God’s Word and God’s Son

IF we read on and discover the content of the covenant, we have further evidence of the grace of God. We read:

“To your offspring I give this land” (Genesis 15:18).

This is the first time that God says, “To your offspring I [now] give the land.” Up until now it had been a promise; now it becomes an established fact. God speaks as though it were already done. And so too the Christian today, who seeks for assurance, can but go to Calvary where God seems to say, “There is the evidence of my love. If you can stand before Calvary and still doubt that I love you, still doubt that My Word is true, there is nothing else that I can possibly do for you.”

It must be impressed upon our minds that to ask for anything more than the simple word of the living God and Calvary is an insult to the Almighty and an example of our own doubt. When Abram asked God for further assurance, God gave him a picture of Calvary and confirmed His covenant. Today there is a great tendency for men not to be satisfied with the Word of God, but to look for other evidences, emotional experiences and disturbances, mental experiences and fleshly manifestations. Men want to have feelings and see signs and wonders and miracles, and have all sorts of strange dreams and visions and manifestations; but God says in effect, “All these things are dishonoring to Me.” He wants nothing more than for us to believe the record of His Word. Again we refer you to that passage in John’s first letter:

“If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son” (1 John 5:9-10).

Let us be satisfied only with His Word and with the record of what He has done through Jesus Christ. Can we, my friends, stand before Calvary and see the agony of the Son of God as He hangs there upon the Cross, bleeding and dying in our stead until out of the depth of the distress of His soul He cries out, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), and realize that it was for us that God gave His Son, that He should die and then still doubt? Certainly we must see the awful sin of asking for anything more than that which He has so clearly demonstrated on the Cross of Calvary. And so in answer to Abram’s question, “How am I to know?” (Genesis 15:8), God in essence said, “Go to Calvary.” May the Lord bring us to Calvary day by day so that we shall ask for nothing more than His Word.

Adapted and modified excerpts from Studies in the Life of Abraham by M. R. De Haan (1891-1964)
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
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