We read in the vision of Obadiah an arresting statement, “The house of Jacob shall possess their possessions” (v. 17). This unusual way of enshrining a great truth opens up a wide field of thought.
When a sinner, convicted of his guilt before God, trusts the Lord Jesus as His Saviour and Lord, he immediately becomes the possessor of eternal life, possessed alike by all God’s children, whether a new convert or the maturest of saints.
But what experience can the new convert have of eternal life at the beginning of his Christian career? He is like a child going to school for the first time, not knowing more than the alphabet on which all language is based, nor does he know much about figures on which all calculations are based. He is furnished with class books, leading him on step by step into fuller and still fuller knowledge. Thus the new convert needs Divine teaching, until it can be said of him, that not only has he eternal life as the sovereign gift of God, but he knows now what eternal life really means, and it can be said of him that he possesses his possessions.
A kind father might give each of his two sons a plot of ground with the exhortation, that they should cultivate their respective plots, growing flowers, fruit and vegetables. One boy is lazy, and does not try to answer to his father’s wishes. His plot is neglected, overspread with weeds and thistles, and is a real wilderness. Thanks to his father’s gift, the plot of ground is his possession, but does he really possess his possessions?
The other boy sets to work diligently, carefully prepares the soil, puts in the necessary seeds, and in due time his plot is covered with the fruits of the ground to his father’s great pleasure. This lad possesses his plot of ground, but he also possesses his possessions in a practical way.
Scripture speaks of eternal life from two aspects. The Apostle John tells us eternal life is the present possession of every believer on the Lord Jesus Christ. We read, “These things have I written to you that believe on the name of the Son of God: that ye may know that ye have eternal life” (1 John 5:13).
But the Apostle Paul presents eternal life as something the believer has to lay hold on. Writing to Timothy, his son in the faith, he exhorted him, “Lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses” (1 Tim. 6:12).
It is very evident that Paul himself sought to follow out in his own Christian life his advice to Timothy. Here are his own words, “I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth to those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:12-14). Here we have the things connected with our real “life,” presented to us as something to be laid hold of, a prize to be won at the end of the race. What a glorious incentive!
1 Corinthians 13:1-4, that great love chapter, shows very clearly the distinction we wish to make, between what we see all around us in Christendom, and what truly exhibits the possessing of our possessions.
It is possible with a retentive memory, and an exhaustive study of the Scriptures, to arrive at a correct knowledge of the letter of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. Such an one may address his fellow-believers, his speech fluent and his exposition faultless, and yet leaving his hearers cold and unimpressed.
Have we anything in Christendom to answer to this? Alas! we see it on every hand. Scripture supposes a man, speaking with the tongues of men and angels, and yet destitute of divine love. Such an one is but a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. Another may have the gift of prophecies, and all knowledge, may have all faith, even to the removing of mountains, yet lacking love, he is nothing. And still further, a man may give all his goods to feed the poor, may even give his body to be burned, and who could go further: Yet without love, it would profit him—nothing.
We all recognise to our sorrow one who speaks as a mere gramophone, a second-hand trafficker in truths, which have not entered his own heart, so as to mould his own inner spiritual being, and whose addresses leave his hearers unmoved and unblest.
On the other hand, how delightful it is to listen to ministry that comes from the heart of the speaker in the power of the Spirit of God. It was said of one speaker, whose life did not correspond with his testimony, “I cannot hear what you say, when I know what you are.” How good it is when we listen to an address with the conviction that the speaker’s Christian life is in accord with his ministry.
When the enemies of our Lord demanded, “Who art Thou?” His reply was, “Even the same that I said to you from the beginning” (John 8:25); that is, His life and outward ministry harmonized. Thus it should be with all the Lord’s servants.
When a servant of the Lord discourses on heavenly things, it is good, if, unconsciously to himself, his very countenance testifies to the joy of his own heart in the knowledge of these spiritual things. No wonder that the face of Moses shone so brightly, that the people could not behold his face “steadfastly” (2 Cor. 3:7). He had just received the wonderful instructions for the building of the Tabernacle, speaking as it does symbolically of Christ in His Person, His life, His atoning death and His resurrection.
The face of Stephen shone, and no wonder. Though the cruel stones were soon to be battering out the life of this brave proto-martyr, we read, “All that sat in the council, looking steadfastly on him,” saw his face “as it had been the face of an angel” (Acts 6:15).
The Apostle Paul wrote, “We all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18).
When a servant of the Lord ministers the word, which he has made his own, and it is reflected in his own Christian life, the Lord’s people are quick to recognize that the speaker really possesses his possessions.
We remember an instance, which may stand as an illustration of our theme. An earnest Christian persuaded a brother in the Lord, one who was alas! a worldly Christian, but whose spiritual welfare he had greatly at heart, to attend a lecture to be given by a true servant of the Lord. Coming away from the meeting, he said to the man, who persuaded him to attend the meeting, that he felt humbled in the dust as to his own half-hearted, worldly ways as a professed Christian, that he would seek the grace of God to enable him to put first things first. The other replied in astonishment, “The speaker said not a single word tonight about worldly Christians.” “That is quite true,” was the answer, “But the Lord’s love to us was so manifested that I felt humbled in God’s presence, and determined with the help of His Spirit to seek to walk henceforth more to His glory.”
The word reached his conscience and heart, for it came from the heart of the speaker in the power of the Holy Spirit, and so produced this happy result.
Here surely is an example of one, who found out, that in order to really possess his possessions, his possessions must possess him in his most inmost soul, affecting his whole life before God in Christ. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt. 12:34).
Well may each one of us sing with our whole heart,
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.”
“God is love; and he that dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:16). Such an experience means that not only do we possess our possessions, but by the Spirit’s operation in our hearts our possessions possess us for God’s glory, and our own immeasurable gain. And we must not forget that “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give [shine out] the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).