THE FULNESS OF GOD'S LOVE IS LEARNT IN ITS OWN SPHERE

THE FULNESS OF GOD’S LOVE IS LEARNT IN ITS OWN SPHERE

In consequence of the misapprehension of what I said last Friday week, I trust I may trouble you with a short explanation. My simple intention was to lead souls to see and find the divine sphere which Canaan represents for their rest and occupation, and not the wilderness and its necessities, to which we would too much confine God’s love and care for us. Once we are really through the Red Sea — the death of Christ, we must be in dependence on God here — and this we are taught in the wilderness. But as a Christian I have much more; I am dead with Christ, this is Jordan; and I am quickened and raised up with Him and made to sit together with Him in heavenly places, and that is Canaan.

Now the question is, and the point of my teaching — Where do I best learn the goodness and love of God? In the wilderness, from His care, thought and provision for me here, or in Canaan where cities I did not build and vineyards I did not plant are given to me, where the whole heart of God is in its own proper circle and sphere?

I say, if I learn Him even a little in Canaan, I can easily reckon on Him in the wilderness. If I know Him at all in the wide field of His love as it has secured a portion for me in the riches of the glory of His inheritance, I can easily and simply see how comparatively small it is for Him to care for me in my little field in the wilderness. If I am delivered from my enemies and out of myself, I must be in dependence, and nowhere else; but dependence is often lauded because of the gain which accrues from it in the wilderness, and this I said was not the highest thing, nay, that on the contrary it often makes a soul dry, for he is thinking of nothing else but of bringing God into his circumstances, and then rejoicing as he finds Him acting in them, instead ^[p. 133] of rising up and seeing God, as I may say, in His own circumstances, making known His love to me, so that in the knowledge of Him the eyes of my heart are enlightened to know the hope of His calling and the riches of the glory of His inheritance in His saints. Of course, there can be nothing but dependence here, but I find dependence is made the greatest good because of the present gain derived from it in the wilderness, and not because it leads me into the wide domain of my Father’s house and glory, certifying to me the depth and fulness of His love; so that people talk of their gains from dependence in the wilderness as if that were the utmost of God’s love for us. It is plain that in God’s own sphere we shall ever be, and that all we learn of it now is for eternity. The wilderness which teaches me dependence must pass away.