The Grand Key to All The LORD's Dealings with The Soul

"Brethren, farewell." -II Corinthians 13:11 [KJV]


To fare well, spiritually understood, is to have everything that God can make us happy in. All God's people will eventually fare well. They all stand complete in Christ: nothing can touch their eternal safety; for they are all complete in Him, "without spot, or blemish, or any such thing." In this point of view, they must all in the end and for ever fare well. But when we come to the matter of experience, we often find that those very times when God's people think they are faring ill, are the seasons when they are really faring well; and again, at other times, when they think they are faring well, then they are really faring ill. For instance, when their souls are bowed down with trouble, it often seems to them that they are faring ill. God's hand appears to be gone out against them: He has hidden His face from them; they can find no access to a throne of grace; they have no sweet testimonies from the Lord that the path in which He is leading them is one of His choosing, and that all things will end well with them. 

 

This they think is indeed faring ill, and yet perhaps they never fare better than when under these circumstances of trouble, sorrow, and affliction. These things wean them from the world. If their heart and affections were going out after idols, they instrumentally bring them back. If they were hewing out broken cisterns, they dash them all to pieces. If they were setting up, and bowing down to idols in the chambers of imagery, affliction and trouble smite them to pieces before their eyes, take away their gods, and leave them no refuge but the Lord God of hosts. If you can only look back, you will see that your greatest sweets have often sprung out of your greatest bitters, and the greatest blessings have flowed from the greatest miseries, and what at the time you thought your greatest sorrows: you will find that the brightest light has sprung up in the blackest darkness, and that the Lord never made Himself so precious as at the time when you were sunk lowest, so as to be without human help, wisdom, or strength. 

 

So that when a child of God thinks he is faring very ill, because burdened with sorrows, temptations, and afflictions, he is never faring so well. The darkest clouds in due time will break, the most puzzling enigmas will sooner or later be unriddled by the blessed Spirit interpreting them, and the darkest providences cleared up; and we shall see that God is in them all, leading and guiding us "by the right way, that we may go to a city of habitation" (Psalm 107:7). "For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." -Isaiah 57:15 

 

O what a mystery that God should have two dwelling-places! The "heaven of heavens" that "cannot contain Him," and the humble, broken, and contrite heart! But in order that the Lord of heaven might have a place in which He could live and lodge, God gives to His people gifts and graces; for He cannot come and dwell in the carnal mind, in our rebellious nature, in a heart full of enmity and wickedness; He therefore makes a lodging-place for Himself, a pavilion in which the King of glory dwells, the curtains of which are like the curtains of Solomon. His abode is that holy, divine nature which is communicated at regeneration— "the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." Thus Christ dwells in the heart by faith; and is "in His people, the hope of glory." 

 

And this made Paul say, "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself for me." This is the object of God's dealings—that the Lord God might dwell in His people; that there might be a union betwixt the Church and her covenant Head: "I in them, and Thou in me, that they might be perfect in one." This is the unfolding of the grand enigma, the solution of the incomprehensible mystery, "God manifest in the flesh,"—that the Lord God might dwell in His people; "I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people;" and thus glorify Himself by filling their hearts with His grace and glory, as Solomon's temple was of old, and that they might enjoy Him, and be with Him when time shall be no more. This is the grand key to all the Lord's dealings with the soul, and all His mysterious leadings in providence,—that the Lord God might dwell in the hearts of His people here, and be eternally glorified in them in a brighter and a better world.

 

-preacher J.C. Philpot (1802-1869 A.D.)

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