FOUR DIVINE BLESSINGS
J. G. Chalmers
The things spoken of in these verses are most attractive to the soul— the loving-kindness of God, the shadow of His wings, the fatness of His house, and the river of His pleasures. The desire of our Saviour God is that all men should be in the present enjoyment of them. God has no pleasure in men going on in sin with all the misery it brings. He has made every provision for their blessing and happiness at immeasurable cost to Himself and to Christ. The enemy has sown in men’s minds altogether wrong thoughts about God, but He is a Saviour God; He is rich in mercy, which means simply that there is plenty of mercy for everybody.
Myriads have already found it, and every sinner who repents towards God now will be shown mercy. What glad tidings! Instead of coming in in judgment on sinful man, God has come in in mercy as we have just sung—
‘Brightly it beamed on men forlorn,
When Christ, the holy Child, was born’.
Christ took on all man’s liabilities and bore the judgment due. He suffered, He died, He was buried, He rose again, and He is now at God’s right hand, having glorified God in respect of sin, and having fully and righteously met every claim of a holy God against the sinner. Oh the efficacy of the work of Christ, and the power and value of His precious blood, the blood of the sin-offering sprinkled upon the mercy-seat! God is now exercising His rights in mercy and not all man’s wicked devices, nor all the power of Satan, can hinder God from dispensing mercy to repenting sinners.
His loving-kindness is in the heavens (Psalm 36: 5). There it is!—far beyond the power of the enemy, and God yearns to show mercy. Zacharias speaks of “the bowels of mercy of our God” (Luke 1: 78), which shows the intensity of His desire to bless men in remitting their sins; and He can do this in perfect righteousness because of the work of Christ upon the cross.
The righteousness of God is one of the outstanding features of the glad tidings, as it says here, “Thy righteousness is like the high mountains”. We delight to call attention to it, towering majestically above all man’s sin and need, and in man’s favour. That is wonderful!
“Righteousness of God” (that kind of righteousness) “by faith of Jesus Christ towards all, and upon all those who believe”, Romans 3: 22.
You have just to take your place before God like the humble penitent who smote upon his breast saying, “O God, have compassion on me, the sinner” (Luke 18: 13), and you will prove for yourself the reality of what I am saying. That man went down to his house justified, yes, justified, for God justifies the ungodly (Romans 4: 5), that is, those who have no merits of their own. Not only your sins forgiven, never to be raised with you again—“Their sins and their lawlessnesses I will never remember any more” (Hebrews 10: 17)—but justified in Christ, the Man in God’s presence, and God regarding you as though you had never committed one sin. Justified persons have peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and they happily join with David and speak appreciatively of God’s loving-kindness as “precious”.
Then there is a moral result—“So the sons of men take refuge under the shadow of thy wings”. As having been shown mercy, you come to it that you can fully trust such a God, that you will be safe and secure under His protection; so you submit to Him and to His will. God is now to be in moral sway in grace in your soul, and that is what the kingdom means. The kingdom of God is here; it is not in display, but it is in power in the Spirit; it is moral, not material; it is a sphere of security and it cannot be moved. The simple believer who confesses Jesus as Lord proves its power on his behalf in the presence of what is adverse and hostile.
The soul of Ruth must have been filled with a sense of assurance and blessing when Boaz said to her personally, “Let thy reward be full from Jehovah the God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to take refuge”, Ruth 2: 12. How sweet that must have sounded in the ears of one who describes herself as a foreigner, one who had no right or title to blessing.
Well, that is something worth knowing, is it not?—to know the Lord Jesus as your Saviour, your Redeemer, and your Protector.
Then the passage proceeds, “They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house”. God has a house here where He is to be known and where you will find true satisfaction and happiness. The door is open and God Himself is inviting men to come,
“Come, for already all things are ready”, Luke 14: 17. The invitation is to a great supper. Oh let our souls be attracted by the greatness and plenitude of what God has, provided for men.
There is plenty of mercy; there is plenty of room and security under the shadow of His wings; there is plenty of room and food in His house. The largeness of God’s heart is expressed in the largeness of His provision for men. We cannot read this without thinking of Luke 15.
What a reception that repenting sinner got! And many of us can speak with joy of our reception, far beyond our expectations, and certainly not what we deserved, for we had sinned against God and deserved eternal judgment. But God forgives sins and gives the Holy Spirit to those who obey Him.
When the father fell upon the neck of the son and covered him with kisses, the son would be immediately conscious of his father’s love. And so it is with us. When God gives us the Spirit, He (the Holy Spirit) sheds abroad in our hearts the love of God; He gives us the inward consciousness of God’s disposition towards us, and how blessed that is! Then there is the best robe—we are graced in Christ, the Beloved; and the ring—the token of endless love; and the sandals—we are accorded the liberty of sonship, for God would have His sons in His house in every way suited to it and in perfect liberty. And the food is not only satisfying but abundantly satisfying. In Luke 15 it is the fatted calf, that is, Christ in His moral excellence as the One who in matchless love went through death to bring to pass God’s eternal thoughts for men. There is much food for our souls in that.
Can the world offer anything like it? Never! My heart bleeds when I think of the time and money that men waste in pursuit of the temporary pleasures of sin which cannot satisfy, when the favour of God’s house stands open to them. Satan gives nothing for nothing. His prices are very steep, famine prices for poor fare, revolting stuff, as suggested in an ass’s head and dove’s dung in 2 Kings 6: 25. If you want to find a giver you must come, in the faith of your soul, to God. In the glad tidings He is offering you the greatest things, eternal blessings, without money and without price. The invitation to you is to come and take of the water of life freely.
Then we have this precious touch, “Thou wilt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures”.
When it comes to speak of this, I feel that human language is inadequate, but I do know that it is something to be experienced in the assembly. Indeed, I felt the power and blessedness of it in my soul in assembly service this morning, especially when we sang that verse in hymn 277—
‘In Thy grace Thou now hast brought us
Sharers of Thy joy to be,
And to know the blessed secret,
Of His preciousness to Thee’.
There is a whole vast scene of glory which has its centre in Christ, and which subsists for the pleasure of God, and God would bring men into the current of what He Himself find His delight in. Oh what a God! What blessedness for men! Some low place within the door might have suited us, but that would not become God. “It became him ... in bringing many sons to glory”, Hebrews 2: 10; can you think of anything more attractive than that? God has infinite pleasure in the Man Christ Jesus, and
in all that He has brought to pass. There is His pleasure in His many sons, and much, much more. So John says, “He has given to us of his Spirit”, 1 John 4: 13. That is, God shares His Spirit with us so that we can enter feelingly, affectionately, intelligently, and responsively into all that He Himself find delight in. Wonderful!
We did not read verse 9, but God is brought before us there as the Source of life—“With thee is the fountain of life”. He quickens. He imparts life to us in Christ Jesus. He is also the Source of every blessing, and the Source of all that is glorious, the Father of glory. What a range of glory belongs to the Father! Then, “In thy light shall we see light”. God enlightens us as to the greatness and glory of Christ, the Son of God; as to His purposes; as to His promises; as to His ways with believers; as to His ways on the earth, so that we are baffled by nothing that happens there, indeed, ‘heavenly light makes all things bright’. Well, dear friends, what God presents to you in His glad tidings is most attractive. Can you remain away from Him and risk the peril of a lost eternity? We plead with you, in all affection, to come, and to come now, and you will find that all that our God would give will be yours.
Preaching at Cullen
23 October 1977