IN all ages God blessed His people according to the revelation which He gave of Himself, as the object of their faith (see Heb. 11). He made Himself known to Abraham, for example, as the ALMIGHTY; and blessed him as the depositary of promise. Called of God, he leaves his own people and country, though he knew not whither he was going; He believes God and obeys, having nothing but the promise. He was a stranger in a strange land. But his strangership was his gain. It brought him, in spirit, nearer to God Himself. It led him to desire a better country. He had no wish to go back to his own. God, known as the Almighty, was his trust, his shield, his reward. In the presence of the king of Sodom, though a stranger in a strange land, he confessed and honored the Lord as “the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth.” He refused to be enriched by the world. He was content to wait upon God, to whom both heaven and earth belonged. Enough for the heart of faith that God knows the need and how and when to meet it.
The God of promise was the object of his faith; He had nothing else, for God gave him none inheritance in the land, “no, not so much as to set his foot on: yet He promised that He would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child” (Acts 7). It was thus that he honored God as a stranger and a pilgrim, and God is not ashamed to be called Abraham’s God. What a testimony! Of whom, we may ask, could God now say so much? Abraham was a pilgrim and a stranger on the ground of promise; we on the higher ground of oneness with a Christ rejected on earth and accepted in heaven. Even our citizenship is in heaven, from whence we look for the Saviour. Of “the fathers” the Spirit of truth bears this blessed testimony in Hebrews 11: — “But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He hath prepared for them a city.”
Israel, the natural seed of Abraham, was in covenant relationship with God, as Jehovah. All temporal blessings in a pleasant land, the choicest of earth’s treasures, are their proper blessing. Through their rebellion they have been dispersed under His chastening hand, but they are His chosen people, and will yet be abundantly blessed, and peacefully settled in the land of promise. But the Christian’s blessing goes far beyond a promise, or a goodly land. And he knows God, not only as the Almighty and as Jehovah, but as Father. “I will be,” He says, “a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” (2 Con 6:18). Promises were the stronghold of the Jew; the Christian rests in accomplished redemption. Nothing more can be added to this blessing — nothing more can be desired. More may be revealed to him, and all shall yet be better understood; but these words, “TO HIMSELF,” are enough. Not only has He chosen us to be like Himself, but near Himself. Surely it is the expression of the most tender, the most marvelous, the most delighting love.
Here are two words for our long and deep meditation. Nothing could be more fitted to calm down every rising fear, and hush to rest all anxieties as to the future. Dear fellow-believer, must thou ever distrust the love that chooses to have thee near as Christ Himself is near? It is marvelous in our eyes. Called to be like Him — called to be near Him; and this, too, is “according to the good pleasure of His will.” The children’s place and portion will be the display, throughout eternity, of the peculiar pleasure of the Father. Now it is revealed to faith, and as true as it will be then. But then all that now hinders our enjoyment of this, our high calling in Christ Jesus, will have passed away forever.
A. M.