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“For he endured, as seeing Him who is invisible” (Heb 11:17). If you compare this with an expression Genesis 16, the force of both is made much more distinct. “And she called the name of the LORD that spake unto her, Thou God seest me: for she said, Have I also here looked after Him that seeth me” (v 13). In the one case Moses saw God; in the other, although Hagar looks after Him, it was God that saw her. We are apt in everything to look at the lower end of the truth, to content ourselves with the scantiest portion that can sustain us.
Now Hagar did not really go beyond this. She was the bondwoman: she knew nothing whatever of the liberty of grace. She might look after God, but what she reached was this, “Thou God seest me.” The simple consciousness that God sees us never goes beyond the knowledge either that He is a Judge noticing our ways to deal with them, or at most, that He is a guardian to protect in the hour of difficulty and danger. But love, liberty, rest and joy in God are hardly known through the bare truth that God sees us.
No one denies it to be a truth; but what must be maintained is that, as believers, we are entitled to the further and more precious privilege of seeing our Father, of “seeing Him who is invisible” (Heb 11:27). This was, in the principle of it, what sustained the heart of Moses. Hagar did not endure—she ran away. It was the bondage of the law that was set forth by her (Gal 4:24). Now the law does bring this out—this is to say, God seeing men, God occupying Himself with man, God dealing with man, God judging men, yet God, it may be, showing mercy to man, as we see in Exodus 34. But communion and fellowship with the Father there never is nor can be, until there is the consciousness that grace reigns.
Not that the law is weakened, dissolved or destroyed; not that its authority is even touched (the Law was never destroyed, but fulfilled by Christ, then “taken away” - Heb 10:9. The Old Covenant was the Law, esp. the Pentateuch—NC). It is not so that our Father brings us into the position of liberty, that would be to set the way of God against His sovereign grace. But the recreated believer is brought out of the region where law applies—out of the scene of death, darkness and bondage, into the place of light (though the law was death to unbelievers in God, the believers were saved—NC): he is brought to his Father. There is no law in His presence (Gal 5:23). Law dealt with the flesh of the world (in providing the knowledge of God’s will to man concerning the sin nature or “old man, i.e. “flesh”—NC). If I am in the place the flesh and of the world, I must be under law or I shall be lawless (lawless, i.e. without God’s guidance of the Law - 1Ti 1:9—NC).
The believer is neither that one nor the other; but he is brought into peace, by the grace of God, unto God. He endures, not because God sees him, but because he sees the Father. He endures, he knows his Father in the Lord Jesus, he has His presence, for he knows Him whom He has sent, and ‘herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1Jo 4:10). This is what He has done and what the law could not do, for it has not propitiation to give. It may demand, but it has nothing to give: it waits to receive the deeds, alas of darkness, of fear and feebleness; it can only receive whatever a poor man’s conscience may offer, trying to make its peace with God (Heb 7:19).
But grace makes the peace by a gift of His own love, gives the eternal peace that it has made through the Blood of Christ’s Cross, and brings into the consciousness the love of Him who has suffered all for us (all rise but not all ascend—NC). Therefore, instead of our being afraid of Him and avoiding Him, endurance is the word for us. This is the portion of the believer, this is what characterizes him. The law dealt with a man as long as he lived. We begin with the confession that we have died, and now we live in eternal life. There is no uncertainty here: whatever may be the practical testimony we bear to Him, there is no weakness nor failure in Him “who is our Life” (Col 3:4). There is endurance, because for us it is “as seeing Him who is invisible.”
—William Kelly (1821-1906)
MJS daily devotional excerpt for September 20
"Sufferings are for chastening (child-training). And chastening is from love, a token of our Father’s care. We live in a world full of trial and suffering. Many of the Lord’s people have complained that their circumstances were too unfavorable for a life of full devotion, of close fellowship with Him, or pressing on to maturity. The duties and difficulties, the cares and troubles of life, render it practically impossible, they say, to live a fully consecrated life.
"Would God that they might learn the lesson of His Word! Every trial comes from the Father as a call to come away from the world to Him, to trust Him, to believe in His love. In every trial He will give strength and blessing. Let but this truth be accepted, in each trial, small or great; first of all and at once, recognize the Father’s hand in it. Say at once, I welcome it from Him; my first care is to glorify my Father—He will use it all for my good.”—James Hudson Taylor (1832-1905)
Now Hagar did not really go beyond this. She was the bondwoman: she knew nothing whatever of the liberty of grace. She might look after God, but what she reached was this, “Thou God seest me.” The simple consciousness that God sees us never goes beyond the knowledge either that He is a Judge noticing our ways to deal with them, or at most, that He is a guardian to protect in the hour of difficulty and danger. But love, liberty, rest and joy in God are hardly known through the bare truth that God sees us.
No one denies it to be a truth; but what must be maintained is that, as believers, we are entitled to the further and more precious privilege of seeing our Father, of “seeing Him who is invisible” (Heb 11:27). This was, in the principle of it, what sustained the heart of Moses. Hagar did not endure—she ran away. It was the bondage of the law that was set forth by her (Gal 4:24). Now the law does bring this out—this is to say, God seeing men, God occupying Himself with man, God dealing with man, God judging men, yet God, it may be, showing mercy to man, as we see in Exodus 34. But communion and fellowship with the Father there never is nor can be, until there is the consciousness that grace reigns.
Not that the law is weakened, dissolved or destroyed; not that its authority is even touched (the Law was never destroyed, but fulfilled by Christ, then “taken away” - Heb 10:9. The Old Covenant was the Law, esp. the Pentateuch—NC). It is not so that our Father brings us into the position of liberty, that would be to set the way of God against His sovereign grace. But the recreated believer is brought out of the region where law applies—out of the scene of death, darkness and bondage, into the place of light (though the law was death to unbelievers in God, the believers were saved—NC): he is brought to his Father. There is no law in His presence (Gal 5:23). Law dealt with the flesh of the world (in providing the knowledge of God’s will to man concerning the sin nature or “old man, i.e. “flesh”—NC). If I am in the place the flesh and of the world, I must be under law or I shall be lawless (lawless, i.e. without God’s guidance of the Law - 1Ti 1:9—NC).
The believer is neither that one nor the other; but he is brought into peace, by the grace of God, unto God. He endures, not because God sees him, but because he sees the Father. He endures, he knows his Father in the Lord Jesus, he has His presence, for he knows Him whom He has sent, and ‘herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1Jo 4:10). This is what He has done and what the law could not do, for it has not propitiation to give. It may demand, but it has nothing to give: it waits to receive the deeds, alas of darkness, of fear and feebleness; it can only receive whatever a poor man’s conscience may offer, trying to make its peace with God (Heb 7:19).
But grace makes the peace by a gift of His own love, gives the eternal peace that it has made through the Blood of Christ’s Cross, and brings into the consciousness the love of Him who has suffered all for us (all rise but not all ascend—NC). Therefore, instead of our being afraid of Him and avoiding Him, endurance is the word for us. This is the portion of the believer, this is what characterizes him. The law dealt with a man as long as he lived. We begin with the confession that we have died, and now we live in eternal life. There is no uncertainty here: whatever may be the practical testimony we bear to Him, there is no weakness nor failure in Him “who is our Life” (Col 3:4). There is endurance, because for us it is “as seeing Him who is invisible.”
—William Kelly (1821-1906)
MJS daily devotional excerpt for September 20
"Sufferings are for chastening (child-training). And chastening is from love, a token of our Father’s care. We live in a world full of trial and suffering. Many of the Lord’s people have complained that their circumstances were too unfavorable for a life of full devotion, of close fellowship with Him, or pressing on to maturity. The duties and difficulties, the cares and troubles of life, render it practically impossible, they say, to live a fully consecrated life.
"Would God that they might learn the lesson of His Word! Every trial comes from the Father as a call to come away from the world to Him, to trust Him, to believe in His love. In every trial He will give strength and blessing. Let but this truth be accepted, in each trial, small or great; first of all and at once, recognize the Father’s hand in it. Say at once, I welcome it from Him; my first care is to glorify my Father—He will use it all for my good.”—James Hudson Taylor (1832-1905)