The People of God

(SANCTIFIED, JUSTIFIED

GOD WITH THEM, THEY STRONG

AND

SEEN IN ALL THE BEAUTY OF CHRIST)

ARE WAITING THE COMING OF THE LORD

(Numbers 22, 23, 24)

It does not appear that this prophecy of Balaam had any immediate light from God in it, either for Moab or for Israel. So far as we can read, it was light about both of them. But it does not appear to have been communicated to either as a company. It was made known to Balak individually, and of course to Moses who I think records it for us.

But we may conclude from other parts of the word also that what we read here is intended as light from God for us, and also as light later for His earthly people in their “latter days”. I think that such a passage as 1 Cor 10: 6, 11 is a sufficient warrant for this conclusion (as to us) and along with this passage it is well to read also 1 Pet 1: 11, 12.

I think it is most interesting and helpful to get this light from God, for we see in it the one steady purpose of God to utterly defeat all the work of the enemy both as to heaven and as to earth. It is an immense comfort to get this as light from God into the soul. There is also another thing; I learn in this prophecy, too, God’s present view of His people, whether Israel then or saints now, about and against whom everything could be truly said, if their conduct as natural men and women in their wilderness history were considered! But I learn that God now refuses to look at His people in that light. This also comes out. He does not see you. He SEES CHRIST. This is because of what He has made them Himself, for both the earthly and the heavenly companies can only come into blessing in relation to Christ and to His work. It is in Him and in this alone, that God will break down and destroy all the works of the devil. But I see that He WILL thus break it down, and that He will have everything both in heaven and earth, according to and in harmony with Himself.

Well, beloved reader, we are on the eve of the coming of the Lord. We are just where Israel was, when these prophecies were uttered. We have reached the point in our history to which these chapters of their history apply. We are just going to heaven, as Israel was about to pass over into the promised land, and it is not by death, but by the coming of the Lord. It is the coming of the Lord that closes Balaam’s prophecy in chap 24 and which will be the dawn of permanent blessing for both the earthly and the heavenly people. “There shall come a Star out of Jacob”—“Out of Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion”. It is the setting up of the kingdom in power and glory, at the Lord’s coming, and the result will be, the total collapse of all the power of the enemy. These are the last words of God respecting him—“perish for ever”.

There are four points in these three chapters to which I would direct your earnest attention. They involve also a fifth, which you will see as we go on. But every question both of the enemy, and of your own heart, is set at rest—set at rest for ever. Thank God that all this is true and that it is His purpose for every saint of God to enter upon today! I am addressing Christians, and I want to get before you what God has to say about you—what you are now in His sight!

In the first prophecy, God declares that His people are a sanctified people, chap 23: 9. “Lo the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations”. That is, God says there is no people like my people. Are you surprised at this? How feebly we grasp the immense grace of God! His people are what He has made them. They are not what they have made themselves, nor are they what the devil has made them. And because they are God’s people thus, they are set in contrast to every other people. There are other people, but God’s delight is in the down-trodden “dust of Jacob”, and as to strength, who can count the ‘‘fourth part of Israel”. The words Israel and Jacob occur repeatedly and side by side in this prophecy, thus identifying them in spite of what they were in themselves; with what God had made them in His purpose. Jacob—nature, Israel—grace. Here then we have the first point, their Sanctification. This is the first in the order in which Peter speaks of these things. “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by sanctification of the Spirit”, 1 Pet 1: 2 NT.

In the next prophecy we learn justification. God’s people are a justified people. “He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel”, chap 23: 21. God has justified them, and it is then fitting to ask (whatever they may have been in the past): “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” Seeing, as the apostle adds, “It is God that justifieth”, Rom 8: 33. God has cleared everything offensive to Him for ever away, to His own eternal satisfaction, and there is nothing left but what suits God. Christ, once “delivered for our offences”, was “raised again for our justification”, and it is in Him risen, that we see that there is nothing in the saints to condemn. I see that “old things are passed away, behold all things are become new”, 2 Cor 5: 17, and (blessed truth) that now “all things are of God” (v 18)!—justification is secured; “that we might be made the righteousness of God in him”, v 21.

Then there is the third point. (God’s people dwell alone, so far as this world is concerned, but not so far as God is concerned.) God is with them. “The Lord his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them”, chap 23: 21. God’s presence is there, and He makes His presence known. “The shout of a king”, I take it, is heard inside; it is the word that makes HIM known, just as the confession that “God is in you of a truth” (1 Cor 14: 25) was the testimony which would also come from outside. It was the desideratum (something that was needed, requirement) proposed to the saints at Corinth, but hindered by the allowance of the flesh in their meetings, and the disorders that had crept into the assembly. But God is as really on the earth today, as He was when “God was in Christ” the dwelling place of (or in whom was pleased to dwell) “all the fulness of the Godhead, bodily”, and if God is on the earth may we not expect that He will make His presence known? I expect “the shout of a king” among His people within, and also the sense that “God is there” from the world without. I think so God manifests Himself and hence the rage and opposition of the enemy are manifested wherever He does so.

Another and a fourth thing is true since God is with His people. That is, they are strong. “He hath as it were the strength of an unicorn”, chap 23: 22, 24. What is there to discourage in speaking of the giants of Anak, when GOD goes up in the midst of them? They may be there, and for us it is true that they are there, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against wicked spirits, the “principalities and powers”, who usurp the “heavenly places”, Eph 6. I think that the enemy usurps the earthly places, and the heavenly places. One belongs to Israel, the other to the church. But the very chapter, Eph 6, which tells us that these are our foes, says also to you and to me, “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might”, v 10. “I have strength for all things through him who gives me power” (Phil 4: 13 NT), is the language of faith, when the light of God fills the soul, but “My leanness, my leanness” (Isa 24: 16), is the language of the saint with his eye upon man.

Now what flows out of these four, in the good of which God sets His people before Him, is, No 5, that He does not see THEM at all. 1, Sanctified—2, Justified—3, God with them—4, They strong. He sees all these instead as their covering. “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles O Israel”, chap 24: 5. He speaks not of them but of their tents!

If we had been looking at these tents that day in a natural way, that is, according to what was true to natural sight—we might have seen them anything but beautiful, for they were in the desert, battered and torn by their thirty-eight years of the wilderness life with all its vicissitudes! How does God see them? Not encompassed by the drought and the desert sands, not as battered and torn, but as valleys—as gardens by the river’s side—as trees of aloes which the Lord had planted—and as cedar trees beside the waters. He says all this about their tents—about that which covered His people. It is Christ, in all His freshness and beauty under the eye of God, it is this which is spoken of here, and the people are lost in HIM!

My next point is The coming of the Lord.

Viewed as sanctified—as justified—God with them, and they strong—viewed also as in Christ, what is there more? Why, THE COMING OF THE LORD. This closes the prophecy.

“There shall come a Star out of Jacob”, and again, “Out of Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion”, chap 24: 17, 19.

All that we have looked at is true, apart from the coming of the Lord. It is true now while “we see not yet all things put under him”, and when the activity of the enemy exists all around, chap 24: 17-24. But His coming ends all this.

For at the coming of the Lord the enemy will be set aside actually and for ever. He “shall perish for ever”, v 24. This is what we wait for. Himself is our hope, but the five points I have referred to are all true now, and as saints we should be in all the known good of them today.

It has pleased the Lord to bless. “HE HATH BLESSED”, and now “Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee”. We are just at the close of our wilderness journey, and are just about to enter the land! And this is what God has to say to us and of us! It will be true of Israel at the end also, but it is His blessed light for this day. I cannot understand any Christian reading these wonderful prophecies without being deeply affected by them. You draw near to God in these chapters, to listen to His words, on a subject than which none can be of greater interest to you, because that subject is yourself, as GOD’S WORKMANSHIP, Eph 2: 10. May the Lord deeply affect us by all the light of His blessed grace to us!

 

From Food for the Faithful—vol 1, 1898