For the Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.—Deuteronomy 32:9–10

 

A lovely verse in the song of Moses. He sang to Joshua and to the whole congregation of the children of Israel. Moses’ song was of God, Jehovah, in his gracious and merciful dealings to save and to bring into his covenant fellowship an undeserving people according to God’s eternal purpose and grace.

The faithful God.

Unfaithful Israel.

The electing God.

Elected Israel.

Jehovah’s love of Jacob is the explanation of God’s dealings with all men: “When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel” (Deut. 32:8). Yes, especially after the flood, after Babel, when Jehovah divided the children of Adam into tribes and tongues and peoples and nations, he had Israel in view. Long before Israel was a nation, when God gave to each people its place in the earth, he had Israel and Israel’s good in his mind’s eye. For Jehovah’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of Jehovah’s inheritance. His mercy toward Israel was an eternal mercy. Always God had Israel as his possession, and always God dealt with all nations according to their number. Always also, then, he so deals with Jacob; for Jehovah is a rock, and his purpose and mercy are unchanging.

This Jacob, this people of Jehovah: what shall we say of him? The man Jacob was the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, who was the friend of God. Jacob was a twin, but he was the younger, the weaker, and the less desirable. God made of Jacob a nation. The nation that came from him was called the children of Israel, the people of Jehovah, and Jeshurun. Was that nation better than other peoples? Were the children of Israel more numerous? Did Jacob seek Jehovah and so was found of him? Did Jacob turn to God, and so God turned to Jacob? Was there something in him that explained this word of God in Deuteronomy 32? Did Jacob choose Jehovah? Did Jacob distinguish himself among the masses of the nations? Did Jacob make himself worthy of God’s choice?

God forbid!

Jehovah told Jacob who he was.

The children of Israel corrupted themselves! When Jehovah showered upon Jeshurun nothing but good things, so that he rode on the high places of the earth, and when the Lord made Jeshurun suck honey from a rock and oil out of flint and fed him with butter and milk and the fat of lambs and rams and gave the finest wine, then Jeshurun waxed fat. He forsook God and lightly esteemed the rock of his salvation. Israel sacrificed to devils! Israel forgot God. A very froward people, a people in whom was no faith. A nation void of counsel and without understanding.

God did not choose a faithful people or a believing people, and he did not save an obedient or a repentant people. Rather, he chose a corrupt and perverse people and an unbelieving one, who provoked God to wrath and forgot his covenant.

God saved the unbelieving, the unfaithful, the disobedient, and the unrepentant because Jehovah’s portion is his people, and Jacob is the lot of God’s inheritance! Jehovah chose them as his own and destined them to be wheat among chaff, light out of darkness, a portion of God’s among all the peoples and nations and tribes and tongues, to be of his party and to stand in the world as his people. As Canaan was divided by lot and a portion was divided to each tribe and family for its inheritance, so God divided the nations and took Jacob as God’s own inheritance.

Amazing grace!

Jehovah, the Lord, who is strong in power and the maker of heaven and earth, chooses his people. By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. He stretched the heavens and filled them with the starry hosts. He knows them all and calls them all by name. He spoke, and all things came into being, and he gave to every creature its being and shape and several offices to serve him. He measured the waters in the hollow of his hand. He meted out the whole heaven with the span and weighed the dust of the earth in a balance. Jehovah is his name! All the nations are as the bead of water that drops from the lip of a bucket and disappears into the dust of the earth. If the whole world were consumed as a sacrifice, it would not add to God’s glory. Among the nations he sets up kings, princes, and governors. He raises them up for the very purpose of showing in them his power. As with Pharaoh—the puny, insignificant piece of clay that replied against the God of heaven—he raises up rulers, and he tears them down. God made his angels spirits and his ministers flames of fire. The cherubim and seraphim and all the serried ranks of the innumerable heavenly host serve him and do his pleasure. And the wicked and all the hosts of hell he comprehends within his sovereignty, upholding them even in their opposition to him, giving them a portion in the earth in order that in the midst of that world he might realize his sovereign good pleasure to the glory of his holy name.

From among the nations this Jehovah chose Jacob. Jehovah’s portion is his people. Among the nations of the world, there is one nation and people who is Jehovah’s and who has been divided to him as his inheritance. Calling his people “the lot of his inheritance” expresses the same thing. A lot is that which is measured out. A cord is cast about a piece of land. All within that boundary is included in the inheritance, and all outside that boundary is excluded from the inheritance. God cast a cord about Jacob. Jacob is the lot of God’s inheritance. Jacob is that about which Jehovah cast a cord of divine and eternal love. Within that cord is Jacob, and outside that cord is not Jacob. By that cord God determines who is Jacob and who is not Jacob. Jacob, the least. The smaller. The younger. The deceiver and supplanter. The helpless. The despised. Yet Jacob, the chosen.

When God casts a cord about Jacob, Jehovah declares about Jacob, “He is mine. He is my possession. He is my delight. He is the one in whom I will dwell and who will dwell with me.” It is this Jacob, then, whom God also redeemed from Egypt, formed into a peculiar people, led through the wilderness, and brought to the very doors of Canaan and to whom he gave the earthly Canaan as the picture of the heavenly Canaan.

Jacob is Israel according to the election of grace. Thus Jacob includes the elect of all ages, whom God gathers, defends, and preserves in his church and with whom he dwells and about whom he says, “Mine.” The church according to the election of grace is the Israel of God, the peculiar nation, the holy people, whom God calls Jacob.

Divine choice!

Sovereign choice! It is not as though God wants all the nations as his possession, but because man is unwilling, the Lord is able to salvage only the nation of Israel from the race of fallen Adam.

No! God forbid!

It is God who determines and actually takes Jacob as his possession. By God’s choice he makes Jacob his possession and the lot of his inheritance. Jehovah—who is a rock, the Lord whose work is perfect and whose ways are judgment, a God of truth and without iniquity, who is righteous in all his dealings—so divides the people of the world, the sons of Adam, into those who are his portion and into those who are not his portion. Of one lump the divine potter makes one vessel to honor and another to dishonor. He divides Jacob to himself, and he puts all others from him. He is the one who casts the cord of love about Jacob; and by casting that cord about Jacob, he determines who will be Jacob and who will not be Jacob and separates Jacob from the rest of the children of Adam, upon whom God’s wrath abides.

Indeed, even in the nation, a sovereign choice!

Jacob was a twin, the younger twin, the lesser twin of Isaac and Rebekah. So that the division of which Jehovah speaks is made also within the sphere of the covenant of God, in the earthly nation of Israel and in the church as she manifests herself in the world. They are not all Israel that are of Israel. Among the offspring of Isaac and Rebekah, God chose Jacob and not Esau. Esau and the rest of the world, God wholly rejected. They do not come within the line that God laid down and the cord that he cast about Jacob. They are the objects of God’s holy wrath, appointed to eternal destruction, also for the glory of his name. And like the chaff must serve the wheat until the time of the winnowing, so the reprobate must serve the elect until the time of the end, when the wheat will be gathered into the Lord’s granaries and the chaff will be burned with unquenchable fire. As the scaffold must serve the house that is being built until the time of completion and then be torn down, so the reprobate must stand until the building of God is perfected. So all nations and all peoples and tribes and tongues, even within Israel herself, were divided by the Lord into beloved Jacob and into hated Esau. The elect of all nations are God’s nation, his portion, and his lot according to his own sovereign choice. The rest he hates and hardens.

An eternal choice! Before Israel was, God had Israel in view, in view from all eternity, as the precious object of his grace. Eternally God loved, eternally he chose, eternally he divided all men before they had done good or evil.

A choice according to Jehovah’s good pleasure alone!

No one instructed him in this choice. No one influenced God’s choice because of some quality in himself. Israel was not blessed because of what she did or how faithful she was to God in the covenant. Moses’ song was an indictment of the nation. The children of Israel repaid the Lord’s kindness and mercy with unfaithfulness, unthankfulness, rebellion, and murmuring. They tempted God in the wilderness. They refused his land. They questioned his power, his goodness, his mercy, and his faithfulness. Moses told them what would happen in the latter days after he died. They would turn from Jehovah. They would corrupt themselves. Moses accused them of great unbelief and unspeakable crimes. He told them that they would revolt from God, corrupt themselves, and turn aside from the way. Yes, the Lord knew this too when he chose Jacob. And it pleased him to choose Jacob.

A costly choice!

Jacob is God’s inheritance, and an inheritance only falls to the heir by death. God divided to himself his people. God chose Jacob, and God appointed himself in the person of his Son according to his human nature as the one to die for that inheritance. At the very heart of Jacob, as the seed, the child of Jacob, the one in whom Jacob finds his meaning and purpose, stands Jesus Christ. It is ultimately because of him and in him that Jacob is chosen. And by Jesus Christ, too, Jacob is redeemed. The God who chose Jacob is a God of justice, truth, and right. His inheritance he takes in the way of the satisfaction of his own justice by dying in the person of his Son according to his human nature in order to redeem his Jacob and his people. Is God not thy Father who bought thee? Striking phrase: a Father bought his children? He bought them at the price of his own and only-begotten Son.

Ah, yes, Jehovah’s portion is his people, and Jacob is the lot of God’s inheritance!

And with Jacob, in Jacob, God dwells. Jacob is God’s inheritance. The line that God cast about Jacob to mark him as his own was the line of his covenant love. Jacob, and Jacob alone, is God’s covenant people, whom he blesses and whom he draws into his most intimate friendship. Jehovah’s choice of Jacob as his inheritance and possession explains all God’s dealings with his people.

Jehovah did not go and find his covenant people in the wilderness in order to make them his possession. They were his. Because they were his, he went and found them. Jehovah did not lead them about in order to make them his. Because they were his, he led them about. Jehovah did not instruct them to make them his. They were his, so he instructed them. Jehovah did not keep them in order to attempt to keep them from falling away from being his. Because they were his, he kept them, and they were absolutely secure. Under them he placed the everlasting arms of the God of Jacob.

Thus Jehovah treated Jacob as he treated no other. What tender care! What grace! What power! What mercy is spoken of in the text! God found Jacob in a desert land and in a waste-howling wilderness. Moses said that Jehovah found Jacob in the desert not because this was first but so that God’s people, then at the door of the land of Canaan, might more readily fix their minds on God’s great mercy toward them.

The wilderness and the desert were places full of horror. There was not a crumb there for the people to eat or a drop of water for them to drink. A land of hostile enemies and fiery serpents. A thousand ways to perish were in the wilderness. And there was enough room in it for millions of graves. The desert and the waste-howling wilderness are symbolic of death, destruction, sin, and all that is evil. This is all that characterizes this world of sin, fallen under the curse.

Is not this our lot? We are born into the desert of this world, a dry and a thirsty land; and we are beset by the sins of our natures, the allures of the wicked world, and the draw of sin. We are surrounded by the fiery serpents of Satan and of his demons. There are a thousand different ways to perish spiritually in this waste-howling wilderness. And Jehovah finds his own. He finds them in their troubles, in their afflictions, in their pains, in their sins and miseries, and, yes, also in their murmurings. He finds them. He always finds them. None go lost!

It is not as though God sets out to search out who will be willing to be his people. But knowing them, he finds them. He goes, and he fetches them for himself and establishes his covenant with them. He knows them all by name. He finds each one known unto him, and all of Jacob he finds. God regenerates them. He calls them by his word. He works faith in their hearts. He justifies them from all their sins. He sanctifies them and separates them from the world of sin, darkness, and night. He gathers them into his church in the world. Having chosen Jacob, God secures him as his own.

And when Jehovah found Jacob in the wilderness, God also led Jacob about. He had no guide. If left to himself, how terrible would have been the lot of Jacob in that wilderness. He had no power to make his way one step through the wilderness and into Canaan. If his life were spared and not snuffed out by the hostile forces of the wilderness, he could not know the way through the desert to the land of Canaan. And even if he knew the way, he would have been incapable of bringing himself to Canaan through the wilderness. And if he could have roused himself to take a few steps toward Canaan, he would have quickly left the way and returned to Egypt. So God led Jacob. God encircled Jacob, guided and directed the ways of his feet and the footsteps of his path. God himself circumscribed Jacob and was a wall about him on every side. And God also determined the way as through the wilderness. Not an easy way but the way determined and led through by God.

This is Jehovah’s careful and gracious care of his people in order to bring them to the goal that he has appointed for them in his eternal counsel. The counsel of election appoints the goal of salvation and prescribes the way of salvation. And God himself carries this out by his guidance and care of his people. He not only finds them in the wilderness of sin and death, but he also guides them through it and out of it into the everlasting joys in the presence of God in the heavenly Canaan.

God instructed Jacob. Jehovah found Jacob not only hopelessly stuck in the wilderness, but Jehovah found Jacob also ignorant and foolish. God found Jacob so willing to trust in his own strength, so willing to question God, so willing to see by sight and not by faith, so willing to return to Egypt. Jacob was a people devoid of counsel, knowledge, and wisdom; and God taught him. God causes us to discern good from evil, right from wrong, wise from foolish. He causes us to know spiritual things spiritually, to see through the wilderness to the joy of the heavenly Canaan. He teaches us to submit to him, to obey his precepts, to follow him, and to joy in God as the God of our salvation. He teaches us to apprehend the glory of God in all things and to subject ourselves to that goal of his glory. He teaches us to lay aside our thoughts and to think his thoughts. He teaches us to abandon our own ways and to follow his way.

God kept Jacob as the apple of his eye. The apple of your eye is your pupil, the tenderest, most sensitive spot in your whole body. The tiniest speck of dust can cause unspeakable agony, and so you guard your pupil. And thus God guarded Jacob. God kept Jacob. God found Jacob vulnerable and weak and of no strength, and God took Jacob to himself and dwelt among him, and God kept Jacob as one keeps the apple of his eye. God so joined Jacob to himself in his fellowship and friendship that to touch Jacob was to touch God himself. Whosoever touched Jacob poked a stick in God’s eye. Jacob was indeed the apple of God’s eye, that precious and tender possession of Jehovah’s choosing.

Where in all the world is there such a people as Jehovah’s people, his possession and the lot of his inheritance? Exactly because God’s grace toward his chosen people is not dependent upon them is there comfort for them. As we look back over the past year, as Moses with Israel looked back over their wanderings in the wilderness, do we not confess with him that indeed such is the case with us? How believing, faithful, and repentant have we been? And God saved us! Has he done us harm in one thing? Has there failed one word of what he has promised to do unto us? Cannot we say that this is true from generation to generation and from years past? Ask your fathers and your elders. They will tell you.

And as we look forward to another year of God’s goodness and grace, we expect nothing different. This God is our God. He will be our guide even unto the end because his purpose to bless Jacob is an unchanging purpose, as he is the unchanging God. He found, and he finds. He led, and he leads. He taught, and he teaches. He kept, and he keeps. He is a rock. And he does not swerve one inch from his gracious purpose to bless his people. For Jehovah’s portion is his people, and Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.

Let this be our confidence in the coming year!