Chapter 2: What Seemeth Him Good

“Let Him do what seemeth Him good.” 1 Samuel 3:18
Eli spoke these words under the terrible certainty of heavy judgments upon his house, because the Lord had spoken it. But how often God’s dear children tremble to say an unreserved “Let Him do what seemeth Him good,” though they are under no such shadow of certainly coming events! It is almost easier to say it when a crushing blow has actually fallen, than when there is suspense and uncertainty as to what the Lord may be going to do. There is always more or less of this element of suspense and uncertainty. One can hardly imagine a life in which there are no clouds, little or great, within the horizon, even when the sky is clearest overhead. We hold not a treasure on earth which we are sure of keeping; and we never know whether gain or loss, failure or success, ease or pain, lies before us. And if we were allowed to put our finger on the balance of uncertainties and turn it as we chose, we should be sure to defeat some ultimate aim by securing a nearer one, and prevent some greater good by grasping a lesser. I think if we were permitted to try such an experiment, we should soon grow utterly puzzled and weary, and find ourselves landed in complications of mistakes; and if we had any sense left, we should want to put it all back into our Father’s hands, and say “Let Him do what seemeth Him good,” then we should feel relieved and at rest.
Then why not be relieved and at rest at once? For “it is the Lord,” who is going to do we know not what. That is a volume in itself the Lord who loves you, the Lord who thinks about you and cares for you, the Lord who understands you, the Lord who never makes a mistake, the Lord who spared not His own Son but gave Him up for you! Will you not let Him do what seemeth Him good? Then think what it is you are to let Him do. Something out of your sight, perhaps, but not out of His sight. For the original word in every case is “what is good in His eyes.” Those Eyes see through and through, and all round and beyond everything. So what is good in His Eyes must be absolutely and entirely good, a vast deal better than our best! There is great rest in knowing that He will do what is right, that He crowns the rightness with the goodness; and when we see this, the rest is crowned with gladness. Ought it, then, to be so very hard to say, “Let Him do what seemeth Him good”?
It is very interesting to trace out that in each recorded instance of this expression of submissive trust at a juncture of dark uncertainty the result was always something most evidently “good,” in the eyes of those who ventured to say it.
First, there were the Gibeonites. They came to Joshua (who by his very name, as well as office, was a direct type of Christ), “sore afraid for their lives.” But, because he had made peace with them, they said, “Behold, we are in thine hand: as it seemeth good and right unto thee to do unto us, do.” A beautiful illustration of confidence based upon a covenant. Now see how their trust was justified. “So did he unto them,” that is, as it was good and right in his eyes; and the first thing was, that he “delivered them out of the hand of the children of Israel that they slew them not.” And the next thing was his ascending from Gilgal to fight their battles for them, conquering five kings for them, and calling upon the sun to stand still over their city “about a whole day,” so that “there was no day like that before it, or after it.”
Next, we find the children of Israel sold for their evil deeds, into the hands of the Philistines and Ammonites, and vexed and oppressed for eighteen years.
(Vexed and oppressed does that describe your case?) They come to the Lord with bare, excuseless confession, “We have sinned,” and then they cast themselves on bare undeserved mercy: “Do Thou unto us whatsoever seemeth good unto Thee.” And what then? “His soul was grieved for the misery of Israel.” Could anything be more humanly tender, as well as Divinely magnanimous! Is it not a lesson to come straight to His heart with any misery of which the sting is that we have brought it on ourselves, and deserved it a thousandfold?
First confess the sin, and then leave the sorrows wholly in His hands, and we find Him verily “the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy.” And mercy includes help, for the Lord did not stop short at grieving over their misery; He sent Jephthah to deliver them, so that they “dwelled safe” for about thirty years. (Compare Judges 11:33 and 1 Samuel 12:11)
Now turn to 1 Chronicles 19:13, “and let the Lord do that which is good in His sight.” Here Joab finds a double army “set against him before and behind.” He makes the wisest arrangements he can think of, and encourages his brother; and then he says, “and let the Lord do that which is good in His sight.” And what the Lord did was to give him a splendid victory. It does not seem that he had to fight or suffer any loss at all; the Syrians and Ammonites simply fled before him: verses 15, 16. “And when the children of Ammon saw that the Syrians were fled, they likewise fled before Abishai his brother, and entered into the city. Then Joab came to Jerusalem. And when the Syrians saw that they were put to the worse before Israel, they sent messengers and drew forth the Syrians that were beyond the river.”
The most touching instance however is David. “And the king said unto Zadok, Carry back the ark of God into the city: if I shall find favor in the eyes of the Lord, He will bring me again and show me both it and His habitation. But if He thus say, I have no delight in thee; behold here am I, let Him do to me as seemeth good unto Him.” Driven from his royal home by his own son, passing amid tears over the brook Kidron, going toward the way of the wilderness, “weary and weak handed,” the wisest head in the land giving counsel against him, and the hearts of the men of Israel going after the traitor, and now losing the visible token of the presence of God Himself! I do not see how any of us could be brought to do all this! And yet he said, “Let Him do to me as seemeth good unto Him.” But only a little while, and the Lord, whom he trusted so implicitly in such depths, restored to him all that seemed so nearly lost, and raised him again to royal heights of prosperity and praise.
Did not these things happen unto them for ensamples? If they, in the dim old days of type and veil, could so trust the God of Israel, should we, who have the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, hesitate to utter the same expression of submissive confidence? And if He has caused such records of His gracious responses to their submission to be written, should we not take them as intended to encourage our hearts in the gloomy and dark day? See now if you cannot find something like your own case in one or other of them, and remember you have the same Saviour and the same Lord to do with. And then, venture the word! Just let Him do what seemeth Him good, and tell Him so! It may be you have been actually hindering deliverance and thwarting help, by not “letting” Him. Do not say, “But what difference can that make? He will do what He pleases whether I am willing or not.” Not exactly that. Does it make no difference if the patient quietly lets the surgeon do what he thinks best? A remedy applied by force, or submitted to unwillingly, may be quite counteracted by fidget, or by feverishness induced or increased through setting one’s self against what is prescribed or advised. The Lord’s remedies do not have fair play, when we set ourselves against them. Even Omnipotence waits for the faith that will let it act.
If the “vessel made of clay,” that was marred in the hand of the potter, could have resisted that skillful hand, how would he have been able to make it again another vessel, as it seemed good to him to make it? The unresisting clay could not help letting the potter remold it, into a better and permanent form; but we can hinder, simply by not “letting.” But will you do this? For “now, O Lord, Thou art our Father, we are the clay, and Thou our Potter.” Whatever may be our Potter’s mysterious moldings, or our Father’s mysterious dealings, let us give the one sweet answer which meets everything: “even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight.”
Not yet thou knowest what I do
Within thine own weak breast;
To mold thee to My image
true,
And fit thee for My rest.
But yield thee to My loving skill;
The veiled work of grace
From day to day progressing
still,
It is not thine to trace.

Yes, walk by faith and not by
sight,
Fast clinging to My hand;
Content to feel My love and
might,
Not yet to understand.
A little while thy course pursue,
Till grace to glory grow;
Then what I am, and what I do,
Hereafter thou shalt know.