God Securing His Inheritance # 2

God Securing His Inheritance # 2

"He will keep the feet of His saints" (1 Sam. 2:9). There is a threefold "leading" of the Lord:

EVANGELICAL. The Lord Jesus declared, "I am the way, the truth and the life: no man comes unto the Father but by Me" (John 14:6). But again He said, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him" (John 6:44). Here then is how God leads: He leads the poor sinner to Christ. Have you, my reader, been brought to the Saviour? Is Christ your only hope? Are you trusting in the sufficiency of His precious blood? If so, what cause have you to praise God for having led you to His blessed Son!

DOCTRINAL. The Lord Jesus declared, "When He the Spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into all the truth" (John 16:13). We are not capable of discovering or entering into the Truth of ourselves, therefore do we have to be guided into it. "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God" (Romans 8:14). It is He who leads us beside the "still waters" of His promises. How thankful we ought to be for every ray of light which has been granted us from the lamp of God's Word.

PROVIDENTIAL. "Because of your great compassion you did not abandon them in the desert. By day the pillar of cloud did not cease to guide them on their path, nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take" (Neh. 9:19). Just as Jehovah led Israel of old, so today He leads us step by step through this wilderness-world. What a mercy this is. "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord and He delight in his way" ({Psalm 37:23). Yes, every detail of our lives is regulated by the Most High.

All my times are in Your hand,
All events at Your command,
All must come and last and end,
As does please our Heavenly Friend.

3. God INSTRUCTING His People.

"He instructed him." So He does us. It was to instruct us that God, in His great mercy, gave us the Scriptures. He has not left us to grope our way in darkness, but has provided us with a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. Nor are we left to our own unaided powers in the study of God's Word. We are supplies with an infallible Instructor. The Holy Spirit is our teacher, "You have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things...the anointing you have received of Him abides in you, and you need not that any man teach you" (1 John 2:20, 27).

Right views of God's truth are not an intellectual attainment, but a blessing bestowed upon us by God. It is written, "a man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven" (John 3:27). No matter how legibly a letter may be written, if the recipient be blind he cannot read it. So we are told, "the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14). And spiritual discernment is imparted only by the Holy Spirit.

"He instructed him." How patiently God bears with our dullness! How graciously He repeats "line upon line and precept upon precept!" Yet slow as we are, He preserves us, for He has promised to perfect that which concerns us (Psalm 138:8). Has He "instructed" you, my reader? Has He taught you the total depravity of man and the utter inability of the sinner to deliver himself? Has He taught you the humbling truth "You must be born again," and that regeneration is the sole work of God - man having no part or hand in it (John 1:13). Has He revealed to you the infinite value and sufficiency of the atoning sacrifice of Christ, that His blood cleanses "from all sin"? Then what cause you have to be thankful for such Divine instruction.

4. God PRESERVING His People.

"He kept him as the apple of His eye." A religion of conditions, contingencies, and uncertainties is not Christianity. It is that God dishonoring, Scripture-repudiating, soul-destroying system of Popery - whose father is the devil - which prates about human merit, creature-ability, and a lot more blasphemous rubbish, and leaves its blinded dupes in the fogs and bogs of uncertainty. Christianity deals with certainties which originated in the purpose and love of an unchanging God, who when He begins a good work always completes it. "For the Lord loves justice, and He will never abandon the godly. He will keep them safe forever" (Psalm 37:28). How blessed is this!

We "are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Peter 1:5). The rage of heathen monarchs, with their den of lions and fiery furnaces, may be employed to try the faith of God's elect; but destroy them, harm them, they cannot. Oh brethren in Christ, what cause we have to praise the finding, instructing, and preserving, Triune Jehovah!

~A. W. Pink~

(The End)