What God seems to be and what God is.
We are constantly oppressed with the mystery of God's permissions. He permits afflictions to visit us, and often times to take very trying forms. We can say, "He hath chastened me sore." But it is a great relief to find that our experience is but the experience of the saints of all ages. It is the old and age-long trouble of all who will live godly in this sinful world. God must put them into discipline, and the forms it takes must, of necessity, sometimes seem strange. Divine dealings would not always do their appointed work if we thoroughly understood them. There is no call to trust when we have perfect sight. "What I do thou knowest not now." In the olden days, and still, there appear, to the godly man, most oppressive differences between what God seems, and what God is. We are distressed while we do but look at what God seems, and we gain rest when we look at what God is.
I. WHAT GOD SEEMS. Illustrate from the mists of mountain-lands. "Clouds and darkness are round about him" (Psalms 97:2).
1. See what God seems in nature. Take single things, and we may easily get wrong impressions. Look at nature as a whole, and it becomes clear that all things are working together towards issues that are right and good.
2. See what God seems in human lives. Take single incidents—an untimely death; a sweeping pestilence; a crushed enterprise: a wasting sickness; and it seems as if there were nothing but "cloud and darkness," the mystery of a strange and unreasoning sovereignty round God and his ways. But look at life as a whole, and it soon comes into view that this thing is working in with that, and all are working together for good, through the controlling of him who is love and who loves. Only, if we would see things clearly, and apprehend them aright, we must keep two things in mind.
3. See what God seems in Divine revelations. Here again single things are often most perplexing, because their form and shaping are, in the first instance, precisely fitted to times and seasons, and we find it so difficult to separate the form from the thing, the kernel from the husk. Single things can only be "parts of God's ways." But to us, in these latter days, the revelations of all the ages have been given, duly set m order and relation. We ought to be able to fit so many things of Divine revelation together, as to fully convince ourselves that all do fit.
II. WHAT GOD IS. This we find out through personal experiences. "He hath not given me over unto death," though he seems to be a "sore chastener." Experiences correct appearances. "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth thee." "We walk by faith"—soul-vision, which reveals what is—"not by sight"—bodily vision, which only reveals what seems. To some the clouds about Sinai were God; just as to some travelers the mists hanging about the mountain are the mountain. We want to know what God is. "This is eternal life, to know thee, the only true God." And it is infinite satisfaction to discover that he is righteousness. And righteousness involves and includes love, as certainly as it does holiness and wisdom. When we find for ourselves what God is, we can describe him thus: "The Being who is always right;" or, as a psalmist expresses it, "Righteousness and judgment are the foundation of his throne." He is right in himself, "just;" and right in his doings, ever doing justice—and justice is not justice unless mercy is at the heart of it. When this is well fixed into our very mind and soul, then we get above and beyond all the evil influence of the things that seem; we begin to get vision of the things that are. Right may still seem stern; but we know it must be kind. Right may still seem strange; but we know it must be wise. We cannot stop with this—"He hath chastened me sore." We must go on; we must say what else—what is the full fact, what is! And then we have to say, "But he hath not given me over unto death."—R.T.