Through all the ages of time the saints of God have been marked by confidence in God, a confidence produced by faith in the knowledge of God, and this knowledge according to the revelation that God was pleased to give of Himself. Man naturally has usually great confidence in himself, and this is what is highly valued by men, but the believer has to learn to have “no confidence in the flesh,“ and to realise that in himself he is nothing. When the Lord Jesus was on earth He taught His disciples, “without me ye can do nothing, ” for all their resource and strength was in Himself. Like Paul we have to learn from the Lord, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9), and when we have learned this we may be able to say with Paul, “I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13).
Job
The patriarch Job evidently lived in the days of the fathers of Israel, probably in the days of Abraham, Isaac or of Jacob, and we learn from what he says that he had a real knowledge of the ways of God, being able to speak of Jehovah, for when he lost all that he possessed he said, “Jehovah gave, and Jehovah has taken away; blessed be the Name of Jehovah!” (Job 1:21). It was quiet and meek submission to the will of God, inspired by faith in God, and by the knowledge of the perfection of God’s goodness.
As we proceed through the debate into which Job enters with his friends, we realise that Job was unable to understand the reason for God’s severe dealings with him, but his friends not only misunderstood God’s dealings with his pious servant, they attributed all manner of evil to Job of which he was not guilty. All this served to bring out in Job a self-righteousness of which he had probably been unaware, but although he said many unwise things about god’s dealings with him, he nevertheless held to the goodness of God, and manifested his confidence in Him, for he said, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15). It was unbounded confidence in God in spite of his not understanding the reason for God’s dealings with him.
Job was not afraid of death, indeed he would have welcomed it in the midst of his afflictions and trial, for he had the utmost confidence in his “redeemer,” and that He the “Last…shall stand upon the earth, and if after my skin this shall be destroyed, yet from out of my flesh shall I see God” (Job 19:25–27). In spite of the severity of his bodily condition, and of the reproaches of his friends, Job rested with deep confidence as to the final end, when he would see God in the resurrection state.
David
In Psalm 17 David prays that the Lord would deliver his soul from the wicked, from the men of the world “which have their portion in this life, and whose belly” He had filled with hidden treasure (verses 13-14). The man of the world in that day was like the man of the world in this day, his thoughts only concerned the present, and to all outward appearance he was prosperous, having all that the natural heart could desire. Such also opposed those who were godly, but the godly had their resource in God, even as it is written, “Show Thy marvellous loving kindness, O Thou that savest by Thy right hand them which put their trust in Thee from those that rise up against them” (verse 7).
At the end of the Psalm the Psalmist speaks of his own convictions and confidence in God, saying, “As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness” (verse 15). The confidence of the man of the world was in his possessions, but the confidence of the man of God was in Jehovah. The Holy Spirit gave this confidence to David, and used David as His instrument to reveal the truth of God, even as the dying monarch said, “The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and His word was in my tongue” (2 Sam. 23:2). Like the patriarch Job, the Psalmist had evidently light beyond his dispensation.
The man of the world had his portion “in this life,” but David looked for his portion in the life to come, saying, “I will behold His face in righteousness.” This surely is the language of the saint of God as he looks beyond this life into what lies beyond death. The language is quite definite, quite unambiguous, but is clearer still in the light of the New Testament. For the dying thief, death was the entrance into the paradise of God to be with Christ, and this because the Lord had said to him, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.” His going into paradise rested on the work of Christ upon the cross, on the work of redemption that enabled God in perfect righteousness to have the erstwhile sinner before His face. The language of the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:8 and Philippians 1:23, re-echo the words of the psalmist, but with the greater light of revelations from heaven after the Son of God had returned there.
David was also confident regarding resurrection, saying, “I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness.” Whether the Psalmist fully entered into the meaning of this or not it certainly was light beyond what was known in David’s day, for who could have told that the saint of God would have the likeness of the Son of God in his body of glory as raised from the dead? The Spirit of God used David to anticipate the revelation of Christianity, “We shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2).
Psalm 49.
We are not told who wrote this Psalm, but it was “for the son of Korah,” those who had been saved from death in God’s sovereign mercy. We might have thought from Numbers 16:32 that the sons of Korah had perished in the divine judgment, but when we come to Numbers 26, where the judgment is recalled, there is this amazing verse, “Notwithstanding the children of Korah died not” (verse 11). Here then is one of the Psalms that is written to those who have been spared from divine judgment in the sovereignty of God, and this has its application to every one who is spared God’s judgment.
All the inhabitants of the world are called upon to heed what the Psalmist is saying as he speaks of the men of wealth who trust and boast in their possessions, but who cannot redeem themselves or their brother from the grasp of death. The thoughts of the wealthy regarding the future are for their posterity, vainly thinking that their names will live on in calling their lands after their names, but the Psalmist views it all as vanity as he sees them laid in the grave where their beauty consumes away.
Then his own confidence is expressed in the words, “But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for He shall receive me. Selah” (verse 15). It is not the vain confidence of the man of the world, self-confidence that is brought to nought in the face of death, but a divinely given confidence in God Himself. It is God that will redeem his soul from the power of death; it is God that will receive him. With comparatively little light, the godly in past generations faced death with confidence in God, and were able to view the glory of the present world as evanescent, passing away with death, “Man in honour, and that understands not”, being “like the beasts that perish” (verse 20).
The Christian’s Confidence
After unfolding God’s revelation to him of the heavenly house that awaits the believer at the coming of the Lord, the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:6 writes, “Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.” The confidence of the Apostle, and of those who have received his ministry as from the Lord, was based on the divinely given knowledge in the revelation he had received. The natural man has no confidence as to the future, for he has no knowledge of God or of the revelations that God has given to those who trust Him. The word of God has laid open to the Christian what lies ahead, and he rests on what God has spoken.
Then the Apostle adds, “We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (verse 8). What a blessed state this is to pass through this world always confident as to what lies ahead, a confidence divinely given, and that gives character to the Christian’s life. To be absent from this body meant being present with the Lord, and this Paul knew was “far better,” for he had been caught up the third heaven, to the paradise of God where Christ is, and knew the unspeakable bliss of that heavenly scene where the loved ones in Christ who have left this world live with Him.
If the Christian has divinely given confidence as to what lies beyond death, and as to the heavenly house that will be his at the coming of the Lord to raise the sleeping and change the living, he also has “boldness and access with confidence by the faith of” Christ Jesus our Lord (Eph. 3:12). God has opened up His presence to us even now, for through the Lord Jesus we “have access to one Spirit unto the Father” (Eph. 2:18). We do not come cringing into the presence of God, but as sons, having the knowledge of the Father and of His “eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord,” we come before Him as knowing that He delights to have us in His presence to learn His thoughts, to be in communion with Him, and to worship Him. It is this knowledge that gives us that holy boldness and confidence to enter His immediate presence.
Having learned something of God’s thoughts we can understand the feelings of the heart of Paul when writing, “Being confident of this very thing, that He which has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). We know that God will complete the work He has begun in the hearts of His own, and He has left us in this world with this in mind. Each saint of God is God’s workmanship, “created in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:10), and in each one God is working, using all the varied circumstances of life to this end, and in view of the day when Jesus Christ, His own beloved Son, will be displayed before the universe.
God will bring out His own Son in His glory as Son of man, but also in the glory of the Father (Luke 9:26), but He will also bring a great company of His sons out with His beloved Son, and every one will be like Him, bearing His image. In order that His Son might be glorified, the saints will be seen with Him, the fruit of His work upon the cross, but also the fruit of the Father’s work in them during their sojourn in this world. It is indeed with confidence that we look forward to the day of display with Christ, not because of anything we are in ourselves, but because of the work of the Father’s grace in us for His own pleasure, and for the honour of His Son.
We therefore see that the Christian has confidence in relation to being with Christ in the paradise of God if called to pass through the article of death, and as to having a glorified body, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. We also have confidence in entering the Father’s presence now as His sons, having been brought to know His thoughts as in relationship with Him, according to His eternal purpose; and we have confidence as to the coming display of the glory of Jesus Christ, knowing that God is working in us with this in view, and that He will finish the work He has begun.
R. 16.12.69