GOD’S VIEW
Scotie W Selman
Genesis 22: 1-2, 6-8
John 6: 5-13
Revelation 3: 7-8
I have been thinking to continue what we considered in our reading meeting about God’s perspective, His outlook, His view of things. From God’s perspective, you are very precious, each one of you. You mean so much to Him. Often when I seek to speak about the Lord Jesus, and speak about the heart of God, I feel quite overwhelmed, because I know I could never adequately express the greatness and the extent of His love. I can only say to you, right now, that He loves you, and cares for you so much. My heart has been touched, and I thank God for it. And I thank God for each one of you; and that I believe that the Lord has touched your heart, in some way. To what extent, I do not know; that is between you and the Lord. He knows your heart; He knows your state; He knows where you are right at this very moment. What is so wonderful about the love of God is He will take you up right where you are, right now, today. I reflect on my own experience and think of the many times God took me up right where I was. He did not pass me by because of where I had been, or what I had done, or because He was disappointed in me or for certain things that would need to be resolved. No, He took me up right then and right there. I think it is wonderful to take that up, because, again from God’s perspective, His heart is a heart of love. His desire is towards you; you are precious to Him and you mean everything to Him.
In reading this particular portion in Genesis, I am not going to go into its typical application, or all the different verses. What struck me in this particular portion at this time was that simple expression: “My son, God will provide himself with the sheep for a burnt-offering”. Think of what God has provided in order to meet your need, in order that you might know His love, and in order that He might express to you the depth and extent of His heart of love, to you - it is to you, and it is to me. God has taken us up, each one individually. His eye is upon you; His heart is towards you. It says, “My son, God will provide himself with the sheep for a burnt-offering”. What a wonderful thing to consider, beloved. God’s love for you was so great that He gave His own Son - He gave His own Son. I can think of nothing greater. I can contemplate love but I cannot think of a love that was greater than that kind of love, a love that would go to such depths, a love that would go to such lengths to secure your heart for Himself; the love that was seen in how God spared not His own Son.
In this particular portion, we have the preciousness of Isaac emphasised as a type of Christ. How precious Isaac was to Abraham; how much Isaac meant to Abraham, and to Sarah too: he meant everything to them. They had Isaac at a late age. It is important to realise that, in that day, having offspring was everything. Every measure of blessing was centred on one’s offspring - producing fruit, in that sense. And they could have none. But God comes in in grace and mercy and He gives them a child. He gives to them Isaac, and Isaac meant everything to them. Think of all those years that they no doubt had longed for a child; they had yearned for a child. And finally, God provides for them and blesses them with this little boy, Isaac. What he must have meant to them! But Abraham, in obedience to God, is willing to deliver him up, and to sacrifice him.
Dear beloved, the thoughts and the feelings of God are no different; in fact, they are even far greater than what Abraham could have ever touched. We may touch on things in some small way. We may have some understanding, even in personal relationships that we have with one another, with family, in marriage and so forth. We touch these things, and we can touch them in measure, but we can never touch them to the extent that God has Himself, and I say that reverently. God has experience; God has feelings; God’s heart of love is real and it is true. We could never reach the depth of His love. We could never understand and comprehend what it meant to Him to give His own Son. We could never fathom the feelings of Christ Himself, in going to the cross - oh, how that should touch our hearts: the preaching of the cross; what the cross means. Let us think what it meant to Christ; how it showed His perfect love; how it expressed His commitment and His devotion; the way that He went to the cross for you. He went there for you. He was nailed on that awful tree for you. He went willingly. Oh, what commitment, what devotion of love was seen in Christ in the way that He went to the cross.
I want to be careful in the way I say this, but what Christ endured at the hands of man - the suffering that He endured at the hands of man - served to demonstrate the hatred and the wickedness of man’s heart - my heart! My heart is no different. The wickedness of my heart, the flesh in me, is no different than the very hearts of those who took Christ and nailed Him on the tree. And there is no difference in any one of us; that is something to lay hold of. But it is something not to dwell on, if our hearts have been touched, and it should magnify in our hearts the greatness of God’s grace and love, that He would take up such a one as me; He would take up such a one as you, in all your sin, and in all of your hatred and wickedness. Dearly beloved, God’s own Son, there on the cross, has taken you up and shown love. Think of the Lord Jesus Himself, in commitment and love and devotion, going to the cross - for you; the One whom God has provided, to show His love. Christ proved that love; He demonstrated that love perfectly. He went to the cross, and He suffered, and He died. Think of what He went through in the three hours of darkness; it is something that we could never understand; not even in a small way could we understand.
We can understand to some extent His sufferings at the hands of man, which served to prove the hatred of man’s heart. But what He endured in the three hours of darkness when He exhausted the wrath of God against sin - think of that. God is a holy and righteous and perfect God; He is a sin-hating God. Sin is in complete opposition to everything that God stands for, if I can say it in that way, and God is the sin-hating God. Christ exhausted His wrath. God can now be propitious towards man. In other words, God has been satisfied by the sacrifice of Christ. God has been perfectly satisfied with what Christ has accomplished because He has exhausted His wrath and if we believe on Him, there is nothing, nothing to be held against me or you. There is nothing for me to add to that work; there is nothing for you to pay: the price has been paid. Think of that! What liberty there is. Our hearts can be set free. When we look on the cross we can say that it was there that He hung and He died, and it was there He went through and endured the wrath of God during the three hours of darkness, and it is there that He could say, “It is finished”, John 19: 30. There is nothing left to be done. How wonderful that is. What peace there is in that, to be able to know that there is nothing for me to add to that work. I know that there was nothing I could do in my own power; I am completely incapable. I can look back at my own history even as a believer, and know that. I think of my ups and downs and my failures and my weaknesses and my detours and so forth - as a believer! And so I know - it has been confirmed in my heart - that in the flesh I am utterly incapable of pleasing God. But, oh how I can rejoice in my heart and spirit that, as in Christ, I can come before Him clothed in His worth. How wonderful it is.
I often think of the younger son in Luke 15, the prodigal son as we speak of him, and I think about what he must have felt when the father saw him from afar off and ran to him, and took him in his arms. How he dressed him and gave him the best robe, and the ring on his finger, and the sandals on his feet, and said, ‘Come in, come in to the house, we are going to rejoice. We are going to celebrate together. This my son was dead, now he is alive’. Think of what the prodigal son must have experienced in his heart. He did not anticipate that. He said, ‘You know, I have not done well. I do not deserve anything. Just make me a servant’. Someone once said to me that on the basis of what he had done, that he did not even deserve to be a servant. But he had gone back with at least that expectation: ‘Well, maybe he could make me a servant’. Dear beloved, from God’s perspective, God’s view, God’s desire for you is not that you might merely be a servant in His house. His desire is that you might be clothed in the best robe with the ring on your hand and the sandals on your feet. His desire is that you should be in His presence, that you should be near to Him, that you would be in the enjoyment of a relationship with Him. How wonderful that is. There is nothing more precious to God, there is nothing that means more to Him, than to have you near to Himself, as a son - to be in a relationship with Himself.
We often get occupied with what we can do, and what we are doing. And so, we think of our relationship with God as serving Him, and worshipping Him, and all of those things are right in their place. But the way that we are to serve is in the dignity of that wonderful relationship that we have with Him as sons, so that we are completely free. We are at liberty in God’s presence - nothing is held back, and how wonderful that is. That is His desire. But it all begins with this wonderful thought of what He has provided. And I trust that we would continue to be encouraged in this. May our hearts be touched; may your heart and my heart might be touched as to the greatness of God’s love as seen in what He has provided in His Son. There it is nothing greater than that. There is no greater demonstration or example of love than what was seen in that. I keep saying it, and I am going to say it again: it was for you. Has that touched your heart? Has that affected you? Does that not cause you to have this desire to respond to Him, to rejoice in your heart, to reach out to Him in thanksgiving and express your love to Him? That is what God is looking for. He is not looking for great feats. He is not looking for acts of greatness and glory. He is not looking for someone who can stand up here and be a great preacher or for a young man who is tirelessly serving doing this and doing that. What He is looking for is for you to walk in faithfulness, simple faithfulness to the light that you have, what God has provided to you in the way of truth, to be faithful to that, to walk in it, to walk in the light to whatever extent that might be.
We are all growing, dearly beloved. We are all at different stages; we should all be progressing; the point is, are we progressing? Are we walking in the light that we have? Are we remaining faithful and true to what God has made available? God does not present it to you simply as, ‘These are my requirements’. No, what God is saying to you is, ‘You are so important to me, and you mean so much to me, and I love you so much, I am going to give you light. I am going to make that light available to you, and you are going to have the privilege of taking that up. You will have the privilege of walking in faithfulness according to the light that I have given to you in love’. Does that not change your perspective on light and truth? We often look at the truth just from the perspective of requirements, and rules, and what we are to be governed by - to some extent that is important - but, dearly beloved, view it from that perspective, that God is speaking to you personally. His desire is for you to come into the greatness of all that He has made available to you, all that He has secured for Himself. His love is so great that He would speak to you and say, ‘I am giving you this so that you have the great privilege of being able to take it up for yourself, that you might be for me’. There is no greater gift from God than that, than to make that available to you.
He has made everything available to you so that you can take it up: Christ has secured it, the Spirit makes it good in your heart. How wonderful the gift of the Holy Spirit is! He is available to us each one. How wonderful it is, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit - that One who tirelessly serves the saints to make these things real to us, to bring us into the full enjoyment of what God has purposed in His heart. The Spirit is ever serving in that way, working with us, in us, working with us collectively. He is here, and He is seeking to help us come into the power and the good and the gain of what God is doing - turn to Him; speak to Him. I would exhort each one of us to avail ourselves of the Spirit’s presence, and His service, and His desire. There is nothing the Spirit wants to do more than to open up the Scriptures to you, nothing the Spirit desires to do more than to help you come into the gain of truth and the light that God has given to you. There is nothing that means more to Him in His service than being able to make these things very real to you. You are not having to think for yourself about what you should do next, or how you should do it, or if this is the right thing or the wrong thing. No, you are just to walk responsively because of the reality of what you hold in your heart. Think of the many things that you do that you do not even think about. Why is that? It is because that is part of who you are; it is part of what you have come into; you no longer have to think about it. The Spirit of God would desire that you would come into His things in that way.
We had in Genesis the simple impression as to what God has provided and I truly desire for us, each one, that we would lay hold of the greatness of what God has provided, so that we would have some understanding of the extent and depth of His love. That would be my desire for each one of us, to truly lay hold of that. Is it not wonderful that in John 6 we continue this thought of what He has provided in this wonderful account of the crowd being fed? I am not going to spend a lot of time on this particular portion but I have enjoyed it of late. It is a very well-known portion here as to this little boy who had some loaves and fishes that he made available to the Lord, but it is wonderful and encouraging to see how God has provided what we need to come into the gain, and some understanding, of the greatness of His love; and to secure us for Himself. He provides what is needed, whatever it is, wherever you may be this very day, whatever the state of your soul is, wherever you may be in your own heart. You may be struggling with things, and there may be circumstances and situations that none of the rest of us even know about that you are going through - God knows. God knows what you are going through; God knows what is in your heart. He knows what you are thinking; He knows what you are going through: speak to Him about it. Remember that He already knows. Sometimes we go through things, and yet we do not get on our knees and speak to the Father about them; we do not open up our hearts. Why? He already knows, but He wants you to speak to Him about them. He wants to be able to make Himself available to you to bring in what you need in the way of comfort and encouragement and strength. These things are real; these are not fanciful things. We have to avail ourselves of that wonderful opportunity to sit down, I say it reverently, with God, with the Father, to speak to Him, to open up our hearts. He knows what is in our hearts and He will provide what is needed. In this particular portion, the Lord knew what was needed; He knew that this crowd needed to be fed. And then you see His desire for His disciples. He knew what He was going to do, but He was trying His disciples.
The Lord allows certain circumstances and situations to come in; He uses those things. He uses those circumstances and those situations to teach us, to form us, to develop us, so that there might be progress in our soul, that there might be a greater appreciation in our hearts for His things, and that we might fully come into the things of Jesus Christ. He uses those things. He sees this as a teaching moment, an opportunity to further develop in their own hearts the reality of what He had been teaching them all along. And so, He knew what He was going to do. His disciples here, Philip and Andrew, seemed to have recognised that this little boy was there, and he has five loaves of bread and two fishes – but they question if that is sufficient. Dearly beloved, it is so wonderful to realise that God is not limited. I enjoyed this recently and it was helpful to me, that this is really an example of how important it is not to get occupied with the outward smallness of things, the confusion, the ruin that has come in - that is all the result of man’s mind and man’s thinking and what he has done. The greatness of what God has purposed in His heart has not changed at all. Now, outwardly, you may not see it. Outwardly, it may be discouraging, because things are small: we are not to despise the day of small things, Zech 4: 10. In some sense, the disciples were despising the day of small things, in not appreciating what this little boy had. What is five loaves of bread and two fishes? “What is it for so many?” - that is like despising the day of small things. May we be preserved from that. May we not get occupied with the smallness of things. May it be that we understand that God uses the smallness of things to bring us into something in a greater and fuller way. It is all part of His work for us.
What we want to continue to do is to have God’s perspective and His outlook, just as we spoke of it in the reading, to see things from His perspective. Look at the Lord here: they said, “There is this little boy here”, but they did not appreciate what this little boy had. Jesus said, “Make the men sit down”. That was His response, “Make the men sit down”. He was going to show what this little boy had, and He was going to use it. In fact, He was going to use it to an extent that it is going to be a miracle. That was quite a miracle really, when you think about the thousands being fed by five loaves of bread and a couple of fishes. But you see that God desires that we would understand and appreciate what He is doing in persons, and not get occupied with outward status. Think of what the Lord can do; in His hands there are no limits whatsoever. So, what we may feel to be small, what we may believe to be weak and insignificant, in the hands of the Lord, becomes great. And that is the thing to hold and never let go, to look at things from that perspective. What will it accomplish, what is available in His hands, not my hands? I might think, ‘What can I do with this? I do not have much, I am just an insignificant brother, I cannot help with anything’. A sister may think, ‘Well, I do not have much of an opportunity to be much of a help’. Do not look at it that way. Look at it what God can do with you, through Christ and by the Spirit and the way that He can use you. I am sure that this little boy did not think when he left home and took up five loaves of bread and a couple of fishes, ‘I want to go down the road because I know there are thousands of people down there and I am going to feed them’. I am quite sure that never crossed his mind. I am sure that he had a simple desire, there was some appreciation in his heart for Christ, and he had a simple desire for it. It is as if he would think: ‘This is what I have; it is Yours. Take what I have and do what You will with it. I have confidence and faith in that’. It is as simple as that. We must come to this realisation, that whatever I have came from Him to begin with. So, who am I to look down on it and treat it as though it is a small thing? No matter how small a thing may seem outwardly, if it is of Christ, if it is from the Lord, it is a great and wonderful thing. So we are not to despise a day of small things. Every little thing that each one has is very precious and so important to Christ, and He can perform miracles with it as in His hands.
I am thinking as to this passage in Revelation that I want to end by encouraging each one of us to go in for these things. We know what God has provided. We know His love - I trust that we would come into it more, that we would have a greater appreciation of His love, that it would truly touch my heart in a deeper and fuller way. We know God’s love and what He has provided. We know and have experienced what He continues to provide in the way of support and help. I trust that each one has experienced that in some way, form or fashion. Each one’s path is different; each one’s experience is different. No doubt we know that, but, dearly beloved, what I want to end with is to encourage us, each one, to go in for these things and to realise there has been an open door set before us. We have only scratched the surface in what we have touched on. In any appreciation we have of the greatness of God’s love and what He has provided, we have only scratched the surface. There are great and wonderful and marvellous things available to us, as seen in this open door. It is an open door that Christ has set before us. How wonderful that is. I often think for myself how I would desire to enter in through that door more often. Think of it like this, that opened door - and everything that is beyond that door - would represent God’s heart and what He desires for you; everything that is available for you in the way of an inheritance. And ultimately, our inheritance is to come into the gain of God’s inheritance; that is our true inheritance. I cannot think of a greater inheritance than that - to be taken up in the reality of what God has secured for Himself in the way of inheritance. It speaks of that in the Scriptures - God’s inheritance, “his inheritance”, Eph 1: 18. Our inheritance, again, is being part of that, being part of God’s inheritance. There is nothing greater than that.
Well everything that is available beyond that opened door represents what God has purposed for His own heart, and the fact is that it is available to you. Have you so much as even stopped and looked through the door, just to get a glimpse of what is there? If you have not, then I would encourage you, I would exhort you, I would plead with you to take a moment to be before Him in prayer - ask Him for help, to give you heavenly eyesight. At least, take a moment: think about what He has done for you. Is He not worthy, on account of what He has done for you, that you take just a moment to stop and at least look through the door and get a glimpse of all that God desires for you? Nothing means more to Him than you availing yourself of what He has provided. Do you want to show your love, do you want to provide response to God on the basis of what He has done? Then continue to take things up in exercise, progress in your own heart and soul in relation to what He has made available for you and ultimately for Himself.
I ask the question again: have you looked through that open door? He says, “I have set before thee an opened door, which no one can shut”. No one can shut it - it is available if you desire to go in for it. God will provide the means and everything that is necessary to enter into it. Have you looked through that door? Have you seen the precious things that God has purposed for you? How wonderful it all is.
May the Spirit of God encourage us, each one, to not only to simply look through the door, but to walk through it and take advantage of what He has provided to us. I trust we would be encouraged with these things. How wonderful what God has provided is, the way He has proved His love in the giving up of His beloved Son, the way He continues to prove His love and what He provides for what we need, the way He continues to work with us, the power of the Holy Spirit that we might grow and progress in divine things. How precious it is that there is an open door, dearly beloved. Just take a moment, look through that open door. Get a glimpse of the wonderful things that God is making available to you through Christ in view of what is for Himself. I trust that you might have some glimpse, and that it might touch your heart in such a way that there is movement in faith to go in for these things in a greater way. I speak for myself in this as well.
May the Lord encourage us, for His Name’s sake.
Wheaton
15th November 2020