God Securing His Inheritance # 1

God Securing His Inheritance # 1

"He found him in a desert land and in the waste howling wilderness. He led Him about, He instructed him, He kept him as the apple of His eye" (Deut. 32:10).

In the previous verse we have the amazing statement that the Lord's "portion" is His people, and that there may be no misunderstanding, the same truth is expressed in another form: "Jacob is the lot of his inheritance." Here in our text we learn something of the pains which God takes to secure His heritage. There are four things to be noted and feasted upon.

1. Jehovah FINDING His people. "He found him in a desert land." It needs hardly to be said that the word "found" necessarily implies a "search." Here then we have presented to our view the amazing spectacle of a seeking God! Sin came in between the creature and the Creator, causing alienation and separation. Not only sin, but, as the result of the Fall, every human being enters this world with a mind that is "enmity against God." Consequently, there is none who seeks after God. Therefore, God, in His marvelous condescension and grace, becomes the Seeker.

The word "found" not only implies a search but, when we consider the sinful character and unworthiness of the objects of His search, it also tells of the love of the Seeker. The great God becomes the Seeker because He set His heart upon those whom He marked out to be the recipients of His sovereign favors. God had set His heart upon Abraham, and therefore did He seek and find him amid the heathen idolaters in Ur of Chaldea. God set His heart upon Jacob, and therefore did He seek out and find him as a fugitive from his brother's vengeance, when he lay asleep on the bare earth. So too it was because He had loved Moses with an everlasting love that the Lord sought out and found him in Midian, at "the backside of the desert." Equally true is this with every real Christian living in the world today: "I was found by those who did not seek me; I revealed Myself to those who did not ask for Me" (Romans 10:20). Has God found you? To help you answer this question, ponder the remainder of the first clause of our text: "He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness." Is that how this world appears unto you? Do you find everything under the sun only "vanity and vexation of spirit?" Are you made to groan daily at what you witness on every hand? Do you find that the world furnishes nothing to satisfy the heart, yes nothing to even minister to it? Is the world, really, a "waste howling wilderness" to you?

Let a second test be applied: when God truly "finds" one of His own He reveals Himself. He imparts to the soul a realization of His sovereign majesty, His awesome power, His ineffable holiness, His wondrous mercy. Has He? "This is life eternal, that they might know You, the One true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent" (John 17:3).

Here is a third test: If God has revealed Himself, He has given you a sight of yourself, for in His light we "see light." A most humbling, painful, and never to be forgotten experience this is. When God was revealed to Abraham, he said, "I am but dust and ashes" (Gen. 18:27). When He was revealed to Isaiah, the prophet said, "Woe is me for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips" (Isaiah 6:5). When God revealed Himself to Job, he said, "I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:6) - note, not merely I abhor my wicked ways, but my vile self. Is this your experience, my reader? Have you discovered your depravity and lost condition? Have you found there is not a single good thing in you? Have you seen yourself to be fit for and deserving only of hell? Have you, truly? Then that is good evidence, yes, it is proof positive that the Lord God has "found" you.

2. Jehovah LEADING His people.  "He led him about." The "finding" is not the end, but only the beginning of God's dealings with His own. Having found him, He remains never more to leave him. Now that He has found His wandering child He teaches him to walk in the Narrow Way. There is a beautiful word on God "leading" in Hosea 11:3: "I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms." Just as a fond mother takes her little one, whose feet are yet too weak and untrained to walk alone, so the Lord takes His people by their arms and leads them in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake. Such is His promise: "He will keep the feet of His saints" (1 Sam. 2:9). 

~A. W. Pink~

(continued with # 2)