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Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2024 10:15:04 GMT -5
CHAPTER FIFTEEN “AT the end of every seven years thou shalt make a release. And this is the manner of the release: Every creditor that lendeth aught unto his neighbor shall release it; he shall not exact it of his neighbor, or of his brother, because it is called the Lord’s release. Of a foreigner thou mayest exact it again; but that which is thine with thy brother thine hand shall release, save when there shall be no poor among you; for the Lord shall greatly bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it; only if thou carefully hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all these commandments which I command thee this day. For the Lord thy God blesseth thee, as He promised thee; and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee” (Ver. 1-6). It is truly edifying to mark the way in which the God of Israel was ever seeking to draw the hearts of His people to Himself by means of the various sacrifices, solemnities, and institutions of the Levitical ceremonial. - There was the morning and evening lamb every day, - There was the holy Sabbath every week, - There was the new moon every month, - There was the passover every year, - There was the tithing every three years, - There was the release every seven years, and - There was the jubilee every fifty years. All this is full of deepest interest. It tells its own sweet tale, and teaches its own precious lesson to the heart. - the morning and evening lamb, as we know, pointed ever to “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world;” - the Sabbath was the lovely type of the rest that remaineth to the people of God; - the new moon beautifully prefigured the time when restored Israel shall reflect back the beams of the Sun of Righteousness upon the nations; - the passover was the standing memorial of the nation’s deliverance from Egyptian bondage; - the year of tithing set forth the fact of the Lord’s proprietorship of the land, as also the lovely way in which His rents were to be expended in meeting the need of His workmen and of His poor; - the sabbatic year gave promise of a bright time when all debts would be canceled, all loans disposed of, all burdens removed; and finally, - the jubilee was the magnificent type of the times of the restitution of all things, when the captive shall be set free, when the exile shall return to his long-lost home and inheritance, and when the land of Israel and the whole earth shall rejoice beneath the beneficent government of the Son of David. Now, in all these lovely institutions we notice two prominent characteristic features, namely, glory to God, and blessing to man. These two things are linked together by a divine and everlasting bond. God has so ordained that His full glory and the creature’s full blessing should be indissolubly bound up together. This is deep joy to the heart, and it helps us to .understand more fully the force and beauty of that familiar sentence – “We rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” When that glory shines forth in its full luster, then, assuredly, human blessedness, rest, and felicity shall reach their full and eternal consummation. We see a lovely pledge and foreshadowing of all this in the seventh year. It was “the Lord’s release,” and therefore its blessed influence was to be felt by every poor debtor from Dan to Beersheba. The Lord would grant unto His people the high and holy privilege of having fellowship with Him in causing the debtor’s heart to sing for joy. He would teach them, if they would only learn, the deep blessedness of frankly forgiving all. This is what He Himself delights in, blessed forever be His great and glorious name. But, alas! the poor human heart is not up to this lovely mark. It is not fully prepared to tread this heavenly road. It is sadly cramped and hindered, by a low and miserable selfishness, in grasping and carrying out the divine principle of grace. It is not quite at home in this heavenly atmosphere; it is but ill-prepared for being the vessel and channel of that royal grace which shines so brightly in all the ways of God. This will only too fully account for the cautionary clauses of the following passage. “If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates, in thy land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother; but thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth. Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him naught; and he cry unto the Lord against thee, and it be sin unto thee. Thou shalt surely give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him; because that for this thing the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all that thou puttest thine hand unto. For the poor shall never cease out of thy land; therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land” (Ver. 7-11). Here the deep springs of the poor selfish heart are discovered and judged. There is nothing like grace for making manifest the hidden roots of evil in human nature. Man must be renewed in the very deepest springs of his moral being ere he can be the vehicle of divine love; and even those who are thus through grace renewed, have to watch continually against the hideous forms of selfishness in which our fallen nature clothes itself. Nothing but grace can keep the heart open wide to every form of human need. We must abide hard by the fountain of heavenly love if we would be channels of blessing in the midst of a scene of misery and desolation like that in which our lot is cast. How lovely are those words, “Thou shalt open thine hand wide”! They breathe the very air of Heaven. An open heart and a wide hand are like God. “The Lord loveth a cheerful giver,” because that is precisely what He is Himself. “He giveth to all liberally, and upbraideth not.” And He would grant unto us the rare and most exquisite privilege of being imitators of Him. Marvelous grace! The very thought of it fills the heart with wonder, love, and praise. - We are not only saved by grace, but we stand in grace, - Live under the blessed reign of grace, - Breathe the very atmosphere of grace, and - Are called to be the living exponents of grace, not only to our brethren, but to the whole human family. “As we therefore have opportunity, let us do good unto all, especially unto them which are of the household of faith.” Christian reader, let us diligently apply our hearts to all this divine instruction. It is most precious; but its real preciousness can only be tasted in the practical carrying out of it. We are surrounded by ten thousand forms of human misery, human sorrow, human need. - There are broken hearts, crushed spirits, desolate homes, around us on every side. - The widow, the orphan, and the stranger meet us daily in our walks. How do we carry ourselves in reference to all these? Are we hardening our hearts and closing our hands against them? Or are we seeking to act in the lovely spirit of “the Lord’s release”? We must bear in mind that we are called to be reflectors of the divine nature and character to be direct channels of communication between our Father’s loving heart and every form of human need. We are not to live for ourselves; to do so is a most miserable denial of every feature and principle of that morally glorious Christianity which we profess. It is our high and holy privilege, yea, it is our special mission, to shed around us the blessed light of that Heaven to which we belong. Wherever we are – in the family, in the field, in the mart or the manufactory, in the shop or in the counting-house, all who come in contact with us should see the grace of Jesus shining out in our ways, our words, our very looks. And then, if any object of need come before us, if we can do nothing more, we should drop a soothing word into the ear, or shed a tear or heave a sigh of genuine, heart-felt sympathy. Reader, is it thus with us? Are we so living near the fountain of divine love, and so breathing the very air of Heaven, that the blessed fragrance of these things shall be diffused around us? or are we displaying the odious selfishness of nature, the unholy tempers and dispositions of our fallen and corrupt humanity? What an unsightly object is a selfish Christian! He is a standing contradiction, a living, moving lie. The Christianity which he professes throws into dark and terrible relief the unholy selfishness which governs his heart and comes out in his life. The Lord grant that all who profess and call themselves Christians may so carry themselves, in daily life, as to be an unblotted Epistle of Christ, known and read of all men. In this way, infidelity will, at least, be deprived of one of its weightiest arguments, its gravest objections. Nothing affords a stronger plea to the infidel than the inconsistent lives of professing Christians. Not that such a plea will stand for a moment, or even be urged, before the judgment-seat of Christ, inasmuch as each one who has within his reach a copy of the Holy Scriptures will be judged by the light of those Scriptures, even though there were not a single consistent Christian on the face of the earth. Nevertheless, Christians are solemnly responsible to let their light so shine before men that they may see their good works and glorify our Father in Heaven. We are solemnly bound to exhibit and illustrate in daily life the heavenly principles unfolded in the Word of God. We should leave the infidel without a shred of a plea or an argument; we are responsible so to do. May we lay these things to heart, and then we shall have occasion to bless God for our meditation on the delightful institution of the Lord’s release. The Hebrew Servant We shall now quote for the reader the touching and beautiful institution in reference to the Hebrew servant. We increasingly feel the importance of giving the veritable language of the HOLY GHOST; for albeit it may be said that the reader has his Bible to refer to, yet we know, as a fact, that when passages of Scripture are referred to, there is, in many cases, a reluctance to lay down the volume which we hold in our hand in order to read the reference. And beside, there is nothing like the Word of God; and as to any remarks which we may offer, their object is simply to help the beloved Christian reader to understand and appreciate the Scriptures which we quote. “If thy brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years, then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty; thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy wine-press; of that wherewith the Lord thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him.” How perfectly beautiful! how like our own ever-gracious God is all this! He would not have the brother go away empty. Liberty and poverty would not be in moral harmony. The brother was to be sent on his way free and full, emancipated and endowed, not only with his liberty, but with a liberal fortune to start with. Truly, this is divine. We do not want to be told the school where such exquisite ethics are taught. They have the very ring of Heaven about them; they emit the fragrant odor of the very paradise of God. Is it not in this way that our God has dealt with us? All praise to His glorious name! He has not only given us life and liberty, but He has furnished us liberally with all we can possibly want for time and eternity. He has opened the exhaustless treasury of Heaven for us; yea, He has given the Son of His bosom for us and to us – for us, to save; to us, to satisfy. He has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness; all that pertains to the life that now is, and to that which is to come, is fully and perfectly secured by our Father’s liberal hand. And is it not deeply affecting to mark how the heart of God expresses itself in the style in which the Hebrew servant was to be treated? “Thou shalt furnish him liberally.” Not grudgingly, or of necessity. It was to be done in a manner worthy of God. The actings of His people are to be the reflection of Himself. We are called to the high and holy dignity of being His moral representatives. It is marvelous; but thus it is, through His infinite grace. He has not only delivered us from the flames of an everlasting hell, but He calls us to act for Him, and to be like Him, in the midst of a world that crucified His Son. And not only has He conferred this lofty dignity upon us, but He has endowed us with a princely fortune to support it. The inexhaustible resources of Heaven are at our disposal. “All things are ours,” through His infinite grace. Oh that we may more fully realize our privileges, and thus more faithfully discharge our holy responsibilities! At verse 15 of our chapter, we have a very touching motive presented to the heart of the people, one eminently calculated to stir their affections and sympathies. “And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee; therefore I command thee this thing to-day.” The remembrance of the Lord’s grace in redeeming them out of Egypt was to be the ever-abiding and all-powerful motive-spring of their actings toward the poor brother. This is a never-failing principle and nothing lower than this will ever stand. If we look for our motive-springs anywhere but in God Himself, and in His dealings with us, we shall soon break down in our practical career. It is only as we keep before our hearts the marvelous grace of God displayed toward us in the redemption which is in Christ JESUS that we shall be able to pursue a course of true, active benevolence, whether toward our brethren or those outside. Mere kindly feelings, bubbling up in our own hearts, or drawn out by the sorrows and distresses and necessities of others, will prove evanescent. It is only in the living God Himself we can find perennial springs. At verse 16, a case is contemplated in which a servant might prefer remaining with his master. “And it shall be, if he say unto thee, I will not go away from thee, because he loveth thee and thine house, because he is well with thee, then thou shalt take an awl, and thrust it through his ear unto the door, and he shall be thy servant forever.” In comparing this passage with Exodus 21:1-6, we observe a marked difference arising, as we might expect, from the distinctive character of each book. In Exodus, the typical feature is prominent; in Deuteronomy, the moral. Hence, in the latter, the inspired writer omits all about the wife and the children, as foreign to his purpose here, though so essential to the beauty and perfectness of the type in Exodus 21. We merely notice this as one of the many striking proofs that Deuteronomy is very far indeed from being a barren repetition of its predecessors. There is neither repetition on the one hand, nor contradiction on the other, but lovely variety in perfect accordance with the divine object and scope of each book. So much for the contemptible shallowness and ignorance of those infidel writers who have had the impious temerity to level their shafts at this magnificent portion of the oracles of God. In our chapter, then, we have the moral aspect of this interesting institution. The servant loved his master, and was happy with him. He preferred perpetual slavery and the mark thereof with a master whom he loved, to liberty and a liberal portion away from him. This, of course, would argue well for both parties. It is ever a good sign for both master and servant when the connection is of long standing. Perpetual changing may, as a general rule, be taken as a proof of moral wrong somewhere. No doubt there are exceptions; and not only so, but in the relation of master and servant, as in everything else, there are two sides to be considered. For instance, we have to consider whether the master is perpetually changing his servants, or the servant perpetually changing his masters. In the former case, appearances would tell against the master; in the latter, against the servant. The fact is, we have all to judge ourselves in this matter. Those of us who are masters have to consider how far we really seek the comfort, happiness, and solid profit of our servants. We should bear in mind that we have very much more to think of, in reference to our servants, than the amount of work we can get out of them. Even upon the lowlevel principle of “live and let live,” we are bound to seek, in every possible way, to make our servants happy and comfortable; to make them feel that they have a home under our roof; that we are not content merely with the labor of their hands, but that we want the love of their hearts. We remember once asking the head of a very large establishment, “How many hearts do you employ?” He shook his head, and owned, with real sorrow, how little heart there is in the relation of master and servant. Hence the common, heartless phrase of “employing hands.” But the Christian master is called to stand upon a higher level altogether; he is privileged to be an imitator of his Master – Christ. The remembrance of this will regulate all his actings toward the servant; it will lead him to study, with ever-deepening interest and solid profit, his divine model, in order to reproduce Him in all the practical details of daily life. So also in reference to the Christian servant, in his position and line of action. He, as well as the master, has to study the great example set before him in the path and ministry of the only true Servant that ever trod this earth. He is called to walk in His blessed footsteps, to drink into His spirit, to study His Word. It is not a little remarkable that the Holy Ghost has devoted more attention to the instruction of servants than to all the other relationships put together. This the reader can see at a glance, in the epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians, and Titus. The Christian servant can adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour by not purloining and not answering again. He can serve the Lord Christ in the most common-place duties of domestic life just as effectually as the man who is called to address thousands on the grand realities of eternity. Thus, when both master and servant are mutually governed by heavenly principles, both seeking to serve and glorify the one Lord, they will get on happily together. The master will not be severe, arbitrary, and exacting; and the servant will not be self-seeking, heady, and high-minded: each will contribute, by the faithful discharge of their relative duties, to the comfort and happiness of the other, and to the peace and happiness of the whole domestic circle. Would that it were more after this heavenly fashion in every Christian household on the face of the earth! Then indeed would the truth of God be vindicated, His Word honored, and His name glorified in our domestic relations and practical ways. In verse 18, we have an admonitory word which reveals to us, very faithfully, but with great delicacy, a moral root in the poor human heart. “It shall not seem hard unto thee when thou sendest him away free from thee, for he has been worth a double hired servant to thee in serving thee six years, and the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all that thou doest.” This is very affecting. Only think of the most high God condescending to stand before the human heart – the heart of a master, to plead the cause of a poor servant, and set forth his claims! It is as if He were asking a favor for Himself. He leaves nothing unsaid in order to strengthen the case; He reminds the master of the value of six years’ service, and encourages him by the promise of enlarged blessing as a reward for his generous acting. It is perfectly beautiful. The Lord would not only have the generous thing done, but done in such a way as to gladden the heart of the one to whom it was done; He thinks not only of the substance of an action, but also of the style. We may, at times, brace ourselves up to the business of doing a kindness; we do it as a matter of duty, and all the while it may “seem hard” that we should have to do it; thus the act will be robbed of all its charms. It is the generous heart that adorns the generous act. We should so do a kindness as to assure the recipient that our own heart is made glad by the act. This is the divine way: - “When they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both.” - “It is meet that we should make merry, and be glad.” - “There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.” Oh, to be a brighter reflection of the precious grace of our Father’s heart! Ere closing our remarks on this deeply interesting chapter, we shall quote for the reader its last paragraph. “All the firstling males that come of thy herd and of thy flock thou shalt sanctify unto the Lord thy God; thou shalt do no work with the firstling of thy bullock, nor shear the firstling of thy sheep; thou shalt eat it before the Lord thy God year by year in the place which the Lord shall choose, thou and thy household. And if there be any blemish therein, as if it be lame, or blind, or have any ill blemish, thou shalt not sacrifice it unto the Lord thy God. Thou shalt eat it within thy gates, the unclean and the clean person shall eat it alike, as the roebuck, and as the hart. Only thou shalt not eat the blood thereof; thou shalt pour it upon the ground as water” (Ver. 19-23). Only that which was perfect was to be offered to God. The first-born, unblemished male, the apt figure of the spotless Lamb of God, offered upon the Cross for us, the imperishable foundation of our peace, and the precious food of our souls, in the presence of God. This was the divine thing, – the assembly gathered together around the divine center, feasting in the presence of God on that which was the appointed type of Christ, who is at once our sacrifice, our center, and our feast. Eternal and universal homage to His most precious and glorious Name! ~ end of chapter 15 ~
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Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2024 10:21:01 GMT -5
CHAPTER SIXTEEN WE now approach one of the most profound and comprehensive sections of the book of Deuteronomy, in which the inspired writer presents to our view what we may call the three great cardinal feasts of the Jewish year, namely, the passover, Pentecost, and tabernacles; or, redemption, the Holy Ghost, and the glory. We have here a more condensed view of those lovely institutions than that given in Leviticus 23, where we have, if we count the Sabbath, eight feasts; but if we view the Sabbath as distinct, and having its own special place as the type of God’s own eternal rest, then there are seven feasts, namely, the passover, the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of first-fruits, Pentecost, trumpets, the day of atonement, and tabernacles. Such is the order of feasts in the book of Leviticus, which, as we have ventured to remark in our studies on that most marvelous book, may be called “The priest’s guide-book.” But in Deuteronomy, which is pre-eminently the people’s book, we have less of ceremonial detail, and the lawgiver confines himself to those great moral and national landmarks which, in the very simplest manner, as adapted to the people, present the past, the present, and the future. “Observe the month of Abib, and keep the passover unto the Lord thy God; for in the month of Abib the Lord thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by -night. Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the passover unto the Lord thy God, of the flock and the herd, in the place which the Lord shall choose to place His name there. Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it; seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith, even the bread of affliction. for thou earnest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste: that thou mayest remember the day when thou earnest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life. And there shall be no leavened bread seen with thee in all thy coasts seven days; neither shall there any thing of the flesh, which thou sacrificedst the first day at even, remain all night until the morning. Thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within any of thy gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee”-as if it were a matter of no importance where, provided the feast were kept – “but. at the place which the Lord thy God shall choose to place His name in, there [and no where else,] thou shalt sacrifice the passover at even, at the going down of the sun, at the season that thou earnest forth out of Egypt. And thou shalt roast and eat it in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose,. and thou shalt turn in the morning, and go unto thy tents. Six days thou shalt eat unleavened bread; and on the seventh day shall be a solemn assembly to the Lord thy God; thou shalt do no work therein” (Ver. 1-8). Having, in our “Notes on Exodus,” gone somewhat fully into the great leading principles of this foundation-feast, we must refer the reader to that volume if he desires to study the subject. But there are certain features peculiar to Deuteronomy to which we feel it our duty to call his special attention; and, in the first place, we have to notice the remarkable emphasis laid upon “the place” where the feast was to be kept. This is full of interest and practical moment. The people were not to choose for themselves. It might, according to human thinking, appear a very small matter how or where the feast was kept, provided it was kept at all. But, be it carefully noted and deeply pondered by the reader, human thinking had nothing whatever to do in the matter; it was divine thinking and divine authority altogether. God had a right to prescribe .and definitively settle where He would meet His people; and this He does in the most distinct and emphatic manner, in the above passage, where, three times over, He inserts the weighty clause, “In the place which the Lord thy God shall choose.” Is this vain repetition? Let no one dare to think, much less to assert it. It is most necessary emphasis. Why most necessary? Because of our ignorance, our indifference, and our willfulness. God, in His infinite goodness, takes special pains to impress upon the heart, the conscience, and the understanding of His people that He would have one place in particular where the memorable and most significant feast of the passover was to be kept. And be it remarked that it is only in Deuteronomy that the place of celebration is insisted upon. We have nothing about it in Exodus, because there it was kept in Egypt,. we have nothing about it in Numbers, because there it was kept in the wilderness,. but in Deuteronomy it is authoritatively and definitively settled, because there we have the instructions for the land. Another striking proof that Deuteronomy is very far indeed from being a barren repetition of its predecessors. The all- important point in reference to “the place,” so prominently and so peremptorily insisted upon in all the three great solemnities recorded in our chapter, is this: God would gather His beloved people around Himself, that they might feast together in His presence, that He might rejoice in them and they in Him and in one another. All this could only be in the one special place of divine appointment. All who desired to meet the Lord and to meet His people – all who desired worship and communion according to God, would thankfully betake themselves to the divinely appointed center. Self-will might say, Can we not keep the feast in the bosom of our families? What need is there of a long journey? Surely if the heart is right, it cannot matter much as to the place. To all this we reply that the clearest, finest, and best proof of the heart being right would be found in the simple, earnest desire to do the will of God. It was quite sufficient for everyone who loved and feared God that He had appointed a place where He would meet His people; there they would be found, and no where else. His presence it was that could alone impart joy, comfort, strength, and blessing to all their great national reunions. It was not the mere fact of a large number of people gathering together, three times a year, to feast and rejoice together; this might minister to human pride, self-complacency, and excitement. But to flock together to meet the Lord, to assemble in His blessed presence, to own the .place where He had recorded His Name, this would be the deep joy of every truly loyal heart throughout the twelve tribes of Israel. For anyone willfully to abide at home, or to go any where else than to the one divinely appointed place, would not only be to neglect and insult the Lord, but actually to rebel against His supreme authority. And now, having briefly spoken of the place, we may, for a moment, glance at the mode of celebration. This, too, is, as we might expect, quite characteristic of our book. The leading feature here is “the unleavened bread.” But the reader will specially note the interesting fact that this, bread is styled “The bread of affliction.” Now, what is the meaning of this? We all understand that unleavened bread is the type of that holiness of heart and life so absolutely essential to the enjoyment of true communion with God. We are not saved by personal holiness, but, thank God, we are saved to it. It is not the ground of our salvation, but it is an essential element in our communion. Allowed leaven is the death-blow to communion and worship. We must never, for one moment, lose sight of this great cardinal principle in that life of personal holiness and practical godliness which, as redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, we are called, bound, and privileged to live from day to day, in the midst of the scenes and circumstances through which we are journeying home to our eternal rest in the heavens. To speak of communion and worship while living in known sin is the melancholy proof that we know nothing of either the one or the other. In order to enjoy communion with God or the communion of saints, and in order to worship God in spirit and in truth, we must be living a life of personal holiness, a life of separation from all known evil. To take our place in the assembly of God’s people, and appear to take part in the holy fellowship and worship pertaining thereto, while living in secret sin, or allowing evil in others, is to defile the assembly, grieve the Holy Ghost, sin against Christ, and bring down upon us the judgment of God, who is now judging His house and chastening His children in order that they may not ultimately be condemned with the world. All this is most solemn, and calls for the earnest attention of all who really desire to walk with God and serve Him with reverence and godly fear. It is one thing to have the doctrine of the type in the region of our understanding, and another thing altogether to have its great moral lesson engraved on the heart and worked out in the life. May all who profess to have the blood of the Lamb sprinkled on their conscience seek to keep the feast of unleavened bread. “Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (I Corinthians 5:6-8). But what are we to understand by “the bread of affliction”? Should we not rather look for joy, praise, and triumph in connection with a feast in memory of deliverance from Egyptian bondage and misery? No doubt there is very deep and real joy, thankfulness, and praise in idealizing the blessed truth of our full deliverance from our former condition, with all its accompaniments and all its consequences; but it is very plain that these were not the prominent features of the paschal feast-indeed, they are not even named. We have “the bread of affliction,” but not a word about joy, praise, or triumph. Now, why is this? what great moral lesson is conveyed to our hearts by the bread of affliction? We believe it sets before us those deep exercises of heart which the Holy Ghost produces by bringing powerfully before us what it cost our adorable Lord and Saviour to deliver us from our sins and from the judgment which those sins deserved. Those exercises are also typified by the “bitter herbs” of Exodus 12, and they are illustrated again and again in the history of God’s people of old, who were led, under the powerful action of the Word and Spirit of God, to chasten themselves and “afflict their souls” in the divine presence. And be it remembered that there is not a tinge of the legal element or of unbelief in these holy exercises – far from it. When an Israelite partook of the bread of affliction, with the roasted flesh of the Passover, did it express a doubt or a fear as to his full deliverance? Impossible! How could it? He was in the land; he was gathered to God’s own center – His own very presence. How could he, then, doubt his full and final deliverance from the land of Egypt? The thought is simply absurd. But although he had no doubts or fears as to his deliverance, yet had he to eat the bread of affliction; it was an essential element in his paschal feast, “For thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste, that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life.” This was very deep and real work. They were never to forget their exodus out of Egypt, but to keep up the remembrance of it, in the promised land, throughout all generations. They were to commemorate their deliverance by a feast emblematical of those holy exercises which ever characterize true, practical, Christian piety. We would very earnestly commend to the serious attention of the Christian reader the whole line of truth indicated by “the bread of affliction.” We believe it is much needed by those who profess great familiarity with what are called the doctrines of grace. There is very great danger, especially to young professors, while seeking to avoid legality and bondage, of running into the opposite extreme of levity – a most terrible snare. Aged and experienced Christians are not so liable to fall into this sad evil; it is the young amongst us who so need to be most solemnly warned against it. They hear, it may be, a great deal about salvation by grace, justification by faith, deliverance from the law, and all the peculiar privileges of the Christian position. Now, we need hardly say that all these are of cardinal importance; and it would be utterly impossible for anyone to hear too much about them. Would they were more spoken about, written about and preached about! Thousands of the Lord’s beloved people spend all their days in darkness, doubt, and legal bondage, through ignorance of those great foundation-truths. But while all this is perfectly true, there are, on the other hand, many – alas! too many – who have a merely intellectual familiarity with the principles of grace, but (if we are to judge from their habits and manners, their style and deportment – the only way we have of judging) who know but little of the sanctifying power in the heart and in the life. Now, to speak according to the teaching of the paschal feast, it would not have been according to the mind of God for anyone to attempt to keep that feast without the unleavened bread, even the bread of affliction. Such a thing would not have been tolerated in Israel of old. It was an absolutely essential ingredient. And so, we may rest assured, it is an integral part of that feast which we, as Christians, are exhorted to keep, to cultivate personal holiness and that condition of soul which is so aptly expressed by the “bitter herbs” of Exodus 12, or the Deuteronomic ingredient – “the bread of affliction,” which latter would seem to be the permanent figure for the land. In a word, then, we believe there is a deep and urgent need amongst us of those spiritual feelings and affections, those profound exercises of soul, which the Holy Ghost would produce by unfolding to our hearts the sufferings of Christ – what it cost Him to put our sins away – what He endured for us when passing under the billows and waves of God’s righteous wrath against our sins. We are sadly lacking – if one may be permitted to speak for others – in that deep contrition of heart which flows from spiritual occupation with the sufferings and death of our precious Saviour. It is one thing to have the blood of Christ sprinkled on the conscience, and another thing to have the death of Christ brought home, in a spiritual way, to the heart, and the Cross of Christ applied, in a practical way, to our whole course and character. - How is it that we can so lightly commit sin, in thought, word, and deed? - How is it that there is so much levity, - So much unsubduedness, - So much self-indulgence, - So much carnal ease, - So much that is merely frothy and superficial? Is it not because that ingredient typified by “the bread of affliction” is lacking in our feast? We cannot doubt it. We fear there is a very deplorable lack of depth and seriousness in our Christianity. There is too much flippant discussion of the profound mysteries of the Christian faith, too much head-knowledge without the inward power. All this demands the serious attention of the reader. We cannot shake off the impression that not a little of this melancholy condition of things is but too justly traceable to a certain style of preaching the Gospel, adopted, no doubt, with the very best intentions, but none the less pernicious in its moral effects. It is all right to preach a simple Gospel. It cannot, by any possibility, be put more simply than God the Holy Ghost has given it to us in Scripture. All this is fully admitted; but, at the same time, we are persuaded there is a very serious defect in the preaching of which we speak. There is a want of spiritual depth, a lack of holy seriousness. In the effort to counteract legality, there is that which tends to levity. Now, while legality is a great evil, levity is much greater. We must guard against both. We believe grace is the remedy for the former, truth for the latter; but spiritual wisdom is needed to enable us rightly to adjust and apply these two. If we find a soul deeply exercised under the powerful action of truth, thoroughly plowed up by the mighty ministry of the Holy Ghost, we should pour in the deep consolation of the pure and precious grace of God, as set forth in the divinely efficacious sacrifice of Christ. This is the divine remedy for a broken heart, a contrite spirit, a convicted conscience. When the deep furrow has been made by the spiritual plowshare, we have only to cast in the incorruptible seed of the Gospel of God, in the assurance that it will take root, and bring forth fruit in due season. But, on the other hand, if we find a person going on in a light, airy, unbroken condition, using very high-flown language about grace, talking loudly against legality, and seeking, in a merely human way, to set forth an easy way of being saved, we consider this to be a case calling for a very solemn application, of truth to the heart and conscience. Now, we greatly fear there is a vast amount of this last named element abroad in the professing church. To speak according to the language of our type, there is a tendency to separate the passover from the feast of unleavened bread – to rest in the fact of being delivered from judgment and forget the roasted lamb, the bread of holiness, and the bread of affliction. In reality, they never can be separated, inasmuch as God has bound them together; and hence we do not believe that any soul can be really in the enjoyment of the precious truth that “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us,” who is not seeking to “keep the feast.” When the Holy Spirit unfolds to our hearts something of the deep blessedness, preciousness, and efficacy of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, He leads us to meditate upon the soul-subduing mystery of His sufferings – to ponder in our hearts all that He passed through for us, all that it cost Him to save us from the eternal consequences of that which we, alas! So often lightly commit. Now, this is very deep and holy work, and leads the soul into those exercises which correspond with “the bread of affliction” in the feast of unleavened bread. There is a wide difference between the feelings produced by dwelling upon our sins and those which flow from dwelling upon the sufferings of Christ to put those sins away. True, we can never forget our sins, never forget the hole of the pit from whence we were digged; but it is one thing to dwell upon the pit, and another and a deeper thing altogether to dwell upon the grace that digged us out of it, and what it cost our precious Saviour to do it. It is this latter we so much need to keep continually in the remembrance of the thoughts of our hearts. We are so terribly volatile, so ready to forget. We need to look very earnestly to God to enable us to enter more deeply and practically into the sufferings of Christ, and into the application of the Cross to all that in us which is contrary to Him. This will impart depth of tone, tenderness of spirit, an intense breathing after holiness of heart and life, practical separation from the world, in its every phase, a holy subduedness, jealous watchfulness over ourselves, our thoughts, our words, our ways, our whole deportment in daily life. In a word, it would lead to a totally different type of Christianity from what we see around us, and what, alas! we exhibit in our own personal history. May the Spirit of God graciously unfold to our hearts, by His own direct and powerful ministry, more and more of what is meant by “the roasted lamb,” the “unleavened bread,” and “the bread of affliction.” * * For further remarks on the passover and the feast of unleavened bread, the reader is referred to Exodus 12. and Numbers 9. Specially in the latter – the connection between the passover and the Lord’s supper. This is a point of deepest interest and immense practical importance. The passover looked forward to the death of Christ; the Lord’s supper looks back to it. What the former was to a faithful Israelite, the latter is to the Church. If this were more fully seen, it would greatly tend to meet the prevailing laxity, indifference, and error as to the table and supper of the Lord. To anyone who lives habitually in the holy atmosphere of Scripture, it must seem strange indeed to mark the confusion of thought and the diversity of practice in reference to a subject so very important, and one so simply and clearly presented in the Word of God. It can hardly be called in question, by anyone who bows to Scripture, that the apostles and the early Church assembled on the first day of the week to break bread. There is not a shadow of warrant in the New Testament for confining that most precious ordinance to once a month, once a quarter, or once in six months. This can only be viewed as a human interference with a divine institution. We are aware that much is sought to be made of the words, “As oft as ye do it;” but we do not see how any argument based on this clause can stand for a moment in the face of apostolic precedent in Acts 20:7. The first day of the week is unquestionably the day for the Church to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Does the Christian reader admit this? If so, does he act upon it? It is a serious thing to neglect a special ordinance of Christ, and one appointed by Him the same night in which He was betrayed, under circumstances so deeply affecting. Surely, all who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity would desire to remember Him in this special way, according to His own word – “This do in remembrance of me.” Can we understand any true lover of Christ living in the habitual neglect of this precious memorial? If an Israelite of old neglected the passover, he would have been “cut off.” But this was law, and we are under grace. True; but is that a reason for neglecting our Lord’s commandment? We would commend this subject to the reader’s careful attention. There is much more involved in it than most of us are aware. We believe the entire history of the Lord’s Supper for the last eighteen centuries is full of interest and instruction. We may see in the way in which the Lord’s table has been treated a striking moral index of the Church’s real condition. In proportion as the Church departed from Christ and His Word did she neglect and pervert the precious institution of the Lord’s supper; and on the other hand, just as the Spirit of God wrought, at any time, with special power in the Church, the Lord’s supper has found its true place in the hearts of His people. But we cannot pursue this subject further in a foot-note; we have ventured to suggest it to the reader, and we trust he may be led to follow it up for himself. We believe he will find it a most profitable and suggestive study. The Feast of Pentecost We shall now briefly consider the feast of Pentecost, which stands next in order to the passover. “Seven weeks shalt thou number unto thee; begin to number the seven weeks from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn. And thou shalt keep the feast of weeks unto the Lord thy God with a tribute of a free-will offering of thine hand, which thou shalt give unto the Lord thy God, according as the Lord thy God hath blessed thee; and thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maid-servant, and the Levite that is within thy gates, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are among you, in the place which the Lord thy God hath chosen to place His name there. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt; and thou shalt observe and do these statutes” (Ver. 9-12). Here we have the well-known and beautiful type of the day of Pentecost. The passover sets forth the death of Christ; the sheaf of first-fruits is the striking figure of a risen Christ; and in the feast of weeks, we have prefigured before us the descent of the Holy Ghost, fifty days after the resurrection. We speak, of course, of what these feasts convey to us, according to the mind of God, irrespective altogether of the question of Israel’s apprehension of their meaning.. It is our privilege to look at all these typical institutions in the light of the New Testament; and when we so view them, we are filled with wonder and delight at the divine perfectness, beauty, and order of all those marvelous types. And not only so, but – what is of immense value to us – we see how the Scriptures of the New Testament dovetail, as it were, into those of the Old; we see the lovely unity of the divine Volume, and how manifestly it is one Spirit that breathes through the whole, from beginning to end. In this way we are inwardly strengthened in our apprehension of the precious truth of the divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, and our hearts are fortified against all the blasphemous attacks of infidel writers. Our souls are conducted to the top of the mountain where the moral glories of the Volume shine upon us in all their heavenly luster, and from whence we can look down and see the clouds and chilling mists of infidel thought rolling beneath us. These clouds and mists cannot affect us, inasmuch as they are far away below the level on which, through infinite grace, we stand. Infidel writers know absolutely nothing of the moral glories of Scripture; but one thing is awfully certain, namely, that one moment in eternity will completely revolutionize the thoughts of all the infidels and atheists that have ever raved or written against the Bible and its Author. Now? in looking at the deeply interesting feast of weeks, or Pentecost, we are at once struck with the difference between it and the feast of unleavened bread. In the first place, we read of “a freewill offering.” Here we have a figure of the Church, formed by the Holy Ghost and presented to God as “a kind of first-fruits of His creatures.” We have dwelt upon this feature of the type in the “Notes on Leviticus,” chapter 23, and shall not therefore enter upon it here, but confine ourselves to what is purely Deuteronomic. The people were to present a tribute of a free-will offering of their hand, according as the Lord their God had blessed them. There was nothing like this at the passover, because that sets forth Christ offering Himself for us, as a sacrifice, and not our offering anything. We remember our deliverance from sin and Satan, and what that deliverance cost; we meditate upon the deep and varied sufferings of our precious Saviour as prefigured by the roasted lamb; we remember that it was our sins that were laid upon Him. He was bruised for our iniquities – judged in our stead, and this leads to deep and hearty contrition, or, what we may call true Christian repentance. For we must never forget that repentance is not a mere transient emotion of a sinner when his eyes are first opened, but an abiding moral condition of the Christian, in view of the Cross and passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. If this were better understood and more fully entered into, it would impart a depth and solidity to the Christian life and character in which the great majority of us are lamentably deficient. But in the feast of Pentecost, we have before us the power of the Holy Ghost, and the varied effects of His blessed presence in us and with us. He enables us to present our bodies and all that we have as a free-will offering unto our God, according as He hath blessed us. This, we need hardly say, can only be done by the power of the Holy Ghost; and hence the striking type of it is presented, not in the passover, which prefigures the death of Christ; not in the feast of unleavened bread, which sets forth the moral effect of that death upon us, in repentance, selfjudgment, and practical holiness; but in Pentecost, which is the acknowledged type of the precious gift of the Holy Ghost. Now, it is the Spirit who enables us to enter into the claims of God upon us – claims which are to be measured only by the extent of the divine blessing. He gives us to see and understand that all we are and all we have belong to God. He gives us to delight in consecrating ourselves-spirit, soul, and body – to God. It is truly” a free-will offering.” It is not of constraint, but willingly. There is not an atom of bondage, for” where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” In short, we have here the lovely spirit and moral character of the entire Christian life and service. A soul under law cannot understand the force and beauty of this. Souls under the law never received the Spirit. The two things are wholly incompatible. Thus the apostle says to the poor misguided assemblies of Galatia, “This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by works of law, or by the hearing of faith? . . . He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth He it by works of law, or by the hearing of faith?” The precious gift of the Spirit is consequent upon the death, resurrection, ascension, and glorification of our adorable Lord and Saviour JESUS Christ, and consequently can have nothing whatever to do with “works of law” in any shape or form. The presence of the Holy Ghost on earth, His dwelling with and in all true believers, is a grand characteristic truth of Christianity. It was not, and could not be, known in Old Testament times. It was not even known by the disciples in our Lord’s lifetime. He Himself said to them, on the eve of His departure, “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth; it is expedient [or profitable – ουμφερει] for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you” (John 16:7). This proves, in the most conclusive manner, that even the very men who enjoyed the high and precious privilege of personal companionship with the Lord Himself were to be put in an advanced position by His going away and the coming of the Comforter. Again, we read, “If ye love Me, keep My commandments; and I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him; but ye know Him, for He dwelleth with you and shall be in you.” We cannot, however, attempt to go elaborately into this immense subject here; our space does not admit of it, much as we should delight in it. We must confine ourselves to one or two points suggested by the feast of weeks, as presented in our chapter. We have referred to the very interesting fact that the Spirit of God is the living spring and power of the life of personal devotedness and consecration beautifully prefigured by “the tribute of a free-will offering.” The sacrifice of Christ is the ground, the presence of the Holy Ghost is the power, of the Christian’s dedication of himself – spirit, soul, and body – to God. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” (Romans 12:1). But there is another point of deepest interest presented in verse 11 of our chapter,- “And thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God.” We have no such word in the paschal feast, or in the feast of unleavened bread. It would not be in moral keeping with either of these solemnities. True it is, the passover lies at the very foundation of all the joy we can or ever shall realize here or hereafter; but we must ever think of the death of Christ, His sufferings, His sorrows – all that He passed through when the waves and billows of God’s righteous wrath passed over His soul. It is upon these profound mysteries that our hearts are, or ought to be, mainly fixed when we surround the Lord’s table and keep that feast by which we show the Lord’s death until He come. Now, it is plain to the spiritual and thoughtful reader that the feelings proper to such a holy and solemn institution are not of a jubilant character. We certainly can and do rejoice that the sorrows and sufferings of our blessed Lord are over, and over forever – that those terrible hours are passed, never to return; but what we recall in the feast is not simply their being over, but their being gone through, and that for us. “Ye do show the Lord’s death;” and we know that whatever may accrue to us from that precious death, yet when we are called to meditate upon it, our joy is chastened by those profound exercises of soul which the Holy Spirit produces by unfolding to us the sorrows, the sufferings, the Cross, and passion of our blessed Saviour. Our Lord’s words are, “This do in remembrance of Me;” but what we especially remember in the supper is, Christ suffering and dying for us; what we show, is His death; and with these solemn realities before our souls, in the power of the Holy Ghost, there will, there must be, holy subduedness and seriousness. We speak, of course, of what becomes the immediate occasion of the celebration of the supper – the suited feelings and affections of such a moment. But these must be produced by the powerful ministry of the Holy Ghost. It can be of no possible use to seek, by any pious efforts of our own, to work ourselves up to a suitable state of mind. This would be ascending by steps to the altar, a thing most offensive to God. It is only by the Holy Spirit’s ministry that we can worthily celebrate the holy supper of the Lord. He alone can enable us to put away all levity, all formality, all mere routine, all wandering thoughts, and to discern the body and blood of the Lord in those memorials which, by His own appointment, are laid on His table. But in the feast of Pentecost, rejoicing was a prominent feature. We hear nothing of “bitter herbs” or “bread of affliction” on this occasion, because it is the type of the corning of the other Comforter – the descent of the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father, and sent down by the risen, ascended, and glorified Head in the heavens, to fill the hearts of His people with praise, thanksgiving, and triumphant joy – yea, to lead them into full and blessed fellowship with their glorified Head, in His triumph over sin, death, hell, Satan, and all the powers of darkness. The Spirit’s presence is connected with liberty, light, power, and joy. Thus we read, “The disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost.” Doubts, fears, and legal bondage flee away before the precious ministry of the Holy Ghost. But we must distinguish between His work and His indwelling – His quickening and His sealing. The very first dawn of conviction in the soul is the fruit of the Spirit’s work. It is His blessed operation that leads to all true repentance, and this is not joyful work. It is very good, very needful, absolutely essential; but it is not joy – nay, it is deep sorrow. But when, through grace, we are enabled to believe in a risen and glorified Saviour, then the Holy Ghost comes and takes up His abode in us, as the seal of our acceptance and the earnest of our inheritance. Now, this fills us with joy unspeakable and full of glory; and being thug filled ourselves, we become channels of blessing to others. “He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive; for the Holy Ghost was not yet, because that Jesus was not yet glorified.” The Spirit is the spring of power and joy in the heart of the believer. He fits, fills, and uses us as His vessels in ministering to poor thirsty, needy souls around us. He links us with the Man in the glory, maintains us in living communion with Him, and enables us to be, in our feeble measure, the expression of what He is. Every movement of the Christian should be redolent with the fragrance of Christ. For one who professes to be a Christian to exhibit unholy tempers, selfish ways, a grasping, covetous, worldly spirit, envy and jealousy, pride and ambition, is to belie his profession, dishonor the holy name of Christ, and bring reproach upon that glorious Christianity which he professes, and of which we have the lovely type in the feast of weeks – a feast preeminently characterized by a joy which had its source in the goodness of God, and which flowed out far and wide, and embraced in its hallowed circle every object of need. “Thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maid-servant, and the Levite that is within thy gates, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are among you.” How lovely! How perfectly beautiful! Oh that its antitype were more faithfully exhibited amongst us! Where are those streams of refreshing which ought to flow from the Church of God? where those unblotted epistles of Christ known and read of all men? Where can we see a practical exhibition of Christ in the ways of His people – something to which we could point and say, There is true Christianity? Oh, may the Spirit of God stir up our hearts to a more intense desire after conformity to the image of Christ, in all things! May He clothe with His own mighty power the Word of God, which we have in our hands and in our homes, that it may speak to our hearts and consciences, and lead us to judge ourselves, our ways, and our associations by its heavenly light, so that there may be a thoroughly devoted band of witnesses gathered out to His name, to wait for His appearing. Will the reader join us in asking for this? The Feast of Tabernacles We shall now turn for a moment to the lovely institution of the feast of tabernacles, which gives such remarkable completeness to the range of truth presented in our chapter.Thou shalt observe the feast of tabernacles seven days, after that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine; and thou shalt rejoice in thy feast, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maid-servant, and the Levite, the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are within thy gates. Seven days shalt thou keep a solemn feast unto the Lord thy God in the place which the Lord shall choose; because the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thine hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice. Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before the Lord thy God in the place which He shall choose; in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles; and they shall not appear before the Lord empty; every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord thy God which He hath given thee” (Ver. 13-17). Here, then, we have the striking and beautiful type of Israel’s future. The feast of tabernacles has not yet had its anti type. The passover and Pentecost have had their fulfillment in the precious death of Christ and the descent of the Holy Ghost, but the third great solemnity points forward to the times of the restitution of all things, which God has spoken of by the mouth of all His holy prophets which have been since the world began. And let the reader note particularly the time of the celebration of this feast. It was to be “after thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine;” in other words, it was after the harvest and the vintage. Now, there is a very marked distinction between these two things. The one speaks of grace, the other of judgment. At the end of the age, God will gather His wheat into His garner, and then will come the treading of the wine-press, in awful judgment. We have in the fourteenth chapter of the book of Revelation a very solemn passage bearing upon the subject now before us. “And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of Man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle. And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, ‘Thrust in thy sickle, and reap; for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe.’ And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped.” Here we have the harvest; and then “another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle. And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire” – the emblem of judgment – “and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, ‘Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe.’ And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great wine-press of the wrath of God. And the wine-press was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the wine-press, even unto the horsebridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs” -equal to the whole length of the land of Palestine! Now, these apocalyptic figures set before us, in their own characteristic way, scenes which must be enacted previous to the celebration of the feast of tabernacles. Christ will gather His wheat into His heavenly garner, and after that He will come in crushing judgment upon Christendom. Thus, every section of the volume of inspiration – Moses, the Psalms, the Prophets, the Gospels (or the acts of Christ), the Acts of the Holy Ghost, the Epistles, and Apocalypse – all go to establish, unanswerably, the fact that the world will not be converted by the Gospel, that things are not improving, and will not improve, but grow worse and worse. That glorious time prefigured by the feast of tabernacles must be preceded by the vintage, the treading of the winepress of the wrath of almighty God. Why, then, we may well ask, in the face of such an overwhelming body of divine evidence, furnished by every section of the inspired canon, will men persist in cherishing the delusive hope of a world converted by the Gospel? What mean “gathered wheat and a trodden wine-press”? Assuredly, they do not and cannot mean a converted world. We shall perhaps be told that we cannot build anything upon Mosaic types and apocalyptic symbols. Perhaps not, if we had but types and symbols; but when the accumulated rays of inspiration’s heavenly lamp converge upon these types and symbols and unfold their deep meaning to our souls, we find them in perfect harmony with the voices of prophets and apostles, and the living teachings of our Lord Himself. In a word, all speak the same language, all teach the same lesson, all bear the same unequivocal testimony to the solemn truth that at the end of this age, instead of a converted world, prepared for a spiritual millennium, there will be a vine covered and borne down with terrible clusters, fully ripe for the wine-press of the wrath of almighty God. Oh, may the men and women of Christendom, and the teachers thereof, apply their hearts to these solemn realities! May these things sink down into their ears, and into the very depths of their souls, so that they may fling to the winds their fondly cherished delusion, and accept instead the plainly revealed and clearly established truth of God! But we must draw this section to a close; and ere doing so, we would remind the Christian reader that we are called to exhibit in our daily life the blessed influence of all those great truths presented to us in the three interesting types on which we have been meditating. Christianity is characterized by those three great formative facts – redemption, the presence of the Holy Ghost, and the hope of glory. The Christian is redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, sealed by the Holy Ghost, and he is looking for the Saviour. Yes, beloved reader, these are solid facts, divine realities, great formative truths. They are not mere principles or opinions, but they are designed to be a living power in our souls, and to shine in our lives. See how thoroughly practical were these solemnities on which we have been dwelling; mark what a tide of praise and thanksgiving and joy and blessing and active benevolence flowed from the assembly of Israel when gathered around the Lord in the place which He had chosen. Praise and thanksgiving ascended to God, and the blessed streams of a large-hearted benevolence flowed forth to every object of need. “Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before the Lord thy God . . . And they shall not appear before the Lord empty; every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord thy God which He hath given thee.” Lovely words! They were not to come empty into the Lord’s presence; they were to come with the heart full of praise, and the hands full of the fruits of divine goodness to gladden the hearts of the Lord’s workmen and the Lord’s poor. All this was perfectly beautiful. The Lord would gather His people around Himself, to fill them to overflowing with joy and praise, and to make them His channels of blessing to others. They were not to remain under their vine and under their figtree, and there congratulate themselves upon the rich and varied mercies which surrounded them. This might be all right and good in its place, but it would not have fully met the mind and heart of God. No; three times in the year they had to arise and betake themselves to the divinely appointed meeting-place, and there raise their hallelujahs to the Lord their God, and there, too, to minister liberally of that which He had bestowed upon them to every form of human need. God would confer upon His people the rich privilege of rejoicing the heart of the Levite, the stranger, the widow, and the fatherless. This is the work in which He Himself delights – blessed forever be His name – and He would share His delight with His people. He would have it to be known, seen, and felt that the place where He met His people was a sphere of joy and praise, and a center from whence streams of blessing were to flow forth in all directions. Has not all this a voice and a lesson for the Church of God? Does it not speak home to the writer and the reader of these lines? Assuredly it does. May we listen to it; may it tell upon our hearts. May the marvelous grace of God so act upon us that our hearts may be full of praise to Him, and our hands full of good works. If the mere types and shadows of our blessings were connected with so much thanksgiving and active benevolence, how much more powerful should be the effect of the blessings themselves! But ah! the question is, Are we realizing the blessings? are we making our own of them? are we grasping them in the power of an artless faith? Here lies the secret of the whole matter. Where do we find professing Christians in the full and settled enjoyment of what the passover prefigured, namely, full deliverance from judgment and this present evil world? Where do we find them in the full and settled enjoyment of their Pentecost, even the indwelling of the Holy Ghost – the seal, the earnest, the unction, and the witness? Ask the vast majority of religious professors the plain question, “Have you received the Holy Ghost?” and see what answer you will get. What answer can the reader give? Can he say, Yes, thank God, I know I am washed in the precious blood of Christ, and sealed with the Holy Ghost? It is greatly to be feared that comparatively few of the vast multitudes of professors around us know any thing of these precious things, which nevertheless are the chartered privileges of the very simplest member of the body of Christ. So also as to the feast of tabernacles, how few understand its meaning! True, it has not yet been fulfilled; but the Christian is called to live in the present power of that which it sets forth. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Our life is to be governed and our character formed by the combined influence of the “grace” in which we stand and the “glory” for which we wait. But if souls are not established in grace – if they do not even know that their sins are forgiven – if they are taught that it is presumption to be sure of salvation, and that it is humility and piety to live in perpetual doubt and fear, and that no one can be sure of their salvation until they stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, how can they possibly take Christian ground, manifest the fruits of Christian life, or cherish proper Christian hope? If an Israelite of old was in doubt as to whether he was a child of Abraham, a member of the congregation of the Lord, and in the land, how could he keep the feast of unleavened bread, Pentecost, or tabernacles? There would have been no sense, meaning, or value in such a thing; indeed, we may safely affirm that no Israelite would have thought for a moment of anything so utterly absurd. How is it, then, that professing Christians – many of them, we cannot doubt, real children of God never seem to be able to enter upon proper Christian ground? - They spend their days in doubt and fear, darkness and uncertainty. - Their religious exercises and services, instead of being the outcome of life possessed and enjoyed, are entered upon and gone through .more as a matter of legal duty, and as a moral preparation for the life to come. Many truly pious souls are kept in this state all their days; and as to “the blessed hope” which grace has set before us, to cheer our hearts and detach us from present things, they do not enter into it or understand it; it is looked upon as a mere speculation, indulged in by a few visionary enthusiasts here and there. They are looking forward to the day of judgment, instead of looking out for “the bright and morning Star;” they are praying for the forgiveness of their sins, and asking God to give them His Holy Spirit, where they ought to be rejoicing in the assured possession of eternal life, divine righteousness, and the Spirit of adoption. All this is directly opposed to the simplest and clearest teaching of the New Testament; it is utterly foreign to the very genius of Christianity, subversive of the Christian’s peace and liberty, and destructive of all true and intelligent Christian worship, service, and testimony. It is plainly impossible that people can appear before the Lord with their hearts full of praise for privileges which they do not enjoy, or their hands full of the blessing which they have never realized. We call the earnest attention of all the Lord’s people, throughout the length and breadth of the professing church, to this weighty subject. We entreat them to search the Scriptures, and see if they afford any warrant for keeping souls in darkness, doubt, and bondage all their days. That there are solemn warnings, searching appeals, weighty admonitions, is most true, and we bless God for them, we need them, and should diligently apply our hearts to them; but let the reader distinctly understand that it is the sweet privilege of the very babes in Christ to know that their sins are all forgiven, that they are accepted in a risen Christ, sealed by the Holy Ghost, and heirs of eternal glory. Such, through infinite and sovereign grace, are their clearly established and assured blessings – blessings to which the love of God makes them welcome, for which the blood of Christ makes them fit, and as to which the testimony of the Holy Ghost makes them sure. May the great Shepherd and Bishop of souls lead all His beloved people – the lambs and sheep of His blood-bought flock – to know, by the teaching of His HOLY SPIRIT, the things that are freely given to them of God; and may those who do know them, in measure, know them more fully, and exhibit the precious fruits of them in a life of genuine devotedness to Christ and His service. It is greatly to be feared that many of us who profess to be acquainted with the very highest truths of the Christian faith are not answering to our profession; we are not acting up to the principle set forth in verse 17 of our beautiful chapter – “Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord thy God which He hath given thee.” We seem to forget that although we have nothing to do and nothing to give for salvation, we have much that we can do for the Saviour, and much that we can give to His workmen and to His poor. There is very great danger of pushing the do-nothing and give-nothing principle too far. If in the days of our ignorance and legal bondage we worked and gave upon a false principle and with a false object, we surely ought not to do less and give less now that we profess to know that we are not only saved, but blessed with all spiritual blessings in a risen and glorified Christ. We have need to take care that we are not resting in the mere intellectual perception and verbal profession of these great and glorious truths, while the heart and conscience have never felt their sacred action, nor the conduct and character been brought under their powerful and holy influence. We venture, in all tenderness and love, just to offer these practical suggestions to the reader for his prayerful consideration. We would not wound, offend, or discourage the very feeblest lamb in all the flock of Christ; and further, we can assure the reader that we are not casting a stone at anyone, but simply writing as in the immediate presence of God, and sounding in the ears of the Church a note of warning as to that which we deeply feel to be our common danger. We believe there is an urgent call, on all sides, to consider our ways, to humble ourselves before the Lord on account of our manifold failures, shortcomings, and inconsistencies, and to seek grace from Him to be more real, more thoroughly devoted, more pronounced in our testimony for Him, in this dark and evil day. ~ end of chapter 16 ~
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Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2024 10:22:18 GMT -5
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN WE must remember that the division of Scripture into chapters and verses is entirely a human arrangement, often very convenient, no doubt, for reference; but not infrequently it is quite unwarrantable, and interferes with the connection. Thus we can see at a glance that the closing verses of chapter 16 are much more connected with what follows than with what goes before. “Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates, which the Lord thy God giveth thee, throughout thy tribes; and they shall judge the people with just judgment. Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift; for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous. That which is altogether just shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live and inherit the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” These words teach us a twofold lesson; in the first place, they set forth the even-handed justice and perfect truth which ever characterize the government of God. Every case is dealt with according to its own merits and on the ground of its own facts. The judgment is so plain that there is not a shadow of ground for a question; all dissension is absolutely closed; and if any murmur is raised, the murmurer is at once silenced by “Friend, I do thee no wrong.” This holds good every where, and at all times, in the holy government of God, and it makes us long for the time when that government shall be established from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. But on the other hand, we learn, from the lines just quoted, what man’s judgment is worth if left to himself. It cannot be trusted for a moment. Man is capable, of “wresting judgment,” of “respecting persons,” of “taking a gift,” of attaching importance to a person because of his position and wealth. That he is capable of all this is evident from the fact of his being told not to do it. We must ever remember this. If God commands man not to steal, it is plain that man has theft in his nature. Hence, therefore, human judgment and human government are liable to the grossest corruption. Judges and governors, if left to themselves, if not under the direct sway of divine principle, are capable of perverting justice for filthy lucre’s sake – of favoring a wicked man because he is rich, and of condemning a righteous man because he is poor of giving a judgment in flagrant opposition to the plainest facts because of some advantage to be gained, whether in the shape of money or influence or popularity or power. To prove this, it is not necessary to point to such men as Pilate and Herod and Felix and Festus; we have no need to go beyond the passage just quoted, in order to see what man is, even when clothed in the robes of official dignity, seated on the throne of government, or on the bench of justice. Some, as they read these lines, may feel disposed to say, in the language of Hazael, “Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?” But let such reflect for a moment on the fact that the human heart is the seed-plot of every sin, and of every vile and abominable and contemptible wickedness that ever was committed in this world; and the unanswerable proof of this is found in the enactments, commandments, and prohibitions which appear on the sacred page of inspiration. And herein we have an uncommonly fine reply to the oft-repeated question, “What have we to do with many of the laws and institutions set forth in the Mosaic economy? Why are such things set down in the Bible? Can they possibly be inspired?” Yes, they are inspired, and they appear on the page of inspiration in order that we may see, as reflected in a divinely perfect mirror, the moral material of which we ourselves are made – the thoughts we are capable of thinking, the words we are capable of speaking, and the deeds we are capable of doing. Is not this something? Is it not good and wholesome to find, for example, in some of the passages of this most profound and beautiful book of Deuteronomy, that human nature is capable, and hence we are capable, of doing things that put us morally below the level of a beast? Assuredly it is; and well would it be for many a one who walks in pharisaic pride and self-complacency – puffed up with false notions of his own dignity and high-toned morality, to learn this deeply humbling lesson. But how morally lovely, how pure, how refined and elevated, were the divine enactments for Israel! They were not to wrest judgment, but allow it to flow in its own straight and even channel, irrespective altogether of persons. The poor man in vile raiment was to have the same impartial justice as the man with a gold ring and gay clothing. The decision of the judgment-seat was not to be warped by partiality or prejudice, or the robe of justice to be defiled by the stain of bribery. Oh, what will it be for this oppressed and groaning earth to be governed by the admirable laws which are recorded in the inspired pages of the Pentateuch, when a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall decree justice! “Give the king Thy judgments, O God, and Thy righteousness unto the king’s son. He shall judge Thy people .with righteousness, and Thy poor with judgment” – no wresting, no bribery, no partial judgments then – “The mountains [or higher dignities] shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills [or lesser dignities], by righteousness. “He shall judge [or defend] the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. They shall fear Thee as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations. He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass; as showers that water the earth. In his days shall the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth . . . He shall deliver the needy when he crieth, the poor also, and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. He shall redeem their souls from deceit and violence, and precious shall their blood be in his sight” (Psalm 72). Well may the heart long for the time – the bright and blessed time when all this shall be made good, when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, when the Lord JESUS shall take to Himself His great power and reign, when the Church in the heavens shall reflect the beams of His glory upon the earth, when Israel’s twelve tribes shall repose beneath the vine and fig tree in their own promised land, and all the nations of the earth shall rejoice beneath the peaceful and beneficent rule of the Son of David. Thanks and praise be to our God, thus it shall be, ere long, as sure as His throne is in the heavens. A little while and all shall be made good, according to the eternal counsels and immutable promise of God. Till then, beloved Christian reader, be it ours to live in the constant, earnest, believing anticipation of this bright and blessed time, and to pass through this ungodly scene as thorough strangers and pilgrims, having no place or portion down here, but ever breathing forth the prayer, “Come, Lord Jesus!” In the closing lines of chapter 16, Israel is warned against the most distant approach to the religious customs of the nations around. “Thou shalt not plant thee a grove of any trees near unto the altar of the Lord thy God, which thou shalt make thee. Neither shalt thou set thee up any image which the Lord thy God hateth.” They were carefully to avoid everything which might lead them in the direction of the dark and abominable idolatries of the heathen nations around. The altar of God was to stand out in distinct and unmistakable separation from those groves and shady places where false gods were worshiped, and things were done which are not to be named. * * It may interest the reader to know that the Holy Ghost, in speaking of the altar of God in the New Testament, does not apply to it the word used to express a heathen altar, but has a comparatively new word – a word unknown in the world’s classics. The heathen altar is βωμον (Acts 17:23): the altar of God is θυσιαστηριον. The former occurs but once; the latter, twenty-three times. So jealously is the worship of the only true God guarded and preserved from the defiling touch of heathen idolatry. Men may feel disposed to inquire why this should be, or how could the altar of God be affected by a name? We reply, The Holy Ghost is wiser than we are; and although the heathen word was before Him – a short and convenient word, too, – He refuses to apply it to the altar of the one true and living God. See Trench’s “Synonyms of the New Testament,” p.242. New edition revised. In a word, everything was to be most carefully avoided which might in any way draw the heart away from the one living and true God. Nor this only; it was not enough to maintain a correct outward form; images and groves might be abolished, and the nation might profess the dogma of the unity of the Godhead, and all the while there might be an utter want of heart and genuine devotedness in the worship rendered. Hence we read, “Thou shalt not sacrifice unto the Lord thy God any bullock or sheep wherein is blemish, or any ill-favoredness, for that is an abomination unto the Lord.” That which was absolutely perfect could alone suit the altar and answer to the heart of God. To offer a blemished thing to Him was simply to prove the absence of all true sense of what became Him, and of all real heart for Him. To attempt to offer an imperfect sacrifice was tantamount to the horrible blasphemy of saying that any thing was good enough for Him. Let us hearken to the indignant pleadings of the Spirit of God, by the mouth of the prophet Malachi. “Ye offer polluted bread upon Mine altar; and ye say, ‘Wherein have we polluted Thee?’ In that ye say, ‘The table of the Lord is contemptible.’ And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith the Lord of Hosts. And now, I pray you, beseech God that He will be gracious unto us; this hath been by your means; will He regard your persons? saith the Lord of Hosts. Who is there even among you that would shut the doors for naught? neither do ye kindle fire on Mine altar for naught. I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of Hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand. For from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same, My name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto My name, and a pure offering; for My name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of Hosts. But ye have profaned it, in that ye say, ‘The table of the Lord is polluted, and the fruit thereof, even His meat is contemptible.’ Ye said also, ‘Behold, what a weariness is it!’ and ye have snuffed at it, saith the Lord of Hosts; and ye brought that which was torn, and the lame, and the sick; thus ye brought an offering: should I accept this of your hand? saith the Lord. But cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and voweth and sacrificeth unto the Lord a corrupt thing; for I am a great King, saith the Lord of Hosts, and My name is dreadful among the heathen” (Malachi 7-14). Has all this no voice for the professing church? Has it no voice for the writer and the reader of these lines? Assuredly it has. - is there not in our private and public worship a deplorable lack of heart, of real devotedness, deep-toned earnestness, holy energy, and integrity of purpose? - is there not much that answers to the offering of the lame and the sick, the blemished and the ill-favored? - is there not a deplorable amount of cold formality and dead routine in our seasons of worship, both in the closet and in the assembly? - have we not to judge ourselves for barrenness, distraction, and wandering, even at the very table of our Lord? - how often are our bodies at the table while our vagrant hearts and volatile minds are at the ends of the earth! - how often do our lips utter words which are not the true expression of our whole moral being! We express far more than we feel; we sing beyond our experience. And then, when we are favored with the blessed opportunity of dropping our offerings in our Lord’s treasury, what heartless formality! What an absence of loving, earnest, hearty devotedness! What little reference to the apostolic rule – “as God hath prospered us”! What detestable niggardliness! how little of the whole-heartedness of the poor widow who having but two mites in the world, and having the option of at least keeping one for her living, willingly cast in both-cast in her all! Pounds may be spent on ourselves, perhaps on superfluities, during the week, but when the claims of the Lord’s work, His poor, and His cause in general are brought before us, how meager is the response! Christian reader, let us consider these things; let us look at the whole subject of worship and devotedness in the divine presence, and in the presence of the grace that has saved us from everlasting burnings; let us calmly reflect upon the precious and powerful claims of Christ upon us. We are not our own; we are bought with a price. It is not merely our best, but our all, we owe to that blessed One who gave Himself for us. Do we not fully own it? Do not our hearts own it? Then may our lives express it! May we more distinctly declare whose we are and whom we serve. May the heart, the head, the hands, the feet – the whole man be dedicated, in unreserved devotedness, to Him, in the power of the Holy Ghost, and according to the direct teaching of Holy Scripture. God grant it may be so, with us and with all His beloved people! A very weighty and practical subject now claims our attention. The Necessity for Two or More Witnesses We feel it right to adhere as much as possible to the custom of quoting at full length the passages for the reader; we believe it to be profitable to give the very Word of God itself; and moreover, it is convenient to the great majority of readers to be saved the trouble of laying aside the volume and turning to the Bible in order to find the passages for themselves. “If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee, man or woman that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the Lord thy God, in transgressing His covenant, and hath gone and served other gods, and worshiped them, either the sun or moon, or any of the hosts of heaven, which I have not commanded; and it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and inquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel;” – something affecting the whole nation – “then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones till they die. At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death be put to death; but at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death. The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people. So thou shalt put the evil away from among you” (Ver. 2-7). We have already had occasion to refer to the great principle laid down in the foregoing passage. It is one of immense importance, namely, the absolute necessity of having competent testimony ere forming a judgment in any case. It meets us constantly in Scripture; indeed, it is the invariable rule in the divine government, and therefore it claims our earnest attention. We may be sure it is a safe and wholesome rule, the neglect of which must always lead us astray. We should never allow ourselves to form, much less to express and act upon, a judgment without the testimony of two or three witnesses. However trustworthy and morally reliable anyone witness may be, it is not a sufficient basis for a conclusion. We may feel convinced in our minds that the thing is true because affirmed by one in whom we have confidence; but God is wiser than we. It may be that the one witness is thoroughly upright and truthful, that he would not for worlds tell an untruth or bear false witness against anyone, – all this may be true, but we must adhere to the divine rule – “In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.” Would that this were more diligently attended to in the Church of God! Its value in all cases of discipline, and in all cases affecting the character or reputation of anyone, is simply incalculable. Ere ever an assembly reaches a conclusion or acts on a judgment in any given case, it should insist on adequate evidence. If this be not forthcoming, let all wait on God – wait patiently and confidingly, and He will surely supply what is needed. For instance, if there be moral evil or doctrinal error in an assembly of Christians, but it is only known to one; that one is perfectly certain – deeply and thoroughly convinced of the fact. What is to be done? Wait on God for further witness. To act without this, is to infringe a divine principle laid down with all possible clearness again and again in the Word of God. Is the one witness to feel himself aggrieved or insulted because his testimony is not acted upon? Assuredly not; indeed he ought not to expect such a thing, yea, he ought not to come forward as a witness until he can corroborate his testimony by the evidence of one or two more. Is the assembly to be deemed indifferent or supine because it refuses to act on the testimony of a solitary witness? Nay, it would be flying in the face of a divine command were it to do so. And be it remembered that this great practical principle is not confined in its application to cases of discipline, or questions connected with an assembly of the Lord’s people; it is of universal application. We should never allow ourselves to form a judgment or come to a conclusion without the divinely appointed measure of evidence; if that be not forthcoming, it is our plain duty to wait, and if it be needful for us to judge in the case, God will, in due time, furnish the needed evidence. We have known a case in which a man was falsely accused because the accuser based his charge upon the evidence of one of his senses; had he taken the trouble of getting the evidence of one or two more of his senses, he would not have made the charge. Thus the entire subject of evidence claims the serious attention of the reader, let his position be what it may. We are all prone to rush to hasty conclusions, to take up impressions, to give place to baseless surmisings, and allow our minds to be warped and carried away by prejudice. All these have to be most carefully guarded against. We need more calmness, seriousness, and cool deliberation in forming and expressing our judgment about men and things; but especially about men, inasmuch as we may inflict a grievous wrong upon a friend, a brother, or a neighbor by giving utterance to a false impression or a baseless charge. We may allow ourselves to be the vehicle of an utterly groundless accusation, whereby the character of another may be seriously damaged. This is very sinful in the sight of God, and should be most jealously watched against in ourselves, and sternly rebuked in others, whenever it comes before us. Whenever anyone brings a charge against another behind his back, we should insist upon his proving or withdrawing his statement. Were this plan adopted, we should be delivered from a vast amount of evil-speaking, which is not only most unprofitable, but positively wicked, and not to be tolerated. Before turning from the subject of evidence, we may just remark that inspired history supplies us with more than one instance in which a righteous man has been condemned with an appearance of attention to Deuteronomy 17:6, 7. Witness the case of Naboth, in I Kings 21; and the case of Stephen, in Acts 6 and 7; and above all, the case of the only perfect Man that every trod this earth. Alas! men can, at times, put on the appearance of wonderful attention to the letter of Scripture when it suits their own ungodly ends; they can quote its sacred words in defense of the most flagrant unrighteousness and shocking immorality. - Two witnesses accused Naboth of blaspheming God and the king, and that faithful Israelite was deprived of his inheritance and of his life on the testimony of two liars, hired by the direction of a godless, cruel woman. - Stephen, a man full of the Holy Ghost, was stoned to death for blasphemy, on the testimony of false witnesses received and acted upon by the great religious leaders of the day, who could doubtless quote Deuteronomy 17 as their authority. But all this, while it so sadly and forcibly illustrates what man is, and what mere human religiousness without conscience is, leaves wholly untouched the fine moral rule laid down for our guidance in the opening lines of our chapter. Religion without conscience or the fear of God is the most degrading, demoralizing, hardening thing beneath the canopy of Heaven; and one of its most terrible features is seen in this, that men under its influence are not ashamed or afraid to make use of the letter of Holy Scripture as a cloak wherewith to cover the most horrible wickedness. But thanks and praise to our God, His Word stands forth before the vision of our souls in all its heavenly purity, divine virtue, and holy morality, and flings back in the face of the enemy his every attempt to draw from its sacred pages a plea for aught that is not true, venerable, just, pure, lovely, and of good report. We shall now proceed to quote for the reader the second paragraph of our chapter, in which we shall find instruction of great moral value, and much needed in this day of self-will and independence. “If there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, being matters of controversy within thy gates; then shalt thou arise and get thee up into the place which the Lord thy God shall choose; and thou shalt come unto the priests the Levites, and unto the judges that shall be in those days, and inquire; and they shall show thee the sentence of judgment: and thou shalt do according to the sentence which they of that place which the Lord shall choose shall show thee; and thou shalt observe to do according to all that they inform thee; according to the sentence of the law which they shall teach thee, and according to the judgment which they shall tell thee, thou shalt do: thou shalt not decline from the sentence which they shall show thee, to the right hand, nor to the left. and the man that will do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest that standeth to minister there before the Lord thy God, or unto the judge, even that man shall die; and thou shalt put away the evil from Israel. And all the people shall hear and fear and do no more presumptuously” (Ver. 8-13). Here we have divine provision made for the perfect settlement of all questions which might arise throughout the congregation of Israel. They were to be settled in the divine presence, at the divinely appointed center, by the divinely appointed authority. Thus self-will and presumption were effectually guarded against. All matters of controversy were to be definitively settled by the judgment of God as expressed by the priest or the judge appointed by God for the purpose. In a word, it was absolutely and entirely a matter of divine authority. It was not for one man to set himself up in self-will and presumption against another. This would never do in the assembly of God. Each one had to submit his cause to a divine tribunal, and bow implicitly to its decision. There was to be no appeal, inasmuch as there was no higher court. The divinely appointed priest or judge spoke as the oracle of God, and both plaintiff and defendant had to bow, without a demur, to the decision. Now, it must be very evident to the reader that no member of the congregation of Israel would ever have thought of bringing his case before a Gentile tribunal for judgment. This, we may feel assured, would have been utterly foreign to the thoughts and feelings of every true Israelite. It would have involved a positive insult to the Lord Himself, who was in their midst to give judgment in every case which might arise. Surely He was sufficient. He knew the ins and outs, the pros and cons, the roots and issues, of every controversy, however involved or difficult. All were to look to Him, and to bring their causes to the place which He had chosen, and nowhere else. The idea of two members of the assembly of God appearing before a tribunal of the uncircumcised for judgment would not have been tolerated for a moment. It would be as much as to say that there was a defect in the divine arrangement for the congregation. Has this any voice for us? How are Christians to have their questions and their controversies settled? Are they to betake themselves to the world for judgment? Is there no provision in the assembly of God for the proper settlement of cases which may arise? Hear what the inspired apostle says on the point to the assembly at Corinth, and “to all that in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours,” and therefore to all true Christians now. “Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life! If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the Church. I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren? But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers. Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather be defrauded? Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren. Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived” (I Corinthians 6:1-9). Here, then, we have divine instruction for the Church of God in all ages. We must never, for a moment, lose sight of the fact that the Bible is the book for every stage of the Church’s earthly career. True it is, alas! the Church is not as it was when the above lines were penned by the inspired apostle; a vast change has taken place in the Church’s practical condition. There was no difficulty in early days in distinguishing between the Church and the world – between “the saints” and “unbelievers” between “those within” and “those without.” The line of demarcation was broad, distinct, and unmistakable in those days. Anyone who looked at the face of society in a religious point of view would see three things, namely, - Paganism, Judaism, and Christianity - The Gentile, the Jew, and the Church of God - The heathen temple, the synagogue, and the assembly of God. There was no confounding these things. The Christian assembly stood out in vivid contrast with all beside. Christianity was strongly and clearly pronounced in those primitive times. It was neither a national, provincial, nor parochial affair, but a personal, practical, living reality. It was not a mere nominal, national, professional creed, but a divinely wrought faith, a living power in the heart flowing out in the life. But now, things are totally changed. The Church and the world are so mixed up, that the vast majority of professors could hardly understand the real force and proper application of the passage which we have just quoted. Were we to speak to them about “the saints” going to law “before the unbelievers,” it would seem like a foreign tongue. Indeed, the term “saint” is hardly heard in the professing church, save when used with a sneer, or as applied to such as have been canonized by a superstitious reverence. But has any change come over the Word of God, or over the grand truths which that Word unfolds to our souls? - Has any change come over the thoughts of God in reference to what His Church is, or what the world is, or as to the proper relation of the one to the other? - Does He not know who are “saints” and who are “unbelievers”? - Has it ceased to be “a fault” for “brother to go to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers”? In a word, has Holy Scripture lost its power, its point, its divine application? - Is it no longer our guide, our authority, our one perfect rule and unerring standard? - Has the marked change that has come over the Church’s moral condition deprived the Word of God of all power of application to us – “to all that in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”? - Has our Father’s most precious revelation become, in anyone particular, a dead letter – a piece of obsolete writing – a document pertaining to days long gone by? - Has our altered condition robbed the Word of God of a single one of its moral glories? Reader, what answer does your heart return to these questions? Let us most earnestly entreat of you to weigh them honestly, humbly, and prayerfully in the presence of your Lord. We believe your answer will be a wonderfully correct index of your real position and moral state. Do you not clearly see and fully admit that Scripture can never lose its power? Can the principles of I Corinthians 6 ever cease to be binding on the Church of God? It is fully admitted – for who can deny that things are sadly changed? – but “Scripture cannot be broken,” and therefore what was “a fault” in the first century cannot be right in the nineteenth; there may be more difficulty in carrying out divine principles, but we must never consent to surrender them, or to act on any lower ground. If once we admit the idea that because the whole professing church has gone wrong it is impossible for us to do right, the whole principle of Christian obedience is surrendered. It is as wrong for “brother to go to law with brother before the unbelievers” to-day as when the apostle wrote his Epistle to the assembly at Corinth. * * It is well for us to bear in mind that wherever there are “two or three” gathered to the Name of the Lord JESUS, in ever such weakness, there will be found, if only they are truly humble and dependent, spiritual ability to judge in any case that may arise between brethren. They can count on divine wisdom being supplied for the settlement of any question, plea, or controversy, so that there need not be any reference to a worldly tribunal. No doubt worldly men would smile at such an idea; but we must adhere, with holy decision, to the guidance of Scripture. Brother must not go to law with brother before the unbelievers. This is distinct and emphatic. There are resources available for the assembly in Christ, the Head and Lord, for the settlement of every possible question. Let the Lord’s people seriously apply their hearts to the consideration of this subject. Let them see that they are gathered on the true ground of the Church of God; and then, though ever conscious that things are not as they once were in the Church – though sensible of the greatest weakness, failure, and shortcoming, they will nevertheless find the grace of Christ ever sufficient for them, and the Word of God full of all needed instruction and authority, so that they need never betake themselves to the world for help, counsel, or judgment. “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” This surely is enough for every exigence. Is there any question that our Lord Christ cannot settle? Do we want natural cleverness, worldly wisdom, long-headedness, great learning, keen sagacity, if we have Him? Surely not; indeed all such things can only prove like Saul’s armor to David. All we want is, simply to use the resources which we have in Christ. We shall assuredly find, “in the place where His name is recorded,” priestly wisdom to judge in every case which may arise between brethren. And further, let the Lord’s dear people remember, in all cases of local difficulty which may arise, that there is no need whatever for them to look for extraneous aid, to write to other places to get some wise man to come and help them. No doubt, if the Lord sends any of His beloved servants at the moment, their sympathy, fellowship, counsel, and help will be highly prized. We are not encouraging independence one of the other, but absolute and complete dependence upon Christ, our Head and Lord. True, the Church’s visible unity is gone; she is shorn of many gifts, she has departed from her normal condition; but the principles of the Word of God can no more lose their power than the Blood of Christ can lose its virtue or His priesthood lose its efficacy. And further, we must bear in mind that there are resources of wisdom, grace, power, and spiritual gift treasured up for the Church in Christ her Head, ever available for those who have faith to use them. We are not straitened in our blessed and adorable Head. We need never expect to see the body restored to its normal condition on the earth, but for all that, it is our privilege to see what the true ground of the body is, and it is our duty to occupy that ground and no other. Now, it is perfectly wonderful the change that takes place in our whole condition – in our view of things, in our thoughts of ourselves and our surroundings – the moment we plant our foot on the true ground of the Church of God. Everything seems changed; the Bible seems a new book; we see everything in a new light; portions of Scripture which we have been reading for years without interest or profit now sparkle with divine light, and fill us with wonder, love, and praise. We see everything from a new stand-point; our whole range of vision is changed; we have made our escape from the murky atmosphere which enwraps the whole professing church, and can now look around and see things clearly in the heavenly light of Scripture. In fact, it seems like a new conversion; and we find we can now read Scripture intelligently, because we have the divine key. We see Christ to be the center and object of all the thoughts, purposes, and counsels of God from everlasting to everlasting, and hence we are conducted into that marvelous sphere of grace and glory which the Holy Ghost delights to unfold in the precious Word of God. May the reader be led into the thorough understanding of all this, by the direct and powerful ministry of the HOLY SPIRIT. May he be enabled to give himself to the study of Scripture, and to surrender himself, unreservedly, to its teaching and authority. Let him not confer with flesh and blood, but cast Himself, like a little child, on the Lord, and seek to be led on in spiritual intelligence and practical conformity to the mind of Christ. The Fallible Kings We must now look for a moment at the closing verses of our chapter, in which we have a remarkable onlook into Israel’s future, anticipating the moment in which they should seek to set a king over them. “When thou art come unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me; thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee whom the Lord thy God shall choose; one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee; thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother. But he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses; forasmuch as the Lord hath said unto you, ‘Ye shall henceforth return no more that way.’ Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away; neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.” How very remarkable that the three things which the king was not to do were just the very things which were done – and extensively done by the greatest and wisest of Israel’s monarchs. “King Solomon made a navy of ships in Ezion-geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore or the Red Sea, in the land of Edom. And Hiram sent in the navy his servants, shipment that had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon. And they came to Ophir, and fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents [over two millions], and brought it to king Solomon.” “And Hiram sent to the king sixscore talents of gold.” “And the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six hundred threescore and six talents of gold [nearly three and a half millions], beside that he had of the merchantmen, and of the traffic of the spice merchants, and of all the kings of Arabia, and of the governors of the country.” Again, we read, “And the king made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones . . . And Solomon had horses brought out of Egypt . . . But king Solomon loved many strange women . . . And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines;. and his wives turned away his heart” (I Kings 9, 10, 11). What a tale this tells! what a commentary it furnishes upon man in his very best and highest estate! Here was a man endowed with wisdom beyond all others, surrounded by unexampled blessings, dignities, honors, and privileges; his earthly cup was full to the brim; there was nothing lacking which this world could supply to minister to human happiness. And not only so, but his remarkable prayer at the dedication of the temple might well lead us to cherish the brightest hopes respecting him, both personally and officially. But sad to say, he broke down most deplorably in everyone of the particulars as to which the law of his God had spoken so definitely and so clearly. - He was told not to multiply silver and gold, and yet he multiplied them; - He was told not to return to Egypt to multiply horses, and yet to Egypt he went for horses; - He was told not to multiply wives, and yet he had a thousand of them, and they turned away his heart. Such is man! Oh, how little is he to be counted upon! “All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away.” “Cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted of?” But we may ask, How are we to account for Solomon’s signal, sorrowful, and humiliating failure? What was the real secret of it? To answer this, we must quote for the reader the closing verses of our chapter. “And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites; and it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them; that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand or to the left; to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children, in the midst of Israel” (Ver. 18-20). Had Solomon attended to these most precious and weighty words, his historian would have had a very different task to perform; but he did not. We hear nothing of his having made a copy of the law; and most assuredly, if he did make a copy of it, he did not attend to it – yea, he turned his back upon it, and did the very things which he was told not to do. In a word, the cause of all the wreck and ruin that so rapidly followed the splendor of Solomon’s reign was the neglect of the plain Word of God. It is this which makes it all so solemn for us, in this our own day, and which leads us to call the earnest attention of the reader to it. We deeply feel the need of seeking to rouse the attention of the whole Church of God to this great subject. Neglect of the Word of God is the source of all the failure, all the sin, all the error, all the mischief and confusion, the heresies, sects, and schisms that have ever been or are now in this world. And we may add, with equal confidence, that the only real, sovereign remedy for our present lamentable condition will be found in returning, everyone for himself and herself, to the simple but sadly neglected authority of the Word of God. Let each one see his own departure, and that of the whole professing body, from the plain and positive teaching of the New Testament – the commandments of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Let us humble ourselves under the mighty hand of our God, because of our common sin, and let us turn to Him in true self-judgment, and He will graciously restore and heal and bless us, and lead us in that most blessed path of obedience which lies open before every truly humble soul. May God the Holy Ghost, in His own resistless power, bring home to the heart and conscience of every member of the body of Christ on the face of the earth, the urgent need of an immediate and unreserved surrender to the authority of the Word of God. ~ end of chapter 17 ~
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Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2024 10:24:34 GMT -5
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN THE opening paragraph of this chapter suggests a deeply interesting and practical line of truth. “The priests the Levites, and all the tribe of Levi, shall have no part nor inheritance with Israel; they shall eat the offerings of the Lord made by fire, and His inheritance. Therefore shall they have no inheritance among their brethren: the Lord is their inheritance, as He hath said unto them. And this shall be the priest’s due from the people, from them that offer a sacrifice, whether it be ox or sheep; and they shall give unto the priest the shoulder, and the two cheeks, and the maw. The first-fruits also of thy corn, of thy wine, and of thine oil, and the first of the fleece of thy sheep shalt thou give him. For the Lord thy God hath chosen him out of all thy tribes, to stand to minister in the name of the Lord, him and his sons forever. And if a Levite come from any of thy gates out of all Israel, where he sojourned, and come with all the desire of his mind unto the place which the Lord shall choose; then he shall minister in the name of the Lord his God, as all his brethren the Levites do, which stand there before the Lord. They shall have like portions to eat, beside that which cometh out of the sale of his patrimony” (Ver. 1-8). Here, as in every part of the book of Deuteronomy, the priests are classed with the Levites in a very marked way. We have called the reader’s attention to this as a special characteristic feature of our book, and shall not dwell upon it now, but merely, in passing. remind the reader of it, as something claiming his attention. Care for the Lord’s Servants Let him weigh the opening words of our chapter, “The priests the Levites,” and compare them with the way in which the priests the sons of Aaron are spoken of in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers; and if he should be disposed to ask the reason of this distinction, we believe it to be this, that in Deuteronomy the divine object is, to bring the whole assembly of Israel more into prominence, and hence it is that the priests in their official capacity come rarely before us. The grand Deuteronomic idea is, Israel in immediate relationship with the Lord. Now, in the passage just quoted, we have the priests and the Levites linked together, and presented as the Lord’s servants, wholly dependent upon Him, and intimately identified with His altar and His service. This is full of interest, and opens up a very important field of practical truth, to which the Church of God would do well to attend. In looking through the history of Israel, we observe that when things were in anything like a healthful condition, the altar of God was well attended to, and, as a consequence, the priests and the Levites were well supplied. If the Lord had His portion, His servants were sure to have theirs; if He was neglected, so were they. They were bound up together. The people were to bring their offerings to God, and He shared them with His servants. The priests the Levites were not to exact or demand of the people, but the people were privileged to bring their gifts to the altar of God, and He permitted His servants to feed upon the fruit of His people’s devotedness to Him. Such was the true – the divine idea as to the Lord’s servants of old. They were to live upon the voluntary offerings presented to God by the whole congregation. True it is that in the dark and evil days of the sons of Eli we find something sadly different from this lovely moral order. Then, “the priest’s custom with the people was, that when anyone offered sacrifice, the priest’s servant came, while the flesh was in seething, with a flesh-hook of three teeth in his hand; and he struck it into the pan, or kettle, or caldron, or pot; all that the flesh-hook brought up, the priest took for himself. So they did in Shiloh unto all the Israelites that came thither. Also before they burnt the fat [God’s special portion], the priest’s-servant came, and said to the man that sacrificed, ‘Give flesh to roast for the priest; for he will not have sodden flesh of thee, but raw.’ And if any man said unto him, Let them not fail to burn the fat presently, and then take as much as thy soul desireth; then he would answer him, ‘Nay; but thou shalt give it me now; and if not, I will take it by force.’ Wherefore the sin of the young men was very great before the Lord; for men abhorred the offering of the Lord” (I Samuel 2:13-17). All this was truly deplorable, and ended in the solemn judgment of God upon the house of Eli. It could not be otherwise. If those who ministered at the altar could be guilty of such terrible iniquity and impiety, judgment must take its course. But the normal condition of things, as presented in our chapter, was in vivid contrast with all this frightful iniquity. The Lord would surround Himself with the willing offerings of His people, and from these offerings He would feed His servants who ministered at His altar. Hence, therefore, when the altar of God was diligently, fervently, and devotedly attended to, the priests the Levites had a rich portion – an abundant supply; and on the other hand, when the Lord and His altar were treated with cold neglect, or merely waited upon in a barren routine or heartless formalism, the Lord’s servants were correspondingly neglected. In a word, they stood intimately identified with the worship and service of the God of Israel. Thus, for example, in the bright days of the good king Hezekiah, when things were fresh and hearts happy and true, we read, “And Hezekiah appointed the courses of the priests and the Levites after their courses, every man according to his service, the priests and Levites for burnt-offerings and for peace-offerings, to minister, and to give thanks, and to praise in the gates of the tents of the Lord. “He appointed also the king’s portion of his substance for the burnt-offerings, to wit, for the morning and evening burnt-offerings, and the burnt-offerings for the Sabbaths, and for the new moons, and for the set feasts, as it is written in the law of the Lord. Moreover, he. commanded the people that dwelt in Jerusalem to give the portion of the priests and the Levites, that they might be encouraged in the law of the Lord. And as soon as the commandment came abroad, the children of Israel brought in abundance the first-fruits of corn, wine, and oil, and honey, and of all the increase of the field; and the tithe of all things brought they in abundantly. And concerning the children of Israel and Judah, that dwelt in the cities of Judah, they also brought in the tithe of oxen and sheep, and the tithe of holy things which were consecrated unto the Lord their God, and laid them by heaps. In the third month they began to lay the foundation of the heaps, and finished them in the seventh month. And when Hezekiah and the princes Came and saw the heaps, they blessed the Lord and His people Israel. Then Hezekiah questioned with the priests and the Levites concerning the heaps. And Azariah the chief priest of the house of Zadok answered him, and said, ‘Since the people began to bring the offerings into the house of the Lord, toe have had enough to eat, and have left plenty; for the Lord hath blessed His people; and that which is left is this great store” (II Chronicles 31:2-10). How truly refreshing is all this! And how encouraging! The deep, full, silvery tide of devotedness flowed around the altar of God, bearing upon its bosom an ample supply to meet all the need of the Lord’s servants, and “heaps” beside. This, we may feel assured, was grateful to the heart of the God of Israel, as it was to the hearts of those who had given themselves, at His call and by His appointment, to the service of His altar and His sanctuary. And let the reader specially note those precious words, “As it is written in the law of the Lord.” Here was Hezekiah’s authority, the solid basis of his whole line of conduct from first to last. True, the nation’s visible unity was gone; the condition of things when he began his blessed work was most discouraging; but the word of the Lord was as true, as real, and as direct in its application in Hezekiah’s day as it was in the days of David or Joshua. Hezekiah rightly felt that Deuteronomy 18:1-8 applied to his day and to his conscience, and that he and the people were responsible to act upon it, according to their ability. Were the priests and the Levites to starve because Israel’s national unity was gone? Surely not. They were to stand or fall with the Word, the worship, and the work of God. Circumstances might vary, and the Israelite might find himself in a position in which it would be impossible to carry out in detail all the ordinances of the Levitical ceremonial, but he never could find himself in circumstances in which it was not his high privilege to give full expression to his heart’s devotedness to the service, the altar, and the law of the Lord. Thus, then, we see, throughout the entire history of Israel, that when things were all bright and healthy, the Lord’s worship, His work, and His workmen were blessedly attended to; but on the other hand, when things were low, when hearts were cold, when self and its interests had the uppermost place, then all these great objects were treated with heartless neglect. Look, for example, at Nehemiah 13. When that beloved and faithful servant returned to Jerusalem, after an absence of certain days, he found, to his deep sorrow, that, even in that short time, various things had gone sadly astray; amongst the rest, the poor Levites had been left without any thing to eat. “And I perceived that the portions of the Levites had not been given them; for the Levites and the singers that did the work were fled everyone to his field.” There were no “heaps” of first-fruits in those dismal days, and surely it was hard for men to work and sing when they had nothing to eat. This was not according to the law of the Lord, nor according to His loving heart. It was a sad reproach upon the people that the Lord’s servants were obliged, through their gross neglect, to abandon His worship and His work in order to keep themselves from starving. This, truly, was a deplorable condition of things, Nehemiah felt it keenly, as we read, “Then contended I with the rulers, and said, Why is the house of God forsaken?’ And I gathered them together, and set them in their place. Then brought all Judah the tithe of the corn, and the new wine, and the oil, unto the treasuries. And I made treasurers over the treasuries, . . . for they were counted faithful;” – they were entitled to the confidence of their brethren – “and their office was to distribute unto their brethren.” It needed a number of tried and faithful men to occupy the high position of distributing to their brethren the precious fruit of the people’s devotedness; they could take counsel together, and see that the Lord’s treasury was faithfully managed, according to His Word, and the need of His true and bona-fide workmen fully met, without prejudice or partiality. Such was the lovely order of the God of Israel – an order to which every true Israelite such as Nehemiah and Hezekiah would delight to attend. The rich tide of blessing flowed forth from the Lord to His people, and back from His people to Him, and from that flowing tide His servants were to draw a full supply for all their need. It was a dishonor to Him to have the Levites obliged to return to their fields; it proved that His house was forsaken, and that there was no sustenance for His servants. Now, the question may here be asked, What has all this to say to us? What has the Church of God to learn from Deuteronomy 18:1-8? In order to answer this question, we must turn to I Corinthians 9, where the inspired apostle deals with the very important subject of the support of the Christian ministry – a subject so little understood by the great mass of professing Christians. As to the law of the case, it is as distinct as possible. “Who goeth a warfare at any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? For it is written in the law of Moses, ‘Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the com. “Doth God take care for oxen? or saith He it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written; that he that ploweth should plow in hope, and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. If’ we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things? If others be partakers of this power over you, are not we rather? Nevertheless”-here grace shines out, in all its heavenly luster – “we have not used this power; but suffer all things lest we should hinder the Gospel of Christ. Do you not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple? and they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar? Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel. But” – here again grace asserts its holy dignity – “I have used none of these things; neither have I written these things that it should be so done unto me; for it were better for me to die than that any man should make my glorying void. For though I preach the Gospel, I have nothing to glory of; for necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel! For if I do this thing willingly, I have a reward; but if against my will, a dispensation of the Gospel is committed unto me. What is my reward, then? Verily that when I preach the Gospel, I may make the Gospel of Christ without charge, that I abuse not my power, in the Gospel” (Ver. 7-18). Here we have this interesting and weighty subject presented in all its bearings. The inspired apostle lays down, with all possible decision and clearness, the divine law on the point. There is no mistaking it. “The Lord hath ordained that they that preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel;” that just as the priests and the Levites of old lived on the offerings’ presented by the people, so now, those who are really called of God, gifted by Christ, and fitted by the HOLY GHOST to preach the Gospel, and who are giving themselves constantly and diligently to that glorious work, are morally entitled to temporal support. It is not that they should look to those to whom they preach for a certain stipulated sum. There is no such idea as this in the New Testament. The workman must look to his Master, and to Him alone, for support. Woe be to him if he looks to the church, or to men in any way. The priests and Levites had their portion in and from the Lord. He was the lot of their inheritance. True, He expected the people to minister to Him in the persons of His servants. He told them what to give, and blessed them in giving: it was their high privilege, as well as their bounden duty, to give; had they refused or neglected, it would have brought drought and barrenness upon their fields and vineyards. (Haggai 1:5-11). But the priests the Levites had to look only to the Lord. If the people failed in their offerings, the Levites had to fly to their fields and work for their living. They could not go to law with anyone for tithes and offerings; their only appeal was to the God of Israel, who had ordained them to the work and given them the work to do. So also with the Lord’s workmen now – they must look only to Him. They must be well assured that He has fitted them for the work, and called them to it, ere they attempt to push out (if we may so express it) from the shore of circumstances, and give themselves wholly to the work of preaching. They must take their eyes completely off from men – from all creature-streams and human props, and lean exclusively upon the living God. We have seen the most disastrous consequences resulting from acting under a mistaken impulse in this most solemn matter; men not called of God, or fitted for the work, giving up their occupations, and coming forth, as they said, to live by faith and give themselves to the work. Deplorable shipwreck was the result in every instance. Some, when they began to look the stern realities of the path straight in the face, became so alarmed that they actually lost their mental balance, lost their reason for a time; some lost their peace, and some went right back into the world again. In short, it is our deep and thorough conviction, after forty years’ observation, that the cases are few and far between in which it is morally safe and good for one to abandon his bread-winning calling in order to preach the Gospel. It must be so distinct and unquestionable to the man himself, that he has only to say, with Luther, at the Diet of Worms, “Here I am; I can do no otherwise: God help me! Amen.” Then he may be perfectly sure that God will sustain him in the work to which He has called him, and meet all his need “according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” And as to men and their thoughts respecting him and his course, he has simply to refer them to his Master. He is not responsible to them, nor has he ever asked them for any thing. If they were compelled to support him, reason would that they might complain or raise questions; but as they are not, they must just leave him, remembering that to his own Master he standeth or falleth. But when we look at the splendid passage just quoted from I Corinthians 9, we find that the blessed apostle, after having established, beyond all question, his right to be supported, relinquishes it completely – “Nevertheless, I have used none of these things.” He worked with his hands; he wrought with labor and travail night and day, in order not to be chargeable or burdensome to any. “These hands,” he says, “have ministered to my necessities, and those that were with me.” He coveted no man’s silver or gold or apparel. He traveled, he preached, he visited from house to house, he was the laborious apostle, the earnest evangelist, the diligent pastor, he had the care of all the churches. Was not he entitled to support? Assuredly he was. It ought to have been the joy of the Church of God to minister to his every need But he never enforced his claim – nay, he surrendered it. He supported himself and his companions by the labor of his hands; and all this as an example, as he says to the elders of Ephesus, “I have showed you all things, how that so laboring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” Now, it is perfectly wonderful to think of this beloved and revered servant of Christ, with his extensive travels from Jerusalem and round about to Illyricum, his gigantic labors as an evangelist, a pastor, and a teacher, and yet finding time to support himself and others by the work of his hands. Truly he occupied high moral ground. His case is a standing testimony against hirelingism, in every shape and form. The infidel’s sneering references to well-paid ministers could have no application whatever to him. He certainly did not preach for hire. And yet he thankfully received help from those who knew how to give it. Again and again the beloved assembly at Philippi ministered to the necessities of their revered and beloved. father in Christ. How well for them that they did so! It will never be forgotten. Millions have read the sweet record of their devotedness, and been refreshed by the odor of their sacrifice; it is recorded in Heaven, where nothing of the kind is ever forgotten – yea, it is engraved on the very tablets of the heart of Christ. Hear how the blessed apostle pours out his grateful heart to his much-loved children – “I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at the last your care of me hath flourished again’; wherein ye were also careful, but ye lacked opportunity. Not that I speak in respect of want;” blessed, self-denying servant! – “for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound; every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me. Notwithstanding, ye have well done that ye did communicate with my affliction. Now ye Philippians know also, that in the beginning of the Gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only. For even in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my necessity. Not because I desire a gift; but I desire fruit that may abound to your account. But I have all, and abound; I am full, having received from Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odor of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God. But my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:10-19). What a rare privilege to be allowed to comfort the heart of such an honored servant of Christ, at the close of his career, and in the solitude of his prison at Rome! How seasonable, how right, how lovely, was their ministry! What joy to receive the apostle’s grateful acknowledgments! and then how precious the assurance that their service had gone up, as an odor of sweet smell, to the very throne and heart of God! Who would not rather be a Philippian ministering to the apostle’s need, than a Corinthian calling his ministry in question, or a Galatian breaking his heart? How vast the difference! The apostle could not take any thing from the assembly at Corinth; their state did not admit of it. Individuals in that assembly did minister to him, and their service is recorded on the page of inspiration, remembered above, and it will be abundantly rewarded in the kingdom by and by. “I am glad of the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus; for that which was lacking on your part they have supplied. For they have refreshed my spirit and yours, therefore acknowledge ye them that are such” (I Corinthians 16:17, 18). Thus, then, from all that has passed before us, we learn most distinctly that both under the law and under the Gospel it is according to the revealed will, and according to the heart of God, that those who are really called of Him to the work, and who devote themselves earnestly, diligently, and faithfully to it, should have the hearty sympathy and practical help of His people. All who love Christ will count it their deepest joy to minister to Him in the persons of His servants. When He Himself was here upon earth, He graciously accepted help from the hands of those who loved Him, and had reaped the fruit of His most precious ministry – “certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary, called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto Him of their substance” (Luke 8:2, 3). Happy, highly privileged women! What joy to be allowed to minister to the Lord of glory, in the days of His human need and humiliation! There stand their honored names, on the divine page, written down by God the Holy Ghost, to be read by untold millions, to be borne along the stream of time right onward into eternity. How well it was for those women that they did not waste their substance in self-indulgence, or hoard it up to be rust on their souls, or a positive curse, as money must ever be if not used for God! But on the other hand, we learn the urgent need, on the part of all who take the place of workers, whether in or out of the assembly, of keeping themselves perfectly free from all human influence, all looking to men, in any shape or form. They must have to do with God in the secret of their own souls, or they will assuredly break down, sooner or later. They must look to Him alone for the supply of their need. If the church neglect them, the church will be the serious loser here and hereafter. If they can support themselves by the labor of their hands, without curtailing their direct service to Christ, so much the better; it is unquestionably the more excellent way. We are as persuaded of this as of the truth of any proposition that could he submitted to us. There is nothing more spiritually and morally noble than a truly gifted servant of Christ supporting himself and his family by the sweat of his brow or the sweat of his brain, and, at the same time, giving himself diligently to the Lord’s work, whether as an evangelist, a pastor, or a teacher. The moral antipodes of this is presented to our view in the person of a man who, without gift or grace or spiritual life, enters what is called the ministry, as a mere profession or means of living. The position of such a man is morally dangerous and miserable in the extreme. We shall not dwell upon it, inasmuch as it does not come within the range of the subject which has been engaging our attention, and we are only too thankful to leave it and proceed with our chapter. The Danger of consulting with mediums “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. There shall not be found among you anyone 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, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits; or a wizard, or a necromancer; 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. Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God. 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” (Ver. 9-14). Now, it may be that, on reading the foregoing quotation, the reader feels disposed to ask what possible application it can have to professing Christians. We ask, in reply, Are there any professing Christians who are in the habit of going to witness the performances of wizards, magicians, and necromancers? are there any who take part in table-turning, spirit-rapping, mesmerism, or clairvoyance? * * Some of our readers may object to our classing mesmerism with spirit rapping and table turning. It may be they would regard it in the same light, and use it in the same way, as ether or chloroform, in medical practice. We do not attempt to dogmatize on the point. We can only say that we could have nothing whatever to do with it. We consider it a most solemn thing for anyone to allow himself to be placed by another in a state of utter unconsciousness, for any purpose whatsoever. And as to the idea of listening to, or being guided by, the ravings of a person in that state, we can only regard it as absolutely absurd, if not positively sinful. If so, the passage which we have just quoted bears very pointedly and solemnly upon all such. We most surely believe that all these things which we have named are of the devil. This may sound harsh and severe, but we cannot help that. We are thoroughly persuaded that when people lend themselves to the awful business of bringing up, in any way, the spirits of the departed, they are simply putting themselves into the hands of the devil, to be deceived and deluded by his lies. What, we may ask, do those who hold in their hands a perfect revelation from God want of tableturning and spirit-rapping? Surely nothing. And if, not content with that precious Word, they turn to the spirits or departed friends or others, what can they expect but that God will judicially give them over to be blinded and deceived by wicked spirits, who come up and personate the departed, and tell all manner of lies? We cannot attempt to go fully into this subject here; we have no time, nor space, nor inclination, for anything of the sort. We merely feel it to be our solemn duty to warn the reader against having anything whatever to do with consulting departed spirits. We believe it to be most dangerous work. We do not enter upon the question as to whether souls can come back to this world; no doubt God could permit them to come if He saw fit, but this we leave. The great point for us to keep ever before our hearts is, the perfect sufficiency of divine revelation. What do we want of departed spirits? The rich man imagined that if Lazarus were to go back to earth and speak to his five brethren, it would have a great effect: “‘I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house; for I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ Abraham saith unto him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘Nay, father Abraham; but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.’ And he said unto him, ‘If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead’” (Luke 16:27-31). Here we have a thorough settlement of this question. If people will not hear the Word of God, if they will not believe its clear and solemn statements as to themselves, their present condition, and their future destiny, neither will they be persuaded though a thousand departed souls were to come back and tell them what they saw and heard and felt in Heaven above or in hell beneath; it would produce no saving or permanent effect upon them. It might cause great excitement – great sensation, furnish great material for talk, and fill the newspapers far and wide; but there it would end. People would go on all the same with their traffic and gain, their folly and vanity, their pleasure-hunting and self-indulgence. “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, [and, we may add, Christ and His holy apostles] neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” The heart that will not bow to Scripture will not be convinced by anything; and as to the true believer, he has in Scripture all he can possibly want, and therefore he has no need to have recourse to table-turning, spirit-rapping, or magic. “And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter; should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isaiah 8:19, 20). Here is the divine resource of the Lord’s people, at all times and in all places; and to this it is that Moses refers the congregation in the splendid paragraph which closes our chapter. He shows them very distinctly that they had no need to apply to familiar spirits, enchanters, wizards, or witches, which were all an abomination to the Lord. “The Lord thy God,” he says, “will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken; 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.’ And the Lord said unto me, ‘They have well spoken that which they have spoken. I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put My words into his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. 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. 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. And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken? 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” (Ver. 15-22). We can be at no loss to know who this Prophet is, namely, our adorable Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. In the third chapter of Acts, Peter so applies the words of Moses: “He shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you; whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began. For Moses truly said unto the fathers, ‘A Prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you. And it shall come to pass that every soul which will not hear that Prophet shall be destroyed from among the People’ “ (Ver. 20-23). How precious the privilege of hearing the voice of such a Prophet! It is the voice of God speaking through the lips of the Man Christ Jesus – speaking, not in thunder, not with flaming fire, nor the lightning’s flash, but in that still small voice of love and mercy which falls in soothing power on the broken heart and contrite spirit, which distills like the gentle dew of Heaven upon the thirsty ground. This voice we have in the Holy Scriptures – that precious revelation which comes so constantly and so powerfully before us in our studies on this blessed book of Deuteronomy. We must never forget this. The voice of Scripture is the voice of Christ, and the voice of Christ is the voice of God. We want no more. If anyone presumes to come with a fresh revelation, with some new truth not contained in the divine Volume, we must judge him and his communication by the standard of Scripture and reject them utterly. “Thou shalt not be afraid of him.” False prophets come with great pretensions, high-sounding words, and sanctimonious bearing. Moreover, they seek to surround themselves with a sort of dignity, weight, and impressiveness which are apt to impose on the ignorant. But they cannot stand the searching power of the Word of God. Some simple clause of Holy Scripture will strip them of all their imposing surroundings, and cut up by the roots their wonderful revelations. Those who know the voice of the true Prophet will not listen to any other: those who have heard the voice of the good Shepherd will not listen to the voice of a stranger. Reader, see that you listen only to the voice of Jesus. ~ end of chapter 18 ~
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Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2024 10:25:36 GMT -5
CHAPTER NINETEEN “WHEN the Lord thy God hath cut off the nations whose land the Lord thy God giveth thee, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their cities, and in their houses; thou shalt separate three cities for thee in the midst of thy land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it. Thou shalt prepare thee a way, and divide the coasts of thy land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee to inherit, into three parts, that every slayer may flee thither” (Ver. 1- 3). What a very striking combination of “goodness and severity” we observe in these few lines! We have the “cutting off” of the nations of Canaan because of their consummated wickedness, which had become positively unbearable; and on the other hand, we have a most touching display of divine goodness in the provision made for the poor manslayer in the day of his deep distress, when flying for his life from the avenger of blood. The government and the goodness of God are, we need hardly say, both divinely perfect. There are cases in which goodness would be nothing but a toleration of sheer wickedness and open rebellion, which is utterly impossible under the government of God. If men imagine that because God is good they may go on and sin with a high hand, they will sooner or later find out their woeful mistake. “Behold,” says the inspired apostle, “the goodness and severity of God!” * * The word rendered “severity” is αποτομια, which literally means “cutting off.” God will most assuredly cut off evil-doers who despise His goodness and long-suffering mercy. He is slow to anger, blessed be His holy name! and of great kindness. For hundreds of years He bore with the seven nations of Canaan, until their wickedness rose up to the very heavens, and the land itself could bear them no longer. He bore with the enormous wickedness of the guilty cities of the plain; and if He had found even ten righteous people in Sodom, He would have spared it for their sakes. But the day of terrible vengeance came, and they were “cut off.” And so will it be ere long with guilty Christendom. “Thou also shalt be cut off.” The reckoning-time will come, and oh, what a reckoning-time it will be! The heart trembles at the thought of it, while the eye scans and the pen traces the soul-subduing words. But mark how divine “goodness” shines out in the opening lines of our chapter. See the gracious painstaking of our God to make the city of refuge as available as possible for the slayer. The three cities were to be “in the midst of thy land.” It would not do to have them in remote corners, or in places difficult of access. And not only so, but “thou shalt prepare thee a way,” and again, “Thou shalt divide the coasts of thy land . . . into three parts.” Everything was to be done to facilitate the slayer’s escape. The gracious Lord thought of the feelings of the distressed one “flying for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before him.” The city of refuge was to be “brought near,” just as “the righteousness of God” is brought near to the poor broken-hearted helpless sinner – so near, that it is “to him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly.” There is peculiar sweetness in the expression, “Thou shalt prepare thee a way.” How like our own ever-gracious God – “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”! and yet it was the same God that cut off the nations of Canaan in righteous judgment who thus made such gracious provision for the man-slayer. “Behold, the goodness and severity of God.” “And this is the case of the slayer, which shall flee thither, that he may live: Whoso killeth his neighbor ignorantly, whom he hated not in time past; as when a man goeth into the wood with his neighbor to hew wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slippeth from the helve, and lighteth upon his neighbor, that he die; he shall flee unto one of those cities and live; lest the avenger of the blood pursue the slayer, while his heart is hot, and overtake him, because the way is long,” – most touching and exquisite grace! – “and slay him; whereas he was not worthy of death, inasmuch as he hated him not in time past. Wherefore I command thee, saying, ‘Thou shalt separate three cities for thee.’” (Ver. 4-7). Who could flee to the city of refuge? Here we have a most minute description of the man for whom the city of refuge was provided. If he did not answer to this, the city was not for him; but if he did, he might feel the most perfect assurance that a gracious God had thought of him, and found a refuge for him, where he might be as safe as the hand of God could make him. Once the slayer found himself within the precincts of the city of refuge, he might breathe freely, and enjoy calm and sweet repose. No avenging sword could reach him there, not a hair of his head could be touched there. He was safe – yes, perfectly safe; and not only perfectly safe, but, perfectly certain. He was not hoping to be saved, he was sure of it. He was in the city, and that was enough. Before he got in, he might have many a struggle deep down in his poor terrified heart, many doubts and fears and painful exercises. He was flying for his life, and this was a serious and an all-absorbing matter for him – a matter that would make all beside seem light and trifling. We could not imagine the flying slayer stopping to gather flowers by the roadside. Flowers! he would say, What have I to do with flowers just now? My life is at stake. I am flying for my life. What if the avenger should come and find me gathering flowers? No; the city is my one grand and all-engrossing object; nothing else has the smallest interest or charm for me. I want to be saved; that is my exclusive business now. But the moment he found himself within the blessed gates, he was safe, and he knew it. How did he know it? By his feelings? By his evidences? By experience? Nay; but simply by the Word of God. No doubt he had the feeling, the evidence, and the experience, and most precious they would be to him after his tremendous struggle and conflict to get in; but these things were by no means the ground of his certainty or the basis of his peace. He knew he was safe because God told him so. The grace of God had made him safe, and the Word of God made him sure. We cannot conceive a man-slayer within the walls of the city of refuge expressing himself as many of the Lord’s dear people do in reference to the question of safety and certainty. He would not deem it presumption to be sure be was safe. If any one had asked him, Are you sure you are safe? Sure! he would say, “How can I be otherwise than sure? Was I not a slayer? Have I not fled to this city of refuge? Has not the Lord, our covenant-God, pledged His Word for it? Has He not said that ‘fleeing thither he may live’? Yes, thank God, I am perfectly sure. I had a terrible run for it – a fearful struggle. At times, I almost felt as if the avenger had me in his dreaded grasp. I gave myself up for lost; but then, God, in His infinite mercy, made the way so plain, and made the city so easy of access to me, that, spite of all my doubts and fears, here I am, safe and certain. The struggle is all over, the conflict past and gone. I can breathe freely now, and walk up and down in the perfect security of this blessed place, praising our gracious covenantGod for His great goodness in having provided such a sweet retreat for a poor slayer like me.” Can the reader speak thus as to his safety in CHRIST? Is he saved, and does he know it? If not, may the Spirit of God apply to his heart the simple illustration of the man-slayer within the walls of the city of refuge. May he know that “strong consolation” which is the sure, because divinely appointed, portion of all those who have “fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before them” (Hebrews 6:18). We must now proceed with our chapter; and in so doing, we shall find that there was more to be thought of in the cities of refuge than the question of the slayer’s safety. That was provided for perfectly, as we have seen; but the glory of God, the purity of His land, and the integrity of His government had to be duly maintained. If these things were touched, there could be no safety for anyone. This great principle shines on every page of the history of God’s ways with man. Man’s true blessing and God’s glory are indissolubly bound together, and both the one and the other rest on the same imperishable foundation, namely, Christ and His precious work. “And if the Lord thy God enlarge thy coasts, as He hath sworn unto thy fathers, and give thee all the land which He promised to give unto thy fathers; if thou shalt keep all these commandments to do them, which I command thee this day, to love the Lord thy God, and to walk ever in His ways; then shalt thou add three cities more for thee, beside these three; that innocent blood be not shed in thy land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and so blood be upon thee. “But if any man hate his neighbor, and lie in wait for him, and rise up against him, and smite him mortally that he die, and fleeth into one of these cities; then the elders of his city shall send and fetch him thence, and deliver him into the hand of the avenger of blood, that he may die. Thine eye shall not pity him, but thou shalt put away the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, that it may go well with thee” (Ver. 8-13). Thus, whether it was grace for the slayer, or judgment for the murderer, the glory of God and the claims of His government had to be duly maintained. The unwitting man-slayer was met by the provision of mercy; the guilty murderer fell beneath the stern sentence of inflexible justice. We must never forget the solemn reality of divine government. It meets us everywhere; and if it were more fully recognized, it would effectually deliver us from one-sided views of the divine character. Take such words as these – “Thine eye shall not pity him.” - Who uttered them? The Lord. - Who penned them? God the Holy Ghost. - What do they mean? Solemn judgment upon wickedness. Let men beware how they trifle with these weighty matters. Let the Lord’s people beware how they give place to foolish reasonings in reference to things wholly beyond their range. Let them remember that a false sentimentality may constantly be found in league with an audacious infidelity in calling in question the solemn enactments of divine government. This is a very serious consideration. Evil doers must look out for the sure judgment of a sinhating God. If a willful murderer presumed to avail himself of God’s provision for the ignorant man-slayer, the hand of justice laid hold of him and put him to death, without mercy. Such was the government of God in Israel of old, and such will it be in a day that is rapidly approaching. Just now, God is dealing in longsuffering mercy with the world; this is the day of salvation – the acceptable time. The day of vengeance is at hand. Oh that man, instead of reasoning about the justice of God’s dealings with evil-doers, would flee for refuge to that precious Saviour who died on the Cross to save us from the flames of an everlasting hell! * * For other points presented in the cities of refuge we must refer the reader to “Notes on the Book of Numbers,” chapter 35. Before quoting for the reader the closing paragraph of our chapter, we would just call his attention to verse 14, in which we have a very beautiful proof of God’s tender care for His people, and His most gracious interest in everything which directly or indirectly concerned them. “Thou shalt not remove thy neighbor’s landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it.” This passage, taken in its plain import and primary application, is full of sweetness, as presenting the loving heart of our God, and showing us how marvelously He entered into all the circumstances of His beloved people. - The landmarks were not to be meddled with. - Each one’s portion was to be left intact, according to the boundary-lines set up by those of old time. The Lord had given the land to Israel, and not only so, but He had assigned to each tribe and to each family their proper portion, marked off with perfect precision, and indicated by landmarks so plain that there could be no confusion, no clashing of interests, no interference one with another, no ground for lawsuit or controversy about property. There stood the ancient landmarks, marking off each one’s portion in such a manner as to remove all possible ground of dispute. Each one held as a tenant under the God of Israel, who knew all about his little holding, as we say, and every tenant had the comfort of knowing that the eye of the gracious and almighty Landlord was upon his bit of land, and His hand over it to protect it from every intruder. Thus he could abide in peace under his vine and under his fig-tree, enjoying the portion assigned him by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Thus much as to the obvious sense of this beautiful clause of our chapter; but surely it has a deep spiritual meaning also. Are there not spiritual landmarks for the Church of God, and for each individual member thereof, marking off, with divine accuracy, the boundaries of our heavenly inheritance – those landmarks which they of old time, even the apostles of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, have set up. Assuredly there are, and God has His eye upon them, and He will not permit them to be removed with impunity. Woe be to the man that attempts to touch them; he will have to give account to God for so doing. It is a serious thing for anyone to interfere, in any way, with the place, portion, and prospect of the Church of God; and it is to be feared that many are doing it without being aware of it. We do not attempt to go into the question of what these landmarks are; we have sought to do this earlier in our “Notes on Deuteronomy,” as well as in the other four volumes of the series; but we feel it to be our duty to warn, in the most solemn manner, all whom it may concern against doing that which, in the Church of God, answers to the removal of the landmarks in Israel. If anyone had come forward in the land of Israel to suggest some new arrangement in the inheritance of the tribes, to adjust the property of each upon some new principle, to set up some new boundary lines, what would have been the reply of the faithful Israelite? A very simple one, we may be sure. He would have replied in the language of Deuteronomy 19:14. He would have said, We want no novelties here; we are perfectly content with those sacred and time-honored landmarks which they of old time have set in our inheritance. We are determined, by the grace of God, to keep to them, and to resist, with firm purpose, any modern innovation. Such, we believe, would have been the prompt reply of every true member of the congregation of Israel; and surely the Christian ought not to be less prompt or less decided in his answer to all those who, under the plea of progress and development, would remove the landmarks of the Church of God and, instead of the precious teaching of CHRIST and His apostles, offer us the so-called light of science and the resources of philosophy. Thank God, we want them not. We have CHRIST and His Word; what can be added to these? What do we want of human progress or development, when we have “that which was from the beginning”! What can science or philosophy do for those who possess “all truth”! No doubt, we want – yea, long to make progress in the knowledge of CHRIST; long for a fuller, clearer development of the life of CHRIST in our daily history; but science and philosophy cannot help us in these; nay, they could only prove a most serious hindrance. Christian reader, let us seek to keep close to CHRIST, close to His Word. This is our only security in this dark and evil day. Apart from Him, we are nothing, have nothing, can do nothing; in Him, we have all. He is the portion of our cup and the lot of our inheritance. May we know what it is not only to be safe in Him, but separated to Him, and satisfied with Him, till that bright day when we shall see Him as He is, and be like Him and with Him forever. We shall now do little more than quote the few remaining verses of our chapter. They need no exposition. They set forth wholesome truth, to which professing Christians, with all their light and knowledge, may well give attention. “One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sinneth; at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established” (Ver. 15). This subject has already come before us. It cannot be too strongly insisted upon. We may judge of its importance from the fact that not only does Moses again and again press it upon Israel’s attention, but our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and the Holy Ghost in the apostle Paul, in two of his epistles, insists upon the principle of “two or three witnesses,” in every case. One witness, be he ever so trustworthy, is not sufficient to decide a case. If this plain fact were more carefully weighed and duly attended to, it would put an end to a vast amount of strife and contention. We, in our fancied wisdom, might imagine that one thoroughly reliable witness ought to be sufficient to settle any question. Let us remember that God is wiser than we are, and that it is ever our truest wisdom, as well as our greatest moral security, to hold fast by His unerring Word. “If a false witness rise up against any man, to testify against him that which is wrong; then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the Lord, before the priests and the judges which shall be in those days; and the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and have testified falsely against his brother; then shall ye do unto him as he had thought to have done unto his brother: so shalt thou put the evil away from among you. And those which remain shall hear and fear, and shall henceforth commit no more any such evil among you. And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot” (Ver. 16-21). We may here see how God hates false witness; and further, we have to bear in mind that though we are not under law, but under grace, false witness is not less hateful to God; and surely the more fully we enter into the grace in which we stand, the more intensely we shall abhor false witness, slander, and evil-speaking, in every shape and form. The good Lord preserve us from all such. ~ end of chapter 19 ~
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Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2024 10:31:31 GMT -5
CHAPTER TWENTY “WHEN thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses and chariots, and a people more than thou, be not afraid of them; for the Lord thy God is with thee, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And it shall be, when ye are come nigh unto the battle, that the priest shall approach and speak unto the people, and shall say unto them, Hear, O Israel! ye approach this day unto battle against your enemies; let not your hearts faint; fear not, and do not tremble, neither be ye terrified because of them; for the Lord your God is He that goeth with you to fight for you against your enemies, to save you” (Ver. 1-4). How wonderful to think of the Lord as a Man of war! Think of His fighting against people! Some find it very hard to take in the idea – hard to understand how a benevolent Being could act in such a character. But the difficulty arises mainly from not distinguishing between the different dispensations. It was just as consistent with the character of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to fight against His enemies, as it is with the character of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ to forgive them. And inasmuch as it is the revealed character of God that furnishes the model on which His people are to be formed – the standard by which they are to act, it was quite as consistent for Israel to cut their enemies in pieces as it is for us to love them, pray for them, and do them good. If this very simple principle were borne in mind, it would remove a quantity of misunderstanding, and save a vast amount of unintelligent discussion. No doubt it is thoroughly wrong for the Church of God to go to war. No one can read the New Testament with a mind free from bias and not see this. We are positively commanded to love our enemies, to do good to them that hate us, and to pray for them that despitefully use us. “Put up again thy sword into his place, for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” And again, in another Gospel, “Then said Jesus unto Peter, ‘Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?” Again, our Lord says to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world: if My kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight” – it would be perfectly consistent for them so to do – “but now is My kingdom not from hence” – and therefore it would be wholly out of character, utterly inconsistent, thoroughly wrong, for them to fight. All this is so plain that we need only say, “How readest thou?” Our blessed Lord did not fight; He meekly and patiently submitted to all manner of abuse and illtreatment, and in so doing, He left us an example, that we should follow His steps. If we only honestly ask ourselves the question, What would JESUS do? it would close all discussion on this point, as well as upon a thousand other points besides. There is really no use in reasoning – no need of it. If the words and ways of our blessed Lord, and the distinct teaching of His Spirit by His holy apostles, be not sufficient for our guidance, all discussion is utterly vain. And if we be asked, What does the HOLY GHOST teach on this great practical point? hear His precious, clear, and pointed words – “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves; but rather give place unto wrath; for it is written, Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.’ Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink; for in so doing, thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12). These are the lovely ethics of the Church of God, the principles of that heavenly kingdom to which all true Christians belong. Would they have suited Israel of old? Certainly not. Only conceive Joshua acting toward the Canaanites on the principles of Romans 12! It would have been as flagrant an inconsistency as for us to act on the principle of Deuteronomy 20. How is this? Simply because in Joshua’s day God was executing judgment in righteousness, whereas now He is dealing in unqualified grace. This makes all the difference. The principle of divine action is the grand moral regulator for God’s people in all ages. If this be seen, all difficulty is removed, all discussion definitively closed. But then, if any feel disposed to ask, What about the world? how could it get on upon the principle of grace? Could it act on the doctrine of Romans 12:20? Not for a moment. The idea is simply absurd. To attempt to amalgamate the principles of grace with the law of nations, or to infuse the spirit of the New Testament into the frame-work of political economy, would instantly plunge civilized society into hopeless confusion. And here is just where many most excellent and well-meaning people are astray. They want to press the nations of the world into the adoption of a principle which would be destructive of their national existence. The time is not come yet for nations to beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, and learn war no more. That blessed time will come, thank God, when this groaning earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea; but to seek to get nations now to act upon peace principles is simply to ask them to cease to be – in a word, it is thoroughly hopeless, unintelligent labor. It cannot be. We are not called upon to regulate the world, but to pass through it as pilgrims and strangers. Jesus did not come to set the world right. He came to seek and to save that which was lost; and as to the world, He testified of it that its deeds were evil. He will, ere long, come to set things right; He will take to Himself His great power and reign. The kingdoms of this world shall most assuredly become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. He will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them that do iniquity. All this is most blessedly true, but we must wait His time. It can be of no possible use for us, by our ignorant efforts, to seek to bring about a condition of things which all Scripture goes to prove can only be introduced by the personal presence and rule of our beloved and adorable Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. But we must proceed with our chapter. Israel were called to fight the Lord’s battles. The moment they put their foot upon the land of Canaan it was war to the knife with the doomed inhabitants. “Of the cities of these people which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth.” This was distinct and emphatic. The seed of Abraham were not only to possess the land of Canaan, but they were to be God’s instruments in executing His just judgment upon the guilty inhabitants, whose sins had risen up to Heaven, and become absolutely intolerable. Does anyone feel called upon to apologize for the divine actings toward the seven nations of Canaan? If so, let him be well assured of this, that his labor is perfectly gratuitous, entirely uncalled for. What folly for any poor worm of the earth to think of entering upon such work! and what folly, too, for anyone to require an apology or an explanation! It was a high honor put upon Israel to exterminate those guilty nations – an honor of which they proved themselves utterly unworthy, inasmuch as they failed to do as they were commanded. They left alive many of those who ought to have been utterly destroyed; they spared them to be the wretched instruments of their own ultimate ruin, by leading them into the self-same sins which had so loudly called for divine judgment. But let us look for a moment at the qualifications which were necessary for those who would fight the Lord’s battles. We shall find the opening paragraph of our chapter full of most precious instruction for ourselves in the spiritual warfare which we are called to wage. The reader will observe that the people, on approaching to the battle, were to be addressed, first, by the priest, and secondly, by the officers. This order is very beautiful. The priests came forward to unfold to the people their high privileges; the officers came to remind them of their holy responsibilities, such is the divine order here. Privilege comes first, and then responsibility. “The priest shall approach and speak unto the people, and shall say unto there, Hear, O Israel! ye approach this day unto battle against your enemies; let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble, neither be ye terrified because of them; for the Lord your God is He that goeth with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.” What blessed words are these! How full of comfort and encouragement! how eminently calculated to banish all fear and depression, and to infuse courage and confidence into the most sinking, fainting heart! The priest was the very expression of the grace of God, – his ministry a stream of most precious consolation flowing from the loving heart of the God of Israel to each individual warrior. His loving words were designed and fitted to gird up the loins of the mind, and nerve the feeblest arm for fight. He assures them of the divine presence with them. There is no question, no condition, no “if,” no “but.” It is an unqualified statement. Jehovah Elohim was with them. This surely was enough. It mattered not, in the smallest degree, how many, how powerful, or how formidable were their enemies, they would all prove to be as chaff before the whirlwind in the presence of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel. But then the officer had to be heard as well as the priest – “And the officers shall speak unto the people, saying, What man is there that hath built a new house and hath not dedicated it? let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicate it. And what man is he that hath planted a vineyard and hath not yet eaten of it? let him also go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man eat of it. And what man is there that hath betrothed a wife and hath not taken her? let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her. And the officers shall speak further unto the people, and they shall say, What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren’s heart faint as well as his heart. And it shall be that when the officers have made an end of speaking unto the people, that they shall make captains of the armies to lead the people” (Ver. 5-9). Thus we learn that there were two things absolutely essential to all who would fight the Lord’s battles, namely, a heart thoroughly disentangled from the things of nature and of earth, and a bold unclouded confidence in God. “No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.” There is a very material difference between being engaged in the affairs of this life and being entangled by them. A man might have had a house, a vineyard, and a wife and yet have been fit for the battle. These things were not, in themselves, a hindrance; but it was having them under such conditions as rendered them an entanglement that unfitted a man for the conflict. Spiritual Warfare It is well to bear this in mind, we, as Christians, are called to carry on a constant spiritual warfare. We have to fight for every inch of heavenly ground. What. the Canaanites were to Israel, the wicked spirits in the heavenlies are to us. - We are not called to fight for eternal life; we have gotten that as God’s free gift before we begin. - We are not called to fight for salvation; we are saved before we enter upon the conflict. It is most needful to know what it is that we have to fight for, and whom we are to fight with. The object for which we fight is, to make good, maintain, and carry out practically our heavenly position and character in the midst of the scenes and circumstances of ordinary human life from day to day. And then as to our spiritual foes, they are wicked spirits, who, during this present time, are permitted to occupy the heavenlies. “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, [as Israel had to do in Canaan] but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers [χοσμοχρατορας] of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Now, the question is, what do we want in carrying on such a conflict as this? Must we abandon our lawful earthly callings? Must we detach ourselves from those relationships founded on nature and sanctioned of God? Is it needful to become an ascetic, a mystic, or a monk in order to carry on the spiritual warfare to which we are called? By no means; indeed, for a Christian to do anyone of these things would, in itself, be a proof that he had completely mistaken his calling, or that he had, at the very outset, fallen in the battle. We are imperatively called upon to work with our hands the thing which is good, that we may have to give to him that needeth. And not only so, but we have the most ample guidance, in the pages of the New Testament, as to how we are to carry ourselves in the varied natural relationships which God Himself has established, and to which He has affixed the seal of His approval. Hence it is perfectly plain that earthly callings and natural relationships are, in themselves, no hindrance to our waging a successful spiritual warfare. What, then, is needed by the Christian warrior? – A heart thoroughly disentangled from things earthly and natural, and an unclouded confidence in God. But how are these things to be maintained? Hear the divine reply: “Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day” – that is, the whole time from the Cross to the coming of CHRIST: “And having done all, to stand. Stand, therefore; having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints” (Ephesians 6). Reader, mark the qualification of a Christian warrior as here set forth by the HOLY GHOST. It is not the question of a house, a vineyard, or a wife, - But of having the inward man governed by “truth,” - The outward conduct characterized by real practical “righteousness,” - The moral habits and ways marked by the sweet “peace” of the Gospel, - The whole man covered by the impenetrable shield of “faith,” - The seat of the understanding guarded by the full assurance of “salvation,” and - The heart continually sustained and strengthened by persevering prayer and supplication, and - Led forth in earnest intercession for all saints, and specially for the Lord’s beloved workmen and their blessed work. This is the way in which the spiritual Israel of God are to be furnished for the warfare which they are called to wage with wicked spirits in the heavenlies. May the Lord, in His infinite goodness, make all these things very real in our souls’ experience, and in our practical career from day to day. The close of our chapter contains the principles which were to govern Israel in their warfare. They were most carefully to discriminate between the cities which were very far off from them and those that pertained to the seven judged nations. To the former, they were, in the first place, to make overtures of peace; with the latter, on the contrary, they were to make no terms whatever. “When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it” – a marvelous method of fighting! – “And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it; and when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof” as expressing the positive energy of evil – “with the edge of the sword. But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof” – all that was capable of being turned to account in the service of God and of His people – “thou shalt take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.” Indiscriminate slaughter and wholesale destruction formed no part of Israel’s business. If any cities were disposed to accept the proffered terms of peace, they were to have the privilege of becoming tributaries to the people of God; and in reference to those cities which would make no peace, all within their walls which could be made use of was to be reserved. There are things in nature and things of earth which are capable of being used for God – they are sanctified by the Word of God and prayer. We are told to make to ourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when we fail, they may receive us into everlasting habitations; which simply means that if this world’s riches come into the Christian’s hands, he should diligently and faithfully use them in the service of CHRIST; he should freely distribute them to the poor, and to all the Lord’s needy workmen; in short, he should make them available, in every right and prudent way, for the furtherance of the Lord’s work in every department. In this way, the very riches which else might crumble into dust in their hands, or prove to be as rust on their souls, shall produce precious fruit that shall serve to minister an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour JESUS CHRIST. Many seem to find considerable difficulty in Luke 16:9, but its teaching is as clear and forcible as it is practically important. We find very similar instruction in I Timothy 6 – “Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate, laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.” There is not a fraction which we spend directly and simply for CHRIST which will not be before us by and by. The thought of this, though it should not by any means be a motive-spring, may well encourage us to devote all we have and all we are to the service of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Such is the plain teaching of Luke 16:and I Timothy 6; let us see that we understand it. The expression, “That they may receive you into everlasting habitations” simply means that what is spent for CHRIST will be rewarded in the day that is coming. Even a cup of cold water given in His precious name shall have its sure reward in His everlasting kingdom. Oh, to spend and be spent for Him! But we must close this section by quoting the few last lines of our chapter, in which we have a very beautiful illustration of the way in which our God looks after the smallest matters, and His gracious care that nothing should be lost or injured. “When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof, by forcing an ax against them; for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man’s life) to employ them in the siege; only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it be subdued” (Ver. 19, 20). “Let nothing be lost,” is the Master’s own word to us – a word which should ever be kept in remembrance. “Every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused.” We should carefully guard against all reckless waste of aught that can be made available for human use. Those who occupy the place of domestic servants should give their special attention to this matter. It is painful, at times, to witness the sinful waste of human food. Many a thing is flung out as offal which might supply a welcome meal for a needy family. If a Christian servant should read these lines, we would earnestly entreat him or her to weigh this subject in the divine presence, and never to practice or sanction the waste of the smallest atom that is capable of being turned to account for human use. We may depend upon it that to waste any creature of God is displeasing in His sight. Let us remember that His eye is upon us; and may it be our earnest desire to be agreeable to Him in all our ways. ~ end of chapter 20 ~
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Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2024 10:32:41 GMT -5
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE “IF one be found slain in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it, lying in the field, and it be not known who hath slain him; then thy elders and thy judges” – the guardians of the claims of truth and righteousness – “shall come forth, and they shall measure unto the cities that are round about him that is slain; and it shall be, that the city which is next unto the slain man, even the elders of that city shall take a heifer, which hath not been wrought with, and hath not drawn in the yoke; and the elders of that city shall bring down the heifer unto a rough valley which is neither eared nor sown, and shall strike off the heifer’s neck there in the valley. And the priests the sons of Levi – “exponents of grace and mercy – “shall come near; for them the Lord thy God hath chosen to minister unto Him, and to bless in the name of the Lord, and by their word shall every controversy and every stroke be tried;”- blessed, comforting fact! – “and all the elders of that city that are next unto the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer that is beheaded in the valley; and they shall answer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. Be merciful, O Lord, unto Thy people Israel, whom Thou hast redeemed, and lay not innocent blood to Thy people of Israel’s charge. And the blood shall be forgiven them. So shalt thou put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you, when thou shalt do that which is right in the sight of the Lord” (Ver. 1-9). A very suggestive and interesting passage of Holy Scripture now lies open before us, and claims our attention. A sin is committed – a man is found slain in the land, but no one knows aught about it; no one can tell whether it is murder or manslaughter, or who committed the deed. It lies entirely beyond the range of human knowledge; and yet there it is – an undeniable fact. Sin has been committed, and it lies as a stain on the Lord’s land, and man is wholly incompetent to deal with it. What, then, is to be done? The glory of God and the purity of His land must be maintained. He knows all about it, and He alone can deal with it; and truly His mode of dealing with it is full of most precious teaching. First of all, the elders and judges appear on the scene. The claims of truth and righteousness must be duly attended to; justice and judgment must be perfectly maintained. This is a great cardinal truth, running all through the Word of God. Sin must be judged ere sins can be forgiven or the sinner justified. Ere mercy’s heavenly voice can be heard, justice must be perfectly satisfied, the throne of God vindicated, and His name glorified. Grace must reign through righteousness. Blessed be God that it is so! What a glorious truth for all who have taken their true place as sinners! God has been glorified as to the question of sin, and therefore He can, in perfect righteousness, pardon and justify the sinner. But we must confine ourselves simply to the interpretation of the passage before us, and in so doing, we shall find in it a very wonderful onlook into Israel’s future. True, the great foundation-truth of atonement is presented, but it is with special reference to Israel. The death of Christ is here seen in its two grand aspects, namely, as the expression of man’s guilt, and the display of God’s grace. The former, we have in the man found slain in the field; the latter, in the heifer slain in the rough valley. The elders and the judges find out the city nearest to the slain man, and nothing can avail for that city save the blood of a spotless victim – the blood of the One who was slain at the guilty city of Jerusalem. The reader will note with much interest that the moment the claims of justice were met by the death of the victim, a new element is introduced into the scene. “The priests the sons of Levi shall come near.” This is grace acting on the blessed ground of righteousness. The priests are the channels of grace, as the judges are the guardians of righteousness. How perfect, how beautiful, is Scripture, in every page, every paragraph, every sentence! It was not until the blood was shed that the ministers of grace could present themselves. The heifer beheaded in the valley changed the aspect of things completely. “The priests the sons of Levi shall come near; for them the Lord thy God hath chosen to minister unto Him, and to bless in the name of the Lord; and by their word” – blessed fact for Israel! Blessed fact for every true believer! – “shall every controversy and every stroke be tried.” All is to be settled on the glorious and eternal principle of grace reigning through righteousness. Thus it is that God will deal with Israel by and by. We must not attempt to interfere with the primary application of all those striking institutions which come under our notice in this profound and marvelous book of Deuteronomy. No doubt there are lessons for us – precious lessons, but we may rest perfectly assured that the true way in which to understand and appreciate those lessons is to see their true and proper bearing. For instance, how precious, how full of consolation, the fact that it is by the word of the minister of grace that every controversy and every stroke is to be tried for repentant Israel by and by, and for every repentant soul now! Do we lose aught of the deep blessedness of this by seeing and owning the proper application of the Scripture? Assuredly not. So far from this, the true secret of profiting by any special passage of the Word of God is to understand its true scope and bearing. - “And all the elders of that city that are next unto the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer that is beheaded in the valley.” * - “I will wash my hands in innocency, and so will I compass Thine altar.” * How full of suggestive power is the figure of “the rough Valley”! How aptly it sets forth what this world at large, and the land of Israel in particular, was to our blessed Lord and Saviour! Truly it was a rough place to Him, a place of humiliation, a dry and thirsty land, a place that had never been eared or sown. But, all homage to His Name! By His death in this rough valley, He has procured for this earth and for the land of Israel a rich harvest of blessing, which shall be reaped throughout the millennial age, to the full praise of redeeming love. And even now, He, from the throne of heaven’s majesty, and we, in spirit with Him, can look back to that rough valley as the place where the blessed work was done which forms the imperishable foundation of God’s glory, the Church’s blessing, Israel’s full restoration, the joy of countless nations, and the glorious deliverance of this groaning creation. The true place to wash the hands is where the blood of atonement has forever expiated our guilt. “And they shall answer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. Be merciful, O Lord, unto Thy people Israel, whom Thou hast redeemed, and lay not innocent blood unto Thy people of Israel’s charge. And the blood shall be forgiven them.” - “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” - “Unto you first, God having raised up His Son Jesus, sent Him to bless you, by turning away everyone of you from his iniquities.” Thus all Israel shall be saved and blessed by and by, according to the eternal counsels of God, and in pursuance of His promise and oath to Abraham, ratified and eternally established by the precious blood of Christ, to whom be all homage and praise, world without end! Verses 10-17 bear in a very special way upon Israel’s relationship to the Lord. We shall not dwell upon it here. The reader will find numerous references to this subject throughout the pages of the prophets, in which the Holy Ghost makes the most touching appeals to the conscience of the nation – appeals grounded on the marvelous fact of the relationship into which He had brought them to Himself, but in which they had so signally and grievously failed. Israel has proved an unfaithful wife, and, in consequence thereof, has been set aside; but the time will come when this long-rejected but never forgotten people shall not only be reinstated, but brought into a condition of blessedness, privilege, and glory beyond any thing ever known in the past. This must never, for a moment, be lost sight of or interfered with. It runs like a brilliant golden line through the prophetic Scriptures, from Isaiah to Malachi, and the lovely theme is resumed and carried on in the New Testament. Take the following, glowing passage, which is only one of a hundred; “For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth. “And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory; and thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name. Thou shalt also be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God. Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken, neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate; but thou shalt be called Hephzibah [My delight is in her], and thy land Beulah [married]; for the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married. For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee; and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee. I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night; ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence, and give Him no rest, till He establish, and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. The Lord hath sworn by His right hand, and by the arm of His strength” – let men beware how they meddle with this! – “Surely I will no more give thy corn to be meat for thine enemies; and the sons of the stranger shall not drink thy wine, for the which thou hast labored; but they that have gathered it shall eat it and praise the Lord, and they that have brought it together shall drink it in the courts of my holiness . . . Behold, the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, ‘Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, His reward is with Him, and His work before Him. And they shall call them, The holy people, ‘The redeemed of the Lord; and thou shalt be called, Sought out, A city not forsaken’ “ (Isaiah 42). To attempt to alienate this sublime and glorious passage from its proper object, and apply it to the Christian Church, either on earth or in Heaven, is to do positive violence to the Word of God, and introduce a system of interpretation utterly destructive of the integrity of Holy Scripture. The passage which we have just transcribed, with intense spiritual delight, applies only to the literal Zion, the literal Jerusalem, the literal land of Israel. Let the reader see that he thoroughly seizes and faithfully holds fast this fact. As to the Church, her position on earth is that of an espoused virgin, not of a married wife. Her marriage will take place in Heaven. (Revelation 19:7, 8). To apply to her such passages as the above is to falsify her position entirely, and deny the plainest statements of Scripture as to her calling, her portion, and her hope, which are purely heavenly. Verses 18-21 of our chapter record the case of’ “a stubborn and rebellious son.” Here again we have Israel viewed from another stand-point. It is the apostate generation, for which there is no forgiveness. “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that when they have chastened him will not hearken unto them; then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; and they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him, with stones, that he die; so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear and fear.” The reader may with much interest contrast the solemn action of law and government in the case of the rebellious son, with the lovely and familiar parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15. Our space does not admit of our dwelling upon it here, much as we should delight to do so. It is marvelous to think that it is the same God who speaks and acts in Deuteronomy 21, and in Luke 15; but oh, how different the action! How different the style! Under the law, the father is called upon to lay hold of his son and bring him forth to be stoned; under grace, the father runs to meet the returning son, falls on his neck and kisses him; clothes him in the best robe, puts a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, has the fatted calf killed for him, seats him at the table with himself, and makes the house ring with the joy that fills his own heart at getting back the poor wandering spendthrift. Striking contrast! In Deuteronomy 21, we see the hand of God, in righteous government, executing judgment upon the rebellious; in Luke 15, we see the heart of God pouring itself out, in soul-subduing tenderness, upon the poor repentant one, giving him the sweet assurance that it is His own deep joy to get back His lost one. - The persistent rebel meets the stone of judgment; - The returning penitent meets the kiss of love. But we must close this section by calling the reader’s attention to the last verse of our chapter. It is referred to in a very remarkable way by the inspired apostle in the third chapter of Galatians. “Christ hath redeemed us from the Curse of the law, being made a Curse for us; for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.’ “ This reference is full of interest and value, not only because it presents to us the precious grace of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in making Himself a Curse for us, in order that the blessing of Abraham might come on us poor sinners of the Gentiles, but also because it furnishes a very striking illustration of the way in which the Holy Spirit puts His seal upon the writings of Moses in general, and upon Deuteronomy 21 in particular. All Scripture hangs together so perfectly that if one part be touched, you mar the integrity of the whole. The same Spirit breathes in the writings of Moses, in the pages of the Prophets, in the four evangelists, in the Acts, in the apostolic epistles, general and particular, and in that most profound and precious section which closes the divine volume. We deem it our sacred duty – as it is most assuredly our high privilege – to press this weighty fact upon all with whom we come in contact; and we would very earnestly entreat the reader to give it his earnest attention, to hold it fast, and bear a steady testimony to it, in this day of carnal laxity, cold indifference, and positive hostility. ~ end of chapter 21 ~
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Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2024 10:33:52 GMT -5
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO TO TWENTY-FIVE THE portion of our book on which we now enter, though not calling for elaborate exposition, yet teaches us two very important practical lessons. In the first place, many of the institutions and ordinances here set forth, prove and illustrate, in a most striking way, the terrible depravity of the human heart. They show us, with unmistakable distinctness, what man is capable of doing if left to himself. We must ever remember, as we read some of the paragraphs of this section of Deuteronomy, that God the Holy Ghost has indited them. We, in our fancied wisdom, may feel disposed to ask why such passages were ever penned. Can it be possible that they are actually inspired by the Holy Ghost? And of what possible value can they be to us? If they were written for our learning, then what are we to learn from them? Our reply to all these questions is at once simple and direct; and it is this: The very passages which we might least expect to find on the page of inspiration teach us, in their own peculiar way, the moral material of which we are made, and the moral depths into which we are capable of plunging. And is not this of great moment? Is it not well to have a faithful mirror held up before our eyes, in which we may see every moral trait, feature, and lineament perfectly reflected? Unquestionably. We hear a great deal about the dignity of human nature, and very many find it exceedingly hard to admit that they are really capable of committing some of the sins prohibited in the section before us, and in other portions of the divine volume; but we may rest assured that when God commands us not to commit this or that particular sin, we are verily capable of committing it. This is beyond all question. Divine wisdom would never erect a dam if there was not a current to be resisted. There would be no necessity to tell an angel not to steal; but man has theft in his nature, and hence the command applies to him. And just so in reference to every other prohibited thing; the prohibition proves the tendency – proves it beyond all question. We must either admit this or imply the positive blasphemy that God has spoken in vain. But then, it may be said, and is said by many, that while some very terrible samples of fallen humanity are capable of committing some of the abominable sins prohibited in Scripture, yet all are not so. This is a most thorough mistake. Hear what the Holy Ghost says in the seventeenth chapter of the prophet Jeremiah. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Whose heart is he speaking of? Is it the heart of some atrocious criminal, or of some untutored savage? Nay; it is the human heart – the heart of the writer and of the reader of these lines. Hear also what our Lord Jesus Christ says on this subject – “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” Out of what heart? Is it the heart of some hideously depraved and abominable wretch, wholly unfit to appear in decent society? Nay; it is out of the human heart – the heart of the writer and of the reader of these lines. Let us never forget this; it is a wholesome truth for everyone of us. We all need to bear in mind that if God were to withdraw His sustaining grace for one moment, there is no depth of iniquity into which we are not capable of plunging; indeed, we may add – and we do it with deep thankfulness – it is His own gracious hand that preserves us, each moment, from becoming a complete wreck in every way, – physically, mentally, morally, spiritually, and in our circumstances. May we keep this ever in the remembrance of the thoughts of our hearts, so that we may walk humbly and watchfully, and lean upon that arm which alone can sustain and preserve us. But we have said there is another valuable lesson furnished by this section of our book which now lies open before us. It teaches us, in a manner peculiar to itself, the marvelous way in which God provided for everything connected with His people. Nothing escaped His gracious notice; nothing was too trivial for His tender care. No mother could be more careful of the habits and manners of her little child than the almighty Creator and moral Governor of the universe was of the most minute details connected with the daily history of His people. By day and by night, waking and sleeping, at home and abroad, He looked after them. Their clothing, their food, their manners and ways toward one another, how they were to build their houses, how they were to plow and sow their ground, how they were to carry themselves in the deepest privacy of their personal life, – all was attended to and provided for in a manner that fills us with wonder, love, and praise. We may here see, in a most striking way, that there is nothing too small for our God to take notice of when His people are concerned. He takes a loving, tender, fatherly interest in their most minute concerns. We are amazed to find the Most High God, the Creator of the ends of the earth, the Sustainer of the vast universe, condescending to legislate about the matter of a bird’s nest; and yet why should we be amazed when we know that it is just the same to Him to provide for a sparrow as to feed a thousand millions of people daily? But there was one grand fact which was ever to be kept prominently before each member of the congregation of Israel, namely, the divine presence in their midst. This fact was to govern their most private habits, and give character to all their ways. “The Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy; that He see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee” (Chap. 23:14). What a precious privilege to have the Lord walking in their midst! what a motive for purity of conduct, and refined delicacy in their personal and domestic habits! If He was in their midst to secure victory over their enemies, He was also there to demand holiness of life. They were never for one moment to forget the august Person who walked up and down in their midst. Would the thought of this prove irksome to any? Only to as such as did not love holiness, purity, and moral order. Every true Israelite would delight in the thought of having One dwelling in their midst who could not endure aught that was unholy, unseemly, or impure. The Christian reader will be at no loss to seize the moral force and application of this holy principle. It is our privilege to have God the Spirit dwelling in us, individually and collectively. Thus we read, in I Corinthians 6:19, “What! know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” This is individual. Each believer is a temple of the Holy Ghost, and this most glorious and precious truth, is the ground of the exhortation given in Ephesians 4:30 – “Grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” How very important to keep this ever in the remembrance of the thoughts of our hearts! what a mighty moral motive for the diligent cultivation of purity of heart and holiness of life! When tempted to indulge in any wrong current of thought or feeling, any unworthy manner of speech, any unseemly line of conduct, what a powerful corrective would be found in the realization of the blessed fact that the Holy Spirit dwells in our body as in His temple! If only we could keep this ever before us, it would preserve us from many a wandering thought, many an unguarded and foolish utterance, many an unbecoming act. But not only does the Holy Spirit dwell in each individual believer, He also dwells in the Church collectively. “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (I Corinthians 3:16). It is upon this fact that the apostle grounds his exhortation in I Thessalonians 5:19, “Quench not the Spirit.” How divinely perfect is Scripture? How blessedly it hangs together! - The Holy Ghost dwells in us individually, hence we are not to grieve Him; - He dwells in the assembly, hence we are not to quench Him, but give Him His right place, and allow full scope for His blessed operations. May these great practical truths find a deep place in our hearts, and exert a more powerful influence over our ways, both in private life and in the public assembly. The Dealings of God with His People of Old We shall now proceed to quote a few passages from the section of our book which now lies open before us strikingly illustrative of the wisdom, goodness, tenderness, holiness, and righteousness which marked all the dealings of God with His people of old. Take, for example, the very opening paragraph. “Thou shalt not see thy brother’s ox or his sheep go astray, and hide thyself from them; thou shalt in any case bring them again unto thy brother. And if thy brother be not nigh unto thee, or if thou know him not, then thou shalt bring it unto thine own house, and it shall be with thee until thy brother seek after it, and thou shalt restore it to him again. In like manner shalt thou do with his ass; and so shalt thou do with his raiment; and with all lost thing of thy brother’s which he hath lost, and thou hast found, shalt thou do likewise; thou mayest not hide thyself. Thou shalt not see thy brother’s ass or his ox fall down by the way, and hide thyself from them; thou shalt surely help him to lift them up again” (Chap. 22:1-4). Here the two lessons of which we have spoken are very distinctly presented. What a deeply humbling picture of the human heart have we in that one sentence, “Thou mayest not hide thyself”! We are capable of’ the base and detestable selfishness of hiding ourselves from our brother’s claims upon our sympathy and succor – of shirking the holy duty of looking after his interests – of pretending not to see his real need of our aid. Such is man! – such is the writer! But oh, how blessedly character of our God shines out in this passage! The brother’s ox, or his sheep, or his ass, was not (to use a modern phrase) to be thrust into pound for trespass; it was to be brought home, cared for, and restored, safe and sound, to the owner, without charge for damage. And so with the raiment. How lovely is all this! how it breathes upon us the very air of the divine presence, the fragrant atmosphere of divine goodness, tenderness, and thoughtful love! What a high and holy privilege for any people to have their conduct governed and their character formed by such exquisite statutes and judgments! Again, take the following passage, so beautifully illustrative of divine thoughtfulness: “When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man fall from thence.” The Lord would have His people thoughtful and considerate of others; and hence, in building their houses, they were not merely to think of themselves and their convenience, but also of others and their safety. Cannot Christians learn something from this? How prone we are to think only of ourselves, our own interests, our own comfort and convenience! How rarely it happens that in the building or furnishing of our houses we bestow a thought upon other people! We build and furnish for ourselves. Alas! Self is too much our object and motive-spring in all our undertakings; nor can it be otherwise unless the heart be kept under the governing power of those motives and objects which belong to Christianity. We must live in the pure and heavenly atmosphere of the new creation in order to get above and beyond the base selfishness which characterizes fallen humanity. Every unconverted man, woman, and child on the face of the earth is governed simply by self in some shape or another. Self is the center, the object, the motive-spring, of every action. True, some are more amiable, more affectionate, more benevolent, more unselfish, more disinterested, more agreeable, than others; but it is utterly impossible that “the natural man” can be governed by spiritual motives, or an earthly man be animated by heavenly objects. Alas! we have to confess, with shame and sorrow, that we who profess to be heavenly and spiritual are so prone to live for ourselves, to seek our own things, to maintain our own interests, to consult our own ease and convenience. We are all alive and on the alert when self, in any shape or form, is concerned. All this is most sad and deeply humbling. It really ought not to be, and it would not be if we were looking more simply and earnestly to Christ as our great Exemplar and model in all things. Earnest and constant occupation of heart with Christ is the true secret of all practical Christianity. It is not rules and regulations that will ever make us Christ-like in our spirit, manner, and ways. We must drink into His spirit, walk in His footsteps, dwell more profoundly upon His moral glories, and then we shall, of blessed necessity, be conformed to His image. “We all with open face beholding as in a glass [or mirroring – κατοπτριξομενοι] the glory, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (II Corinthians 3). Mingled Truth with error We must now ask the reader to turn for a moment to the following very important practical instructions – full of suggestive power for all Christian workers: “Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with divers seeds, lest the fruit of thy seed which thou hast sown and the fruit of thy vineyard be defiled” (Chap. 22:9). What a weighty principle is here! Do we really understand it? Do we see its true spiritual application? It is to be feared there is a terrible amount of “mingled seed” used in the so-called spiritual husbandry of the present day. - how much of “philosophy and vain deceit,” - how much of “science falsely so called,” - how much of “the rudiments of the world,” Do we find mixed up in the teaching and preaching throughout the length and breadth of the professing church! How little of the pure, unadulterated seed of the Word of God, the “incorruptible seed” of the precious Gospel of Christ, is scattered broad-cast over the field of Christendom in this our day! How few, comparatively, are content to confine themselves within the covers of the Bible for the material of their ministry! Those who are, by the grace of God, faithful enough to do so, are looked upon as men of one idea, men of the old school, narrow, and behind the times. Well, we can only say, with a full and glowing heart, God bless the men of one idea – men of the precious old school of apostolic preaching! Most heartily do we congratulate them on their blessed narrowness, and their being behind these dark and infidel times. We are fully aware of what we expose ourselves to in thus writing, but this does not move us. We are persuaded that every true servant of Christ must be a man of one idea, and that idea is Christ; - He must belong to the very oldest school – the school of Christ; - He must be as narrow as the truth of God; and - He must, with stern decision, refuse to move one hair’s breadth in the direction of this infidel age. We cannot shake off the conviction that the effort on the part of the preachers and teachers of Christendom to keep abreast of the literature of the day must, to a very large extent, account for the rapid advance of rationalism and infidelity. They have got away from the Holy Scriptures, and sought to adorn their ministry by the resources of philosophy, science, and literature. They have catered more for the intellect than for the heart and conscience. The pure and precious doctrines of Holy Scripture, the sincere milk of the Word, the Gospel of the grace of God and of the glory of Christ, were found insufficient to attract and keep together large congregations. As Israel of old despised the manna, got tired of it, and pronounced it light food, so the professing church grew weary of the pure doctrines of that glorious Christianity unfolded in the pages of the New Testament, and sighed for something to gratify the intellect and feed the imagination. The doctrines of the Cross, in which the blessed apostle gloried. have lost their charm for the professing church, and any who would be faithful enough to adhere and confine themselves in their ministry to those doctrines might abandon all thought of popularity. But let all the true and faithful ministers of Christ, all true workers in His vineyard, apply their hearts to the spiritual principle set forth in Deuteronomy 22:9; let them, with unflinching decision, refuse to make use of “divers seeds” in their spiritual husbandry; let them confine themselves, in their ministry, to “the form of sound words,” and ever seek “rightly to divide the word of truth,” that so they may not be ashamed of their work, but receive a full reward in that day when every man’s work shall be tried of what sort it is. We may depend upon it, the Word of God – the pure seed – is the only proper material for the spiritual workman to use. We do not despise learning; far from it; we consider it most valuable in its right place. The facts of science, too, and the resources of sound philosophy, may all be turned to profitable account in unfolding and illustrating the truth of Holy Scripture. We find the blessed Master Himself and His inspired apostles making use of the facts of history and of nature in their public teaching; and who, in his sober senses, would think of calling in question the value and importance of a competent knowledge of the languages of Hebrew and Greek in the private study and public exposition of the Word of God? But admitting all this, as we most fully do, it leaves wholly untouched the great practical principle before us – a principle to which all the Lord’s people and His servants are bound to adhere, namely, that the Holy Ghost is the only power, and Holy Scripture the only material, for all true ministry in the Gospel and the Church of God. If this were more fully understood and faithfully acted upon, we should witness a very different condition of things throughout the length and breadth of the vineyard of Christ. Here, however, we must close this section. We have elsewhere sought to handle the subject of “The Unequal Yoke,” and shall not therefore dwell upon it here. * * See a pamphlet entitled “The Unequal Yoke”. The Israelite was not to plow with an ox and an ass together; neither was he to wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woolen and linen. The spiritual application of both these things is as simple as it is important. The Christian is not to link himself with an unbeliever for any object whatsoever, be it domestic, religious, philanthropic, or commercial; neither must he allow himself to be governed by mixed principles. His character must be formed and his conduct ruled by the pure and lofty principles of the Word of God. Thus may it be with all who profess and call themselves Christians. ~ end of chapter 22-25
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Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2024 10:34:50 GMT -5
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX “AND it shall be, when thou art come in unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and possessest it, and dwellest therein; that thou shalt take of the first of all the fruit of the earth, which thou shalt bring of thy land that the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt put it in a basket, and shalt go unto the place which the Lord thy God shall choose to place His name there” – not to a place of their own or others’ choosing – “And thou shalt go unto the priest that shall be in those days, and say unto him, I profess this day unto the Lord thy God that I am come unto the country which the Lord sware unto our fathers for to give us. And the priest shall take the basket out of thine hand, and set it down before the altar of the Lord thy God” (Ver. 1-4). The chapter on which we now enter contains the lovely ordinance of the basket of first-fruits, in which we shall find some principles of the deepest interest and practical importance. It was when the hand of the Lord had conducted His people into the land of promise that the fruits of that land could be presented. It was obviously necessary to be in Canaan ere Canaan’s fruits could be offered in worship. The worshiper was able to say, “I profess this day unto the Lord thy God that I am come unto the country which the Lord sware unto our fathers for to give us.” Here lay the root of the matter – “I am come.” He does not say, I am coming, hoping to come or longing to come. No; but, “I am come.” Thus it must ever be. We must know ourselves saved ere we can offer the fruits of a known salvation. We may be most sincere in our desires after salvation, most earnest in our efforts to obtain it; but then we cannot but see that efforts to be saved, and the fruits of a known and enjoyed salvation, are wholly different. The Israelite did not offer the basket of first-fruits in order to get into the land, but because he was actually in it. “I profess this day . . . that I am come.” There is no mistake about it – no question, no doubt, not even a hope – I am actually in the land, and here is the fruit of it. “And thou shalt speak, and say before the Lord thy God, A Syrian ready to perish was my father; and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous; and the Egyptians evil entreated us, and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage; and when we cried unto the Lord God of our fathers, the Lord heard our voice, and looked on our affliction and our labor and our oppression; and the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs, and with wonders; and He hath brought us into this place, and hath given us this land, even a land that floweth with milk and honey. “And now, behold, I have brought the first-fruits of the land, which Thou, O Lord, hast given me. And thou shalt set it before the Lord thy God, and worship before the Lord thy God; and thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the Lord thy God hath given unto thee, and unto thine house, thou, and the Levite, and the stranger that is among you.” This is a very beautiful illustration of worship “A Syrian ready to perish.” Such was the origin. There is nothing to boast of, so far as nature is concerned. And as to the condition in which grace had found them, what of it? Hard bondage in the land of Egypt; toiling amid the brick-kilns, beneath the cruel lash of Pharaoh’s taskmasters. But then, “We cried unto the Lord.” Here was their sure and blessed resource. It was all they could do, but it was enough. That cry of helplessness went directly up to the throne and to the heart of God, and brought Him down into the very midst of the brick-kilns of Egypt. Hear the Lord’s gracious words to Moses – “I have surely seen the affliction of My people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry, by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows, and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey . . . Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto Me; and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them” (Exodus 3:7-9). Such was the immediate response of the Lord to the cry of His people. “l am come down to deliver them.” Yes, blessed be His name, He came down, in the exercise of His own free and sovereign grace, to deliver His people; and no power of men or devils – earth or hell could hold them for a. moment beyond the appointed time. Hence, in our chapter, we have the grand result as set forth in the language of the worshiper and in the contents of his basket. “I am come unto the country which the Lord sware unto our fathers for to give us . . . And now, behold, I have brought the first-fruits of the land, which Thou, O Lord, hast given me.” The Lord had accomplished all, according to the love of His heart and the faithfulness of His word. Not one jot or tittle had failed – “I am come” And “I have brought the fruit.” The fruit of what? Of Egypt? Nay; but “of the land, which Thou, O Lord, hast given me.” The worshiper’s lips proclaimed the completeness of the Lord’s work; the worshiper’s basket contained the fruit of the Lord’s land. Nothing could be simpler, nothing more real. There was no room for a doubt, no ground for a question. He had simply to declare the Lord’s work and show the fruit. It was all of God from first to last. He had brought them out of Egypt, and He had brought them into Canaan. He had filled their baskets with the mellow fruits of His land, and their hearts with His praise. And now, beloved reader, let us just ask you, do you think it was presumption on the part of the Israelite to speak as he did? Was it right, was it modest, was it humble, of him to say, “I am come”? Would it have been more becoming in him merely to give expression to the faint hope that at some future period he might come? Would doubt and hesitation as to his position and his portion have been more honoring and gratifying to the God of Israel? What say you? It may be that, anticipating our argument, you are ready to say, There is no analogy. Why not? If an Israelite could say, “I am come unto the country which the Lord sware unto our fathers for to give us,” why cannot the believer now say, I am come unto JESUS? True, in the one case, it was sight; in the other, it is faith. But is the latter less real than the former? Does not the inspired apostle say to the Hebrews, “Ye we come unto Mount Zion”? and again, “We receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve God with reverence and godly fear.” If we are in doubt as to whether we have “come” or not, and as to whether we have “received the kingdom” or not, it is impossible to worship in truth or serve with acceptance. It is when we are in intelligent and peaceful possession of the place and portion in Christ that true worship can ascend to the throne above, and effective service be rendered in the vineyard below. For what, let us ask, is true worship? It is simply telling out, in the presence of God, what He is, and what He has done. It is the heart occupied with and delighting in God and in all His marvelous actings and ways. Now, if we have no knowledge of God, and no faith in what He has done, how can we worship Him? “He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” But then to know God is eternal life. I cannot worship God if I do not know Him, and I cannot know Him without having eternal life. The Athenians had erected an altar “to the unknown God,” and Paul told them that they were worshiping in ignorance, and proceeded to declare unto them the true God as revealed in the Person and work of the Man Christ Jesus. It is deeply important to be clear as to this. I must know God ere I can worship Him. I may “feel after Him, if haply I may find Him;” but feeling after One whom I have not found, and worshiping and delighting in One whom I have found, are two totally different things. God has revealed Himself, blessed be His name! He has given us the light of the knowledge of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ. He has come near to us in the Person of that blessed One, so that we may know Him, love Him, trust in Him, delight in Him, and use Him, in all our weakness and in all our need. We have no longer to grope for Him amid the darkness of nature, nor yet among the clouds and mists of spurious religion, in its ten thousand forms. No; our God has made Himself known by a revelation so plain that the wayfaring man, though a fool in all beside, may not err therein. The Christian can say, “I know whom I have believed.” This is the basis of all true worship. There may be a vast amount of fleshly pietism, mechanical religion, and ceremonial routine without a single atom of true spiritual worship. This latter can only flow from the knowledge of God. Active benevolence But our object is not to write a treatise on worship, but simply to unfold to our readers the instructive and beautiful ordinance of the basket of first-fruits. And having shown that worship was the first thing with an Israelite who found himself in possession of the land – and further, that we now must know our place and privilege in Christ before we can truthfully and intelligently worship the Father – we shall proceed to point out another very important practical result illustrated in our chapter, namely, active benevolence. “When thou hast made an end of tithing all the tithes of thine increase the third year, which is the year of tithing, and hast given it unto the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, that they may eat within thy gates, and be filled; then thou shalt say before the Lord thy God, I have brought away the hallowed things out of mine house, and also have given them unto the Levite, and unto the stranger, to the fatherless, and to the widow, according to all Thy commandments, which Thou hast commanded me; I have not transgressed Thy commandments, neither have I forgotten them” (Ver. 12, 13). Nothing can be more beautiful than the moral order of these things. It is precisely similar to what we have in Hebrews 13. “By Him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name.” Here is the worship. “But to do good and to communicate forget not; for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.” Here is the active benevolence putting both together, we have what we may call the upper and the nether side of the Christian’s character-praising God and doing good to men. Precious characteristics! May we exhibit them more faithfully. One thing is certain, they will always go together. Show us a man whose heart is full of praise to God, and we will show you one whose heart is open to every form of human need. He may not be rich in this world’s goods; he may be obliged to say, like one of old who was not ashamed to say it, “Silver and gold have I none;” but he will have the tear of sympathy, the kindly look, the soothing word, and these things tell far more powerfully upon a sensitive heart than the opening of the purse-strings, and the jingling of silver and gold. Our adorable Lord and Master, our great Exemplar, “went about doing good;” but we never read of His giving money to anyone; indeed, we are warranted in believing that the blessed One never possessed a penny. When He wanted to answer the Herodians on the subject of paying tribute to Caesar, He had to ask them to show Him a penny; and when asked to pay tribute, He sent Peter to the sea to get it. He never carried money, and most assuredly money is not named in the category of gifts bestowed by Him upon His servants. Still He went about doing good, and we are to do the same, in our little measure; it is at once our high privilege and our bounden duty to do so. And let the reader mark the divine order laid down in Hebrews 13 and illustrated in Deuteronomy 26. Worship gets the first, the highest place. Let us never forget this. We, in our wisdom or our sentimentality, might imagine that doing good to men, usefulness, philanthropy, is the highest thing; but it is not so. “Whoso offereth praise glorifieth Me.” God inhabits the praises of His people. He delights to surround Himself with hearts filled to overflowing with a sense of His goodness, ins greatness, and His glory. Hence, we are to offer the sacrifice of praise to God “continually.” So also the Psalmist says, “I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my month.” It is not merely now and then, or when all is bright and cheery around us, when everything goes on smoothly and prosperously; no, but “at all times” – “continually.” The stream of thanksgiving is to flow uninterruptedly. There is no interval for murmuring or complaining, fretfulness or dissatisfaction, gloom or despondency. Praise and thanksgiving are to be our continual occupation. We are ever to cultivate the spirit of worship. Every breath, as it were, ought to be a hallelujah. Thus it shall be by and by. Praise will be our happy and holy service while eternity rolls along its course of golden ages. When we shall have no further call to “communicate,” no demand on our resources or our sympathies, when we shall have bid an eternal adieu to this scene of sorrow and need, death and desolation, then shall we – praise our God for evermore, without let or interruption, in the sanctuary of His own blessed presence above. “But to do good and to communicate forget not.” There is singular interest attaching to the mode in which this is put. He does not say, But to offer the sacrifice of praise forget not. No; but lest, in the full and happy enjoyment of our own place and portion in Christ, we should “forget” that we are passing through a scene of want and misery, trial and pressure, the apostle adds the salutary and much-needed admonition as to doing good and communicating. The spiritual Israelite is not only to rejoice in every good thing which the Lord his God has bestowed upon him, but he is also to remember the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow – that is, the one who has no earthly portion, and is thoroughly devoted to the Lord’s work, and the one who has no home, the one who has no natural protector, and the one who has no earthly stay. It must ever be thus. The rich tide of grace rolls down from the bosom of God, fills our hearts to overflowing, and in its overflow, refreshes and gladdens our whole sphere of action. If we were only living in the enjoyment of what is ours in God, our every movement, our every act, our every word, yea, our every look, would do good. The Christian, according to the divine idea, is one who stands with one hand lifted up to God in the presentation of the sacrifice of praise, and the other hand filled with the fragrant fruits of genuine benevolence to meet every form of human need. O beloved reader, let us deeply ponder these things; let us really apply our whole hearts to the earnest consideration of them; let us seek a fuller realization and a truer expression of these two great branches of practical Christianity, and not be satisfied with anything less. Practical Sanctification We shall now briefly glance at the third point in the precious chapter before us. We shall do little more than quote the passage for the reader. The Israelite, having presented his basket and distributed his tithes, was further instructed to say, “I have not eaten thereof in my mourning, neither have I taken away aught thereof for any unclean use, nor given aught thereof for the dead; but I have hearkened to the voice of the Lord my God, and have done according to all that Thou hast commanded me. Look down from Thy holy habitation, from heaven, and bless Thy people Israel, and the land which Thou hast given us, as Thou swarest unto our fathers, a land that floweth with milk and honey. This day the Lord thy God hath commanded thee to do these statutes and judgments; thou shalt therefore keep and do them, with all thine heart and with all thy soul. Thou hast avouched the Lord this day to be thy God, and to walk in His ways, and to keep His statutes and His commandments and His judgments, and to hearken unto His voice: and the Lord hath avouched thee this day to be His peculiar people” – that is, a people of His own special possession – “as He hath promised thee, and that thou shouldest keep all His commandments; and to make thee high above all nations which He hath made, in praise and in name and in honor; and that thou mayest be a holy people unto the Lord thy God, as He hath spoken” (Ver. 14-19). Here we have personal holiness, practical sanctification, entire separation from every thing inconsistent with the holy place and relationship into which they had been introduced, in the sovereign grace and mercy of God. There must be no mourning, no uncleanness, no dead works. We have no room, no time, for any such things as these; they do not belong to that blessed sphere in which we are privileged to live and move and have our being. We have just three things to do: - We look up to God, and offer the sacrifice of praise; - We look around at a needy world, and do good; - We look in upon the circle of our own being – our inner life, and seek, by grace, to keep ourselves unspotted. “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world” (James 1:27). Thus, whether we hearken to Moses in Deuteronomy 26, or to Paul in Hebrews 13, or to James in his most wholesome, needed, practical Epistle, it is the same Spirit that speaks to us, and the same grand lessons that are impressed upon us – lessons of unspeakable value and moral importance – lessons loudly called for in this day of easy-going profession, in the which the doctrines of grace are taken up and held in a merely intellectual way, and connected with all sorts of worldliness and self-indulgence. Truly, there is an urgent need of a more powerful, practical ministry amongst us. There is a deplorable lack of the prophetic and pastoral element in our ministrations. By the prophetic element, we mean that character of ministry that deals with the conscience, and brings it into the immediate presence of God. This is greatly needed. There is a good deal of ministry which addresses itself to the intelligence, but sadly too little for the heart and the conscience. The teacher speaks to the understanding; the prophet speaks to the conscience; * the pastor speaks to the heart. * Very many seem to entertain the idea that a prophet is one who foretells future events, but it would be a mistake thus to confine the term. I Corinthians 14:28-32 lets us into the meaning of the words “prophet” and “prophesying.” The teacher and the prophet are closely and beautifully connected. The teacher unfolds truth from the Word of God; the prophet applies it to the conscience; and, we may add, the pastor sees how the ministry of both the one and the other is acting on the heart and in the life. We speak, of course, generally. It may so happen that the three elements are found in the ministry of one man; but they are distinct; and we cannot but feel that where the prophetic and pastoral gifts are lacking in any assembly, the teachers should very earnestly wait upon the Lord for spiritual power to deal with the hearts and consciences of His beloved people. Blessed be His name, He has all needed gift, grace, and power for His servants. All we need is, to wait on Him in real earnestness and sincerity of heart, and He will most assuredly supply us with all suited grace and moral fitness for whatever service we may be called to render in His Church. Oh, that all the Lord’s servants may be stirred up to a more deep-toned earnestness, in every department of His blessed world May we be “instant in season, out of season,” and in no wise discouraged by the condition of things around us, but rather find in that very condition an urgent reason for more intense devotedness. ~ end of chapter 26 ~
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Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2024 10:36:17 GMT -5
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN “AND Moses, with the elders of Israel, commanded the people, saying, ‘Keep all the commandments which I command you this day. And it shall be on the day when ye shall pass over Jordan unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, that thou shalt set thee up great stones, and plaster them with plaster; and thou shalt write upon them all the words of this law, when thou art passed over, that thou mayest go in unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, a land that floweth with milk and honey; as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee. Therefore it shall be when ye be gone over Jordan, that ye shall set up these stones, which I command you this day, in Mount Ebal, and thou shalt plaster them with plaster. And there shalt thou build an altar unto the Lord thy God, an altar of stones: thou shalt not lift up any iron tool upon them. Thou shalt build the altar of the Lord thy God of whole stones; and thou shalt offer burnt-offerings thereon unto the Lord thy God; and thou shalt offer peace-offerings, and shalt eat there, and rejoice before the Lord thy God. And thou shalt write upon the stones all the words of this law very plainly.’ And Moses and the priests the Levites spake unto all Israel, saying, ‘Take heed, and hearken, O Israel; this day thou art become the people of the Lord thy God. Thou shalt therefore obey the voice of the Lord thy God, and do His commandments and His statutes, which I command thee this day.’ And Moses charged the people the same day, saying, ‘These shall stand upon Mount Gerizim to bless the people, when ye are come over Jordan: Simeon and Levi and Judah and Issachar and Joseph and Benjamin. And these shall stand upon Mount Ebal to curse: Reuben, Gad, and Asher and Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali” (Ver. 1-13). There could not be a more striking contrast than that which is presented in the opening and close of this chapter. In the paragraph which we have just penned, we see Israel entering upon the land of promise – that fair and fruitful land flowing with milk and honey, and there erecting an altar in Mount Ebal, for burnt-offerings and peace-offerings. We read nothing about sin-offerings or trespass-offerings here. The law, in all its fullness, was to be “written very plainly” upon the plastered stones, and the people, in full, recognized, covenant-relationship, were to offer on the altar those special offerings of sweet savor so blessedly expressive of worship and Holy Communion. The subject here is not the trespasser in act, or the sinner in nature, approaching the brazen altar with a trespass-offering or a sin-offering; but rather a people fully delivered, accepted, and blessed – a people in the actual enjoyment of their relationship and their inheritance. True, they were trespassers and sinners, and as such, needed the precious provision of the brazen altar, – this, of course, is obvious, and fully understood and admitted by everyone taught of God; but it manifestly is not the subject of Deuteronomy 27:1-13, and the. spiritual reader will at once perceive the reason. When we see the Israel of God, in full covenant-relationship, entering into possession of their inheritance, having the revealed will of their covenant-God, the Lord, plainly and fully written before them, and the milk and honey flowing around them, we must conclude that all question as to trespasses and sins is definitively settled, and that nothing remains for a people so highly privileged and so richly blessed but to surround the altar of their covenant-God and present those sweet-savor offerings which were acceptable to Him and suited to them. In short, the whole scene unfolded to our view in the first half of our chapter is perfectly beautiful. Israel having avouched the Lord to be their God, and the Lord having avouched Israel to be His peculiar people, to make them high above all nations which He had made, in praise and in name and in honor, and a holy people unto the Lord their God, as He had spoken, – Israel thus privileged, blessed, and exalted, in full possession of the goodly land, and having all the precious commandments of God before their eyes, what remained but to present the sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving, in holy worship and happy fellowship? But in the latter half of our chapter, we find something quite different. Moses appoints six tribes to stand upon Mount Gerizim to bless the people, and six on Mount Ebal to curse; but alas! When we come to the actual history – the positive facts of the case, there is not a single syllable of blessing, nothing but twelve awful curses, each confirmed by a solemn “amen” from the whole congregation. What a sad change! What a striking contrast! It reminds us of what passed before us in our study of Exodus 19. There could not be a more impressive commentary on the words of the inspired apostle in Galatians 3:10 – “For as many as are of the works of the law” – as many as are on that ground – “are under the curse; for it is written,” – and here he quotes Deuteronomy 27: “Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” Here we have the real solution of the question. Israel, as to their actual moral condition, were on the ground of law; and hence, although the opening of our chapter presents a lovely picture of God’s thoughts respecting Israel, yet the close of it sets forth the sad and humiliating result of Israel’s real state before God. There is not a sound from Mount Gerizim, not one word of benediction; but, instead thereof, curse upon curse falls on the ears of the people. Nor could it possibly be otherwise. Let people contend for it as they will, nothing but a curse can come upon “as many as are of the works of the law.” It does not merely say, As many as fail to keep the law, though that is true; but, as if to set the truth in the very clearest and most forcible manner before us, the Holy Ghost declares that for all, no matter who – Jew, Gentile, or nominal Christian – all who are on the ground or principle of works of law, there is and can be nothing but a curse. Thus, then, the reader will be able intelligently to account for the profound silence that reigned on Mount Gerizim in the day of Deuteronomy 27. The simple fact is, if one solitary benediction had been heard, it would have been a contradiction to the entire teaching of Holy Scripture on the question of law. We have so fully gone into the weighty subject of the law in earlier chapters of this volume, that we do not feel called upon to dwell upon it here. We can only say that the more we study Scripture, and the more we ponder the law question in the light of the New Testament, the more amazed we are at the manner in which some persist in contending for the opinion that Christians are under the law, whether for life, for righteousness, for holiness, or for any object whatsoever. How can such an opinion stand for a moment in the face of that magnificent and conclusive statement in Romans 6, “YE ARE NOT UNDER LAW, BUT UNDER GRACE”? ~ end of chapter 27
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Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2024 10:37:24 GMT -5
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT IN approaching the study of this remarkable section of our book, the reader must bear in mind that it is by no means to be confounded with chapter 27. Some expositors, in seeking to account for the absence of the blessings in the latter, have sought for them here; but it is a grand mistake – a mistake absolutely fatal to the proper understanding of either chapter. The obvious fact is, the two chapters are wholly distinct, in basis, scope, and practical application. Chapter 27 is (to put it as pointedly and briefly as possible) moral and personal; chapter 28 is dispensational and national. That deals with the great root-principle of man’s moral condition as a sinner, utterly ruined and wholly incapable of meeting God on the ground of law; this, on the other hand, takes up the question of Israel as a nation, under the government of God. In short, a careful comparison of the two chapters will enable the reader to see their entire distinctness. For instance, what connection can we trace between the six blessings of our chapter and the twelve curses of chapter 27? None whatever. It is not possible to establish the slightest relationship. But a child can see the moral link between the blessings and curses of chapter 28. Let us quote a passage or two in proof. “And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God,” – the grand old Deuteronomic motto, the key-note of the book – “to observe and to do all His commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth; and all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God” – the only safeguard, the true secret of happiness, security, victory, and strength – “Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store. Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou bc when thou goest out.” Is it not perfectly plain to the reader that these are not the blessings pronounced by the six tribes on Mount Gerizim? What is here presented to us is Israel’s national dignity, prosperity, and glory, founded upon their diligent attention to all the commandments set before them in this book. It was the eternal purpose of God that Israel should be pre-eminent on the earth, high above all the nations. This purpose shall assuredly be made good, although Israel, in the past, have shamefully failed to render that perfect obedience which was to form the basis of their national pre-eminence and glory. We must never forget or surrender this great truth. Some expositors have adopted a system of interpretation by which the covenant-blessings of Israel are spiritualized and made over to the Church of God. This is a most fatal mistake. Indeed, it is hardly possible to set forth in language, or even to conceive, the pernicious effects of such a method of handling the precious Word of God. Nothing is more certain than that it is diametrically opposed to the mind and will of God. He will not and cannot sanction such tampering with His truth, or such an unwarrantable alienation of the blessings and privileges of His people Israel. True, we read, in Galatians 3, “That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive” – what? Blessings in the city and in the field? blessings in our basket and store? Nay; but “the promise of the Spirit through faith.” So also we learn from the same Epistle, in chapter 4, that restored Israel will be permitted to reckon amongst her children all those who are born of the Spirit during the Christian period. “But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written, ‘Rejoice, thou barren, that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou, that travailest not; for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath a husband.’ “ All this is blessedly true, but it affords no warrant whatever for transferring the promises made to Israel to New Testament believers. God has pledged Himself by an oath to bless the seed of Abraham His friend – to bless them with all earthly blessings, in the land of Canaan. This promise holds good, and is absolutely inalienable. Woe be to all who attempt to interfere with its literal fulfillment in God’s own time. We have referred to this in our studies on the earlier part of this book, and must now rest content with warning the reader most solemnly against every system of interpretation which involves such serious consequences as to the Word and ways of God. We must ever remember that Israel’s blessings are earthly; the Church’s blessings are heavenly. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” Thus, both the nature and the sphere of the Church’s blessings are wholly different from those of Israel, and must never be confounded. But the system of interpretation above referred to does confound them, to the marring of the integrity of Holy Scripture, and the serious damage of souls. To attempt to apply the promises made to Israel to the Church of God, either now or hereafter, on earth or in Heaven, is to turn things completely upside down, and to produce the most hopeless confusion in the exposition and application of Scripture. We feel called upon, in simple faithfulness to the Word of God and to the soul of the reader, to press this matter upon his earnest attention. He may rest assured it is by no means an unimportant question; so far from this, we are persuaded that it is utterly impossible for anyone who confounds Israel and the Church – the earthly and the heavenly, to be a sound or accurate interpreter of the Word of God. However, we cannot pursue this subject further here. We only trust that the Spirit of God will arouse the heart of the reader to feel its interest and importance, and give him to see the necessity of rightly dividing the word of truth. If this be so, our object will be fully gained. With regard to this twenty-eighth of Deuteronomy, if the reader only seizes the fact of its entire distinctness from its predecessor, he will be able to read it with spiritual intelligence and real profit. There is no need whatever for elaborate exposition. It divides itself naturally and obviously into two parts. In the first, we have a full and most blessed statement of the results of obedience (See verses 1-15).; in the second, we have, a deeply solemn and affecting statement of the awful consequences of disobedience. (See verses 16-68). And we cannot but be struck with the fact that the section containing the curses is more than three times the length of the one containing the blessings. That consists of fifteen verses; this, of fifty-three. The whole chapter furnishes an impressive commentary on the government of God, and a most forcible illustration of the fact that “our God is a consuming fire.” All the nations of the earth may learn from Israel’s marvelous history that God must punish disobedience, and that, too, first of all, in His own. And if He has not spared His own people, what shall be the end of those who know Him not? - “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” - “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” It is the very height of extravagant folly for anyone to attempt to evade the full force of such passages, or to explain them away. It cannot be done. Let anyone read the chapter before us and compare it with the actual history of Israel, and he will see that as sure as there is a God on the throne of the majesty in the heavens, so surely will He punish evildoers, both here and hereafter. It cannot be otherwise. The government that could or would allow evil to go unjudged, uncondemned, unpunished, would not be a perfect government – would not be the government of God. It is vain to found arguments upon one-sided views of the goodness, kindness, and mercy of God. Blessed be His name, He is kind and good and merciful and gracious, longsuffering and full of compassion; but He is holy and just, righteous and true, and “He hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world [the habitable earth – οικουμενην] in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance [given proof – πιστιν] unto all, in that He hath raised Him from the dead” (Acts 17). However, we must draw this section to a close; but ere doing so, we feel it to be our duty to call the reader’s attention to a very interesting point in connection with verse 13 of our chapter. “The Lord shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the Lord thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them.” This, no doubt, refers to Israel as a nation. They are destined to be the head of all the nations of the earth. Such is the sure and settled purpose and counsel of God respecting them. Low as they are now sunk, scattered and lost amongst the nations, suffering the terrible consequences of their persistent disobedience, sleeping, as we read in Daniel 12, in the dust of the earth, yet they shall, as a nation, arise and shine in far brighter glory than that of Solomon. All this is blessedly true, and established beyond all question in manifold passages in Moses, the Psalms, the prophets, and the New Testament; but in looking through the history of Israel, we find some very striking instances of individuals who were permitted and enabled, through infinite grace, to make their own of the precious promise contained in verse 13, and that, too, in very dark and depressing periods of the national history, when Israel, as a nation, was the tail and not the head. We shall just give the reader an instance or two, not only to illustrate our point, but also to set before him a principle of immense practical importance and universal application. Let us turn for a moment to that charming little book of Esther – a book so little understood or appreciated – a book which, we may truly say, fills a niche and teaches a lesson which no other book does. It belongs to a period when most assuredly Israel was not the head, but the tail; but, notwithstanding, it presents to our view the very edifying and encouraging picture of an individual son of Abraham so carrying himself as to reach the very highest position, and gaining a splendid victory over Israel’s bitterest foe. As to Israel’s condition in the days of Esther, it was such that God could not publicly own them. Hence it is that His name is not found in this book, from beginning to end. The Gentile was the head and Israel the tail. The relationship between the Lord and Israel could no longer be publicly owned; but the heart of the Lord could never forget His people, and, we may add, the heart of a faithful Israelite could never forget the Lord or His holy law; and these are just the two facts that specially characterize this most interesting little book. God was acting for Israel behind the scenes, and Mordecai was acting for God before the scenes. It is worthy of remark that neither Israel’s best Friend nor their worst enemy is once named in the book of Esther, and yet the whole book is full of the actings of both. The finger of God is stamped on every link in the marvelous chain of providence; and on the other hand, the bitter enmity of Amalek comes out in the cruel plot of the haughty Agagite. All this is intensely interesting. Indeed, in rising from the study of this book, we may well say, “Oh, scenes surpassing fable and yet true.” No romance could possibly exceed in interest this simple but most blessed history. But we must not expatiate, much as we should like to do so. Time and space forbid. We merely refer to it now in order to point out to the reader the unspeakable value and importance of individual faithfulness at a moment when the national glory was faded and gone. Mordecai stood like a rock for the truth of God. He refused, with stern decision, to own Amalek. He would save the life of Ahasuerus, and bow to his authority as the expression of the power of God; but he would not bow to Haman. His conduct in this matter was governed simply by the Word of God. The authority for his course was to be found in this blessed book of Deuteronomy – “Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt; how he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not God” – here was the true secret of the whole matter – “therefore it shall be, when the Lord thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it” (Chap. 25:17-19). This was distinct Enoch for every circumcised ear, every obedient heart, every upright conscience. Equally distinct is the language of Exodus 17. “And the Lord said unto Moses, ‘Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua; for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.’ And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it Jehovah-nissi [the Lord my banner]; for he said, ‘Because the Lord hath sworn that the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation’” (Ver. 14-16). Here, then, was Mordecai’s authority for refusing a single nod of his head to the Agagite. How could a faithful member of the house of Israel bow to a member of a house with which the Lord was at war? Impossible. He could clothe himself in sackcloth, fast and weep for his people, but he could not, he would not, he dare not, bow to an Amalekite. He might be charged with presumption, blind obstinacy, stupid bigotry, and contemptible narrow-mindedness; but with that he had nothing whatever to do. It might seem the most unaccountable folly to withhold the common mark of respect from the highest noble in the kingdom; but that noble was an Amalekite, and that was enough for Mordecai. The apparent folly was simple obedience. It is this which makes the case so interesting and important for us. Nothing can ever do away with our responsibility to obey the Word of God. It might be said to Mordecai that the commandment as to Amalek was a by-gone thing, having reference to Israel’s palmy days. It was quite right for Joshua to fight with Amalek; Saul, too, ought to have obeyed the word of the Lord instead of sparing Agag; but now, all was changed; the glory was departed from Israel, and it was perfectly useless to attempt to act on Exodus 17 or Deuteronomy 25. All such arguments, we feel assured, would have no weight whatever with Mordecai. It was enough for him that the Lord had said, “Remember what Amalek did . . . Thou shalt not forget it.” How long was this to hold good? “From generation to generation.” The Lord’s war with Amalek was never to cease until his very name and remembrance were blotted out from under Heaven. And why? Because of his cruel and heartless treatment of Israel. Such was the kindness of God toward His people! How, then, could a faithful Israelite ever bow to an Amalekite? Impossible. Could Joshua bow to Amalek? Nay. Did Samuel? Nay; “he hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal.” How, then, could Mordecai bow to him? He could not do it, cost what it might. It mattered not to him that the gallows was erected for him. He could be hanged, but he could never do homage to Amalek. And what was the result? A magnificent triumph! There stood the proud Amalekite near the throne, basking in the sunshine of royal favor, boasting himself in his riches, his greatness, his glory, and about to crush beneath his foot the seed of Abraham. There, on the other hand, lay poor Mordecai in sackcloth and ashes and tears. What could he do? He could obey. He had neither sword nor spear; but he had the Word of God, and by simply obeying that Word, he gained a victory over Amalek quite as decisive and splendid in its way as that gained by Joshua in Exodus 17 – a victory which Saul failed to gain, though surrounded by a host of warriors selected from the twelve tribes of Israel. Amalek sought to get Mordecai hanged; but instead of that, he was obliged to act as his footman, and conduct him, in all but regal pomp and splendor, through the street of the city. “And Haman answered the king, ‘For the man whom the king delighteth to honor, let the royal apparel be brought which the king useth to wear, and the horse that the king rideth upon, and the crown royal which is set upon his head; and let this apparel and horse be delivered to the hand of one of the king’s most noble princes, that they may array the man withal whom the king delighteth to honor, and bring him on horseback through the street of the city, and proclaim before him, Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honor.’ Then the king said to Haman, ‘Make haste, and take the apparel and the horse, as thou hast said, and do even so to Mordecai the Jew, that sitteth at the king’s gate: let nothing fail of all that thou hast spoken.’ Then took Haman the apparel and the horse, and arrayed Mordecai, and brought him on horseback through the street of the city, and proclaimed before him, ‘Thus shall it be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honor.’ And Mordecai came again to the king’s gate; but Haman hasted to his house mourning, and having his head covered.” Here, assuredly, Israel was the head and Amalek the tail – Israel, not nationally, but individually. But this was only the beginning of Amalek’s defeat and of Israel’s glory. Haman was hanged on the very gallows he had erected for Mordecai, “and Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal apparel of blue and white, and with a great crown of gold, and with a garment of fine linen and purple; and the city of Shushan rejoiced and was glad.” Nor was this all. The effect of Mordecai’s marvelous victory was felt far and wide over the hundred and twenty-seven provinces of the empire. “In every province, and in every city whithersoever the king’s commandment and his decree came, the Jews had joy and gladness, a feast and a good day. And many people of the land became Jews, for the fear of the Jews fell upon them.” And, to crown all, we read that “Mordecai the Jew was next unto king Ahasuerus, and great among the Jews, and accepted of the multitude of his brethren, seeking the wealth of his people, and speaking peace to all his seed.” Now, reader, does not all this prove to us, in the most striking manner, the immense importance of individual faithfulness? Is it not eminently calculated to encourage us to stand for the truth of God, cost what it may? Only see what marvelous results followed from the actings of one man! Many might have condemned Mordecai’s conduct. It might have seemed like unaccountable obstinacy to refuse a simple mark of respect to the highest noble in the empire; but it was not so. It was simple obedience; it was decision for God, and it led to a most magnificent victory, the spoils of which were reaped by his brethren at the very ends of the earth. For further illustration of the subject suggested by Deuteronomy 28:13, we must refer the reader to Daniel 3 and 6. There he will see what morally glorious results can be reached by individual faithfulness to the true God, at a moment when Israel’s national glory was gone – their city and temple in ruins. The three worthies refused to worship the golden image. They dared to face the wrath of the king, to withstand the universal voice of the empire, yea, to meet the fiery furnace itself, rather than disobey. They could surrender life, but they could not surrender the truth of God. And what was the result? A splendid victory! They walked through the furnace with the Son of God, and were called forth from the furnace as witnesses and servants of the Most High God. Glorious privilege! wondrous dignity! and all the simple result of obedience. Had they gone with the crowd, and bowed the head in worship to the national god, in order to escape the dreadful furnace, see what they would have lost! But, blessed be God, they were enabled to stand fast in the confession of the grand foundation-truth of the unity of the Godhead – that truth which had been trampled underfoot amid the splendors of Solomon’s reign; and the record of their faithfulness has been penned for us by the HOLY SPIRIT in order to encourage us to tread, with firm step, the path of individual devotedness, in the face of a God-hating, Christ-rejecting world, and in the face of a truth-neglecting Christendom. It is impossible to read the narrative and not have our whole renewed being stirred up and drawn out in earnest desire for more deep-toned personal devotedness to CHRIST and His precious cause. Similar must be the effect produced by the study of Daniel 6. We cannot allow ourselves to quote or expatiate; we can only commend the soul-stirring record to the attention of the reader. It is uncommonly fine, and it furnishes a splendid lesson for this day of soft, self-indulgent, easy-going profession, in which it costs people nothing to give a nominal assent to the truths of Christianity; but in which, notwithstanding, there is so little desire or readiness to follow, with whole-hearted decision, a rejected Lord, or to yield an unqualified and unhesitating obedience to His commandments. How refreshing, in the face of so much heartless indifference, to read of the faithfulness of Daniel! He, with unflinching decision, persisted in his holy habit of praying three times a day, with his window open toward Jerusalem, although he knew that the den of lions was the penalty of his act. He might have closed his window and drawn his curtains and retired into the privacy of his chamber to pray, or he might have waited for the midnight hour, when no human eye could see or human ear hear him. But no; this beloved servant of God would not hide his light under a bed or a bushel. There was a great principle at stake. It was not merely that he would pray to the one living and true God, but he would pray with “his windows open toward Jerusalem.” And why “toward Jerusalem”? Because it was God’s center. But it was in ruins. True, for the present, and as looked at from a human stand-point; but to faith, and from a divine stand-point, Jerusalem was God’s center for His earthly people. It was, and it shall be, beyond all question. And not only so, but its dust is precious to the Lord; and hence Daniel was in full communion with the mind of God when he opened his windows toward Jerusalem and prayed. He had Scripture for what he did, as the reader may see by referring to II Chronicles 6, “If they return to thee with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their captivity, whither they have carried them captives, and pray toward their land, which Thou gavest unto their fathers, and toward the city which Thou hast chosen, and toward the house which I have built for Thy name.” Here was Daniel’s warrant. This was what he did, utterly regardless of human opinions, and utterly regardless, too, of pains and penalties. - he would rather be thrown into the den of lions than surrender the truth of God; - he would rather go to Heaven with a good conscience than remain on earth with a bad one. And what was the result? Another splendid triumph! “Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no manner of hurt was found upon him, BECAUSE HE BELIEVED IN HIS GOD.” Blessed servant! noble witness! Assuredly he was the head on this occasion, and his enemies the tail. And how? Simply by obedience to the Word of God. This is what we deem to be of such vast moral importance for this our day. It is to illustrate and enforce this that we refer to those brilliant examples of individual faithfulness at a time when Israel’s national glory was in the dust, their unity gone, and their polity broken up. We cannot but regard it as a fact full of interest, full of encouragement, full of suggestive power, that in the darkest days of Israel’s history as a nation we have the brightest and noblest examples of personal faith and devotedness. We earnestly press this upon the attention of the Christian reader. We consider it eminently calculated to strengthen and cheer up our hearts in standing for the truth of God at a moment like the present, when there is so much to discourage us in the general condition of the professing church. It is not that we are to look for such speedy, striking, and splendid results as were realized in those cases to which we have referred. This is by no means the question. What we have to keep before our hearts is the fact that, no matter what may be the condition of the ostensible people of God at any given time, it is the privilege of the individual man of God to tread the narrow path and reap the precious fruits of simple obedience to the Word of God and the precious commandments of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. This, we feel persuaded, is a truth for the day. May we all feel its holy power. We are in imminent danger of lowering the standard of personal devotedness because of the general condition. This is a fatal mistake, yea, it is the positive suggestion of the enemy of CHRIST and His cause. If Mordecai, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Daniel had acted thus, what would have been the result? Ah, no, reader; we have ever to bear in mind that our one great business is, to obey, and leave results with God. It may please Him to permit His servants to see striking results, or He may see fit to allow them to wait for that great day that is coming, when there will be no danger of our being puffed up by seeing any little fruit of our testimony. Be this as it may, it is our plain and bounden duty to tread that bright and blessed path indicated for us by the commandments of our precious and adorable Lord and Saviour JESUS CHRIST. May God enable us, by the grace of His HOLY SPIRIT, so to do. May we cleave to the truth of God with purpose of heart, utterly regardless of the opinions of our fellow-men who may charge us with narrowness, bigotry, intolerance, and such like. We have just to go on with the Lord! ~ end of chapter 28 ~
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Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2024 10:39:06 GMT -5
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE THIS chapter closes the second grand division of our book. In it we have a most solemn appeal to the conscience of the congregation. It is what we may term the summing up and practical application of all that has gone before in this most profound, practical, and hortatory section of the five books of Moses. “These are the words of the covenant, which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, beside the covenant which He made with them in Horeb.” Allusion has already been made to this passage as one of the many proofs of the entire distinctness of the book of Deuteronomy from the preceding section of the Pentateuch; but it claims the reader’s attention on another ground. It speaks of a special covenant made with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, in virtue of which they were to be brought into the land. This covenant was as distinct from the covenant made at Sinai as it was from the covenant made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In a word, it was neither pure law on the one hand, nor pure grace on the other, but government exercised in sovereign mercy. It is perfectly clear that Israel could not enter the land on the ground of the Sinai or Horebcovenant, inasmuch as they had completely failed under it, by making a. golden calf. They forfeited all right and title to the land, and were only saved from instant destruction by sovereign mercy exercised toward them through the mediation and earnest intercession of Moses. It is equally plain that they did not enter the land on the ground of the Abrahamic covenant of grace, for had they done so, they would not have been turned out of it. Neither the extent nor the duration of their tenure answered to the terms of the covenant made with their fathers. It was by the terms of the Moab-covenant that they entered upon the limited and temporary possession of the land of Canaan; and inasmuch as they have as signally failed under the Moab-covenant as under that of Horeb – failed under government as completely as under law, they are expelled from the land and scattered over the face of the earth, under the governmental dealings of God. But not forever. Blessed be the God of all grace, the seed of Abraham His friend shall yet possess the land of Canaan according to the magnificent terms of the original grant. “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” Gifts and calling must not be confounded with law and government. Mount Zion can never be classed with Horeb and Moab. The new and everlasting covenant of grace, ratified by the precious blood of the Lamb of God, shall be gloriously fulfilled to the letter, spite of all the powers of earth and hell – men and devils combined. “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in My covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord: I will put My laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts; and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people; and they shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for all shall know Me, from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.’ In that He saith, ‘A new covenant,’ He hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away” (Hebrews 8:8-13). Now, the reader must carefully guard against a system of interpretation that would apply this precious and beautiful passage to the Church. It involves a threefold wrong, namely, - A wrong to the truth of God, - A wrong to the Church, and - A wrong to Israel. We have raised a warning note on this subject again and again in the course of our studies on the Pentateuch, because we feel its immense importance. It is our deep and thorough conviction that no one can understand, much less expound, the Word of God who confounds Israel with the Church. The two things are as distinct as Heaven and earth; and hence, when God speaks of Israel, Jerusalem, and Zion, if we presume to apply those names to the New Testament Church, it can only issue in utter confusion. We believe it to be a simple impossibility to set forth the mischievous consequences of such a method of handling the Word of God. - it puts an end to all accuracy of interpretation, and to all that holy precision and divine certainty which Scripture is designed and fitted to impart; - it mars the integrity of truth, damages the souls of God’s people, and hinders their progress in divine life and spiritual intelligence. In short, we cannot too strongly urge upon everyone who reads these lines the absolute necessity of guarding against this fatally false system of handling Holy Scripture. We must beware of meddling with the scope of prophecy, or the true application of the promises of God. We have no warrant whatever to interfere with the divinely appointed sphere of the covenants. The inspired apostle tells us distinctly, in the ninth of Romans, that they pertain to Israel; and if we attempt to alienate them from the Old Testament fathers and transfer them to the Church of God – the body of Christ, we may depend upon it, we are doing what Jehovah-Elohim will never sanction. The Church forms no part of the ways of God with Israel and the earth. Her place, her portion, her privileges, her prospect, are all heavenly. She is called into existence in this time of Christ’s rejection, to be associated with Him where He is now hidden in the heavens, and to share His glory in the coming day. If the reader fully grasps this grand and glorious truth, it will go far toward helping him to put things into their right places and leave them there. We must now turn our attention to the very solemn practical application of all that has passed before us to the conscience of every member of the congregation. “And Moses called unto all Israel, and said unto them, ‘Ye have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt unto Pharaoh, and unto all his servants, and unto all his land; the great temptations which thine eyes have seen, the signs, and those great miracles; yet the Lord hath not given you a heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.’” This is peculiarly solemn. The most astounding miracles and signs may pass before us, and leave the heart untouched. These things may produce a transient effect upon the mind and upon the natural feelings, but unless the conscience is brought into the light of the divine presence, and the heart brought under the immediate action of the truth by the power of the Spirit of God, there is no permanent result reached. Nicodemus inferred from the miracles of Christ that He was a teacher come from God; but this was not enough. He had to learn the deep and wondrous meaning of that mighty sentence, “Ye must be born again.” A faith founded on miracles may leave people unsaved, unblessed, unconverted – awfully responsible, no doubt, but wholly unconverted. We read, at the close of the second chapter of John’s Gospel, of many who professed to believe on Christ when they saw His miracles; but He did not commit Himself unto them. There was no divine work, nothing to be trusted. There must be a new life – a new nature, and miracles and signs cannot impart this. We must be born again-born of the Word and Spirit of God. The new life is communicated by the incorruptible seed of the Gospel of God, lodged in the heart by the power of the Holy Ghost. It is not a head-belief founded on miracles, but a heart-belief in the Son of God. It is something which could never be known under law or government. “The gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Precious gift! Glorious source! Blessed channel! Universal and everlasting praise to the Eternal Trinity! - “And I have led you forty years in the wilderness; your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot.”-Wonderful clothes! Wonderful shoes! God took care of them and made them last, blessed forever be His great and holy name! - “Ye have not eaten bread, neither have ye drunk wine or strong drink; that ye might know that I am the Lord your God.” They were fed and clothed by God’s own gracious hand. - “Man did eat angels’ food.” They had no need of wine or strong drink – no need of stimulants. - “They drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.” That pure stream refreshed them in the dreary desert, and the heavenly manna sustained them day by day. All they wanted was the capacity to enjoy the divine provision. Here, alas! like ourselves, they failed; they got tired of the heavenly food, and lusted for other things. How sad that we should be so like them! how very humbling that we should so fail to appreciate that precious one whom God has given to be our life, our portion, our object, our all in all! How terrible to find our hearts craving the wretched vanities and follies of this poor passing world – its riches, its honors, its distinctions, its pleasures, which all perish in the using, and which, even if they were lasting, are not for a moment to be compared with “the unsearchable riches of Christ”! May God, in His infinite goodness, “grant us, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith; that we, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Oh, that this most blessed prayer may be answered in the deep and abiding experience of the reader and the writer! “And when ye carne unto this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan” – formidable and much-dreaded foes! – “came out against us unto battle, and we smote them.” And had they been ten thousand times as great and as formidable, they would have proved to be as chaff before the presence of the God of the armies of Israel. “And we took their land, and gave it for an inheritance unto the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half tribe of Manasseh.” Will any one dare to compare this with what human history records respecting the invasion of South America by the Spaniards? Woe be to those who do so! They will find themselves terribly mistaken. There is this grand and allimportant difference, that Israel had the direct authority of God for what they did to Sihon and Og; the Spaniards could show no such authority for what they did to the poor ignorant savages of South America. This alters the case completely. The introduction of God and His authority is the one perfect answer to every question, the divine solution of every difficulty. May we ever keep this weighty fact in the remembrance of the thoughts of our hearts, as a divine antidote against every infidel suggestion! “Keep therefore the words of this [the Moab] covenant, and do them, that ye may prosper in all that ye do.” Simple obedience to the Word of God ever has been, is now, and ever shall be the deep and real secret of all true prosperity. To the Christian, of course, the prosperity is not in earthly or material things, but in heavenly and spiritual; and we must never forget that it is the very height of folly to think of prospering or making progress in the divine life if we are not yielding an implicit obedience to all the commandments of our blessed and adorable Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. “If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be My disciples. As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you; continue ye in My love. If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love.” Here is true Christian prosperity. May we earnestly long after it, and diligently pursue the proper method of attaining it. “Ye stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God; your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel, your little ones” – touching and interesting fact! – “your wives, and thy stranger that is in thy camp.” How exquisite, how deeply affecting, the expression, “thy stranger”! What a powerful appeal to Israel’s heart on behalf of the stranger! “From the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water; that thou shouldest enter into covenant with the Lord thy God, and into His oath, which the Lord thy God maketh with thee this day; that He may establish thee to-day for a people unto Himself, and that He may be unto thee a God, as He hath said unto thee, and as He hath sworn unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath, but with him that standeth here with us this day before the Lord our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day; for ye know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the nations which ye passed by; and ye have seen their abominations [that is, the objects of their worship – their false gods] and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them” (Ver. 10-17). This earnest appeal is not only general, but also intensely individual. This is very important. We are ever prone to generalize, and thus miss the application of truth to our individual conscience. This is a grave mistake, and a most serious loss to our souls. We are everyone of us responsible to yield an implicit obedience to the precious commandments of our Lord. It is thus we enter into the real enjoyment of our relationship, as Moses says to the people, “that He may establish thee for a people unto Himself, and that He may be unto thee a God.” Nothing can be more precious. And then it is so very simple. There is no vagueness, obscurity, or mysticism about it. It is simply having His most precious commandments treasured up in our hearts, acting upon the conscience, and carried out in the life. This is the true secret of habitually realizing our relationship with our Father and with our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. For anyone to imagine that he can enjoy the blessed sense of intimate relationship while living in the habitual neglect of our Lord’s commandments is a miserable and mischievous delusion. “If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love.” This is the grand point; let us deeply ponder it. - “If ye love Me, keep My commandments.” - “Not everyone that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven.” - “For whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother.” - “Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God.” These are seasonable words for this day of easygoing, self-indulgent, worldly profession. May they sink down into our ears and into our hearts. May they take full possession of our whole moral being, and bring forth fruit in our individual history. We feel persuaded of the need of this practical side of things. We are in imminent danger, while seeking to keep clear of everything like legality, of running into the opposite evil of carnal laxity. The passages of Holy Scripture which we have just quoted – and they are but a few of many – supply the divine safeguard against both these pernicious and deadly errors. It is blessedly true that we are brought into the holy relationship of children by the sovereign grace of God, through the power of His Word and Spirit. This one fact cuts up by the roots the noxious weed of legality. But then, surely the relationship has its suited affections, its duties, and its responsibilities, the due recognition of which furnishes the true remedy for the terrible evil of carnal laxity so prevalent on all hands. If we are delivered from law-works – as, thank God, we are, if we are true Christians – it is not that we should be good-for-nothing self-pleasers, but that life-works might be produced in us, to the glory of Him whose name we bear, whose we are, and whom we are bound, by every argument, to love obey, and serve. May we, beloved reader, earnestly seek to apply our hearts to this practical line of things. We are imperatively called upon to do so, and we may fully count upon the abundant grace of our Lord JESUS Christ to enable us to respond to the call, spite of the ten thousand difficulties and hindrances that lie in our way. Oh, for a deeper work of grace in our souls, a closer walk with God, a more pronounced discipleship! Let us give ourselves to the earnest pursuit of these things! We must now proceed with the lawgiver’s solemn appeal. He warns the people to take heed, “lest there should be among you man or woman or family or tribe whose heart turneth away this day from the Lord our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood.” These searching words are referred to by the inspired apostle in his Epistle to the Hebrews in a very emphatic manner. “Looking diligently,” he says, “lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled.” What weighty words are these! How full of wholesome admonition and warning! They set forth the solemn responsibility of all Christians. We are all called upon to exercise a holy, jealous, godly care over each other, which, alas! Is but little understood or recognized. We are not all called to be pastors or teachers. The passage just quoted does not refer particularly to such; it refers to all Christians, and we are bound to attend to it. We hear great complaints on all sides, of the sad lack of pastoral care. No doubt there is a great lack of true pastors in the Church of God, as there is of every other gift. This is only what we might expect. How could it be otherwise? How could we expect a profusion of spiritual gifts in our present miserable condition? The Spirit is grieved and quenched by our lamentable divisions, our worldliness, our gross unfaithfulness. Need we, then, marvel at our deplorable poverty? But our blessed Lord is full of deep and tender compassion toward us in the midst of our ruin and spiritual desolation, and if we only humbled ourselves under His mighty hand, He would graciously lift us up, and enable us, in many ways, to meet the deficiency of pastoral gift amongst us. We might, through His precious grace, look more diligently and lovingly after one another, and seek each other’s spiritual progress and prosperity in a thousand ways. Let not the reader imagine for a moment that we mean to give the smallest countenance to prying officiousness or unwarrantable espionage on the part of Christians. Far away be the thought! We look upon such things as perfectly insufferable in the Church of God. They stand at the very moral antipodes of that loving, holy, tender, diligent pastoral care of which we speak and for which we long. But does it not strike the reader that, while giving the widest possible berth to these most contemptible evils to which we have just referred, we might cultivate and exercise a loving, prayerful interest in one another, and a holy watchfulness and care, which might prevent many a root of bitterness from springing up? We cannot doubt it. It is quite true we are not all called to be pastors, and it is equally true that there is a grievous dearth of pastors in the Church of God. We mean, of course, true pastors – pastors given by the Head of the Church – men with a pastor’s heart, and real pastoral gift and power. All this is undeniable, and for this very reason it ought to stir the hearts of the Lord’s beloved people everywhere to seek of Him grace to enable them to exercise a tender, loving, brotherly care over one another, which might go a great way toward supplying the need of pastors amongst us. One thing is clear, that in the passage just quoted from Hebrews 12, there is nothing said about pastors. It is simply a most stirring exhortation to all Christians to exercise a mutual care, and to watch against the springing up of any root of bitterness. And oh, how needful this is! - How terrible are those roots! - How bitter they are! - How widely spread are their pernicious tendrils at times! - What irreparable mischief they do! - How many are defiled by them! - How many precious links of friendship are snapped, and how many hearts broken by them! Yes, reader, and how often we have felt persuaded that a little judicious pastoral or even brotherly care, a little loving, godly counsel, might have nipped the evil in the bud, and thus hindered an incalculable amount of mischief and sorrow. May we all lay these things to heart, and earnestly seek grace to do what we can to prevent roots of bitterness springing up and spreading abroad their defiling influence. But we must hearken to further weighty and searching words from the beloved and venerable lawgiver. He draws a most solemn picture of the end of the one who caused the root of bitterness to spring up. “And it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst.” Fatal delusion! Crying, Peace, peace! when there is no peace, but imminent wrath and judgment. “The Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and His jealousy shall smoke against that man, and,” – instead of the “peace” which he vainly promised himself, – “all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven.” Awful warning: to all who act as roots of bitterness in the midst of the people of God, and to all who countenance them! “And the Lord shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law; so that the generation to come of your children, that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the Lord hath laid upon it; and that the whole land thereof is brimstone and salt and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger and in His wrath.” Soul-subduing examples of the governmental dealings of the living God, which ought to speak with a voice of thunder in the ears of all those who are turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the Lord that bought them! – “even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land? What meaneth the heat of this great anger? Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them forth out of the land of Egypt; for they went and served other gods, and worshiped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom He had not given unto them; and the anger of the Lord was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book; and the Lord rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day” (Ver. 19-28). Reader, how peculiarly solemn is all this! What a powerful illustration of the apostle’s words, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”! and again, “Our God is a consuming fire”! How important that the professing church should give heed to such warning notes! Most assuredly, she is called to learn much from the history of God’s dealings with His people Israel; Romans 11 is perfectly clear and conclusive as to this. The apostle, in speaking of the divine judgment upon the unbelieving branches of the olive-tree, thus appeals to Christendom: “If some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive-tree, wert graffed in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive-tree; boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off that I might be graffed in. Well; because of unbelief they were broken off; and thou standest by faith. BE NOT HIGH-MINDED, BUT FEAR; for if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee. Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God; on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness,’ if thou continue in His goodness; otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.” Alas! the professing church has not continued in the goodness of God. It is utterly impossible to read her history in the light of Scripture and not see this. She has grievously departed, and there is nothing before her save the unmingled wrath of Almighty God. The beloved members of the body of Christ who, sad to say, are mingled with the terrible mass of corrupt profession, will be gathered out of it and taken to the place prepared in the Father’s house in Heaven. Then, if not before, they will see how wrong it was to have remained in connection with what was so flagrantly opposed to the mind of Christ as revealed, with divine clearness and simplicity, in the Holy Scriptures. But as to the great thing known as Christendom, it will be “spued out” and “cut off.” It will be given over to strong delusion, to believe a lie, “that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” Tremendous words! May they ring in the ears and sink down into the hearts of thousands who are going on from day to day, week to week, and year to year, content with a mere name to live, a form of godliness, but denying the power, “lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.” What an awfully graphic picture of so-called Christian England! How appalling the condition and the destiny of the pleasure-hunting thousands who are rushing blindly, heedlessly, and madly down the inclined plane that leads to hopeless and everlasting misery! May God, in His infinite goodness, by the power of His Spirit and by the mighty action of His Word, rouse the hearts of His people everywhere to a more profound and influential sense of these things. We must now, ere closing this section, briefly direct the reader’s attention to the last verse of our chapter. It is one of those passages of Scripture sadly misunderstood and misapplied. “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God; but those things which are revealed belong unto us, and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” This verse is constantly used to hinder the progress of souls in the knowledge of “the deep things of God,” but its simple meaning is this: The things “revealed” are what we have had before us in the preceding chapter of this book; the things “secret,” on the other hand, refer to those resources of grace which God had in store, to be unfolded when the people should have utterly failed to “do all the words of this law.” The revealed things are what Israel ought to have done, but did not do; the secret things are what God would do, spite of Israel’s sad and shameful failure, and they are most blessedly presented in the following chapters – the counsels of divine grace, the provisions of sovereign mercy to be displayed when Israel shall have thoroughly learnt the lesson of their utter failure under both the Moab and the Horeb-covenants. Thus this passage, when rightly understood, so far from affording any warrant for the use so constantly made of it, encourages the heart to search into these things which, though “secret” to Israel in the plains of Moab, are fully and clearly “revealed” to us for our profit, comfort, and edification. * * I Corinthians 2:9 is another of the misunderstood and misapplied passages. “But, as it is written, ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.’ “ Here, people are sure to stop, and hence conclude that we cannot possibly know aught of the precious things which God has in store for us; but the very next verse proves the gross absurdity of any such conclusion. “But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we [that is, all the Lord’s people] have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.” Thus this passage, like Deuteronomy 29:29, teaches the very opposite of what is so constantly deduced from it. How important to examine and weigh the context of the passages which are quoted. The Holy Spirit came down, on the day of Pentecost, to lead the disciples into all truth. The canon of Scripture is complete; all the purposes and counsels of God are fully revealed. The mystery of the Church completes the entire circle of divine truth. The apostle John could say to all God’s children, “Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and know all things.” Thus the entire New Testament abounds with evidence to prove the mistaken use that is so constantly mane of Deuteronomy 29:29. We have dwelt upon it because we are aware that the Lord’s beloved people are sadly hindered by it in their progress in divine knowledge. The enemy would ever seek to keep them in the dark, when they ought to be walking in the sunlight of divine revelation – to keep them as babes feeding upon milk, when they ought, as those “of full age,” to be feeding upon the “strong meat” so freely provided for the Church of God. We have but little idea of how the Spirit of God is grieved and Christ dishonored by the low tone of things amongst us. How few really “know the things that are freely given to us of God”! Where are the proper privileges of the Christian understood, believed, and realized? How meager is our apprehension of divine things! . How stunted our growth! How feeble our practical exposition of the truth of God! What a blotted Epistle of Christ we present! Beloved Christian reader, let us seriously ponder these things in the divine presence. Let us honestly search out the root of all this lamentable failure, and have it judged and put away, that so we may more faithfully and unmistakably declare whose we are and whom we serve. May it be more thoroughly manifest that Christ is our one absorbing object. ~ end of chapter 29
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Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2024 10:40:40 GMT -5
CHAPTER THIRTY THIS chapter is one of very deep interest and importance. It is prophetic, and presents to us some of “the secret things” referred to at the close of the preceding chapter. It unfolds some of those most precious resources of grace treasured up in the heart of God, to be unfolded when Israel, having utterly failed to keep the law, should be scattered to the ends of the earth. “And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations, whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee, and shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and shalt obey His voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thine heart and with all thy soul; that then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations, whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee.” How touching, how perfectly beautiful, is all this! It is no question of law-keeping, but something far deeper, far more precious; it is the turning of the heart – the whole heart – the whole soul to the Lord, at a time when a literal obedience to the law is utterly impossible. It is a broken and contrite heart turning to God, and God, in deep and tender compassion, meeting that heart. This is true blessedness, at all times and in all places. It is something above and beyond all dispensational dealings and arrangements. It is God Himself, in all the fullness and ineffable blessedness of what He is, meeting a repentant soul; and we may truly say that when these two meet, all is divinely and eternally settled. It must be perfectly clear to the reader that what we have now before us is something as far removed from law-keeping and human righteousness as Heaven is above earth. The first verse of our chapter proves in the clearest possible manner that the people are viewed as in a condition in which the carrying out of the ordinances of the law is a simple impossibility. But blessed be God, there is not a spot on the face of the earth, be it ever so remote, from which the heart cannot turn to God. The hands might not be able to present a victim for the altar, the feet might not be able to travel to the appointed place of worship, but the heart could travel to God. Yes; the poor crushed, broken, contrite heart could go directly to God, and God, in the depth of His compassion and tender mercy, could meet that heart, bind it up, and fill it to overflowing with the rich comfort and consolation of His love, and the full joy of His salvation. But let us hearken yet further to those “secret things” which “belong to God” – things precious beyond all human thought. “If any of thine be driven out unto the utmost parts of heaven” – as far as they could go – “from thence will the Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will He fetch thee; and the Lord thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and He will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers.” How precious is all this! But there is something far better still. Not only will He gather them, fetch them, and multiply them – not only will He act in power for them, but He will do a mighty work of grace in them of far more value than any outward prosperity however desirable. “And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart” – the very center of the whole moral being, the source of all those influences which go to form the character – “and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart” – the grand moral regulator of the entire life – “and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live. And the Lord thy God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them that hate thee, which persecuted thee” – a solemn word for all those nations who have ever sought to oppress the Jews! – “And thou shalt return, and obey the voice of the Lord, and do all His commandments, which I command thee this day.” Nothing can be more morally lovely than all this. The people gathered, fetched, multiplied, blessed, circumcised in heart, thoroughly devoted to the Lord, and yielding a whole-hearted, loving obedience to all His precious commandments! What can exceed this in blessedness for a people on the earth? “And the Lord thy God will make thee plenteous in every work of thine hand, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy land, for good; for the Lord will again rejoice over thee for good, as He rejoiced over thy fathers: if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this book of the law, and if thou turn unto the Lord thy God, with all thine heart and with all thy soul. For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. 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? 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? But the Word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it” (Ver. 10-14). This is a singularly interesting passage. It furnishes a key to “the secret things” already referred to, and sets forth the great principles of divine righteousness, in vivid and beautiful contrast to legal righteousness in every possible aspect. According to the truth here unfolded, it matters not in the least where a soul may be – here, there, or any where; “the Word is nigh thee.” It could not possibly be nigher. What could be nigher than “in thy mouth, and in thy heart”? We need not, as we say, move a muscle to get it. If it were above us or beyond us, reason would that we might complain of our utter inability to reach it; but no, there is no need of either hands or feet in this most blessed and all-important matter. The heart and the mouth are here called into exercise. There is a very beautiful allusion to the above passage in the tenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, to which the reader may refer with much interest and profit. Indeed, it is so full of evangelic sweetness, that we must quote it. “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. For I bear them record, that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth” – not to everyone who says he believes, as in James 2:14 – “For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, that the man which doeth those things shall live by them. But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise: Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down;)” – Striking parenthesis! Marvelous instance of the Spirit’s use of Old Testament Scripture! It bears the distinct stamp of His master-hand – “or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead). But what saith it? The Word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart; that is, the word of faith, which we preach;” – How perfectly beautiful the addition! Who but the Spirit could have supplied it? – “that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture saith, ‘Whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed.’ “ Mark this beautiful word – “whosoever.” It most assuredly takes in the Jew. It meets him wherever he may be, a poor exile at the very ends of the earth, under circumstances where obedience to the law as such was simply impossible, but where the rich and precious grace of God and His most glorious salvation could meet him in the depth of his need. There, though he could not keep the law, he could confess with his mouth the Lord JESUS, and believe in his heart that God had raised Him from the dead; and this is salvation. But then, if it be “whosoever,” it cannot possibly be confined to the Jew; nay, it cannot be confined at all; and hence the apostle goes on to say, “There is no difference between the Jew and the Greek.” There was the greatest possible difference under the law. There could not be a broader or more distinct line of demarcation than that which the lawgiver had drawn between the Jew and the Greek; but that line is obliterated, for a double reason: first, because “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (chap. 3:23).; and secondly, because “the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him; for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” How blessedly simple! “Calling” – “believing” – “confessing”! Nothing can exceed the transcendent grace that shines in these words. No doubt it is assumed that the soul is really in earnest – that the heart is engaged. God deals in moral realities. It is not a nominal, notional head-belief; but divine faith wrought in the heart by the HOLY GHOST – a living faith, which connects the soul, in a divine way and by an everlasting link, to Christ. And then there is the confessing with the mouth the Lord JESUS. This is of cardinal importance. A man may say, I believe in my heart, but I am not one for parading my religious belief. I am not a talker. I keep my religion to myself. It is entirely a matter between my soul and God; I do not believe in that perpetual intruding our religious impressions upon other people. Many who talk loudly and largely about their religion in public, make but a sorry figure in private, and I certainly do not want to be identified with such. I utterly abhor all cant. Deeds, not words, for me. All this sounds very plausible, but it cannot stand for a moment in the light of Romans 10:9. There must be the confession with the mouth. Many would like to be saved by Christ, but they shrink from the reproach of confessing His precious Name. They would like to get to Heaven when they die, but they do not want to be identified with a rejected Christ. Now God does not own such. He looks for the full, bold, clear confession of Christ, in the face of a hostile world. Our Lord Christ, too, looks for this confession. He declares that whoso confesses Him before men, He will confess before the angels of God; but whoso denies Him before men, He will deny before the angels of God. The thief on the Cross exhibited the two great branches of true saving faith. He believed with his heart, and confessed with his mouth. Yes, he gave a flat contradiction to the whole world on the most vital question that ever was or ever could be raised, and that question was Christ. He was a thoroughly pronounced disciple of Christ. Oh, that there were more such! There is a terrible amount of indefiniteness and cold half-heartedness in the professing church, grievous to the Holy Ghost, offensive to Christ, hateful to God. We long for bold decision, out-and-out, unmistakable testimony to the Lord Jesus. May God the Holy Spirit stir up all our hearts, and lead us forth, in more thorough consecration of heart, to that blessed One who freely gave His life to save us from everlasting burnings! We shall close this section by quoting for the reader the last few verses of our chapter, in which Moses makes a peculiarly solemn appeal to the hearts and consciences of the people. It is a most powerful word of exhortation. “See, I have set before thee this day life and good and death and evil.” Thus it is ever in the government of God. The two things are inseparably linked together. Let no man dare to snap the link. God “will render to every man according to his deeds; to them who, by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; but glory, honor, and peace to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile: for there is no respect of persons with God” (Romans 2:6-11). The apostle does not, in this great practical passage, go into the question of power; he simply states the broad fact – a fact applicable at all times and under all dispensations – government, law, and Christianity; it ever holds good that “God will render to every man according to his deeds.” This is of the very last possible importance. May we ever bear it in mind. It may perhaps be said, Are not Christians under grace? Yes, thank God; but does this weaken, in the smallest degree, the grand governmental principle stated above? Nay, it strengthens and confirms it immensely. But again, some may feel disposed to say, Can any unconverted person do good? We reply, This question is not raised in the Scripture just quoted. Everyone taught of God knows and feels and owns that not one atom of “good” has ever been done in this world but by the grace of God; that man left to himself will do evil only – evil continually. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights.” All this is most blessedly true, and thankfully owned by every pious soul, but it leaves wholly untouched the fact set forth in Deuteronomy 30 and confirmed by Romans 2, that life and good, death and evil, are bound together by an inseparable link. May we never forget it. May it ever abide in the remembrance of the thoughts of our hearts. “See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; 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. But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them; 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. 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; that thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey His voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto Him” – the all-important, essential thing for each, for all, the very spring and power of all true religion, in every age, in every place; – ‘‘for He is thy life, and the length of thy days;” -How close! how vital! how real! how very precious! – “that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them” (Ver. 15-20). Nothing can be more solemn than this closing appeal to the congregation; it is in full keeping with the tone and character of the entire book of Deuteronomy – a book marked throughout by the most powerful exhortations that ever fell on mortal ears. We have no such soul-stirring appeals in any of the preceding sections of the Pentateuch. Each book, we need not say, has its own specific niche to fill, its own distinct object and character; but the great burden of Deuteronomy, from beginning to end, is exhortation; its thesis, the Word of God; its object, obedience – whole-hearted, earnest, loving obedience, grounded on a known relationship and enjoyed privileges. ~ end of chapter 30 ~
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Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2024 10:42:29 GMT -5
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE THE heart of Moses still lingers, with deep tenderness and affectionate solicitude, over the congregation. It seems as though he could never weary of pouring into their ears his earnest exhortations. He felt their need, he foresaw their danger, and, like a true and faithful shepherd, he sought, with all the deep and tender affection of His large, loving heart, to prepare them for what was before them. No one can read his closing words without being struck with their peculiarly solemn tone. They remind us of Paul’s touching farewell to the elders of Ephesus. Both these beloved and honored servants realized, in a very vivid manner, the seriousness of their own position and that of the persons they were addressing. They felt the uncommon gravity of the interests at stake, and the urgent need of the most faithful dealing with the heart and conscience. This will account for what we may term the awful solemnity of their appeals. All who really enter into the situation and destiny of the people of God in a world like this must be serious. The true sense of these things, the apprehension of them in the divine presence, must, of necessity, impart a holy gravity to the character, and a special pungency and power to the testimony. “And Moses went and spake these words unto all Israel. And he said unto them, ‘I am a hundred and twenty years old this day; I can no more go out and come in; also the Lord hath said unto me, Thou shalt not go over this Jordan.’” How very touching this allusion to his great age, and this fresh and final reference to the solemn governmental dealing of God with himself personally! The direct and manifest object of both was, to give effect to his appeal to the hearts and consciences of the people, to strengthen the moral lever by which this beloved and honored servant of God sought to move them in the direction of simple obedience. If he points to his gray hairs, or to the holy discipline exercised toward him, it most assuredly is not for the purpose of bringing himself, his circumstances, or his feelings before them, but simply to touch the deepest springs of their moral being by every possible means. “The Lord thy God, He will go over before thee, and He will destroy these nations from before thee, and thou shalt possess them; and Joshua, he shall go over before thee, as the Lord hath said. And the Lord shall do unto them as He did to Sihon and to Og, kings of the Amorites, and unto the land of them whom He destroyed. And the Lord shall give them up before your face, that ye may do unto them according unto all the commandments which I have commanded you.” Not a word of murmuring or repining as to himself, not the faintest tinge of envy or jealousy in his reference to the one who was to take his place, not the most distant approach to aught of the kind; every selfish consideration is swallowed up in the one grand object of encouraging the hearts of the people to tread, with firm step, the pathway of obedience, which was then, is now, and ever must be the path of victory, the path of blessing, the path of peace. “Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them; for the Lord thy God, He it is that doth go with thee; He will not fail thee nor forsake thee.” What precious, soul-sustaining words are these, beloved Christian reader! How eminently calculated to lift the heart above every discouraging influence! The blessed consciousness of the Lord’s presence with us, and the remembrance of His gracious ways with us, in days gone by, must ever prove the true secret of strength in moving onward. The same mighty hand which had subdued before them Sihon and Og, could subdue all the kings of Canaan. The Amorites were quite as formidable as the Canaanites; the Lord was more than a match for all. “We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what work Thou didst in their days, in the times of old. How Thou didst drive out the heathen with Thy hand, and plantedst them; how Thou didst afflict the people, and cast them out.” Only think of God driving out people with His own hand! What an answer to all the arguments and difficulties of a morbid sentimentality! - How very shallow and erroneous are the thoughts of some in reference to the governmental ways of God! - How miserably one-sided their notions of His character and actings! - How perfectly absurd the attempt to measure God by the standard of human judgment and feeling! It is very evident that Moses had not the smallest particle of sympathy with such sentiments when he addressed to the congregation of Israel the magnificent exhortation quoted above. He knew something of the gravity and solemnity of the government of God, something, too, of the blessedness of having Him as a shield in the day of battle, a refuge and a resource in every hour of peril and need. Let us hearken to his encouraging words addressed to the man who was to succeed him. “And Moses called unto Joshua, and said unto him in the sight of all Israel, ‘Be strong and of a good courage; for thou must go with this people unto the land which the Lord hath sworn unto their fathers to give them; and thou shalt cause them to inherit it. And the Lord, He it is that doth go before thee; He will be with thee; He will not fail thee, neither forsake thee; fear not, neither be dismayed.’” Joshua needed a special word for himself, as one called to occupy a prominent and very distinguished place in the congregation. But the word to him embodies the same precious truth as that addressed to the whole assembly. He is assured of the divine presence and power with him. This is enough for each, for all; for Joshua as for the most obscure member of the assembly. Yes, reader, and enough for thee, whoever thou art, or whatever be thy sphere of action. It matters not in the least what difficulties or dangers may lie before us, our God is amply sufficient for all. If only we have the sense of the Lord’s presence with us, and the authority of His Word for the work in which we are engaged, we may move on with joyful confidence, spite of ten thousand difficulties and hostile influences. “And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests the sons of Levi, which bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and unto all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, saying, ‘At the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles, when all Israel is come to appear before the Lord thy God in the place which He shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel, in their hearing. Gather the people together, men and women and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the Lord your God, and observe to do all the words of this law; and that their children, which have not known any thing, may hear, and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as ye live in the land whither ye go over Jordan to possess it” (Ver. 9-35). Two things in the foregoing passage claim our special attention; first, the fact that the Lord attached the most solemn importance to the public assembly of His people for the purpose of hearing His Word. “All Israel” - “men, women, and children” - with the stranger who had cast in his lot amongst them, were commanded to assemble themselves together to hear the reading of the book of the law of God, that all might learn His holy will and their duty. Each member of the assembly, from the eldest to the youngest, was to be brought into direct personal contact with the revealed will of the Lord, that each one might know his solemn responsibility. And secondly, we have to weigh the fact that the children were to be gathered before the Lord to hearken to His Word. Both these facts are full of weighty instruction for all the members of the Church of God - instruction urgently called for on all sides. There is a most deplorable amount of failure as to these two points. We sadly neglect the assembling of ourselves together for the simple reading of the Holy Scriptures. There does not seem to be sufficient attraction in the Word of God itself to bring us together. There is an unhealthy craving for other things; human oratory, music, religious excitement of some kind or other seems needful to bring people together, - anything and everything but the precious Word of God. It will perhaps be said that people have the Word of God in their houses, that it is quite different now from what it was with Israel; everyone can read the Scriptures at home, and there is not the same necessity for the public reading. Such a plea will not stand the test of truth for a moment. We may rest assured, if the Word of God were loved and prized and studied in private and in the family, it would be loved and prized and studied in public. We should delight to gather together around the fountain of Holy Scripture, to drink, in happy fellowship, of the living water, for our common refreshment and blessing. But it is not so. The Word of God is not loved and studied, either privately or publicly. Trashy literature is devoured in private, and music, ritualistic services, and imposing ceremonies are eagerly sought after in public. Thousands will flock to hear music, and pay for admission, but how few care for a meeting to read the Holy Scriptures! These are facts, and facts are powerful arguments. We cannot get over them. There is a growing thirst for religious excitement, and a growing distaste for the calm study of Holy Scripture and the spiritual exercises of the Christian assembly. It is perfectly useless to deny it. We cannot shut our eyes to it. The evidence of it meets us on every hand. Thank God, there are a few, here and there, who really love the Word of God, and delight to meet, in holy fellowship, for the study of its precious truths. May the Lord increase the number of such, and bless them abundantly. May our lot be cast with them, “till traveling days are done.” They are but an obscure and feeble remnant everywhere; but they love Christ and cleave to His Word, and their richest enjoyment is, to get together and think and speak and sing of Him. May God bless them and keep them. May He deepen His precious work in their souls, and bind them more closely to Himself and one another, and thus prepare them, in the state of their affections, for the appearing of “the Bright and Morning Star.” We must now turn for a few moments to the closing verses of our chapter, in which the Lord speaks to His beloved and honored servant, in tones of deep and touching solemnity, as to his own death, and as to Israel’s dark and gloomy future. “And the Lord said unto Moses, ‘Behold, thy days approach that thou must die: call Joshua, and present yourselves in the tabernacle of the congregation, that I may give him a charge.’ And Moses and Joshua went and presented themselves in the tabernacle of the congregation. And the Lord appeared in the tabernacle in a pillar of a cloud; and the pillar of the cloud stood over the door of the tabernacle. And the Lord said unto Moses, ‘Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers; and this people will rise up and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land, whither they go to be among them, and will forsake Me, and break My covenant which I have made with them. Then My anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide My face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them; so that they will say in that day, Are not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us’! And I will surely hide My face in that day, for all the evils which they shall have wrought, in that they are turned unto other gods.’” “Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another god.” So says the Spirit of CHRIST in Psalm 16. Israel has proved, is proving, and shall yet more fully prove the solemn truth of these words. Their history in the past, their present dispersion and desolation, and, beyond all, that “great tribulation” through which they have yet to pass, at “the time of the end,” - all go to confirm and illustrate the truth that the sure and certain way to multiply our sorrows is, to turn away from the Lord and look to any creature-resource. This is one of the many and varied practical lessons which we have to gather from the marvelous history of the seed of Abraham. May we learn it effectually. May we learn to cleave to the Lord with purpose of heart, and turn away, with holy decision, from every other object. This, we feel persuaded, is the only path of true happiness and peace. May we ever be found in it. “Now therefore write ye this song for you, and teach it the children of Israel; put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for Me against the children of Israel. For when I shall have brought them into the land which I sware unto their fathers, that floweth with milk and honey; and they shall have eaten and filled themselves and waxen fat; then will they turn unto other gods, and serve them, and provoke Me, and break My covenant. And it shall come to pass, when many evils and troubles are befallen them, that this song shall testify against them as a witness; for it shall not be forgotten out of the mouths of their seed; for I know their imaginations which they go about, even now, before I have brought them into the land which I sware.” How deeply affecting, how peculiarly solemn, is all this! Instead of Israel being a witness for the Lord before all nations, the song of Moses was to be a witness for the Lord against the children of Israel. They were called to be His witnesses; they were responsible to declare His name and to show forth His praise in that land into which, in His faithfulness and sovereign mercy, He conducted them; but alas! they utterly and shamefully failed, and hence, in view of this sad and most humiliating failure, a song was to be written which, in the first place, as we shall see, sets forth, in most magnificent strains, the glory of God; and secondly, records, in accents of inflexible faithfulness, Israel’s deplorable failure, in every stage of their history. “Moses therefore wrote this song the same day, and taught it the children of Israel. And he gave Joshua the son of Nun a charge, and said, ‘Be strong, and of a good courage,. for thou shalt bring the children of Israel into the land which I sware unto them; and I will be with thee.” Joshua was not to be discouraged or faint-hearted because of the predicted unfaithfulness of the people. He was, like his great progenitor, to be strong in faith giving glory to God. He was to move forward with joyful confidence, leaning on the arm and confiding in the word of the Lord, the covenant-God of Israel, in nothing terrified by his adversaries, but resting in the precious, soul-sustaining assurance that, however the seed of Abraham might fail to obey, and, as a consequence, bring down judgment on themselves, yet the God of Abraham would infallibly maintain and make good His promise, and glorify His name in the final restoration and everlasting blessing of His chosen people. All this comes out with uncommon vividness and power in the song of Moses, and Joshua was called to serve in the faith of it. He was to fix his eye, not upon Israel’s ways, but upon the eternal stability of the divine covenant with Abraham. He was to conduct Israel across the Jordan and plant them in that fair inheritance designed for them in the purpose of God. Had Joshua occupied his mind with Israel, he must have flung down his sword and given up in despair; but no, he had to encourage himself in the Lord his God, and serve in the energy of a faith that endures as seeing Him who is invisible. Precious, soul-sustaining, God - honoring faith! May the reader, whatever be his line of life or sphere of action, know, in the profoundest depths of his soul, the moral power of this divine principle. May every beloved child of God and every servant of CHRIST know it. It is the only thing which will enable us to grapple with the difficulties, hindrances, and hostile influences which surround us in the scene through which we are passing, and to finish our course with joy. “And it came to pass when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished, that Moses commanded the Levites, which bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying, ‘Take this book of the law, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee. For I know thy rebellion, and thy stiff neck; behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the Lord; and how much more after my death? Gather unto me all the elders of your tribes, and your officers, that I may speak these words in their ears, and call heaven and earth to record against them. For I know that after my death ye will utterly corrupt yourselves, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you; and evil will befall you in the latter days; because ye will do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger through the work of your bands.’” How forcibly we are here reminded of Paul’s farewell address to the elders of Ephesus! “For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. “Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears. And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified” (Acts 20:29-32). Man is the same always and every where. His history is a blotted one from beginning to end. But oh, it is such a relief and solace to the heart to know and remember that God is ever the same, and His Word abides and is “settled forever in heaven.” It was hid in the side of the ark of the covenant and there preserved intact, spite of all the grievous sin and folly of the people. This gives sweet rest to the heart at all times, in the face of human failure, and the wreck and ruin of everything committed to man’s hand. “The Word of our God shall stand forever;” and while it bears a true and solemn testimony against man and his ways, it also conveys home to the heart the most precious and tranquilizing assurance that God is above all man’s sin and folly, that His resources are absolutely inexhaustible, and that ere long His glory shall shine out and fill the whole scene. The Lord be praised for the deep consolation of all this! ~ end of chapter 31
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Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2024 10:43:50 GMT -5
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO “AND Moses spake in the ears of all the congregation of Israel the words of this song, until they were ended.” It is not too much to say that one of the very grandest and most comprehensive sections in the divine volume now lies open before us and claims our prayerful attention. It takes in the whole range of God’s dealings with Israel from first to last, and presents a most solemn record of their grievous sin and of divine wrath and judgment. But, blessed be God, it begins and ends with Him; and this is full of deepest and richest blessing for the soul. If it were not so, if we had only the melancholy story of man’s ways, we should be completely overwhelmed; but in this magnificent song, as indeed in the entire volume, we begin with God and we end with God. This tranquilizes the spirit most blessedly, and enables us, in calm and holy confidence, to pursue the history of man, to see everything going to pieces in his hands, and to mark the actings of the enemy in opposition to the counsels and purposes of God. We can afford to see the complete failure and ruin of the creature, in every shape and form, because we know and are assured that God will be God in spite of everything. He will have the upper hand in the end, and then all will be – must be right. God shall be all in all, and there shall be neither enemy nor evil occurrent throughout that vast universe of bliss of which our adorable Lord Christ shall be the central sun forever. But we must turn to the song. “Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.” Heaven and earth are summoned to hearken to this magnificent outpouring. Its range is commensurate with its vast moral importance. “My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass; because I will publish the name of the Lord; ascribe ye greatness unto our God.” Here lies the solid, the imperishable foundation of everything. Come what may, the name of our God shall stand forever. No power of earth or hell can possibly countervail the divine purpose, or hinder the outshining of the divine glory. What sweet rest this gives the heart in the midst of this dark, sorrowful, sin-stricken world, and in the face of the apparently successful schemes of the enemy! Our refuge, our resource, our sweet relief and solace, are found in the name of the Lord our God, the God and. Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Truly the publication of that blessed name must ever be as the refreshing dew and tender rain falling upon the heart. This is, of a truth, the divine and heavenly doctrine on which the soul can feed, and by which it is sustained, at all times, and under all circumstances. - “He is the Rock” – not merely a rock. There is, there can be, no other Rock but Himself. Eternal and universal homage to His glorious name! - “His work is perfect;” – not a single flaw in aught that comes from His blessed hand; all bears the stamp of absolute perfection. This will be made manifest to all created intelligences by and by. It is manifest to faith now, and is a spring of divine consolation to all true believers. The very thought of it distills as the dew upon the thirsty soul. - “For all His ways are judgment; a God of truth, and without iniquity; just and right is He.” Infidels may cavil and sneer; they may, in their fancied wisdom, try to pick holes in the divine actings; but their folly shall be manifest to all. “Let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, ‘That Thou mightest be justified in Thy sayings, and mightest overcome when Thou art judged.’ “ God must have the upper hand in the end. Let men beware how they presume to call in question the sayings and doings of the only true, the only wise, and the almighty God. There is something uncommonly fine in the opening notes of this song. It gives the sweetest rest to the heart to know that however man, and even the people of God, may fail and come to ruin, yet we have to do with One who abideth faithful and cannot deny Himself, whose ways are absolutely perfect, and who, when the enemy has done his very utmost, and brought all his malignant designs to a head, shall glorify Himself, and bring in universal and everlasting blessedness. True, He has to execute judgment upon man’s ways. He is constrained to take down the rod of discipline and use it, at times, with terrible severity upon His own people. He is perfectly intolerant of evil in those who bear His holy name. All this comes out, with special solemnity in the song before us. Israel’s ways are exposed and dealt with unsparingly; nothing is allowed to pass; all is set forth with holy precision and faithfulness. Thus we read, “They have corrupted themselves; their spot is not the spot of His children; they are a perverse and crooked generation. Do ye thus requite the Lord, a foolish people and unwise? is not He thy Father that hath bought thee? hath He not made thee, and established thee?” Here we have the first note of reproof in this song, but no sooner has it fallen on the ear than it is followed by a most precious outpouring of testimony to the goodness, loving-kindness, faithfulness, and tender mercy of the Lord, the Elohim of Israel, and the Most High, or Elion of all the earth. “Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations; ask thy father, and he will show thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee; when the Most High [God’s millennial title] divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.” What a glorious fact is here unfolded to our view! a fact but little understood or taken account of by the nations of the earth. How little do men consider that, in the original settlement of the great national boundaries, the Most High had direct reference to “the children of Israel”! Yet thus it was, and the reader should seek to grasp this grand and intensely interesting fact. When we look at geography and history from a divine stand-point, we find that Canaan and the seed of Jacob are God’s center. Yes; Canaan, a little strip of land lying along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, with an area of eleven thousand square miles, (about a third of the extent of Ireland,) is the center of God’s geography, and the twelve tribes of Israel are the central object of God’s history. How little have geographers and historians thought of this! They have described countries, and written the history of nations, which, in geographical extent and political importance, far outstrip Palestine and its people, according to human thinking, but which, in God’s account, are as nothing compared with that little strip of land which He deigns to call His own, and which it is His fixed purpose to inherit through the seed of Abraham His friend. * * How true it is that God’s thoughts are not man’s thoughts, or His ways as man’s ways! man attaches importance to extensive territories, material strength, pecuniary resources, well-disciplined armies, powerful fleets; God, on the contrary, takes no account of such things; they are to Him as the small dust of the balance. “Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? Have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in; that bringeth the princes to nothing; He maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.” Hence we may see the moral reason why, in selecting a country to be the center of His earthly plans and counsels, the Lord did not select one of vast extent, but a very small and insignificant strip of land, of little account in the thoughts of men. But oh, what importance attaches to that little spot! What principles have been unfolded there! What events have taken place there! What deeds have been done there! what plans and purposes are yet to be wrought out there! There is not a spot on the face of the earth so interesting to the heart of God as the land of Canaan and the city of Jerusalem. Scripture teems with evidence as to this: we could fill a small volume with proofs. The time is rapidly approaching when living facts will do what the fullest and clearest testimony of Scripture fails to do, namely, convince men that the land of Israel was, is, and ever shall be God’s earthly center. All other nations owe their importance, their interest, their place in the pages of inspiration, simply to the fact of their being, in some way or other, connected with the land and people of Israel. How little do historians know or think of this! But surely everyone who loves God ought to know it and ponder it. We cannot attempt to dwell upon this most important and suggestive fact, but we would ask the reader to give it his serious consideration. He will find it fully developed and strikingly illustrated in the prophetic Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. “The Lord’s portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; He led him about, He instructed him, He kept him as the apple of His eye” – the most sensitive, delicate part of the human body – “As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them upon her wings;” – to teach them to fly and to keep them from falling – “so the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and He made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock; butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape.” Need we say that the primary application of all this is to Israel? No doubt the Church may learn from it and profit by it, but to apply it to the Church would involve a double mistake, a mistake of the most serious nature; it would involve nothing less than the reducing of the Church from a heavenly to an earthly level, and the most unwarrantable interference with Israel’s divinely appointed place and portion. What, we may lawfully inquire, has the Church of God, the body of Christ, to do with the settlement of the nations of the earth? Nothing whatever. The Church, according to the mind of God, is a stranger on the earth. Her portion, her hope, her home, her inheritance, her all, is heavenly. It would make no difference in the current of this world’s history if the Church had never been heard of. Her calling, her walk, her destiny, her whole character and course, her principles and morals, are or ought to be heavenly. The Church has nothing to do with the politics of this world: Her citizenship is in Heaven, from whence she looks for the Saviour. She proves false to her Lord, false to her calling, false to her principles, in so far as she meddles with the affairs of nations. It is her high and holy privilege to be linked and morally identified with a rejected, crucified, risen, and glorified Christ. She has no more to do with the present system of things, or with the current of this world’s history, than her glorified Head in the heavens. “They,” says our Lord Christ, speaking of His people, “are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” This is conclusive. It fixes our position and our path in the most precise and definite way possible. “As He is, so are we in this world.” This involves a double truth, namely, our perfect acceptance with God and our complete separation from the world. We are in the world, but not of it. We have to pass through it as pilgrims and strangers, looking out for the coming of our Lord, the appearing of the Bright and Morning Star. It is no part of our business to interfere with municipal or political matters. We are called and exhorted to obey the powers that be, to pray for all in authority, to pay tribute, and owe no man anything; “to be blameless and harmless, the sons of God without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation,” among whom we are to “shine as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life.” From all this we may gather something of the immense practical importance of “rightly dividing the word of truth.” We have but little idea of the injury done, both to the truth of God and to the souls of His people, by confounding Israel with the Church – the earthly and the heavenly. It hinders all progress in the knowledge of Scripture, and mars the integrity of Christian walk and testimony. This may seem a strong statement, but we have seen the truth of it painfully illustrated times without number; and we feel that we cannot too urgently call the attention of the reader to the subject. We have more than once referred to it in the progress of our studies on the Pentateuch, and therefore we shall not further pursue it here, but proceed with our chapter. At verse 15, we reach a very different note in the song of Moses. Up to this point, we have had before us God and His actings, His purposes, His counsels, His thoughts, His loving interest in His people Israel, His tender, gracious dealings with them. All this is full of deepest, richest blessing. There is, there can be, no drawback here. When we have God and His ways before us, there is no hindrance to the heart’s enjoyment. All is perfection – absolute, divine perfection, and as we dwell upon it, we are filled with wonder, love, and praise. But there is the human side, and here, alas! All is failure and disappointment. Thus at the fifteenth verse of our chapter we read, “But Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked” – what a very full and suggestive statement! How vividly it presents, in its brief compass, the moral history of Israel! – “thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation. They provoked Him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they Him to anger. They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not. Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.” There is a solemn voice in all this for the writer and the reader. We are each of us in danger of treading the moral path indicated by the words just quoted. Surrounded on all hands by the rich and varied mercies of God, we are apt to make use of them to nourish a spirit of selfcomplacency. We make use of the gifts to shut out the Giver. In a word, we, too, like Israel, wax fat and kick – we forget God. We lose the sweet and precious sense of His presence and of His perfect sufficiency, and turn to other objects, as Israel did to false gods. How often do we forget the Rock that begat us, the God that formed us, the Lord that redeemed us! And all this is so much the more inexcusable in us, inasmuch as our privileges are so much higher than theirs. We are brought into a relationship and a position of which Israel knew absolutely nothing; our privileges and blessings are of the very highest order; it is our privilege to have fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ; we are the objects of that perfect love which stopped not short of introducing us into a position in which it can be said of us, “As He [Christ] is, so are we in this world.” Nothing could exceed the blessedness of this; even divine love itself could go no further than this. It is not merely that the love of God has been manifested to us in the gift and the death of His only begotten and well-beloved Son, and in giving us His Spirit, but it has been made perfect with us by placing us in the very same position as that blessed One on the throne of God. All this is perfectly marvelous. It passeth knowledge. And yet how prone we are to forget the blessed One who has so loved us and wrought for us and blessed us! How often we slip away from Him in the spirit of our minds and the affections of our hearts! It is not merely a question of what the professing church, as a whole, has done, but the very much deeper, closer, more pointed question of what our own wretched hearts are constantly prone to do. We are apt to forget God, and to turn to other objects, to our serious loss and His dishonor. Would we know how the heart of God feels as to all this? would we form anything like a correct idea of how He resents it? Let us hearken to the burning words addressed to His erring people Israel, the overwhelming strains of the song of Moses. May we have grace to hear them aright, and deeply profit by them. “And when the Lord saw it, He abhorred them, because of the provoking of His sons and of His daughters. And He said, ‘I will hide My face from them, I will see what their end shall be;’’ – alas! alas! a truly deplorable end – “for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith. They have moved Me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked Me to anger with their vanities; and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. For a fire is kindled in Mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and shall set on fire the foundations of the mountains. I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend Mine arrows upon, them. They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat and with bitter destruction; I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. The sword without and terror within shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs’” (Ver. 19-26). Here we have a most solemn record of God’s governmental dealings with His people – a record eminently calculated to set forth the awful truth of Hebrews 10:31 – “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” The history of Israel in the past, their condition at present, and what they are yet to pass through in the future – all goes to prove, in the most impressive manner, that “our God is a consuming fire.” - No nation on the face of the earth has ever been called to pass through such severe discipline as the nation of Israel. As the Lord reminds them in those deeply solemn words, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore will I punish you for your iniquities.” - No other nation was ever called to occupy the highly privileged place of actual relationship with the Lord. This dignity was reserved for one nation; but the very dignity was the basis of a most solemn responsibility. If they were called to be His people, they were responsible to conduct themselves in a way worthy of such a wondrous position, or else have to undergo the heaviest chastenings ever endured by any nation under the sun. Men may reason about all this; they may raise all manner of questions as to the moral consistency of a benevolent Being acting according to the terms set forth in verses 22-25 of our chapter. But all such questions and reasonings must sooner or later be discovered to be utter folly. It is perfectly useless for men to argue against the solemn actings of divine government, or the terrible severity of the discipline exercised toward the chosen people of God. How much wiser and better and safer to be warned by the facts of Israel’s history to flee from the wrath to come, and lay hold upon eternal life and full salvation revealed in the precious Gospel of God! And then, with regard to the use which Christians should make of the record of His dealings with His earthly people, we are bound to turn it to most profitable account by learning from it the urgent need of walking humbly, watchfully, and faithfully in our high and holy position. True, we are the possessors of eternal life, the privileged subjects of that magnificent grace which reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord; we are members of the body of Christ, temples of the Holy Ghost, and heirs of eternal glory; but does all this afford any warrant for neglecting the warning voice which Israel’s history utters in our ears? are we, because of our incomparably higher privileges, to walk carelessly and despise the wholesome admonitions which Israel’s history supplies? God forbid! Nay, we are bound to give earnest heed to the things which the Holy Ghost has written for our learning. The higher our privileges, the richer our blessings, the nearer our relationship, the more does it become us, the more solemnly are we bound, to be faithful, and to seek in all things to carry ourselves in such a way as to be well-pleasing to Him who has called us into the very highest and most blessed place that even His perfect love could bestow. The Lord, in His great goodness, grant that we may, in true purpose of heart, ponder these things in His holy presence, and earnestly seek to serve Him with reverence and godly fear. But we must proceed with our chapter. At verse 26, we have a point of deepest interest in connection with the history of the divine dealings with Israel. “I said I would scatter them into corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men.” And why did He not? The answer to this question presents a truth of infinite value and importance to Israel – a truth which lies at the very foundation of all their future blessing. No doubt, so far as they are concerned, they deserved to have their remembrance blotted out from among men; but God has His own thoughts and counsels and purposes respecting them; and not only so, but He takes account of the thoughts and actings of the nations in reference to His people. This comes out with singular force and beauty at verse 27. He condescends to give us His reasons for not obliterating every trace of the sinful and rebellious people – and oh, what a touching reason it is! – “Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their adversaries should behave themselves strangely, and lest they should say, Our hand is high, and the Lord hath not done all this.” Can aught be more affecting than the grace that breathes in these words? God will not permit the nations to behave themselves strangely toward His poor erring people. He will use them as His rod of discipline, but the moment they attempt, in the indulgence of their own bitter animosity, to exceed their appointed limit, He will break the rod in pieces, and make it manifest to all that He Himself is dealing with His beloved though erring people, for their ultimate blessing and His glory. This is a truth of unspeakable preciousness. It is the fixed purpose of the Lord to teach all the nations of the earth that Israel has a special place in His heart, and a destined place of pre-eminence on the earth. This is beyond all question. The pages of the prophets furnish a body of evidence perfectly unanswerable on the point. If nations forget or oppose, so much the worse for them. It is utterly vain for them to attempt to countervail the divine purpose, for they may rest assured that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will confound every scheme formed against the people of His choice. Men may think, in their pride and folly, that their hand is high, but they will have to learn that God’s hand is higher still. But our space does not admit of our dwelling upon this deeply interesting subject; we must allow the reader to pursue it for himself, in the light of Holy Scripture. He will find it a most profitable and refreshing study. Most gladly would we accompany him through the precious pages of the prophetic Scriptures, but we must just now confine ourselves to the magnificent song which is in itself a remarkable epitome of the entire teaching on the point – a brief but comprehensive and impressive history of God’s ways with Israel and Israel’s ways with God, from first to last – a history strikingly illustrative of the great principles of grace, law, government, and glory. At verse 29, we have a very touching appeal. “O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end! How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the Lord had shut them up? For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.” There is, there can be, but the one Rock, blessed throughout all ages be His glorious name! – “For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter; their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps.” Terrible picture of a people’s moral condition drawn by a master-hand! Such is the divine estimate of the real state of all those whose rock was not as the Rock of Israel. But a day of vengeance will come. It is delayed in longsuffering mercy, but it will come as sure as there is a God on the throne of Heaven. A day is coming when all those nations which have dealt proudly with Israel shall have to answer at the bar of the Son of Man for their conduct, hear His solemn sentence, and meet His unsparing wrath. “Is not this laid up in store with Me, and sealed up among My treasures’! To Me belongeth vengeance and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste. For the Lord shall judge [vindicate, defend, or avenge] His people, and repent Himself for His servants, when He seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up or left.” Precious grace for Israel by and by – for each, for all, now, who feel and own their need! “And He shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted; which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink-offerings? let them rise up and help you and be your protection. See now that I, even I, am He, and there is no god with Me; I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal;” – wound in governmental wrath, and heal in pardoning grace; all homage to His great and holy name, throughout the everlasting ages! – “neither is there any that can deliver out of My hand. For I lift up My hand to Heaven, and say, ‘I live forever.’” – Glory be to God in the highest! Let all created intelligences adore His matchless name! – “If I whet My glittering sword, and Mine hand take hold on judgment,” – as it most assuredly will – “I will render vengeance to Mine enemies, and will reward them that hate Me” – whoever and wherever they are. Tremendous sentence for all whom it may concern, for all haters of God – all lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God! – “I will make Mine arrows drunk with blood, and My sword shall devour flesh; and that with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy.” Here we reach the end of the heavy record of judgment, wrath, and vengeance so briefly presented in this song of Moses, but so largely unfolded throughout the prophetic Scriptures. The reader can refer, with much interest and profit, to Ezekiel 38 and 39, where we have the judgment of Gog and Magog, the great northern foe who is to come up, at the end, against the land of Israel, and there meet his ignominious fall and utter destruction. He may also turn to Joel 3, which opens with words of balm and consolation for the Israel of the future: “For behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for My people and for My heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted My land.” Thus he will see how perfectly the voices of the prophets harmonize with the song of Moses, and how fully, how clearly, and how unanswerably, in both the one and the other, does the Holy Ghost set forth and establish the grand truth of Israel’s future restoration, supremacy, and glory. And then, how truly delightful is the closing note of our song! how magnificently it places the top stone upon the whole superstructure! All the hostile nations are judged, under whatever style or title they appear upon the scene, whether it be Gog and Magog, the Assyrian, or the king of the north – all the foes of Israel shall be confounded and consigned to everlasting perdition, and then this sweet note falls upon the ear – “REJOICE, O YE NATIONS, WITH HIS PEOPLE; FOR HE WILL AVENGE THE BLOOD OF HIS SERVANTS, AND WILL RENDER VENGEANCE TO HIS ADVERSARIES, AND WILL BE MERCIFUL UNTO HIS LAND AND TO HIS PEOPLE.” Here ends this marvelous song, one of the very finest, fullest, and most forcible utterances in the whole volume of God. It begins and ends with God, and takes in, in its comprehensive range, the history of His earthly people Israel – past, present, and future. - It shows us the ordering of the nations in direct reference to the divine purpose as to the seed of Abraham. - It unfolds the final judgment of all those nations that have acted or shall yet act in opposition to the chosen seed; and then, - When Israel is fully restored and blessed, according to the covenant made with their fathers, the saved nations are summoned to rejoice with them. How glorious is all this! What a splendid circle of truth is presented to the vision of our souls in the thirty-second chapter of Deuteronomy! Well may it be said, “God is the Rock, His work is perfect.” Here the heart can rest, in holy tranquillity, come what may. Every thing may go to pieces in man’s hand, all that is merely human may and must issue in hopeless wreck and ruin, but “the Rock” shall stand forever, and every “work” of the divine Hand shall shine in everlasting perfection to the glory of God and the perfect blessing of His people. Such, then, is the song of Moses; such its scope, range, and application. The intelligent reader does not need to be told that the Church of God, the body of Christ, the mystery of which the blessed apostle Paul was made the minister, finds no place in this song. When Moses wrote this song, the mystery of the Church lay hid in the bosom of God. If we do not see this, we are wholly incompetent to interpret, or even to understand, the Holy Scriptures. To a simple mind, taught exclusively by Scripture, it is as clear as a sunbeam that the song of Moses has for its thesis the government of God, in connection with Israel and the nations; for its sphere, the earth; and for its center, the land of Canaan. “And Moses came and spake all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he, and Hoshea the son of Nun. And Moses made an end of speaking all these words to all Israel; and he said unto them, ‘Set your hearts unto all the words which I testify among you this day, which ye shall command your children to observe to do, all the words of this law. For it is not a vain thing for you, because it is your life; and through this thing ye shall prolong your days in the land, whither ye go over Jordan to possess it’ “ (Ver. 44-47). Thus, from first to last, through every section of this precious book of Deuteronomy, we find Moses, that beloved and most honored servant of God, urging upon the people the solemn duty of implicit, unqualified, hearty obedience to the Word of God. In this lay the precious secret of life, peace, progress, prosperity – all. They had nothing else to do but obey. Blessed business! Happy, holy duty! May it be ours, beloved reader, in this day of conflict and confusion, in the which man’s will is so fearfully dominant. The world and the so-called church are rushing on together, with appalling rapidity, along the dark pathway of self-will – a pathway which must end in the blackness of darkness forever. Let us bear this in mind, and earnestly seek to tread the narrow path of simple obedience to all the precious commandments of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Thus shall our hearts be kept in sweet peace; and although we may seem, to the men of this world, and even to professing Christians, to be odd and narrow-minded, let us not be moved the breadth of a hair from the path indicated by the Word of God. May the word of Christ dwell in us richly, and the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, until the end. It is very remarkable, and indeed eminently impressive, to find our chapter closing with another reference to the Lord’s governmental dealing with His beloved servant Moses. “And the Lord spake unto Moses that self-same day” – the very day in which he uttered his song in the ears of the people – “saying,’ Get thee up into this mountain Abarim, unto Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, that is over against Jericho; and behold the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel for a possession; and die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy people; as Aaron thy brother died in Mount Hor, and was gathered unto his people; because ye trespassed against Me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin, because ye sanctified Me not in the midst of the children of Israel. Yet thou shalt see the land before thee; but thou shalt not go thither unto the land which I give the children of Israel’ “ (Ver. 48-52). How solemn and soul-subduing is the government of God! Surely it ought to make the heart tremble at the very thought of disobedience. If such an eminent servant as Moses was judged for speaking unadvisedly with his lips, what will be the end of those who live from day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year in deliberate and habitual neglect of the plainest commandments of God, and positive self-willed rejection of His authority? Oh, for a lowly mind, a broken and contrite heart! This is what God looks for and delights in; it is with such He can make His blessed abode. “To this man will I look, even to him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at My word.” God, in His infinite goodness, grant much of this sweet spirit to each of His beloved children, for Jesus Christ’s sake. ~ end of chapter 32
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