"I Will Be As The Dew Unto Israel" # 4

Dear brothers and sisters, we have the beauty of Christ in us; you do not have to put it on as Solomon put on his glory. You are like the Lily, you have it - but it needs the dew that it should grow and blossom and bring joy to the heart of God! "I will be as the dew unto Israel." You will notice that the Lord does not say, "I will give dew unto Israel." He said, "I will be the dew". What a marvelous promise. The Lord says, "I will come to you, my child." You notice the Word says in verse three, "in Thee the fatherless finds mercy" - "My poor orphan brought into the family, the one who was not blessed and not loved and not My people, but now blessed and made one of the family. I will come to you Myself and be Dew to bring your life into full freshness and fruitfulness for the glory of God and the blessing of man." Oh, let us lay hold of this promise which is another one of these marvelous "I will's" of the Lord. We need not be looking to others and saying, "I wish I knew the dew." We need not be giving up in despair to feel." "In my circumstances, with things as they are, I cannot know the dew," but we need to be receiving the promise of the Lord gratefully to our heart. "My dear child," He says, "if you are contrite, and if there is really that full reconciliation between us, if you are disillusioned about everything and everybody except Me, I will be as the dew."

What shall we say about the dew? I think first of all we must take notice of the gentleness of the dew, the gentle dew distilling. It has to be a quiet night for there to be dew. It is in the night that the dew appears. As to its strength, the dew is not weak or strong, nevertheless, its effects can be seen! But as for its manner of coming, the dew is gentle, it is silent. And the Lord says, "I will come to you like that." We have missed the Lord very often because we have been looking for whirlwinds, and He wanted to come as the dew. We were crying for the torrential rain, and He was offering to be the dew. The dew is too quiet for some of us, but how mightily potent it is; or, perhaps, we are so drawn out in the heat of our own spirit, our own exercise, our own concern, our own complaint, that the dew only comes when the heat dies down. When the earth cools off, the dew begins to come; perhaps, we have not been quiet enough or cool enough.

There is a mystery and a miracle about the dew. Of course, any schoolboy can tell you how it happens. In a sense it is easy to explain; and, yet there is a perennial mystery about it. There is, of course, a mystery about the rain also, of how water can be gathered up from the ocean and brought over in the clouds and poured out upon the earth. It is very wonderful, but there seems to be a surpassing mystery and miracle about ti when moisture is present without clouds and without winds, just the moisture that was in the atmosphere, that nobody was able to appreciate, distilling into the dew. You hardly see it, but it is there. You have to get up early to see it, but all the world sees the effects of it. There is a mystery about God's coming to our spirits which is not to be explained by our efforts, by anything that we can do. No, it is just the grace of God working this miracle, changing our dryness into His freshness, our heat into His coolness, our barrenness into His fertility. You will remember that in Exodus it is said, "The manna came with the dew." You will remember that even after forty years, the Israelites still called it "manna". It was God's heavenly gift. And so the Dew is the spirit's refresher, it is a miracle, and those of us who know the dryness o our own hearts will testify most to the miracle that it can be. But, thank God, for the miracle that it is when the Lord comes with His refreshing grace; nobody can rob us of this promise and this blessing except our own lack of faith.

The dew achieves its object by its constancy. One night's dew would make very little impression on the cedars of Lebanon or even the flowers of the fields. The point about the dew is the constant coming and coming and unfailing renewal, and that is the Lord's promise to you and to me. In the silent night, in the secret of the night, by a miracle, in daily renewal, we may know freshness and fullness of life. "I," He said, "Will be as the Dew unto Israel."

Remember how Gideon made the dew an occasion of a special appeal to the Lord for the proof of the reality of His presence? In his case, the issue was not dew as such, but the issue was the personal testimony, the proof, that He, as an individual,could count upon God. Gideon tried it the first time as he put out his fleece and said, "Though there be dew nowhere else, let there be dew on the fleece and I shall know that is God - that is God." It came, and then to make absolutely certain that it was God, he had God o do it the other way around (Judges 6:36-40). So, dear friends, if the Lord is Dew in your life, not you alone will know that, but all who will meet you will say, "That is God." Not because you are a clever person, not because you are so devoted and active and earnest, but that is just God.

Do you remember what Gideon did with the fleece? He did not only look at the fleece to see if it looked wet, for appearances are sometimes deceptive, but he took the fleece and wrung it into a bowl. Perhaps that is what the Lord is doing with you. Is He? Has He taken you in His hands, and is He wringing you? What is coming out? Well, out of Gideon's fleece, there came a bowl full of water.

The Lord grant that we may not be dry when He wrings us, but only let that wringing be a further proof that we have got the Dew. May the Lord come to us  constantly as the Dew; may it be so, for His namesake. Amen

~T. Austin-Sparks~

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