants to have us there. How one’s heart delights to think of that! But what do you think of this Hebrews 13? Let me, beloved friends, exercise your conscience a little. May the Lord be pleased to do it through His word tonight! Have you put yourself into Hebrews 13? There is an immensity of sentimentality passing current in minds, and it is difficult, in speaking about the truth of God, to avoid treading on these sentimental thoughts that many have about heaven in these days; I desire to be both faithful and loving in all I say.
But look at Hebrews 13. There is a great deal of what is plain and matter-of-fact about that. “Let us go forth, therefore, unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.” And look at the wisdom of the Spirit of God. If you stay inside, you escape the reproach; if you go outside unto Jesus, you will get the reproach. And what sweetens it? This — that you go forth unto Him! It is not the bare fact that I go outside and that I protest when I get outside against everything that is inside; but I go outside (and I urge this upon you), I go outside as much from affection to Christ as from a divinely-exercised conscience. I go outside, it is true, from a divinely-exercised conscience, because I cannot stay inside, but I am attracted by a living Person outside!
I look up into the heavens, and I say, Where is Jesus?
Inside there [into the Holiest]. Then I go in there!
Here on earth, He is outside [of the camp], and I go outside!
That fills up the two parts of my history.
I go inside to enjoy and share in the delights of home, and I go outside to keep company with the One who has made the home for me up there. Do your hearts enter into that, beloved? Does that suit you?
And, oh, friends, there may be a great many things which this will touch. I have no doubt it is as a word that cuts in a circle. I have no question as to that. Some of us here know how, and when, and where it cuts; but there is this sweetener in it — not only the fact that He is there, but the point that presses upon my heart is, the moment that the Holy Ghost finds Jesus for you, there is your place, if your heart is true to Him. The moment that He shows you Jesus in the many mansions which He has for you outside this ruined earth, then your heart is at once attracted into that place, and He tells you He has them there for you.
Well, can you not bear the break-up of things here now? the withering blasts of sorrow, the rolling waves of trial? It is this which enables one to stand before the piercing arrows of death, and they are shot everywhere this side. There is not a single spot on earth into which they do not penetrate. The insatiable archer fires his darts everywhere in this poor world, and nothing is secure against them. The sunniest region is desolated by these arrows of death. But Jesus goes up there, and says, “I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go, I will come again.” It is not only that He has it for us, it is not only that His presence prepares it — because that is the force of the passage — but He will come and receive, and welcome us into it.
Source – Turpin, Walter Thomas. “A Threefold Cord.” Light for the Pilgrim Path: Our Pilgrimage and His Rest.
[…] used for emphasis, or clarification