The children of God are ready to write hard things against themselves and are ready to come to wrong conclusions. That oftentimes they are perfectly sincere in doing this in no way alters the fact that what they are writing and saying and thinking is not true. It is the truth that is to stand and it ill becomes the children of God, for whom the Lord has done so much and to whom He has shown so much of His favour and loving kindness, to question the reality of His promises, as though He would no longer be faithful to them.
Asaph was saying, “Will the Lord cast off for ever? and will He be favourable no more? Is His mercy clean gone for ever? Doth His promise fail for evermore? Hath God forgotten to be gracious? Hath He in anger shut up His tender mercies?” But then he went on to say, “This is my infirmity: but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High.” It is true that appearances may belie the promises but we are not warranted to go on appearances, it is the reality that counts. In David’s case and in Asaph’s case the reality was very far from the appearance.
Saul proved a relentless persecutor of David. As it was in Isaac’s day when the son of the bondwoman persecuted the son of the free woman, so it was in David’s day. Godless Saul persecuted godly David. So had it been from the beginning when godless Cain persecuted and slew godly Abel. This is a conflict which is to be carried on in the world down to the end of time. The true Church of God in the world can expect the opposition, not only of the world lying in the wicked one outside the Church but of the world in the Church as well. Godless Saul had many
good appearances. Did he not prophesy? Did he not repent? Yet the time came when he manifested whose he was and whom he served when, in his last extremity, he went to the witch of Endor. It was Saul who was to perish in Mount Gilboa, not David.
Jacob, too, in his experience had to say, “All these things are against me”, when it was very far from being so. Yet it looked to him at that time as if the Lord was working against him and was to bereave him of more of his sons. Instead of that the Lord was about to restore to him the son whom he had already lost. In a very short time he was to say, “It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before I die.”
It is when their hope is well nigh gone that the Lord enables His people to look again towards His holy temple. He is not to cast off His people whom He foreknew. He is to preserve their souls alive even in time of famine. He is to carry on in them and perfect the good work He has begun in them. He will never leave nor forsake them. He has engraven them upon the palms of His hands; their walls are continually before Him. He paid their redemption price, therefore they are His by purchase. He is to perfect that which concerns them.
It is often difficult for the children of God to believe that they will ever inhabit glory. As they look at themselves it is little wonder that they should come to this conclusion. They see nothing in themselves that warrants them to come to this conclusion. So, too, when they think of their own lives in this world, and of how far short they came of the Lord’s glory in all things, then how can they hope ever to dwell in the mansions that Christ has gone to prepare for His people. In this they write hard things against themselves and are ready to conclude that they will never enjoy the realms of glory.
But in this, as in much else, they are much mistaken and are far from the truth. It is not on the basis of anything they are in themselves or of anything that they have done that they are to inhabit glory. It is on the basis of what Christ has done. It is on the basis of the perfection of the finished work of Christ that they are to be received into glory. Can they find any ground in that work why they should be excluded from heaven, who have come to rest under the shadow of the wings of the Almighty? None perish that Him trust. Have they any warrant, again, to question the truth of His promise given to the disciples, “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also”? He is faithful that promised. Or have they any reason to question the prevalency of His intercession in heaven of the One who said on earth,
“Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which Thou hast given Me: for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world”? No, in spite of all their fears, the poor, tried, afflicted people of God are not to be cast off. Notwithstanding all that might indicate otherwise,
“They shall be brought with gladness great,
and mirth on every side,
Into the palace of the King,
and there they shall abide.”
Prayer Meeting Address
by Rev. John Colquhoun
(Preached in Glendale on 1st March 1956)