Enjoying God's Best # 4

Enjoying God's Best # 4

Long before Joshua was born, Elihu had affirmed, "If they obey and serve Him, they shall spend their days in prosperity, and their years in pleasures" (Job 36:11); and centuries after Joshua's death, the Holy Spirit declared through Zechariah, "Thus says God: Why do you disobey the Lord's commands? You will not prosper. Because you have forsaken the Lord, He has forsaken you!" (2 Chron. 24:20).

Nor is there any justification to insist that such statements pertained only to the Mosaic economy. If we unhesitatingly apply to our own day that precious word in Isaiah 1:18, "Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet - they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson - they shall be as wool" (Isaiah 1:18), is it honest to refuse taking unto ourselves the very next verse, "If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land" (Isaiah 1:19)? The principles which regulate God's providential dealings with His people are in no way altered by any change made in the outward form of His kingdom upon earth.

The teaching of the New Testament is equally expressive: that "godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come" (1 Tim. 4:8); yet the fulfillment of that promise is conditional upon our keeping of the divine precepts, upon our personal piety.

There is a definite proviso on which we are warranted to hope for an enjoyment of God's best. That was announced by Joshua and Caleb when they said unto Israel, "If the Lord delights in us - then He will bring us into this land, and give it to us" (Num. 14:8). That term, "delight," has no reference there unto that divine love unto the souls of believers which is the source of their salvation - but rather to His complacency in their character and conduct.

So also is it to be understood in the words used by David when he was fleeing from the conspiracy of Absalom: "Then the king said to Zadok: Take the ark of God back into the city. If I find favor in the Lord's eyes, He will bring me back and let me see it and His dwelling place again. But if He says, I am not pleased with you," then I am ready; let Him do to me whatever seems good to Him." (2 Sam. 15:25-26). David certainly could not mean by that language: If God have no love for my soul, I am willing to be forever banished from Him; for such submission is required of none who lives under a dispensation of mercy. Rather did he signify, If God approve not of me as I am the head of His people, let Him take away my life if that so pleases Him.

We must distinguish between His eternal love for us - and His present delight in us; between His acceptance of us in Christ - and the acceptableness of our character and conduct unto Him. It is the latter which determines His governmental smile upon us.

Of Enoch, it is said, "before his translation, he had this testimony, the he pleased God" (Hebrews 11:5); whereas of Israel in the wilderness, He declared, "I was grieved with that generation"  (Hebrews 3:10)!

It must not be inferred from what has been said above - that the one who walks in the paths of righteousness brings God into his debt, or that he merits favor at His hands. Not so! for nothing that we can do, profits God anything; and if we rendered perfect obedience unto His every precept, we had merely performed our duty and rendered unto God what is His rightful due.

On the other hand, it is very plain that we profit from and are the gainers by our obedience.

Scripture has not a little to say upon the subject of REWARDS. It goes so far as to teach that the joys of the future - will bear a definite relation and proportion to our conduct in the present - such as obtains between sowing and reaping (Gal. 6:7-8). If then the future rewarding of the saints according to their work (Rev. 22:12) clashes neither with the grace of God nor the merit of Christ - then we  present rewarding of them cannot do so, for no difference in place or condition, can make any difference as to the nature of things. Deity does not hesitate to take as on of His titles, "the LORD God of recompenses" (Jere. 51:56), and many are the passages which show Him recompensing righteousness, even in this world

~A. W. Pink~

(The End)