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The Daily Word of Righteousness
From Bethel to El-bethel, #4
He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him—the dark rain clouds of the sky. (Psalms 18:11—NIV)
God is in the darkness of the storm as much as He is in the brightness of a sunny day. We must know both of these faces if we are to bear a true witness of the Lord.
It's pleasant to walk with God during a morning filled with sunshine. It also is pleasant to walk with God on dark waters at midnight. But it takes a while to get used to this, to accept affliction and pressure cheerfully that the power of Christ may rest on us.
Then the LORD said to him, "Know for certain your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions." (Genesis 15:13,14—NIV)
These were not light matters God was referring to. The offspring that Abram had just been promised were to be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years. That is a long time, longer than the entire existence of the United States of America. Therefore the occasion was one of dreadful darkness, not lightness and frivolity.
If God should choose to give us great fruitfulness, as He did Abram, then we can be certain the occasion will not be a merry party but an experience that will penetrate the marrow of our bones, laying bare the roots of our personality.
The valleys of the sea were exposed and the foundations of the earth laid bare at your rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of breath from your nostrils. (Psalms 18:15—NIV)
Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. (Psalms 42:7—NIV)
The mountains saw you and writhed. Torrents of water swept by; the deep roared and lifted its waves on high. (Habakkuk 3:10—NIV)
Are you beginning to get a feel for what I am attempting to portray? The three verses above are all referring to our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a side of Him that mature saints come to experience and then accept.
"Yes, Abram, your offspring shall be as the stars of the heavens. But they will be enslaved and mistreated before they are released into their inheritance."
We know that to the present hour the Jews suffer much rejection. But their day shall come. He who made a covenant with Abram by sacrifice is still in control. He is the Lord Jesus Christ—King of all kings and Lord of all Lords!
"But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves." God was speaking here of the suffering of the Egyptians. Although Egypt was made expendable in terms of God's purpose in Israel, God loved and yet loves the Egyptian people. The Word to Abram was solemn indeed!
You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. (Genesis 15:15,16—NIV)
To be continued.