THE EXPERIENCE OF A CALEB

THE EXPERIENCE OF A CALEB

The longer you are in the wilderness as a Caleb, with an actual acquaintance with Hebron, the more truly and really does your heart make ready for possession, as well as being enriched with the durable nature of His mercies to you here. “Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell” (Deuteronomy 8: 4). Hence, the longer one is on the journey, the more miraculous the unchanging character of His care and ways with us. The wilderness was immensely different to Caleb and to the rest of Israel. He was not in the land, he was travelling on to take possession, but of a country known, not only by report, but where he had been; and as he travelled on, he was learning that the very same care or provision made for him at the first, remained fresh and unworn up to the last. Not only ^[p. 416] were his garments fresh, but his foot was unweary. The garments and the foot were in the same state all the journey up to the end. The one is the shelter of His wing all along the road; the other, the cost to myself, or the tax on myself, all the way; the one unchanging, the other unwearied. They suffered not outwardly nor inwardly; they were nourished and cherished all the way.

Each year your heart is deepening in the care of God in the wilderness, and has a brighter consciousness of your heavenly possession, which gets more enjoyable to you, while heaven is more and more within your reach. You can say, “Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God” (Psalm 92: 13). You are blessed with the upper springs and the nether springs, and they increase simultaneously. It is as I enjoy the upper springs that I am conscious of the nether; as I eat of the corn of the land, so do I practically partake of the manna; as my heart is occupied with the glorified Christ, so are my steps here in the life and grace of Christ on earth. The less you have from earth and the world, the more you are in the wilderness; and it is in the wilderness, and in the absence of natural supplies, that you know the Father’s care, and that the knowledge of heaven brightens. If you lose naturally, you gain spiritually as to both. The more the wilderness is a wilderness, the more God’s resources are made known to you. The moment we gain from the earth or man, we are losing the wilderness, and with it the divine comforts of it. If I have nothing but God, I am in the wilderness, and I am supremely happy. It is the admixture of old and new wine which occasions our ups and downs here. The wilderness is having all our resources in God on earth, and without any check in heaven. He is everything to us. If I love the things that are in the world, I turn away from the wilderness. I might retire from the world politically and positionally, and yet enjoy the ^[p. 417] things that are in it; and inasmuch as I do so, I am not in the wilderness in the true sense of the word, nor enjoying God’s provision for me when in it. God will take care that my needed comfort shall not be impaired, nor my natural force abated; but wherever I seek outside of Him, I do not get from Him. The more all my springs are in Him, the more I really enjoy heaven, where all my springs shall be in Him, with everything to co-operate and nothing to distract. My springs are in Him now, though hindered by Satan’s temptations and distractions.

It is only as you are thus truly in the wilderness that you are in the joys of God, or are able to discern what is of God all round you. You must be separated in your own soul from the world and its things, and have found your springs in God, before you can be sure, or clear in judgment, as to anything or any one for God. If I am in the light I know what light is, for it aids me; and I know darkness, for it opposes me. “He that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man” (1 Corinthians 2: 15). It is not that you have spiritual knowledge, but that you are spiritual, living on divine springs; and then you can determine like test-paper the reality of each, and you seek it too. You know nothing but as you have been it; you cannot know the heavenly but as you have been in it; and you cannot discern in another what you have not known in yourself. You may see more in another than in yourself, but you could not see it at all if it were not, in some measure, in yourself.