Such lessons do Isaac and Jacob and Solomon, in these ways, read for us, beloved--such are the minute and various instructions left for our souls in the fruitful and living pages of the oracles of God. They give us to see, in the house of God, vessels fit for use and kept in use even to the end--vessels laid aside, to rust out rather than to wear out--vessels whose best service it is to get themselves clean again--and vessels whose dishonour it is, at the end of their service, to contract some fresh defilement.
Wondrous and various the lessons and the ways of grace, abounding grace! Quickly indeed does the soul entertain thoughts of God according to the suggestions of _nature_, instead of knowing Him according to _faith_. Nature holds Him before the soul as a judge, or as a lawgiver, or an exactor of righteousness, as One that carries balances in His hand to try every thought and work--One that is sensitive and resentful of the slightest touch of evil. But faith holds Him before a gazing, worshipping eye and heart, as the One who always loves us, do what He may, or speak as He will. For faith worketh by love (Gal. v. 6)--it worketh towards God as Love, and therefore it is a spirit of confidence and liberty. If we find our souls under pressure of the spirit of fear or bondage or uncertainty, we may be sure that they have let go the gentle hand of faith, and allowed themselves to be led by such tutors and governors as nature provides. This ought not so to be. We are to know that we have _ever_ to do with _love_! When we read, when we pray, when we converse, when we confess, when we serve, when we sing, when we look at His hand in providence, or think of His name in secret, may faith’s communion with God be ours! He loves us. The relationship in which we stand, and of which our Isaac was the expression, makes this a _necessary_ truth.
It is "to Himself" that God has brought us and adopted us--having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ _to Himself_, according to the good pleasure of His will. Eph. i. 5. And these words "to Himself" bespeak God’s own joy in the _adoption_ of the elect, in making them _children_; as was Abraham’s joy at the weaning of our Isaac. Christ presents the Church to _Himself_ (Eph. v. 27), and the Father gathers the elect as children by adoption to _Himself_. Each has personal interest and personal delight in the mysteries of grace. And according to this, the Holy Ghost, in the Epistle to the Galatians, to which the story of Isaac so refers, pleads the cause of the Father as well as the cause of Christ with us. He teaches us that we are redeemed by Christ from the _curse_ of the law, and, through the Spirit given to us by the Father, from the _bondage_ of the law. All this is full of blessing to us; and all this, the mystery of Isaac, the son of the free-woman, suggests to us.