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Deuteronomy Chapter
Fourteen
Deuteronomy 14
Chapter Contents
The Israelites to distinguish themselves from other
nations. (1-21) Respecting the application of tithes. (22-29)
Commentary on Deuteronomy 14:1-21
(Read Deuteronomy 14:1-21)
Moses tells the people of Israel how God had given them
three distinguishing privileges, which were their honour, and figures of those
spiritual blessings in heavenly things, with which God has in Christ blessed
us. Here is election; "The Lord hath chosen thee." He did not choose
them because they were by their own acts a peculiar people to him above other
nations, but he chose them that they might be so by his grace; and thus were
believers chosen, Ephesians 1:4. Here is adoption; "Ye are
the children of the Lord your God;" not because God needed children, but
because they were orphans, and needed a father. Every spiritual Israelite is
indeed a child of God, a partaker of his nature and favour. Here is
sanctification; "Thou art a holy people." God's people are required
to be holy, and if they are holy, they are indebted to the grace God which
makes them so. Those whom God chooses to be his children, he will form to be a
holy people, and zealous of good works. They must be careful to avoid every thing
which might disgrace their profession, in the sight of those who watch for
their halting. Our heavenly Father forbids nothing but for our welfare. Do
thyself no harm; do not ruin thy health, thy reputation, thy domestic comforts,
thy peace of mind. Especially do not murder thy soul. Do not be the vile slave
of thy appetites and passions. Do not render all around thee miserable, and
thyself wretched; but aim at that which is most excellent and useful. The laws
which regarded many sorts of flesh as unclean, were to keep them from mingling
with their idolatrous neighbours. It is plain in the gospel, that these laws
are now done away. But let us ask our own hearts, Are we of the children of the
Lord our God? Are we separate from the ungodly world, in being set apart to
God's glory, the purchase of Christ's blood? Are we subjects of the work of the
Holy Ghost? Lord, teach us from these precepts how pure and holy all thy people
ought to live!
Commentary on Deuteronomy 14:22-29
(Read Deuteronomy 14:22-29)
A second portion from the produce of their land was
required. The whole appointment evidently was against the covetousness,
distrust, and selfishness of the human heart. It promoted friendliness,
liberality, and cheerfulness, and raised a fund for the relief of the poor.
They were taught that their worldly portion was most comfortably enjoyed, when
shared with their brethren who were in want. If we thus serve God, and do good
with what we have, it is promised that the Lord our God will bless us in all
the works of our land. The blessing of God is all to our outward prosperity;
and without that blessing, the work of our hands will bring nothing to pass.
The blessing descends upon the working hand. Expect not that God should bless
thee in thy idleness and love of ease. And it descends upon the giving hand. He
who thus scatters, certainly increases; and to be free and generous in the
support of religion, and any good work, is the surest and safest way of
thriving.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Deuteronomy》
Deuteronomy 14
Verse 1
[1] Ye
are the children of the LORD your God: ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make
any baldness between your eyes for the dead.
Of the Lord —
Whom therefore you must not disparage by unworthy or unbecoming practices.
Ye shall not cut yourselves — Which were the practices of idolaters, both in the worship of their
idols, in their funerals, and upon occasion of public calamities. Is not this
like a parent's charge to his little children, playing with knives, "Do
not cut yourselves!" This is, the intention of those commands, which
obliges us to deny ourselves. The meaning is, Do yourselves no harm! And as
this also is, the design of cross providences, to remove from us those things
by which we are in danger of doing ourselves harm.
Verse 3
[3] Thou shalt not eat any abominable thing.
Abominable —
Unclean and forbidden by me, which therefore should be abominable to you.
Verse 22
[22] Thou
shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed, that the field bringeth forth
year by year.
All the increase —
This is to be understood of the second tithes, which seem to be the same with
the tithes of the first year, mentioned Deuteronomy 14:28.
Verse 25
[25] Then
shalt thou turn it into money, and bind up the money in thine hand, and shalt
go unto the place which the LORD thy God shall choose:
In thine hand —
That is, in a bag to be taken into thy hand and carried with thee.
Verse 27
[27] And the Levite that is within thy gates; thou shalt not forsake him; for
he hath no part nor inheritance with thee.
Thou shalt not forsake him — Thou shalt give him a share in such tithes or in the product of them.
Verse 28
[28] At
the end of three years thou shalt bring forth all the tithe of thine increase
the same year, and shalt lay it up within thy gates:
At the end of three years — That is, in the third year, as it is, expressed, Deuteronomy 26:12.
The same year —
This is added to shew that he speaks of the third year, and not of the fourth
year, as some might conjecture from the phrase, at the end of three years.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Deuteronomy》
14 Chapter 14
Verse 1-2
At the end of every seven years . . . a release.
Economical laws
One of the things that strikes a reader of Deuteronomy, and indeed
of the Old Testament in general, is the way in which all kinds of subjects are
brought under the scope of religion. The modern mind is ready with
distinctions, and classifies subjects as religious, moral, political,
scientific, economical, and so forth; but the Israelitish lawgivers, men with
the prophetic spirit in them, subordinate politics, economics, and morals alike
to religion. Laws, to whatever department of life they are applicable, are to
be made and administered in the Spirit of God; they are not an end in
themselves; their one end is to enable people so to live as that the purposes
may be fulfilled for which God has called them into being and constituted them
into societies. This high point of view must always be retained. If we know
better than the Israelites the life which God intends human beings to live, we
shall have a higher standard for our legislation than they; we shall be more
bound than they to remember that law is an instrument of religion, a means to a
spiritual end, and that it rests with us who make our own laws to adapt them,
over the whole area of national life, to the ends which God sets before us.
1. In the first place, there is legislation regarding land. It
proceeds upon the idea that the land belongs to God, and has been given by Him
to the nation that on it as a foundation it may live that life of labour, of
health, and of natural piety to which He has called it. Strictly speaking,
there is no such thing as unrestricted private property in land. An individual
does not have the power of alienating any part of it forever. One result, and
no doubt one purpose of this was, to prevent a single worthless person from
ruining his posterity by parting forever with what he really held in trust for
them; another, was to prevent the accumulation of great masses of landed
property, which was then the only kind of property, in the hands of
individuals. Such accumulations, in the circumstances, and in most
circumstances, could only lead to the practical enslavement of those who tilled
the land to those who owned it. These aims of the land laws in Israel will very
generally be acknowledged as worthy of approval. I suppose there is not a
statesman in Europe who would not give a great deal to resettle on the land
hundreds of thousands of those who have been driven or drawn into the towns.
There is not one but sees that private property in land must, if the
moral ends for which society exists are to be attained, be limited somehow.
Similarly, legislation is justifiable--that is, it is in the line of a Divine
intention--which aims at making it hard to beggar the poor, and hard to heap up
wealth without limit. It is not a morally healthy situation in which one man of
enormous wealth has thousands practically at his mercy. It is not good for him--I
mean for his soul; it is not good for their souls either; and the law may
properly aim, by just methods, at making it hard to create such a situation and
impossible to perpetuate it. Unhappily, in most new countries the need of
bribing settlers and capital has proved a temptation too strong to be resisted;
and land has been parted with in masses, to individuals, on terms which have
simply sown for future generations the seed of all the trouble under which
older countries labour. The instinct for gain has proved stronger titan the
devotion to ideal moral ends. The future has been sacrificed to the present,
the moral interests of the community to the material interests of a few.
2. Besides the land, the Book of Deuteronomy contains a variety of
laws regarding money, and particularly the lending of money. To begin with, the
lending of money for interest was absolutely forbidden. The Israelites were not
a commercial, but a farming people, and when a man borrowed, it was not to
float a venture too great for his own means, but because he had got into
difficulties, and wanted relief. To assist a brother in difficulty was regarded
as a case of charity; he was to be relieved readily and freely; it were inhuman
to take advantage of his distress to get him into one’s power, as a money
lender does his victim. It may be said, of course, that the effect of this law
would be to discourage lending altogether; people would not be too ready to
part with their money without some hope of profit. Probably this might be so,
and to some extent with good effect. There are some people who borrow, and who
ought not to do so. They ought not to have money lent to them. It is a mercy not
to lend him money: it is a special mercy to protect him, as this law does,
against the money lenders. But I am not sure that the law which prohibits
lending money for interest has not another moral idea at the heart of it. As
distinguished from agriculture, commerce, which depends so much more upon
credit, i.e. upon money lent for interest, has a much larger element of
speculation in it; and speculation is always to be discouraged, on moral
grounds. Everyone knows that there are persons with little money of their own
who contrive to make a livelihood by watching the ups and downs in the price of
shares. This is a vocation which depends for its very existence on the lending
of money for interest, and no one will say that it is morally wholesome, or
that, whatever sensitiveness it may develop in certain of the intellectual
faculties, it is elevating for the whole man. It would be far better for him to
be doing field labour. But there is more still in this law. As it stands, I do
not believe it is applicable to the vastly different conditions of modern life,
especially in a trading community; here, to lend a trustworthy person money to
carry on or extend his business may be what the law intended all lending to be,
an act of charity. But the lender must consider his own position--I mean his
moral position. His whole income may come--in many cases it does come--from
investments. He lives on the interest of money he has lent. He takes no care of
it, except to see at first that the investments are sound. He does no work in
connection with it. He is largely ignorant of the use made of the power which
it bestows. I am not going to say that no one should live on such terms: for
many, life would be impossible otherwise. For many it is the proper reward of a
life of labour: they are only reaping the fruit of their toils in earlier years.
To such it is not likely to do any harm. But those who have inherited such a
situation are undoubtedly exposed to moral perils of which they may easily
become unconscious. They can live without needing to make their living; and
there are very few people in a generation good enough to stand such a trial.
Those who labour with the money are conscripts; let those who lend it be
volunteers in all the higher services which society requires from its members.
Let them be leaders in all philanthropies and charities, in all laborious
duties which have it as their object to raise the moral and spiritual status of
men.
3. A third class of economical laws which bulks largely in the Book
of Deuteronomy, and to which special attention is due, is occupied with the
care of the poor. This fifteenth chapter has a number of enactments bearing on
this subject. The first is rather obscure, “At the end of every seven years
thou shalt make a release.” In the Book of Exodus (Exodus 23:10) this law refers to the
land, and its meaning is that every seventh year it is not to be cropped. Here,
there is a year of release established for debts, though it is not clear
whether it means that a debt due seven years was to be irrecoverable by legal
process, or that every seventh year there should be a period of grace, during
which no debt should be recoverable by law. Then, in the laws about
lending, the duty of charity is strongly enforced. The forgotten sheaf in the
field, or the gleanings of the vineyard and the olive are not to be too
carefully gathered in; they are to be left for the stranger, the fatherless,
and the widow, “that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the works of thine
hand.” God is interested in humanity; He sees such consideration and rewards
it, just as He sees inhumanity and judges it. But the most striking thing in
these ancient poor laws is the way in which they realise the actual conditions
of the life of the poor, and consider them. The lender is allowed to take a
pledge, but if he takes the upper garment of the borrower he must not keep it
all night. It is not only the poor man’s cloak, but his blanket; he has nothing
else to cover himself with, and God is angry with the man who inhumanly leaves
his poor brother to shiver in the cold night air. So, too, no one may take the
hand mill or the upper millstone as a pledge; that is to rob the poor of the
means of grinding the handful of corn with which he keeps the breath in his
body. We see from laws like these how excessively poor they were, yet the
lawgiver who has the Spirit of God in him enters into this deep poverty,
realises the conditions of life under it, and insists on due consideration for
them. Business is business, of course; but humanity is also humanity, and it is
an interest which no consideration of business will ever displace before God.
And to refer in this connection to only one point more, what could be more
beautiful than the law we find in verses 10 and 11 of Deuteronomy 24:1-22? It is a mean and
inhuman temper, which is here reproved by God. The poor man is not to be
insulted because he is in distress; he is to be treated by the lender as
courteously and respectfully as if he were--what he is--his equal. The
sacredness of his home is to be respected; he is not to be needlessly affronted
before his children by having an unfeeling or insolent stranger walk into the
house and carry off what he pleases. Laws like these move us to reflection on
the provision which we ourselves make for the poor. On what a large scale
poverty exists in the great cities! The practical difficulties of relieving
distress without doing moral injury are undeniably very great, but I do not
believe they will be overcome by men whom habitual contact with dishonesty and
incapacity has rendered hard and inhuman. Those who have the care of the poor
should care for them with humanity. They should care for their feelings too,
and respect the common nature which is in them. If they do not, they suffer for
it themselves, and one can hardly find a more odious type of human being than
the man who has been hardened and brutalised by the administration of charity.
There is one kind of criticism which has often been passed, and will no doubt
continue to be passed, on such laws as these. It is this: they have never been
kept. There is no evidence, for instance, that the law of the jubilee year,
when all property returned to its original owners, was ever observed in Israel:
as a means for preventing the dissipation of family property, or its
accumulation in a few hands, it was a failure. So have all laws been which
attempted to regulate the business of lending money, either by prohibiting
interest altogether, or by fixing a maximum rate of interest. No law written in
a book can ever compete with the living intellect of man, with his cunning and
greed on the one hand, with his distress, his passions, or his stupidity on the
other. There is a certain quantity of truth in this; but taken without
qualification it is only a plea for anarchy--an invitation to give up the whole
of the economical side of social existence to the conflict of ability,
selfishness, and capital with incompetence, need, and passion. Surely there is
a moral ideal for this side of existence; and surely if there is, it must find
some expression, however inadequate, some assistance, however feeble, from the
laws. We cannot by law protect people against the consequences of their vices
or their follies; but we can provide in the law a safeguard for those interests
which are higher than private gain or loss. We can make it impossible for
anyone in the pursuit of private gain to trample humanity under foot. (James
Denney, D. D.)
Proclamation of release
My text was intended as an especial law to the ancients, and
prefigured to all ages Gospel forgiveness. The fact is that the world is loaded
down with a debt, which no bankrupt law or two-third enactment can alleviate.
The voices of heaven cry, “Pay! Pay!” Men and women are frantic with moral
insolvency. What shall be done? A new law is proclaimed, from the throne of
God, of universal release for all who will take advantage of that enactment.
1. In the first place, why will you carry your burden of sin any
longer? “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from sin.” Cut loose the cables
which hold your transgressions, and let them fall off. Spiritual, infinite,
glorious, everlasting release! “Blessed is the man whose transgressions are
forgiven and whose sins are covered.”
2. Some of you, also, want deliverance from your troubles. God knows
you have enough of them. Physical, domestic, spiritual, and financial troubles.
How are you going to get relief? The Divine Physician comes, and He knows how
severe the trouble is, and He gives you this promise: “Weeping may endure for a
night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Does it not take effect upon you? Here,
then, He pours out more drops of Divine consolation, and I am sure this time
the trouble will be arrested: “All things work together for good to those who
love God.” All the Atlantic and Pacific oceans of surging sorrow cannot sink a
soul that has asked for God’s pilotage. The difficulty is, that when we have
misfortunes of any kind, we put them in God’s hand, and they stay there a
little while; and then we go and get them again, and bring them back. A vessel
comes in from a foreign port. As it comes near the harbour it sees a pilot
floating about. It hails the pilot. The pilot comes on board, and he says:
“Now, captain, you have had a stormy passage. Go down and sleep, and I will
take the vessel into New York harbour.” After a while the captain begins to
think: “Am I right in trusting this vessel to that pilot? I guess I’ll go up
and see.” So he comes to the pilot, and says: “Don’t you see that rock? Don’t
you see those headlands? You will wreck the ship. Let me hold the helm for a
while myself, and then I’ll trust to you.” The pilot becomes angry, and says:
“I will either take care of this ship or not. If you want to, I will get into
my yawl and go ashore, or back to my boat.” Now we say to the Lord: “O God,
take my life, take my all, in Thy keeping.” We go along for a little while, and
suddenly wake up, and say: “Things are going all wrong. O Lord, we are driving
on these rocks, and Thou art going to let us be shipwrecked.” God says: “You go
and rest; I will take charge of this vessel, and take it into the harbour.” It
is God’s business to comfort, and it is our business to be comforted. “At the
end of seven years thou shalt make a release.”
3. But what is our programme for the coming years? It is about the
same line of work, only on a more intensified and consecrated scale. Ah, we
must be better men and women. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
A new chance
God is putting lines of mercy amid all the black print of the law.
It would seem as if wherever God could find a place at which He might utter
some word of pity or compassion, He filled up that place with an utterance of
His solicitude for the welfare of man. Flowers look lovely everywhere, but what
must be the loveliness of a flower to the wanderer in a desert? So these Gospel
words are full of charm wherever we find them, but they have double
charmfulness being found in connection with institutions, instructions,
precepts, and commandments marked by the severest righteousness. In the midst
of time God graciously puts a year of release. We find in this year of release
what we all need--namely, the principle of new chances, new opportunities,
fresh beginnings. Tomorrow, said the debtor or the slave, is the day of
release, and the next day I shall begin again: I shall have another chance in
life; the burden will be taken away. The darkness will be dispersed, and life
shall be young again. Every man ought to have more chances than one, even in
our own life. God has filled the sphere of life with opportunities. But moral
releases can only be accomplished by moral processes. The man who is in prison
must take the right steps to get out of it. What are those right
steps?--repentance, contrition, confession--open, frank, straightforward,
self-renouncing confession; then the man must be allowed to begin again; God
will, in His providence, work out for such a man another opportunity;
concealment there must be none, prevarication none, self-defence none. Where
the case lies between the soul and God--the higher morality still--there must
be an interview at the Cross--a mysterious communion under the blood that flows
from the wounded Christ. All this being done on the part of the creditor and the
owner, what happens on the side of God? The answer to that inquiry is: “The
Lord shall greatly bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee
for an inheritance to possess it” (Deuteronomy 24:4). God never allows us to
obey the law without immediate and large compensation. We cannot obey the laws
of health without instantly being the healthier; we cannot obey the laws of
cleanliness without the flesh instantly thanking us, in stronger pulsations and
wider liberties, for what we have done to it. A blessing is attached to all
obedience, when the obedience is rendered to law Divine and gracious. The
reward is in the man’s own heart: he has a reward which no thief can take away
from the sanctuary in which it is preserved; heaven is within. None can
forestall God, or outrun God, or confer upon God an obligation which He cannot
repay; He takes the moisture from the earth only that He may return it in
copious showers. No man can serve God for nought. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The year of release
I propose to consider death as the Christian’s release, and then
you will easily perceive what pleasure it must give to the believer, who is
waiting for his discharge, to be told that the year of release is at hand.
I. For they shall
be released from all labour and sorrow.
1. From labour (Revelation 14:13). They know little of
religion who think that a Christian has nothing to do. When Christ first calls
us, He says: “Go, work today in My vineyard.” There is not only a great variety
of employments, but that which requires much application and labour. To mortify
sin is difficult work. But courage, Christians, the year of release is at hand.
In heaven there will be much service, but no kind of labour. They rest not, day
nor night, from rapturous adorations, and yet feel no fatigue, for the joy of
the Lord is their strength.
2. But I said also that you shall be released from sorrow as well as
from labour. The sources of present grief are almost innumerable. There are
personal, family, and national troubles; and these sometimes follow one another
so quickly, that many have tears for their meat, night and day. But courage,
Christians, the year of release is at hand, when they that sow in tears shall
reap in joy.
II. There will be a
release from sin. Though you go out of this world lamenting your numerous
infirmities, you shall be presented before the throne of God without spot or
wrinkle or any such thing.
III. It will be a
release from temptation. Within the gates of the New Jerusalem you shall be
free from all assaults and troubles whatever, and be proclaimed more than
conquerors through Him that loved you.
IV. There will be a
release from this state of exile and confinement. Mysteries of Providence will
then be unfolded, and the most delightful discoveries made of the infinite
wisdom and goodness of God. The much greater mysteries of grace shall be also
laid open; and fill our hearts with love and admiration, and our mouths with
never-ending praises. (S. Lavington.)
Forgiveness, freedom, favour
I. The release
which the Lord desired His people to give.
1. They were, at the end of every seven years, to release every man
his debtor from the debt which he had accumulated. A man might pay if he could,
and he should do so. A man might, at some future time, if his circumstances
altered, discharge the debt which had been remitted; but, as far as the
creditor was concerned, it was remitted.
2. They were never to exact that debt again. The moral claim might
remain, and the honest Israelite might take care that his brother Israelite
should not lose anything through him; but, still, according to the Divine
command, there was to be no exacting of it. None but a generous Lawgiver would
have made such a law as this. It is noble-hearted, full of loving kindness; and
we could expect that none but a people in whose midst there was the daily
sacrifice, in the midst of whom moved the high priest of God, would be obedient
to such a precept.
3. They were to do this for the Lord’s sake: “because it is called
the Lord’s release.” It is not enough to do the correct thing; it must be done
in a right spirit, and with a pure motive. A good action is not wholly good unless
it be done for the glory of God, and because of the greatness and goodness of
His holy name. The most powerful motive that a Christian can have is this, “For
Jesus’ sake.” You could not forgive the debt, perhaps, for your brother’s sake;
there may be something about him that would harden your heart; but can you not
do it for Jesus’ sake? This is true charity, that holy love which is the
choicest of the graces. And then, like the Israelites, we may look believingly
to the gracious reward that God gives. We do not serve God for wages; but still
we have respect unto the recompense of the reward, even as Moses had. We do not
run like hirelings; but yet we have our eye upon the prize of our high calling
in Christ Jesus. They were not only to perform this kindness once, but they
were to be ready to do it again. It is the part of Christians not to be weary
in well doing; and if they get no reward for what they have done from those to
whom it is done, still to do the same again. Remember how gracious God is, and
how He giveth to the unthankful and the evil, and maketh His rain to fall upon
the field of the churl as well as upon the field of the most generous.
5. While they were to forgive and remit, on this seventh year, the
loans which remained unpaid, they were also to let the bondman go. It was not
to be thought a hardship to part with a servant man or woman. However useful
they might have been in the house or field, however much they were felt to be
necessary to domestic comfort or farm service, they were to be allowed to go;
and, what was more, they were not to go empty handed, but they were to receive
a portion out of every department of the master’s wealth.
6. Further, this setting free of their brother at the specified time
was to be done for a certain reason: “Thou shalt remember,” etc. How can you
hold another a bondman when God has set you free? How can you treat another
with unkindness when the Lord has dealt so generously with you? Down at Olney,
when Mr. Newton was the rector of the parish, he put in his study this text
where he could always see it when he lifted his eyes from his text while
preparing his sermon, Remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt,
and the Lord thy God redeemed thee. Would it not do many Christians good if
they had that text often before their eyes? Would it not excite gratitude to
their Redeemer, and tenderness towards those who happened to be in subjection
to them, tenderness to every sinner that is a bondslave under the law,
tenderness to the myriads that swarm these streets, slaves to sin and self, and
who are perishing in their iniquity?
7. The spirit of this release of the Lord is this, “Never be hard on
anybody.” It is true that the man made the bargain, and he ought to keep to it;
but he is losing money, and he cannot afford it; he is being ruined, and you
are being fattened by his mistake. Do not hold him to it. No Christian man can
be a sweater of workers; no Christian man can be a grinder of the poor; no man,
who would be accepted before God, can think that his heart is right with Him
when he treats others ungenerously, not to say unjustly.
II. The release
which the Lord gives to us.
1. Let me proclaim to every sinner here, who owns his indebtedness to
God, and feels that he can never discharge it, that if you will come, and put
your trust in Christ, the Lord promises oblivion to all your debt, forgiveness
of the whole of your sins.
2. This release shall be followed up by a nonexacting of the penalty
forever.
3. God will do all this for thee on the ground of thy poverty. See
the fourth verse: “Save when there shall be no poor among you. When you cannot
pay half a farthing in the pound of all your great debt of sin, when you are
absolutely bankrupt, then may you believe that Jesus Christ is your Saviour.
4. I may be addressing a soul here that says, “I like that thought, I
wish I could catch hold of it; but I feel myself to be such a slave that I
cannot grasp it.” Well, the Lord may allow a soul to be in bondage for a time;
indeed, it may be needful that He should. The Hebrew might be in bondage six
years, and yet he went free when the seventh year came. There are reasons why
the Spirit of God is to some men a Spirit of bondage for a long time. Hard
hearts must be melted, proud stomachs must be brought down.
5. The man was set free at the end of the sixth year, paying nothing
for his liberation. Though not freeborn, nor yet buying his liberty with a
great sum, yet he was set free. O Lord, set some soul free tonight!
6. And when the Lord sets poor souls at liberty, He always sends them
away full-handed. He gives something from the flock, and from the threshing
floor, and from the wine press.
7. This act never seems hard to the Lord. He says to the Hebrew, in
the eighteenth verse, “It shall not seem hard unto thee, when thou sendest him
away free.” It never seems hard to Christ when He sets a sinner free.
8. One thing I feel sure of, and that is, if the Lord sets us free,
we shall want to remain His servants forever. We will go straight away to the
door-post, and ask Him to use the awl; for, though we are glad to be free, we
do not want to be free from Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Verses 4-20
The beasts which ye shall eat.
God’s provision for man’s table
I. Provision,
Divine in its source. Israel could not have procured it and would not have
known without Divine teaching what was good for them. Recognise that power
which can “furnish a table in the wilderness” (Psalms 78:19).
II. Provision good
in quality. Nothing unclean, nothing unwholesome, was specified. Not anything
was to be eaten apt to stimulate sensual passions, or to foster coarse tastes
and degrading habits.
III. Provisions
abundant in quality. There was no stint in beasts, birds, or fish. The articles
of food were nutritious and abundant. God’s legislation for our lower reminds
us of His care for our higher nature. There is no lack anywhere. Let us remember
our Benefactor, for we cannot put a morsel of food into our mouths till God
puts it into our hands--discern kindness not only in prescribing, but in
prohibiting, and be grateful to “the living God who giveth us richly all things
to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17). For a man may be
blessed with riches, wealth, and honour; want nothing; “yet God giveth him not
power to eat thereof” (Ecclesiastes 6:2). (Matthew Henry, D.
D.)
Food provided
In this provision of food we see--
1. A mark of Divine condescension. If kings legislated for the diet
of their people, is it beneath the King of Israel to appoint the food for His
chosen people? “All that we know of God,” says Dr. Cumming, “in creation, in
providence, in redemption, leads us to see that He takes as much care of what
the world calls, in its ignorance, little things, as He does of what the world
thinks, in equal ignorance, great and weighty things.”
2. A proof of Divine benevolence. It is kind to provide at all. But
what thought indicated, in the choice of animals which multiplied slowly, which
were not difficult to obtain, found without leaving the camp, and without danger
and contact with heathens around them! All this intended to reclaim and bless.
(Matthew Henry, D. D.)
Every creeping thing that
flieth is unclean.
Gilded sin
1. There is a natural disgust in everyone to the idea of eating, or
even handling, a creeping worm or caterpillar. However difficult this feeling
may be to analyse, God has given it to the race for some purpose. All things
that are abhorrent to our human instincts--things which we call repulsive--are
so many indications of the great truth that we are to make distinctions between
clean and unclean, good and evil, right and wrong.
2. Now God saw fit to incorporate this natural instinct of man, which
He had implanted, in the law for His people. He forbade their eating these
repulsive, crawling things. We know how the natural instinct is often overcome
by wilful habits, and we find degraded men taking pleasure in those articles of
food which the human palate originally and instinctively rejects. Hence the
necessity of a law behind the instinct, when God would teach by it His great
spiritual lesson.
3. He would teach us that we may in conscience shrink from gross
sins, and yet gradually blunt conscience and indulge in sins we formerly
abhorred; and that, therefore, a Divine law must be made the norm of our lives,
and not simply the protests of natural conscience.
4. We desire to call your attention to a different class of dalliers
with sin--not the gross and vulgar, but the refined and elegant. Their
refinement is such that gross forms of sin repel them--not because they are
sin, but because they are gross. The nauseous caterpillar has dressed itself up
as a beautiful butterfly, and in this form they sport with the creature. But
what does God’s law say? “Every creeping thing that flieth is unclean unto you.”
The wings and pretty colours have not altered the nature of the vermin. The
same uncleanness is there as before. How many there are who would shrink with
dismay from overt sensuality, and yet will, in the privacy of the chamber,
gloat over a licentious novel! It is the very same crawling thing--only now it
has pretty wings.
5. One of the most successful cloaks for sin at the present day is
so-called art. Art is something very lovely and refined. It is a grand thing
for the young to know all about art. It shows high breeding to admire and
criticise art. Now, there is a grain of wheat and a bushel of chaff in all this
talk. To one genuine artist who only looks to the art, there are a thousand
hypocrites, who know nothing about art, and only adopt the language of art to
hide their sinful tendencies. In the name of art they go to see the public
performances of a loose woman and watch the movements of a play that makes
light of the marriage relation. In the name of art they fill their parlours
with nudities, in voluptuous form and colour, by which the youth of the
families are stimulated to sensuality and debauchery; and, in the name of art,
the young artist sits before his nude model for her destruction and his.
6. In every way luxury can devise, passions are inflamed, and then
modesty is called prudery. Indecent dressing, lascivious dances, immoral
innuendo in conversation, form part of this refined system of destroying the
soul, in which Christians engage because they must he in the fashion. The
creeping thing down in a dance house in Water Street they would exclaim
against; but the winged creeping thing that flies in the uptown parlour they
delight in; yet it is the same venomous beast.
7. Is it right for those who are washed in the blood of Christ, and
who seek the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit, to enter wilfully into
a social life where books and pictures and statuary and entertainments are most
unblushingly promotive of sensuality and vicious thought? Is it right to become
accustomed to such gilded filth, so that we lose our Christian delicacy and
reserve, and at last make impurity a fashionable virtue? Satan is cunning in
his temptations. He does not come to us in a vulgar form and so disgust us. He
puts the many-coloured wings on the slimy crawler, and so fascinates us into
his service. “Beware!” (H. Crosby, D. D.)
Verse 21
Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.
Cultivation of the feelings a Christian duty
I. That which
commentators upon Scripture have found intricate and uncertain, writers of a
more secular character have seized upon and read rightly. Some of you may
remember the use made of it in one of those classical works of fiction of which
Englishmen are so justly proud; where the intended victim of a deep-laid plot
is lured to her destruction by an imitation of her husbands signal, and one of
the conspirators says to his more guilty accomplice, “Thou hast destroyed her
by means of her best affections. It is a seething of the kid in the mother’s
milk!” A just and thrilling application of the inspired charge; of which the
simplest meaning is the true one. Thou shalt not blunt thy natural feelings, or
those of others, by disregarding the inward dictate of a Divine humanity: human
nature shrinks from the idea of using that which ought to be the food of a
newborn animal, to prepare that animal to be man’s food; of applying the
mother’s milk to a purpose so opposite to that for which God destined it:
harden not thy heart against this instinct of tenderness on the plea that it
matters not to the slain animal in what particular way it is dressed, or that
the living parent, void of reason, has no consciousness of the inhumanity: for
thine own sake refrain from that which is hardhearted; from that which, though
it inflicts not pain, springs out of selfishness, indicates a spirit unworthy
of man and forgetful of God, and tends still further to blunt those moral
sensibilities which once lost are commonly lost forever, and with them all that
is most beautiful and most attractive in the human character.
II. The text seems
to teach us most of all the wickedness of using for selfish or wrong purposes
the sacred feelings of another; of availing ourselves of the knowledge of
another’s affections to make him miserable or to make him sinful; of trifling,
in this sense, with the most delicate workings of the human mechanism, and
turning to evil account that insight into character with which God has endowed
us all, in different degrees, for purposes wholly beneficent, pure, and good.
III. In proportion
as you learn and practise early that regard for others’ feelings which is
almost synonymous with Christian charity, in that same degree will you become,
not effeminate, but in the best of all senses manly; having put away childish
things, and anticipated the noblest qualities of a Christian maturity. We pray
in the Litany, “From hardness of heart, good Lord, deliver us.” Hardness of
heart has two aspects; towards man, and towards God. Towards God it is brought
about by acts of neglect, leading to habits of neglect; by a disregard of His
word and commandments, issuing in what is called in the same petition, a
“contempt” of both. Towards man, it is produced in us in a similar way; by
repeated acts of disregard, leading to a habit of disregard; by blinding
ourselves to others’ feelings, and saying and doing every day things which
wound them, till at last we become unconscious of their very existence, and
think nothing real which is not, in some manner, our own. That is hardness of
heart in its full growth; selfishness unrestrained and unlimited. Many people
are walking about in that state; with a heart hardened utterly both towards man
and towards God. And they pass for respectable men too: in them religion and
charity, worship and almsgiving, have become alike workings of selfishness
regulated by calculations of self-interest, and never looking beyond earth for
their reward. That you may not become thus seared, you must watch and pray,
while you can, against hardness of heart. You must practise its opposite. Try
to think more than you do of others, and less than you do of yourselves. Enter
into the feelings one of another. Think not only what is your right, or what
you can get, or what you are used to, in such and such a matter; but also what
others would like, what would give pleasure, what would make their life happy,
in small things or great; and sometimes do that; form the habit of doing that.
(Dean Vaughan.)
Verses 22-29
Tithe all the increase of thy seed.
Systematic provision for beneficent work
I. The duty of
God’s people. In Jewish law God claimed tithes and gifts for the worship of the
sanctuary and the necessities of the poor. Conspicuous features of these
demands are--the priority of God’s claim--that provision for it be made before
man’s self-enjoyment, that it bear some suitable proportion to the Divine glory
and grace, and that for fullness and power, system is essential; i.e. that
the work of God be provided for before man’s indulgence (Leviticus 19:1-37; Numbers 18:1-32; Deuteronomy 14:1-29). The New Testament
has also its plan of meeting God’s claim, containing the same elements of
priority, certainty, proportion and system. See 1 Corinthians 16:2, sustained and
illustrated by the weighty arguments and motives of 2 Corinthians 8:1-24; 2 Corinthians 9:1-15.
II. The financial
law of Christ. Christ is sole King in His Church. The constitution of this
Church is Christian, not Jewish. “As I have given order to the Churches of
Galatia, even so do ye.” The method taught by the apostle to provide the
revenues of the Church is an expansion of Jewish and pentecostal church
systems, an example for us, an implied and inferential obligation sustained by
cumulative and presumptive argument. New Testament institutions are not given
with Sinaitic form and severity. They meet us as sacred provisions for urgent
occasions. They appeal to a willing heart more than to a legal mind. Christ
rules in love, but His will should not have less authority or constraining
power on that account (John 7:17).
III. The necessity
of the age. The present age needs loftiness of aim, seriousness of feeling, and
ardour of devotion. Faithful consecration of substance to God, elevated by
Christian love to a financial rule of life, would nourish every moral and
spiritual principle in the soul. Storing the Lord’s portion is the necessity of
the age, from its tendency.
1. To cheek the idolatry of money and to strengthen the love of God
in the heart.
2. To meet adequately the demands of religion and humanity.
3. To exhibit the power and beauty of godliness. By fostering
simplicity of life and personal fidelity to God. By liberally sustaining the
honour of Christ in the sight of men. (John Ross.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》