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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadWilliam Burkitt Notes and Observations - Hebrews 13:14 - 13:14
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These words may be considered either relatively or absolutely: consider them with relation to the context, and their sense is this: "How cheerfully ought believers, according to the advice in the foregoing verse, to go forth to Christ without the camp, bearing his reproach, when they consider their present state and condition, that they have no city here below, that was now the seat of divine worship whereunto it was confined, as the Jews had at Jerusalem before the abolishment of their ceremonial worship; but they seek one to come, even the heavenly Jerusalem, where they shall worship God in his temple day and night?"
Consider the words absolutely in themselves, and two things seem to be intended and designed by them:
1. That our condition in this world is very uncertain and unsettled, We have no continuing city here.
2. It implies a tendency to a future settling, and the hopes and expectations we have of a happier condition, into which we shall enter when we go out of this world.
Learn hence, 1. That the world never did, nor ever will, give a state of satisfactory rest unto believers; it will not afford them a city of rest, hardly a place of refuge; they must therefore arise and depart, for this is not their rest.
Learn, 2. That as God has prepared a city of rest for believers, so it is their duty to seek and secure it, and continually endeavour the attainment of it, in the way of his own appointmen: We have not, but we seek.