The Lord’s Portion is His People

“For the Lord’s portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness, He led him about, He instructed him, He kept him as the apple of His eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings, so the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him” (Deuteronomy 32:9-12).

Our first appreciation of the Lord lay in the fact that He must be everything to us. Our need of Him awakened by divine grace was but to make us appreciate His sufficiencies to meet that need and give satisfaction to us.

The next thing we are made to discover really surpasses the grace of the other, and is, we are to be for His satisfaction, and to meet a need that was in His heart, and that will not be fully satisfied until, looking round the whole blood-washed throng in heavenly glory He will see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied.

It is the realization of this last fact that gives us confidence in praying one for another. He is deeply interested in the pathway of His own children, and Psalm 56 tells us that He is evidently interested sufficiently to keep our diary for us. He telleth our wanderings, He bottles our tears and keeps register of all in His book.

That He should be so much to us when we think of His greatness and glory is not nearly so surprising as that we should be so much to Him. He could say of Israel, “Ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me.” Almost the same words are used of us in Titus 2, “He purifies to Himself a peculiar people,” something to be His special treasure. This will help to bring home to us the fact that He as interested in everything that relates to us and our happiness. All this comes before us in that one pregnant sentence, “The Lord’s portion is His people.” Now we have brought before us the four ways by which His interest in us was first proved.

1. His grace found us: “He found him”! He did not stumble upon us. We had been the object of a very gracious and persistent search. “He sought us” long before “He found us”! Oh, the wonders of His love!

“Oh the love that sought us,

Oh the blood that bought us,

Oh the grace that brought us to Himself.”

Who is going to fathom the depth of that love—a love that will not let us go. His blessed willing feet took Him the whole journey until He found us.

2. Has mercy compassed us about—He led him. What a shelter that mercy has been many a time.

And since our souls have known His love, “What mercies hath He made us prove.”

3. His wisdom instructed us—“He instructed him,” watched over him. Elihu says, “Who teacheth like Him?” (Job 36:22). Isaiah 48:17 says, “I am the Lord thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go.”

His wisdom ever waketh. His sight is never dim.”

4. His power keeps us “He kept him.” That has been proved right up to the present moment, and all these things have been the way he has proved to us how much we are to Him. Then it speaks about the nest in which all these things have been enjoyed by many young Christians who are reading my words. The stirring up these nests comes. The nestlings are to do their own flying. We shrink from some changes, we are eager for others, but whether pleasing or painful, changes there must be. In the eagle’s case they had to be stirred up to make them take wing—no starting to fly without a nest stirring; but is that all? No. She spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them and beareth them. He will support and keep us from falling all the time. Many times it may be if the Lord leaves us here we may feel the need of the wings spread abroad to keep us, for we are weak and temptations are strong.

“In weakness be Thy love our strength.”

In waiting on the Lord we will be able to renew our strength and mount again. What cheer all this is! No mere bit of religious sentiment but bona fide fact. We feel our need of a lead too.

“Saviour, lead me lest I stray”

is our hearts’ earnest prayer, and here is the answer. “So the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange God with Him.” Oh, that this may be true of us!

A.Cutting

S.T. 1931