September 2003

HINDS’ FEET IN HIGH PLACES

Part 9

“He makes my feet like hinds’ feet,
and sets me on my high places!”

(2 Sa 22:34)

Our ongoing investigation of the “high places”, brings us to the plaintive and passionate “Song of Moses”. As we read it here, let us search our hearts for any part that may apply to our lives now. Indeed, the Church is that spiritual Israel to whom the Lord is speaking through Moses. And like then, Christendom has corrupted itself with religious systems based on doctrinal dilutions and deceptions! They have built self-works of “wood, hay and stubble”, instead of Christ’s Works of “gold, silver and precious stones” (1 Co 3:12) on His simple Foundation of Faith! They have exalted self-will above the Sovereign Will of God! Their self-righteousness has usurped the humble Righteousness of Christ!

“O heavens, listen, and I will speak; O earth, hear the words of my mouth.
My doctrine will drop as the rain, my speech will distill as the dew like the
small rain on the tender herb and the showers on the grass. As I declare
the Name of the Lord: you ascribe greatness to our God! He is the Rock,
His work is perfect: for all his ways are Judgment: He is a God of truth
He is just and right and without iniquity,. But (Israel) is become corrupt;
they are a perverse and crooked generation without the mark of His sons.
Do you repay the Lord’s Mercy with foolishness as unwise people? Isn’t
God your Father Who bought you (with the Blood of Christ)? Didn’t He
make and establish you as His people?
Remember the days of old, and consider the years of many generations:
ask your father and he will show you; ask the elders and they will tell you.
When the Most High divided to each of your nations its inheritance, and
when He separated the children of men, he set the bounds of the people
according to the number of the children of Israel. For the Lord's people
are His portion; and Jacob is His allotted inheritance. God found Jacob
in a desert land, and He led him around in the waste howling wilderness.
He instructed him and kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirs
up her nest, and flutters over her young, and spreads out her wings, and
takes them up, and bears them aloft on her wings: so the Lord, alone, led
Jacob; and there was no strange god with him!
He made Jacob ride on the HIGH PLACES OF THE EARTH! There
he ate the increase of the fields. He made him suck honey out of the rock,
and draw oil from the flinty rock; He gave him butter from cows, the milk
of sheep, the fat of lambs, goats and the rams of the breed of Bashan, with
the finest of wheat (typifying, the Word of Christ)! And you even drank the
pure blood of the grape (typifying the Blood of Christ).
But Jeshurun (an epithet for Israel) grew fat, and kicked (“against the
pricks” like Saul in Ac 9:5 before he became Paul). You gorged yourself,
grew thick till you were covered with fatness. Then he forsook the God
Who made him; and lightly esteemed the Rock of his Salvation (Christ)!
He provoked God to jealousy with his strange gods, and provoked Him
to anger with his abominations. You sacrificed to devils and not to God;
also you sacrificed to gods you didn’t know, as well as to new gods that
were just recently established, which your fathers did not fear.
You are unmindful of the Rock that begat you, and have forgotten God
Who formed you. When the Lord saw this, he abhorred them, because
his sons and daughters had provoked Him. So He said, I will hide My
face from them, and I will see what their end shall be! For they are a
very perverse generation; they are children in whom is no faith. They
have aroused My jealousy with things not of God; and provoked anger
in Me through their vanities! Now I will make them jealous with those
who are not a people; and provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.
[Please see this fulfilled in Ro 11:11-28] A fire is kindled in My anger
that will burn to the lowest hell, and spread to consume the earth, and
even set on fire the foundations of the mountains. [Read: Jas 3:5-18]
I will heap mischiefs on them; and spend My arrows on them. They
shall be burned with hunger; and they shall be devoured with burning
heat and bitter destruction: I will also send on them the teeth of beasts
that have the poison of serpents of the dust! The sword on the outside,
and terror on the inside, shall destroy both the young man and virgin
as well as the infant and the old man.
I said I would scatter them abroad till remembrance of them ceased
from among men: if it weren’t for the fact that I dreaded the wrath of
the enemy, should their adversaries behave themselves strangely and
say, Our own hand has prevailed, and the Lord has not done all this!
For they are a nation void of counsel, nor is there any understanding
in them. O if only they were wise, that they understood this, that they
would consider their latter end!
How could one man chase 1000, or two put 10,000 to flight, unless
their Rock had sold them, and the Lord had shut them up? Their rock
is not as our Rock, where even our enemies are judges. Their vine is
the vine of Sodom, their fields are Gomorrah: their grapes are full of
gall, and their clusters are bitter: their wine is the poison of dragons,
and the cruel venom of asps. Isn’t this laid up in store with me, and
sealed up among my treasures? Don’t vengeance and recompense
belong to Me? Their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their
calamity is at hand, and the things that are going to come upon them
are fast approaching.
For the Lord will judge his people and have mercy on His servants
when he sees that their (fleshly) power is depleted, and none remain
who are shut up. He will say, Where are their false gods now? And
where is their spurious rock in whom they trusted, that ate up the fat
of their sacrifices and drank up the wine of their drink offerings? Let
them all rise up and help you, and be your protection. No, now you
can see that I, and only I, am the true God, and there is no other god
who reigns with me! Only I kill and make alive; I wound, and I heal:
and there is nothing and no one that can deliver you out of My hand!
For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever! If I whet
My glittering sword (“The Sword of the Spirit is the Word of God”
Eph 6:17), and My hand takes hold on judgment! Only I will render
vengeance upon My enemies, and I will avenge them that hate me.
(“The carnal mind is the enemy and hatred against God!” Ro 8:7)
I will make My arrows (“The tongue is an arrow!” Jer 9:8) drunk
with blood, and My sword (Anointed Word) will devour flesh along
with the blood of the slain and the captives: this is the beginning of
My revenges on the enemy.
But rejoice, O you nations, along with his people: because He will
avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his
adversaries, and He will be merciful to his land and to His people.”
(Deut 32:8-43)

These things resulted from God taking Jacob up to the “high places” of the earth. Let this be a lesson to us to be especially vigilant to keep our hearts in the meek and lowly state of Christ in those times He bears us up on His wings to share glorious mountain top experiences! Let us be on our guard against avarice and apathy- two of satan’s most cunning tools used against God’s sons!

[TO BE CONTINUED]