GOD'S PURPOSE TO BLESS
GOD’S PURPOSE TO BLESS
Genesis 1: 26 - 29; Genesis 12: 1 - 7; Galatians 3: 13, 14
In taking up these scriptures I want to shew the unvarying principles of God’s ways. They all go to prove that God ever had His own purpose and mind, and that He is never diverted from it. There are few men steadfast enough to be able to adhere unswervingly to a purpose; so many things come in to influence and affect them. But God adheres to His own purpose and has His own way of giving effect to it. We feel thus that we have to do with a God with whom there is no change nor variableness. This principle remains ever true as to God, “I the Lord change not”.
There are three great testimonies of God’s purpose which come out in Scripture with reference to man: the first is of blessing, the second of dwelling, and the third of ruling. The first, namely blessing, came out in the scriptures I have read; dwelling appears in connection with Israel; and ruling is typified in David. God has seen fit to identify Himself with a kingdom. He will reign. The Psalms look forward to Jehovah reigning: “Jehovah reigneth ... He sitteth between the cherubim. Let the earth be moved”.
The thought of blessing we find came out at the very outset of man’s history, long before Abraham. It was for this reason that I referred to Genesis, but the idea of dwelling did not come out until a figure of redemption is present, although it was ever, I suppose, in the mind of God: then the kingdom, the throne was set up in David, but evidently had in view David’s Son. These are three great testimonies, but I purpose only to speak of one at present, but at the same time to shew that every testimony centres and rests in one point, and that is Christ; they all converge there.
Now to speak of blessing. God’s purpose ever was to [p. 393] bless, and neither sin nor curse by law diverted God from His purpose, and I shall trace this through Scripture until we come to the vessel of blessing. The blessing of God really waited until we get the second Adam, the life-giving Spirit. I turn back to Genesis 1. It is there we first read of blessing (see verses 26 - 29). There the thought is plain enough; God did not simply create man, but He blessed him, and man could not be blessed of God without knowing it, that is, he was consciously in God’s favour. Everything that was around Adam and Eve was a witness and expression of the goodness and favour of the Creator. They could look round and all was perfect and attested the beneficence and favour of the Creator. Had things continued as they were man would not have been called to hate father and mother to be a disciple of Christ, for he would have been conscious of the bounty and goodness of God in every relationship in which God had set him; and further, the blessing was to descend. They were to be fruitful and to multiply; the blessing was to reach to their posterity. This was the beginning of the world as it is; man was blessed of God. But things did not continue long in that state. Man fell, and Adam and his wife were turned out of the garden, the sense of moral distance had come in, they were afraid, and with that they lost the sense of blessing and favour. Man was then under death on account of sin, according to God’s solemn warning. All was changed, and man had to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. It was a dark day that had come in, and things went on from bad to worse, until at length the wickedness of the world was so great that God brought in the flood of waters and swept all away; He could not tolerate things any longer.
Now I turn to chapter 12, which comes in after the scattering of man. The importance of that passage is that it shews that God had not departed from His mind to bless, although the condition of blessing was altered. God says to Abraham, “in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed”. He purposed to bless, His thought had not changed, notwithstanding all that had come in. The tower of Babel and idolatry had come in after the flood, but God would bless, but blessing was connected with a man answering to God’s call. The important point in the call of Abraham is that it shews that God was to be paramount with man. I do not expect now to experience the favour of God in connection with country, kindred and father’s house but in connection with the Lord Jesus Christ. When converted, a soul has to come to the truth that God must be paramount, and that sometimes brings us into trouble. God must be paramount with Abraham, and for the reason that he was no longer in those things in which he had been in the beginning. We have to say to God, to fear God and to walk with God, and our knowledge of Him takes precedence of all and every other consideration. This is all individual and by faith. I know God by faith, and the light of God as revealed is that to which I have to maintain faithfulness by His grace. We have to stand true to the knowledge we have of Him. If kindred were idolatrous, we should have to stand apart from them, or if worldly (and this comes closer home to us), we have to be true to the light we have from God and make it our first consideration. God’s purpose was to bless, and therefore God justified Abraham, but outside of all here he was to have a place in the favour of God.
I turn now to the passage in Galatians 3. After Abraham — four hundred years — another principle came in and that was law — which brought a curse. There had been curse before; the ground had been cursed on account of man’s sin. Curse is evidently the opposite of blessing. A man’s curse is of small account, but if man is under the curse of God it is a bad prospect. If a man is cursed he will be thrust away from God like thorns.
There was, however, hid in the law that which was to be written in man’s heart; but as a system law brought [p. 395] a curse. Afterwards, though Balaam wanted for the sake of a houseful of gold to curse Israel, the truth came out that in the sovereignty of God’s mercy they were an elect people whom God had blessed, and Balaam could not curse those whom God had blessed.
But Israel, when the Lord came to them, being far away in heart and spirit from God, had no sense of favour or blessing from God; but a wonderful thing had come to pass in the presence here of the Lord Jesus, and that was that the vessel of God’s blessing was on earth. We could not, I think, speak of Christ as being blessed, for He was the Blesser. The Son had become Man, and was thus the vessel of God’s blessing for man. The little company who were gathered around Christ were greatly blessed. They were in the midst of an apostate people, but by the fact of being in the company of the Lord they must have been conscious of being blessed, and that more than they could have described to you. They had instinctively, I imagine, a sense of the favour of God; they could not have explained their experience, but still we read they “contemplated his glory, a glory as of an only-begotten with a father”. They could not have been in the company of such an one without having the sense of being blessed.
I pass on to the passage in Galatians. “That the blessing of Abraham might come to the nations in Christ Jesus?” I shall touch here on two points. (1) That the vessel of blessing needed to be adequate — that is, One who was in the communion of God’s thought. The vessel of blessing must be naturally acquainted with the divine purpose to bless. No one therefore but the Son of God could be the vessel of blessing. (2) He must also be one who could take away the curse which stood in the way of blessing, and that is what we get here, “Christ has redeemed us out of the curse of the law, having become a curse for us”: and mark the consequence, “that the blessing of Abraham might come to the nations in Christ Jesus”.
[p. 396] Now I see three truths which necessarily come in that we may have part in the blessing and be conscious of being blessed. We need to know (1) the God of resurrection; (2) the vessel of blessing; and (3) the power of the Holy Spirit. Now with regard to the first; all that I have in this world is limited to me by death. When a man dies, his genius and acquirements and everything pass away from him; and if I am to be conscious of blessing from God I need to be acquainted with the God of resurrection — the living God who can make alive the dead. (God raises the wicked, but it is never said save as to blessing that God makes alive.) Nothing can be more essential to us, being liable to death as we are, than that we should have faith in the God who raises the dead.
Our consciousness of blessing depends likewise upon our nearness to the vessel of blessing — like the disciple who leaned on the bosom of Jesus. We are conscious of blessing as we are near to Him. The vessel of blessing not only died for us, but He is Priest for us. God blesses through Christ, and to be conscious of blessing means to be near to Him. I ask, Why should you not be near to Christ, when He came into death that you might be? If we were near to Him, how conscious we should be of favour; God has associated us with the vessel of blessing.
But not only are we near to the vessel of His pleasure, but the Spirit has been given that saints may be formed according to Him. One great work of the Holy Spirit is to subdue, and another is to form saints according to the pattern of the heavenly Man. All God’s ways looked forward to the vessel of blessing, and the Holy Spirit has come down to form us according to the image of that vessel.
We shall never understand christianity unless we see what the Lord was with His disciples and they with Him down here. In Him in the midst of His own you get the beginning of christianity morally. More light came in afterwards — redemption having been accomplished and [p. 397] the Holy Spirit given — but we want to be near to Christ, as were the disciples when He was here upon earth.
Thus the unvarying purpose of God’s ways from the beginning was to bless, and nothing that has come in in this world’s history has diverted Him from His purpose: He has blessed and will bless. I ask, Can there be anything wanting for us if we stand blessed of Him? “We have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God”.