Word of Encouragement (01/03/2022)
“He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. 11 Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions, 12 the LORD alone guided him, no foreign god was with him. 13 He made him ride on the high places of the land, and he ate the produce of the field, and he suckled him with honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock. 14 Curds from the herd, and milk from the flock, with fat of lambs, rams of Bashan and goats, with the very finest of the wheat-- and you drank foaming wine made from the blood of the grape.” (Deut. 32:10-14)
Moses tells us that the LORD cared for Israel “as the apple of his eye.” This, of course, is an anthropomorphic expression, which describes God in human terms. God, being a Spirit, has no body and, therefore, no body parts, including the eyes. Since so much of our experience is through our physical sensory organs, we cannot imagine how a Spirit operates. Even our souls/spirits, insofar as they are encased and connected to our bodies (not to mention their finite nature), do not fully reflect the operations of a pure, divine Spirit. So, to help us understand Him, He communicates through anthropomorphic expressions so we can relate to and know Him truthfully though not fully as He is.
The apple of His eye—what an apt description of God’s care for His people! We can readily relate to it because we all have eyes. We know how sensitive our eyes are. Even a tiny speck can be so vexing, forcing our eyes to water and twitch uncontrollably and close. When something gets close to our eyes, our eyelids close reflexively to protect our eyes. God must have placed such protective measures for our eyes because they are so delicate and important. He, who did this for us, said that He cared for Israel as the very apple of His eye.
What was Israel that God should care for her that much, as the apple of His eye? It was not because she was better than other nations (Deut. 7:7). As we saw last time, the LORD found her “in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness....” She was helpless and hopeless in herself, without a land of her own, exposed to all kinds of danger lurking in the wilderness. She had to be rescued by the LORD from her pathetic, precarious condition. What value could she have for the LORD? Nothing! If He valued her, it was because He sovereignly chose to set His love on Israel (Deut. 7:7), not for any merit in her. The same is true for us Christians.
This is both scary and comforting, isn’t it? When I first understood the doctrine of God’s unconditional election (belatedly only in my second year at the seminary), the first emotion I experienced was terror. Cold sweats ran down my spine as I realized that He was so much greater than I had ever thought Him to be in His sovereign lordship, so much so that I was terrified by His absolute authority over all things, especially my life. If God did not choose me (and only He knows why), I would have gone on with my sinful and rebellious life on the path of eternal destruction. That was the closest I have come to what Job must have experienced at the end of the book when he was finally confronted by God and His majesty.
But what comfort it also affords us! It may feel terrifying to realize how little we can control anything, how we have nothing with which to claim God’s love. But if the eternal and unchanging God should choose to love us, though we can never know why He should, what security is ours! His love may be out of our control—we cannot make Him love us any more than we can make Him hate us!—but He, who loves us, will not change His mind and stop loving us, ever! (If someone should abuse His grace and continue to sin without repentance, it may be proof that he was never elected. But if he is chosen by God, He will discipline him and help him to turn from his sin and walk in His path.)
If God, who is holy, can love us with His eternal love, it is only because He loves us in Jesus Christ, His beloved Son, with whom He is well pleased, the perfect Savior of His people. Because we are united with Him through faith, God cares for us as the very apple of His eye and will not allow anything to separate us from the love of Christ. Praise God for His grace!