September 13

"And he said, Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?" Genesis 15:8.

WHY, had not God that very moment promised it? And was not his word sufficient?

They surely have never made the trial who imagine that it is an easy thing to believe. To confide in a Being invisible, and whom we have so deeply offended, and to hang our everlasting hope upon his naked truth, requires the exertion of the power that raised up Christ from the dead. Who never feels in him the working of an evil heart of unbelief? Our Lord upbraided his own apostles with their want of faith. And even the father of the faithful desires something more than God's engagement to give him the land of Canaan. Whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it? Yet God pardoned his servant in this thing, and stooped to his weakness, and yielded him what he required. And Abraham was satisfied with the sign and the seal.

There is a better country, even a heavenly. The possession of it is an object worthy of all our concern. And they who love it and seek it supremely, cannot leave their claim undecided and uncertain; and therefore their language will be, "Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation;" "Give me a token for good;" "Whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?"

"Why, you have the promise of God, who cannot lie." Yes; and this infallibly insures it to all those to whom it belongs. But who are the heirs of promise? Away with dreams and visions, and sounds in the air, and impulses, and accidental occurrences of passages of Scripture. We have super evidence. We have unerring proofs, furnished by God himself. Search his word with diligence and prayer. There you will find, not the names indeed of the heirs of eternal life, but their characters, their qualities, their taste, their choice, their way, their aim.

Let me fix on one of these vouchers only; it is a preparation for the blessedness. Where this is found, the title can never be absent. The apostle therefore gives "thanks to the Father, who has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light." In another place he says, "He hath wrought us for the self-same thing." And he does nothing in vain. If he has, by the agency of his Holy Spirit, fitted you in the temper of your soul for the world of glory, you may be assured that he designs you for it. If you bear the image of the heavenly, you will partake of their condition. If you have the dawn of that blessed state, you will have the day. Grace is of the same nature with glory; they differ only in the degree. Is heaven not only the high but the holy place into which entereth nothing that defileth? and do you hunger and thirst after righteousness? Does the blessedness consist in adoring the Lamb that was slain, and in being like him, and in seeing him as he is? And are you now glorying only in his cross, and following him in the regeneration; and praying that you may know him in the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings? Will the distinctions in life, now allowable and necessary, be done away, and only those remain which arise from character? And are you valuing persons, not according to their outward circumstances, but their real, their moral, their spiritual worth? As no inquiry will be made there where we have worshipped, but how; nor to what denomination we pertained, but whether we were Jews inwardly, can you now pray from the heart, "Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity?" Can you now say, "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother?" Then heaven is already begun, and therefore insured; "for we are confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." If you can take the representations of the employments and enjoyments of heaven given us in the Scripture, and can desire these things, and hope for these things, and find your liberty and happiness in them, you have the earnest of the inheritance, and are sealed by the Holy Spirit of God unto the day of redemption. Let me not then, O my soul, be faithless, but believing; and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.