Morning By Morning #54

Never will I leave you.

Hebrews 13:5

From the pen of Charles Spurgeon:

None of God’s promises are private, as though they extend to only one person, for whatever God says to one of His saints, He says to all. When He opens up a well of water for one Christian, it is so all may drink. And when He opens the granary door to distribute food, one starving man may be the reason behind it, but nevertheless, all hungry saints may come and eat as well.

O believer, it makes no difference whether the promise originally came to Abraham or Moses, for He has given it to you as an heir of His covenant. There is no lofty blessing of God’s too high for you, nor a vast mercy of His too wide for you. “Go up to the top of Pisgah and look west and north and south and east. Look at the land with your own eyes” (Deut. 3:27). View the full extent of God’s divine promise, for all the land you see, you own—it is yours! There is not one brook of living water of which you may not drink. If it is “a land flowing with milk and honey” (Ex. 3:8), then eat the honey and drink the milk, for both are yours.

Be bold and believe “because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’” Through this promise the Lord gives His people everything. “Never will I leave you.” Due to this promise, no attribute of God can ever cease to be employed on our behalf. Is He mighty? He will “strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chron. 16:9). Is He love? Then He will crown “you with love and compassion” (Ps. 103:4). Whatever attributes comprise the character of God, each of them is employed to their fullest extent on our behalf.

To fully sum up this truth, there is nothing you could want, nothing you could ask for, nothing you could need in all of time or eternity, nothing living or dying, nothing in this world or the next, and nothing now, nothing on resurrection morning, or nothing in heaven that is not contained in this verse—“Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

From the pen of Jim Reimann:

The Lord said through Balaam, “God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” (Num. 23:19). Later, Joshua’s farewell to Israel’s leaders answered Balaam’s questions, “Now I am about to go the way of all the earth. You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the LORD your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed. But just as every good promise of the LORD your God has come true, so the LORD will bring on you all the evil he has threatened…if you violate the covenant of the LORD your God” (Josh. 23:14-16).

Again, why did the children of Israel suffer so many difficulties? Because “they despised the pleasant land; they did not believe his promise” (Ps. 106:24). They should have been like David, who said, “I rejoice in your promise like one who finds great spoil” (Ps. 119:162).

“But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe” (Gal. 3:22). “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God” (2 Cor. 1:20).