“Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” Psalm 2: 8.
It is the promise of the Father to His Beloved Son that we have presented before us here. The Father invites the Son to ask of Him, and assures Him that He will not withhold from Him the request of His lips. We see here that there is no unwillingness on the part of the Father to bestow blessing and good upon the children of men in answer to the plea of Christ. Christ has only to ask and it will be given with the wholehearted acquiescence of the Father. How extensive the promise to Christ is by the Father when it extends to the heathen for His inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession. With what amazement should our hearts be filled in the light of this revelation. What countless numbers of the fallen race of Adam are embraced in this promise, not only those that are near but also those that are afar off. Does it not embrace also millions that are yet unborn? Why should the great God of eternity look down on this sin-cursed world and behold the inhabitants in any other way than with divine anger and wrath? Why should the God of heaven look on any of the children of men with the very least complacency? Is not destruction, destruction everlasting, the due reward of their sin and rebellion against God? How then could they be deemed a reward and a worthy reward — for the Father would bestow nothing less upon the Son — when in themselves they are fallen, ruined and undone? Surely there must be more to this than at first meets the eye. “The gift must be of a value commensurate with the glory of the Giver and the Receiver. And so it is in this instance — a people redeemed with precious blood, a people having no intrinsic value in themselves, yet made glorious by being washed in the precious blood of Christ and clothed in Immanuel’s righteousness. That they are precious in the eyes of the Lord of hosts is seen in His declaration: “They shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my jewels.”
It is to Christ as the Divine Redeemer and as the King of Zion that the promise is given: “Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” Before ever this people were given to Christ as a reward, they were given to Him in Covenant. He could say to the Father: “Thine they were, and thou gavest them me.” They were given to Christ in eternity in the setting up of the Covenant of grace, for that Covenant embraced the heathen for Christ’s inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession. This Covenant was ordered in all things and sure, not like the Covenants of men which so often fail, but a firmly established and indissoluble Covenant. To make the Covenant sure for all those for whom the benefits contained in it were intended, it must be sealed and ratified by the blood of the Son of God. It is in virtue of that sealing and ratifying, and of all that is implied in the shedding of the precious blood of Christ, that the benefits of the Covenant are made over to all them that believe.
Who can enter into what the death of Christ meant? Who can enter into the dark hours of Calvary when the Saviour of men suffered? No eye could pierce through that dark veil but the eye of the Eternal Father. What have we at Calvary’s Cross but the eternal Son of God suffering in our nature sufferings which were indescribably great, and bearing the wrath of God against the sins which were laid to His charge. The load of suffering He had to bear has been described as infinite upon infinite. The sins themselves were finite in number so far as each individual was concerned, but each sin was infinite in demerit and worthy of eternal punishment because against a God of infinite glory. Christ took the law place of the guilty. He went down into a valley deeper than any shall ever know to its full extent. How deep it was His cry on the Cross reveals: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me.” But who can measure the depths of soul agony which these words comprise? Yet this was the path of obedience which He was required to tread if He was ever to hear from the lips of the Father: “Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” He came out on the other side of the valley — which was the valley of His people’s damnation — saying, “It is finished.” His work was done, His people saved. But He must go to the dust of death and rise again on the third day as the first fruits of a glorious inheritance and as the First Begotten from the dead. Surely it can now be said: “O death where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
Surely we can now say that the reward is sure. But some dissenting voices will say: “That is all very well, but the world as we see it is full of the enemies of Christ. Where can we see nations and peoples subject to Christ? Are there not millions of people under the blight of Romanism? Are not millions of our race under Mohammedanism, Hinduism, Confucism, Shintoism and other false religions? Are there not millions in China under the scourge of Communism? Are not many parts of the world subject to the cruelties of tyrannical rulers? How then can you speak of Christ receiving the heathen for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession? Surely, so far as outward appearances are concerned we were never further from the fulfilment of the promise?
How are we to answer such dissenting voices? It is the Lord that has said it, and not man. Has He said it, and shall He not do it? Have any of His promises failed? And why do you think that the time, if it is ever to come, must be far off? Has the Lord not said: “A nation shall be born in a day?” “Is there anything too hard for the Lord?” Is our unbelief to prevent the Lord fulfilling His promises? What the Father has said to the Son remains as true today as it ever was. “Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” Not only so, but the promise contains in it the sure outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Pentecostal blessing to effect the fulfilment of the promise.
We are ready to say: How can it be done? The world was never more unlike the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon it. If that is so, may we not deduce from this that the world was never more in need of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon it, instead of deducing the opposite. Is Christianity to continue to decline? Is the spiritual state of Christian nations to remain at their present low state? Is the Christian Church to die out? If not how is all this to be prevented? Can man prevent it? Verily, no! How then is the change to come? The Lord leaves us in no doubt of this. “I will pour upon the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplications.” Beginning, as of old, at the city of Jerusalem and, spreading out to the nations of the earth, it will encompass the globe. “Cry yet, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts: My cities through prosperity shall yet be spread abroad: and the Lord shall yet comfort Zion, and shall yet choose Jerusalem.” “Run speak to this young man, saying, Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls for the multitude of men and cattle therein.”
David prayed: “Let the whole earth be filled with his glory,” and that prayer is recorded in the Scriptures of truth. Modern amillennialists would say: ‘O David, you have gone wrong expecting a millennium on earth through which the whole earth would be filled with the glory of the Lord. You have your prayer fulfilled now, David, in heaven, but it could never be fulfilled on earth.’ With which sentiment does the Word of God agree — with David’s or with that of the amillennialists. Let the Word of God answer that question: “As truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.” And again, “For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” Such are the promises, and these shall certainly be fulfilled. And they shall be fulfilled when Christ shall ask of the Father the nations as His possession. In answer to that request the Father shall give Him the heathen for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession, and “all nations shall call him blessed”.