Jesus, I need not say, defeated him to the highest point of victory; and we must seek for increase of faith to do likewise. It is faith that does this. “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” And faith waits on God and for God.
God has prospects for us as well as the devil. Most surely. But they are, morally, the very opposite. The devil’s promised enjoyments and greatness may be entered on at once; the Lord’s inheritance must be entered on, in its fullness, only in resurrection; as Moses had to die on the Mount.
The duty of the soul is, to open the eye and the heart to the Lord’s objects, and to shut both to the devil’s-to take care neither to be indifferent to the one, nor moved or fascinated by the other. It is the spirit that finds its sympathy with the one, while the flesh consents only to the other. And, in a saint, the flesh works in that way. Lot lifted up his own eyes, and chose a present well-watered plain, though the cities of the uncircumcised were there; Abraham lifted up his eyes, under direction from God, and God gave him the distant but sure prospect of the land where the glory was to be in due season.
These things are different surely. Let us nourish our hearts only with the prospects which the Lord opens to us; and though that will call us off from many a present natural delight, it will cast us surely on a good which, as we see in this case of Moses, will exceed all our expectations; and so fill the heart as to leave nothing without its abundant satiating joy forever. Like the Queen of Sheba, when God’s good thing comes, we shall say of it, “the half was not told.”
“See where the Lamb in glory stands, Encircled with His radiant bands, And join th’ angelic powers- For all that height of glorious bliss, Our everlasting portion is, And all that heaven is ours.”
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