The grand principle of the divine life is faith — faith that takes and enjoys all that God has given. This is true in reference to the people of God in all ages. All that God reveals, faith may have, and all that faith can grasp, the soul may abidingly enjoy.
We all live far below our privileges. We are satisfied, many of us, with merely knowing salvation, while at the same time, we taste but little of holy communion with the Saviour. We are satisfied with merely knowing that a relationship exists, without earnestly and jealously cultivating the affections belonging to it. This is the cause of much of our coldness and barrenness. Our hearts do not sigh, as they should, after the higher walks of spiritual relationship. We are satisfied with having the foundation laid and are not as anxious as we should be to add to the spiritual superstructure.
But let us look at Israel’s case. Surely no one would say that an Israelite ought to have sought nothing beyond the blood-stained lintel. It is plain he ought to have fixed his steady gaze on the vine-clad hills of the promised land. The blood-stained lintel was the starting post; the land of promise, the goal. It was Israel’s high privilege not only to have the assurance of full deliverance from the hand of Pharaoh, but also to cross the Jordan and pluck the grapes of Eshcol. It was to their shame that with the clusters of Eshcol before them, they could still long after “the leeks, the onions, and the garlic” of Egypt.
Unbelief
But how was this? What kept them back? Just that hateful thing which robs us of the precious privilege of treading the very highest stages of the divine life — unbelief! This was what caused Israel to wander in the desert for forty tedious years. Instead of looking at Jehovah’s power to bring them into the land, they looked at the enemy’s power to keep them out of it. It was one thing to admire the grapes of Eshcol when brought to their tent doors by the energy of others; it was quite another to move onward, in the energy of faith, and pluck those grapes for themselves. The land was all that could be desired, but the difficulties were too great for them, and they had not faith to trust God. Israel “despised the pleasant land,’’ and, “in their hearts, turned back again into Egypt.”
For us as Christians, we need to be encouraged to arise and, in the energy of a full, unquestioning trust in Christ, tread the very highest stages of the life of faith. Having our solid foundation laid in the blood of the cross, it is our privilege not only to be victorious over Amalek or indwelling sin, but also to taste of the old corn of the land of Canaan, to pluck the grapes of Eshcol, and to delight ourselves in its flowing tide of milk and honey. In other words, we may enter into the living and elevated experiences which flow from habitual fellowship with a risen Christ, with whom we are linked in the power of an endless life.
But let us never forget that this faith involves the full surrender of the heart to Christ, as well as the full acceptance of Christ for the heart. This is too much lost sight of and, hence, the uncertain course and fluctuating experience. There is no progress. We cannot expect to progress with Christ in one hand and the world in the other. We can never enjoy “the grapes of Eshcol” while our hearts are longing after “the flesh pots of Egypt.” Having all divinely and eternally settled by the blood of the cross, may we press forward, with holy energy and decision, “toward the mark, for the prize of our high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
C. H. Mackintosh, adapted