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Expositions of Holy Scripture

by Alexander Maclaren · English · Gutenberg #8068 · 1,489,323 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Expositions of Holy Scripture

Author: Alexander Maclaren


        
Release date: May 1, 2005 [eBook #8068]
                Most recently updated: October 18, 2012

Language: English

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Produced by Charles Franks, Anne Folland and the Online
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  EXPOSITIONS OF
  HOLY SCRIPTURE

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.


DEUTERONOMY, JOSHUA, JUDGES, RUTH, AND FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL

SECOND SAMUEL, FIRST KINGS, AND SECOND KINGS _CHAPTERS I to VII_




CONTENTS


THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY


  GOD'S FAITHFULNESS (Deut. vii. 9)
  THE LESSON OF MEMORY (Deut. viii. 2)
  THE EATING OF THE PEACE-OFFERING (Deut. xii. 18)
  PROPHETS AND THE PROPHET (Deut. xviii. 9-22)
  A CHOICE OF MASTERS (Deut. xxviii. 47, 48)
  THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW (Deut. xxx. 11-20)
  GOD'S TRUE TREASURE IN MAN (Deut. xxxii. 9; TITUS ii. 14)
  THE EAGLE AND ITS BROOD (Deut. xxxii. 11)
  THEIR ROCK AND OUR ROCK (Deut. xxxii. 31)
  GOD AND HIS SAINTS (Deut. xxxiii. 3)
  ISRAEL THE BELOVED (Deut. xxxiii. 12)
  'AT THE BUSH' (Deut. xxxiii. 16)
  SHOD FOR THE ROAD (Deut. xxxiii. 25)
  A DEATH IN THE DESERT (Deut. xxxiv. 5, 6)


THE BOOK OF JOSHUA


  THE NEW LEADER'S COMMISSION (Joshua i. 1-11)
  THE CHARGE TO THE SOLDIER OF THE LORD (Joshua i. 7, 8)
  THE UNTRODDEN PATH AND THE GUIDING ARK (Joshua iii. 4)
  'THE WATERS SAW THEE; THEY WERE AFRAID' (Joshua iii. 5-17)
  STONES CRYING OUT (Joshua iv. 10-24)
  THE CAPTAIN OF THE LORD'S HOST (Joshua v. 14)
  THE SIEGE OF JERICHO (Joshua vi. 10, 11)
  RAHAB (Joshua vi. 25)
  ACHAN'S SIN, ISRAEL'S DEFEAT (Joshua vii. 1-12)
  THE SUN STAYED (Joshua x. 12)
  UNWON BUT CLAIMED (Joshua xiii. 1-6)
  CALEB-A GREEN OLD AGE (Joshua xiv. 6)
  THE CITIES OF REFUGE (Joshua xx. 1-9)
  THE END OF THE WAR (Joshua xxi. 43-45; xxii. 1-9)
  THE NATIONAL OATH AT SHECHEM (Joshua xxiv. 19-28)


THE BOOK OF JUDGES


  A SUMMARY OF ISRAEL'S FAITHLESSNESS AND GOD'S PATIENCE (Judges ii. 1-10)
  ISRAEL'S OBSTINACY AND GOD'S PATIENCE (Judges ii. 11-23)
  RECREANT REUBEN (Judges v. 16, R.V.)
  'ALL THINGS ARE YOURS' (Judges v. 20; Job v. 23)
  LOVE MAKES SUNS (Judges v. 31)
  GIDEON'S ALTAR (Judges vi. 24)
  GIDEON'S FLEECE (Judges vi. 37)
  'FIT, THOUGH FEW'(Judges vii. 1-8)
  A BATTLE WITHOUT A SWORD (Judges vii. 13-23)
  STRENGTH PROFANED AND LOST (Judges xvi. 21-31)


THE BOOK OF RUTH


GENTLE HEROINE, A GENTILE CONVERT (Ruth i. 16-22)


THE FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL


  THE CHILD PROPHET (1 Samuel iii. 1-14)
  FAITHLESSNESS AND DEFEAT (1 Samuel iv. 1-18)
  REPENTANCE AND VICTORY (1 Samuel vii, 1-12)
  'MAKE US A KING' (1 Samuel viii. 4-20)
  THE OLD JUDGE AND THE YOUNG KING (1 Samuel ix. 16-27)
  THE KING AFTER MAN'S HEART (1 Samuel x. 17-27)
  SAMUEL'S CHALLENGE AND CHARGE (1 Samuel xii. 1-15)
  OLD TRUTH FOR A NEW EPOCH (1 Samuel xii. 13-25)
  SAUL REJECTED (1 Samuel xv. 10-23)
  THE SHEPHERD-KING (1 Samuel xvi. 1-13)
  THE VICTORY OF UNARMED FAITH (1 Samuel xvii. 32-51)
  A SOUL'S TRAGEDY (1 Samuel xviii. 5-16)
  JONATHAN, THE PATTERN OF FRIENDSHIP (1 Samuel xx.1-13)
  LOVE FOR HATE, THE TRUE _QUID PRO QUO_ (1 Samuel xxiv.4-17)
  LOVE AND REMORSE (1 Samuel xxvi. 5-12; 21-25)
  SAUL (1 Samuel xxviii. 15)
  'WHAT DOEST THOU HERE?' (1 Samuel xxix. 3; I Kings xix. 9)
  THE SECRET OF COURAGE (1 Samuel xxx. 6)
  AT THE FRONT OR THE BASE (1 Samuel xxx. 24)
  THE END OF SELF-WILL (1 Samuel xxxi. 1-13)




THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY


GOD'S FAITHFULNESS

'Know therefore that the Lord thy God, He is God, the faithful God,
which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love Him.'--DEUT. vii.
9.


'Faithful,' like most Hebrew words, has a picture in it. It means
something that can be (1) leant on, or (2) builded on.

This leads to a double signification--(1) trustworthy, and that because
(2) rigidly observant of obligations. So the word applies to a steward,
a friend, or a witness. Its most wonderful and sublime application is
to God. It presents to our adoring love--

I. God as coming under obligations to us.

A marvellous and blessed idea. He limits His action, regards Himself as
bound to a certain line of conduct.

1. Obligations from His act of creation.

'A faithful Creator,' bound to take care of those whom He has made. To
supply their necessities. To satisfy their desires. To give to each the
possibility of discharging its ideal.

2. Obligations from His past self.

'God is faithful by whom ye were called,' therefore He will do all that
is imposed on Him by His act of calling.

He cannot begin without completing. There are no abandoned mines. There
are no half-hewn stones in His quarries, like the block at Baalbec. And
this because the divine nature is inexhaustible in power and
unchangeable in purpose.

3. Obligations from His own word.

A revelation is presupposed by the notion of faithfulness. It is not
possible in heathenism. 'Dumb idols,' which have given their
worshippers no promises, cannot be thought of as faithful. By its grand
conception of Jehovah as entering into a covenant with Israel, the Old
Testament presents Him to our trust as having bound Himself to a known
line of action. Thereby He becomes, if we may so phrase it, a
constitutional monarch.

That conception of a Covenant is the negation of caprice, of arbitrary
sovereignty, of mystery. We know the principles of His government. His
majestic 'I wills' cover the whole ground of human life and needs for
the present and the future. We can go into no region of life but we
find that God has defined His conduct to us there by some word spoken
to our heart and binding Him.

4. Obligations from His new Covenant and highest word in Jesus Christ.

'He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.'

II. God as recognising and discharging these obligations.

That He will do so comes from His very nature. With Him there is no
change of disposition, no emergence of unseen circumstances, no failure
or exhaustion of power.

That He does so is matter of fact. Moses in the preceding context had
pointed to facts of history, on which he built the 'know therefore' of
the text. On the broad scale the whole world's history is full of
illustrations of God's faithfulness to His promises and His threats.
The history of Judaism, the sorrows of nations, and the complications
of national events, all illustrate this fact.

The personal history of each of us. The experience of all Christian
souls. No man ever trusted in Him and was ashamed. He wills that we
should put Him to the proof.

III. God as claiming our trust.

He is faithful, worthy to be trusted, as His deeds show.

Faith is our attitude corresponding to His faithfulness. Faith is the
germ of all that He requires from us. How much we need it! How firm it
might be! How blessed it would make us!

The thought of God as 'faithful' is, like a precious stone, turned in
many directions in Scripture, and wherever turned it flashes light.
Sometimes it is laid as the foundation for the confidence that even our
weakness will be upheld to the end, as when Paul tells the Corinthians
that they will be confirmed to the end, because 'God is faithful,
through whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son' (1 Cor. i.
9). Sometimes there is built on it the assurance of complete
sanctification, as when he prays for the Thessalonians that their
'whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless unto the
coming of our Lord' and finds it in his heart to pray thus because
'Faithful is He that calleth you, who will also do it' (1 Thess. v.
24). Sometimes it is presented as the steadfast stay grasping which
faith can expect apparent impossibilities, as when Sara 'judged Him
faithful who had promised' (Heb. xi. 11). Sometimes it is adduced as
bringing strong consolation to souls conscious of their own feeble and
fluctuating faith, as when Paul tells Timothy that 'If we are
faithless, He abideth faithful; for He cannot deny Himself' (2 Tim. ii.
13). Sometimes it is presented as an anodyne to souls disturbed by
experience of men's unreliableness, as when the apostle heartens the
Thessalonians and himself to bear human untrustworthiness by the
thought that though men are faithless, God 'is faithful, who shall
establish you and keep you from evil' (2 Thess. in. 2, 3). Sometimes it
is put forward to breathe patience into tempted spirits, as when the
Corinthians are comforted by the assurance that 'God is faithful, who
will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able' (1 Cor. x.
13). Sometimes it is laid as the firm foundation for our assurance of
pardon, as when John tells us that 'If we confess our sins, He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins' (1 John i. 9). And sometimes
that great attribute of the divine nature is proposed as holding forth
a pattern for us to follow, and the faith in it as tending to make us
in a measure steadfast like Himself, as when Paul indignantly rebuts
his enemies' charge of levity of purpose and vacillation, and avers
that 'as God is faithful, our word toward you is not yea and nay' (2
Cor. L 18).




THE LESSON OF MEMORY

'Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these
lofty 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.'--DEUT. viii.2.


The strand of our lives usually slips away smoothly enough, but days
such as this, the last Sunday in a year, are like the knots on a
sailor's log, which, as they pass through his fingers, tell him how
fast it is being paid out from the reel, and how far it has run off.

They suggest a momentary consciousness of the swift passage of life,
and naturally lead us to a glance backwards and forwards, both of which
occupations ought to be very good for us. The dead flat upon which some
of us live may be taken as an emblem of the low present in which most
of us are content to pass our lives, affording nowhere a distant view,
and never enabling us to see more than a street's length ahead of us.
It is a good thing to get up upon some little elevation and take a
wider view, backwards and forwards.

And so now I venture to let the season preach to us, and to confine
myself simply to suggesting for you one or two very plain and obvious
thoughts which may help to make our retrospect wise and useful. And
there are two main considerations which I wish to submit. The first
is--what we ought to be chiefly occupied with as we look back; and
secondly, what the issue of such a retrospect ought to be.

I. With what we should be mainly occupied as we look back. Memory, like
all other faculties, may either help us or hinder us. As is the man, so
will be his remembrance. The tastes which rule his present will
determine the things that he likes best to think about in the past.
There are many ways of going wrong in our retrospects. Some of us, for
instance, prefer to think with pleasure about things that ought never
to have been done, and to give a wicked immortality to thoughts that
ought never to have had a being. Some men's tastes and inclinations are
so vitiated and corrupted that they find a joy in living their
badnesses over again. Some of us, looking back on the days that are
gone, select by instinctive preference for remembrance, the vanities
and frivolities and trifles which were the main things in them whilst
they lasted. Such a use of the great faculty of memory is like the
folly of the Egyptians who embalmed cats and vermin. Do not let us be
of those, who have in their memories nothing but rubbish, or something
worse, who let down the drag-net into the depths of the past and bring
it up full only of mud and foulnesses, and of ugly monsters that never
ought to have been dragged into the daylight.

Then there are some of us who abuse memory just as much by picking out,
with perverse ingenuity, every black bit that lies in the distance
behind us, all the disappointments, all the losses, all the pains, all
the sorrows. Some men look back and say, with Jacob in one of his
moods, 'Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life!' Yes!
and the same man, when he was in a better spirit, said, and a great
deal more truly, 'The God that fed me all my life long, the Angel which
redeemed me from all evil.' Do not paint like Rembrandt, even if you do
not paint like Turner. Do not dip your brush only in the blackness,
even if you cannot always dip it in molten sunshine.

And there are some of us who, in like manner, spoil all the good that
we could get out of a wise retrospect, by only looking back in such a
fashion as to feed a sentimental melancholy, which is, perhaps, the
most profitless of all the ways of looking backwards.

Now here are the two points, in this verse of my text, which would put
all these blunders and all others right, telling us what we should
chiefly think about when we look back, and from what point of view the
retrospect of the past must be taken in order that it should be
salutary. 'Thou shalt remember all the way by which the Lord thy God
hath led thee.' Let memory work under the distinct recognition of
divine guidance in every part of the past. That is the _first_
condition of making the retrospect blessed. 'To humble thee and to
prove thee, and to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest
keep His commandments, or no'; let us look back with a clear
recognition of the fact that the use of life is to test, and reveal,
and to make, character. This world, and all its outward engagements,
duties, and occupations, is but a scaffolding, on which the builders
may stand to rear the true temple, and when the building is reared you
may do what you like with the scaffolding. So we have to look back on
life from this point of view, that its joys and sorrows, its ups and
downs, its work and repose, the vicissitudes and sometimes contrariety
of its circumstances and conditions, are all for the purpose of making
_us_, and of making plain to ourselves, what we are. 'To humble thee,'
that is, to knock the self-confidence out of us, and to bring us to
say: 'I am nothing and Thou art everything; I myself am a poor weak rag
of a creature that needs Thy hand to stiffen me, or I shall not be able
to resist or to do.' That is one main lesson that life is meant to
teach us. Whoever has learnt to say by reason of the battering and
shocks of time, by reason of sorrows and failures, by reason of joys,
too, and fruition,--'Lord, I come to Thee as depending upon Thee for
everything,' has wrung its supreme good out of life, and has fulfilled
the purpose of the Father, who has led us all these years, to humble us
into the wholesome diffidence that says: 'Not in myself, but in Thee
are all my strength and my hope.'

I need not do more than remind you of the other cognate purposes which
are suggested here. Life is meant, not only to bring us to humble
self-distrust, as a step towards devout dependence on God, but also to
reveal us to ourselves; for we only know what we are by reflecting on
what we have done, and the only path by which self-knowledge can be
attained is the path of observant recollection of our conduct in daily
life.

Another purpose for which the whole panorama of life is made to pass
before us, and for which all the gymnastic of life exercises us, is
that we may be made submissive to the great Will, and may keep His
commandments.

These thoughts should be with us in our retrospect, and then our
retrospect will be blessed: First, we are to look back and see God's
guidance everywhere, and second, we are to judge of the things that we
remember by their tendency to make character, to make us humble, to
reveal us to ourselves, and to knit us in glad obedience to our Father
God.

II. And now turn to the other consideration which may help to make
remembrance a good, viz., the issues to which our retrospect must tend,
if it is to be anything more than sentimental recollection.

First, let me say: Remember and be thankful. If what I have been saying
as to the standard by which events are to be tried be true; if it be
the case that the main fact about things is their power to mould
persons and to make character, then there follows, very plainly and
clearly, that all things that come within the sweep of our memory may
equally contribute to our highest good.

Good does not mean pleasure. Bright-being may not always be well-being,
and the highest good has a very much nobler meaning than comfort and
satisfaction. And so, realising the fact that the best of things is
that they shall make us like God, then we can turn to the past and
judge it wisely, because then we shall see that all the diversity, and
even the opposition, of circumstances and events, may co-operate
towards the same end. Suppose two wheels in a great machine, one turns
from right to left and the other from left to right, but they fit into
one another, and they both produce one final result of motion. So the
moments in my life which I call blessings and gladness, and the moments
in my life which I call sorrows and tortures, may work into each other,
and they will do so if I take hold of them rightly, and use them as
they ought to be used. They will tend to the highest good whether they
be light or dark; even as night with its darkness and its dews has its
ministration and mission of mercy for the wearied eye no less than day
with its brilliancy and sunshine; even as the summer and the winter are
equally needful, and equally good for the crop. So in our lives it is
good for us, sometimes, that we be brought into the dark places; it is
good for us sometimes that the leaves be stripped from the trees, and
the ground be bound with frost.

And so for both kinds of weather, dear brethren, we have to remember
and be thankful. It is a hard lesson, I know, for some of us. There may
be some listening to me whose memory goes back to this dying year as
the year that has held the sorest sorrow of their lives; to whom it has
brought some loss that has made earth dark. And it seems hard to tell
quivering lips to be thankful, and to bid a man be grateful though his
eyes fill with tears as he looks back on such a past. But yet it is
true that it is good for us to be drawn, or to be driven, to Him; it is
good for us to have to tread even a lonely path if it makes us lean
more on the arm of our Beloved. It is good for us to have places made
empty if, as in the year when Israel's King died, we shall thereby have
our eyes purged to behold the Lord sitting on the Royal Seat.

               'Take it on trust a little while,
                  Thou soon shalt read the mystery right,
                In the full sunshine of His smile.'

And for the present let us try to remember that He dwelleth in the
darkness as in the light, and that we are to be thankful for the things
that help us to be near Him, and not only for the things that make us
outwardly glad. So I venture to say even to those of you who may be
struggling with sad remembrances, remember and be thankful.

I have no doubt there are many of us who have to look back, if not upon
a year desolated by some blow that never can be repaired, yet upon a
year in which failing resources and declining business, or diminished
health, or broken spirits, or a multitude of minute but most disturbing
cares and sorrows, do make it hard to recognise the loving Hand in all
that comes. Yet to such, too, I would say: 'All things work together
for good,' therefore all things are to be embraced in the thankfulness
of our retrospect.

The second and simple practical suggestion that I make is this:
Remember, and let the memory lead to contrition. Perhaps I am speaking
to some men or women for whom this dying year holds the memory of some
great lapse from goodness; some young man who for the first time has
been tempted to sensuous sin; some man who may have been led into
slippery places in regard to business integrity. I draw a 'bow at a
venture' when I speak of such things--perhaps some one is listening to
me who would give a great deal if he or she could forget a certain past
moment of this dying year, which makes their cheeks hot yet whilst they
think of it. To such I say: Remember, go close into the presence of the
black thing, and get the consciousness of it driven into your heart;
for such remembrance is the first step to deliverance from the load,
and to your passing, emancipated from the bitterness, into the year
that lies before you.

But even if there are none of us to whom such remarks would specially
apply, let us summon up to ourselves the memories of these bygone days.
In all the three hundred and sixty-five of them, my friend, how many
moments stand out distinct before you as moments of high communion with
God? How many times can you remember of devout consecration to Him? How
many, when--as visitors to the Riviera reckon the number of days in the
season in which, far across the water, they have seen Corsica--you can
remember this year to have beheld, faint and far away, 'the mountains
that are round about' the 'Jerusalem that is above'? How many moments
do you remember of consecration and service, of devotion to your God
and your fellows? Oh! what a miserable, low-lying stretch of
God-forgetting monotony our lives look when we are looking back at them
in the mass. One film of mist is scarcely perceptible, but when you get
a mile of it you can tell what it is--oppressive darkness. One drop of
muddy water does not show its pollution, but when you have a pitcherful
of it you can see how thick it is. And so a day or an hour looked back
upon may not reveal the true godlessness of the average life, but if
you will take the twelvemonth and think about it, and ask yourself a
question or two about it, I think you will feel that the only attitude
for any of us in looking back across a stretch of such brown barren
moorland is that of penitent prayer for forgiveness and for cleansing.

But I dare say that some of you say: 'Oh! I look back and I do not feel
anything of that kind of regret that you describe; I have done my duty,
and nobody can blame me. I am quite comfortable in my retrospect. Of
course there have been imperfections; we are all human, and these need
not trouble a man.' Let me ask you, dear brother, one question: Do you
believe that the law of a man's life is, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself'? Do you
believe that that is what you ought to do? Have you done it? If you
have not, let me beseech you not to go out of this year, across the
artificial and imaginary boundary that separates you from the next,
with the old guilt upon your back, but go to Jesus Christ, and ask Him
to forgive you, and then you may pass into the coming twelvemonth
without the intolerable burden of unremembered, unconfessed, and
therefore unforgiven, sin.

The next point that I would suggest is this: Let us remember in order
that from the retrospect we may gain practical wisdom. It is
astonishing what unteachable, untamable creatures men are. They learn
wisdom about all the little matters of daily life by experience, but
they do not seem to do so about the higher. Even a sparrow comes to
understand a scarecrow after a time or two, and any rat in a hole will
learn the trick of a trap. But you can trick men over and over again
with the same inducement, and, even whilst the hook is sticking in
their jaws, the same bait will tempt them once more. That is very
largely the case because they do not observe and remember what has
happened to them in bygone days.

There are two things that any man, who will bring his reason and
common-sense to bear upon the honest estimate and retrospect of the
facts of his life, may be fully convinced of. These are, first, his own
weakness. One main use of a wise retrospect is to teach us where we are
weakest. What an absurd thing it would be if the inhabitants of a Dutch
village were to let the sea come in at the same gap in the same dyke a
dozen times! What an absurd thing it would be if a city were captured
over and over again by assaults at the same point, and did not
strengthen its defences there! But that is exactly what you do; and all
the while, if you would only think about your own past lives wisely and
reasonably, and like men with brains in your heads, you might find out
where it was that you were most open to attack; what it was in your
character that most needed strengthening, what it was wherein the devil
caught you most quickly, and might so build yourselves up in the most
defenceless points.

Do not look back for sentimental melancholy; do not look back with
unavailing regrets; do not look back to torment yourselves with useless
self-accusation; but look back to see how good God has been, and look
back to see where you are weak, and pile the wall, higher there, and so
learn practical wisdom from retrospect.

Another phase of the practical wisdom which memory should give is
deliverance from the illusions of sense and time. Remember how little
the world has ever done for you in bygone days. Why should you let it
befool you once again? If it has proved itself a liar when it has
tempted you with gilded offers that came to nothing, and with beauty
that was no more solid than the 'Easter-eggs' that you buy in the
shops--painted sugar with nothing inside--why should you believe it
when it comes to you once more? Why not say: 'Ah! once burnt, twice
shy! You have tried that trick on me before, and I have found it out!'
Let the retrospect teach us how hollow life is without God, and so let
it draw us near to Him.

The last thing that I would say is: 'Let us remember that we may hope.
It is the prerogative of Christian remembrance, that it merges into
Christian hope. The forward look and the backward look are really but
the exercise of the same faculty in two different directions. Memory
does not always imply hope, we remember sometimes because we do not
hope, and try to gather round ourselves the vanished past because we
know it never again can be a present or a future. But when we are
occupied with an unchanging Friend, whose love is inexhaustible, and
whose arm is unwearied, it is good logic to say: 'It has been,
therefore it shall be.'

With regard to this fleeting life, it is a delusion to say 'to-morrow
shall be as this day, and much more abundant'; but with regard to the
life of the soul that lives in God, that is true, and true for ever.
The past is a specimen of the future. The future for the man who lives
in Christ is but the prolongation, and the heightening into superlative
excellence and beauty, of all that is good in the past and in the
present. As the radiance of some rising sun may cast its bright beams
into the opposite sky, even so the glowing past behind us flings its
purples and its golds and its scarlets on to the else dim curtain of
the future.

Remember that you may hope. A paradox, but a paradox that is a truth in
the case of Christians whose memory is of a God that has loved and
blessed them whose hope is in a God that changes never; whose memory is
charged with 'every good and perfect gift that came down from the
Father of Lights,' whose hope is in that same Father, 'with whom is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning.' So on every stone of
remembrance, every Ebenezer on which is graved: 'Hitherto hath the Lord
helped us,' we can mount a telescope--if I may so say--that will look
into the furthest glories of the heavens, and be sure that the past
will be magnified and perpetuated in the future. Our prayer may
legitimately be; 'Thou hast been my help, leave me not, neither forsake
me!' And His answer will be: 'I will not leave thee until I have done
that which I have spoken to thee of.' Remember that you may hope, and
hope because you remember.




THE EATING OF THE PEACE-OFFERING

'But thou must eat them before the Lord thy God in the place which the
Lord thy God shall choose, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy
manservant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite that is within thy
gates: and thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God in all that thou
puttest thine hands unto.'--DEUT. xii. 18.


There were three bloody sacrifices, the sin-offering, the
burnt-offering, and the peace-offering. In all three expiation was the
first idea, but in the second of them the act of burning symbolised a
further thought, namely, that of offering to God, while in the third,
the peace-offering, there was added to both of these the still further
thought of the offerer's participation with God, as symbolised by the
eating of the sacrifice. So we have great verities of the most
spiritual religion adumbrated in this external rite. The rind is hard
and forbidding, the kernel is juicy and sweet.

I. Communion with God based on atonement.

II. Feeding on Christ.

What was sacrifice becomes food. The same Person and facts, apprehended
by faith, are, in regard to their bearing on the divine government, the
ground of pardon, and in regard to their operation within us, the
source of spiritual sustenance. Christ for us is our pardon; Christ in
us is our life.

III. The restoration to the offerer of all which he lays on God's altar.

The sacrifice was transformed and elevated into a sacrament. By being
offered the sacrifice was ennobled. The offerer did not lose what he
laid on the altar, but it came back to him, far more precious than
before. It was no longer mere food for the body, and to eat it became
not an ordinary meal, but a sacrament and means of union with God. It
was a hundredfold more the offerer's even in this life. All its savour
was more savoury, all its nutritive qualities were more nutritious. It
had suffered a fiery change, and was turned into something more rich
and rare.

That is blessedly true as to all which we lay on God's altar. It is far
more ours than it ever was or could be, while we kept it for ourselves,
and our enjoyment of, and nourishment from, our good things, when
offered as sacrifices, are greater than when we eat our morsel alone.
If we make earthly joys and possessions the materials of our sacrifice,
they will not only become more joyful and richer, but they will become
means of closer union with Him, instead of parting us from Him, as they
do when used in selfish disregard of Him.

Nor must we forget the wonderful thought, also mirrored in this piece
of ancient ritual, that God delights in men's sacrifices and surrenders
and services. 'If I were hungry, I would not tell thee,' said the
Psalmist in God's name in regard to outward sacrifices; 'Will I eat the
flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?' But he does 'eat' the
better sacrifices that loving hearts or obedient wills lay on His
altar. He seeks for these, and delights when they are offered to Him.
'He hungered, and seeing a fig tree by the wayside, He came to it.' He
still hungers for the fruit that we can yield to Him, and if we will,
He will enter in and sup with us, not disdaining to sit at the poor
table which we can spread for Him, nor to partake of the humble fare
which we can lay upon it, but mending the banquet by what He brings for
_our_ nourishment, and hallowing the hour by His presence.




PROPHETS AND THE PROPHET

'When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee,
thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. 10.
There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his
daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an
observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, 11. Or a charmer, or a
consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. 12. For
all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because
of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before
thee. 13. Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God. 14. For these
nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto observers of times,
and unto diviners: but as for thee, the Lord thy God hath not suffered
thee so to do. 15. The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet
from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto Him ye
shall hearken; 16. According to all that thou desiredst of the Lord thy
God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again
the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see this great fire any
more, that I die not. 17. And the Lord said unto me, They have well
spoken that which they have spoken. 18. I will raise them up a Prophet
from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put My words in His
mouth; and He shall speak unto them all that I shall command Him. 19.
And it shall come to pass that whosoever will not hearken unto My words
which He shall speak in My name, I will require it of him. 20. But the
prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in My name, which I have
not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other
gods, even that prophet shall die. 21. And if thou say in thine heart,
How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken? 22. When a
prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor
come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the
prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of
him.'--DEUT. xviii. 9-22.


It is evident from the connection in which the promise of 'a prophet
like unto Moses' is here introduced that it does not refer to Jesus
only; for it is presented as Israel's continuous defence against the
temptation of seeking knowledge of the divine will by the illegitimate
methods of divination, soothsaying, necromancy, and the like, which
were rampant among the inhabitants of the land. A distant hope of a
prophet in the far-off future could afford no motive to shun these
superstitions. We cannot understand this passage unless we recognise
that the direct reference is to the institution of the prophetic order
as the standing means of imparting the reliable knowledge of God's
will, possessing which, Israel had no need to turn to them 'that peep
and mutter' and bring false oracles from imagined gods. But that
primary reference of the words does not exclude, but rather demands,
their ultimate reference to Him in whom the divine word is perfectly
enshrined, and who is the bright, consummate flower of the prophetic
order, which 'spake of Him,' not only in its individual predictions,
but by its very existence.

A glance must be given to the exhaustive list of pretenders to
knowledge of the future or to power of shaping it magically, which
occurs in verses 10,11, and suggests a terrible picture of the burdens
of superstition which weighed on men in these days of ignorance, as the
like burdens do still, wherever Jesus is not known as the one Revealer
of God, and the sole Lord of all things. Of the eight terms employed,
the first three refer to different means of reading the future, the
next two to different means of influencing events, and the last three
to different ways of consulting the dead. The first of these eight
properly refers to drawing lots, but includes other methods; the second
is an obscure word, which is supposed by some to mean a 'murmurer,' and
may refer rather to the low mutterings of the soothsayer than to the
method of his working; the third is probably a general expression for
an interpreter of omens, especially of those given by the play of
liquid in a 'cup,' such as Joseph 'divined' by.

Two names for magicians follow, of which the former seems to mean one
who worked with charms such as African or American Indian 'medicine
men' use, and the latter, one who binds by incantations, or one who
ties magic knots, which are supposed to have the power of hindering the
designs of the person against whom they are directed. The word employed
means 'binding,' and maybe used either literally or metaphorically. The
malicious tying of knots in order to work harm is not dead yet in some
backward corners of Britain. Then follow three names for traffickers
with spirits,--those who raise ghosts as did the witch of Endor, those
who have a 'familiar spirit,' and those who in any way consult the
dead. It is a grim catalogue, bearing witness to the deep-rooted
longing in men to peer into the darkness ahead, and to get some
knowledge of the purposes of the awful unseen Power who rules there.
The longing is here recognised as legitimate, while the methods are
branded as bad, and Israel is warned from them, by being pointed to the
merciful divine institution which meets the longing.

It is clear, from this glance at the context, that the 'prophet'
promised to Israel must mean the order, not the individual; and it is
interesting to note, first, the relation in which that order is
presented as standing towards all that rabble of diviners and
sorcerers, with their rubbish of charms and muttered spells. It sweeps
them off the field, because it is truly what they pretend to be. God
knows men's longings, and God will meet them so far as meeting them is
for men's good. But the characteristics of the prophet are set in
strong contrast to those of the diviners and magicians, and lift the
order high above all the filth and folly of these others. First, the
prophet is 'raised up' by God; the individual holder of the office has
his 'call' and does not 'prophesy out of his own heart.' The man who
takes this office on himself without such a call is _ipso facto_
branded as a false prophet. Then he is 'from the midst of thee, of thy
brethren,'--springing from the people, not an alien, like so many of
these wandering soothsayers, but with the national life throbbing in
his veins, and himself participant of the thoughts and emotions of his
brethren. Then he is to be 'like unto' Moses,--not in all points, but
in his receiving direct communications from God, and in his authority
as God's messenger. The crowning characteristic, 'I will put My words
into his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command
him,' invests his words with divine authority, calls for obedience to
them as the words of God Himself, widens out his sphere far beyond that
of merely foretelling, brings in the moral and religious element which
had no place in the oracles of the soothsayer, and opens up the
prospect of a continuous progressive revelation throughout the ages
('all that I _shall_ command him'). We mutilate the grand idea of the
prophet in Israel if we think of his work as mainly prediction, and we
mutilate it no less if we exclude prediction from it. We mutilate it
still more fatally if we try to account for it on naturalistic
principles, and fail to see in the prophet a man directly conscious of
a divine call, or to hear in his words the solemn accents of the voice
of God.

The loftiness and the limitations of 'the goodly fellowship of the
prophets' alike point onwards to Jesus Christ. In Him, and in Him
alone, the idea of the prophet is fully realised. The imperfect
embodiments of it in the past were prophecies as well as prophets. The
fact that God has 'spoken unto the fathers by the prophets,' leads us
to expect that He will speak 'to us in a Son,' and that not by
fragments of His mighty voice, but in one full, eternal, all-embracing
and all-sufficient Word. Every divine idea, which has been imperfectly
manifested in fragmentary and sinful men and in the material creation,
is completely incarnated in Him. He is the King to whom the sins and
the saintlinesses of Israel's kings alike pointed. He is the Priest,
whom Aaron and his sons foreshadowed, who perfectly exercises the
sympathy which they could only feel partially, because they were
compassed with infirmity and self-regard, and who offers the true
sacrifice of efficacy higher than 'the blood of bulls and goats.' He is
the Prophet, who makes all other means of knowing the divine will
unnecessary, hearing whom we hear the very voice of God speaking in His
gentle words of love, in His authoritative words of command, in His
illuminating words of wisdom, and speaking yet more loudly and
heart-touchingly in the eloquence of deeds no less than divine; who is
'not ashamed to call us brethren,' and is 'bone of our bone and flesh
of our flesh'; who is like, but greater than, the great lawgiver of
Israel, being the Son and Lord of the 'house' in which Moses was but a
servant. 'To Him give all the prophets witness,' and the greatest of
them was honoured when, with Moses, Elijah stood on the Mount of
Transfiguration, subordinate and attesting, and then faded away when
the voice proclaimed, 'This is My beloved Son, hear Him,'--and they
'saw no one save Jesus only.'




A CHOICE OF MASTERS

'Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with
gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; 48. Therefore shalt
thou serve thine enemies ... in want of all things: and He shall put a
yoke of iron upon thy neck, until He have destroyed thee.'--DEUT.
xxviii. 47, 48


The history of Israel is a picture on the large scale of what befalls
every man.

A service--we are all born to obedience, to depend on and follow some
person or thing. There is only a choice of services; and he who boasts
himself free is but a more abject slave, as the choice for a nation is
either the rule of settled order and the sanctities of an established
law, or the usurpation of a mob and the intolerable tyranny of
unbridled and irresponsible force.

I. The service of God or the service of our enemies.

Israel was the servant in turn of Egypt, Philistia, Edom, Assyria,
Babylon, Syria, and Rome. It was every invader's prey. God's invisible
arm was its only guard from these, and an all-sufficient guard as long
as it leaned on Him. When it turned from Him it fell under their yoke.
Its lawful Lord loved it; its tyrants hated it.

So with us. We have to serve God or enemies. Our lusts, our passions,
the world, evil habits--in a word, our sins ring us round. God is the
only defence against them.

The contrast between the one and the many--a king or an ochlocracy. The
contrast of the loving Lord and the hostile sins.

II. A service which is honour or a service which is degradation.

God alone is worthy of our absolute submission and service. How low a
man sinks when he is ruled by any lesser authority! Such obedience is a
crime against the dignity of human nature, and the soul is not without
a galling sense of this now and then, when its chains rattle.

III. A service which is freedom because it is rendered by love, or a
service which is hard slavery.

'With joy for the abundance of all things.' How sin palls upon us, and
yet we commit it. The will is overborne, conscience is stifled.

IV. A service which feeds the spirit or a service which starves it.

The soul can only in God get what it wants. Prison fare is what it
receives in the other service. The unsatisfying character of all sin;
it cloys, and yet leaves one hungry. It is 'that which satisfieth not.'
'Broken cisterns which hold no water.'

V. A service which is life or a service which is death.

The dark forebodings of the text grow darker as it goes on. The grim
slavery which it threatens as the only alternative to joyful service of
God is declared to be lifelong 'penal servitude,' and not only is there
no deliverance from it, but it directly tends to wear away the life of
the hopeless slaves. For the words that follow our text are 'and he
shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.'
That is dismally true in regard to any and every life that has shaken
off the service of God which is perfect freedom, and has persisted in
the service of sin. Such service is suicidal; it rivets an iron yoke on
our necks, and there is no locksmith who can undo the shackles and lift
it off, so long as we refuse to take service with God. Stubbornly
rebellious wills forge their own fetters. Like many a slave-owner, our
tyrants have a cruel delight in killing their slaves, and our sins not
only lead to death, but are themselves death.

But there is a bright possibility before the most down-trodden vassal
of sin. 'The bond-servant abideth not in the house for ever.' He is not
a son of the house, but has been brought into it, stolen from his home.
He may be carried back to his Father's house, and there 'have bread
enough and to spare,' if a deliverer can be found. And He has been
found. Christ the Son makes us free, and if we trust Him for our
emancipation we 'shall be free indeed,' 'that we, being delivered out
of the hand of our enemies, should serve Him without fear, in holiness
and righteousness before Him all our days.'




THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW

'For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden
from thee, neither is it far off. 12. It is not in heaven, that thou
shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us,
that we may hear it, and do it? 13. Neither is it beyond the sea, that
thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto
us, that we may hear it, and do it? 14. But the word is very nigh unto
thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it. 15. See,
I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; 16.
In that I command thee this day to love the Lord thy God, to walk in
His ways, and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His
judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply; and the Lord thy God
shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it. 17. But
if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be
drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them; 18. I denounce unto
you this day, that ye shall surely perish, and that ye shall not
prolong your days upon the land, whither thou passest over Jordan to go
to possess it. 19. I call heaven and earth to record this day against
you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing:
therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: 20. That
thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey His voice,
and that thou mayest cleave unto Him: for He is thy life, and the
length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord
sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give
them.'--DEUT. xxx. 11-20.


This paragraph closes the legislation of this book, the succeeding
chapters being in the nature of an epilogue or appendix. It sums up the
whole law, makes plain its inmost essence and its tremendous
alternatives. As in the closing strains of some great symphony, the
themes which have run through the preceding movements are woven
together in the final burst of music. Let us try to discover the
component threads of the web.

The first point to note is the lofty conception of the true essence of
the whole law, which is enshrined here. 'This commandment which I
command thee this day' is twice defined in the section (vs. 16, 20),
and in both instances 'to love Jehovah thy God' is presented as the
all-important precept. Love is recognised as the great commandment.
Leviticus may deal with minute regulations for worship, but these are
subordinate, and the sovereign commandment is love. Nor is the motive
which should sway to love omitted; for what a tender drawing by the
memories of what He had done for Israel is put forth in the name of
'Jehovah, _thy_ God!' The Old Testament system is a spiritual system,
and it too places the very heart of religion in love to God, drawn out
by the contemplation of his self-revelation in his loving dealings with
us. We have here clearly recognised that the obedience which pleases
God is obedience born of love, and that the love which really sets
towards God will, like a powerful stream, turn all the wheels of life
in conformity to His will. When Paul proclaimed that 'love is the
fulfilling of the law,' he was only repeating the teaching of this
passage, when it puts 'to walk in His ways,' or 'to obey His voice,'
after 'to love Jehovah thy God.' Obedience is the result and test of
love; love is the only parent of real obedience.

The second point strongly insisted on here is the blessedness of
possessing such a knowledge as the law gives. Verses 11-14 present that
thought in three ways. The revelation is not that of duties far beyond
our capacity: 'It is not too hard for thee.' No doubt, complete
conformity with it is beyond our powers, and entire, whole-hearted, and
whole-souled love of God is not attained even by those who love Him
most. Paul's position that the law gives the knowledge of sin, just
because it presents an impossible elevation in its ideal, is not
opposed to the point of view of this context; for he is thinking of
complete conformity as impossible, while it is thinking of real, though
imperfect, obedience as within the reach of all men. No man can love as
he ought; every man can love. It is blessed to have our obligations all
gathered into such a commandment.

Again, the possession of the law is a blessing, because its
authoritative voice ends the weary quest after some reliable guide to
conduct, and we need neither try to climb to heaven, nor to traverse
the wide world and cross the ocean, to find certitude and enlightenment
enough for our need. They err who think of God's commandments as
grievous burdens; they are merciful guide-posts. They do not so much
lay weights on our backs as give light to our eyes.

Still further, the law has its echo 'in thy heart.' It is 'graven on
the fleshly tables of the heart,' and we all respond to it when it
gathers up all duty into 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,' and our
consciences say to it, 'Thou speakest well.' The worst man knows it
better than the best man keeps it. Blurred and illegible often, like
the half-defaced inscriptions disinterred from the rubbish mounds that
once were Nineveh or Babylon, that law remains written on the hearts of
all men.

A further point to be well laid to heart is the merciful plainness and
emphasis with which the issues that are suspended on obedience or
disobedience are declared. The solemn alternatives are before every man
that hears. Life or death, blessing or cursing, are held out to him,
and it is for him to elect which shall be realised in his case. Of
course, it may be said that the words 'life' and 'death' are here used
in their merely physical sense, and that the context shows (vs. 17, 18)
that life here means only 'length of days, that thou mayest dwell in
the land.' No doubt that is so, though we can scarcely refuse to see
some glimmer of a deeper conception gleaming through the words, 'He is
thy life,' though it is but a glimmer. We have no space here to enter
upon the question of how far it is now true that obedience brings
material blessings. It was true for Israel, as many a sad experience
that it was a bitter as well as an evil thing to forsake Jehovah was to
show in the future. But though the connection between well-doing and
material gain is not so clear now, it is by no means abrogated, either
for nations or for individuals. Moral and religious law has social and
economic consequences, and though the perplexed distribution of earthly
good and ill often bewilders faith and emboldens scepticism, there
still is visible in human affairs a drift towards recompensing in the
world the righteous and the wicked.

But to us, with our Christian consciousness, 'life' means more than
living, and 'He is our life' in a deeper and more blessed sense than
that our physical existence is sustained by His continual energy. The
love of God and consequent union with Him give us the only true life.
Jesus is 'our life,' and He enters the spirit which opens to Him by
faith, and communicates to it a spark of His own immortal life. He that
is joined to Jesus lives; he that is separated from Him 'is dead while
he liveth.'

The last point here is the solemn responsibility for choosing one's
part, which the revelation of the law brings with it. 'I have set
before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse, therefore
choose life.' We each determine for ourselves whether the knowledge of
what we ought to be will lead to life or to death, and by choosing
obedience we choose life. Every ray of light from God is capable of
producing a double effect. It either gladdens or pains, it either gives
vision or blindness. The gospel, which is the perfect revelation of God
in Christ, brings every one of us face to face with the great
alternative, and urgently demands from each his personal act of choice
whether he will accept it or neglect or reject it. Not to choose to
accept _is_ to choose to reject. To do nothing is to choose death. The
knowledge of the law was not enough, and neither is an intellectual
reception of the gospel. The one bred Pharisees, who were 'whited
sepulchres'; the other breeds orthodox professors, who have 'a name to
live and are dead.' The clearer our light, the heavier our
responsibility. If we are to live, we have to 'choose life'; and if we
do not, by the vigorous exercise of our will, turn away from earth and
self, and take Jesus for our Saviour and Lord, loving and obeying whom
we love and obey God, we have effectually chosen a worse death than
that of the body, and flung away a better life than that of earth.




GOD'S TRUE TREASURE IN MAN

'The Lord's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His
inheritance.'--DEUT, xxxii.9.

'Jesus Christ (Who) gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from
all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people.'--TITUS ii. 14.


I choose these two texts because they together present us with the
other side of the thought to that which I have elsewhere considered,
that man's true treasure is in God. That great axiom of the religious
consciousness, which pervades the whole of Scripture, is rapturously
expressed in many a psalm, and never more assuredly than in that one
which struggles up from the miry clay in which the Psalmist's 'steps
had well-nigh slipped' and soars and sings thus: 'The Lord is the
portion of my inheritance and of my cup; Thou maintainest my lot,' 'The
lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly
heritage.'

You observe the correspondence between these words and those of my
first text: 'The Lord's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His
inheritance.' The correspondence in the original is not quite so marked
as it is in our Authorised Version, but still the idea in the two
passages is the same. Now it is plain that persons can possess persons
only by love, sympathy, and communion. From that it follows that the
possession must be mutual; or, in other words, that only he can say
'Thou art mine' who can say 'I am Thine.' And so to possess God, and to
be possessed by God, are but two ways of putting the same fact. 'The
Lord is the portion of His people, and the Lord's portion is His
people,' are only two ways of stating the same truth.

Then my second text clearly quotes the well-known utterance that lies
at the foundation of the national life of Israel: 'Ye shall be unto Me
a peculiar treasure above all people,' and claims that privilege, like
all Israel's privileges, for the Christian Church. In like manner Peter
(1 Pet. ii. 9) quotes the same words, 'a peculiar people,' as properly
applying to Christians. I need scarcely remind you that 'peculiar' here
is used in its proper original sense of belonging to, or, as the
Revised Version gives it, 'a people for God's own possession' and has
no trace of the modern signification of 'singular.' Similarly we find
Paul in his Epistle to the Ephesians giving both sides of the idea of
the inheritance in intentional juxtaposition, when he speaks (i. 14) of
the 'earnest of our inheritance ... unto the redemption of God's own
possession.' In the words before us we have the same idea; and this
text besides tells us how Christ, the Revealer of God, wins men for
Himself, and what manner of men they must be whom He counts as His.

Therefore there are, as I take it, three things to be spoken about now.
First, God has a special ownership in some people. Second, God owns
these people because He has given Himself to them. Third, God
possesses, and is possessed by, His inheritance, that He may give and
receive services of love. Or, in briefer words, I have to speak about
this wonderful thought of a special divine ownership, what it rests
upon, and what it involves.

I. God has special ownership in some people.

'The Lord's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His
inheritance.' Put side by side with those other words of the Old
Testament: 'All souls are Mine,' or the utterance of the 100th Psalm
rightly translated: 'It is He that hath made us, and to Him we belong.'
There is a right of absolute and utter ownership and possession
inherent in the very relation of Creator and creature; so that the
being made is wholly and altogether at the disposal, and is the
property, of Him that makes him.

But is that enough for God's heart? Is that worth calling ownership at
all? An arbitrary tyrant in an unconstitutional kingdom, or a
slave-owner, may have the most absolute right of property over his
subject or his slave; may have the right of entire disposal of all his
industry, of the profit of all his labour; may be able to do anything
he likes with him, may have the power of life and death; but such
ownership is only of the husk and case of a man: the man himself may be
free, and may smile at the claim of possession. 'They may '_own_' the
body, and after that have no more than they can do.' That kind of
authority and ownership, absolute and utter, to the point of death, may
satisfy a tyrant or a slave-driver, it does not satisfy the loving
heart of God. It is not real possession at all. In what sense did Nero
own Paul when he shut him up in prison, and cut his head off? Does the
slave-owner own the man whom he whips within an inch of his life, and
who dare not do anything without his permission? Does God, in any sense
that corresponds with the longing of infinite love, own the men that
reluctantly obey Him, and are simply, as it were, tools in His hands?
He covets and longs for a deeper relationship and tenderer ties, and
though all creatures are His, and all men are His servants and His
possession, yet, like certain regiments in our own British army, there
are some who have the right to bear in a special manner on their
uniform and on their banners the emblazonment, 'The King's Own.' 'The
Lord's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.'

Well, then, the next thought is that the special relationship of
possession is constituted by mutual love. I said at the beginning of
these remarks that as concerns men's relations, the only real
possession is through love, sympathy, and communion, and that that must
necessarily be mutual. We have a perfect right to apply the human
analogy here; in fact, we are bound to do it if we would rightly
understand such words as those of my text; and it just leads us to
this, that the one thing whereby God reckons that He possesses a man at
all is when His love falls upon that man's heart and soaks into it, and
when there springs up in the heart a corresponding emotion and
affection. The men who welcome the divine love that goes through the
whole world, seeking such to worship it, and to trust it, and to become
its own; and who therefore lovingly yield to the loving divine will,
and take it for their law--these are the men whom He regards as His
'portion' and 'the lot of His inheritance.' So that God is mine, and
that 'I am God's,' are two ends of one truth; 'I possess Him,' and 'I
am possessed by Him,' are but the statement of one fact expressed from
two points of view. In the one case you look upon it from above, in the
other case you look upon it from beneath. All the sweet commerce of
mutual surrender and possession which makes the joy of our hearts, in
friendship and in domestic life, we have the right to lift up into this
loftier region, and find in it the last teaching of what makes the
special bond of mutual possession between God and man.

And deep words of Scripture point in that direction. Those parables of
our Lord's: the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son, in their
infinite beauty, whilst they contain a great deal besides this, do
contain this in their several ways; the money, the animal, the man
belong to the woman of the house, to the shepherd, to the father. Each
is 'lost' in a different fashion, but the most clear revelation is
given in the last parable of the three, which explains the other two.
The son was 'lost' when he did not love the father; and he was 'found'
by the father when he returned the yearning of the father's heart.

And so, dear brethren, it ever is; the one thing that knits men to God
is that the silken cord of love let down from Heaven should by our own
hand be wrapped round our own hearts, and then we are united to Him. We
are His and He is ours by the double action of His love manifested by
Him, and His love received by us.

Now there is nothing in all that of favouritism. The declaration that
there are people who have a special relationship to the divine heart
may be so stated as to have a very ugly look, and it often has been so
stated as to be nothing more than self-complacent Pharisaism, which
values a privilege principally because its possession is an insult to
somebody else that has it not.

There has been plenty of Christianity of that sort in the world, but
there is nothing of it in the thoughts of these texts rightly looked
at. There is only this: it cannot but be that men who yield to God and
love Him, and try to live near Him and to do righteousness, are His in
a manner that those who steel themselves against Him and turn away from
Him are not. Whilst all creatures have a place in His heart, and are
flooded with His benefits, and get as much of Him as they can hold, the
men who recognise the source of their blessing, and turn to it with
grateful hearts, are nearer Him than those that do not do so. Let us
take care, lest for the sake of seeming to preserve the impartiality of
His love, we have destroyed all in Him that makes His love worth
having. If to Him the good and the bad, the men who fear Him and the
men who fear Him not, are equally satisfactory, and, in the same
manner, the objects of an equal love, then He is not a God that has
pleasure in righteousness; and if He is not a God that 'has pleasure in
righteousness,' He is not a God for us to trust to. We are not giving
countenance to the notion that God has any step-children, any petted
members of His family, when we cleave to this--they that have welcomed
His love into their hearts are nearer to Him than those that have
closed the door against it.

And there is one more point here about this matter of ownership on
which I dwell for a moment, namely, that this conception of certain men
being in a special sense God's possession and inheritance means also
that He has a special delight in, and lofty appreciation of, them. All
this material creation exists for the sake of growing good men and
women. That is the use of the things that are seen and temporal; they
are like greenhouses built for the great Gardener's use in striking and
furthering the growth of His plants; and when He has got the plants He
has got what He wanted, and you may pull the greenhouse down if you
like. And so God estimates, and teaches us to estimate, the relative
value and greatness of the material and the spiritual in this fashion,
that He says to us in effect: 'All these magnificences and magnitudes
round you are small and vulgar as compared with this--a heart in which
wisdom and divine truth and the love and likeness of God have attained
to some tolerable measure of maturity and of strength.' These are His
'jewels,' as the Roman matron said about her two boys. The great Father
looks upon the men that love Him as His jewels, and, having got the
jewels, the rock in which they were embedded and preserved may be
crushed when you like. 'They shall be Mine,' saith the Lord, 'My
treasures in that day of judgment which I make.'

And so, my brother, all the insignificance of man, as compared with the
magnitude and duration of the universe, need not stagger our faith that
the divinest thing in the universe is a heart that has learnt to love
God and aspires after Him, and should but increase our wonder and our
gratitude that He has been mindful of man and has visited him, in order
that He might give Himself to men, and so might win men for Himself.

II. That brings me, and very briefly, to the other points that I desire
to deal with now. The second one, which is suggested to us from my
second text in the Epistle to Titus, is that this possession, by God,
of man, like man's possession of God, comes because God has given
Himself to man.

The Apostle puts it very strongly in the Epistle to Titus: 'The
glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who
gave Himself for us that He might purify unto Himself _a people for a
possession_.' Israel, according to one metaphor, was God's 'son,'
begotten by that great redeeming act of deliverance from the captivity
of Egypt (Deut. xxxii. 6-19). According to another metaphor, Israel was
God's bride, wooed and won for His own by that same act. Both of these
figures point to the thought that in order to get man for His own He
has to give Himself to man.

And the very height and sublimity of that truth is found in the
Christian fact which the Apostle points to here. We need not depart
from human analogies here either. Christ gave Himself to us that He
might acquire us for Himself. Absolute possession of others is only
possible at the price of absolute surrender to them. No human heart
ever gave itself away unless it was convinced that the heart to which
it gave itself had given itself to it.

And on the lower levels of gratitude and obligation, the only thing
that binds a man to another in utter submission is the conviction that
that other has given himself in absolute sacrifice for him. A doctor
goes into the wards of an hospital with his life in his hands, and
because he does, he wins the full confidence and affection of those
whom he treats. You cannot buy a heart with anything less than a heart.
In the barter of the world it is not 'skin for skin,' but it is 'self
for self'; and if you want to own me, you must give yourself altogether
to me. And the measure in which teachers and guides and preachers and
philanthropists of all sorts make conquests of men is the measure in
which they make themselves sacrifices for men.

Now all that is true, and is lifted to its superlative truth, in the
great central fact of the Christian faith. But there is more than human
analogy here. Christ is not only self-sacrifice in the sense of
surrender, but He is sacrifice in the sense of giving Himself for our
redemption and forgiveness. He has not only given Himself to us, He has
given Himself for us. And there, and on that, is builded, and on that
alone has He a right to build, or have we a right to yield to it, His
claim to absolute authority and utter command over each of us.

He has died for us, therefore the springs of our life are at His
disposal; and the strongest motives which can sway our lives are set in
motion by His touch. His death, says this text, redeems us from
iniquity and purifies us. That points to its power in delivering us
from the service and practice of sin. He buys us from the despot whose
slaves we were, and makes us His own in the hatred of evil and the
doing of righteousness. Moved by His death, we become capable of
heroisms and martyrdoms of devotion to Him. Brethren, it is only as
that self-sacrificing love touches us, which died for our sins upon the
Cross, that the diabolical chain of selfishness will be broken from our
affections and our wills, and we shall be led into the large place of
glad surrender of ourselves to the sweetness and the gentle authority
of His omnipotent love.

III. The last thought that I suggest is the issues to which this mutual
possession points. God owns men, and is owned by them, in order that
there may be a giving and receiving of mutual services of love.

'The Lord's portion is His people.' That in the Old Testament is always
laid as the foundation of certain obligations under which He has come,
and which He will abundantly discharge. What is a great landlord
expected to do to his estate? 'What ought I to have done to my
vineyard?' the divine Proprietor asks through the mouth of His servant
the prophet. He ought to till it, He ought not to starve it, He ought
to fence it, He ought to cast a wall about it, He ought to reap the
fruits. And He does all that for His inheritance. God's honour is
concerned in His portion not being waste. It is not to be a 'garden of
the sluggard,' by which people who pass can see the thorns growing
there. So He will till it, He will plough it, He will pick out the
weeds, and all the disciplines of life will come to us, and the
ploughshare will be driven deep into the heart, that 'the peaceable
fruit of righteousness' may spring up. He will fence His vineyard.
Round about His inheritance His hand will be cast, within His people
His Spirit will dwell. No harm shall come near thee if thy love is
given to Him; safe and untouched by evil thou shalt walk if thou walk
with God. 'He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of Mine eye.' The
soul that trusts Him He takes in charge, and before any evil can fall
to it 'the pillared firmament must be rottenness, and earth be built on
stubble.' 'He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him
against that day.' 'The Lord's portion is His people,' and 'none shall
pluck them out of His hand.'

And on the other side, we belong to God in Christ. What do we owe Him?
What does the vineyard owe the husbandman? Fruit. We are His, therefore
we are bound to absolute submission. 'Ye are not your own.' Life,
circumstances, occupations, all--we hold them at His will. We have no
more right of property in anything than a slave in the bad old days had
in his cabin and patch of ground. They belonged to the master to whom
he belonged. Let us recognise our stewardship, and be glad to know
ourselves His, and all events and things which we sometimes think ours,
His also.

We are His, therefore we owe absolute trust. The slave has at least
this blessing in his lot, that he need have no anxieties; nor need we.
We belong to God, and He will take care of us. A rich man's horses and
dogs are well cared for, and our Owner will not leave us unheeded. Our
well-being involves His good name. Leave anxious thought to masterless
hearts which have to front the world with nobody at their backs. If you
are God's you will be looked after.

We are His, therefore we are bound to live to His praise. That is the
conclusion which one Old Testament passage draws. 'This people have I
formed for Myself; they shall show forth My praise' (Isaiah xliii. 21).
The Apostle Peter quotes these words immediately after those from
Exodus, which describe Israel as 'a people for God's own possession,'
when he says 'that ye should show forth the praise of Him who hath
called you.' Let us, then, live to His glory, and remember that the
servants of the King are bound to stand to their colours amid rebels,
and that they who know the sweetness of possessing God, and the
blessedness of yielding to His supreme control, should acknowledge what
they have found of His goodness, and 'tell forth the honour of His
name, and make His praise glorious.' Let not all the magnificent and
wonderful expenditure of divine longing and love be in vain, nor run
off your hearts like water poured upon a rock. Surely the sun's flames
leaping leagues high, they tell us, in tongues of burning gas, must
melt everything that is near them. Shall we keep our hearts sullen and
cold before such a fire of love? Surely that superb and wonderful
manifestation of the love of God in the Cross of Christ should melt
into running rivers of gratitude all the ice of our hearts.

'He gave Himself for me!' Let us turn to Him and say: 'Lo! I give
myself to Thee. Thou art mine. Make me Thine by the constraint of Thy
love, so utterly, and so saturate my spirit with Thyself, that it shall
not only be Thine, but in a very deep sense it shall be Thee, and that
it may be "no more I that live, but Christ that liveth in me."'




THE EAGLE AND ITS BROOD

'As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth
abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings.'--DEUT.
xxxii. 11.


This is an incomplete sentence in the Authorised Version, but really it
should be rendered as a complete one; the description of the eagle's
action including only the two first clauses, and (the figure being
still retained) the person spoken of in the last clauses being God
Himself. That is to say, it should read thus, 'As an eagle stirreth up
his nest, fluttereth over his young, _He_ spreads abroad His wings,
takes them, bears them on His pinions.' That is far grander, as well as
more compact, than the somewhat dragging comparison which, according to
the Authorised Version, is spread over the whole verse and tardily
explained, in the following, by a clause introduced by an unwarranted
'So'--'the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with
him.'

Now, of course, we all know that the original reference of these words
is to the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, and their training
in the desert. In the solemn address by Jehovah at the giving of the
law (Exodus xix. 4), the same metaphor is employed, and, no doubt, that
passage was the source of the extended imagery here. There we read, 'Ye
know what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings,
and brought you unto Myself.' The meaning of the glowing metaphor, with
its vivid details, is just that Jehovah brought Israel out of its fixed
abode in Goshen, and trained it for mature national life by its varied
desert experiences. As one of the prophets puts the same idea, 'I
taught Ephraim to go,' where the figure of the parent bird training its
callow fledglings for flight is exchanged for that of the nurse
teaching a child to walk. While, then, the text primarily refers to the
experience of the infant nation in the forty years' wanderings, it
carries large truths about us all; and sets forth the true meaning and
importance of life. There seem to me to be three thoughts here, which I
desire to touch on briefly: first, a great thought about God; then an
illuminating thought about the true meaning and aspect of life; and
lastly a calming thought about the variety of the methods by which God
carries out our training.

I. Here is a great thought about God.

Now, it may come as something of a shock if I say that the bird that is
selected for the comparison is not really the eagle, but one which, in
our estimation, is of a very much lower order--viz. the carnivorous
vulture. But a poetical emblem is not the less fitting, though, besides
the points of resemblance, the thing which is so used has others less
noble. Our modern repugnance to the vulture as feeding on carcasses was
probably not felt by the singer of this song. What he brings into view
are the characteristics common to the eagle and the vulture; superb
strength in beak and claw, keenness of vision almost incredible,
magnificent sweep of pinion and power of rapid, unwearied flight. And
these characteristics, we may say, have their analogues in the divine
nature, and the emblem not unfitly shadows forth one aspect of the God
of Israel, who is 'fearful in praises,' who is strong to destroy as
well as to save, whose all-seeing eye marks every foul thing, and who
often pounces on it swiftly to rend it to pieces, though the sky seemed
empty a moment before.

But the action described in the text is not destructive, terrible, or
fierce. The monarch of the sky busies itself with tender cares for its
brood. Then, there is gentleness along with the terribleness. The
strong beak and claw, the gaze that can see so far, and the mighty
spread of wings that can lift it till it is an invisible speck in the
blue vault, go along with the instinct of paternity: and the fledglings
in the nest look up at the fierce beak and bright eyes, and know no
terror. The impression of this blending of power and gentleness is
greatly deepened, as it seems to me, if we notice that it is the male
bird that is spoken about in the text, which should be rendered: 'As
the eagle stirreth up _his_ nest and fluttereth over _his_ young.'

So we just come to the thought that we must keep the true balance
between these two aspects of that great divine nature--the majesty, the
terror, the awfulness, the soaring elevation, the all-penetrating
vision, the power of the mighty pinion, one stroke of which could crush
a universe into nothing; and, on the other side, the yearning instinct
of Fatherhood, the love and gentleness, and all the tender ministries
for us, His children, to which these lead. Brethren, unless we keep
hold of both of these in due equipoise and inseparably intertwining, we
damage the one which we retain almost as much as the one which we
dismiss. For there is no love like the love that is strong, and can be
fierce, and there is no condescension like the condescension of Him who
is the Highest, in order that He may be, and because He is ready to be,
the lowest. Modern tendencies, legitimately recoiling from the
one-sidedness of a past generation, are now turning away far too much
from the Old Testament conceptions of Jehovah, which are concentrated
in that metaphor of the vulture in the sky. And thereby we destroy the
love, in the name of which we scout the wrath.

                    'Infinite mercy, but, I wis,
                     As infinite a justice too.'

'As the vulture stirreth up his nest,'--that is the Old Testament
revelation of the terribleness and gentleness of Jehovah. 'How often
would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth
her chickens under her wing?'--that is the New Testament modification
of the image. But you never could have had the New unless you first had
had the Old. And you are a foolish man if, in the name of the sanctity
of the New, you cast away the teaching of the Old. Keep both the
metaphors, and they will explain and confirm each other.

II. Here we have an illuminating thought of the meaning of life.

What is it all for? To teach us to fly, to exercise our half-fledged
wings in short flights, that may prepare us for, and make it possible
to take, longer ones. Every event that befalls us has a meaning beyond
itself; and every task that we have to do reacts upon us, the doers,
and either fits or hinders us for larger work. Life as a whole, and in
its minutest detail, is worthy of God to give, and worthy of us to
possess, only if we recognise the teaching that is put into picturesque
form in this text--that the meaning of all which God does to us is to
train us for something greater yonder. Life as a whole is 'full of
sound and fury, signifying nothing,' unless it is an apprenticeship
training. What are we here for? To make character. That is the aim and
end of all--to make character; to get experience; to learn the use of
our tools. I declare it seems to me that the world had better be wiped
out altogether, incontinently, unless there is a world beyond, where a
man shall use the force which here he made his own. 'Thou hast been
faithful in a few things; behold I will make thee ruler over many
things.' No man gets to the heart of the mystery of life or has in his
hand the key which will enable him to unlock all the doors and
difficulties of human experience, unless he gets to this--that it is
all meant as training.

If we could only carry that clear conviction with us day by day into
the little things of life, what different things these, which we call
the monotonous trifles of our daily duties, would become! The things
may be small and unimportant, but the way in which we do them is not
unimportant. The same fidelity may be exercised, and must be brought to
bear, in order to do the veriest trifle of our daily lives rightly, as
needs to be invoked, in order to get us safely through the crises and
great times of life. There are no great principles for great duties,
and little ones for little duties. We have to regulate all our conduct
by the same laws. Life is built up of trifles, as mica-flakes, if there
be enough of them, make the Alpine summits towering thousands of feet
into the blue. Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it
is made in the small ones. So, life is meant for discipline, and unless
we use it for that, however much enjoyment we get out of it, we misuse
it.

III. Lastly, there is here a calming thought as to the variety of God's
methods with us.

'As the eagle stirreth up his nest.' No doubt the callow brood are much
warmer and more comfortable in the nest than when they are turned out
of it. The Israelites were by no means enamoured with the prospect of
leaving the flesh-pots and the onions and the farmhouses that they had
got for themselves in Goshen, to tramp with their cattle through the
wilderness. They went after Moses with considerable disinclination.

Here we have, then, as the first thing needed, God's loving compulsion
to effort. To 'stir up the nest' means to make a man uncomfortable
where he is;--sometimes by the prickings of his conscience, which are
often the voices of God's Spirit; sometimes by changes of
circumstances, either for the better or for the worse; and oftentimes
by sorrows. The straw is pulled out of the nest, and it is not so
comfortable to lie in; or a bit of it develops a sharp point that runs
into the half-feathered skin, and makes the fledgling glad to come
forth into the air. We all shrink from change. What should we do if we
had it not? We should stiffen into habits that would dwarf and weaken
us. We all recoil from storms. What should we do if we had them not?
Sea and air would stagnate, and become heavy and putrid and
pestilential, if it were not for the wild west wind and the hurtling
storms. So all our changes, instead of being whimpered over, and all
our sorrows, instead of being taken reluctantly, should be recognised
as being what they are, loving summonses to effort. Then their pressure
would be modified, and their blessing would be secured when their
purpose was served.

But the training of the father-eagle is not confined to stirring up the
nest. What is to become of the young ones when they get out of it, and
have never been accustomed to bear themselves up in the invisible ether
about them? So 'he fluttereth over his young.' It is a very beautiful
word that is employed here, which 'flutter' scarcely gives us. It is
the same word that is used in the first chapter of Genesis, about the
Spirit of God '_brooding_ on the face of the waters'; and it suggests
how near, how all-protecting with expanded wings, the divine Father
comes to the child whose restfulness He has disturbed.

And is not that true? Had you ever trouble that you took as from Him,
which did not bring that hovering presence nearer you, until you could
almost feel the motion of the wing, and be brushed by it as it passed
protectingly above your head? Ah, yes! 'Stirring the nest' is meant to
be the precursor of closer approach of the Father to us; and if we take
our changes and our sorrows as loving summonses from Him to effort, be
sure that we shall realise Him as near to us, in a fashion that we
never did before.

That is not all. There is sustaining power. 'He spreadeth abroad his
wings; he taketh them; beareth them on his wings.' On those broad
pinions we are lifted, and by them we are guarded. It matters little
whether the belief that the parent bird thus carries the young, when
wearied with their short flights, is correct or not. The truth which
underlies the representation is what concerns us. The beautiful
metaphor is a picturesque way of saying, 'In all their afflictions He
was afflicted; and the Angel of His presence saved them.' It is a
picturesque way of saying, 'Thou canst do all things through Christ
which strengtheneth thee.' And we may be very sure that if we let Him
'stir up our nests' and obey His loving summons to effort, He will come
very near to strengthen us for our attempts, and to bear us up when our
own weak wings fail. The Psalmist sang that angels' hands should bear
up God's servant. That is little compared with this promise of being
carried heavenwards on Jehovah's own pinions. A vile piece of Greek
mythology tells how Jove once, in the guise of an eagle, bore away a
boy between his great wings. It is foul where it stands, but it is
blessedly true about Christian experience. If only we lay ourselves on
God's wings--and that not in idleness, but having ourselves tried our
poor little flight--He will see that no harm comes to us.

During life this training will go on; and after life, what then? Then,
in the deepest sense, the old word will be true, 'Ye know how I bore
you on eagle's wings and brought you _to Myself_'; and the great
promise shall be fulfilled, when the half-fledged young brood are
matured and full grown, 'They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they
shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.'




THEIR ROCK AND OUR ROCK

'Their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being
Judges.' DEUT. xxxii. 31.


Moses is about to leave the people whom he had led so long, and his
last words are words of solemn warning. He exhorts them to cleave to
God. The words of the text simply mean that the history of the nation
had sufficiently proved that God, their God, was 'above all gods.' The
Canaanites and all the enemies whom Israel had fought had been beaten,
and in their awe of this warrior people acknowledged that their idols
had found their lord. The great suit of 'Jehovah _versus_ Idols' has
long since been decided. Every one acknowledges that Christianity is
the only religion possible for twentieth century men. But the words of
the text lend themselves to a wider application, and clothe in a
picturesque garb the universal truth that the experience of godless men
proves the futility of their objects of trust, when compared with that
of him whose refuge is in God.

I. God is a Rock to them that trust Him.

We note the singular frequency of that designation in this song, in
which it occurs six times. It is also found often in the Psalms. If
Moses were the singer, we might see in this often-repeated metaphor a
trace of influence of the scenery of the Sinaitic peninsula, which
would be doubly striking to eyes accustomed to the alluvial plains of
Egypt. What are the aspects of the divine nature set forth by this name?

(1) Firm foundation: the solid eternity of the rock on which we can
build.

Petra: faithfulness to promises, unchanging.

(2) Refuge: 'refuge from the storm'; 'my rock and my fortress and my
high tower.'

(3) Refreshment: rock from which water gushed out; and (4) Repose:
'shadow of a great rock'; 'shadow from the heat.'

Trace the image through Scripture, from this song till Christ's parable
of the man who 'built his house on a rock.'

II. Every man's experience shows him that there is no such refuge
anywhere else.

We do not assert that every man consciously comes to that conclusion.
All we say is that he would do so if he rightly pondered the facts. The
history of every life is a history of disappointment. Take these
particulars just stated and ask yourselves: What does experience say as
to the possibility of our possessing such blessings apart from God?
There is no need for us to exaggerate, for the naked reality is sad
enough. If God is not our best Good, we have no solid good. Every other
'rock' crumbles into sand. Else why this restless change, why this
disquiet, why the constant repetition, generation after generation, of
the old, old wail, 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity'? Why does every
heart say Amen to the poet and the dramatist singing of 'the fever and
the fret,' the tragic fare of man's life?

Our appeal is not to men in the flush of excitement, but to them in
their hours of solitary sane reflection. It is from 'Philip drunk to
Philip sober.' We each have material for judging in our own case, and
in the cases of some others. The experiment of living with other
'rocks' than God has been tried for millenniums now. What has been the
issue? You know what Christianity claims that it can do to make a life
stable and safe. Do you know anything else that can? You know what
Christian men will calmly say that they have found. Can you say as
much? Let us hear some dying testimonies. Hearken to Jacob: 'The God
which hath fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which
redeemed me from all evil.' Hearken to Moses: 'The Rock, His work is
perfect, for all His ways are judgment, a God of faithfulness and
without iniquity, just and right is He.' Hearken to Joshua: 'Not one
good thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord your God
spake.' Hearken to David: 'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
.... Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my
life.' Hearken to Paul: 'The Lord stood by me and strengthened me, and
I was delivered ... the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and
will save me unto His heavenly kingdom.' What man who has chosen to
take refuge or build on men and creatures can look backward and forward
in such fashion?

III. Every man's own nature tells him that God is his true Rock.

Again I say that here I do not appeal to the surface of our
consciousness, nor to men who have sophisticated themselves, nor to
people who have sinned themselves, into hardness, but to the voice of
the inner man which speaks in the depths of each man's being.

There is the cry of Want: the manifest want of the soul for God.

There is the voice of Reason.

There is the voice of Conscience.

IV. Yet many of us will not take God for our Rock.

Surely it is a most extraordinary thing that men should be 'judges,'
being convinced in their deepest consciousness that God is the only
Foundation and Refuge, and yet that the conviction should have
absolutely no influence on their conduct. The same stark, staring
inconsequence is visible in many other departments of life, but in this
region it works its most tragic results. The message which many of my
hearers need most is--follow out your deepest convictions, and be true
to the inward voice which condenses all your experience into the one
counsel to take God for the 'strength of your hearts and your portion
for ever,' for only in Him will you find what you need for life and
strength and riches. If He is 'our Rock,' then we shall have a firm
foundation, a safe refuge, inexhaustible refreshment and untroubled
rest. Lives founded on aught beside are built on sand and will be full
of tremors and unsettlements, and at last the despairing builder and
his ruined house will be washed away with the dissolving 'sandbank and
shoal of time' on which he built.




GOD AND HIS SAINTS

'He loved the people; all His saints are in Thy hand: and they sat down
at Thy feet; every one shall receive of Thy words.'--DEUT. xxxiii. 3.


The great ode of which these words are a part is called 'the blessing
wherewith Moses blessed the children of Israel before his death.' It is
mainly an invocation of blessing from Heaven on the various tribes, but
it begins, as the national existence of Israel began, with the
revelation of God on Sinai, and it lays that as the foundation of
everything. It does not matter, for my purposes, in the smallest
degree, who was the author of this great song. Whoever he was, he has,
by dint of divine inspiration and of his own sympathy with the inmost
spirit of the Old Covenant, anticipated the deepest things of Christian
truth; and these are here in the words of our text.

I. The first thing that I would point out is the Divine Love which is
the foundation of all.

'He loved the people.' That is the beginning of everything. The word
that this singer uses is one that only appears in this place, and if we
regard its etymology, there lies in it a very tender and beautiful
expression of the warmth of the divine love, for it is probably
connected with words in an allied language which mean the _bosom_ and a
_tender embrace_, and so the picture that we have is of that great
divine Lover folding 'the people' to His heart, as a mother might her
child, and cherishing them in His bosom.

Still further, the word is in a form in the Hebrew which implies that
the act spoken about is neither past, present, nor future only, but
continuous and perpetual. Thus it suggests to us the thought of
timeless, eternal love, which has no beginning, and therefore has no
end, which does not grow, and therefore will never decline nor decay,
but which runs on upon one lofty level, with neither ups nor downs, and
with no variation of the impulse which sends it forth; always the same,
and always holding its objects in the fervent embrace of which the text
speaks.

Further, mark the place in this great song where this thought comes in.
As I said, it is laid as the beginning of everything. 'We love Him
because He first loved us' was the height to which the last of the
Apostles attained in the last of his writings. But this old singer,
with the mists of antiquity around him, who knew nothing about the
Cross, nothing about the historical Christ, who had only that which
modern thinkers tell us is a revelation of a wrathful God, somehow or
other rose to the height of the evangelical conception of God's love as
the foundation of the very existence of a people who are His. Like an
orchid growing on a block of dry wood and putting forth a gorgeous
bloom, this singer, with so much less to feed his faith than we have,
has yet borne this fair flower of deep and devout insight into the
secret of things and the heart of God. 'He loved the people'--therefore
He formed them for Himself; therefore He brought them out of bondage;
therefore He came down in flashing fire on Sinai and made known His
will, which to know and do is life. All begins from the tender,
timeless love of God.

And if the question is asked, Why does God thus love? the only answer
is, Because he is God. 'Not for your sakes, O house of Israel ... but
for Mine own name's sake.' The love of God is self-originated. In it,
as in all His acts, He is His own motive, as His name, 'I am that I
am,' proclaims. It is inseparable from His being, and flows forth
before, and independent of, anything in the creature which could draw
it out. Men's love is attracted by their perception or their
imagination of something loveable in its objects. It is like a well,
where there has to be much work of the pump-handle before the gush
comes. God's love is like an artesian well, or a fountain springing up
from unknown depths in obedience to its own impulse. All that we can
say is, 'Thou art God. It is Thy nature and property to be merciful.'

'God loved the people.' The bed-rock is the spontaneous, unalterable,
inexhaustible, ever-active, fervent love of God, like that with which a
mother clasps her child to her maternal breast. The fair flower of this
great thought was a product of Judaism. Let no man say that the God of
Love is unknown to the Old Testament.

II. Notice how, with this for a basis, we have next the guardian care
extended to all those that answer love by love.

The singer goes on to say, mixing up his pronouns, in the fashion of
Hebrew poetry, somewhat arbitrarily, 'all _His_ saints are in _Thy_
hand.' Now, what is a 'saint'? A man who answers God's love by his
love. The notion of a saint has been marred and mutilated by the Church
and the world. It has been taken as a special designation of certain
selected individuals, mostly of the ascetic and monastic type, whereas
it belongs to every one of God's people. It has been taken by the world
to mean sanctimoniousness and not sanctity, and is a term of contempt
rather than of admiration on their lips. And even those of us, who have
got beyond thinking that it is a title of honour belonging only to the
aristocracy of Christ's Kingdom, are too apt to mistake what it really
does mean. It may be useful to say a word about the Scriptural use and
true meaning of that much-abused term. The root idea of sanctity or
holiness is not moral character, goodness of disposition and of action,
but it is separation from the world and consecration to God. As surely
as a magnet applied to a heap of miscellaneous filings will pick out
every little bit of iron there, so surely will that love which He bears
to the people, when it is responded to, draw to itself, and therefore
draw out of the heap, the men that feel its impulse and its
preciousness. And so 'saint' means, secondly, righteous and pure, but
it means, first, knit to God, separated from evil, and separated by the
power of His received love.

Now, brethren, here is a question for each of us: Do I yield to that
timeless, tender clasp of the divine Father and Mother in one? Do I
answer it by my love? If I do, then I am a 'saint,' because I belong to
Him, and He belongs to me, and in that commerce I have broken with the
world. If we are true to ourselves, and true to our Lord, and true to
the relation between us, the purity of character, which is popularly
supposed to be the meaning of _holiness_, will come. Not without
effort, not without set-backs, not without slow advance, but it will
come; for he that is consecrated to the Lord is 'separated' from
iniquity. Such is the meaning of 'saint.'

'All His saints are in Thy hand.' The first metaphor of our text spoke
of God's bosom, to which He drew the people and folded them there. This
one speaks of His 'hand.' They lie in it. That means two things. It
means absolute security, for will He not close His fingers over His
palm to keep the soul that has laid itself there? And 'none shall pluck
them out of My Father's hand.' No one but yourself can do that. And you
can do it, if you cease to respond to His love, and so cease to be a
saint. Then you will fall out of His hand, and how far you will fall
God only knows.

Being in God's hand means also submission. Loyola said to his black
army, 'Be like a stick in a man's hand.' That meant utter submission
and abnegation of self, the willingness to be put anywhere, and used
anyhow, and done anything with. And if I by my reception of, and
response to, that timeless love, am a saint belonging to God, then not
only shall I be secure, but I must be submissive. 'All His saints are
in Thy hand.' Do not try to get out of it; be content to let it guide
you as the steersman's hand turns the spokes of the wheel and directs
the ship.

Now, there is a last thought here. I have spoken of the foundation of
all as being divine love, of the security and guardian care of the
saints, and there follows one thought more:--

III. The docile obedience of those that are thus guarded.

As the words stand in our Bible, they are as follow:--'They sat down at
Thy feet; every one shall receive of Thy words.' These two clauses make
up one picture, and one easily understands what it is. It represents a
group of docile scholars, sitting at the Master's feet. He is teaching
them, and they listen open-mouthed and open-eared to what he says, and
will take his words into their lives, like Mary sitting at Christ's
feet, whilst Martha was bustling about His meal. But, beautiful as that
picture is, there has been suggested a little variation in the words
which gives another one that strikes me as being even more beautiful.
There are some difficulties of language with which I need not trouble
you. But the general result is this, that perhaps instead of 'sitting
down at Thy feet' we should read 'followed at Thy feet.' That suggests
the familiar metaphor of a guide and those led by him who, without him,
know not their road. As a dog follows his master, as the sheep their
shepherd, so, this singer felt, will saints follow the God whom they
love. Religion is imitation of God. That was a deep thought for such a
stage of revelation, and it in part anticipates Christ's tender words:
'He goeth before them, and the sheep follow Him, for they know His
voice.' They follow at His feet. That is the blessedness and the power
of Christian morality, that it is keeping close at Christ's heels, and
that instead of its being said to us, 'Go,' He says, 'Come,' and
instead of our being bid to hew out for ourselves a path of duty, He
says to us, 'He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall
have the light of life.' They follow at His feet, as the dog at his
master's, as the sheep at their shepherd's.

They 'receive His words.' Yes, if you will keep close to Him, He will
turn round and speak to you. If you are near enough to Him to catch His
whisper He will not leave you without guidance. That is one side of the
thought, that following we receive what He says, whereas the people
that are away far behind Him scarcely know what His will is, and never
can catch the low whisper which will come to us by providences, by
movements in our own spirits, through the exercise of our own faculties
of judgment and common-sense, if only we will keep near to Him. 'Be ye
not as the horse or as the mule, which have no understanding, whose
mouths must be held in with bit and with bridle, else they will not
come near to thee,' but walk close behind Him, and then the promise
will be fulfilled: 'I will guide thee with Mine eye.' A glance tells
two people who are in sympathy what each wishes, and Jesus Christ will
speak to us, if we keep close at His heels.

They that follow Him will 'receive His words' in another sense. They
will take them in, and His words will not be wasted. And they will
receive them in yet another sense. They will carry them out and do
them, and His words will not be in vain.

So, dear brethren, the peace, the strength, the blessedness, the
goodness, of our lives flow from these three stages, which this singer
so long ago had found to be the essence of everything, recognition of
the timeless tenderness of God, the yielding to and answering that
love, so that it separates us for Himself, the calm security and happy
submission which follow thereon, the imitation of Him in daily life,
and the walking in His steps, which is rewarded and made more perfect
by hearing more distinctly the whisper of His loving, commanding voice.




ISRAEL THE BELOVED

'The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by Him; and the Lord
shall cover him all the day long, and he shall dwell between His
shoulders.'--DEUT. xxxiii. 12.


Benjamin was his father's favourite child, and the imagery of this
promise is throughout drawn from the relations between such a child and
its father. So far as the future history of the tribes is shadowed in
these 'blessings' of this great ode, the reference of the text may be
to the tribe of Benjamin, as specially distinguished by Saul having
been a member of it, and by the Temple having been built on its soil.
But we find that each of the promises of the text is repeated
elsewhere, with distinct reference to the whole nation. For example,
the first one, of safe dwelling, reappears in verse 28 in reference to
Israel; the second one, of God's protecting covering, is extended to
the nation in many places; and the third, of dwelling between His
shoulders, is in substance found again in chap. i. 31, 'the Lord thy
God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son.' So that we may give the
text a wider extension, and take it as setting forth under a lovely
metaphor, and with a restricted reference, what is true of all God's
children everywhere and always.

I. Who are the 'beloved of the Lord'?

The first answer to that question must be--all men. But these great
blessings, so beautifully shadowed in this text, do not belong to all
men; nor does the designation, 'the beloved of the Lord,' belong to all
men, but to those who have entered into a special relation to Him. In
these words of the Hebrew singer there sound the first faint tones of a
music that was to swell into clear notes, when Jesus said: 'If a man
love Me, he will keep My Word, and My Father will love him, and We will
come unto him, and make Our abode with him.' They who are knit by faith
and love to God's only-begotten and beloved Son, by that union receive
'power to become the sons of God,' and share in the love which is ever
pouring out from the Father's heart on 'the Son of His love.'

II. What are their blessed privileges?

The three clauses of the text express substantially the same idea, but
with a striking variety of metaphors.

1. They have a sure dwelling-place.

There is a very slight change of rendering of the first clause, which
greatly increases its 'force, and preserves the figure that is obscured
by the usual translation. We should read 'shall dwell safely _on_,'
rather than '_by_, Him.' And the effect of that small change in the
preposition is to bring out the thought that God is regarded as the
foundation on which His beloved build their house of life, and dwell in
security and calm. If we are sons through the Son, we shall build our
houses or pitch our tents on that firm ground, and, being founded on
the Rock of ages, they will not fall when all created foundations reel
to the overthrow of whatever is built on _them_. It is not
companionship only, blessed as that is, that is promised here. We have
a larger privilege than dwelling _by_ Him, for if we love His Son, we
build _on_ God, and 'God dwelleth in us and we in Him.'

What spiritual reality underlies the metaphor of dwelling or building
on God? The fact of habitual communion.

Note the blessed results of such grounding of our lives on God through
such habitual communion. We shall 'dwell safely.' We may think of that
as being objective safety--that is, freedom from peril, or as being
subjective--that is, freedom from care or fear, or as meaning
'trustfully,' confidently, as the expression is rendered in Psalm xvi.
9 (margin), which is for us the ground of both these. He who dwells in
God trustfully dwells both safely and securely, and none else is free
either from danger or from dread.

2. They have a sure shelter.

God is for His beloved not only the foundation on which they dwell in
safety, but their perpetual covering. They dwell safely because He is
so. There are many tender shapes in which this great promise is
presented to our faith. Sometimes God is thought of as covering the
weak fugitive, as the arching sides of His cave sheltered David from
Saul. Sometimes He is represented as covering His beloved, who cower
under His wings, 'as the hen gathereth her chickens' when hawks are in
the sky. Sometimes He appears as covering them from tempest, 'when the
blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall,' and 'the
shadow of a great rock' shields from its fury. Sometimes He is pictured
as stretching out protection over His beloved's heads, as the Pillar of
cloud lay, long-drawn-out, over the Tabernacle when at rest, and 'on
all the Glory was a defence.' But under whatever emblem the general
idea of a covering shelter was conceived, there was always a
correlative duty on our side. For the root-meaning of one of the Old
Testament words for 'faith' is 'fleeing to a refuge,' and we shall not
be safe in God unless by faith we flee for refuge to Him in Christ.

3. They have a Father who bears them on His shoulders.

The image is the same as in chap. i. already referred to. It recurs
also in Isaiah (xlvi. 3, 4), 'Even to hoar hairs will I carry you, and
I have made and I will bear, yea, I will carry, and will deliver'; and
in Hosea (xi. 3), 'I taught Ephraim to go; I took them on My arms.'

The image beautifully suggests the thought of the favourite child
riding high and happy on the strong shoulder, which lifts it above
rough places and miry ways. The prose reality is: 'My grace is
sufficient for thee, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.'

The Cross carries those who carry it. They who carry God in their
hearts are carried by God through all the long pilgrimage of life.
Because they are thus upheld by a strength not their own, 'they shall
run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint,' and though
marches be long and limbs strained, they shall 'go from strength to
strength till every one of them appears before God in Zion.'



'AT THE BUSH'

'.. The goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush.'-DEUT. xxxiii. 16.


I Think this is the only reference in the Old Testament to that great
vision which underlay Moses' call and Israel's deliverance. It occurs
in what is called 'the blessing wherewith Moses, the man of God,
blessed the children of Israel before his death,' although modern
opinion tends to decide that this hymn is indeed much more recent than
the days of Moses. There seems a peculiar appropriateness in this
reference being put into the mouth of the ancient Lawgiver, for to him
even Sinai, with all its glories, cannot have been so impressive and so
formative of his character as was the vision granted to him when
solitary in the wilderness. It is to be noticed that the characteristic
by which God is designated here never occurs elsewhere than in this one
place. It is intended to intensify the conception of the greatness, and
preciousness, and all-sufficiency of that 'goodwill.' If it is that 'of
Him that dwelt in the bush,' it is sure to be all that a man can need.
I need not remind you that the words occur in the blessing pronounced
on 'Joseph'--that is, the two tribes which represented Joseph--in which
all the greatest material gifts that could be desired by a pastoral
people are first called down upon them, and then the ground of all
these is laid in 'the goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush.' 'The
blessing--let it come on the head of Joseph.'

So then here, first, is a great thought as to what for us all is the
blessing of blessings--God's 'goodwill.' 'Goodwill'-the word, perhaps,
might bear a little stronger rendering. 'Goodwill' is somewhat tepid. A
man may have a good enough will, and yet no very strong emotion of
favour or delight, and may do nothing to carry his goodwill into
action. But the word that is employed here, and is a common enough one
in Scripture, always carries with it a certain intensity and warmth of
feeling. It is more than 'goodwill'; it is more than 'favour'; perhaps
'delight' would be nearer the meaning. It implies, too, not only the
inward sentiment of complacency, but also the active purpose of action
in conformity with it, on God's part. Now it needs few words to show
that these two things, which are inseparable, do make the blessing of
blessings for every one of us--the delight, the complacency, of God in
us, and the active purpose of good in God for us. These are the things
that will make a man happy wherever he is.

If I might dwell for a moment upon other scriptural passages, I would
just recall to you, as bringing up very strongly and beautifully the
all-sufficiency and the blessed effects of having this delight and
loving purpose directed towards us like a sunbeam, the various great
things that a chorus of psalmists say that it will do for a man. Here
is one of their triumphant utterances: 'Thou wilt bless the righteous;
with favour wilt Thou compass him as with a shield.' That crystal
battlement, if I may so vary the figure, is round a man, keeping far
away from him all manner of real evil, and filling his quiet heart as
he stands erect behind the rampart, with the sense of absolute
security. That is one of the blessings that God's favour or goodwill
will secure for us. Again, we read: 'By Thy favour Thou hast made my
mountain to stand strong.' He that knows himself to be the object of
the divine delight, and who by faith knows himself to be the object of
the divine activity in protection, stands firm, and his purposes will
be carried through, because they will be purposes in accordance with
the divine mind, and nothing has power to shake him. So he that grasps
the hand of God can say, not because of his grasp, but because of the
Hand that he holds, 'The Lord is at my right hand; I shall not be
greatly moved. By Thy favour Thou hast made our mountain to stand
strong.' And again, in another analogous but yet diversified
representation, we read: 'In Thee shall we rejoice all the day, and in
Thy favour shall our horn be exalted.' That is the emblem, not only of
victory, but of joyful confidence, and so he who knows himself to have
God for his friend and his helper, can go through the world keeping a
sunny face, whatever the clouds may be, erect and secure, light of
heart and buoyant, holding up his chin above the stormiest waters, and
breasting all difficulties and dangers with a confidence far away from
presumption, because it is the consequence of the realisation of God's
presence. So the goodwill of God is the chiefest good.

Now, if we turn to the remarkable designation of the divine nature
which is here, consider what rivers of strength and of blessedness flow
out of the thought that for each of us 'the goodwill of Him that dwelt
in the bush' may be our possession.

What does that pregnant designation of God say? That was a strange
shrine for God, that poor, ragged, dry desert bush, with apparently no
sap in its gray stem, prickly with thorns, with 'no beauty that we
should desire it,' fragile and insignificant, yet it was 'God's house.'
Not in the cedars of Lebanon, not in the great monarchs of the forest,
but in the forlorn child of the desert did He abide. 'The goodwill of
Him that dwelt in the bush' may dwell in you and me. Never mind how
small, never mind how sapless, never mind how lightly esteemed among
men, never mind though we make a very poor show by the side of the
'oaks of Bashan' or the 'cedars of Lebanon.' It is all right; the Fire
does not dwell in them. 'Unto this man will I look, and with him will I
dwell, who is of a humble and a contrite heart, and who trembleth at My
word.' Let no sense of poverty, weakness, unworthiness, ever draw the
faintest film of fear across our confidence, for even with us He will
sojourn. For it is 'the goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush' that we
evoke for ours.

Again, what more does that name say? He 'that dwelt in the bush' filled
it with fire, and it 'burned and was not consumed.' Now there is good
ground to object to the ordinary interpretation, as if the burning of
the bush which yet remains unconsumed was meant to symbolise Israel,
or, in the New Testament application, the Church which, notwithstanding
all persecution, still remains undestroyed. Our brethren of the
Presbyterian churches have taken the Latin form of the words in the
context for their motto--_Nec Tamen Consumebatur_. But I venture to
think that that is a mistake; and that what is meant by the symbol is
just what is expressed by the verbal revelation which accompanied it,
and that was this: 'I AM THAT I AM.' The fire that did not burn out is
the emblem of the divine nature which does not tend to death because it
lives, nor to exhaustion because it energises, nor to emptiness because
it bestows, but after all times is the same; lives by its own energy
and is independent. 'I am that I have become,'--that is what men have
to say. 'I am that I once was not, and again once shall not be,' is
what men have to say. 'I am that I am' is God's name. And this eternal,
ever-living, self-sufficing, absolute, independent, unwearied,
inexhaustible God is the God whose favour is as inexhaustible as
Himself, and eternal as His own being. 'Therefore the sons of men shall
put their trust beneath the shadow of Thy wings,' and, if they have
'the goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush,' will be able to say,
'Because Thou livest we shall live also.'

What more does the name say? He 'that dwelt in the bush' dwelt there in
order to deliver; and, dwelling there, declared 'I have seen the
affliction of My people, and am come down to deliver them.' So, then,
if the goodwill of that eternal, delivering God is with us, we, too,
may feel that our trivial troubles and our heavy burdens, all the needs
of our prisoned wills and captive souls, are known to Him, and that we
shall have deliverance from them by Him. Brethren, in that name, with
its historical associations, with its deep revelations of the divine
nature, with its large promises of the divine sympathy and help, there
lie surely abundant strengths and consolations for us all. The
goodwill, the delight, of God, and the active help of God, may be ours,
and if these be ours we shall be blessed and strong.

Do not let us forget the place in this blessing on the head of Joseph
which my text holds. It is preceded by an invoking of the precious
things of Heaven, and 'the precious fruits brought forth by the sun...
of the chief things of the ancient mountains, and the precious things
of the lasting hills, and the precious things of the earth and the
fulness thereof.' They are all heaped together in one great mass for
the beloved Joseph. And then, like the golden spire that tops some of
those campaniles in Italian cities, and completes their beauty, above
them all there is set, as the shining apex of all, 'the goodwill of Him
that dwelt in the bush.' That is more precious than all other precious
things; set last because it is to be sought first; set last as in
building some great structure the top stone is put on last of all; set
last because it gathers all others into itself, secures that all others
shall be ours in the measure in which we need them, and arms us against
all possibilities of evil. So the blessing of blessings is the
'goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush.'

In my text this is an invocation only; but we can go further than that.
You and I can make sure that we have it, if we will. How to secure it?
One of the texts which I have already quoted helps us a little way
along t he road in answer to that question, for it says, 'Thou, Lord,
wilt bless the righteous. With favour wilt thou compass him as with a
shield.' But it is of little use to tell me that if I am 'righteous'
God will 'bless me,' and 'compass me with favour.' If you will tell me
how to become righteous, you will do me more good. And we have been
told how to be righteous--'If a man keep My commandments My Father will
love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him.' If we
knit ourselves to Jesus Christ, and we can all do that if we like, by
faith that trusts Him, and by love, the child of faith, that obeys Him,
and grows daily more like Him--then, without a doubt, that delight of
God in us, and that active purpose of good in God's mind towards us,
will assuredly be ours; and on no other terms.

So, dear brethren, the upshot of my homily is just this--Men may strive
and scheme, and wear their finger-nails down to the quick, to get some
lesser good, and fail after all. The greatest good is certainly ours by
that easy road which, however hard it may be otherwise, is made easy
because it is so certain to bring us to what we want. Holiness is the
condition of God's delight in us, and a genuine faith in Christ, and
the love which faith evokes, are the conditions. So it is a very simple
matter You never can be sure of getting the lower good You can be quite
sure of getting the highest. You never can be certain that the precious
things of the earth and the fulness thereof will be yours, or that if
they were, they would be so very precious; but you can be quite sure
that the 'goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush' may lie like light
upon your hearts, and be strength to your limbs.

And so I commend to you the words of the Apostle, 'Wherefore we labour
that, whether present or absent, we may be well-pleasing to Him.' To
minister to God's delight is the highest glory of man. To have the
favour of Him that dwelt in the bush resting upon us is the highest
blessing for man. He will say 'Well done! good and faithful servant.'
'The Lord taketh pleasure'--wonderful as it sounds--'in them that fear
Him, in them that hope in His mercy,' and that, hoping in His mercy,
live as He would have them live.




SHOD FOR THE ROAD

'Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy
strength be.' DEUT. xxxiii. 25.


There is a general correspondence between those blessings wherewith
Moses blessed the tribes of Israel before his death, and the
circumstances and territory of each tribe in the promised land. The
portion of Asher, in whose blessing the words of our text occurs, was
partly the rocky northern coast and partly the fertile lands stretching
to the base of the Lebanon. In the inland part of their territory they
cultivated large olive groves, the produce of which was trodden out in
great rock-hewn cisterns. So the clause before my text is a benediction
upon that industry-'let him dip his foot in oil.' And then the metaphor
naturally suggested by the mention of the foot is carried on into the
next words, 'Thy shoes shall be iron and brass,' the tribe being
located upon rocky sea-coast, having rough roads to travel, and so
needing to be well shod. The substance, then, of that promise seems to
be--strength adequate to, and unworn by, exercise; while the second
clause, though not altogether plain, seems to put a somewhat similar
idea in unmetaphorical shape. 'As thy days, so shall thy strength be,'
probably means the promise of power that grows with growing years.

So, then, we have first that thought that God gives us an equipment of
strength proportioned to our work,--shoes fit for our road. God does
not turn people out to scramble over rough mountains with thin-soled
boots on; that is the plain English of the words. When an Alpine
climber is preparing to go away into Switzerland for rock work, the
first thing he does is to get a pair of strong shoes, with plenty of
iron nails in the soles of them. So Asher had to be shod for his rough
roads, and so each of us may be sure that if God sends us on stony
paths He will provide us with strong shoes, and will not send us out on
any journey for which He does not equip us well.

There are no difficulties to be found in any path of duty, for which he
that is called to tread it is not prepared by Him that sent him.
Whatsoever may be the road, our equipment is calculated for it, and is
given to us from Him that has appointed it.

Is there not a suggestion here, too, as to the sort of travelling we
may expect to have? An old saying tells us that we do not go to heaven
in silver slippers, and the reason is because the road is rough. The
'primrose way' leads somewhere else, and it may be walked on
'delicately.' But if we need shoes of iron and brass, we may pretty
well guess the kind of road we have before us. If a man is equipped
with such coverings on his feet, depend upon it that there will be use
for them before he gets to the end of his day's journey. The thickest
sole will make the easiest travelling over rocky roads. So be quite
sure of this, that if God gives to us certain endowments and equipments
which are only calculated for very toilsome paths, the roughness of the
road will match the stoutness of the shoes.

And see what He does give. See the provision which is made for patience
and strength, for endurance and courage, in all the messages of His
mercy, in all the words of His love, in all the powers of His Gospel,
and then say whether that looks as if we should have an easy life of it
on our way home. Those two ships that went away a while ago upon the
brave, and, as some people thought, desperate task of finding the North
Pole--any one that looked upon them as they lay in Portsmouth Roads,
might know that it was no holiday cruise they were meant for. The
thickness of the sides, the strength of the cordage, the massiveness of
the equipment, did not look like pleasure-sailing.

And so, dear brethren, if we think of all that is given to us in God's
Gospel in the way of stimulus and encouragement, and exhortation, and
actual communication of powers, we may calculate, from the abundance of
the resources, how great will be the strain upon us before we come to
the end, and our 'feet stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem.'  Go into
some of the great fortresses in continental countries, and you will
find the store-rooms full of ammunition and provisions; bread enough
and biscuits enough, as it seems, for half the country, laid up there,
and a deep well somewhere or other in the courtyard. What does that
mean? It means fighting, that is what it means. So if we are brought
into this strong pavilion, so well provisioned, so massively fortified
and defended, that means that we shall need all the strength that is to
be found in those thick walls, and all the sustenance that is to be
found in those gorged magazines, and all the refreshment that is to be
drawn from that free, and full, and inexhaustible fountain, before the
battle is over and the victory won. Depend upon it, the promise 'Thy
shoes shall be iron and brass.' means, 'Thy road shall be rocky and
flinty'; and so it is.

And yet, thank God! whilst it is true that it is very hard and very
difficult for many of us, and hard and difficult--even if without the
'very'--for us all, it is also true that we have the adequate provision
sufficient for all our necessities--and far more than sufficient! It is
a poor compliment to the strength that He gives to us to say that it is
enough to carry us through. God does not deal out His gifts to people
with such an economical correspondence to necessities as that. There is
always a wide margin. More than we can ask, more than we can think,
more than we can need is given us.

If He were to deal with us as men often deal with one another, asking
us, 'Well, how much do you want? cannot you do with a little less?
there is the exact quantity that you need for your support'--if you got
your bread by weight and your water by measure, it would be a very poor
affair. See how He actually does--He says, 'Child, there is Mine own
strength for you'; and we think that we honour Him when we say, 'God
has given us enough for our necessities!' Rather the old word is always
true: 'So they did eat and were filled; and they took up of the
fragments that remained seven baskets-full,' and after they were
satisfied and replete with the provision, there was more at the end
than when they began.

That suggests another possible thought to be drawn from this promise,
namely, that it assures not only of strength adequate to the
difficulties and perils of the journey, but also of a strength which is
not worn out by use.

The 'portion' of Asher was the rocky sea-coast. The sharp, jagged rocks
would cut to pieces anything made of leather long before the day's
march was over; but the travellers have their feet shod with metal, and
the rocks which they have to stumble over will only strike fire from
their shoes. They need not step timidly for fear of wearing them out;
but, wherever they have to march, may go with full confidence that
their shoeing will not fail them. A wise general looks after that part
of his soldiers' outfit with special care, knowing that if _it_ gives
out, all the rest is of no use. So our Captain provides us with an
inexhaustible strength, to which we may fully trust. We shall not
exhaust it by any demands that we can make upon it. We shall only
brighten it up, like the nails in a well-used shoe, the heads of which
are polished by stumbling and scrambling over rocky roads.

So we may be bold in the march, and draw upon our stock of strength to
the utmost. There is no fear that it will fail us. We may put all our
force into our work, we shall not weaken the power which 'by reason of
use is exercised,' not exhausted. For the grace which Christ gives us
to serve Him, being divine, is subject to no weariness, and neither
faints nor fails. The bush that burned unconsumed is a type of that
Infinite Being who works unexhausted, and lives undying, after all
expenditure is rich, after all pouring forth is full. And of His
strength we partake.

Whensoever a man puts forth an effort of any kind whatever--when I
speak, when I lift my hand, when I run, when I think-there is waste of
muscular tissue. Some of my strength goes in the act, and thus every
effort means expenditure and diminution of force. Hence weariness that
needs sleep, waste that needs food, languor that needs rest. We belong
to an order of being in which work is death, in regard to our physical
nature; but our spirits may lay hold of God, and enter into an order of
things in which work is not death, nor effort exhaustion, nor is there
loss of power in the expenditure of power.

That sounds strange, and yet it is not strange. Think of that electric
light which is made by directing a strong stream upon two small pieces
of carbon. As the electricity strikes upon these and turns their
blackness into a fiery blaze, it eats away their substance while it
changes them into light. But there is an arrangement in the lamp by
which a fresh surface is continually being brought into the path of the
beam, and so the light continues without wavering and blazes on. The
carbon is our human nature, black and dull in itself; the electric beam
is the swift energy of God, which makes us 'light in the Lord.' For the
one, decay is the end of effort; for the other, there is none. 'Though
our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.'
Though we belong to the perishing order of nature by our bodily frame,
we belong to the undecaying realm of grace by the spirit that lays hold
upon God. And if our work weary us, as it must do so long as we
continue here, yet in the deepest sanctuary of our being, our strength
is greatened by exercise. 'Thy shoes shall be iron and brass.' 'Thy
raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these
forty years.' 'Stand, therefore, having your feet shod with the
preparedness of the Gospel of peace.'

But this is not all. There is an advance even upon these great promises
in the closing words. That second clause of our text says more than the
first one. 'Thy shoes shall be iron and brass,' that promises us powers
and provision adapted to, and unexhausted by, the weary pilgrimage and
rough road of life. But 'as thy days, so shall thy strength be,' says
even more than that. The meaning of the word rendered 'strength' in our
version is very doubtful, and most modern translators are inclined to
render it 'rest.' But if we adhere to the translation of our version,
we get a forcible and relevant promise, which fits on well to the
previous clause, understood as it has been in my previous remarks. The
usual understanding of the words is 'strength proportioned to thy day,'
an idea which we have found already suggested by the previous clause.
But that explanation rests on, or at any rate derives support from, the
common misquotation of the words. They are not, as we generally hear
them quoted, 'As thy day, so shall thy strength be,'--but 'day' is in
the plural, and that makes a great difference. 'As thy days, so shall
thy strength be,' that is to say: the two sums--of 'thy days' and of
'thy strength'--keep growing side by side, the one as fast as the other
and no faster. The days increase. Well, what then? The strength
increases too. As I said, we are allied to two worlds. According to the
law of one of them, the outer world of physical life, we soon reach the
summit of human strength. For a little while it is true, even in the
life of nature, that our power grows with our days. But we soon reach
the watershed, and then the opposite comes to be true. Down, steadily
down, we go. With diminishing power, with diminishing vitality, with a
dimmer eye, with an obtuser ear, with a slower-beating heart, with a
feebler frame, we march on and on to our grave. 'As thy days, so shall
thy weakness be,' is the law for all of us mature men and women in
regard to our outward life.

But, dear brethren, we may be emancipated from that dreary law in
regard to the true life of our spirits, and instead of growing weaker
as we grow older, we may and we should grow stronger. We may be and we
should be moving on a course that has no limit to its advance. We may
be travelling on a shining path through the heavens, that has no
noon-tide height from which it must slowly and sadly decline, but tends
steadily and for ever upwards, nearer and nearer to the very fountain
itself of heavenly radiance. 'The path of the just is as the shining
light, which shineth more and more till the noon-tide of the day.' But
the reality surpasses even that grand thought, for it discloses to us
an endless approximation to an infinite beauty, and an ever-growing
possession of never exhausted fulness, as the law for the progress of
all Christ's servants. The life of each of us may and should be
continual accession and increase of power through all the days here,
through all the ages beyond. Why? Because 'the life which I live, I
live by the faith of the Son of God.' Christ liveth in me. It is not my
strength that grows, so much as God's strength in me which is given
more abundantly as the days roll. It is so given on one condition. If
my faith has laid hold of the infinite, the exhaustless, the immortal
energy of God, unless there is something fearfully wrong about me, I
shall be becoming purer, nobler, wiser, more observant of His will,
gentler, liker Christ, every way fitter for His service, and for larger
service, as the days increase.

Those of us who have reached middle life, or perhaps gone a little over
the watershed, ought to have this experience as our own in a very
distinct degree. The years that are past ought to have drawn us
somewhat away from our hot pursuing after earthly and perishable
things. They should have added something to the clearness and
completeness of our perception of the deep simplicity of God's gospel.
They should have tightened our hold and increased our possession of
Christ, and unfolded more and more of His all-sufficiency. They should
have enriched us with memories of God's loving care, and lighted all
the sky behind with a glow which is reflected on the path before us,
and kindles calm confidence in His unfailing goodness. They should have
given us power and skill for the conflicts that yet remain, as the Red
Indians believe that the strength of every defeated and scalped enemy
passes into his conqueror's arm. They should have given force to our
better nature, and weakening, progressive weakening, to our worse. They
should have rooted us more firmly and abidingly in Him from whom all
our power comes, and so have given us more and fuller supplies of His
exhaustless and ever-flowing might.

So it may be with us if we abide in Him, without whom we are nothing,
but partaking of whose strength 'the weakest shall be as David, and
David as an angel of God.'

If for us, drawing nearer to the end is drawing nearer to the light,
our faces will be brightened more and more with that light which we
approach, and our path will be 'as the shining light which shines more
and more unto the noon-tide of the day,' because we are closer to the
very fountain of heavenly radiance, and growingly bathed and flooded
with the outgoings of His glory. 'As thy days, so shall thy strength
be.'

The promise ought to be true for us all. It _is_ true for all who use
the things that are freely given to them of God. And whilst thus it is
the law for the devout life here, its most glorious fulfilment remains
for the life beyond. There each new moment shall bring new strength,
and growing millenniums but add fresh vigour to our immortal life. Here
the unresting beat of the waves of the sea of time gnaws away the bank
and shoal whereon we stand, but there each roll of the great ocean of
eternity shall but spread new treasures at our feet and add new acres
to our immortal heritage. 'The oldest angels,' says Swedenborg, 'look
the youngest.' When life is immortal, the longer it lasts the stronger
it becomes, and so the spirits that have stood for countless days
before His throne, when they appear to human eyes, appear as--'young
men clothed in long white garments,'--full of unaging youth and energy
that cannot wane. So, whilst in the flesh we must obey the law of
decay, the spirit may be subject to this better law of life, and 'while
the outward man perisheth, the inward man be renewed day by day.' 'Even
the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly
fall; but they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.'




A DEATH IN THE DESERT

'So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab,
according to the word of the Lord. 6. And he buried him in a valley in
the land of Moab, ... but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this
day.'--DEUT. xxxiv.5, 6.


A fitting end to such a life! The great law-giver and leader had been
all his days a lonely man; and now, surrounded by a new generation, and
all the old familiar faces vanished, he is more solitary than ever. He
had lived alone with God, and it was fitting that alone with God he
should die.

How the silent congregation must have watched, as, alone, with 'natural
strength unabated,' he breasted the mountain, and went up to be seen no
more! With dignified reticence our chapter tells us no details. He
'died there,' in that dreary solitude, and in some cleft he was buried,
and no man knows where. The lessons of that solitary death and unknown
tomb may best be learned by contrast with another death and another
grave--those of the Leader of the New Covenant, the Law-giver and
Deliverer from a worse bondage, and Guide into a better Canaan, the Son
who was faithful over His own house, as Moses was 'faithful in all his
house, as a servant.' That lonely and forgotten grave among the savage
cliffs was in keeping with the whole character and work of him who lay
there.

  Here,--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
    Lightnings are loosened,
  Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,
    Peace let the dew send!
  Lofty designs must close in like effects;     Loftily lying,
  Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects,
    Living and dying.'

Contrast that grave with the sepulchre in the garden where Jesus lay,
close by a city wall, guarded by foes, haunted by troops of weeping
friends, visited by a great light of angel faces. The one was hidden
and solitary, as teaching the loneliness and mystery of death; the
other revealed light in the darkness, and companionship in the
loneliness. The one faded from men's memory because it was nothing to
any man; no impulses, nor hopes, nor gifts, could come from it. The
other forever draws hearts and memories, because in it was wrought out
the victory in which all our hopes are rooted. An endured cross, an
empty grave, an occupied throne, are as the threefold cord on which all
our hopes hang. Moses was solitary as God's servant in life and death,
and oblivion covered his mountain grave. Christ's 'delights were with
the sons of men.' He lived among them, and all men 'know his sepulchre
to this day.'

I. Note, then, first, as a lesson gathered from this lonely death, the
penalty of transgression.

One of the great truths which the old law and ordinances given by Moses
were intended to burn in on the conscience of the Jew, and through him
on the conscience of the world, was that indissoluble connection
between evil done and evil suffered, which reaches its highest
exemplification in the death which is the 'wages of sin.' And just as
some men that have invented instruments for capital punishment have
themselves had to prove the sharpness of their own axe, so the
lawgiver, whose message it had been to declare, 'the soul that sinneth
it shall die,' had himself to go up alone to the mountain-top to
receive in his own person the exemplification of the law that had been
spoken by his own lips. He sinned when, in a moment of passion  (with
many palliations and excuses), he smote the rock that he was bidden to
address, and forgot therein, and in his angry words to the rebels, that
he was only an instrument in the divine hand. It was a momentary
wavering in a hundred and twenty years of obedience. It was one failure
in a life of self-abnegation and suppression. The stern sentence came.

People say, 'A heavy penalty for a small offence.' Yes; but an offence
of Moses could not be a small offence.' _Noblesse oblige!_ The higher a
man rises in communion with God, and the more glorious the message and
office which are put into his hands, the more intolerable in him is the
slightest deflection from the loftiest level. A splash of mud, that
would never be seen on a navvy's clothes, stains the white satin of a
bride or the embroidered garment of a noble. And so a little sin done
by a loftily endowed and inspired man ceases to be small.

Nor are we to regard that momentary lapse only from the outside and the
surface. One little mark under the armpit of a plague-sufferer tells
the physician that the fatal disease is there. A tiny leaf above ground
may tell that, deep below, lurks the root of a poison plant. That
little deflection, coming as it did at the beginning of the resumption
of his functions by the Lawgiver after seven-and-thirty years of
comparative abeyance, and on his first encounter with the new
generation that he had to lead, was a very significant indication that
his character had begun to yield and suffer from the strain that had
been put upon it; and that, in fact, he was scarcely fit for the
responsibilities that the new circumstances brought. So the penalty was
not so disproportionate to the fault as it may seem.

And was the penalty such a very great one? Do you think that a man who
had been toiling for eighty years at a very thankless task would
consider it a very severe punishment to be told, 'Go home and take your
wages'? It did not mean the withdrawal of the divine favour. 'Moses and
Aaron among his priests. ... Thou wast a God that forgavest them,
though Thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.' The penalty of a
forgiven sin is never hard to bear, and the penalty of a forgiven sin
is very often punctually and mercifully exacted.

But still we are not to ignore the fact that this lonely death, with
which we are now concerned, is of the nature of a penal infliction. And
so it stands forth in consonance with the whole tone of the Mosaic
teaching. I admit, of course, that the mere physical fact of the
separation between body and spirit is simply the result of natural law.
But that is not the death that you and I know. Death as we know it, the
ugly thing that flings its long shadows across all life, and that comes
armed with terrors for conscience and spirit, is 'the wages of sin,'
and is only experienced by men who have transgressed the law of God. So
far Moses in his life and in his death carries us--that no
transgression escapes the appropriate punishment; that the smallest sin
has in it the seeds of mortal consequences; that the loftiest saint
does not escape the law of retribution.

And no further does Moses with his Law and his death carry us. But we
turn to the other death. And there we find the confirmation, in an
eminent degree, of that Law, and yet the repeal of it. It is confirmed
and exhausted in Jesus Christ. His death was 'the wages of sin.' Whose?
Not His. Mine, yours, every man's. And because He died, surrounded by
men, outside the old city wall, pure and sinless in Himself, He therein
both said 'Amen' to the Law of Moses, and swept it away. For all the
sins of the world were laid upon His head, He bore the curse for us
all, and has emptied the bitter cup which men's transgressions have
mingled. Therefore the solitary death in the desert proclaims 'the
wages of sin'; that death outside the city wall proclaims 'the gift of
God,' which is 'eternal life.'

II. Another of the lessons of our incident is the withdrawal, by a hard
fate, of the worker on the very eve of the completion of his work.

For all these forty years there had gleamed before the fixed and
steadfast spirit of the sorely tried leader one hope that he never
abandoned, and that was that he might look upon and enter into the
blessed land which God had promised. And now he stands on the heights
of Moab. Half a dozen miles onwards, as the crow flies, and his feet
would tread its soil. He lifts his eyes, and away up yonder, in the far
north, he sees the rolling uplands of Gilead, and across the deep gash
where the Jordan runs, he catches a glimpse of the blue hills of
Naphtali or of Galilee, and the central mountain masses of Ephraim and
Manasseh, where Ebal and Gerizim lift their heads; and then, further
south, the stony summits of the Judaean hills, where Jerusalem and
Bethlehem lie, and, through some gap in the mountains, a gleam as of
sunshine upon armour tells where the ocean is. And then his eye falls
upon the waterless plateau of the South, and at his feet the fertile
valley of Jordan, with Jericho glittering amongst its palm trees like a
diamond set in emeralds, and on some spur of the lower hill bounding
the plain, the little Zoar. This was the land which the Lord had
promised to the fathers, for which he had been yearning, and to which
all his work had been directed all these years; and now he is to die,
as my text puts it, with such pathetic emphasis, 'there in Moab,' and
to have no part in the fair inheritance.

It is the lot of all epoch-making men, of all great constructive and
reforming geniuses, whether in the Church or in the world, that they
should toil at a task, the full issues of which will not be known until
their heads are laid low in the dust. But if, on the one hand, that
seems hard, on the other hand there is the compensation of 'the vision
of the future and all the wonder that shall be,' which is granted many
a time to the faithful worker ere he closes his eyes. But that is not
the fate of epoch-making and great men only; it is the law for our
little lives. If these are worth anything, they are constructed on a
scale too large to bring out all their results here and now. It is easy
for a man to secure immediate consequences of an earthly kind; easy
enough for him to make certain that he shall have the fruit of his
toil. But quick returns mean small profits; and an unfinished life that
succeeds in nothing may be far better than a completed one, that has
realised all its shabby purposes and accomplished all its petty
desires. Do you, my brother, live for the far-off; and seek not for the
immediate issues and fruits that the world can give, but be contented
to be of those whose toil waits for eternity to disclose its
significance. Better a half-finished temple than a finished pigstye or
huckster's shop. Better a life, the beginning of much and the
completion of nothing, than a life directed to and hitting an earthly
aim. 'He that soweth to the spirit shall of the Spirit reap life
everlasting,' and his harvest and garner are beyond the grave.

III. Again, notice here the lesson of the solitude and mystery of death.

Moses dies alone, with no hand to clasp his, none to close his eyes;
but God's finger does it. The outward form of his death is but putting
into symbol and visibility the awful characteristics of that last
moment for us all. However closely we have been twined with others,
each of us has to unclasp dear hands, and make that journey through the
narrow, dark tunnel by himself. We live alone in a very real sense, but
we each have to die as if there were not another human being in the
whole universe but only ourselves. But the solitude may be a solitude
with God. Up there, alone with the stars and the sky and the
everlasting rocks and menacing death, Moses had for companion the
supporting God. That awful path is not too desolate and lonely to be
trodden if we tread it with Him.

Moses' lonely death leads to a society yonder. If you refer to the
thirty-second chapter you will find that, when he was summoned to the
mountain, God said to him, 'Die in the mount whither thou goest up, and
be gathered to thy people.' He was to be buried there, up amongst the
rocks of Moab, and no man was ever to visit his sepulchre to drop a
tear over it. How, then, was he 'gathered to his people'? Surely only
thus, that, dying in the desert alone, he opened his eyes in 'the
City,' surrounded by 'solemn troops and sweet societies' of those to
whom he was kindred. So the solitude of a moment leads on to blessed
and eternal companionship.

So far the death of Moses carries us. What does the other death say?
Moses had none but God with him when he died. There is a drearier
desolation than that, and Jesus Christ proved it when He cried, 'My
God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?' That was solitude indeed, and
in that hour of mysterious, and to us unfathomable, desertion and
misery, the lonely Christ sounded a depth, of which the lawgiver in His
death but skimmed the surface. Christ was parted from God in His death,
because He bore on Him the sins that separate us from our Father, and
in order that none of us may ever need to tread that dark passage
alone, but may be able to say, 'I will fear no evil, for Thou art with
me'--Thou, who hast trodden every step in its rough and dreary path,
uncheered by the presence which cheers us and millions more. Christ
died that we might live. He died alone that, when we come to die, we
may hold His hand and the solitude may vanish.

Then, again, our incident teaches us the mystery that wrapped death to
that ancient world, of which we may regard that unknown and forgotten
sepulchre as the visible symbol. Deep darkness lies over the Old
Testament in reference to what is beyond the grave, broken by gleams of
light, when the religious consciousness asserted its indestructibility,
in spite of all appearance to the contrary; but never growing to the
brightness of serene and continuous assurance of immortal life and
resurrection. We may conceive that mysteriousness as set forth for us
by that grave that was hidden away in the defiles of Moab, unvisited
and uncared for by any.

We turn to the other grave, and there, as the stone is rolled away, and
the rising sunshine of the Easter morning pours into it, we have a
visible symbol of the life and immortality which Jesus Christ then
brought to light by His Gospel. The buried grave speaks of the
inscrutable mystery that wrapped the future: the open sepulchre
proclaims the risen Lord of life, and the sunlight certainty of future
blessedness which we owe to Him. Death is solitary no more, though it
be lonely as far as human companionship is concerned; and a mystery no
more, though what is beyond is hidden from our view, and none but
Christ has ever returned to tell the tale, and He has told us little
but the fact that we shall live with Him.

We rejoice that we have not to turn to a grave hid amongst the hills
where our dead Leader lies, but to an open sepulchre by the city wall
in the sunshine, from whence has come forth the ever-living 'Captain of
our salvation.'

IV. The last lesson is the uselessness of a dead leader to a generation
with new conflicts.

Commentators have spent a great deal of ingenuity in trying to assign
reasons why God concealed the grave of Moses. The text does not say
that God concealed it at all. The ignorance of the place of his
sepulchre does not seem to have been part of the divine design, but
simply a consequence of the circumstances of his death, and of the fact
that he lay in an enemy's land, and that they had had something else to
do than go to look for the grave of a dead commander. They had to
conquer the land, and a living Joshua was what they wanted, not a dead
Moses.

So we may learn from this how easily the gaps fill. 'Thirty days'
mourning,' and says my text, with almost a bitter touch,' so the days
of mourning for Moses were ended.' A month of it, that was all; and
then everybody turned to the new man that was appointed for the new
work. God has many tools in His tool-chest, and He needs them all
before the work is done. Joshua could no more have wielded Moses' rod
than Moses could have wielded Joshua's sword. The one did his work, and
was laid aside. New circumstances required a new type of character--the
smaller man better fitted for the rougher work. And so it always is.
Each generation, each period, has its own men that do some little part
of the work which has to be done, and then drop it and hand over the
task to others. The division of labour is the multiplication of joy at
the end, and 'he that soweth and he that reapeth rejoice together.' But
whilst the one grave tells us, 'This man served his generation by the
will of God, and was laid asleep and saw corruption,' the other grave
proclaims One whom all generations need, whose work is comprehensive
and complete, who dies never. 'He liveth and was dead, and is alive for
evermore.' Christ, and Christ alone, can never be antiquated. This day
requires Him, and has in Him as complete an answer to all its
necessities as if no other generation had ever possessed Him. He liveth
for ever, and for ever is the Shepherd of men.

So Aaron dies and is buried on Hor, and Moses dies and is buried on
Pisgah, and Joshua steps into his place, and, in turn, he disappears.
The one eternal Word of God worked through them all, and came at last
Himself in human flesh to be the Everlasting Deliverer, Redeemer,
Founder of the Covenant, Lawgiver, Guide through the wilderness,
Captain of the warfare, and all that the world or a single soul can
need until the last generation has crossed the flood, and the wandering
pilgrims are gathered in the land of their inheritance. The dead Moses
pre-supposes and points to the living Christ. Let us take Him for our
all-sufficing and eternal Guide.




THE BOOK OF JOSHUA




THE NEW LEADERS COMMISSION

'Now after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord it came to pass,
that the Lord spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' minister,
saying, 2. Moses My servant is dead: now therefore arise, go over this
Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to
them, even to the children of Israel. 3. Every place that the sole of
your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto
Moses. 4. From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great
river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the
great sea, toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast. 5.
There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of
thy life; as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail
thee, nor forsake thee. 6. Be strong and of a good courage; for unto
this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I sware
unto their fathers to give them. 7. Only be thou strong and very
courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law,
which Moses My servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right
hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest.
8. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou
shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do
according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy
way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. 9. Have not I
commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither
be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou
goest. 10. Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people, saying,
11. Pass through the host, and command the people, saying, Prepare you
victuals; for within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan, to go
in to possess the land, which the Lord your God giveth you to possess
it.'--JOSHUA I. 1-11.


The closest connection exists between Deuteronomy and Joshua. The
narrative may be read as running on without a break. It turns away from
the lonely grave up on the mountain to the bustling camp and the new
leader. No man is indispensable. God's work goes on uninterrupted. The
instruments are changed, but the Master-hand is the same, and lays one
tool aside and takes another out of the tool-chest as He will. Moses is
dead,--what then? Does his death paralyse the march of the tribes? No;
it is but the ground for the ringing command, 'Therefore arise, go over
this Jordan.' The immediate installation of his successor, and the
uninterrupted continuance of the advance, do not mean that Moses is not
honoured or is forgotten, for the narrative lovingly links his
honorific title, 'the servant of the Lord,' with the mention of his
death; and God Himself does the same, for he is thrice referred to in
the divine command to Joshua, as the recipient of the promise of the
conquest, as the example of the highest experience of God's
all-sufficing companionship, and as the medium by which Israel received
the law. Joshua steps into the empty place, receives the same great
promise, is assured of the same Presence, and is to obey the same law.
The change of leaders is great, but nothing else is changed; and even
it is not so great as faint hearts in their sorrow are apt to think,
for the real Leader lives, and Moses and Joshua alike are but the
transmitters of His orders and His aids to Israel.

The first command given to Joshua was a trial of his faith, for 'Jordan
was in flood' (Joshua iii. 15),--and how was that crowd to get across,
when fords were impassable and ferry-boats were wanting, to say nothing
of the watchful eyes that were upon them from the other bank? To cross
a stream in the face of the enemy is a ticklish operation, even for
modern armies; what must it have been, then, for Joshua and his horde?
Not a hint is given him as to the means by which the crossing is to be
made possible. He has Jehovah's command to do it, and Jehovah's promise
to be with him, and that is to be enough. We too have sometimes to face
undertakings which we cannot see how to carry through; but if we do see
that the path is one appointed by God, and will boldly tread it, we may
be quite sure that, when we come to what at present seems like a
mountain wall across it, we shall find that the glen opens as we
advance, and that there is a way,--narrow, perhaps, and dangerous, but
practicable. 'One step enough for me' should be our motto. We may trust
God not to command impossibilities, nor to lead us into a _cul de sac._

The promise to Moses (Deut. ii. 24) is repeated almost verbally in
verse 4. The boundaries of the land are summarily given as from 'the
wilderness' in the south to 'this Lebanon' in the north, and from the
Euphrates in the east to the Mediterranean in the west. 'The land of
the Hittites' is not found in the original passage in Deuteronomy, and
it seems to be a designation of the territory between Lebanon and the
Euphrates, which we now know to have been the seat of the northern
Hittites, while the southern branch was planted round Hebron and the
surrounding district. But these wide boundaries were not attained till
late in the history, and were not long retained. Did the promise, then,
fail? No, for it, like all the promises, was contingent on conditions,
and Israel's unfaithfulness cut short its extent of territory. We, too,
fail to possess all the land destined for us. Our charter is much wider
than our actual wealth. God gives more than we take, and we are content
to occupy but a corner of the broad land which He has given us. In like
manner Joshua did not realise to the full the following promise of
uniform victory, but was defeated at Ai and elsewhere. The reason was
the same,--the faithlessness of the people. Unbelief and sin turn a
Samson into a weakling, and make Israel flee before the ranks of the
Philistines.

The great encouragement given to Joshua in entering on his hard and
perilous enterprise is twice repeated here: 'As I was with Moses, so
will I be with thee.' Did Joshua remember how, nearly forty years
since, he had fronted the mob of cowards with the very same assurance,
and how the answer had been a shower of stones? The cowards are all
dead,--will their sons believe the assurance now? If we do believe that
God is with us, we shall be ready to cross Jordan in flood, and to meet
the enemies that are waiting on the other bank. If we do not, we shall
not dare greatly, nor succeed in what we attempt. The small successes
of material wealth and gratified ambition may be ours, but for all the
higher duties and nobler conflicts that become a man, the condition of
achievement and victory is steadfast faith in God's presence and help.

That assurance--which we may all have if we cling to Jesus, in whom God
comes to be with every believing soul--is the only basis on which the
command to Joshua, thrice repeated, can wisely or securely be rested.
It is mockery to say to a man conscious of weakness, and knowing that
there are evils which must surely come, and evils which may possibly
come, against which he is powerless, 'Don't be afraid' unless you can
show him good reason why he need not be. And there is only one reason
which can still reasonable dread in a human heart that has to front
'all the ills that flesh is heir to,' and sees behind them all the grim
form of death. He ought to be afraid, unless--unless what? Unless he
has heard and taken into his inmost soul the Voice that said to Joshua,
'I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee: be strong and of a good
courage,' or, still more sweet and peace-bringing, the Voice that said
to the frightened crew of the fishing-boat in the storm and the
darkness,' It is I; be not afraid.' If we know that Christ is with us,
it is wise to be strong and courageous; if we are meeting the tempest
alone, the best thing we can do is to fear, for the fear may drive us
to seek for His help, and He ever stretches out His hand to him who is
afraid, as he ought to be, when he feels the cold water rising above
his knees, and by his very fear is driven to faith, and cries, 'Lord,
save; I perish!'

Courage that does not rest on Christ's presence is audacity rather than
courage, and is sure to collapse, like a pricked bladder, when the
sharp point of a real peril comes in contact with it. If we sit down
and reckon the forces that we have to oppose to the foes that we are
sure to meet, we shall find ourselves unequal to the fight, and, if we
are wise, shall 'send the ambassage' of a humble desire to the great
King, who will come to our help with His all-conquering powers. Then,
and only then, shall we be safe in saying,' I will not fear what man
can do unto me, or devils either,' when we have said,' In God have I
put my trust,' and have heard Him answering, 'I will not fail thee, nor
forsake thee.




THE CHARGE TO THE SOLDIER OF THE LORD

'Only be then strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to
do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded thee...
that thou mayest prosper wheresoever thou goest. 8. This book of the
law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shall meditate therein
day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is
written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then
thou shalt have good success.'--JOSHUA i. 7,8.


This is the central portion of the charge given to the successor of
Moses. Joshua was a very small man in comparison with his predecessor.
He was no prophet nor constructive genius; he was not capable of the
heights of communion and revelation which the lofty spirit of Moses was
able to mount. He was only a plain, fiery soldier, with energy, swift
decision, promptitude, self-command, and all the military virtues in
the highest degree. The one thing that he needed was to be 'strong and
courageous'; and over and over again in this chapter you will find that
injunction pealed into his ears. He is the type of the militant servant
of the Lord, and the charge to him embodies the duties of all such.

I. We have here the duty of courageous strength.

Christianity has altered the perspective of human virtues, has thrown
the gentler ones into prominence altogether unknown before, and has
dimmed the brilliancy of the old heroic type of character; but it has
not struck those virtues out of its list. Whilst the perspective is
altered, there is as much need in the lowliest Christian life for the
loftiest heroism as ever there was. For in no mere metaphor, but in
grim earnest, all Christian progress is conflict, and we have to fight,
not only with the evils that are within, but, if we would be true to
the obligations of our profession and loyal to the commands of our
Master, we have to take our part in the great campaign which He has
inaugurated and is ever carrying on against every abuse and oppression,
iniquity and sin, that grinds down the world and makes our brethren
miserable and servile. So, then, in these words we have directions in
regard to a side of the Christian character, indispensable to-day as
ever, and the lack of which cannot be made up for by any amount of
sweet and contemplative graces.

Jesus Christ is the type of both. The Conqueror of Canaan and the
Redeemer of the world bear the same name. The Jesus whom we trust was a
Joshua. And let us learn the lesson that neither the conqueror of the
typical and material land of promise nor the Redeemer who has won the
everlasting heaven for our portion could do their work without the
heroic side of human excellence being manifestly developed. Do you
remember 'He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem'? Do you
remember that the Apostle whom a hasty misconception has thought of as
the gentlest of the Twelve, because he had most to say about love, is
the Apostle that more emphatically than any other rings into our ears
over and over again the thought of the Christ, militant and victorious,
the Hero as well as the patient Sufferer, the 'Captain of our
salvation'? And so let us recognise how both the gentler and the
stronger graces, the pacific and the warlike side of human excellence,
have their highest development in Jesus Christ, and learn that the
firmest strength must be accompanied with the tenderest love and
swathed in meekest gentleness. As another Apostle has it in his
pregnant, brief injunctions, ringing and laconic like a general's word
of command, 'Quit you like men I be strong! let all your deeds be done
in love!' Braid the two things together, for the mightiest strength is
the love that conquers hate, and the only love that is worthy of a man
is the love that is strong to contend and to overcome.

'Be strong.' Then strength is a duty; then weakness is a sin. Then the
amount of strength that we possess and wield is regulated by ourselves.
We have our hands on the sluice. We may open it to let the whole full
tide run in, or we may close it till a mere dribble reaches us. For the
strength which is strength, and not merely weakness in a fever, is a
strength derived, and ours because derived. The Apostle gives the
complete version of the exhortation when he says: 'Finally, my
brethren,' that Omega of command which is the Alpha of performance, 'be
strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.' Let Christ's
strength in. Open the heart wide that it may come. Keep yourself in
continual touch with God, the fountain of all power. Trust is strength,
because trust touches the Rock of Ages.

For this reason the commandment to be strong and of good courage is in
the text based upon this: 'As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee.
I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.' Our strength depends on
ourselves, because our strength is the fruit of our faith. And if we
live with Him, grasping His hand and, in the realising consciousness of
our own weakness, looking beyond ourselves, then power will come to us
above our desire and equal to our need. The old victories of faith will
be reproduced in us when we say with the ancient king, 'Lord! We know
not what to do, but our eyes are up unto Thee.' Then He will come to
us, to make us 'strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.'
'Wait on the Lord and He will strengthen thine heart; wait, I say, on
the Lord.'

But courage is duty, too, as well as strength. Power and the
consciousness of power do not always go together. In regard to the
strength of nature, courage and might are quite separable. There may be
a strong coward and a weak hero. But in the spiritual region, strength
and courage do go together. The consciousness of the divine power with
us, and that alone, will make us bold with a boldness that has no taint
of levity and presumption mingled with it, and never will overestimate
its own strength. The charge to Joshua, then, not only insists upon the
duty of strength, but on the duty of conscious strength, and on the
duty of measuring the strength that is at my back with the weakness
that is against me, and of being bold because I know that more and
'greater is He that is with me than are they that be with them.'

II. So much, then, for the first of the exhortations here. Now look
next at the duty of implicit obedience to the word of command.

That is another soldierly virtue, the exercise of which sheds a
nobility over the repulsive horrors of the battlefield. Joshua had to
be fitted to command by learning to obey, and, like that other soldier
whose rough trade had led him to some inkling of Christ's authority by
its familiarising him with the idea of the strange power of the word of
command, had to realise that he himself was 'under authority' before he
could issue his orders.

Courage and strength come first, and on them follows the command to do
all according to the law, to keep it without deflection to right or
left, and to meditate on it day and night. These two virtues make the
perfect soldier-courage and obedience. Daring and discipline must go
together, and to know how to follow orders is as essential as to know
how to despise dangers.

But the connection between these two, as set forth in this charge, is
not merely that they must co-exist, but that courage and strength are
needed for, and are to find their noblest field of exercise in,
absolute acceptance of, and unhesitating, swift, complete, unmurmuring
obedience to, everything that is discerned to be God's will and our
duty.

For the Christian soldier, then, God's law is his marching orders. The
written word, and especially the Incarnate Word, are our law of
conduct. The whole science of our warfare and plan of campaign are
there. We have not to take our orders from men's lips, but we must
often disregard them, that we may listen to the 'Captain of our
salvation.' The soldier stands where his officer has posted him, and
does what he was bid, no matter what may happen. Only one voice can
relieve him. Though a thousand should bid him flee, and his heart
should echo their advices, he is recreant if he deserts his post at the
command of any but him who set him there. Obedience to others is
mutiny. Nor does the Christian need another law to supplement that
which Christ has given him in His pattern and teaching. Men have
appended huge comments to it, and have softened some of its plain
precepts which bear hard on popular sins. But the Lawgiver's law is one
thing, and the lawyers' explanations which explain it away or darken
what was clear enough, however unwelcome, are quite another. Christ has
given us Himself, and therein has given a sufficient directory for
conduct and conflict which fits close to all our needs, and will prove
definite and practical enough if we honestly try to apply it.

The application of Christ's law to daily life takes some courage, and
is the proper field for the exercise of Christian strength. 'Be very
courageous that thou mayest observe.' If you are not a bold Christian
you will very soon get frightened out of obedience to your Master's
commandments. Courage, springing from the realisation of God's helping
strength, is indispensable to make any man, in any age, live out
thoroughly and consistently the principles of the law of Jesus Christ.
No man in _this_ generation will work out a punctual obedience to what
he knows to be the will of God, without finding out that all the
'Canaanites' are not dead yet; but that there are enough of them left
to make a very thorny life for the persistent follower of Jesus Christ.

And not only is there courage needed for the application of the
principles of conduct which God has given us, but you will never have
them handy for swift application unless, in many a quiet hour of
silent, solitary, patient meditation you have become familiar with
them. The recruit that has to learn on the battle-field how to use his
rifle has a good chance of being dead before he has mastered the
mysteries of firing. And Christian people that have their Christian
principles to dig out of the Bible when the necessity comes, will
likely find that the necessity is past before they have completed the
excavation. The actual battle-field is no place to learn drill. If a
soldier does not know how his sword hangs, and cannot get at it in a
moment, he will probably draw it too late.

I am afraid that the practice of such meditation as is meant here has
come to be, like the art of making ecclesiastical stained glass, almost
extinct in modern times. You have all so many newspapers and magazines
to read that the Bible has a chance of being shoved out of sight,
except on Sundays and in chapels. The 'meditating' that is enjoined in
my text is no mere intellectual study of Scripture, either from an
antiquarian or a literary or a theological point of view, but it is the
mastering of the principles of conduct as laid down there, and the
appropriating of all the power for guidance and for sustaining which
that word of the Lord gives. Meditation, the familiarising ourselves
with the ethics of Scripture, and with the hopes and powers that are
treasured in Jesus Christ, so that our minds are made up upon a great
many thorny questions as to what we ought to do, and that when crises
or dangers come, as they have a knack of coming, very suddenly, and are
sprung upon us unexpectedly, we shall be able, without much difficulty,
or much time spent in perplexed searching, to fall back upon the
principles that decide our conduct--that is essential to all successful
and victorious Christian life.

And it is the secret of all blessed Christian life. For there is a
lovely echo of these vigorous words of command to Joshua in a very much
more peaceful form in the 1st Psalm: 'Blessed is the man that walketh
not in the counsel of the ungodly, ... but his delight is in the law of
the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day and night'--the very
words that are employed in the text to describe the duty of the
soldier--therefore 'all that he doeth shall prosper.'

III. That leads to the last thought here--the sure victory of such bold
obedience.

'Thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest'; 'Thou shalt make thy
way prosperous, and then shalt thou have good success,' or, as the last
word might be rendered, 'then shalt thou _act wisely_' You may not get
victory from an earthly point of view, for many a man that lives strong
and courageous and joyfully obeying God's law, as far as he knows it
and because he loves the Lawgiver, goes through life, and finds that,
as far as the world's estimate is concerned, there is nothing but
failure as his portion. Ah I but the world's way is not the true way of
estimating victory. 'Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world,' said
Jesus Christ when within arm's-length of the Cross. And His way is the
way in which we must conquer the world, if we conquer it at all. The
success which my text means is the carrying out of conscientious
convictions of God's will into practice. That is the only success that
is worth talking about or looking for. The man that succeeds in obeying
and translating God's will into conduct is the victor, whatever be the
outward fruits of his life. He may go out of the field beaten,
according to the estimate of men that can see no higher than their own
height, and little further than their own finger tips can reach; he may
himself feel that the world has gone past him, and that he has not made
much of it; he may have to lie down at last unknown, poor, with all his
bright hopes that danced before him in childhood gone, and sore beaten
by the enemies; but if he is able to say in the strength that Christ
gives, 'I have finished my course; I have kept the faith,' his 'way has
prospered,' and he has had' good success.' 'We are more than conquerors
through Him that loved us.'

THE UNTRODDEN PATH AND THE GUIDING ARK

'Come not near unto the ark, that ye may know the way by which ye must
go; for ye have not passed this way heretofore.'--JOSHUA iii. 4.

It was eminently true of Israel that they had 'not passed this way
heretofore,' inasmuch as the path which was opening before them,
through the oozy bed of the river, had never been seen by human eye,
nor trodden by man's foot. Their old leader was dead. There were only
two of the whole host that had ever been out of the desert in their
lives. They had a hard task before them. Jericho lay there, gleaming
across the plain, among the palm-trees, backed by the savage cliffs, up
the passes in which they would have to fight their way. So that we need
not wonder that, over and over again, in these early chapters of this
book, the advice in reiterated, 'Be of good courage. Be strong and fear
not!' They needed special guidance, and they received very special
guidance, and my text tells us what they had to do, in order to realise
the full blessing and guidance that was given them. 'Let there be a
space of 2000 cubits by measure between you and the
ark'--three-quarters of a mile or thereabouts--'do not press close upon
the heels of the bearers, for you will not be able to see where they
are going if you crowd on them. Be patient. Let the course of the ark
disclose itself before you try to follow it, that ye may know the way
by which ye must go, for ye have not passed this way heretofore.'

I. Note the untrodden path.

I suppose that most of us have to travel a very well-worn road, and
that our course, in the cases of all except those in early life, is
liker that of a millhorse than an untrodden path. Most of us are
continually treading again in the prints of our own footsteps. A long,
weary stretch of monotonous duties, and the repetition of the same
things to-day that we did yesterday is the destiny of most of us.

Some of us, perhaps, may be standing upon the verge of some new scenes
in our lives. Some of you young people may have come up to a great city
for the first time to carve out a position for yourselves, and are for
the first time encompassed by the temptations of being unknown in a
crowd. Some of you may be in new domestic circumstances, some with new
sorrows, or tasks, or difficulties pressing upon you, calling for
wisdom and patience. It is quite likely that there may be some who, in
the most prosaic and literal sense of the words, are entering on a path
altogether new and untrodden. But they will be in the minority, and for
the most of us the days that were full of new possibilities are at an
end, and we have to expect little more than the monotonous repetition
of the habitual, humdrum duties of mature life. We have climbed the
winding paths up the hill, and most of us are upon the long plateau
that stretches unvaried, until it begins to dip at the further edge.
And some of us are going down that other side of the hill.

But whatever may be the variety in regard to the mere externals of our
lives, how true it is about us all that even the most familiar duties
of to-day are not quite like the same duties when they had to be done
yesterday; and that the path for each of us--though, as we go along, we
find in it nothing new--is yet an untrodden path! For we are not quite
the same as we were yesterday, though our work may be the same, and the
difference in us makes it in some measure different.

But what mainly makes even the most well-beaten paths new at the
thousandth time of traversing them is our ignorance of what may be
waiting round the next turn of the road. The veil that hangs before and
hides the future is a blessing, though we sometimes grumble at it, and
sometimes petulantly try to make pinholes through it, and peep in to
see a little of what is behind it. It brings freshness into our lives,
and a possibility of anticipation, and even of wonder and expectation,
that prevents us from stagnating. Even in the most habitual repetition
of the same tasks 'ye have not passed this way heretofore.' And life
for every one of us is still full of possibilities so great and so
terrible that we may well feel that the mist that covers the future is
a blessing and a source of strength for us all.

Our march through time is like that of men in a mist, in which things
loom in strangely distorted shapes, unlike their real selves, until we
get close up to them, and only then do we discover them.

So for us all the path is new and unknown by reason of the sudden
surprises that may be sprung upon us, by reason of the sudden
temptations that may start up at any moment in our course, by reason of
the earthquakes that may shatter the most solid-seeming lives, by
reason of the sudden calamities that may fall upon us. The sorrows that
we anticipate seldom come, and those that do come are seldom
anticipated. The most fatal bolts are generally from the blue. One
flash, all unlooked for, is enough to blast the tree in all its leafy
pride. Many of us, I have no doubt, can look back to times in our lives
when, without anticipation on our parts, or warning from anything
outside of us, a smiting hand fell upon some of our blessings. The
morning dawned upon the gourd in full vigour of growth, and in the
evening it was stretched yellow and wilted upon the turf. Dear
brethren, anything may come out of that dark cloud through which our
life's course has to pass, and there are some things concerning which
all that we know is that they must come.

These are very old threadbare thoughts; I dare say you think it was not
worth your while to come to hear them, nor mine to speak them; but if
we would lay them to heart, and realise how true it is about every step
of our earthly course that 'ye have not passed this way heretofore,' we
should complain less than we do of the weariness and prosaic character
of our commonplace lives, and feel that all was mystical and great and
awful; and yet most blessed in its possibilities and its uncertainties.

II. Note, again, the guiding ark.

It was a new thing that the ark should become the guide of the people.
All through the wilderness, according to the history, it had been
carried in the centre of the march, and had had no share in the
direction of the course. That had been done by the pillar of cloud.
But, just as the manna ceased when the tribes got across the Jordan and
could eat the bread of the land, the miracle ending and they being left
to trust to ordinary means of supply at the earliest possible moment,
so there ensued an approximation to ordinary guidance, which is none
the less real because it is granted without miracle. The pillar of
cloud ceased to move before the people in the crossing of the Jordan,
and its place was taken by the material symbol of the presence of God,
which contained the tables of the law as the basis of the covenant. And
that ark moved at the commandment of the leader Joshua, for he was the
mouthpiece of the divine will in the matter. And so when the ark moved
at the bidding of the leader, and became the guide of the people, there
was a kind of a drop down from the pure supernatural of the guiding
pillar.

For us a similar thing is true. Jesus Christ is the true Ark of God.
For what was the ark? the symbol of the divine Presence; and Christ is
the reality of the divine Presence with men. The whole content of that
ark was the 'law of the Lord,' and Jesus Christ is the embodied law of
the present God. The ark was the sign that God had entered into this
covenant with these people, and that they had a right to say to Him,
'Thou art our God, and we are Thy people,' and the same double
assurance of reciprocal possession and mutual delight in possession is
granted to us in and through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So He becomes the guiding Ark, the Shepherd of Israel. His presence and
will are our directors. The law, which is contained and incorporated in
Him, is that by which we are to walk. The covenant which He has
established in His own blood between God and man contains in itself not
only the direction for conduct, but also the motives which will impel
us to walk where and as He enjoins.

And so, every way we may say, by His providences which He appoints, by
His example which He sets us, by His gracious word in which He sums up
all human duties in the one sweet obligation, 'Follow Me,' and even
more by His Spirit that dwells in us, and whispers in our ears, 'This
is the way; walk ye in it,' and enlightens every perplexity, and
strengthens all feebleness, and directs our footsteps into the way of
peace; that living and personal Ark of the covenant of the Lord of the
whole earth is still the guide of waiting and docile hearts. Jesus
Christ's one word to us is, 'If any man serve Me, let him follow Me.
And where I am'--of course, seeing he is a follower--'there shall also
My servant be.'

The one Pattern for us, the one Example that we need to follow, the one
Strength in our perplexities, the true Director of our feet, is that
dear Lord, if we will only listen to Him. And that direction will be
given to us in regard to the trifles, as in regard to the great things
of our lives.

III. And so the last thought that is here is the watchful following.

'Come not near unto it, that ye may know the way by which ye ought to
go.' In a shipwreck, the chances are that the boats will be swamped by
the people scrambling into them in too great a hurry. In the Christian
life most of the mistakes that people make arise from their not letting
the ark go far enough ahead of them before they gather up their
belongings and follow it. An impatience of the half-declared divine
will, a running before we are sent, an acting before we are quite sure
that God wills us to do so-and-so, are at the root of most of the
failures of Christian effort, and of a large number of the miseries of
Christian men. If we would only have patience! Three-quarters of a mile
the ark went ahead before a man lifted a foot to follow it, and there
was no mistake possible then.

Now do not be in a hurry to act. 'Raw haste' is 'half-sister to delay.'
We are all impatient of uncertainty, either in opinion or in conduct;
but if you are not quite sure what God wants you to do, you may be
quite sure that He does not at present want you to do anything. Wait
till you see what He does wish you to do. Better, better far, to spend
hours in silent--although people that know nothing about what we are
doing may call it indolent--waiting for the clear declaration of God's
will, than to hurry on paths which, after we have gone on them far
enough to make it a mortification and a weariness to turn back, we
shall find out to have been not His at all, but only our own mistakes
as to where the ark would have us go.

And that there may be this patience the one thing needful-as, indeed,
it is the one thing needful for all strength of all kinds in the
Christian life--is the rigid suppression of our own wills. That is the
secret of goodness, and its opposite is the secret of evil. To live by
my own will is to die. Nothing but blunders, nothing but miseries,
nothing but failures, nothing but remorse, will be the fruit of such a
life. And a great many of us who call ourselves Christians are not
Christians in the sense of having Christ's will for our absolute law,
and keeping our own will entirely in subordination thereto. As is the
will, so is the man, and whoever does not bow himself absolutely, and
hush all the babble of his own inclinations and tastes and decisions,
in order that that great Voice may speak, has small chance of ever
walking in the paths of righteousness, or finding that his ways please
the Lord.

Suppress your own wills, dwell near God, that you may hear His lightest
whisper. 'I will guide thee with Mine eye.' What is the use of the
glance of an eye if the man for whom it is meant is half a mile off,
and staring about him at everything except the eye that would guide?
And that is what some of us that call ourselves Christian people are.
God might look guidance at us for a week, and we should never know that
He was doing it; we have so many other things to look after. And we are
so far away from Him that it would need a telescope for us to see His
face. 'I will guide thee with Mine eye.' Keep near Him, and you will
not lack direction.


And so, dear brethren, if we stay ourselves on, and wait patiently for,
Him, and are content to do what He wishes, and never to run without a
clear commission, nor to act without a full conviction of duty, then
the old story of my text will repeat itself in our daily life, as well
as in the noblest form in the last act of life, which is death. The
Lord will move before us and open a safe, dry path for us between the
heaped waters; and where the feet of our great High Priest, bearing the
Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, stood, amidst the slime and the mud,
we may plant our firm feet on the stones that He has left there. And so
the stream of life, like the river of death, will be parted for
Christ's followers, and they will pass over on dry ground, 'until all
the people are passed clean over Jordan.'




'THE WATERS SAW THEE; THEY WERE AFRAID'

'And Joshua said unto the people, Sanctify yourselves: for tomorrow the
Lord will do wonders among you. 6. And Joshua spake unto the priests,
saying, Take up the ark of the covenant, and pass over before the
people. And they took up the ark of the covenant, and went before the
people. 7. And the Lord said unto Joshua, This day will I begin to
magnify thee in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I
was with Moses, so I will be with thee. 8 And thou shalt command the
priests that bear the ark of the covenant, saying, When ye are come to
the brink of the water of Jordan, ye shall stand still in Jordan. 8.
And Joshua said unto the children of Israel, Come hither, and hear the
words of the Lord your God. 10. And Joshua said, Hereby ye shall know
that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive
out from before you the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Hivites,
and the Perizzites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the
Jebusites. 11. Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the
earth passeth Over before you into Jordan. 12. Now therefore take you
twelve men out of the tribes of Israel, out of every tribe a man. 13.
And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the
priests that bear the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, shall
rest in the waters of Jordan, that the waters of Jordan shall be out
off from the waters that come down from above; and they shall stand
upon an heap. 14. And it came to pass, when the people removed from
their tents, to pass over Jordan, and the priests bearing the ark of
the covenant before the people; 15. And as they that bare the ark were
come unto Jordan, and the feet of the priests that bare the ark were
dipped in the brim of the water, (for Jordan overfloweth all his banks
all the time of harvest,) 16. That the waters which came down from
above stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam, that
is beside Zaretan: and those that came down toward the sea of the
plain, even the salt sea failed, and were cut off: and the people
passed over right against Jericho. 17. And the priests that bare the
ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst
of Jordan, and all the Israelites passed over on dry ground, until all
the people were passed clean over Jordan.'--JOSHUA iii 5-17.


The arrangement of the narrative of the passage of Jordan, which
occupies chapters iii. and iv., is remarkable, and has led to
suggestions of interpolation and blending of two accounts, which are
quite unnecessary. It is divided into four sections,--the preparations
(Joshua in. 1-6), the passage (Joshua in. 7-17), the lifting of the
memorial stones from the river's bed and the fixing of one set of them
in it (Joshua iv. 1-14), the return of the waters, and the erection of
the second set of memorial stones at Gilgal (Joshua iv. 15-24).

Each section closes with a summary of the whole transaction, after the
common manner of Old Testament history, which gives to a hasty reader
the impression of confusion and repetition; but a little attention
shows a very symmetrical arrangement, negativing the possibility of
interpolation. The last three sections are all built on the same lines.
In each there is a triple division,--God's command to Joshua, Joshua's
communication of it to the people, and the actual fact, fulfilling
these. So each stage passes thrice before the view, and the
impressiveness of the history is heightened by our seeing it first in
the mirror of the divine Word, and then in the orders of the commander,
before we see it as a thing actually happening.

Verses 5 and 6 of the chapter belong to the section which deals with
the preparation. General instructions had been already issued that the
host was to follow the ark, leaving two thousand cubits between them
and it; but nothing had been said as to how Jordan was to be crossed.
No doubt many a question and doubt had been muttered by the
watch-fires, as the people looked at the muddy, turbid stream, swirling
in flood. The spies probably managed to swim it, but that was a feat
worthy to be named in the epitaph of heroes (1 Chron. xii. 15), and
impossible for the crowd of all ages and both sexes which followed
Joshua. There was the rushing stream, swollen as it always is in
harvest. How were they to get over? And if the people of Jericho, right
over against them, chose to fall upon them as they were struggling
across, what could hinder utter defeat? No doubt, all that was
canvassed, in all sorts of tones; but no inkling of the miracle seems
to have been given.

God often opens His hand by one finger at a time, and leaves us face to
face with some plain but difficult duty, without letting us see the
helps to its performance, till we need to use them. If we go right on
the road which He has traced out, it will never lead us into a blind
alley. The mountains will part before us as we come near what looked
their impassable wall; and some narrow gorge or other, wide enough to
run a track through, but not wide enough to be noticed before we are
close on it, will be sure to open. The attitude of expectation of God's
help, while its nature is unrevealed, is kept up in Joshua's last
instruction. The people are bidden to 'sanctify themselves, because
to-morrow the Lord will do wonders' among them. That sanctifying was
not external, but included the hallowing of spirit by docile waiting
for His intervention, and by obedience while the manner of it was
hidden. The secret of to-morrow is partly made known, and the faith of
the people is nourished by the mystery remaining, as well as by the
light given. The best security for to-morrow's wonders is to-day's
sanctifying.

The command to the priests discloses to them a little more, in bidding
them pass over before the people, but the additional disclosure would
only be an additional trial of faith; for the silence as to how so
impossible a command was to be made possible is absolute. The swollen
river had obliterated all fords; and how were priests, staggering under
the weight of the ark on their shoulders, to 'pass over'? The question
is not answered till the ark is on their shoulders. To-day often sees
to-morrow's duty without seeing how it is to be done. But the bearers
of the ark need never fear but that the God to whom it belongs will
take care of it and of them. The last sentence of verse 6 is the
anticipatory summary which closes each section.

In verses 7-17 we have the narrative of the actual crossing, in its
three divisions of God's command (vs. 7-8), Joshua's repetition of it
(vs. 9-13), and the historical fact (vs. 14-17). The final instructions
were only given on the morning of the day of crossing. The report of
God's commands given in verses 7 and 8 is condensed, as is evident from
the fuller statement of them in Joshua's address to the people, which
immediately follows. In it Joshua is fully aware of the manner of the
miracle and of the details of the crossing, but we have no record of
his having received them. The summary of that eventful morning's
instructions to him emphasises first the bearing of the miracle on his
reputation. The passage of the Red Sea had authenticated the mission of
Moses to the past generation, who, in consequence of it, 'believed God
and His servant Moses.' The new generation are to have a parallel
authentication of Joshua's commission. It is noteworthy that this is
not the purpose of the miracle which the leader announces to the people
in verse 10. It was a message from God to himself, a kind of gracious
whisper meant for his own encouragement. What a thought to fill a man's
heart with humble devotion, that God would work such a wonder in order
to demonstrate that He was with him! And what a glimpse of more to
follow lay in that promise, 'This day will I _begin_ to magnify thee I'

The command to the priests in verse 8 is also obviously condensed; for
Joshua's version of it, which follows, is much more detailed, and
contains particular instructions, which must have been derived from the
divine word to him on that morning.

We may pass on, then, to the second division of the narrative; namely,
Joshua's communication of God's commands to the people. Observe the
form which the purpose of the miracle assumes there. It is the
confirmation of the divine Presence, not with the leader, but with the
people and their consequent victory. Joshua grasped the inmost meaning
of God's Word to himself, and showed noble self-suppression, when he
thus turned the direction of the miracle. The true servant of God knows
that God is with him, not for his personal glorification, but for the
welfare of God's people, and cares little for the estimation in which
men hold him, if they will only believe that the conquering God is with
them. We too often make great leaders and teachers in the church opaque
barriers to hide God from us, instead of transparent windows through
which He shines upon His people. We are a great deal more ready to say,
'God is with him,' than to add, 'and therefore God is with us, in our
Joshuas, and without them.'

Observe the grand emphasis of that name, 'the living God,' tacitly
contrasted with the dead idols of the enemies, and sealing the
assurance of His swift and all-conquering might. Observe, too, the
triumphant contempt in the enumeration of the many tribes of the foe
with their barbarous names. Five of them had been enough, when named by
the spies' 

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