Notes on the Book of Deuteronomy, Volume II
by Charles Henry Mackintosh · English · Gutenberg #41584 · 742,003 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Notes on the Book of Deuteronomy, Volume II
Author: Charles Henry Mackintosh
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTES ON THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY, VOLUME II ***
NOTES
_on the book of_
DEUTERONOMY
_Volume II_
C. H. MACKINTOSH
"_Forever, O Lord, Thy Word is settled in heaven._"
"_Thy Word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin
against Thee._"
LOIZEAUX BROTHERS
New York
FIRST EDITION 1880
TWENTY-FIFTH PRINTING 1954
LOIZEAUX BROTHERS, Inc., PUBLISHERS
_A Nonprofit Organization, Devoted to the Lord's Work
and to the Spread of His Truth_
19 WEST 21ST STREET, NEW YORK 10, N. Y.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PREFATORY NOTE
TO THE AMERICAN EDITION
As several persons in America have, without any authority whatever
from me, undertaken to publish my four[1] volumes of "Notes," I deem
it my duty to inform the reader that I have given full permission to
Messrs. LOIZEAUX BROTHERS to publish an edition of those books in such
form as they shall consider most suitable.
C. H. MACKINTOSH.
_6 West Park Terrace, Scarborough,
May 1st, 1879._
[1] Now six.
CONTENTS
_Page._
Chapter VII, 1
" VIII, 33
" IX, 64
" X, 77
" XI, 99
" XII, 121
" XIII, 138
" XIV, 174
" XV, 204
" XVI, 219
" XVII, 253
" XVIII, 280
" XIX, 302
" XX, 315
" XXI, 329
" XXII.-XXV, 339
" XXVI, 352
" XXVII, 365
" XXVIII, 370
" XXIX, 388
" XXX, 408
" XXXI, 419
" XXXII, 431
" XXXIII, 454
" XXXIV, 468
NOTES
ON
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY
CHAPTER VII.
"When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou
goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, ...
seven nations greater and mightier than thou, and when the Lord thy
God shall deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them, and utterly
destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy
unto them."
In reading the record of God's dealings with the nations, in
connection with His people Israel, we are reminded of the opening
words of Psalm ci.--"I will sing of mercy and of judgment." We see the
display of mercy to His people, in pursuance of His covenant with
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and we see also the execution of judgment
upon the nations, in consequence of their evil ways. In the former, we
see divine sovereignty; in the latter, divine justice; in both, divine
glory shines out. All the ways of God, whether in mercy or in
judgment, speak His praise, and shall call forth the homage of His
people forever. "Great and marvelous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty;
just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of nations.[2] Who shall not
fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? for Thou art holy; for all
nations shall come and worship before Thee; for Thy judgments are made
manifest." (Rev. xv. 3, 4.)
[2] "Nations" is read by most editors: Christ is not called the "King
of saints."
This is the true spirit in which to contemplate the ways of God in
government. Some persons, allowing themselves to be influenced by a
morbid feeling and false sentimentality, rather than by an enlightened
judgment, find difficulty in the directions given to Israel in
reference to the Canaanites, in the opening of our chapter. It seems
to them inconsistent with a benevolent Being to command His people to
smite their fellow-creatures, and to show them no mercy. They cannot
understand how a merciful God could commission His people to slay
women and children with the edge of the sword.
It is very plain that such persons could not adopt the language of
Revelation xv. 3, 4. They are not prepared to say, "Just and true are
Thy ways, Thou King of nations." They cannot justify God in _all_ His
ways; nay, they are actually sitting in judgment upon Him. They
presume to measure the actings of divine government by the standard of
their own shallow thoughts--to scan the infinite by the finite; in
short, they measure God by themselves.
This is a fatal mistake. We are not competent to form a judgment upon
the ways of God, and hence it is the very height of presumption for
poor, ignorant, short-sighted mortals to attempt to do so. We read in
the seventh chapter of Luke that "Wisdom is justified of _all_ her
children." Let us remember this, and hush all our sinful reasonings.
"Let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, 'That Thou
mightest be justified in Thy sayings, and mightest overcome when Thou
art judged.'"
Is the reader at all troubled with difficulties on this subject? If
so, we should much like to quote a very fine passage which may help
him. "O give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good; for His mercy
endureth forever.... To Him _that smote Egypt in their first-born_;
for His mercy endureth forever; and brought out Israel from among
them; for His mercy endureth forever; with a strong hand, and with a
stretched-out arm; for His mercy endureth forever. To Him which
divided the Red Sea into parts; for His mercy endureth forever; and
made Israel to pass through the midst of it; for His mercy endureth
forever; but _overthrew Pharaoh and his host_ in the Red Sea; for His
mercy endureth forever. To Him which _smote great kings_; for His
mercy endureth forever; and _slew famous kings_; for His mercy
endureth forever; Sihon, king of the Amorites; for His mercy endureth
forever; and Og, the king of Bashan; for His mercy endureth forever;
and gave their land for a heritage; for His mercy endureth forever;
even a heritage unto Israel His servant; for His mercy endureth
forever." (Ps. cxxxvi.)
Here we see that the smiting of Egypt's first-born and the deliverance
of Israel, the passage through the Red Sea and the utter destruction
of Pharaoh's host, the slaughter of the Canaanites and giving their
lands to Israel--all alike illustrated the everlasting mercy of
Jehovah.[3] Thus it was, thus it is, and thus it shall be. All must
redound to the glory of God. Let us remember this, and fling to the
winds all our silly reasonings and ignorant arguments. It is our
privilege to justify God in all His ways, to bow our heads in holy
worship, in view of His unsearchable judgments, and rest in the calm
assurance that all God's ways are right. We do not understand them
all; this would be impossible. The finite cannot grasp the infinite.
This is where so many go wrong. They reason upon the actings of God's
government, not considering that those actings lie as far beyond the
range of human reason as the Creator is beyond the creature. What
human mind can unravel the profound mysteries of divine providence?
Can we account for the fact of a city full of human beings--men,
women, and children, in one hour, plunged beneath a tide of burning
lava? Utterly impossible; and yet this is but one fact of thousands
that stand recorded on the page of human history, all lying far beyond
the grasp of the most gigantic intellect. Go through the lanes,
alleys, wynds, closes, and court-yards of our cities and towns; see
the thousands of human beings that throng these places, living in
squalid misery, poverty, wretchedness, and moral degradation. Can we
account for all this? can we tell why God permits it? are we called
upon to do so? Is it not perfectly plain to the reader that it is no
part of our business to discuss such questions? and if we, in our
ignorance and stupid folly, set about reasoning and speculating upon
the inscrutable mysteries of the divine government, what can we expect
but utter bewilderment, if not positive infidelity?
[3] Very many Christians find considerable difficulty in interpreting
and applying the language of a large number of the psalms which call
for judgment upon the wicked. Such language would, of course, be quite
unsuitable for Christians now, inasmuch as we are taught to love our
enemies, to do good to them that hate us, and to pray for them that
despitefully use us and persecute us.
But we must remember that what would be wholly out of place for the
Church of God, a heavenly people, under grace, was, and will yet be,
perfectly consistent for Israel, an earthly people, under government.
No intelligent Christian could think for a moment of calling down
vengeance upon his enemies or upon the wicked. It would be grossly
inconsistent. We are called to be the living exponents of the grace of
God to the world--to walk in the footsteps of the meek and lowly
Jesus--to suffer for righteousness--not to resist evil. God is now
dealing in long-suffering mercy with the world. "He maketh His sun to
rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on
the unjust." This is to be our model. We are, in this, to be "perfect,
even as our Father which is in heaven is perfect." For a Christian to
deal with the world on the principle of righteous judgment, would be
to misrepresent his heavenly Father and falsify his profession.
But by and by, when the Church shall have left the scene, God will
deal with the world in righteousness; He will judge the nations for
their treatment of His people Israel.
We do not attempt to quote passages, but merely call the reader's
attention to the principle, in order to enable him to understand the
just application of the prophetic psalms.
The foregoing line of thought will enable the reader to understand the
opening lines of our chapter. The Canaanites were to receive no mercy
at the hands of Israel. Their iniquities had reached the culminating
point, and nothing remained but the stern execution of divine
judgment. "Thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt
make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them; neither shalt
thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto
his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For they will
turn away thy son from following Me, that they may serve other gods;
so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and destroy thee
suddenly. But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their
altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and
burn their graven images with fire."
Such were the instructions given by Jehovah to His people. They were
clear and explicit. No mercy for the Canaanites, no covenant with
them, no union, no fellowship of any kind, unsparing judgment, intense
separation.
We know, alas! how soon and how completely Israel failed to carry out
these instructions. Hardly had they planted their foot upon the land
of Canaan ere they made a covenant with the Gibeonites. Even Joshua
himself fell into the snare. The tattered garments and mouldy bread of
those wily people beguiled the princes of the congregation, and caused
them to act in direct opposition to the plain commandment of God. Had
they been governed by the authority of the Word, they would have been
preserved from the grave error of making a league with people who
ought to have been utterly destroyed; but they judged by the sight of
their eyes, and had to reap the consequences.[4]
[4] It is at once instructive and admonitory to see that the garments,
the mouldy bread, and the plausible words of the Gibeonites did what
the walls of Jericho could not do. Satan's _wiles_ are more to be
dreaded than his _power_. "Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may
be able to stand against the _wiles_ of the devil." The more deeply we
ponder the various parts of the whole armor of God, the more clearly
we shall see that they are ranged under these two heads,--obedience
and dependence. The soul that is really governed by the authority of
the Word, and wholly dependent upon the power of the Spirit, is fully
equipped for the conflict. It was thus the Man Christ Jesus vanquished
the enemy. The devil could do nothing with a man who was perfectly
obedient and perfectly dependent. May we study, in this, as in all
beside, our great Exemplar.
Implicit obedience is the grand moral safeguard against the wiles of
the enemy. No doubt the story of the Gibeonites was very plausible,
and their whole appearance gave a show of truth to their statements;
but none of these things should have had the slightest moral weight
with Joshua and the princes; nor would they, if they had but
remembered the word of the Lord. But they failed in this. They
reasoned on what they saw, instead of obeying what they had heard.
Reason is no guide for the people of God; we must be, absolutely and
completely, guided and governed by the Word of God.
This is a privilege of the very highest order, and it lies within the
reach of the simplest and most unlettered child of God. The Father's
word, the Father's voice, the Father's eye, can guide the youngest,
feeblest child in His family. All we need is the lowly and obedient
heart. It does not demand great intellectual power or cleverness; if
it did, what would become of the vast majority of Christians? If it
were only the educated, the deep-thinking, and the far-seeing that
were capable of meeting the wiles of the adversary, then verily most
of us might give up in despair.
But, thanks be to God, it is not so; indeed, on the contrary, we find,
in looking through the history of the people of God in all ages, that
human wisdom, human learning, human cleverness, if not kept in their
right place, have proved a positive snare, and rendered their
possessors only the more efficient tools in the enemy's hand. By whom
have most, if not all, of the heresies been introduced which have
disturbed the Church of God from age to age? Not by the simple and the
unlearned, but by the educated and the intellectual. And in the
passage to which we have just referred, in the book of Joshua, who was
it that made a covenant with the Gibeonites? The common people? Nay;
but the princes of the congregation. No doubt all were involved in the
mischief, but it was the princes that led the way. The heads and
leaders of the assembly fell into the snare of the devil through
neglect of the plain word of God.
"Thou shalt make no covenant with them." Could aught be plainer than
this? Could tattered garments, old shoes, and mouldy bread alter the
meaning of the divine command, or do away with the urgent necessity
for strict obedience on the part of the congregation? Assuredly not.
Nothing can ever afford a warrant for lowering, the breadth of a
hair, the standard of obedience to the Word of God. If there are
difficulties in the way, if perplexing circumstances come before us,
if things crop up for which we are not prepared, and as to which we
are unable to form a judgment, what are we to do? Reason? Jump to
conclusions? Act on our own or on any human judgment? Most certainly
not. What then? Wait on God; wait patiently, humbly, believingly, and
He will assuredly counsel and guide. "The meek will He guide in
judgment; and the meek will He teach His way." Had Joshua and the
princes acted thus, they never would have made a league with the
Gibeonites; and if the reader acts thus, he will be delivered from
every evil work and preserved unto the everlasting kingdom of our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ.
In verse six of our chapter, Moses sets before the people the moral
ground of the line of action which they were to adopt in reference to
the Canaanites--the rigid separation and the unsparing judgment.
"_For_ thou art _a holy people unto the Lord thy God_; the Lord thy
God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto Himself, above all
people that are upon the face of the earth."
The principle here laid down is of the very weightiest character. Why
were the people to maintain the most marked separation from the
Canaanites? Why were they to refuse, with firm decision, to make any
covenant, or form any matrimonial alliance with them? Why were they to
demolish their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves?
Simply because they were a holy people. And who had constituted them a
holy people? Jehovah. He had chosen them and set His love upon them;
He had redeemed them, and separated them to Himself; and hence it was
His province and prerogative to prescribe what they were to be, and
how they were to act. "Be ye holy, for I am holy."
It was not by any means on the principle of "Stand by thyself, I am
holier than thou." This is manifest from what follows. "The Lord did
not set His love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in
number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people; but
because the Lord loved you, and because He would keep the oath which
He had sworn unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a
mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the
hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt." (Ver. 7, 8.)
Seasonable words these for Israel!--most healthful and needful! They
were to remember that they owed all their dignity, all their
privileges, all their blessings, not to aught in themselves--their own
goodness or their own greatness, but simply to the fact of Jehovah's
having identified Himself with them, in His infinite goodness and
sovereign grace, and in virtue of His covenant with their fathers--"a
covenant ordered in all things and sure." This, while it furnished a
divine antidote against self-complacency and self-confidence, formed
the solid basis of their happiness and their moral security. All
rested upon the eternal stability of the grace of God, and therefore
human boasting was excluded. "My soul shall make her boast in the
Lord; the humble shall hear thereof and be glad."
It is the settled purpose of God that "no flesh shall glory in His
presence." All human pretension must be set aside. He will hide pride
from man. Israel had to be taught to remember their origin and their
true condition--"bondmen in Egypt"--"fewest of all people." No room
for pride or boasting. They were in no wise better than the nations
around them; and therefore, if called to account for their high
elevation and moral greatness, they had simply to trace it all up to
the free love of God and His faithfulness to His oath. "Not unto us, O
Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory, for Thy mercy and for
Thy truth's sake." (Ps. cxv. 1.)
"Know therefore that the Lord thy God, He is God, the faithful God,
which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love Him and keep His
commandments, to a thousand generations; and repayeth them that hate
Him to their face, to destroy them: He will not be slack to him that
hateth Him, He will repay him to his face." (Ver. 9, 10.)
We have two weighty facts set before us here,--one, full of rich
consolation and comfort to every true lover of God; the other, fraught
with deep solemnity to every hater of God. All who really love God and
keep His commandments may count on His infallible faithfulness and
tender mercy at all times and under all circumstances. "_All things_
work _together_ for good to them that love God, to them who are the
called according to His purpose." If, through infinite grace, we have
the love of God in our hearts, and His fear before our eyes, we may
move on with good courage and joyful confidence, assured that all
shall be well--must be well. "Beloved, if our heart condemn us not,
then have we confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive
of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are
pleasing in His sight."
This is a grand, eternal truth--a truth for Israel, a truth for the
Church. Dispensations make no difference as to this. Whether we study
the seventh of Deuteronomy or the third chapter of 1 John, we learn
the same great practical truth, that God delights in those who fear
Him and love Him and keep His commandments.
Is there aught of the legal element in this? Not a tinge. Love and
legality have nothing in common; they are as far removed as the poles.
"This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His
commandments are not grievous." The spirit and genius, the ground and
character of our obedience all go to prove it the very reverse of
legality. It is our deep and settled conviction that those persons who
are ever ready to cry out, "Legal! Legal!" whenever obedience is
pressed upon them, are sadly and grossly mistaken. If indeed it were
taught that we must earn by our obedience the high position and
relationship of children of God, then verily the solemn charge of
legality might justly be urged; but to bestow such an epithet on
Christian obedience, is, we repeat, a serious moral mistake. Obedience
could never precede sonship, but sonship should ever be followed by
obedience.
And while we are on this subject, we must call the attention of the
reader to a passage or two of New-Testament scripture as to which
there is a want of clearness in many minds. In the fifth chapter of
Matthew, we read, "Ye have heard that it hath been said, 'Thou shalt
love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy;' but _I_ say unto you, Love
your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate
you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you;
that ye may be the sons [υἱοί] of your Father which is in
heaven; for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and
sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.... Be ye therefore
perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." (Ver.
43-48.)
This passage might, in the judgment of some, seem to teach that the
relationship of children can be attained by a certain line of action;
but it is not so. It is a question of moral conformity or suitability
to the character and ways of our Father. We sometimes hear, in
every-day life, the saying, "You would not be your father's son if you
were to act in such a way." It is as though our Lord had said, If you
want to be the sons of your heavenly Father, you must act in grace to
all; for that is what He is doing.
Again, in 2 Corinthians vi. we read, "Wherefore come out from among
them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean;
and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be
My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." Here, it is not a
question of the secret relationship of children, formed by a divine
operation, but the public acknowledgment of the position of sons
[υἱούς] as the result of our separation from evil.[5]
[5] Speaking in a general way, the word τέκνον, child, is a
term of endearment; υἱός, son, of moral dignity.
παῖς is either a child or a servant: νήπιος, a babe.
It will be well for the reader to seize this important distinction; it
is of great practical value. We do not become children by separation
from the world, "for ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ
Jesus." "As many as received Him, to them gave He power [or authority,
ἐξουσίαν] to become children [τέκνα] of God, to them
that believe on His name; which were born, not of blood, nor of the
will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." (Gal. iii. 26;
John i. 12, 13.) "Of His own will begat He us by the word of truth."
(James i. 18.) We become children by new birth, which, thanks be to
God, is a divine operation from first to last. What had we to do with
our natural birth? Nothing. And what have we to do with our spiritual
birth? Clearly nothing.
But then we must remember that God can only identify Himself with, and
publicly acknowledge those who, through grace, seek to walk in a way
worthy of Him--a way befitting the sons and daughters of the Lord
Almighty. If our ways are unlike Him, if we are mixed up with all
sorts of wrong things, if we are unequally yoked together with
unbelievers, how can we expect God to own us as His sons? We read, in
Hebrews xi, of those who "confessed that they were strangers and
pilgrims on the earth," and who "declared plainly that they sought a
country;" and of them we are told that "_God was not ashamed_ to be
called their God." He could publicly identify Himself with them, and
acknowledge them; He could own them as His.
Reader, let us seriously apply our hearts to the consideration of this
great practical question. Let us look, seriously and honestly, to our
ways. Let us, in truthfulness and uprightness of heart, inquire
whether we are "unequally yoked together with unbelievers," on any
ground, or for any object whatsoever. If so, let us give earnest heed
to the words, "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch
not the unclean thing." It may be that the carrying out of this holy
commandment will expose us to the charge of bigotry, narrowness, and
intolerance; it may wear the aspect of pharisaic pride and
self-complacency. We may be told, we are not to judge, or set
ourselves up to be holier or better than other people.
To all this line of argument we have the one simple, conclusive
answer, namely, God's plain command. He tells us to be separate, to
come out, to touch not the unclean; and all this in order to His
receiving us, and acknowledging us as His sons and daughters. This
ought to be quite sufficient for us. Let people think or say what they
will of us,--let them call us what they please; God will settle the
matter with them, sooner or later; our duty is to separate ourselves
from unbelievers, if we would be received and owned of God. If
believers are mixed up with unbelievers, how are they to be known or
distinguished as the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty?
But we may perhaps be asked, How are we to know who are unbelievers?
All profess to be Christians--all take the ground of belonging to
Christ: we are not surrounded by ignorant heathen, or unbelieving
Jews; how then are we to judge? It was plain enough in the early days
of Christianity, when the apostle wrote his epistle to the assembly at
Corinth--then the line of demarkation was as clear as a sunbeam; there
were the three distinct classes--"the Jew, the Gentile, and the Church
of God;" but now all is changed,--we live in a Christian land, under a
Christian government, we are surrounded on all hands by Christians,
and therefore 2 Corinthians vi. cannot apply to us; it was all very
well when the Church was in its infancy, having just emerged from
Judaism on the one hand and heathenism on the other, but to think of
applying such a principle at this advanced stage of the Church's
history, is wholly out of the question.
To all who take this ground, we would put a very plain question,--Is
it true that the Church has reached a stage of her history in which
the New Testament is no longer her guide and authority? Have we got
beyond the range of holy Scripture? If so, what are we to do? whither
are we to turn for guidance? If we admit for a moment that 2
Corinthians vi. does not apply to Christians now, what warrant have we
for appropriating to ourselves any portion of the New Testament?
The fact is, Scripture is designed for the Church of God as a whole,
and for each member of that Church in particular; and hence, as long
as the Church is on earth, so long will the Scripture apply. To
question this is to offer a flat contradiction to the words of the
inspired apostle when he tells us that the holy Scriptures are able to
make us "_wise unto salvation_"--that is, "wise" right onward to the
day of glory, for such is the blessed force of the word "salvation" in
2 Timothy iii. 15.
We want no new light--no fresh revelation; we have "_all truth_"
within the covers of our precious Bible. Thank God for it! We do not
want science or philosophy to make us wise. All true science and all
sound philosophy will leave untouched the testimony of holy Scripture;
they cannot add to it, but they will not contradict it. When infidels
talk to us about "progress," "development," "the light of science," we
fall back, in holy confidence and tranquillity, upon those precious
words, "all truth," "wise unto salvation." It is blessedly impossible
to get beyond these. What can be added to "all truth"? What more do we
or can we want than to be made wise right onward to the coming of our
Lord Jesus Christ?
And further, let us remember that there is no change whatever in the
relative position of the Church and the world. It is as true to-day as
it was eighteen hundred and fifty years ago, when our Lord uttered the
words, that His people are not of the world, even as He Himself is not
of the world. (John xvii.) The world is the world still. It may, in
some places, have changed its dress, but not its true character,
spirit, and principles. Hence, therefore, it is as wrong to-day for
Christians to be "unequally yoked together with unbelievers" as it was
when Paul penned his epistle to the Church at Corinth. We cannot get
over this; we cannot set aside our responsibility in this matter. It
will not, by any means, meet the case to say, "We must not judge." We
are bound to judge. If we refuse to judge, we refuse to obey, and what
is this but positive rebellion? God says, "Come out from among them
and be ye separate;" if we reply, We cannot judge, where are we? The
fact is, we are absolutely commanded to judge. "Do not ye judge them
that are _within_? but them that are _without_ God judgeth." (1 Cor.
v. 12, 13.)
But we shall not pursue this line of argument any further. We trust
the reader is one who fully owns the direct application to himself of
the passage which we have just quoted. It is as plain as it is
pointed; it calls upon all God's people to come out and be separate,
and touch not the unclean thing. This is what God requires of His
people, in order to His owning them as His; and surely it ought to be
the deep and earnest desire of our hearts to respond to His gracious
will in this matter, utterly regardless of the world's thoughts
respecting us. Some of us are very much afraid of being thought narrow
and bigoted; but, oh, how little it imports to a truly devoted heart
what men think of us! Human thoughts perish in an hour. When we are
manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ, when we stand in the
full blaze of the glory, what will it matter to us whether men
considered us narrow or broad, bigoted or liberal? and what should it
matter to us now? Not the weight of a feather. Our one grand object
should be, so to act--so to carry ourselves as to be "acceptable" to
Him who has made us "accepted." May it be so with the writer and the
reader, and with every member of the body of Christ?
Let us now turn, for a moment, to the weighty and very solemn truth
presented to us in verse 10 of our chapter. "He will not be slack to
him that hateth Him, He will repay him to his face." If the lovers of
God are comforted in verse 9, and most blessedly encouraged to keep
His commandments, the haters of God are called to hearken to a warning
note in verse 10.
There is a time coming when God will deal personally, face to face,
with His enemies. How awful the thought that any one should be _a
hater of God_--a hater of that One who is said to be and who is
"Light" and "Love;" the very fountain of goodness, the Author and
Giver of every good and perfect gift, the Father of lights; the One
whose liberal hand supplies the need of every living thing, who hears
the cry of the young ravens, and quenches the thirst of the wild ass;
the infinitely good, the only wise, the perfectly holy God, the Lord
of all power and might, the creator of the ends of the earth, and the
One who has power to destroy both soul and body in hell!
Only think, reader, of any one being a hater of such a One as God; and
we know that all who are not lovers must be haters. People may not see
this; very few would be disposed to own themselves to be absolute
haters of God, but there is no neutral ground in this great question;
we must either be for or against; and in point of fact, people are not
slow in showing their colors. It often happens that the heart's
deep-seated enmity to God comes out in hatred to His people, to His
Word, His worship, His service. How frequently do we hear such
expressions as, "I hate religious people," "I hate all cant," "I hate
preachers"! The truth is, it is God Himself that is hated. "The carnal
mind is enmity against God; it is not subject to the law of God,
neither indeed can be;" and this enmity comes out in reference to
every one and every thing connected with God. There lies deep down in
every unconverted heart the most positive enmity to God. Every man in
his natural state hates God.
Now, God declares, in Deuteronomy vii. 10, that "He will not be slack
to him that hateth Him; He will repay him to his face." This is a
most solemn truth, and one which ought to be more pressed upon the
attention of all whom it may concern. Men do not like to hear it; many
affect and profess not to believe it. They would fain persuade
themselves and persuade others also that God is too good, too kind,
too merciful, too benevolent, to deal in stern judgment with His
creatures. They forget that God's ways in government are as perfect as
His ways in grace. They imagine that the government of God will pass
over or deal lightly with evil and evil-doers.
This is a most miserable and fatal mistake, and men will find it to be
so to their heavy and eternal cost. True it is, blessed be God, He
can, in His rich sovereign grace and mercy, forgive us our sins, blot
out our transgressions, cancel our guilt, justify us perfectly, and
fill our hearts with the spirit of adoption; but this is another thing
altogether. This is grace reigning through righteousness unto eternal
life by Jesus Christ our Lord. It is God, in His wondrous love,
providing righteousness for the poor, guilty, hell-deserving sinner
who knows and feels and owns that he has no righteousness of his own,
and never could have it. God, in the marvelous love of His heart, has
provided a means whereby He can be just and the justifier of every
poor broken-hearted, bankrupt sinner that simply believes in Jesus.
But how, we may ask, was all this done? Was it by passing over sin, as
though it were nothing? was it by relaxing the claims of the divine
government, lowering the standard of divine holiness, or touching, in
the most remote way, the dignity, stringency, and majesty of the law?
No; thanks and praise to redeeming love, it was the very reverse.
Never was there or could there be a more terrible expression of God's
eternal hatred of sin, or of His unflinching purpose to condemn it
utterly and punish it eternally; never was there or could there be a
more glorious vindication of the divine government, a more perfect
maintenance of the standard of divine holiness, truth, and
righteousness; never was the law more gloriously vindicated or more
thoroughly established than by that most glorious scheme of
redemption, planned, executed, and revealed by the Eternal Three in
One,--planned by the Father, executed by the Son, and revealed by the
Holy Ghost.
If we would have a just sense of the awful reality of the government
of God, His wrath against sin, and the true character of His holiness,
we must gaze at the cross; we must hearken to that bitter cry that
issued from the heart of the Son of God and broke through the dark
shadows of Calvary, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Never
had such a question been asked before, never has such a question been
asked since, and never shall--never can such a question be asked
again. Whether we consider the One who asked it, the One of whom it
was asked, or the answer, we must see that the question stands
absolutely alone in the annals of eternity. The cross is the measure
of God's hatred of sin, as it is the measure of His love to the
sinner. It is the imperishable foundation of the throne of grace, the
divinely righteous ground on which God can pardon our sins and
constitute us perfectly righteous in a risen and glorified Christ.
But then if men despise all this, and persist in their hatred of God,
and yet talk of His being too good and too kind to punish evil-doers,
how will it be with them? "He that obeyeth not [ἀπειθῶν] the
Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth upon him." (John
iii. 36.)[6] Can it be possible--can we believe for a moment that a
just God should exercise judgment upon His only begotten Son, His
well-beloved, His eternal delight, because He was bearing our sins in
His own body on the tree, and yet allow impenitent sinners to escape?
Had Jesus, the spotless, holy, perfect Man--the only perfect Man that
ever trod this earth--had He to suffer for sins, the just for the
unjust, and shall evil-doers, unbelievers, and haters of God be saved
and blessed and taken to heaven? and all this, forsooth, because God
is too kind and too good to punish sinners in hell forever! Did it
cost God the giving up, the forsaking, and the bruising of His beloved
Son in order to save His people _from their sins_, and shall ungodly
sinners, despisers, and rebels be saved _in their sins_? Did the Lord
Jesus Christ die for nothing? did Jehovah put Him to grief and hide
His face from Him when there was no necessity? Why the awful horrors
of Calvary? why the three hours' darkness? why that bitter cry, "My
God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"--why all this if sinners can
get to heaven without it? Why all this inconceivable sorrow and
suffering for our blessed Lord if God is too kind and too gracious and
too tender to send sinners to hell?
[6] John iii. 36 is a passage of immense weight and importance. It not
only sets forth the great truth that all who believe in the Son of God
are the privileged possessors of eternal life, but it also cuts up by
the roots two leading heresies of the day, namely, universalism and
annihilationism. The universalist professes to believe that,
ultimately, all shall be restored and blessed. Not so, says our
passage; for those who obey not the Son "shall not see life."
The annihilationist professes to believe that all who are out of
Christ shall perish like the beasts. Not so, for "the wrath of God
_abideth_" upon the disobedient. Abiding wrath and annihilation are
wholly incompatible. It is utterly impossible to reconcile them.
It is interesting and instructive to notice the difference between
the words ὁ πιστεύων--"he that believeth"--and ὁ
ἀπειθῶν--"he that obeyeth not." They give us the two sides
of the subject of faith.
What egregious folly! What will not men believe, provided it be not
the truth of God? The poor dark human mind will affect to believe the
most monstrous absurdity in order to get a plea for rejecting the
plain teaching of holy Scripture. The very thing which men would never
think of attributing to a good human government they do not hesitate
to attribute to the government of the only wise, the only true, the
only just God. What should we think of a government that could not or
would not punish evil-doers? Would we like to live under it? What
should we think of the government of England if, because her majesty
is so kind, so gracious, so tender-hearted, she could not allow
criminals to be punished as the law directs? Who would care to live in
England?
Reader, do you not see how that one verse which is now before us
demolishes completely all the theories and arguments which men, in
their folly and ignorance, have advanced on the subject of the divine
government? "The Lord thy God, He is God, the faithful God, which ...
repayeth them that hate Him to their face, to destroy them; He will
not be slack to him that hateth Him, He will repay him to his face."
Oh that men would hearken to the Word of God! that they would be
warned by its clear, emphatic, and solemn statements as to coming
wrath, judgment, and eternal punishment! that, instead of seeking to
persuade themselves and others that there is no hell, no deathless
worm and unquenchable fire, no eternal torment, they would listen to
the warning voice, and, ere it be too late, flee for refuge to the
hope set before them in the gospel! Truly this would be their wisdom.
God declares that He will repay those that hate Him. How awful the
thought of this repayment! Who can meet it? The government of God is
perfect, and because it is so, it is utterly impossible that it can
allow evil to pass unjudged. Nothing can be plainer than this. All
Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, sets it forth in terms so clear
and forcible as to render it the very height of folly for men to argue
against it. How much better and wiser and safer to flee from the wrath
to come than to deny that it is coming, and that when it does come, it
will be eternal in its duration. It is utterly vain for any one to
attempt to reason in opposition to the truth of God. Every word of
God shall stand forever. We see the actings of His government in
reference to His people Israel, and in reference to Christians now.
Did He pass over evil in His people of old? Nay; on the contrary, He
visited them continually with His chastening rod, and this, too, just
because they were His people, as He said to them by His prophet
Amos--"Hear this word which the Lord hath spoken against you, O
children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from
the land of Egypt, saying, 'You only have I known of all the families
of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.'"
(Amos iii. 1, 2.)
We have the same weighty principle set forth in the first epistle of
Peter, in its application to Christians now.--"For the time is come
that _judgment must begin_ at the house of God; and if it first begin
at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?
And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and
the sinner appear?" (Chap. iv. 17, 18.)
God chastens His own just because they are His own, and that they may
not be condemned with the world. (1 Cor. xi.) The children of this
world are allowed to go on their way; but their day is coming--a dark
and heavy day--a day of judgment and unmitigated wrath. Men may
question and argue and reason, but Scripture is distinct and emphatic.
"God hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in
righteousness, by that Man whom He hath ordained." The great day of
reckoning is at hand, when God will repay every man to his face.
It is truly edifying to mark the way in which Moses, that beloved and
honored servant of God, led assuredly by the Spirit of God, pressed
the grand and solemn realities of the divine government upon the
conscience of the congregation. Hear how he pleads and exhorts: "Thou
shalt _therefore_ keep the commandments, and the statutes, and the
judgments, which I command thee this day, _to do them_. Wherefore it
shall come to pass, if ye _hearken_ to these judgments, and _keep_ and
_do_ them, that the Lord thy God shall keep unto thee the covenant and
the mercy which He sware unto thy fathers. And He will _love_ thee,
and _bless_ thee, and _multiply_ thee; He will also bless the fruit of
thy womb, and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine
oil, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep, in the
land which He sware unto thy fathers to give thee. Thou shalt be
blessed above all people; there shall not be male nor female barren
among you or among your cattle. And the Lord will take away from thee
all sickness, and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which
thou knowest, upon thee; but will lay them upon all them that hate
thee. And thou shalt consume all the people which the Lord thy God
shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them; neither
shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee."
(Ver. 11-16.)
What a powerful appeal! how affecting! Mark the two groups of words.
Israel was to "hearken," "keep," and "do." Jehovah was to "love,"
"bless," and "multiply." Alas! alas! Israel failed--sadly, shamefully
failed, under law and under government; and hence, instead of the love
and the blessing and the multiplying, there has been judgment, curse,
barrenness, dispersion, desolation.
But, blessed be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, if Israel has failed under _law_ and
_government_, He has not failed in His rich and precious sovereign
_grace_ and _mercy_. He will keep the covenant and the mercy which He
sware unto their fathers. Not one jot or tittle of His covenant-promise
shall ever fail. He will make all good by and by. He will fulfill, to
the very letter, all His gracious promises. Though He cannot do this
on the ground of Israel's obedience, He can and will do it through the
blood of the everlasting covenant, the precious blood of Jesus, His
eternal Son--all homage to His peerless name!
Yes, reader, the God of Israel cannot suffer one of His precious
promises to fall to the ground. What would become of us if He could?
What security, what rest, what peace could we have, if Jehovah's
covenant with Abraham were to fail in any single point? True it is
that Israel has forfeited all claim. If it be a question of fleshly
descent, Ishmael and Esau have a prior claim: if it be a question of
legal obedience, the golden calf and the broken tables tell their
melancholy tale: if it be a question of government on the ground of
the Moab covenant, they have not a single plea to urge.
But God will be God, spite of Israel's lamentable unfaithfulness. "The
gifts and calling of God are without repentance," and hence "all
Israel shall be saved." God will most assuredly make good His oath to
Abraham, spite of all the wreck and ruin of Abraham's seed. We must
steadfastly hold to this, in the face of every opposing thought,
feeling, or opinion. Israel shall be restored and blessed and
multiplied in their own beloved and holy land. They shall take down
their harps from the willows and, beneath the peaceful shade of their
own vines and fig-trees, chant the high praises of their loving
Saviour and God, throughout that bright millennial Sabbath which lies
before them. Such is the unvarying testimony of Scripture, from
beginning to end, which must be maintained in its integrity, and made
good in every particular, to the glory of God, and on the ground of
His everlasting covenant.
But we must return to our chapter, the closing verses of which demand
our special attention. It is very touching and beautiful to mark the
way in which Moses seeks to encourage the heart of the people in
reference to the dreaded nations of Canaan. He enters into and
anticipates their very inmost thoughts and feelings.
"If thou shalt say _in thine heart_, These nations are more than I;
how can I dispossess them? Thou shalt not be afraid of them; but shalt
_well remember_ what the Lord thy God did unto Pharaoh, and unto all
Egypt; the great temptations which thine eyes saw, and the signs, and
the wonders, and the mighty hand, and the stretched-out arm, whereby
the Lord thy God brought thee out: _so_ shall the Lord thy God do unto
all the people of whom thou art afraid. Moreover, the Lord thy God
will send the hornet among them, until they that are left, and hide
themselves from thee, be destroyed. Thou shalt not be affrighted at
them; for _the Lord thy God is among you, a mighty God and terrible_.
And the Lord thy God will put out those nations before thee by little
and little; thou mayest not consume them at once, lest the beasts of
the field increase upon thee. But the Lord thy God shall deliver them
unto thee, and shall destroy them with a mighty destruction, until
they be destroyed. And He shall deliver their kings into thine hand,
and thou shalt destroy their name from under heaven; there shall no
man be able to stand before thee, until thou have destroyed them. The
graven images of their gods shall ye burn with fire; thou shalt not
desire the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it unto thee, lest
thou be snared therein; for it is an abomination to the Lord thy God.
Neither shalt thou bring _an abomination into thine house, lest thou
be a cursed thing like it_; but thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou
shalt utterly abhor it, for it is a cursed thing." (Ver. 17-26.)
The grand remedy for all unbelieving fears is, simply to fix the eye
upon the living God; thus the heart is raised above the difficulties,
whatever they may be. It is of no possible use to deny that there are
difficulties and opposing influences of all sorts. This will not
minister comfort and encouragement to the sinking heart. Some people
affect a certain style of speaking of trials and difficulties which
just goes to prove, not their practical knowledge of God, but their
profound ignorance of the stern realities of life. They would fain
persuade us that we ought not to feel the trials, sorrows, and
difficulties of the way. They might as well tell us that we ought not
to have a head on our shoulders or a heart in our bosom. Such persons
know not how to comfort those that are cast down. They are mere
visionary theorists, wholly unfit to deal with souls passing through
conflict or grappling with the actual facts of our daily history.
How did Moses seek to encourage the hearts of his brethren? "Be not
affrighted," he says; but why? Was it that there were no enemies, no
difficulties, no dangers? No; but "the Lord thy God is among you, a
mighty God and terrible." Here is the true comfort and encouragement.
The enemies were there, but God is the sure resource. Thus it was that
Jehoshaphat, in his time of trial and pressure, sought to encourage
himself and his brethren. "O our God, wilt Thou not judge them? For we
have no might against this great company that cometh against us,
neither know we what to do; but _our eyes are upon Thee_."
Here lies the precious secret. The eyes are upon God. His power is
brought in, and this settles every thing. "If God be for us, who can
be against us?" Moses meets, by his precious ministry, the rising
fears in the heart of Israel--"These nations are more than I." Yes,
but they are not more than the "mighty and terrible God." What nations
could stand before Him? He had a solemn controversy with those nations
because of their terrible sins; their iniquity was full; the
reckoning-time had come, and the God of Israel was going to drive them
out before His people.
Hence, therefore, Israel had no need to fear the _power_ of the enemy.
Jehovah would see to that. But there was something far more to be
dreaded than the enemy's power, and that was, the insnaring influence
of their idolatry. "The graven images of their gods shall ye burn with
fire." What! the heart might say, are we to destroy the gold and
silver that adorn these images? Might not that be turned to some good
account? Is it not a pity to destroy what is so very valuable in
itself? It is all right to burn the images, but why not spare the gold
and silver?
Ah, it is just thus the poor heart is prone to reason; thus ofttimes
we deceive ourselves when called to judge and abandon what is evil. We
persuade ourselves of the rightness of making some reserve; we imagine
we can pick and choose and make some distinction. We are prepared to
give up some of the evil, but not all. We are ready to burn the wood
of the idol, but spare the gold and silver.
Fatal delusion! "Thou shalt not desire the silver or gold that is on
them, nor take it unto thee, _lest thou be snared therein_; for it is
an abomination to the Lord thy God." All must be given up, all
destroyed. To retain an atom of the accursed thing is to fall into the
snare of the devil, and link ourselves with that which, however highly
esteemed among men, is an abomination in the sight of God.
And let us mark and ponder the closing verses of our chapter. To bring
an abomination into the house is to become like it! How very solemn!
Do we fully understand it? The man who brought an abomination into his
house became a cursed thing like it!
Reader, may the Lord keep our hearts separated from all evil, and true
and loyal to Himself.
CHAPTER VIII.
"All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye observe
to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land
which the Lord sware unto your fathers. And thou shalt remember _all
the way_ which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the
wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in
thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments or no." (Ver.
1, 2.)
It is at once refreshing, edifying, and encouraging to look back over
the whole course along which the faithful hand of our God has
conducted us; to trace His wise and gracious dealings with us; to call
to mind His many marvelous interpositions on our behalf; how He
delivered us out of this strait and that difficulty; how, ofttimes,
when we were at our wits' end, He appeared for our help, and opened
the way before us, rebuking our fears and filling our hearts with
songs of praise and thanksgiving.
We must not, by any means, confound this delightful exercise with the
miserable habit of looking back at _our_ ways, our attainments, our
progress, our service, what we have been able to do, even though we
are ready to admit, in a general way, that it was only by the grace of
God that we were enabled to do any little work for Him. All this only
ministers to self-complacency, which is destructive of all true
spirituality of mind. Self-retrospection, if we may be allowed to use
such a term, is quite as injurious in its moral effect as
self-introspection. In short, self-occupation, in any of its
multiplied phases, is most pernicious; it is, in so far as it is
allowed to operate, the death-blow to fellowship. Any thing that tends
to bring self before the mind must be judged and refused, with stern
decision; it brings in barrenness, darkness, and feebleness. For a
person to sit down to look back at his attainments or his doings, is
about as wretched an occupation as any one could engage in. We may be
sure it was not to any such thing as this that Moses exhorted the
people when he charged them to "remember all the way by which the
Lord their God had led them."
We may here recur, for a moment, to the memorable words of the apostle
in Philippians iii.--"Brethren, I count not myself to have
apprehended; but this one thing I do, _forgetting those things which
are behind_, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I
press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in
Christ Jesus."
Now, the question is, what were the "things" of which the blessed
apostle speaks? Did he forget the precious dealings of God with his
soul throughout the whole of his wilderness-journey? Impossible!--indeed
we have the very fullest and clearest evidence to the contrary. Hear
his touching words before Agrippa--"Having therefore obtained help of
God, I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small and great." So
also, in writing to his beloved son and fellow-laborer, Timothy, he
reviews the past, and speaks of the persecutions and afflictions which
he had endured; "but," he adds, "out of them all the Lord delivered
me." And again, "At my first answer no man stood with me, but all
forsook me; I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge.
Notwithstanding, the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by
me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might
hear; and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion."
To what then does the apostle refer when he speaks of "forgetting
those things which are behind"? We believe he refers to all those
things which had no connection with Christ--things in which the heart
might rest, and nature might glory--things which might act as weights
and hindrances,--all these were to be forgotten in the ardent pursuit
of those grand and glorious realities which lay before him. We do not
believe that Paul, or any other child of God or servant of Christ,
could ever desire to forget a single scene or circumstance in his
whole earthly career in any way illustrative of the goodness, the
loving-kindness, the tender mercy, the faithfulness of God. On the
contrary, we believe it will ever be one of our very sweetest
exercises to dwell upon the blessed memory of all our Father's ways
with us while passing across the desert, home to our everlasting rest.
"There with what joy reviewing
Past conflicts, dangers, fears,
Thy hand our foes subduing,
And drying all our tears.
Our hearts with rapture burning,
The path we shall retrace,
Where now our souls are learning
The riches of Thy grace."
But let us not be misunderstood. We do not, by any means, wish to give
countenance to the habit of dwelling merely upon our own experience.
This is often very poor work, and resolves itself into self-occupation.
We have to guard against this as one of the many things which tend to
lower our spiritual tone and draw our hearts away from Christ. But we
need never be afraid of the result of dwelling upon the record of the
Lord's dealings and ways with us. This is a blessed habit, tending
ever to lift us out of ourselves, and fill us with praise and
thanksgiving.
Why, we may ask, were Israel charged to "remember _all_ the way" by
which the Lord their God had led them? Assuredly, to draw out their
hearts in praise for the past, and to strengthen their confidence in
God for the future. Thus it must ever be.
"We'll praise Him for all that is past,
And trust Him for all that's to come."
May we do so more and more. May we just move on, day by day, praising
and trusting, trusting and praising. These are the two things which
redound to the glory of God, and to our peace and joy in Him. When the
eye rests on the "Ebenezers" which lie all along the way, the heart
must give forth its sweet "halleluiahs" to Him who has helped us
hitherto, and will help us right on to the end. He _hath_ delivered,
and He _doth_ deliver, and He _will_ deliver. Blessed chain! Its every
link is divine deliverance.
Nor is it merely upon the signal mercies and gracious deliverances of
our Father's hand that we are to dwell, with devout thankfulness, but
also upon the "humblings" and the "provings" of His wise, faithful,
and holy love. All these things are full of richest blessing to our
souls. They are not, as people sometimes call them, "mercies in
disguise," but plain, palpable, unmistakable mercies, for which we
shall have to praise our God throughout the golden ages of that bright
eternity which lies before us.
"Thou shalt remember _all_ the way"--every stage of the journey, every
scene of wilderness-life, all the dealings of God, from first to last,
with the special object thereof, "to humble thee, and to prove thee,
_to know what was in thine heart_."
How wonderful to think of God's patient grace and painstaking love
with His people in the wilderness! What precious instruction for us!
With what intense interest and spiritual delight we can hang over the
record of the divine dealings with Israel in all their desert-wanderings!
How much we can learn from the marvelous history! We, too, have to be
humbled and proved, and made to know what is in our hearts. It is very
profitable and morally wholesome.
On our first setting out to follow the Lord, we know but little of the
depths of evil and folly in our hearts. Indeed, we are superficial in
every thing. It is as we get on in our practical career that we begin
to prove the reality of things; we find out the depths of evil in
ourselves, the utter hollowness and worthlessness of all that is in
the world, and the urgent need of the most complete dependence upon
the grace of God every moment. All this is very good; it makes us
humble and self-distrusting; it delivers us from pride and
self-sufficiency, and leads us to cling, in childlike simplicity, to
the One who alone is able to keep us from falling. Thus, as we grow
in self-knowledge, we get a deeper sense of grace, a more profound
acquaintance with the wondrous love of the heart of God, His
tenderness toward us, His marvelous patience in bearing with all our
infirmities and failings, His rich mercy in having taken us up at all,
His loving ministry to all our varied need, His numberless
interpositions on our behalf, the exercises through which He has seen
fit to lead us for our souls' deep and permanent profit.
The practical effect of all this is invaluable; it imparts depth,
solidity, and mellowness to the character; it cures us of all our
crude notions and vain theories; it delivers us from one-sidedness and
wild extremes; it makes us tender, thoughtful, patient, and
considerate toward others; it corrects our harsh judgments and gives a
gracious desire to put the best possible construction upon the actions
of others, and a readiness to attribute the best motives in cases
which may seem to us equivocal. These are precious fruits of
wilderness-experience which we may all earnestly covet.
"And He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with
manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know, that He
might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by
every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man
live." (Ver 3.)
This passage derives special interest and importance from the fact
that it is the first of our Lord's quotations from the book of
Deuteronomy in His conflict with the adversary in the wilderness. Let
us ponder this deeply; it demands our earnest attention. Why did our
Lord quote from Deuteronomy? Because that was the book which, above
all others, specially applied to the condition of Israel at the
moment. Israel had utterly failed, and this weighty fact is assumed in
the book of Deuteronomy from beginning to end. But notwithstanding the
failure of the nation, the path of obedience lay open to every
faithful Israelite. It was the privilege and duty of every one who
loved God to abide by His Word under all circumstances and in all
places.
Now, our blessed Lord was divinely true to the position of the Israel
of God. Israel after the flesh had failed and forfeited every thing;
He was there, in the wilderness, as the true Israel of God, to meet
the enemy by the simple authority of the Word of God. "And Jesus,
being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan, and was led by the
Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil. And
in those days He did eat nothing; and when they were ended, He
afterward hungered. And the devil said unto Him, 'If Thou be the Son
of God, command this stone that it be made bread.' And Jesus answered
Him, saying, '_It is written_, that man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word of God.'" (Luke iv.)
Here, then, is something for us to ponder. The perfect Man, the true
Israel, in the wilderness, surrounded by the wild beasts, fasting for
forty days, in the presence of the great adversary of God, of man, of
Israel. There was not a single feature in the scene to speak for God.
It was not with the second Man as it was with the first; He was not
surrounded with all the delights of Eden, but with all the dreariness
and desolation of a desert--there in loneliness and hunger, but there
for God!
Yes, blessed be His name, and there for man,--there to show man how to
meet the enemy in all his varied temptations, there to show man how to
live. We must not suppose for a moment that our adorable Lord met the
adversary as God over all. True, He was God, but if it were only as
such that He stood in the conflict, it could not afford any example
for us. Besides, it would be needless to tell us that God was able to
vanquish and put to flight a creature which His own hand had formed.
But to see One who was, in every respect, a man, and in all the
circumstances of humanity, sin excepted,--to see Him there in
weakness, in hunger, standing amid the consequences of man's fall, and
to find Him triumphing completely over the terrible foe, it is this
which is so full of comfort, consolation, strength, and encouragement
for us.
And how did He triumph? This is the grand and all-important question
for us,--a question demanding the most profound attention of every
member of the Church of God--a question the magnitude and importance
of which it would be utterly impossible to overstate. How, then, did
the Man Christ Jesus vanquish Satan in the wilderness? Simply by the
Word of God. He overcame, not as the almighty God, but as the humble,
dependent, self-emptied, and obedient Man. We have before us the
magnificent spectacle of a Man standing in the presence of the devil
and utterly confounding him with no other weapon whatsoever save the
Word of God. It was not by the display of divine power, for that could
be no model for us; it was simply with the Word of God, in His heart
and in His mouth, that the Second Man confounded the terrible enemy of
God and man.
And let us carefully note that our blessed Lord does not reason with
Satan. He does not appeal to any facts connected with Himself--facts
with which the enemy was well acquainted. He does not say, I know I am
the Son of God; the opened heavens, the descending Spirit, the
Father's voice, have all borne witness to the fact of My being the Son
of God. No; this would not do; it would not and could not be an
example for us. _The_ one special point for us to seize and learn from
is, that our great Exemplar, when meeting all the temptations of the
enemy, used only the weapon which we have in our possession, namely,
the simple, precious, written, Word of God.
We say, "all the temptations," because in all the three instances our
Lord's unvarying reply is, "_It is written_." He does not say, "I
know"--"I think"--"I feel"--"I believe" this, that, or the other; He
simply appeals to the written Word of God--the book of Deuteronomy in
particular,--that very book which infidels have dared to insult, but
which is pre-eminently the book for every obedient man, in the face
of total, universal, hopeless, wreck and ruin.
This is of unspeakable moment for us, beloved reader. It is as though
our Lord Christ had said to the adversary, Whether I am the Son of God
or not is not now the question, but how _man_ is to live, and the
answer to this question is only to be found in holy Scripture; and it
is to be found there as clear as a sunbeam, quite irrespective of all
questions respecting Me. Whoever I am, the Scripture is the same: "man
doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of
the mouth of the Lord."
Here we have the only true, the only safe, the only happy attitude for
man, namely, hanging in earnest dependence upon "every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord." Blessed attitude! We may
well say there is nothing like it in all this world. It brings the
soul into direct, living, personal contact with the Lord Himself, by
means of His Word. It makes the Word so absolutely essential to us, in
every thing; we cannot do without it. As the natural life is sustained
by bread, so the spiritual life is sustained by the Word of God. It is
not merely going to the Bible to find doctrines there, or to have our
opinions or views confirmed; it is very much more than this; it is
going to the Bible for the staple commodity of life--the life of the
new man; it is going there for food, for light, for guidance, for
comfort, for authority, for strength--for all, in short, that the soul
can possibly need, from first to last.
And let us specially note the force and value of the expression,
"_every_ word." How fully it shows that we cannot afford to dispense
with a single word that has proceeded out of the mouth of the Lord. We
want it all. We cannot tell the moment in which some exigence may
present itself for which Scripture has already provided. We may not
perhaps have specially noticed the scripture before, but when the
difficulty arises, if we are in a right condition of soul--the true
posture of heart, the Spirit of God will furnish us with the needed
scripture, and we shall see a force, beauty, depth, and moral
adaptation in the passage which we had never seen before. Scripture is
a divine and therefore exhaustless treasury, in which God has made
ample provision for all the need of His people, and for each believer
in particular, right on to the end. Hence we should study it all,
ponder it, dig deeply into it, and have it treasured up in our hearts,
ready for use when the demand arises.
There is not a single crisis occurring in the entire history of the
Church of God, not a single difficulty in the entire path of any
individual believer, from beginning to end, which has not been
perfectly provided for in the Bible. We have all we want in that
blessed volume, and hence we should be ever seeking to make ourselves
more and more acquainted with what that volume contains, so as to be
"thoroughly furnished" for whatever may arise, whether it be a
temptation of the devil, an allurement of the world, or a lust of the
flesh; or, on the other hand, for equipment for that path of good
works which God has afore prepared that we should walk in it.
And we should, further, give special attention to the expression,
"_Out of the mouth of the Lord_." This is unspeakably precious. It
brings the Lord so very near to us, and gives us such a sense of the
reality of feeding upon His every word--yea, of hanging upon it as
something absolutely essential and indispensable. It sets forth the
blessed fact that our souls can no more exist without the Word than
our bodies could without food. In a word, we are taught by this
passage that _man's_ true position, his proper attitude, his only
place of strength, safety, rest, and blessing, is to be found in
habitual dependence upon the Word of God.
This is the life of faith which we are called to live--the life of
dependence--the life of obedience--the life that Jesus lived
perfectly. That blessed One would not move a step, utter a word, or do
a single thing save by the authority of the Word of God. No doubt He
could have turned stone into bread, but He had no command from God to
do that; and inasmuch as He had no command, He had no motive for
action. Hence Satan's temptations were perfectly powerless. He could
do nothing with a man who would only act on the authority of the Word
of God.
And we may also note, with very much interest and profit, that our
blessed Lord does not quote Scripture for the purpose of silencing the
adversary, but simply as authority for His position and conduct. Here
is where we are so apt to fail; we do not sufficiently use the
precious Word of God in this way; we quote it, at times, more for
victory over the enemy than for power and authority for our own souls.
Thus it loses its power in our hearts. We want to use the Word as a
hungry man uses bread, or as a mariner uses his chart and his compass;
it is that on which we live, and by which we move and act and think
and speak. Such it really is, and the more fully we prove it to be all
this to us, the more we shall know of its infinite preciousness. Who
is it that knows most of the real value of bread? Is it a chemist? No;
but a hungry man. A chemist may analyze it, and discuss its component
parts, but a hungry man proves its worth. Who knows most of the real
value of a chart? is it the teacher of navigation? No; but the mariner
as he sails along an unknown and dangerous coast.
These are but feeble figures to illustrate what the Word of God is to
the true Christian. He cannot do without it. It is absolutely
indispensable, in every relationship of life and in every sphere of
action. His hidden life is fed and sustained by it; his practical life
is guided by it. In all the scenes and circumstances of his personal
and domestic history, in the privacy of his closet, in the bosom of
his family, in the management of his affairs, he is cast upon the Word
of God for guidance and counsel.
And it never fails those who simply cleave to it and confide in it.
We may trust Scripture without a single shade of misgiving. Go to it
when we will, we shall always find what we want. Are we in sorrow? is
the poor heart bereaved, crushed, and desolate? What can soothe and
comfort us like the balmy words which the Holy Spirit has penned for
us? One sentence of holy Scripture can do more, in the way of comfort
and consolation, than all the letters of condolence that ever were
penned by human hand. Are we discouraged, faint-hearted, and cast
down? The Word of God meets us with its bright and soul-stirring
assurances. Are we pressed by pinching poverty? The Holy Ghost brings
home to our hearts some golden promise from the page of inspiration,
recalling us to Him who is "the Possessor of heaven and earth," and
who, in His infinite grace, has pledged Himself to "supply all _our
need_ according to _His riches_ in glory by Christ Jesus." Are we
perplexed and harassed by the conflicting opinions of men, by the
dogmas of conflicting schools of divinity, by religious and
theological difficulties? A few sentences of holy Scripture will pour
in a flood of divine light upon the heart and conscience, and set us
at perfect rest, answering every question, solving every difficulty,
removing every doubt, chasing away every cloud, giving us to know the
mind of God, putting an end to conflicting opinions by the one
divinely competent authority.
What a boon, therefore, is holy Scripture! What a precious treasure we
possess in the Word of God! How we should bless His holy name for
having given it to us! Yes; and bless Him, too, for every thing that
tends to make us more fully acquainted with the depth, fullness, and
power of those words of our chapter, "Man shall not live by bread
only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord
doth man live."
Truly precious are these words to the heart of the believer! And
hardly less so are those that follow, in which the beloved and revered
lawgiver refers, with touching sweetness, to Jehovah's tender care
throughout the whole of Israel's desert-wanderings. "Thy raiment," he
says, "waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these
forty years."
What marvelous grace shines out in these words! Only think, reader, of
Jehovah looking after His people in such a manner, to see that their
garments should not wax old or their foot swell! He not only fed them,
but clothed them and cared for them in every way. He even stooped to
look after their feet, that the sand of the desert might not injure
them. Thus, for forty years, did He watch over them, with all the
exquisite tenderness of a father's heart. What will not love undertake
to do for its object? Jehovah had set His love upon His people, and
this one blessed fact secured every thing for them, had they only
understood it. There was not a single thing within the range of
Israel's necessities, from Egypt to Canaan, which was not secured to
them and included in the fact that Jehovah had undertaken to do for
them. With infinite love and almighty power on their side, what could
be lacking?
But then, as we know, love clothes itself in various forms. It has
something more to do than to provide food and raiment for its objects.
It has not only to take account of their physical but also of their
moral and spiritual wants. Of this the lawgiver does not fail to
remind the people. "Thou shalt also consider," he says, "_in thine
heart_"--the only true and effective way to consider--"that, as a man
chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee."
Now, we do not like chastening; it is not joyous, but grievous. It is
all very well for a son to receive food and raiment from a father's
hand, and to have all his comforts provided by a father's thoughtful
love, but he does not like to see him taking down the rod. And yet
that dreaded rod may be the very best thing for the son; it may do for
him what no material benefits or earthly blessings could effect,--it
may correct some bad habit, or deliver him from some wrong tendency,
or save him from some evil influence, and thus prove a great moral and
spiritual blessing for which he shall have to be forever thankful. The
grand point for the son is, to see a father's love and care in the
discipline and chastening just as distinctly as in the various
material benefits which strew his path from day to day.
Here is precisely where we so signally fail in reference to the
disciplinary dealings of our Father. We rejoice in His benefits and
blessings; we are filled with praise and thankfulness as we receive,
day by day, from His liberal hand, the rich supply of all our need; we
delight to dwell upon His marvelous interposition on our behalf in
times of pressure and difficulty; it is a most precious exercise to
look back over the path by which His good hand has led us, and mark
those "Ebenezers" which tell of gracious help supplied all along the
road.
All this is very good and very right and very precious, but then there
is a great danger of our resting in the mercies, the blessings, and
the benefits which flow, in such rich profusion, from our Father's
loving heart and liberal hand. We are apt to rest in these things, and
say with the Psalmist, "In _my prosperity_ I said, 'I shall never be
moved. Lord, by Thy favor Thou hast made _my mountain_ to stand
strong.'" True, it is "by Thy favor," but yet we are prone to be
occupied with _our_ mountain and _our_ prosperity; we allow these
things to come in between our hearts and the Lord, and thus they
become a snare to us. Hence the need of chastening. Our Father, in His
faithful love and care, is watching over us; He sees the danger and He
sends trial, in one shape or another. Perhaps a telegram comes
announcing the death of a beloved child, or the crash of a bank
involving the loss of our earthly all; or, it may be, we are laid on a
bed of pain and sickness, or called to watch by the sick bed of a
beloved relative.
In a word, we are called to wade through deep waters which seem, to
our poor, feeble, coward hearts, absolutely overwhelming. The enemy
suggests the question. Is this love? Faith replies, without
hesitation and without reserve, Yes; it is all love--perfect love; the
death of the child, the loss of the property, the long, heavy, painful
illness, all the sorrow, all the pressure, all the exercise, the deep
waters and dark shadows--all, all is love--perfect love and unerring
wisdom. I feel assured of it, even now; I do not wait to know it by
and by, when I shall look back on the path from amid the full light of
the glory; I know it now, and delight to own it to the praise of that
infinite grace which has taken me up from the depth of my ruin, and
charged itself with all that concerns me, and which deigns to occupy
itself with my very failures, follies, and sins, in order to deliver
me from them, and to make me a partaker of divine holiness, and
conform me to the image of that blessed One who "loved Me and gave
Himself for me."
Christian reader, this is the way to answer Satan, and to hush the
dark reasonings which may spring up in our hearts. We must always
justify God. We must look at all His disciplinary dealings in the
light of His love. "Thou shalt also consider in thine heart that, _as
a man chasteneth his son_, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee." Most
surely we should not like to be without the blessed pledge and proof
of sonship. "_My son_, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord,
nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him; for _whom the Lord loveth He
chasteneth_, and scourgeth _every son_ whom He receiveth. If ye endure
chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom
the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof
all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore, we
have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them
reverence; shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of
spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after
their own pleasure; but He for our profit, that we might be partakers
of His holiness. Now, no chastening for the present seemeth to be
joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the
peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised
thereby. Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble
knees; and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame
be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed." (Heb. xii.
5-13.)
It is at once interesting and profitable to mark the way in which
Moses presses upon the congregation the varied motives of obedience
arising from the past, the present, and the future. Every thing is
brought to bear upon them to quicken and deepen their sense of
Jehovah's claims upon them. They were to "remember" the past, they
were to "consider" the present, and they were to anticipate the
future; and all this was to act on their hearts, and lead them forth
in holy obedience to that blessed and gracious One who had done, who
was doing, and who would do such great things for them.
The thoughtful reader can hardly fail to observe in this constant
presentation of moral motives a marked feature of this lovely book of
Deuteronomy, and a striking proof that it is no mere attempt at a
repetition of what we have in Exodus; but, on the contrary, that our
book has a province, a range, a scope, and design entirely its own. To
speak of mere repetition is absurd; to speak of contradiction is
impious.
"Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, to
walk in His ways, and to fear Him." The word "therefore" had a
retrospective and prospective force. It was designed to lead the heart
back over the past dealings of Jehovah, and forward into the future.
They were to think of the marvelous history of those forty years in
the desert,--the teaching, the humbling, the proving, the watchful
care, the gracious ministry, the full supply of all their need, the
manna from heaven, the stream from the smitten rock, the care of their
garments, and of their very feet, the wholesome discipline for their
moral good. What powerful moral motives were here for Israel's
obedience!
But this was not all: they were to look forward into the future; they
were to anticipate the bright prospect which lay before them; they
were to find in the future, as well as in the past and the present,
the solid basis of Jehovah's claims upon their reverent and
whole-hearted obedience.
"For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks
of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and
hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and
pomegranates, a land of oil olive, and honey; a land wherein thou
shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in
it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest
dig brass."
How fair was the prospect! how bright the vision! How marked the
contrast to the Egypt behind them and the wilderness through which
they had passed! The Lord's land lay before them in all its beauty and
verdure, its vine-clad hills and honeyed plains, its gushing fountains
and flowing streams. How refreshing the thought of the vine, the
fig-tree, the pomegranate, and the olive! How different from the
leeks, onions, and garlic of Egypt! Yes, all so different! It was the
Lord's own land: this was enough. It produced and contained all they
could possibly want. Above its surface, rich profusion; below, untold
wealth--exhaustless treasure.
What a prospect! How the faithful Israelite would long to enter upon
it!--long to exchange the sand of the desert for that bright
inheritance! True, the desert had its deep and blessed experiences,
its holy lessons, its precious memories; there they had known Jehovah
in a way they could not know Him even in Canaan;--all this was quite
true, and we can fully understand it; but still the wilderness was not
Canaan, and every true Israelite would long to set his foot on the
land of promise, and truly we may say that Moses presents the land, in
the passage just quoted, in a way eminently calculated to attract the
heart. "A land," he says, "wherein thou shalt eat bread without
scarceness, _thou shalt not lack any_ _thing in it_." What more could
be said? Here was the grand fact in reference to that good land into
which the hand of covenant-love was about to introduce them. All their
wants would be divinely met. Hunger and thirst should never be known
there. Health and plenty, joy and gladness, peace and blessing, were
to be the assured portion of the Israel of God in that fair
inheritance upon which they were about to enter. Every enemy was to be
subdued; every obstacle swept away; "the pleasant land" was to pour
forth its treasures for their use; watered continually by heaven's
rain, and warmed by its sunlight, it was to bring forth, in rich
abundance, all that the heart could desire.
What a land! what an inheritance! what a home! Of course, we are
looking at it now from a divine stand-point--looking at it according
to what it was in the mind of God, and what it shall most assuredly be
to Israel during that bright millennial age which lies before them. We
should have but a very poor idea indeed of the Lord's land were we to
think of it merely as possessed by Israel in the past, even in the
very brightest days of its history, as it appeared amid the splendors
of Solomon's reign. We must look onward to "the times of the
restitution of all things," in order to have any thing like a true
idea of what the land of Canaan will yet be to the Israel of God.
Now, Moses speaks of the land according to the divine idea of it. He
presents it as given by God, and not as possessed by Israel. This
makes all the difference. According to his charming description,
there was neither enemy nor evil occurrent: nothing but fruitfulness
and blessing from end to end. That is what it would have been, that is
what it should have been, and that is what it shall be, by and by, to
the seed of Abraham, in pursuance of the covenant made with their
fathers--the new, the everlasting covenant, founded on the sovereign
grace of God, and ratified by the blood of the cross. No power of
earth or hell can hinder the purpose or the promise of God. "Hath He
said, and shall He not do it?" God will make good, to the letter,
every word, spite of all the enemy's opposition and the lamentable
failure of His people. Though Abraham's seed have utterly failed under
law and under government, yet Abraham's God will give grace and glory,
for His gifts and calling are without repentance.
Moses fully understood all this. He knew how it would turn out with
those who stood before him, and with their children after them, for
many generations; and he looked forward into that bright future in
which a covenant-God would display, in the view of all created
intelligences, the triumphs of His grace in His dealings with the seed
of Abraham His friend.
Meanwhile, however, the faithful servant of Jehovah, true to the
object before his mind, in all those marvelous discourses in the
opening of our book, proceeds to unfold to the congregation the truth
as to their mode of acting in the good land on which they were about
to plant their foot. As he had spoken of the past and of the present,
so would he make use of the future; he would turn all to account in
his holy effort to urge upon the people their obvious, bounden duty to
that blessed One who had so graciously and tenderly cared for them all
their journey through, and who was about to bring them in and plant
them in the mountain of His inheritance. Let us hearken to his
touching and powerful exhortations.
"When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy
God for the good land which He has given thee." How simple! how
lovely! how morally suitable! Filled with the fruit of Jehovah's
goodness, they were to bless and praise His holy name. He delights to
surround Himself with hearts filled to overflowing with the sweet
sense of His goodness, and pouring forth songs of praise and
thanksgiving. He inhabits the praises of His people. He says, "Whoso
offereth praise glorifieth Me." The feeblest note of praise from a
grateful heart ascends as fragrant incense to the throne and to the
heart of God.
Let us remember this, beloved reader. It is as true for us, most
surely, as it was for Israel, that praise is comely. Our grand primary
business is to praise the Lord. Our every breath should be a
halleluiah. It is to this blessed and most sacred exercise the Holy
Ghost exhorts us, in manifold places. "By Him therefore let us offer
the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our
lips giving thanks to His name." We should ever remember that nothing
so gratifies the heart and glorifies the name of our God as a
thankful, worshiping spirit on the part of His people. It is well to
do good and communicate,--God is well pleased with such sacrifices; it
is our high privilege, while we have opportunity, to do good unto all
men, and especially unto them who are of the household of faith; we
are called to be channels of blessing between the loving heart of our
Father and every form of human need that comes before us in our daily
path;--all this is most blessedly true, but we must never forget that
the very highest place is assigned to praise. It is this which shall
employ our ransomed powers throughout the golden ages of eternity,
when the sacrifices of active benevolence shall no longer be needed.
But the faithful lawgiver knew but too well the sad proneness of the
human heart to forget all this--to lose sight of the gracious Giver,
and rest in His gifts; hence he addresses the following admonitory
words to the congregation--wholesome words, truly, for them and for
us. May we bend our ears and our hearts to them, in holy reverence and
teachableness of spirit.
"Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, in not keeping His
commandments, and His judgments, and His statutes, which I command
thee this day. Lest _when thou hast eaten and art full_, and hast
built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy herds and thy
flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all
that thou hast is multiplied; then thine heart be lifted up, and thou
forget the Lord thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of
Egypt, from the house of bondage; who led thee through that great and
terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and
drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of
the rock of flint; who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which
thy fathers knew not, that He might humble thee, and that He might
prove thee, _to do thee good at thy latter end_; and thou say in thine
heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.
But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God; for it is He that giveth
thee power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He
sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day. And it shall be, if thou do
at all forget the Lord thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve
them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall
surely perish. As the nations which the Lord destroyeth before your
face, so shall ye perish, _because ye would not be obedient unto the
voice of the Lord your God_." (Ver. 11-20.)
Here is something for us to ponder deeply. It has most assuredly a
voice for us, as it had for Israel. We may perhaps feel disposed to
marvel at the frequent reiteration of the note of warning and
admonition, the constant appeals to the heart and conscience of the
people as to their bounden duty to obey in all things the word of God,
the recurrence again and again to those grand soul-stirring facts
connected with their deliverance out of Egypt and their journey
through the wilderness.
But wherefore should we marvel? In the first place, do we not deeply
feel and fully admit our own urgent need of warning, admonition, and
exhortation? Do we not need line upon line, precept upon precept, and
that continually? Are we not prone to forget the Lord our God--to rest
in His gifts instead of Himself? Alas! alas! we cannot deny it. We
rest in the stream, instead of getting up to the Fountain; we turn the
very mercies, blessings, and benefits which strew our path in rich
profusion into an occasion of self-complacency and gratulation,
instead of finding in them the blessed ground of continual praise and
thanksgiving.
And then, as to those great facts of which Moses so continually
reminds the people, could they ever lose their moral weight, power, or
preciousness? Surely not. Israel might forget and fail to appreciate
those facts, but the facts remained the same. The terrible plagues of
Egypt, the night of the passover, their deliverance from the land of
darkness, bondage, and degradation, their marvelous passage through
the Red Sea, the descent of that mysterious food from heaven morning
by morning, the refreshing stream gushing forth from the flinty
rock,--how could such facts as these ever lose their power over a
heart possessing a spark of genuine love to God? and why should we
wonder to find Moses again and again appealing to them and using them
as a most powerful lever wherewith to move the hearts of the people?
Moses felt the mighty moral influence of these things himself, and he
would fain lead others to feel it also. To him, they were precious
beyond expression, and he longed to make his brethren feel their
preciousness as well as himself. It was his one object to set before
them, in every possible way, the powerful claims of Jehovah upon their
hearty and unreserved obedience.
This, reader, will account for what might, to an unspiritual,
unintelligent, cursory reader, seem the too frequent recurrence to the
scenes of the past in those wonderful discourses of Moses. We are
reminded, as we read them, of the lovely words of Peter, in his second
epistle,--"Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you _always in
remembrance of these things_, though ye know them, and be established
in the present truth. Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this
tabernacle, _to stir you up, by putting you in remembrance_; knowing
that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus
Christ hath showed me. Moreover, I will endeavor that ye may be able,
after my decease, to have _these things always in remembrance_."
(Chap. i. 12-15.)
How striking the unity of spirit and purpose in these two beloved and
venerable servants of God! Both the one and the other felt the
tendency of the poor human heart to forget the things of God, of
heaven, and of eternity, and they felt the supreme importance and
infinite value of the things of which they spoke; hence their earnest
desire to keep them continually before the hearts and abidingly in
the remembrance of the Lord's beloved people. Unbelieving, restless
nature might say to Moses, or to Peter, Have you nothing new to tell
us? Why are you perpetually dwelling on the same old themes? We know
all you have got to say; we have heard it again and again. Why not
strike out into some new field of thought? Would it not be well to try
and keep abreast of the science of the day? If we keep perpetually
moping over those antiquated themes, we shall be left stranded on the
bank, while the stream of civilization rushes on. Pray give us
something new.
Thus might the poor unbelieving mind--the worldly heart reason, but
faith knows the answer to all such miserable suggestions. We can well
believe that both Moses and Peter would have made short work with all
such reasonings. And so should we. We know whence they emanate,
whither they tend, and what they are worth; and we should have, if not
on our lips, at least deep down in our hearts, a ready answer--an
answer perfectly satisfactory to us, however contemptible it may seem
to the men of this world. Could a true Israelite ever tire of hearing
of what the Lord had done for him, in Egypt, in the Red Sea, and in
the wilderness? Never! Such themes would be ever fresh, ever welcome
to his heart. And just so with the Christian. Can he ever tire of the
cross and all the grand and glorious realities that cluster around it?
can he ever tire of Christ, His peerless glories and unsearchable
riches, His Person, His work, His offices? Never! No, never,
throughout the bright ages of eternity. Does he crave any thing new?
Can science improve upon Christ? can human learning add aught to the
great mystery of godliness, which has for its foundation God manifest
in the flesh, and for its top-stone a Man glorified in heaven? can we
ever get beyond this? No, reader, we could not if we would, and we
would not if we could.
And even were we, for a moment, to take a lower range, and look at the
works of God in creation; do we ever tire of the sun? He is not new;
he has been pouring his beams upon this world for well-nigh six
thousand years, and yet those beams are as fresh and as welcome to-day
as they were when first created. Do we ever tire of the sea? It is not
new; its tide has been ebbing and flowing for nearly six thousand
years, but its waves are as fresh and as welcome on our shores as
ever. True, the sun is often too dazzling to man's feeble vision, and
the sea often swallows up, in a moment, man's boasted works; but yet
the sun and the sea never lose their power, their freshness, their
charm. Do we ever tire of the dew-drops that fall in refreshing virtue
upon our gardens and fields? do we ever tire of the perfume that
emanates from our hedge-rows? do we ever tire of the notes of the
nightingale and the thrush? And what are all these when compared with
the glories which cluster around the Person and the cross of Christ?
what are they when put in contrast with the grand realities of that
eternity which is before us?
Reader, let us beware how we listen to such suggestions, whether they
come from without or spring from the depths of our own evil hearts,
lest we be found, like Israel after the flesh, loathing the heavenly
Manna and despising the pleasant land; or like Demas, who forsook the
blessed apostle, having loved this present age; or like those of whom
we read in the sixth of John, who, offended by our Lord's close and
pointed teaching, "went back, and walked no more with Him." May the
Lord keep our hearts true to Himself, and fresh and fervent in His
blessed cause, till He come.
CHAPTER IX.
"Hear, O Israel: Thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to
possess nations greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and
fenced up to heaven, a people great and tall, the children of the
Anakims, whom thou knowest, and of whom thou hast heard say, 'Who can
stand before the children of Anak!'" (Ver. 1, 2.)
This chapter opens with the same grand Deuteronomic sentence, "_Hear_,
O Israel." This, we may say, is the key-note of this most blessed
book, and especially of those opening discourses which have been
engaging our attention. But the chapter which now lies open before us
presents subjects of immense weight and importance. In the first
place, the lawgiver sets before the congregation, in terms of deep
solemnity, that which lay before them in their entrance upon the land.
He does not hide from them the fact that there were serious
difficulties and formidable enemies to be encountered. This he does,
we need hardly say, not to discourage their hearts, but that they
might be forewarned, forearmed, and prepared. What that preparation
was we shall see presently; but the faithful servant of God felt the
rightness, yea, the urgent need of putting the true state of the case
before his brethren.
There are two ways of looking at difficulties; we may look at them
from a human stand-point, or from a divine one; we may look at them in
a spirit of unbelief, or we may look at them in the calmness and
quietness of confidence in the living God. We have an instance of the
former in the report of the unbelieving spies in Numbers xiii; we have
an instance of the latter in the opening of our present chapter.
It is not the province, nor the path, of faith to deny that there are
difficulties to be encountered by the people of God; it would be the
height of folly to do so, inasmuch as there are difficulties, and it
would be but fool-hardiness, fanaticism, or fleshly enthusiasm to deny
it. It is always well for people to know what they are about, and not
to rush blindly into a path for which they are not prepared. An
unbelieving sluggard may say, There is a lion in the way; a blind
enthusiast may say, There is no such thing; the true man of faith will
say, Though there were a thousand lions in the way, God can soon
dispose of them.
But, as a great practical principle of general application, it is very
important for all the Lord's people to consider, deeply and calmly,
what they are about, ere they enter upon any particular path of
service or line of action. If this were more attended to, we should
not witness so many moral and spiritual wrecks around us. What mean
those most solemn, searching, and testing words addressed by our
blessed Lord to the multitudes that thronged around Him in Luke
xiv?--"He turned and said to them, 'If any man _come to Me_, and hate
not his father and mother, his wife and children, and brethren and
sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And
whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after Me, cannot be My
disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not
down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to
finish it? lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not
able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This
man began to build, and was not able to finish.'" (Ver. 26-30.)
These are solemn and seasonable words for the heart. How many
unfinished buildings meet our view as we look forth over the wide
field of Christian profession, giving sad occasion to the beholders
for mockery! How many set out upon a path of discipleship under some
sudden impulse, or under the pressure of mere human influence, without
a proper understanding, or a due consideration of all that is
involved; and then when difficulties arise, when trials come, when the
path is found to be narrow, rough, lonely, unpopular, they give it up,
thus proving that they had never really counted the cost, never taken
the path in communion with God, never understood what they were doing.
Now, such cases are very sorrowful; they bring great reproach on the
cause of Christ, give occasion to the adversary to blaspheme, and
greatly dishearten those who care for the glory of God and the good of
souls. Better far not to take the ground at all than, having taken it,
to abandon it in dark unbelief and worldly-mindedness.
Hence, therefore, we can perceive the wisdom and faithfulness of the
opening words of our chapter. Moses tells the people plainly what was
before them; not, surely, to discourage them, but to preserve them
from self-confidence, which is sure to give way in the moment of
trial, and to cast them upon the living God, who never fails a
trusting heart.
"Understand therefore this day, that the Lord thy God is He which
goeth over before thee; as a consuming fire He shall destroy them, and
He shall bring them down before thy face: so shalt thou drive them
out, and destroy them quickly, as the Lord hath said unto thee."
Here, then, is the divine answer to all difficulties, be they ever so
formidable. What were mighty nations, great cities, fenced walls, in
the presence of Jehovah? Simply as chaff before the whirlwind. "If
God be for us, who can be against us?" The very things which scare and
stumble the coward heart afford an occasion for the display of God's
power, and the magnificent triumphs of faith. Faith says, Grant me but
this, that God is before me and with me, and I can go any where. Thus
the only thing in all this world that really glorifies God is the
faith that can trust Him and use Him and praise Him; and inasmuch as
faith is the only thing that glorifies God, so is it the only thing
that gives man his proper place, even the place of complete dependence
upon God, and this insures victory and inspires praise--unceasing
praise.
But we must never forget that there is moral danger in the very moment
of victory--danger arising out of what we are in ourselves. There is
the danger of self-gratulation--a terrible snare to us poor mortals.
In the hour of conflict we feel our weakness, our nothingness, our
need. This is good and morally safe. It is well to be brought down to
the very bottom of self and all that pertains to it, for there we find
God, in all the fullness and blessedness of what He is, and this is
sure and certain victory and consequent praise.
But our treacherous and deceitful hearts are prone to forget whence
the strength and victory come; hence the moral force, value, and
seasonableness of the following admonitory words addressed by the
faithful minister of God to the hearts and consciences of his
brethren: "Speak not thou _in thine heart_"--here is where the
mischief always begins--"after that the Lord hath cast them out from
before thee, saying, For my righteousness the Lord hath brought me in
to possess this land; but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord
doth drive them out from before thee."
Alas! what materials there are in us! what ignorance of our own
hearts! what a shallow sense of the real character of our ways! How
terrible to think that we are capable of saying in our hearts such
words as, "For my righteousness"! Yes, reader, we are verily capable
of such egregious folly; for as Israel was capable of it, so are we,
inasmuch as we are made of the very same material; and that they were
capable of it is evident from the fact of their being warned against
it; for, most assuredly, the Spirit of God does not warn against
phantom dangers or imaginary temptations. We are verily capable of
turning the actings of God on our behalf into an occasion of
self-complacency; instead of seeing in those gracious actings a ground
for heartfelt praise to God, we use them as a ground for
self-exaltation.
Hence, therefore, we would do well to ponder the words of faithful
admonition addressed by Moses to the hearts and consciences of the
people; they furnish a very wholesome antidote for the self-righteousness
so natural to us as well as to Israel. "Not for thy righteousness, or
for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their
land; but for the wickedness of those nations the Lord thy God doth
drive them out from before thee, and that He may perform the word
which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Understand, therefore, that the Lord giveth thee not this good land to
possess it for thy righteousness; for thou art a stiff-necked people.
Remember, and forget not, how thou provokedst the Lord thy God to
wrath in the wilderness; from the day that thou didst depart out of
the land of Egypt, until ye came unto this place, ye have been
rebellious against the Lord." (Ver. 5-7.)
This paragraph sets forth two great principles, which, if fully laid
hold of, must put the heart into a right moral attitude. In the first
place, the people were reminded that their possession of the land of
Canaan was simply in pursuance of God's promise to their fathers. This
was placing the matter on the most solid basis--a basis which nothing
could ever disturb.
As to the seven nations which were to be dispossessed, it was on the
ground of their wickedness that God, in the exercise of His righteous
government, was about to drive them out. Every landlord has a perfect
right to eject bad tenants; and the nations of Canaan had not only
failed to pay their rent, as we say, but they had injured and defiled
the property to such an extent that God could no longer endure them,
and therefore He was going to drive them out, irrespective altogether
of the incoming tenants. Whoever was going to get possession of the
property, these dreadful tenants must be evicted. The iniquity of the
Amorites had reached its highest point, and nothing remained but that
judgment should take its course. Men might argue and reason as to the
moral fitness and consistency of a benevolent Being unroofing the
houses of thousands of families and putting the occupants to the
sword, but we may depend upon it the government of God will make very
short work with all such arguments. God, blessed forever be His holy
name, knows how to manage His own affairs, and that, too, without
asking man's opinion. He had borne with the wickedness of the seven
nations to such a degree that it had become absolutely insufferable;
the very land itself could not bear it. Any further exercise of
forbearance would have been a sanction of the most terrible
abominations; and this, of course, was a moral impossibility. The
glory of God absolutely demanded the expulsion of the Canaanites.
Yes; and we may add, the glory of God demanded the introduction of the
seed of Abraham into possession of the property, to hold as tenants
forever under the Lord God Almighty--the Most High God, Possessor of
heaven and earth. Thus the matter stood for Israel, had they but seen
it. Their possession of the land of promise and the maintenance of the
divine glory were so bound up together that one could not be touched
without touching the other. God had promised to give the land of
Canaan to the seed of Abraham as an everlasting possession. Had He not
a right to do so? Will infidels question God's right to do as He will
with His own? Will they refuse to the Creator and Governor of the
universe a right which they claim for themselves? The land was
Jehovah's, and He gave it to Abraham His friend forever; and although
this was true, yet were not the Canaanites disturbed in their tenure
of the property until their wickedness had become positively
unbearable.
Thus we see that in the matter both of the outgoing and incoming
tenants the glory of God was involved. That glory demanded that the
Canaanites should be expelled, because of their ways; and that glory
demanded that Israel should be put in possession, because of the
promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
But, in the second place, Israel had no ground for self-complacency,
as Moses most plainly and faithfully instructs them. He rehearses in
their ears, in the most touching and impressive manner, all the
leading scenes of their history from Horeb to Kadesh-barnea; he refers
to the golden calf, to the broken tables of the covenant, to Taberah
and Massah, and Kibroth-hattaavah; and sums all up, at verse 24, with
these pungent, humbling words, "Ye have been rebellious against the
Lord from the day that I knew you."
This was plain dealing with heart and conscience. The solemn review of
their whole career was eminently calculated to correct all false
notions about themselves; every scene and circumstance in their entire
history, if viewed from a proper stand-point, only brought to light
the humbling fact of what they were, and how near they had been, again
and again, to utter destruction. With what stunning force must the
following words have fallen upon their ears!--"And the Lord said unto
me, 'Arise, get thee down quickly from hence, for _thy_ people which
_thou_ hast brought forth out of Egypt have corrupted themselves; they
are quickly turned aside out of the way which I commanded them; they
have made them a molten image.' Furthermore, the Lord spake unto me,
saying, 'I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked
people; _let Me alone, that I may destroy_ them, and blot out their
name from under heaven; and I will make of thee a nation mightier and
greater than they.'" (Ver. 12-14.)
How withering was all this to their natural vanity, pride, and
self-righteousness! How should their hearts have been moved to their
very deepest depths by those tremendous words, "Let Me alone, that I
may destroy them"! How solemn to reflect upon the fact which these
words revealed--their appalling nearness to national ruin and
destruction! How ignorant they had been of all that passed between
Jehovah and Moses on the top of Mount Horeb! They had been on the very
brink of an awful precipice. Another moment might have dashed them
over. The intercession of Moses had saved them, the very man whom they
had accused of taking too much upon him. Alas! how they had mistaken
and misjudged him! How utterly astray they had been in all their
thoughts! Why, the very man whom they had accused of self-seeking and
desiring to make himself altogether a prince over them, had actually
refused a divinely given opportunity of becoming the head of a greater
and mightier nation than they! Yes, and this same man had earnestly
requested that if they were not to be forgiven and brought into the
land, his name might be blotted out of the book.
How wonderful was all this! What a turning of the tables upon them!
How exceedingly small they must have felt, in view of all these
wonderful facts! Surely, as they reviewed all these things, they might
well see the utter folly of the words, "For my righteousness the Lord
hath brought me in to possess this land." How could the makers of a
molten image use such language! Ought they not rather to see and feel
and own themselves to be no better than the nations that were about to
be driven out from before them? For what had made them to differ? The
sovereign mercy and electing love of their covenant-God. And to what
did they owe their deliverance out of Egypt, their sustenance in the
wilderness, and their entrance into the land? Simply to the eternal
stability of the covenant made with their fathers, "a covenant ordered
in all things and sure," a covenant ratified and established by the
blood of the Lamb, in virtue of which all Israel shall yet be saved
and blessed in their own land.
But we must now quote for the reader the splendid paragraph with which
our chapter closes--a paragraph eminently fitted to open Israel's eyes
to the utter folly of all their thoughts respecting Moses, their
thoughts respecting themselves, and their thoughts respecting that
blessed One who had so marvelously borne with all their dark unbelief
and daring rebellion.
"Thus I fell down before the Lord forty days and forty nights, as I
fell down at the first; because the Lord had said He would destroy
you. I prayed therefore unto the Lord, and said, 'O Lord God, destroy
not _Thy people_ and _Thine inheritance_, which Thou hast redeemed
through Thy greatness, which Thou hast brought forth out of Egypt with
a mighty hand. Remember thy servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; _look
not unto the stubbornness of this people, nor to their wickedness, nor
to their sin_; lest the land whence thou broughtest us out say,
Because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land which He
promised them, and because He hated them, He hath brought them out to
slay them in the wilderness. _Yet they are Thy people, and Thine
inheritance_, which Thou broughtest out by Thy mighty power, and by
Thy stretched-out arm.'"
What marvelous words are these to be addressed by a human being to the
living God! What powerful pleadings for Israel! what self-renunciation!
Moses refuses the offered dignity of being the founder of a greater
and mightier nation than Israel. He only desires that Jehovah should
be glorified, and Israel pardoned, blessed, and brought into the
promised land. He could not endure the thought of any reproach being
brought upon that glorious Name so dear to his heart, neither could he
bear to witness Israel's destruction. These were the two things he
dreaded; and as to his own exaltation, it was just the thing about
which he cared nothing at all. This beloved and honored servant cared
_only_ for the glory of God and the salvation of His people; and as to
himself, his hopes, his interests, his all, he could rest, with
perfect composure, in the assurance that his individual blessing and
the divine glory were bound together by a link which could never be
snapped.
And, oh, how grateful must all this have been to the heart of God! How
refreshing to His spirit were those earnest, loving pleadings of His
servant! How much more in harmony with His mind than the intercession
of Elias against Israel hundreds of years afterward! How they remind
us of the blessed ministry of our great High-Priest, who ever liveth
to make intercession for His people, and whose active intervention on
our behalf never ceases for a single moment!
And then how very touching and beautiful to mark the way in which
Moses insists upon the fact that the people were Jehovah's
inheritance, and that He had brought them up out of Egypt. The Lord
had said, "_Thy_ people which _thou_ hast brought forth out of Egypt;"
but Moses says, "They are _Thy_ people, and _Thine_ inheritance, which
_Thou_ broughtest out." This is perfectly exquisite. Indeed this whole
scene is full of profound interest.
CHAPTER X
"At that time the Lord said unto me, 'Hew thee two tables of stone
like unto the first, and come up unto Me into the mount, and make thee
an ark of wood; and I will write on the tables the words that were in
the first tables which thou brakest, and thou shalt put them in the
ark.' And I made an ark of shittim wood, and hewed two tables of stone
like unto the first, and went up into the mount, having the two tables
in mine hand. And He wrote on the tables, according to the first
writing, the ten commandments, which the Lord spake unto you in the
mount out of the midst of the fire, in the day of the assembly; and
the Lord gave them unto me. And I turned myself and came down from the
mount, and put the tables in the ark which I had made; and there they
be, as the Lord commanded me." (Ver. 1-5.)
The beloved and revered servant of God seemed never to weary of
rehearsing in the ears of the people the interesting, momentous, and
significant sentences of the past. To him they were ever fresh, ever
precious. His heart delighted in them. They could never lose their
charm in his eyes; he found in them an exhaustless treasury for his
own heart, and a mighty moral lever wherewith to move the heart of
Israel.
We are constantly reminded, in these powerful and deeply affecting
addresses, of the inspired apostle's words to his beloved
Philippians--"To write the same things to you, to me is not grievous,
but for you it is safe." The poor, restless, fickle, vagrant heart
might long for some new theme; but the faithful apostle found his deep
and unfailing delight in unfolding and dwelling upon those precious
subjects which clustered, in rich luxuriance, around the Person and
the cross of his adorable Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He had found
in Christ all he needed for time and eternity. The glory of His Person
had completely eclipsed all the glories of earth and of nature. He
could say, "What things were _gain to me_, those I counted _loss for
Christ_. Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss, for the
excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; for whom I have
suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I
may win Christ." (Phil. iii. 7, 8.)
This is the language of a true Christian, of one who had found a
perfectly absorbing and commanding object in Christ. What could the
world offer to such an one? what could it do for him? Did he want its
riches, its honors, its distinctions, its pleasures? He counted them
all as dung. How was this? Because he had found Christ; he had seen an
object in Him which so riveted his heart that to win Him and know more
of Him and be found in Him was the one ruling desire of his soul. If
any one had talked to Paul about something new, what would have been
his answer? If any one had suggested to him the thought of getting on
in the world or of seeking to make money, what would have been his
reply? Simply this: I have found my ALL in Christ; I want no more. I
have found in Him "_unsearchable_ riches"--"_durable_ riches and
righteousness." In Him are hid _all_ the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge. What do I want of this world's riches, its wisdom, or its
learning? These things all pass away like the vapors of the morning;
and even while they last, are wholly inadequate to satisfy the desires
and aspirations of an immortal spirit. Christ is an eternal object,
heaven's centre, the delight of the heart of God; He shall satisfy me
throughout the countless ages of that bright eternity which is before
me; and surely, if He can satisfy me forever, He can satisfy me now.
Shall I turn to the wretched rubbish of this world--its pursuits, its
pleasures, its amusements, its theatres, its concerts, its riches, or
its honors to supplement my portion in Christ? God forbid! All such
things would be simply an intolerable nuisance to me. Christ is my all
and in all, now and forever.
Such, we may well believe, would have been the distinctly pronounced
reply of the blessed apostle; such was the distinct reply of his whole
life; and such, beloved Christian reader, should be ours also. How
truly deplorable, how deeply humbling, to find a Christian turning to
the world for enjoyment, recreation, or pastime! It simply proves that
he has not found a satisfying portion in Christ. We may set it down as
a fixed principle that the heart which is filled with Christ has no
room for aught beside. It is not a question of the right or the wrong
of things; the heart does not want them, would not have them; it has
found its present and everlasting portion and rest in that blessed One
that fills the heart of God, and will fill the vast universe with the
beams of His glory throughout the everlasting ages.
We have been led into the foregoing line of thought in connection with
the interesting fact of Moses' unwearied rehearsal of all the grand
events in Israel's marvelous history from Egypt to the borders of the
promised land. To him they furnished a perpetual feast; and he not
only found his own deep, personal delight in dwelling upon them, but
he also felt the immense importance of unfolding them before the whole
congregation. To him, most surely, it was not grievous, but for them
it was safe. How delightful for him, and how good and needful for
them, to dwell upon the facts connected with the two sets of
tables--the first set smashed to atoms, at the foot of the mountain,
and the second set inclosed in the ark.
What human language could possibly unfold the deep significance and
moral weight of such facts as these? Those broken tables! how
impressive! how pregnant with wholesome instruction for the people!
how powerfully suggestive! Will any one presume to say that we have
here a mere barren repetition of the facts recorded in Exodus?
Certainly no one who reverently believes in the divine inspiration of
the Pentateuch.
No, reader, the tenth of Deuteronomy fills a niche and does a work
entirely its own. In it the lawgiver holds up to the hearts of the
people past scenes and circumstances in such a way as to rivet them
upon the very tablets of the soul. He allows them to hear the
conversation between Jehovah and himself; he tells them what took
place during those mysterious forty days upon that cloud-capped
mountain; he lets them hear Jehovah's reference to the broken
tables--the apt and forcible expression of the utter worthlessness of
man's covenant. For why were those tables broken? Because they had
shamefully failed. Those shattered fragments told the humiliating tale
of their hopeless ruin on the ground of the law. All was gone. Such
was the obvious meaning of the fact. It was striking, impressive,
unmistakable. Like a broken pillar over a grave, which tells at a
glance that the prop and stay of the family lies mouldering beneath.
There is no need of any inscription, for no human language could speak
with such eloquence to the heart as that most expressive emblem. So
the broken tables were calculated to convey to the heart of Israel the
tremendous fact that, so far as their covenant was concerned, they
were utterly ruined--hopelessly undone; they were complete bankrupts
on the score of righteousness.
But then that second set of tables! What of them? Thank God, they tell
a different tale altogether. They were not broken. God took care of
them. "I turned myself and came down from the mount, and put the
tables in the ark which I had made; and _there they be_, as the Lord
commanded me."
Blessed fact! "There they be." Yes, covered up in that ark which spoke
of Christ, that blessed One who magnified the law and made it
honorable, who established every jot and tittle of it, to the glory of
God and the everlasting blessing of His people. Thus, while the broken
fragments of the first tables told the sad and humbling tale of
Israel's utter failure and ruin, the second tables, shut up intact in
the ark, set forth the glorious truth that Christ is the end of the
law for righteousness to every one that believeth, to the Jew first,
and also to the Gentile.
We do not, of course, mean to say that Israel understood the deep
meaning and far-reaching application of those wonderful facts which
Moses rehearsed in their ears. As a nation, they certainly did not
then, though, through the sovereign mercy of God, they will by and by.
Individuals may, and doubtless did, enter into somewhat of their
significance. This is not now the question. It is for us to see and
make our own of the precious truth set forth in those two sets of
tables, namely, the failure of every thing in the hands of man, and
the eternal stability of God's covenant of grace, ratified by the
blood of Christ, and to be displayed in all its glorious results, in
the kingdom, by and by, when the Son of David shall reign from sea to
sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth; when the seed of
Abraham shall possess, according to the divine gift, the land of
promise; and when all the nations of the earth shall rejoice under the
beneficent reign of the Prince of peace.
Bright and glorious prospect for the now desolate land of Israel, and
this groaning earth of ours! The King of righteousness and peace will
then have it all His own way. All evil will be put down with a
powerful hand. There will be no weakness in that government; no rebel
tongue will be permitted to prate, in accents of insolent sedition,
against the decrees and enactments thereof; no rude and senseless
demagogue will be allowed to disturb the peace of the people, or to
insult the majesty of the throne. Every abuse will be put down, every
disturbing element will be neutralized, every stumbling-block will be
removed, and every root of bitterness eradicated. The poor and the
needy shall be well looked after, yea, all shall be divinely attended
to; toil, sorrow, poverty, and desolation shall be unknown; the
wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad, and the desert shall
rejoice and blossom as the rose. "Behold a king shall reign in
righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment. And a man shall be
as a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as
rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a
weary land."
Reader, what glorious scenes are yet to be enacted in this poor
sin-stricken, Satan-enslaved, sorrowful world of ours! How refreshing
to think of them! What a relief to the heart amid all the mental
misery, the moral degradation, and physical wretchedness exhibited
around us on every side! Thank God, the day is rapidly approaching
when the prince of this world shall be hurled from his throne and
consigned to the bottomless pit, and the Prince of heaven, the
glorious Emmanuel shall stretch forth His blessed sceptre over the
wide universe of God, and heaven and earth shall bask in the sunlight
of His royal countenance. Well may we cry out, O Lord, hasten the
time!
"And the children of Israel took their journey from Beeroth of the
children of Jaakan to Mosera; there Aaron died, and there he was
buried; and Eleazar his son ministered in the priest's office in his
stead. From thence they journeyed unto Gudgodah; and from Gudgodah to
Jotbath, a land of rivers of waters. At that time the Lord separated
the tribe of Levi, to bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to
stand before the Lord to minister unto Him, and to bless in His name,
unto this day. Wherefore Levi hath no part nor inheritance with his
brethren; the Lord is His inheritance, according as the Lord thy God
promised him."
The reader must not allow his mind to be disturbed by any question of
historical sequence in the foregoing passage. It is simply a
parenthesis in which the lawgiver groups together, in a very striking
and forcible manner, circumstances culled, with holy skill, from the
history of the people, illustrative at once of the government and
grace of God. The death of Aaron exhibits the former; the election and
elevation of Levi presents the latter. Both are placed together, not
with a view to chronology, but for the grand moral end which was ever
present to the mind of the lawgiver--an end which lies far away beyond
the range of infidel reason, but which commends itself to the heart
and understanding of the devout student of Scripture.
How utterly contemptible are the quibbles of the infidel when looked
at in the brilliant light of divine inspiration! How miserable the
condition of a mind which can occupy itself with chronological
hair-splittings in order, if possible, to find a flaw in the divine
Volume, instead of grasping the real aim and object of the inspired
writer!
But why does Moses bring in, in this parenthetical and apparently
abrupt manner, those two special events in Israel's history? Simply to
move the heart of the people toward the one grand point of obedience.
To this end he culls and groups according to the wisdom given unto
him. Do we expect to find in this divinely taught servant of God the
petty preciseness of a mere copyist? Infidels may affect to do so, but
true Christians know better. A mere scribe could copy events in their
chronological order; a true prophet will bring those events to bear,
in a moral way, upon the heart and conscience. Thus, while the poor
deluded infidel is groping amid the shadows of his own creation, the
pious student delights himself in the moral glories of that peerless
Volume which stands like a rock, against which the waves of infidel
thought dash themselves with contemptible impotency.
We do not attempt to dwell upon the circumstances referred to in the
above parenthesis; they have been gone into elsewhere, and therefore
we only feel it needful, in this place, to point out to the reader
what we may venture to call the Deuteronomic bearing of the facts--the
use which the lawgiver makes of them to strengthen the foundation of
his final appeal to the heart and conscience of the people, to give
pungency and power to his exhortation, as he urged upon them the
absolute necessity of unqualified obedience to the statutes and
judgments of their covenant-God. Such was his reason for referring to
the solemn fact of the death of Aaron. They were to remember that
notwithstanding Aaron's high position as the high-priest of Israel,
yet he was stripped of his robes and deprived of his life for
disobedience to the word of Jehovah. How important, then, that they
should take heed to themselves! The government of God was not to be
trifled with, and the very fact of Aaron's elevation only rendered it
all the more needful that his sin should be dealt with, in order that
others might fear.
And then they were to remember the Lord's dealings with Levi, in which
grace shines with such marvelous lustre. The fierce, cruel,
self-willed Levi was taken up from the depths of his moral ruin and
brought nigh to God, "to bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to
stand before the Lord, to minister unto Him, and to bless in His
name."
But why should this account of Levi be coupled with the death of
Aaron? Simply to set forth the blessed consequences of obedience. If
the death of Aaron displayed the awful result of disobedience, the
elevation of Levi illustrates the precious fruit of obedience. Hear
what the prophet Malachi says on this point.--"And ye shall know that
I have sent this _commandment_ unto you, that My covenant might be
with Levi, saith the Lord of hosts. My covenant was with him of life
and peace; and _I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared
Me, and was afraid before My name_. The law of truth was in his mouth,
and iniquity was not found in his lips; he walked with Me in peace and
equity, and did turn many away from iniquity." (Chap. ii. 4-6.)
This is a very remarkable passage, and throws much light upon the
subject now before us. It tells us distinctly that Jehovah gave His
covenant of life and peace to Levi "for the fear wherewith he feared"
Him on the terrible occasion of the golden calf which Aaron (himself a
Levite of the very highest order) made. Why was Aaron judged? Because
of his rebellion at the waters of Meribah. (Num. xx. 24.) Why was Levi
blessed? Because of his reverent obedience at the foot of Mount Horeb.
(Ex. xxxii.) Why are both grouped together in Deuteronomy x? In order
to impress upon the heart and conscience of the congregation the
urgent necessity of implicit obedience to the commandments of their
covenant-God. How perfect is Scripture in all its parts! how
beautifully it hangs together! and how plain it is to the devout
reader that the lovely book of Deuteronomy has its own divine niche
to fill, its own distinctive work to do, its own appointed sphere,
scope, and object! How manifest it is that the fifth division of the
Pentateuch is neither a contradiction nor a repetition, but a divine
application of its divinely inspired predecessors! And, finally, we
cannot help adding, how convincing the evidence that infidel writers
know neither what they say nor whereof they affirm, when they dare to
insult the oracles of God--yea, that they greatly err, not knowing the
Scriptures, nor the power of God![7]
[7] We have, in human writings, numerous examples of the same thing
that infidels object to in Deuteronomy x. 6-9. Suppose a man is
anxious to call the attention of the English nation to some great
principle of political economy, or some matter of national importance;
he does not hesitate to select facts however widely separated on the
page of history, and group them together in order to illustrate his
subject. Do infidels object to this? No; not when found in the
writings of men. It is only when it occurs in Scripture, because they
hate the Word of God, and cannot bear the idea that He should give to
His creatures a book-revelation of His mind. Blessed be His name, He
has given it notwithstanding, and we have it in all its infinite
preciousness and divine authority, for the comfort of our hearts and
the guidance of our path amid all the darkness and confusion of this
scene through which we are passing home to glory.
At verse 10 of our chapter, Moses returns to the subject of his
discourse. "And I stayed in the mount, according to the first time,
forty days and forty nights; and the Lord hearkened unto me at that
time also, and the Lord would not destroy thee. And the Lord said unto
me, 'Arise, take thy journey before the people, that they may go in
and possess the land which I sware unto their fathers to give unto
them.'"
Jehovah would accomplish His promise to the fathers spite of every
hindrance. He would put Israel in full possession of the land
concerning which He had sworn to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give it
to their seed for an everlasting inheritance.
"And now, Israel, what doth the Lord _thy_ God require of thee, but to
fear the Lord thy God, to walk in _all His ways_, and to love Him, and
to serve the Lord _thy_ God with all thy heart and with all thy soul.
To keep the commandments of the Lord, and His statutes, which I
command thee this day, _for thy good_." It was all for their real
good--their deep, full blessing to walk in the way of the divine
commandments. The path of whole-hearted obedience is the only path of
true happiness; and, blessed be God, this path can always be trodden
by those who love the Lord.
This is an unspeakable comfort, at all times. God has given us His
precious Word, the perfect revelation of His mind; and He has given us
what Israel had not, even His Holy Spirit to dwell in us, whereby we
can understand and appreciate His Word. Hence our obligations are
vastly higher than were Israel's. We are bound to a life of obedience
by every argument that could be brought to bear on the heart and
understanding.
And surely it is for our good to be obedient. There is indeed "great
reward" in keeping the commandments of our loving Father. Every
thought of Him and of His gracious ways, every reference to His
marvelous dealings with us--His loving ministry, His tender care, His
thoughtful love--all should bind our hearts in affectionate devotion
to Him, and quicken our steps in treading the path of loving obedience
to Him. Wherever we turn our eyes we are met by the most powerful
evidences of His claim upon our heart's affections and upon all the
energies of our ransomed being; and, blessed be His name, the more
fully we are enabled, by His grace, to respond to His most precious
claims, the brighter and happier our path must be. There is nothing in
all this world more deeply blessed than the path and portion of an
obedient soul. "Great peace have they that love Thy law, and nothing
shall offend them." The lowly disciple who finds his meat and his
drink in doing the will of his beloved Lord and Master, possesses a
peace which the world can neither give nor take away. True, he may be
misunderstood and misinterpreted; he may be dubbed narrow and bigoted,
and such like; but none of these things move him. One approving smile
from his Lord is more than ample recompense for all the reproach that
men can heap upon him. He knows how to estimate at their proper worth
the thoughts of men; they are to him as the chaff which the wind
driveth away. The deep utterance of his heart, as he moves steadily
along the sacred path of obedience, is,--
"Let me my feebleness recline
On that eternal love of Thine,
And human thoughts forget;
Childlike attend what Thou wilt say,
Go forth and serve Thee while 'tis day,
Nor leave Thy sweet retreat."
In the closing verses of our chapter, the lawgiver seems to rise
higher and higher in his presentation of moral motives for obedience,
and to come closer and closer to the hearts of the people. "Behold,"
he says, "the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the Lord's thy God,
the earth also, with all that therein is. Only the Lord had a delight
in thy fathers to love them, and He chose their seed after them, even
you above all people, as it is this day." What a marvelous privilege
to be chosen and loved by the Possessor of heaven and earth! what an
honor to be called to serve and obey Him! Surely nothing in all this
world could be higher or better. To be identified and associated with
the Most High God, to have His name called upon them, to be His
peculiar people, His special possession, the people of His choice, to
be set apart from all the nations of the earth to be the servants of
Jehovah and His witnesses. What, we may ask, could exceed this, except
it be that to which the Church of God and the individual believer are
called?
Assuredly, our privileges are higher, inasmuch as we know God in a
higher, deeper, nearer, more intimate manner than the nation of Israel
ever did. We know Him as the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and as our God and Father. We have the Holy Ghost dwelling in us,
shedding abroad the love of God in our hearts, and leading us to cry,
Abba, Father. All this is far beyond any thing that God's earthly
people ever knew or could know; and, inasmuch as our privileges are
higher, His claims upon our hearty and unreserved obedience are also
higher. Every appeal to the heart of Israel should come home with
augmented force to our hearts, beloved Christian reader; every
exhortation addressed to them should speak far more powerfully to us.
We occupy the very highest ground on which any creature could stand.
Neither the seed of Abraham on earth nor the angels of God in heaven
could say what we can say or know what we know. We are linked and
eternally associated with the risen and glorified Son of God. We can
adopt as our own the wondrous language of 1 John iv. 17, and say, "As
He is, so are we in this world." What can exceed this, as to privilege
and dignity? Surely nothing, save to be, in body, soul, and spirit,
conformed to His adorable image, as we shall be ere long, through the
abounding grace of God.
Well then, let us ever bear in mind--yea, let us have it deep, deep
down in our hearts, that according to our privileges are our
obligations. Let us not refuse the wholesome word "obligation," as
though it had a legal ring about it. Far from it! it would be utterly
impossible to conceive any thing further removed from all thought of
legality than the obligations which flow out of the Christian's
position. It is a very serious mistake to be continually raising the
cry of "Legal! legal!" whenever the holy responsibilities of our
position are pressed upon us. We believe that every truly pious
Christian will delight in all the appeals and exhortations which the
Holy Ghost addresses to us as to our obligations, seeing they are all
grounded upon privileges conferred upon us by the sovereign grace of
God, through the precious blood of Christ, and made good to us by the
mighty ministry of the Holy Ghost.
But let us hearken still further to the stirring appeals of Moses.
They are truly profitable for us, with all our higher light,
knowledge, and privilege.
"Circumcise therefore _the foreskin of your heart_, and be no more
stiff-necked. For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords,
a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons,
nor taketh reward. He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and
widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment."
Here, Moses speaks not merely of God's doings and dealings and ways,
but of Himself, of what He is. He is high over all, the great, the
mighty, and the terrible. But He has a heart for the widow and the
fatherless--those helpless objects deprived of all earthly and natural
props, the poor bereaved and broken-hearted widow, and the desolate
orphan. God thinks of and cares for such in a very special way; they
have a claim upon His loving heart and mighty hand. "A father of the
fatherless, and a Judge of the widow is God in His holy habitation."
"She that is a widow indeed and desolate trusteth in God, and
continueth in supplications and prayers night and day." "Leave thy
fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows
trust in Me."
What a rich provision is here for widows and orphans! How wondrous
God's care of such! How many widows are much better off than when they
had their husbands! how many orphans are better cared and provided for
than when they had their parents! God looks after them! This is
enough. Thousands of husbands and thousands of parents are worse, by
far, than none; but God never fails those who are cast upon Him. He is
ever true to His own name, whatever relationship He takes. Let all
widows and orphans remember this for their comfort and encouragement.
And then the poor stranger! He is not forgotten. "He loveth the
stranger, in giving him food and raiment." How precious is this! Our
God cares for all those who are bereft of earthly props, human hopes,
and creature-confidences. All such have a special claim upon Him, to
which He will most surely respond according to all the love of His
heart. The widow, the fatherless, and the stranger are the special
objects of His tender care, and all such have but to look to Him, and
draw upon His exhaustless resources in all their varied need.
But then He must be known in order to be trusted. "They that know Thy
name will put their trust in Thee; for Thou, Lord, hast not forsaken
them that seek Thee." Those who do not know God would vastly prefer an
insurance policy or a government annuity to His promise; but the true
believer finds in that promise the unfailing stay of his heart,
because he knows and trusts and loves the Promiser. He delights in the
thought of being absolutely shut up to God--wholly dependent upon Him.
He would not, for worlds, be in any other position. The very thing
which would almost drive an unbeliever out of his senses is to the
Christian--the man of faith, the very deepest joy of his heart. The
language of such an one will ever be, "My soul, wait thou _only_ upon
God; for my expectation is from Him. He _only_ is my rock." Blessed
position! precious portion! May the reader know it as a divine
reality, a living power, in his heart, by the mighty ministry of the
Holy Ghost. Then will he be able to sit loose to earthly things. He
will be able to tell the world that he is independent of it, having
found all he wants, for time and eternity, in the living God and His
Christ.
"Thou, O Christ, art all I want;
More than all in Thee I find."
But let us specially note the provision which God makes for the
stranger. It is very simple--"food and raiment." This is enough for a
true stranger, as the blessed apostle says to his son Timothy, "We
brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry
nothing out. And having food and raiment, let us be therewith
content."
Christian reader, let us ponder this. What a cure for restless
ambition is here! what an antidote against covetousness! what a
blessed deliverance from the feverish excitement of commercial life,
the grasping spirit of the age in which our lot is cast! If we were
only content with the divinely appointed provision for the stranger,
what a different tale we should have to tell! how calm and even would
be the current of our daily life! how simple our habits and tastes!
how unworldly our spirit and style! what moral elevation above the
self-indulgence and luxury so prevalent amongst professing Christians!
We should simply eat and drink to the glory of God, and to keep the
body in proper working order. To go beyond this, either in eating or
drinking, is to indulge in "fleshly lusts, which war against the
soul."
Alas! alas! how much of this there is, specially in reference to
drink! It is perfectly appalling to think of the consumption of
intoxicating drink amongst professing Christians. It is our thorough
conviction that the devil has succeeded in ruining the testimony of
hundreds, and in causing them to make shipwreck of faith and a good
conscience, by the use of stimulants. Thousands ruin their fortunes,
ruin their families, ruin their health, ruin their souls, through the
senseless, vile, and cursed desire for stimulants.
We are not going to preach a crusade against stimulants or narcotics.
The wrong is not in the things themselves, but in our inordinate and
sinful use of them. It not unfrequently happens that persons who fall
under the horrible dominion of drink seek to lay the blame on their
medical adviser, but surely no proper medical man would ever advise
his patient to _indulge_ in the use of stimulants. He may prescribe
the use of "a _little_ wine, for the stomach's sake and frequent
infirmities," and he has the very highest authority for so doing; but
why should this lead any one to become a drunkard? Each one is
responsible to walk in the fear of God in reference to both eating and
drinking. If a doctor prescribes a little nourishing food for his
patient, is he to be blamed if that patient becomes a glutton? Surely
not. The evil is not in the doctor's prescription, or in the stimulant
or in the nourishment, but in the wretched lust of the heart.
Here, we are persuaded, lies the root of the evil; and the remedy is
found in that precious grace of God which, while it bringeth salvation
unto all men, teacheth those who are saved "to live _soberly_,
righteously, and godly in this present world." And be it remembered
that "to live soberly" means a great deal more than temperance in
eating and drinking; it means this, most surely, but it takes in also
the whole range of inward self-government--the government of the
thoughts, the government of the temper, the government of the tongue.
The grace that saves us not only _tells_ us how to live, but _teaches_
how to do it, and if we follow its teachings, we shall be well content
with God's provision for the stranger.
It is at once interesting and edifying to notice the way in which
Moses sets the divine example before the people as their model.
Jehovah "loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. Love ye
therefore the stranger; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."
This is very touching. They were not only to keep before their eyes
the divine model, but also to remember their own past history and
experience, in order that their hearts might be drawn out in sympathy
and compassion toward the poor homeless stranger. It was the bounden
duty and high privilege of the Israel of God to place themselves in
the circumstances and enter into the feelings of others. They were to
be the moral representatives of that blessed One whose people they
were, and whose name was called upon them. They were to imitate Him in
meeting the wants and gladdening the hearts of the fatherless, the
widow, and the stranger. And if God's earthly people were called to
this lovely course of action, how much more are we who are "blessed
with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus." May
we abide more in His presence, and drink more into His spirit, that so
we may more faithfully reflect His moral glories upon all with whom we
come in contact.
The closing lines of our chapter give us a very fine summing up of the
practical teaching which has been engaging our attention. "Thou shalt
fear the Lord thy God; Him shalt thou serve, and to Him shalt thou
cleave, and swear by His name. He is thy praise, and He is thy God,
that hath done for thee these great and terrible things, which thine
eyes have seen. Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and
ten persons, and now the Lord hath made thee as the stars of heaven
for multitude." (Ver. 20-22.)
How thoroughly bracing is all this to the moral being! This binding of
the heart to the Lord Himself by means of all that He is, and all His
wondrous actings and gracious ways, is unspeakably precious. It is, we
may truly say, the secret spring of all true devotedness. God grant
that the writer and the reader may abidingly realize its motive power.
CHAPTER XI.
"Therefore thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and keep His charge, and
His statutes, and His judgments, and His commandments, _alway_. And
know ye this day; for I speak not with your children which have not
known, and which have not seen the chastisements of the Lord your God,
His greatness, His mighty hand, and His stretched-out arm, and His
miracles, and His acts, which He did in the midst of Egypt unto
Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and unto all his land; and what He did unto
the army of Egypt, unto their horses, and to their chariots; how He
made the water of the Red Sea to overflow them as they pursued after
you, and how the Lord hath destroyed them unto this day; and what He
did unto you in the wilderness, until ye came into this place; and
what He did unto Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, the son of
Reuben; how the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and
their households, and their tents, and all the substance that was in
their possession, in the midst of all Israel; but your eyes have seen
all the great acts of the Lord which He did."
Moses felt it to be of the very highest importance that all the mighty
acts of Jehovah should be kept prominently before the hearts of the
people, and deeply engraved on the tablets of their memory. The poor
human mind is vagrant, and the heart volatile, and notwithstanding all
that Israel had seen of the solemn judgments of God upon Egypt and
upon Pharaoh, they were in danger of forgetting them, and losing the
impression which they were designed and eminently fitted to make upon
them.
It may be we feel disposed to wonder how Israel could ever forget the
impressive scenes of their history in Egypt from first to last--the
descent of their fathers thither as a mere handful, their steady
growth and progress as a people, spite of formidable difficulties and
hindrances, so that from the insignificant few, they had become, by
the good hand of their God upon them, as the stars of heaven for
multitude.
And then those ten plagues upon the land of Egypt! How full of awful
solemnity! how pre-eminently calculated to impress the heart with a
sense of the mighty power of God, the utter impotency and
insignificance of man, in all his boasted wisdom, strength, and glory,
and the egregious folly of his attempting to set himself up against
the almighty God! What was all the power of Pharaoh and of Egypt in
the presence of the Lord God of Israel? In one hour all was plunged
into hopeless ruin and destruction. All the chariots of Egypt, all the
pomp and glory, the valor and might, of that ancient and far-famed
nation--all was overwhelmed in the depths of the sea.
And why? Because they had presumed to meddle with the Israel of God;
they had dared to set themselves in opposition to the eternal purpose
and counsel of the Most High. They sought to crush those on whom He
had set His love. He had sworn to bless the seed of Abraham, and no
power of earth or hell could possibly annul His oath. Pharaoh, in his
pride and hardness of heart, attempted to countervail the divine
actings, but he only meddled to his own destruction. His land was
shaken to its very centre, and himself and his mighty army overthrown
in the Red Sea, a solemn example to all who should ever attempt to
stand in the way of Jehovah's purpose to bless the seed of Abraham His
friend.
Nor was it merely what Jehovah had done to Egypt and to Pharaoh that
the people were called to remember, but also what He had done amongst
themselves. How soul-subduing the judgment upon Dathan and Abiram and
their households! How awful the thought of the earth opening her mouth
and swallowing them up! And for what? For their rebellion against the
divine appointment. In the history given in Numbers, Korah, the
Levite, is the prominent character; but here, he is omitted, and the
two Reubenites are named--two members of the congregation, because
Moses is seeking to act on the whole body of the people by setting
before them the terrible consequence of self-will in two of their
number--two ordinary members, as we should say, and not merely a
privileged Levite.
In a word, then, whether the attention was called to the divine
actings without or within, abroad or at home, it was all for the
purpose of impressing their hearts and minds with a deep sense of the
moral importance of obedience. This was the one grand aim of all the
rehearsals, all the comments, all the exhortations, of the faithful
servant of God who was so soon to be removed from their midst. For
this, he ranges over their history for centuries, culling, grouping,
commenting, taking up this fact and omitting that, as guided by the
Spirit of God. The journey down to Egypt, the sojourn there, the heavy
judgments upon the self-willed Pharaoh, the exodus, the passage
through the sea, the scenes in the wilderness, and specially the awful
fate of the two rebellious Reubenites--all is brought to bear, with
marvelous force and clearness, upon the conscience of the people, in
order to strengthen the basis of Jehovah's claim upon their
unqualified obedience to His holy commandments.
"Therefore shall ye _keep all the commandments_ which I command you
this day, _that ye may be strong_, and go in and possess the land,
whither ye go to possess it; and that ye may prolong your days in the
land, which the Lord sware unto your fathers to give unto them and to
their seed, a land that floweth with milk and honey."
Let the reader note the beautiful moral link between those two
clauses--"keep _all_ the commandments"--"that ye may be strong." There
is great strength gained by unreserved obedience to the Word of God.
It will not do to pick and choose. We are prone to this--prone to take
up certain commandments and precepts which suit ourselves; but this is
really self-will. What right have we to select such and such precepts
from the Word, and neglect others? None whatever. To do so is, in
principle, simply self-will and rebellion. What business has a servant
to decide as to which of his master's commands he will obey? Surely
none whatever; each commandment stands clothed with the master's
authority, and therefore claims the servant's attention; and, we may
add, the more implicitly the servant obeys, the more he bends his
respectful attention to every one of his master's commands, be it ever
so trivial, the more does he strengthen himself in his position and
grow in his master's confidence and esteem. Every master loves and
values an obedient, faithful, devoted servant. We all know what a
comfort it is to have a servant whom we can trust--one who finds his
delight in carrying out our every wish, and who does not require
perpetual looking after, but knows his duty and attends to it.
Now, ought we not to seek to refresh the heart of our blessed Master,
by a loving obedience to all His commandments? Only think, reader,
what a privilege it is to be allowed to give joy to the heart of that
blessed One who loved us and gave Himself for us. It is something
wonderful that poor creatures such as we can in any way refresh the
heart of Jesus; yet so it is, blessed be His name. He delights in our
keeping His commandments; and assuredly the thought of this should
stir our whole moral being, and lead us to study His Word, in order to
find out, more and more, what His commandments are, so that we may do
them.
We are forcibly reminded, by those words of Moses which we have just
quoted, of the apostle's prayer for "the saints and faithful brethren
in Christ at Colosse." "For this cause we also, since the day we heard
it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be
filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual
understanding; that ye might walk worthy of the Lord _unto all
pleasing_, being fruitful in every good work, and _increasing in the
knowledge of God; strengthened with all might_, according to His
glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness;
giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers
of the inheritance of the saints in light; who hath delivered us from
the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of the
Son of His love; in whom we have redemption through His blood, the
forgiveness of sins." (Col. i. 9-14.)
Making allowance for the difference between the earthly and the
heavenly--between Israel and the Church, there is a striking
similarity between the words of the lawgiver and the words of the
apostle. Both together are eminently fitted to set forth the beauty
and preciousness of a willing-hearted, loving obedience. It is
precious to the Father, precious to Christ, precious to the Holy
Ghost; and this surely ought to be enough to create and strengthen in
our hearts the desire to be filled with the knowledge of His will,
that so we might walk worthy of Him to all pleasing, being fruitful
_in every good work_, and increasing in the knowledge of God. It
should lead us to a more diligent study of the Word of God, so that we
might be ever finding out more and more of our Lord's mind and will,
learning what is well-pleasing to Him, and looking to Him for grace to
do it. Thus should our hearts be kept near to Him, and we should find
an ever-deepening interest in searching the Scriptures, not merely to
grow in the knowledge of truth, but in the knowledge of God, the
knowledge of Christ--the deep, personal, experimental knowledge of all
that is treasured up in that blessed One who is the fullness of the
Godhead bodily. Oh, may the Spirit of God, by His most precious and
powerful ministry, awaken in us a more intense desire to know and to
do the will of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that thus we
may refresh His loving heart and be well-pleasing to Him in all
things.
We must now turn, for a moment, to the lovely picture of the promised
land which Moses holds up before the eyes of the people.--"For the
land whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt,
from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it
with thy foot, as a garden of herbs; but the land whither ye go to
possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the
rain of heaven; a land which the Lord thy God careth for; the eyes of
the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year
even unto the end of the year." (Ver. 10-12.)
What a vivid contrast between Egypt and Canaan! Egypt had no rain from
heaven; it was all human effort there. Not so in the Lord's land; the
human foot could do nothing there, nor was there any need, for the
blessed rain from heaven dropped upon it; Jehovah Himself cared for it
and watered it with the early and latter rain. The land of Egypt was
dependent upon its own resources; the land of Canaan was wholly
dependent upon God--upon what came down from heaven. "My river is mine
own," was the language of Egypt; "the river of God" was the hope of
Canaan. The habit in Egypt was to water with the foot; the habit in
Canaan was to look up to heaven.
We have in the sixty-fifth psalm a lovely statement of the condition
of things in the Lord's land, as viewed by the eye of faith. "Thou
visitest the earth, and waterest it; Thou greatly enrichest it with
the river of God, which is full of water; Thou preparest them corn,
when Thou hast so provided for it. Thou waterest the ridges thereof
abundantly; Thou settlest the furrows thereof; Thou makest it soft
with showers; Thou blessest the springing thereof. Thou crownest the
year with Thy goodness, and Thy paths drop fatness. They drop upon the
pastures of the wilderness; and the little hills rejoice on every
side. The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are
covered over with corn; they shout for joy, they also sing." (Ver.
9-13.)
How perfectly beautiful! Only think of God watering the ridges and
settling the furrows! think of His stooping down to do the work of a
husbandman for His people! Yes, and delighting to do it! It was the
joy of His heart to pour His sunbeams and His refreshing showers upon
the "hills and valleys" of His beloved people. It was refreshing to
His spirit, as it was to the praise of His name, to see the vine, the
fig-tree, and the olive flourishing, the valleys covered with the
golden grain, and the rich pastures covered with flocks of sheep.
Thus it should ever have been, and thus it would have been, had Israel
only walked in simple obedience to the holy law of God. "It shall come
to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto My commandments which I
command you this day, _to love the Lord your God, and to serve Him
with all your heart and with all your soul_, that I will give you the
rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter
rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine
oil. And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou
mayest eat and be full." (Ver. 13-15.)
Thus the matter stood between the God of Israel and the Israel of God.
Nothing could be simpler, nothing more blessed. It was Israel's high
and holy privilege to love and serve Jehovah; it was Jehovah's
prerogative to bless and prosper Israel. Happiness and fruitfulness
were to be the sure accompaniments of obedience. The people and their
land were wholly dependent upon God. All their supplies were to come
down from heaven; and hence, so long as they walked in loving
obedience, the copious showers dropped upon their fields and
vineyards, the heavens dropped down the dew, and the earth responded
in fruitfulness and blessing.
But, on the other hand, when Israel forgot the Lord, and forsook His
precious commandments, the heaven became brass and the earth iron;
barrenness, desolation, famine, and misery were the melancholy
accompaniments of disobedience. How could it be otherwise? "If ye be
willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land; but if ye
refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword; for the mouth
of the Lord hath spoken it."
Now, in all this there is deep, practical instruction for the Church
of God. Although we are not under law, we are called to obedience; and
as we are enabled, through grace, to yield a loving, hearty obedience,
we are blessed in our own spiritual state, our souls are watered,
refreshed, and strengthened, and we bring forth the fruits of
righteousness which are by Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of
God.
The reader may refer with much profit, in connection with this great
practical subject, to the opening of John xv.--a most precious
scripture, and one demanding the earnest attention of every
true-hearted child of God. "I am the true vine, and My Father is the
Husbandman. Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit He taketh away;
and every branch that beareth fruit, He purgeth it, _that it may bring
forth more fruit_. Now ye are clean through the word which I have
spoken unto you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear
fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except
ye abide in Me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in
Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without [or
apart from] Me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in Me, he is cast
forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them
into the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in Me, and My words
abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto
you. Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall
ye be My disciples. As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you;
continue ye in My love. _If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in
My love_; even as I have kept My Father's commandments, and abide in
His love." (Ver. 1-10.)
This weighty passage of Scripture has suffered immensely through
theological controversy and religious strife. It is as plain as it is
practical, and only needs to be taken as it stands, in its own divine
simplicity. If we seek to import into it what does not belong to it,
we mar its integrity and miss its true application. In it we have
Christ, the true vine, taking the place of Israel, who had become to
Jehovah the degenerate plant of a strange vine. The scene of the
parable is obviously earth, and not heaven; we do not think of a vine
and a husbandman (γεωργος) in heaven. Besides, our Lord says,
"I _am_ the true vine." The figure is very distinct. It is not the
head and the members, but a tree and its branches. Moreover, the
subject of the parable is as distinct as the parable itself; it is not
eternal life, but fruit-bearing. If this were borne in mind, it would
greatly help to an understanding of this much-misunderstood passage of
Scripture.
In a word, then, we learn from the figure of the vine and its branches
that the true secret of fruit-bearing is, to abide in Christ, and the
way to abide in Christ is, to keep His precious commandments. "If ye
keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept
My Father's commandments, and abide in His love." This makes it all so
simple. The way to bear fruit in season is, to abide in the love of
Christ, and this abiding is proved by our treasuring up His
commandments in our hearts and yielding a loving obedience to every
one of them. It is not running hither and thither in the mere energy
of nature; it is not the excitement of mere fleshly zeal displaying
itself in spasmodic efforts after devotedness. No; it is something
quite different from all this; it is the calm and holy obedience of
the heart--a loving obedience to our own beloved Lord, which
refreshes His heart and glorifies His name.
"How blest are they who still abide
Close sheltered by Thy watchful side;
Who life and strength from Thee receive,
And with Thee move and in Thee live."
Reader, may we apply our hearts diligently to this great subject of
fruit-bearing. May we better understand what it is. We are apt to make
great mistakes about it. It is to be feared that much--very much of
what passes for fruit would not be accredited in the divine presence.
God cannot own any thing as fruit which is not the direct result of
abiding in Christ. We may earn a great name among our fellows for
zeal, energy, and devotedness; we may be abundant in labors, in every
department of the work; we may acquit ourselves as great travelers,
great preachers, earnest workers in the vineyard, great
philanthropists and moral reformers; we may spend a princely fortune
in promoting all the great objects of Christian benevolence, and all
the while not produce a single cluster of fruit acceptable to the
Father's heart.
And, on the other hand, it may be our lot to pass the time of our
sojourn here in obscurity and retirement from human gaze; we may be
little accounted of by the world and the professing church; we may
seem to leave but little mark on the sands of time; but if only we
abide in Christ, abide in His love, treasure up His precious words in
our hearts, and yield ourselves up to a holy and loving obedience to
His commandments, then shall our fruit be in season, and our Father
will be glorified, and we shall grow in the experimental knowledge of
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
We shall now look for a moment at the remainder of our chapter, in
which Moses, in words of intense earnestness, presses upon the
congregation the urgent need of watchfulness and diligence in
reference to all the statutes and judgments of the Lord their God. The
beloved and faithful servant of God, and true lover of the people, was
unwearied in his efforts to brace them up to that whole-hearted
obedience which he knew to be at once the spring of their happiness
and their fruitfulness; and just as our blessed Lord warns His
disciples by setting before them the solemn judgment of the unfruitful
branch, so does Moses warn the people as to the sure and terrible
consequences of disobedience.
"Take heed to yourselves, that _your heart be not deceived_, and ye
turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them." Sad progress
downward! The heart deceived. This is the beginning of all declension.
"And ye turn aside." The feet are sure to follow the heart. Hence the
deep need of keeping the heart with all diligence; it is the citadel
of the whole moral being, and so long as it is kept for the Lord, the
enemy can gain no advantage; but when once it is surrendered, all is
really gone,--there is the turning aside; the secret departure of the
heart is proved by the practical ways,--"other gods" are served and
worshiped. The descent down along the inclined plane is terribly
rapid.
"And then"--mark the sure and solemn consequences--"the Lord's wrath
be kindled against you, and He _shut up the heaven_, that there be no
rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and ye perish quickly
from off the good land which the Lord giveth you." What barrenness and
desolation there must be when heaven is shut up! No refreshing showers
coming down, no dew-drops falling, no communication between the heaven
and the earth. Alas! how often had Israel tasted the awful reality of
this! "He turneth rivers into a wilderness, and the water-springs into
dry ground; a fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of
them that dwell therein."
And may we not see in the barren land and the desolate wilderness an
apt and striking illustration of a soul out of communion through
disobedience to the precious commandments of Christ? Such an one has
no refreshing communications with heaven--no showers coming down--no
unfoldings of the preciousness of Christ to the heart--no sweet
ministrations of an ungrieved Spirit to the soul; the Bible seems a
sealed book; all is dark, dreary, and desolate. Oh, there cannot be
any thing more miserable in all this world than a soul in this
condition. May the writer and the reader never experience it. May we
bend our ears to the fervent exhortations addressed by Moses to the
congregation of Israel. They are most seasonable, most healthful,
most needful, in this day of cold indifferentism and positive
willfulness. They set before us the divine antidote against the
special evils to which the Church of God is exposed at this very
hour--an hour critical and solemn beyond all human conception.
"Therefore shall ye lay up these _my words_ in _your heart_ and in
_your soul_, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be
as frontlets between your eyes. And ye shall teach them your children,
speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou
walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up; and
thou shalt write them upon the door-posts of thine house, and upon thy
gates, that your days may be multiplied, and the days of your
children, in the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers to give
them, as the days of heaven upon the earth."
Blessed days! And oh, how ardently the large, loving heart of Moses
longed that the people might enjoy many such days! And how simple the
condition! Truly nothing could be simpler, nothing more precious. It
was not a heavy yoke laid upon them, but the sweet privilege of
treasuring up the precious commandments of the Lord their God in their
hearts, and breathing the very atmosphere of His holy Word. All was to
hinge upon this. All the blessings of the land of Canaan--that goodly,
highly favored land, a land flowing with milk and honey, a land on
which Jehovah's eyes ever rested in loving interest and tender
care--all its precious fruits, all its rare privileges, were to be
theirs in perpetuity, on the one simple condition of loving obedience
to the word of their covenant-God.
"For if ye shall _diligently keep all_ these commandments which I
command you, to do them, _to love the Lord your God, to walk in all
His ways_, and _to cleave unto_ Him; then will the Lord drive out all
these nations from before you, and ye shall possess greater nations
and mightier than yourselves." In a word, sure and certain victory was
before them, a most complete overthrow of all enemies and obstacles, a
triumphal march into the promised inheritance--all secured to them on
the blessed ground of affectionate and reverential obedience to the
most precious statutes and judgments that had ever been addressed to
the human heart--statutes and judgments every one of which was but the
very voice of their most gracious Deliverer.
"Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be
yours; from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river
Euphrates, even unto the uttermost sea, shall your coast be. There
shall no man be able to stand before you; for the Lord your God shall
lay the fear of you and the dread of you upon all the land that ye
shall tread upon, as He hath said unto you."
Here was the divine side of the question. The whole land, in its
length, breadth, and fullness, lay before them; they had but to take
possession of it, as the free gift of God; it was for them simply to
plant the foot, in artless, appropriating faith, upon that fair
inheritance which sovereign grace had bestowed upon them. All this we
see made good in the book of Joshua, as we read in chapter xi.--"So
Joshua took _the whole land_, according to all that the Lord said unto
Moses; and Joshua gave it for an inheritance unto Israel, according to
their divisions by their tribes. And the land rested from war." (Ver.
23.)[8]
[8] No doubt it was in faith that Joshua took--and could take nothing
less than--the whole land; but as to actual possession, chapter xiii.
1 shows there was "yet much land to be possessed."
But alas! there was the human side of the question as well as the
divine. Canaan as promised by Jehovah and made good by the faith of
Joshua was one thing, and Canaan as possessed by Israel was quite
another. Hence the vast difference between Joshua and Judges. In
Joshua, we see the infallible faithfulness of God to His promise; in
Judges, we see Israel's miserable failure from the very outset. God
pledged His immutable word that not a man should be able to stand
before them, and the sword of Joshua--type of the great Captain of our
salvation--made good this pledge in its every jot and tittle; but the
book of Judges records the melancholy fact that Israel failed to drive
out the enemy--failed to take possession of the divine grant in all
its royal magnificence.
What then? Is the promise of God made of none effect? Nay, verily; but
the utter failure of man is made apparent. At "Gilgal," the banner of
victory floated over the twelve tribes, with their invincible captain
at their head: at "Bochim," the weepers had to mourn over Israel's
lamentable defeat.
Have we any difficulty in understanding the difference? None whatever.
We see the two things running all through the divine Volume. Man fails
to rise to the height of the divine revelation--fails to take
possession of what grace bestows. This is as true in the history of
the Church as it was in the history of Israel;--in the New Testament,
as well as in the Old, we have Judges as well as Joshua.
Yes, reader, and in the history of each individual member of the
Church we see the same thing. Where is the Christian, beneath the
canopy of heaven, that lives up to the height of his spiritual
privileges? where is the child of God who has not to mourn over his
humiliating failure in grasping and making good practically the high
and holy privileges of his calling of God? But does this make the
truth of God of none effect? No; blessed forever be His holy name. His
Word holds good in all its divine integrity and eternal stability.
Just as in Israel's case, the land of promise lay before them in all
its fair proportions and divinely given attractions; and not only so,
but they could count on the faithfulness and almighty power of God to
bring them in and put them in full possession; so with us, we are
blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ.
There is absolutely no limit to the privileges connected with our
standing, and as to our actual enjoyment, it is only a question of
faith taking possession of all that God's sovereign grace has made
ours in Christ.
We must never forget that it is the privilege of the Christian to live
at the very height of the divine revelation. There is no excuse for a
shallow experience or a low walk. We have no right whatever to say
that we cannot realize the fullness of our portion in Christ, that the
standard is too high, the privileges are too vast, that we cannot
expect to enjoy such marvelous blessings and dignities in our present
imperfect state.
All this is downright unbelief, and should be so treated by every true
Christian. The question is, Has the grace of God bestowed the
privileges upon us? has the death of Christ made good our title to
them? and has the Holy Ghost declared them to be the proper portion of
the very feeblest member of the body of Christ? If so--and Scripture
declares it is so--why should we not enjoy them? There is no hindrance
on the divine side. It is the desire of the heart of God that we
should enter into the fullness of our portion in Christ. Hear the
earnest breathing of the inspired apostle on behalf of the saints at
Ephesus and of all saints.--"Wherefore I also, after I heard of your
faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, cease not to
give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers; that the God
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the
spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him: the eyes of
your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the
hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His
inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of His
power to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty
power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead,
and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenlies, far above all
principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that
is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come:
and hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the head
over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him
that filleth all in all." (Eph. i. 15-23.)
From this marvelous prayer we may learn how earnestly the Spirit of
God desires that we should apprehend and enjoy the glorious privileges
of the true Christian position. He would ever, by His precious and
powerful ministry, keep our hearts up to the mark; but, alas! like
Israel, we grieve Him by our sinful unbelief, and rob our own souls of
incalculable blessing.
But, all praise to the God of all grace, the Father of glory, the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, He will yet make good every jot
and tittle of His most precious truth, both as to His earthly and
heavenly people. Israel shall yet enjoy to the full all the blessings
secured to them by the everlasting covenant; and the Church shall yet
enter upon the perfect fruition of all that which eternal love and
divine counsels have laid up for her in Christ; and not only so, but
the blessed Comforter is able and willing to lead the individual
believer into the present enjoyment of the hope of God's glorious
calling, and the practical power of that hope, in detaching the heart
from present things and separating it to God in true holiness and
living devotedness.
May our hearts, beloved Christian reader, long more ardently after the
full realization of all this, that thus we may live more as those who
are finding their portion and their rest in a risen and glorified
Christ. God, in His infinite goodness, grant it, for Jesus Christ's
name and glory's sake.
* * * * *
The remaining verses of our chapter close the first division of the
book of Deuteronomy, which, as the reader will notice, consists of a
series of discourses addressed by Moses to the congregation of
Israel--memorable discourses, most surely, in whatever way we view
them. The closing sentences are, we need hardly say, in perfect
keeping with the whole, and breathe the same deep-toned earnestness in
reference to the subject of obedience--a subject which, as we have
seen, formed the special burden on the heart of the beloved speaker in
his affecting farewell addresses to the people.
"Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse;"--How
pointed and solemn is this!--"a blessing, if ye obey the commandments
of the Lord your God, which I command you this day; and a curse, if ye
will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside
out of the way which I command you this day, to go after other gods,
which ye have not known. And it shall come to pass, when the Lord thy
God hath brought thee in unto the land whither thou goest to possess
it, that thou shalt put the blessing upon Mount Gerizim, and the curse
upon Mount Ebal. Are they not on the other side Jordan, by the way
where the sun goeth down, in the land of the Canaanites, which dwell
in the champaign over against Gilgal, beside the plains of Moreh? For
ye shall pass over Jordan, to go in to possess the land which the Lord
your God giveth you, and ye shall possess it, and dwell therein. AND
YE SHALL OBSERVE TO DO ALL THE STATUTES AND JUDGMENTS WHICH I SET
BEFORE YOU THIS DAY." (Ver. 26-32.)
Here we have the summing up of the whole matter. The blessing is
linked on to obedience; the curse, to disobedience. Mount Gerizim
stands over against Mount Ebal--fruitfulness and barrenness. We shall
see, when we come to chapter xxvii, that Mount Gerizim and its
blessings are entirely passed over. The curses of Mount Ebal fall,
with awful distinctness, on Israel's ear, while terrible silence
reigns on Mount Gerizim. "As many as are of the works of the law, are
under the curse." The blessing of Abraham can only come on those who
are on the ground of faith. But more of this by and by.
CHAPTER XII.
We now enter upon a new section of our marvelous book. The discourses
contained in the first eleven chapters having established the
all-important principle of obedience, we now come to the practical
application of the principle to the habits and ways of the people when
settled in possession of the land. "These are the statutes and
judgments which ye shall observe to do in the land which the Lord God
of thy fathers giveth thee to possess it, all the days that ye live
upon the earth."
It is of the utmost moral importance that the heart and conscience
should be brought into their true attitude in reference to divine
authority, irrespective altogether of any question as to details.
These will find their due place when once the heart is taught to bow
down, in complete and absolute submission, to the supreme authority of
the Word of God.
Now, as we have seen in our studies on the first eleven chapters, the
lawgiver labors, most earnestly and faithfully, to lead the heart of
Israel into this all-essential condition. He felt, to speak after the
manner of men, it was of no use entering upon practical details until
the grand foundation-principle of all morality was fully established
in the very deepest depths of the soul. The principle is this (let us
Christians apply our hearts to it): It is man's bounden duty to bow
implicitly to the authority of the Word of God. It matters not, in the
smallest degree, what that Word may enjoin, or whether we can see the
reason of this, that, or the other institution. The one grand,
all-important, and conclusive point is this: Has God spoken? If He
has, that is quite enough. There is no room, no need, for any further
question.
Until this point is fully established, or rather until the heart is
brought directly under its full moral force, we are not in a condition
to enter upon details. If self-will be allowed to operate, if blind
reason be permitted to speak, the heart will send up its endless
questionings; as each divine institution is laid before us, some fresh
difficulty will present itself as a stumbling-block in the path of
simple obedience.
What! it may be said, are we not to use our reason? If not, to what
end was it given? To this we have a twofold reply. In the first place,
our reason is not as it was when God gave it. We have to remember that
sin has come in; man is a fallen creature; his reason, his judgment,
his understanding--his whole moral being is a complete wreck; and
moreover, it was the neglect of the Word of God that caused all this
wreck and ruin.
And then, in the second place, we must bear in mind that if reason
were in a sound condition, it would prove its soundness by bowing to
the Word of God. But it is not sound; it is blind, and utterly
perverted; it is not to be trusted for a moment in things spiritual,
divine, or heavenly.
If this simple fact were thoroughly understood, it would settle a
thousand questions and remove a thousand difficulties. It is reason
that makes all the infidels. The devil whispers into man's ear, "You
are endowed with reason; why not use it? It was given to be used--used
in every thing; you ought not to give your assent to any thing which
your reason cannot grasp. It is your chartered right as a man to
submit every thing to the test of your reason; it is only for a fool
or an idiot to receive, in blind credulity, all that is set before
him."
What is our answer to such wily and dangerous suggestions? A very
simple and conclusive one; namely, this: The Word of God is above and
beyond reason altogether; it is as far above reason as God is above
the creature, or heaven above earth. Hence, when God speaks, all
reasonings must be cast down. If it be merely man's word, man's
opinion, man's judgment, then verily reason may exert its powers; or
rather, to speak more correctly, we must judge what is said by the
only perfect standard--the Word of God. But if reason be set to work
on the Word of God, the soul must inevitably be plunged in the thick
darkness of infidelity, from which the descent to the awful blackness
of atheism is but too easy.
In a word, then, we have to remember--yea, to cherish in the very
deepest depths of our moral being, that the only safe ground for the
soul is, divinely wrought faith in the paramount authority, divine
majesty, and all-sufficiency of the Word of God. This was the ground
which Moses occupied in dealing with the heart and conscience of
Israel. His one grand object was, to lead the people into the attitude
of profound, unqualified subjection to divine authority. Without this,
all was useless. If every statute, every judgment, every precept,
every institution, were to be submitted to the action of human
reason, then farewell to divine authority, farewell to Scripture,
farewell to certainty, farewell to peace; but, on the other hand, when
the soul is led by God's Spirit into the delightful attitude of
absolute and unquestioning submission to the authority of God's Word,
then every one of His judgments, every one of His commandments, every
sentence of His blessed book, is received as coming direct from
Himself, and the most simple ordinance or institution stands invested
with all the importance which His authority is fitted to impart. We
may not be able to understand the full meaning or exact bearing of
each statute and judgment,--that is not the question; it is sufficient
for us to know that it comes from God. He has spoken; this is
conclusive. Till this great principle is grasped, or rather till it
takes full possession of the soul, nothing is done; but when it is
fully understood and submitted to, the solid foundation is laid for
all true morality.
The foregoing line of thought will enable the reader to seize the
connection between the chapter which now lies open before us and the
preceding section of this book; and not only will it do this, but we
trust it will also help him to understand the special place and
bearing of the opening verses of chapter xii.
"Ye shall utterly destroy all the places wherein the nations which ye
shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the
hills, and under every green tree. And ye shall overthrow their
altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and
ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the
names of them out of that place." (Ver. 2, 3.)
The land was Jehovah's; they were to hold as tenants under Him, and
therefore their very first duty on entering upon possession was, to
demolish every trace of the old idolatry. This was absolutely
indispensable. It might, according to human reason, seem to be very
intolerant to act in this way toward other people's religion. We
reply, without any hesitation, Yes, it was intolerant; for how could
the one only true and living God be otherwise than intolerant of all
false gods and false worship? To suppose for a moment that He could
permit the worship of idols in His land would be to suppose that He
could deny Himself, which were simply blasphemy.
Let us not be misunderstood. It is not that God does not bear with the
world, in His long-suffering mercy. It seems hardly needful to state
this, with the history of well-nigh six thousand years of divine
forbearance before our eyes. Blessed forever be His holy name, He has
borne with the world most marvelously from the days of Noah, and He
still bears with it, though stained with the guilt of crucifying His
beloved Son.
All this is plain, but it leaves wholly untouched the great principle
laid down in our chapter. Israel had to learn that they were about to
take possession of the Lord's land, and that, as His tenants, their
first and indispensable duty was, to obliterate every trace of
idolatry. To them there was to be but "the one God." His name was
called upon them. They were His people, and He could not permit them
to have fellowship with demons. "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God;
and Him _only_ shalt thou serve."
This might, in the judgment of the uncircumcised nations around, seem
very intolerant, very narrow, very bigoted. They indeed might boast of
their freedom, and glory in the broad platform of their worship which
admitted "gods many and lords many." It might, according to their
thinking, argue greater breadth of mind to let every one think for
himself in matters of religion, and choose his own object of worship,
and his own mode of worshiping also; or, still further, it might give
evidence of a more advanced condition of civilization, greater polish
and refinement, to erect, as in Rome, a Pantheon, in which all the
gods of heathendom might find a place. "What did it matter about the
form of a man's religion, or the object of his worship, provided he
himself were sincere? All would be sure to come right in the end; the
great point for all was, to attend to material progress, to help on
national prosperity as the surest means of securing individual
interests. Of course, it is all right for every man to have some
religion, but as to the form of that religion, it is immaterial. The
great question is, what you are yourself, not what your religion is."
All this, we can well conceive, would admirably suit the carnal mind,
and be very popular amongst the uncircumcised nations; but as for
Israel, they had to remember that one commanding sentence, "The Lord
thy God is one God;" and again, "Thou shalt have none other gods
before Me." This was to be their religion; the platform of their
worship was to be as wide and as narrow as the one true and living
God, their Creator and Redeemer. That, assuredly, was broad enough for
every true worshiper--every member of the circumcised assembly--all
whose high and holy privilege it was to belong to the Israel of God.
They were not to concern themselves with the opinions or observations
of the uncircumcised nations around. What were they worth? Not the
weight of a feather. What could they know about the claims of the God
of Israel upon His circumcised people? Just nothing. Were they
competent to decide as to the proper breadth of Israel's platform?
Clearly not; they were wholly ignorant of the subject. Hence their
thoughts, reasonings, arguments, and objections were perfectly
worthless, not to be listened to for a moment. It was Israel's one,
simple, bounden duty to bow down to the supreme and absolute authority
of the word of God; and that word insisted upon the complete abolition
of every trace of idolatry from that goodly land which they were
privileged to hold as tenants under Him.
But not only was it incumbent upon Israel to abolish all the places in
which the heathen had worshiped their gods,--this they were solemnly
bound to do, most surely; but there was more than this. The heart
might readily conceive the thought of doing away with idolatry in the
various places, and setting up the altar of the true God
instead,--this might seem to be the right course to adopt; but God
thought differently. "Ye shall not do so unto the Lord your God. But
unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your
tribes to put His name there, even _unto His habitation_ shall ye
seek, and thither thou shalt come; and thither ye shall bring your
burnt-offerings, and your sacrifices, and your tithes, and
heave-offerings of your hand, and your vows, and your free-will
offerings, and the firstlings of your herds and of your flocks; and
_there ye shall eat before the Lord your God_; and ye shall rejoice in
all that ye put your hand unto, ye and your households, wherein the
Lord thy God hath blessed thee."
Here a great cardinal truth is unfolded to the congregation of Israel.
They were to have one place of worship--a place chosen of God, and not
of man. His habitation--the place of His presence was to be Israel's
grand centre; thither they were to come with their sacrifices and
their offerings, and there they were to offer their worship, and find
their common joy.
Does this seem exclusive? Of course it was exclusive; how else could
it be? If God was pleased to select a spot in which He would take up
His abode in the midst of His redeemed people, surely they were, of
necessity, shut up to that spot as their place of worship. This was
divine exclusiveness, and every pious soul would delight in it. Every
true lover of Jehovah would say, with all his heart, "Lord, I have
loved _the habitation of Thy house_, and the place where Thine honor
dwelleth;" and again, "How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of
hosts! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.... Blessed are
they that dwell _in Thy house_; they will be still praising Thee.... A
day _in Thy courts_ is better than a thousand. I had rather be a
door-keeper _in the house of My God_, than to dwell in the tents of
wickedness." (Ps. xxvi, lxxxiv.)
Here was _the_ one grand and all-important point. It was the
dwelling-place of Jehovah which was dear to the heart of every true
Israelite. Restless self-will might desire to run hither and thither,
the poor vagrant heart might long for some change, but, for the heart
that loved God, any change from the place of His presence, the place
where He had recorded His blessed name, could only be a change for the
worse. The truly devout worshiper could find satisfaction and delight,
blessing and rest, only in the place of the divine presence; and this,
on the double ground,--the authority of His precious Word and the
powerful attractions of His presence. Such an one could never think of
going anywhere else. Whither could he go? There was but one altar, one
habitation, one God,--that was the place for every right-minded, every
true-hearted Israelite. To think of any other place of worship would,
in his judgment, be not only a departure from the word of Jehovah,
but from His holy habitation.
This great principle is largely insisted upon throughout the whole of
our chapter. Moses reminds the people that from the moment they
entered Jehovah's land there was to be an end to all the irregularity
and self-will that had characterized them in the plains of Moab, or in
the wilderness. "Ye shall not do after all the things that we do here
thi
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