November 13

Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. - Psalms 73:24.

Do what we will, the future will be continually intruding upon our minds. The Christian feels that he need not fear; he knows that all is prepared and provided for; he knows that the future can bring nothing but what is providential, and what is also merciful and gracious. Futurity has a double aspect: there is a temporal futurity, and there is a more awful futurity still-an eternal futurity.

Asaph looks at both, and says with regard to the temporal futurity, “Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel.” I must advance in life, and how much depends upon every step I take. What, then, is my consolation? “Thou shalt guide me.” How was it with the Jews? They had been delivered from Egypt, were in expectation of possessing Canaan, but they were in an intermediate state. They had the wilderness to pass through; he led them about and instructed them. And what provision was made for them? There was the fiery cloudy pillar to go always before them, and this continued forty years, till they reached the verge of Jordan; then it was no more needed, and disappeared.

And what is the language of the Church? “This God is our God for ever and ever, he will be our guide even unto death.” He has said to us also, “I will lead thee, I will guide thee with mine eye.” And what a guide! How patient to bear with us in our mistakes! how powerful to guard us from all our foes! how able to supply all our wants! how wise and unerring in all our difficulties! We know not the way that we are taking; “but,” says Job, “he knoweth the way that I take;” and he has said, “I will bring the blind by a way that they know not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known.”

So all is provided us for the journey. Ah! but there is the journey’s end. What is to become of me when I enter the valley of the shadow of death? David says, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.”

Secondly, Asaph looks at an eternal futurity, and says, “Afterward thou shalt receive me to glory.” There is a state beyond this vale of tears, of which the land flowing with milk and honey was a very imperfect emblem. Sometimes it is called rest; sometimes peace; sometimes the joy of the Lord; but more frequently than any other it is called glory. Into this Christians will enter after being guided by God’s counsel.

God says, I will receive you; and just as a person hastens to receive a beloved friend, or a darling child, after a dangerous trying journey being over so, but with infinitely more affection, will he receive us into glory, that “where he is there we may be also.”

Here we see that a Christian man can attain the satisfaction of certainty as to the nature of his religion; certainty as to the truth of Scripture; certainty as to the privileges on which his hope is placed; certainty as to his own possession of them. A firm unshaken foundation is laid for his confidence- a confidence that is full and extensive-a confidence that enables him to say, “The Lord is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace and glory, and no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.” "Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory.”