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Deuteronomy Chapter
Six
Deuteronomy 6
Chapter Contents
A persuasive to obedience. (1-3) An exhortation to
obedience. (4,5) Obedience taught. (6-16) General precepts, Instructions to be
given to their children. (17-25)
Commentary on Deuteronomy 6:1-3
(Read Deuteronomy 6:1-3)
In this and the like passages, the
"commandments" seem to denote the moral law, the "statues"
the ceremonial law, and the "judgments" the law by which the judges
decided. Moses taught the people all that, and that only, which God commanded
him to teach. Thus Christ's ministers are to teach his churches all he has
commanded, neither more nor less, Matthew 28:20. The fear of God in the heart will
be the most powerful principle of obedience. It is highly desirable that not we
only, but our children, and our children's children, may fear the Lord.
Religion and righteousness advance and secure the prosperity of any people.
Commentary on Deuteronomy 6:4,5
(Read Deuteronomy 6:4,5)
Here is a brief summary of religion, containing the first
principles of faith and obedience. Jehovah our God is the only living and true
God; he only is God, and he is but One God. Let us not desire to have any other.
The three-fold mention of the Divine names, and the plural number of the word
translated God, seem plainly to intimate a Trinity of persons, even in this
express declaration of the unity of the Godhead. Happy those who have this one
Lord for their God. It is better to have one fountain than a thousand cisterns;
one all-sufficient God than a thousand insufficient friends. This is the first
and great commandment of God's law, that we love him; and that we do all parts
of our duty to him from a principle of love; My son, give me thine heart. We
are to love God with all our heart, and soul, and might. That is, 1. With a
sincere love; not in word and tongue only, but inwardly in truth. 2. With a
strong love. He that is our All, must have our all, and none but he. 3. With a
superlative love; we must love God above any creature whatever, and love
nothing but what we love for him. 4. With an intelligent love. To love him with
all the heart, and with all the understanding, we must see good cause to love
him. 5. With an entire love; he is ONE, our hearts must be united in his love.
Oh that this love of God may be shed abroad in our hearts!
Commentary on Deuteronomy 6:6-16
(Read Deuteronomy 6:6-16)
Here are means for maintaining and keeping up religion in
our hearts and houses. 1. Meditation. God's words must be laid up in our
hearts, that our thoughts may be daily employed about them. 2. The religious
education of children. Often repeat these things to them. Be careful and exact
in teaching thy children. Teach these truths to all who are any way under thy
care. 3. Pious discourse. Thou shalt talk of these things with due reverence
and seriousness, for the benefit not only of thy children, but of thy servants,
thy friends and companions. Take all occasions to discourse with those about
thee, not of matters of doubtful disputation, but of the plain truths and laws
of God, and the things that belong to our peace. 4. Frequent reading of the word.
God appointed them to write sentences of the law upon their walls, and in
scrolls of parchment to be worn about their wrists. This seems to have been
binding in the letter of it to the Jews, as it is to us in the intent of it;
which is, that we should by all means make the word of God familiar to us; that
we may have it ready to use upon all occasions, to restrain us from sin, and
direct us in duty. We must never be ashamed to own our religion, nor to own
ourselves under its check and government. Here is a caution not to forget God
in a day of prosperity and plenty. When they came easily by the gift, they
would be apt to grow secure, and unmindful of the Giver. Therefore be careful,
when thou liest safe and soft, lest thou forget the Lord. When the world smiles,
we are apt to make court to it, and expect our happiness in it, and so we
forget Him who is our only portion and rest. There is need of great care and
caution at such a time. Then beware; being warned of your danger, stand upon
your guard. Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God; neither by despairing of his
power and goodness, while we keep in the way of our duty; nor by presuming upon
it, when we turn aside out of that way.
Commentary on Deuteronomy 6:17-25
(Read Deuteronomy 6:17-25)
Moses gives charge to keep God's commandments. Negligence
will ruin us; but we cannot be saved without diligence. It is our interest, as
well as our duty, to be religious. It will be our life. Godliness has the
promise of the continuance and comfort of the life that now is, as far as it is
for God's glory. It will be our righteousness. It is only through the Mediator
we can be righteous before God. The knowledge of the spirituality and excellency
of the holy law of God, is suited to show sinful man his need of a Saviour, and
to prepare his heart to welcome a free salvation. The gospel honours the law,
not only in the perfect obedience of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ; but
in that it is a plan for bringing back apostate rebels and enemies, by
repentance, faith, forgiveness, and renewing grace, to love God above all
things, even in this world; and in the world above, to love him perfectly, even
as angels love him.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Deuteronomy》
Deuteronomy 6
Verse 5
[5] And
thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy might.
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thine heart — And is this only an external commandment?
Can any then say, that the Sinai - covenant was merely external? With all thy
heart - With an entire love. He is One; therefore our hearts must be united in
his love. And the whole stream of our affections must run toward Him. O that
this love of God may be shed abroad in our hearts.
Verse 7
[7] And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of
them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and
when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
Teach them diligently — Heb. whet, or sharpen them, so as they may pierce deep into their
hearts. This metaphor signifies the manner of instructing them, that it is to
be done diligently, earnestly, frequently, discreetly.
Verse 8
[8] And
thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets
between thine eyes.
Thou shalt bind them — Thou shalt give all diligence, and use all means to keep them in thy
remembrance, as men often bind something upon their hands, or put it before
their eyes to prevent forgetfulness of a thing which they much desire to
remember.
Verse 13
[13] Thou
shalt fear the LORD thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name.
Shalt swear by his name — When thou hast a call and just cause to swear, not by idols, or any creatures.
Verse 15
[15] (For the LORD thy God is a jealous God among you) lest the anger of the
LORD thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the
earth.
Among you —
Heb. In the midst of you, to see and observe all your ways and your turnings
aside to other Gods.
Verse 16
[16] Ye
shall not tempt the LORD your God, as ye tempted him in Massah.
Ye shall not tempt —
Not provoke him, as the following instance explains. Sinners, especially
presumptuous sinners, are said to tempt God, that is, to make a trial of God,
whether he be, so wise as to see their sins, so just and true and powerful as
to take vengeance on them, concerning which they are very apt to doubt because
of the present impunity and prosperity of many such persons.
Verse 17
[17] Ye
shall diligently keep the commandments of the LORD your God, and his
testimonies, and his statutes, which he hath commanded thee.
Ye diligently keep —
Negligence will ruin us: but we cannot be saved without diligence.
Verse 25
[25] And
it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments
before the LORD our God, as he hath commanded us.
It shall be our righteousness — Heb. Righteousness shall be to us. We shall be owned and pronounced by
God to be righteous and holy persons, if we sincerely obey him, otherwise we
shall be declared to be unrighteous and ungodly. Or, mercy shall be to us, or
with us. For as the Hebrew word rendered righteousness is very often put for
mercy, (as Psalms 24:5; 36:10; 51:14; Proverbs 10:2; 11:4; Daniel 9:16) so this sense seems best to agree
both with the scripture use of this phrase, (in which righteousness, seldom or
never, but grace or mercy frequently, is said to be to us or with us) and with
the foregoing verse and argument God, saith he, Deuteronomy 5:24, commanded these things for our
good, that he might preserve us alive, as it is this day. And, saith he in this
verse, this is not all; for as he hath done us good, so he will go on to do us
more and more good, and God's mercy shall be to us, or with us, in the remainder
of our lives, and for ever, if we observe these commandments.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Deuteronomy》
06 Chapter 6
Verses 2-4
Thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them.
Wars of the Israelites
There is, perhaps, no point on which the weakness of human nature
is more clearly shown than in the difficulty of treading the right path between
persecution on the one hand, and indifference to evil on the other. For
although we are, it may be, disposed according to our several tempers more to
one of these faults than to the other, yet I fear it is true also that none of
us are free from the danger of falling into them both. If we have today been
too violent against the persons of evil men whom we do not like, this is no security
against our being tomorrow much too forbearing towards the practices of evil
men whom we do like; because we are all apt to respect persons in our judgment
and in our feelings; sometimes to be too severe, and sometimes too indulgent,
not according to justice, but according to our own likings and dislikings. Nor
is it respect of persons only which thus leads us astray, but also our own
particular sympathy with, or disgust at particular faults and characters. Even
in one whom we may like, on the whole, there may be faults which we may visit
too hardly, because they are exactly such as we feel no temptation to commit.
And again, in one whom we dislike on the whole, there may, for the same reason,
be faults which we tolerate too easily, because they are like our own. There is
yet a third cause, and that a very common one, which corrupts our judgment. We
may sympathise with such and such faults generally, because we are ourselves
inclined to them; but if they happen to be committed against us, and we feel the
bad effects of them, then we are apt to judge them in that particular case too
harshly. Or again, we may rather dislike a fault in general, but when it is
committed on our own side, and to advance our own interests, then in that
particular case we are tempted to excuse it too readily. There are these
dangers besetting us on the right hand and on the left, as to our treatment of
other men’s faults. And in Scripture we find very strong language against the
error on either side. A great deal is said against violence, wrath,
uncharitableness, harsh judgment of others, and attempting or pretending to
work God’s service by our own bad passions, and a great deal is also said
against tolerating sin, against defiling ourselves with evil-doers, against
preferring our earthly friendships to the will and service of God. Of these
latter commands the words of the text furnish us with a most remarkable
instance. We see how strong and positive the language is (Deuteronomy 7:2); and the reason is given
(Deuteronomy 7:4). It is better that the
wicked should be destroyed a hundred times over, yea, destroyed with
everlasting destruction, than that they should tempt those who are as yet
innocent to join their company. And if we are inclined to think that God dealt
hardly with the people of Canaan in commanding them to be so utterly destroyed,
let us but think what might have been our fate, and the fate of every other
nation under heaven at this hour, had the sword of the Israelites done its work
more sparingly. The Israelites fought not for themselves only, but for us.
Whatever were the faults of Jephthah or of Samson, never yet were any men
engaged in a cause more important to the whole world’s welfare. Their constant
warfare kept Israel essentially distinct from the tribes around them, their own
law became the dearer to them because they found such unceasing enemies amongst
those who hated it. The uncircumcised, who kept not the covenant of God, were
forever ranged against those who did keep it. It might follow that the
Israelites should thus be accounted the enemies of all mankind, it might be
that they were tempted by their very distinctness to despise other nations;
still, they did God’s work; still, they preserved unhurt the seed of eternal
life, and were the ministers of blessing to all other nations, even though they
themselves failed to enjoy it. But still these commands, so forcible, so
fearful--to spare none--to destroy the wicked utterly--to show no mercy--are
these commands addressed to us now? or what is it which the Lord bids us do?
Certainly, He does not bid us shed blood, or destroy the wicked, or put on any
hardness of heart which might shut out the charity of Christ’s perfect law. But
there is a part of the text which does apply to us now in the letter, thereby
teaching us how to apply the whole to ourselves in the spirit. “Be ye not
unequally yoked together in marriage with unbelievers. For what concord hath
Christ with Belial?” It is, indeed, something shocking to enter into so near
and dear a connection as marriage with those who are not the servants of God.
It is fearful to think of giving birth to children whose eternal life may be
forfeited through the example and influence of him or of her through whom their
earthly life was given. But though this be the worst and most dreadful case,
still it is not the only one. St. Paul does not only speak against marriage
with the unbelievers; he speaks also no less strongly against holding friendly
intercourse with those who call themselves Christ’s, yet in their lives deny
Him (1 Corinthians 5:11). We need not actually
refuse to eat with those whose lives are evil; but woe to us if we do not
shrink from any closer intimacy with them; if their society, when we must
partake of it, be not painfully endured by us, rather than enjoyed. We may put
away from among ourselves that wicked person; put him away, that is, from our
confidence, put him away from our esteem; put him altogether away from our
sympathy. We are on services wholly different; our masters are God and Mammon;
and we cannot be united closely with those to whom our dearest hopes are their
worst fears, and to whom that resurrection which, to the true servant of
Christ, will be his perfect consummation of bliss, will be but the first
dawning of an eternity of shame and misery. (T. Arnold, D. D.)
Destruction of the Canaanites
The extermination of the Canaanites forces itself on the attention
of the most careless reader of the Old Testament. We cannot deny that there is
a difficulty which needs explanation: we cannot doubt that such a judgment was
meant to give to every age a solemn and needful warning.
1. In the first place, it behoves us to understand that this
destruction was not a punishment for idolatry. The war of Israel in Canaan did
not resemble a crusade. The Canaanites perished, not because they had bowed
down to false gods, or refused to worship the true God, but because they had
made themselves utterly abominable. This is clear from Leviticus 18:24. The Canaanites perished
because the earth could no longer bear them: the safety of the whole demanded
their extirpation.
2. We observe, further, that they did not perish without warning. The
sites of Sodom and Gomorrah, once like the garden of Eden in loveliness,
withered and burnt up by fire from heaven, and at length turned into a
bituminous lake, showed the end of those sins by which the land was defiled. It
was a memorial not to be forgotten. The Dead Sea was a phenomenon which forced
the inquiry, “Wherefore hath God done this?” The forty years’ sojourn in the
wilderness was not only fraught with blessing to Israel and instruction to the
Church, but it gave to the Canaanites time to consider and repent. It produced
this effect on Rahab and on the Gibeonites, who humbled themselves under the
hand of God and were spared. The rest of the nations of Canaan heard and
feared, but repented not. We may not, then, marvel that the cup of wrath which
such habitual and audacious wickedness had filled was deep and deadly. Yet the
destruction is not without its parallels. Many modern campaigns have produced a
greater loss of life and far intenser misery. The sword appalls us by its
fierceness; but it is more merciful than the famine and the pestilence, which
in our own days have ravaged large portions of the globe. It cuts short the
suspense which is more grievous than death; it inflicts no lingering pain.
Besides, this was the only judgment in which idolaters would have seen the hand
of the God of Israel. Had they perished in thousands by want or disease they
would have attributed this to the displeasure of Moloch or Baal. But they ever
regarded battle as the trial of deities. So, when the iron chariots had been
broken in the valleys, and the rocky fastness and fenced city had failed to
protect the Anakim, all who felt the sword of Israel and all to whom the
tidings came were forced to confess that Jehovah was to be feared above all
gods. Hence we may see what Israel and all other nations were to learn from
these wars in Canaan.
1. They learnt, first, God’s absolute sovereignty, His right and
property, in the life of man, and therefore ill everything by and for which man
lives. If, then, the Canaanite had no property in his life, nor power to retain
it when God demanded it, we dare not claim more than stewardship of anything
that we call ours. The largest possessions, the richest intellectual gifts, are
less than the life. These, then, are at the disposal of Him who is the Lord of
life. If we use them as God’s servants they will secure to us everlasting possessions;
but from the unfaithful steward shall be taken even that which he seemeth to
have.
2. Again, God manifested that man hath something better than life.
Our hearts may be harrowed or sickened at the thought that the sword of Israel
struck down not only the boastful warrior, but the feeble woman and the
blooming child and the infant at the breast. But the same suffering and death
of the weak and the graceful and the pure is continually forcing itself on our
attention in every epidemic, in public calamities, and in the more frequent
casualties of private life, in Indian and Syrian massacres, and even at the
birth of Christ Himself, when Rachel was weeping for her children. All this
piercing and cutting down of the young and the tender and the promising would
be inexplicable if we had not the revelation of a higher life, for which
suffering and the contact with suffering are the preparation. (M. Biggs, M.
A.)
A noble resolve
Eliza Embert, a young Parisian lady, resolutely discarded a
gentleman to whom she was to have been married the next day because he
ridiculed religion. Having given him a gentle reproof for some impropriety, he
replied that “a man of the world would not be so old-fashioned as to regard God
and religion.” Eliza immediately started; but soon recovering herself, said,
“From this moment, as I discover you do not respect religion, I cease to be
yours.”
The danger of a morally vitiated atmosphere
Some time ago the following strange occurrence happened at St.
Cierge, a village in the Jura. The principal room of an inn there, known as the
Cerf, was lighted by a hanging petroleum lamp, above which had been placed, for
the protection of the ceiling, a metal plate. In course of time the woodwork
above the plate became desiccated, and one evening it took fire, and when the
innkeeper and his family retired to rest was all aglow--a fact, however, which
they do not seem to have noticed. From the ceiling the fire was communicated to
the room above, and was first discovered by a neighbour, who, early next
morning, observing smoke issuing from the door, gave an alarm, when, as none of
the inmates could be aroused, the door was broken open. The fire, having gone
on smouldering without bursting into flame, had done little material damage,
and was easily extinguished; but all the people in the house--the landlord, his
wife and sister--were dead. After the manner of country people, they had firmly
closed their windows before going to bed, and the smoke, having no exit, had
asphyxiated every one of them. In like manner those who allow a morally
vitiated atmosphere to surround them, and willingly inhale its pestiferous
fumes, wither and become spiritually suffocated.
The loss of spiritual tone
Animals that live in two elements are awkward in both. Do we find
it difficult, even after the most innocent and unexceptionable entertainments,
to brace the soul for its devotions? Do not our pinions flap languidly as we
attempt our upward flight? And is it not the case that many of the so-called
amusements which men pursue are in the last degree unfavourable to those
exercises, without a constant application to which the highest zones of
religious experience, the snowy summits of a pure spirituality--those
glistening peaks that are the first to catch the auroral glow of the rising Sun
of Righteousness, and the last to lose His evening beams--cannot be reached and
maintained? To spoil a harp, you need not rudely break its strings and batter
its sounding-board. Remove it from one temperature to another, and the mischief
is done. We cannot say that people are not hurt by these things because they
are not made openly and scandalously vicious. I maintain that a man has
sustained a dire and irreparable, though a subtle, and at first impalpable
injury, when he has lost his spiritual tone. (J. Halsey.)
The Lord our God is one Lord.
Of the unity of God
I. Why God is
called the living God.
1. In opposition to, and to distinguish Him from, dead idols (Psalms 115:4-6; 1 Thessalonians 1:9).
2. Because God is the fountain of life, having all life in Himself (John 5:26), and giving life to all things
else. All life is in Him and from Him.
II. Why God is
called the true God. To distinguish Him from all false or fictitious gods (1 Thessalonians 1:9). There is a
two-fold truth.
1. Of fidelity or faithfulness. Thus God is true--that is, faithful
But that is not the truth here meant.
2. A truth of essence, whereby a thing really is, and does not exist
in opinion only. The meaning is, that there is a true God, and but one true
God.
III. That there is
but one God.
1. The Scripture is very express and pointed on this head (chap. 6:4;
Isaiah 44:6; Mark 12:32; 1 Samuel 2:2; Psalms 18:31; Isaiah 46:9; 1 Corinthians 8:4; 1 Corinthians 8:6).
2. This truth is clear from reason.
(a) There can be but one independent in being; for if there were more
gods, either one of them would be the cause and author of being to the rest,
and then that one would be the only God; or none of them would be the cause and
author of being to the rest, and so none of them would be God, because none of
them would be independent, or the fountain of being to all.
(b) There can be but one independent in working. For if there were
more independent beings, then in those things wherein they will and act freely
they might will and act contrary things, and so oppose and hinder one another;
so that, being equal in power, nothing would be done by either of them.
Trinity and unity
I. The Scriptural
Trinity implies that God is One. So far from being against the cardinal truth
of God’s unity, it actually assumes it. The Trinity of our faith means a
distinction of persons within one common indivisible Divine nature. If we ask,
What is the chief spiritual benefit which we derive from the knowledge of the
unity of God? the answer is this: The unity of God is the only religious basis
for a moral law of perfect and unwavering righteousness. It is a unity of moral
character in the Ruler, and therefore of moral rule in the universe. It is such
a unity as excludes all conflict within the Divine will, all inconsistency in
the Divine law, all feebleness in the Divine administration.
II. What religious
advantages do we reap from the fresh Christian discovery of a Trinity within
this unity of the Divine nature?
1. To this question we answer, that the doctrine of the Trinity has
heightened and enriched our conception of the nature of God.
2. This doctrine affords a basis for those gracious relations which
it has pleased God to sustain towards us in the economy of our salvation. (J.
Oswald Dykes, D. D.)
One God
I. The belief in
one God gives rest to the active man; it satisfies his intellectual, his moral,
his emotional, his spiritual being.
II. In the field of
scientific research this faith inspires us with a confident hope of reducing
all phenomena to law, since all proceed from one hand, and express one creative
will. This faith supplies that which physical science lacks and yet requires--namely,
a prime mover and a sustaining power.
III. In morals this
faith acts most powerfully upon our will, and rouses us to exalt the higher
nature and repress the lower. Polytheism deifies the human passions. But if
there be only one God, then our highest aspirations must give us the truest
image of Him.
IV. Faith in one
God brings peace to the mourner and to the suffering, for we know that He who
now sends the trouble is the same God whose kindness we have felt so often.
Having learned to love and trust Him, we are able to accept suffering as the
chastisement of a Father’s hand. If there were gods many, we could regard the
troubles of life only as the spiteful acts of some malevolent deity; we must
bribe his fellow gods to oppose him.
V. Upon one God we
are able to concentrate all the powers of the soul, our emotions are not
dissipated, our religious efforts are not flittered away upon a pleasing
variety of characters, but the image of God is steadily renewed in the soul,
and communion with God grows ever closer. (F. R. Chapman.)
The Lord our God
I. The supremacy
of the Lord. The one Being--incomparable, unrivalled.
1. As regards His existence. Alpha and Omega. Uncreated. Independent.
From everlasting.
2. As regards His decrees. Consummate wisdom.
3. As regards His operations. Needs no assistance. Makes no mistakes.
4. As regards His faithfulness. The one immutable God.
5. As regards His love. Admits no rival. Has no equal.
6. As regards His claims. The only Being who has a right to our
praise, service, love.
II. The
relationship of the Lord. “Our God.”
1. Has made a covenant with us (Exodus 6:4-8; Hebrews 8:6).
2. Has adopted us.
3. Has endowed us. With Himself. His power, wisdom, etc., are all at
our service.
4. Has owned the relationship.
III. The command of
the Lord. “Hear, O Israel.” God would have us think much on this two-fold
theme--what He is, and what He is to us--
1. To cheek presumption.
2. To stimulate faith.
3. To increase devotedness.
4. To dissipate fears.
5. To impart comfort.
6. To fire love. (R. A. Griffin.)
The one Jehovah
Knowledge as to the fact that there is one God is of high
importance to its possessor. In connection with this statement, as to its
importance, it may be predicated that evidence has never been adduced to prove
that there is more than one God--the one Jehovah. Evidence upon evidence,
however, can be adduced to prove that there is one God, the Creator of the ends
of the earth, the Upholder and Proprietor of all things. In evidence of this,
we have only to look around us upon the things that exist; for they all speak
of God as the Great First Cause of their existence. For the sake of argument,
however, let it be supposed that the proposition is submitted that there are
more Gods than one, how could this proposition be supported? How could there be
any being equally high with the Highest, or equally excellent with the Most
Excellent--two super-superlatives? The idea is not tenable. Not so, however, is
it with the idea that there is one God, one Supreme Ruler in the universe; and
from whom the universe itself had its origin. This idea has manifold support;
and, from among the many evidences that might be adduced in support of it,
reference may be made to that unity of design which is manifest throughout all
the works of God: as in these works, so far as they can be surveyed by the
human mind in present circumstances, this unity, embracing simplicity,
testifies to the infinite wisdom and power of a Designer. The extent to which
this truth might illustratively be carried out can only be glanced at in
present circumstances. New countries, for example, are constantly discovering
themselves to the eye of the traveller; and yet, go where he may, he still
finds that the old laws of nature, by the appointment of Heaven, come into
view. Many new plants may be found on foreign shores; yet all of them indicate
the necessity of their continuance to exist in the adhesion of the pollen of
the stamens to the gummy stigma of the pistil. Yes; and new animals may be
found in different parts of the globe. Whatever their variety, however, they
are all maintained by the same earth, cheered by the same sun, invigorated by
the same breath, and refreshed by the same moisture. Go where we will the
elements act upon each other, the tides uniformly fluctuate; and true to its
index is the instrument, when properly adjusted, by which the ship may be
steered. Man, too, go where we may, has the same origin, the same general
external construction, and the same characteristics by which he is
distinguished from creatures of a lower grade. Now whence, or for what purpose,
does this uniformity of design exist? The text replies--“The Lord our God is
one Lord,” one self-existent, all-wise, and independent Jehovah, and of whose
existence and attributes there is incontrovertible evidence, not only in things
that exist, but in the unity, simplicity, and harmony of those principles which
operate, with marvellous uniformity, throughout every department of the
material world. In Him, as thus revealed, we have a God to adore, worthy of our
worship, worthy of our confidence, and whose goodness may well captivate with
thrilling emotions every affectionate impulse of the soul. But an awful
question here comes into my mind. Is this one Jehovah, so plainly revealed, my
God? How can I, without arrogant presumption, cherish the thought that I may
find acceptance in the sight of Him, compared with whom I am as “nothing; less
than nothing, and vanity”? His greatness, and my insignificance; His holiness,
and my impurity, seem to repel every ground on which the hope of acceptance
with Him would seek to rest. Through what medium, honouring to God, can His
favour ever reach this poor heart of mine? How can condescension, in God, to
take notice of me, ever accord with His own infinite purity, justice, and
dignity? The case transcends my reason: it is too great for me. I am as one
utterly out at sea in a frail bark, without a rudder or a hand to guide it.
Here, in this labyrinth of perplexity, the great Jehovah might have left me to
the guidance of my own mental wanderings till the long night of death had
closed over my head. But in great goodness He has not left me thus! With a
condescension upon which created intelligence, of itself, never could have
reckoned, He has unfolded to me the mystery, that, while there is only one God,
there are yet, in the essence of this one God, or Godhead, three distinct personalities--the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost--each of them fulfilling a separate
department in the economy of human redemption; and that, while thus separate in
their gracious manifestations, they are nevertheless one as to undivided
essence. The day now begins to dawn somewhat upon my hitherto benighted soul;
and though its light be dim amid the darkness through which it comes, there is
in it an intimation that, like the dawn of morn, its light shall increase. Be
it borne in mind, however, that the revelation indicated is only intended to
suit the infancy of our existence in the life that now is; and that while it
does not tell us all that in due time we shall be made to know, it tells us all
that our present circumstances require. (Thos. Adam.)
The unity of nature proclaims one intelligent Mind
Owing to the imperfection and limitation of our powers, we are
obliged to deal with fragments of the universe, and to exaggerate their
differences. But the more profound and varied our study of the objects of Nature,
the more remarkable do we find their resemblances. And we cannot occupy
ourselves with the smallest province of science without speedily becoming
sensible of its intercommunication with other provinces. The snowflake leads us
to the sun. The study of a lichen or moss becomes a key that opens up the great
temple of organic light. If we could understand, as Tennyson profoundly says,
what a little flower growing in the crevice of a wayside wall is, root and all,
and all in all, we should know what God and man are. And the same unbroken
gradation or continuity which we trace throughout all the parts and objects of
our own world pervades and embraces the whole physical universe--so far, at
least, as our knowledge of it at present extends. By the wonderful discoveries
of spectrum analysis, we find the same substances in sun, moon, and stars which
compose our own earth. The imagination of the poet is conversant with the
whole, and sees truth in universal relation. He attains by insight the goal to
which all other knowledge is finding its way step by step. And the Christian
poet and philosopher, whose eye has been opened, not partially, by the clay of
Nature’s materials, worked upon by human thought so that he sees men as trees
walking, but fully and perfectly, by washing in the fountain opened for sin and
uncleanness, whose pure heart sees God in everything, and in God’s light sees
light--he stands at the shining point where all things converge to one.
Wherever he turns his inquiring gaze, he finds “shade unperceived so softening
into shade, and all so forming one harmonious whole,” that not a link is
wanting in the chain which unites and reproduces all, from atom to mountain,
from microscopic mass to banyan tree, from monad up to man. And if the unity of
the tabernacle proved it to be the work of one designing mind, surely the unity
of this greater tabernacle, this vast cosmos, with its myriads of parts and
complications, proves it to be no strange jumbling of chance, no incoherent
freak of fortuity, but the work of one intelligent Mind having one glorious
object in view. (Hugh Macmillan, LL. D.)
The unity of God
1. Here religion and philosophy are in accord. The saints and the
scientists alike maintain the unity of God. Authority and reason go thus far
together. God must be one; cannot be other than one.
2. The revelation of God is of necessity progressive. All education
is progressive, because all knowledge is conditioned by the mind of him who
knows. You may take a whole ocean of water, but you can get only two pints of
it into a quart cup. The water is conditioned, limited, by the cup. Thus is
knowledge conditioned by the mind.
3. The highest truth which the mind can touch is truth about God. The
supreme knowledge is knowledge of God. But this, like all other knowledge, is
conditioned by the mind of him who knows. God changes not; but year by year in
the life of a man, and age by age in the life of the race, the conception of
God changes. It is like the ascent of a hill which overhangs a plain. The plain
does not change, does not get wider, mile by mile, as the beholder climbs. No,
the beholder changes. The higher he gets, the more he sees.
4. Thus religion grew out of belief in God as many, into belief in
God as one. Some see a trace of this old change out of the polytheistic into
the monotheistic idea of God in the fact that in the beginning of the Bible the
Hebrew name of God is plural, while the verb which is written with it is
singular. Men began to see that the gods of their imperfect creed were but
personifications of the attributes of the one God.
5. It was a hard lesson to learn. It is evident in the Old Testament
that faith in the unity of God won its way little by little. The best men held
it, but the people in general were slow to believe it. Even in the Psalms, God
is often spoken of as the greatest of the gods.
6. All religion, however imperfect and mistaken, is an endeavour
after a better knowledge of God. And as men grows they are able to know
more--to know more about everything, even about God. God is able to reveal
Himself more and more. At first, every tree is a god. Then there is a god of
the trees, and then of all the universe and of man included in it. God is known
as one.
7. We have not yet learned all the truth of God. We are not
universally sure, e.g., that God cares more for deeds than creeds. But
we have learned that God is one; we have abandoned polytheism.
8. We believe in God the Father, and we believe in God the Son, and
we believe in God the Holy, Ghost. But there is one God, and there is none
other. The word “person,” which the old creed-makers used to express these
different ideas of God, has given rise to endless confusion. With us a person
is an individual. But this word “person” comes into English out of Latin, and
in Latin was a blundering translation of a wiser word in Greek. It means
“distinction.” There is one God in threefold distinction. The Divine nature is
complex as our human nature is. And there are three ways of thinking about God,
corresponding to the being of God, ways which are not only true but essential,
so that if we are to think of God aright we must think of Him in all these
three ways.
9. Thus the Christian doctrine, taking that old truth that “God is
one,” and holding to it, draws new truth out of it. It is an advance upon
monotheism, as that was upon polytheism. It meets the longings of the heart. It
answers the eager questions of the race. (George Hodges, D. D.)
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.
The love of God
1. This verse is the meeting point of the law and the Gospel. Very
wonderful it must have sounded in the ear of Israel. To be bidden, not only or
chiefly to fear Him as the God revealed in lightnings and thunderings and
voices on Sinai; not only or chiefly to keep themselves from provoking a wrath
so awful, a jealousy so sensitive and so terrible; but to love Him, to love Him
as the whole of duty, to love Him notwithstanding--nay, partly because of--His
incommunicable glory!
2. The words are very strong, very touching: “With all thine heart.”
Let the affections, even the emotions, find in God their object and
satisfaction. “And with all thy soul.” Let the immortal thing within thee, let
the everlasting being which thou art, come out towards this Lord God, and
devote itself, in the central life, in the moving will, to Him as its Creator,
Owner, Father, Saviour, Comforter. “And with all thy might.” Not with the
feeblest, but with the mightiest of all thy faculties of thought and speech and
action--with the mightiest of all, at their mightiest, in a devotion of which
man is the priest and self the sacrifice.
3. Two things lie on the surface of the text.
4. And now reflect upon the mighty consequences and inferences of this
demand. See how it deals with life--the life of men, the life of nations--in so
far as it is received.
The great commandment of Moses and Christ recommended to Jews and
Christians
I. I am to
consider the nature and excellency of that temper of mind which you are to
exercise towards the Jehovah of Israel. If you are men and have the feelings of
humanity, I need not explain to you what love is. Without it, the names of
father, son, brother, friend, and every charity of life, are vanity and a lie.
But, though I refer to your hearts for the feeling of the temper we speak of,
yet remember that as it varies in purity, in strength, and tenderness towards
our connections on earth, so will it differ much more when exercised towards
the Lord our God. The love of God is founded in just apprehensions of His
character. The very idea of God should contain in it all possible perfection in
an infinite degree. There is no weakness in Him that thou shouldest despise Him
and cast off His fear. He hath not burdened thee; that thou shouldest be weary
of His service. He hath not wronged thee, that thou shouldest hate Him and
break His commandments. The love of God is also founded on a due sense of His
mercies. He hath given us life, and breath, and all things; and in Him we live,
move, and have our being. He is perfectly good in Himself, and perfectly good
to us, and to love Him with all our heart and to serve Him with all our
strength is our rational service. If we do not, the very stones will cry out
against our ingratitude, and evil, as well as good, angels will condemn us when
we are judged. Consider how honourable this temper of love is to the blessed
God, and to His happy worshippers. It exhibits Him in the lovely and
confidential character of the Universal Father, the Father of mercies, and the
God of all hope and of all consolations. It sheds the oil of gladness on all
the springs and wheels of duty, and makes His service perfect freedom. For love
is liberal in its gifts, unwearied in its services; it casts out tormenting fear,
and indulges no suspicion in the unlimited confidence it reposes on the God of
our salvation. Finally, it is a principle of universal obedience to all God’s
commandments, to all men, at all times, and under all circumstances. Love is
the ruling affection of every soul of man, and, though false to every other
principle, to this he will be ever true, as the needle to the pole. For where a
man’s treasure is, there will his heart be also; and if the love of God exist
in the soul, it will regulate and subject to itself every other principle. If
we reject this Divine principle, how shall we supply its place? Faith itself is
unprofitable but as it worketh by love. Obedience is a lifeless form of
godliness but as it is animated by the spirit of love.
II. The measure of
that temper you are commanded to exercise towards the Lord your God: “Thou
shalt love Him with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
strength.” The love so strongly marked is of no ordinary character. It is pure,
grateful, strong, affectionate, fervent, and reverent; specifically different
from all earthly affection. As the light of the sun darkeneth all other lights,
so doth the love of God absorb other principles. It requires us cheerfully to
recognise Jehovah as Father of our spirits, the God of our lives, and the Lord
of our possessions: as entitled to dispose of us, of our wives, our children,
our fortunes, our time, our talents, our reputation, and our influence, when
and how He pleaseth. Nor is this requisition unreasonable or unrighteous. For
we, and all we have, are His. He loveth us better than we love ourselves. He is
wise, under every circumstance of life and death, to know what is best for us,
in this world and in the next; and His power is able to effect all His goodness
shall prompt and His wisdom shall contrive. In the absolute surrender of
ourselves to Him lieth all our honour, our happiness, and our security. What
greater honour, then, O ye Jews, can Christians show to the venerable Moses
than to make this precept regulate every secret of their souls? This may appear
wonderful, and it would be so, indeed, were Christianity opposed to Judaism.
But, in truth, they are one and the same religion, as the light of the dawn is
the same as the light of the day, as the rough outline is the same as the
living picture, finished by the same great Master. It was to establish the law
of love, as well as to atone for sin and to procure the Holy Spirit, that our
Immanuel sealed His love to God and man on the altar of His Cross. We love Him
because He so loved us, and His love constraineth us to love His enemies and
ours.
III. Apply the
subject to Jews and Christians. And, first, I address myself to both. Do you
love Jehovah your God with all your heart? That is, better than you love the
world and all that is in it? Better than life itself? if any man think he love
God, how doth he prove the fact? “If ye love Me, saith God, “keep My
commandments.” “This is the love of God,” saith the true worshipper, “that we
keep His commandments, and His commandments are not grievous.” Ye Jews, ye must
be circumcised with the circumcision not made with hands, not of the letter,
but of the Spirit; whose praise is not of man, but of God. Ye Christians, ye
must be born again, not of water, but of the Spirit. Hearken, O men of Israel.
Had your fathers believed Moses, they would have believed Christ. Had they
loved God, they would have received Him who came forth from God. (Melville
Home.)
On love to God
In this publication of His law God clothes Himself with this
title, “The Lord thy God”--
I. With reference
to His gracious, external interpositions in behalf of that people.
II. To intimate the
gracious tendency of this seemingly severe revelation.
III. And its
connection with the offer and communication of God according to the method of
His grace. But there are two inferences falsely made from this preface which
ought to be avoided.
1. That an assured apprehension of God, as ours, is the beginning of
religion, and that this must go before all beneficial knowledge of God and His
law, whereas there must be a spiritual knowledge of God and His law in the
order of nature necessarily antecedent to any such apprehension of God,
otherwise we have no just ideas of Him whom we apprehend (but embrace an idol),
nor of the footing on which we do apprehend Him.
2. That, after reconciliation with God, a man hath nothing to do with
His law.
To overturn such fancies it is to be observed that the doctrine of
the law of God is to be learned--
1. In subserviency to the glorification of God by the exercise of
justifying faith in Jesus Christ.
2. For the government of one who is justified in walking towards
heaven. It is chiefly in order to the first of those uses, to awaken men to
flee to Christ, that I mean to speak at this time from the text. There are no
Christians on earth exempted from the necessity of exciting themselves to faith
in this way, unless there are Christians whose faith needs not to be increased
or exercised.
I. I am to open
the sources of the obligation of the law of God as they are exhibited in this
expression of the text, “The Lord our God is one Lord.” Two preliminary
observations may here be mentioned.
1. It appears from the text that the chief source of the obligation
of the law of God must be searched for and found in God Himself.
2. It appears from the text that the sources of the obligation of the
law of God are to be found in those excellences of the Godhead which are most
peculiar and distinguishing. Here it is to be considered that the excellences
of God are justly distinguished into those which are called communicable and
those which are called incommunicable. With respect to both these sorts of
excellency He is incomparable. As to those which are called communicable
excellences, because some degree of something like them is imparted to other
beings, God is distinguished from His creatures by the degree and manner in
which He possesses these excellences. But the most distinguishing quality of
the manner in which God possesses communicable perfections is their being
united with His incommunicable glories. It is by these last that God is chiefly
distinguished from other beings, that He hath an immense fulness of such kinds
of beauty as in no degree can be found in any created being.
3. It may also be inferred from the text that the obligation of the
law of God is primarily derived from those excellences of the Godhead which
chiefly constitute the harmony of all Divine excellences, or the bond of union,
in consequence of which all the fulness of the Godhead is one whole. “The Lord
our God is one Lord”--that is, in the midst of the immense variety of
excellences which are found in Him, there is a marvellous unity and harmony, so
that there is no division, jarring, or separation, but one glorious whole, in
which all things are compacted.
4. The source of the obligation of the law of God lies in that one
essence which is equally and fully possessed by each of the three persons in
the Godhead.
Application:
1. Beware of despising these truths as abstruse and unintelligible.
2. I call and invite every one of you to employ Jesus Christ, the
Prophet of the Church, to instruct you savingly in these things.
3. Let those who have been called into the light attend to these
exhortations (1 Peter 2:1-3; 1 Peter 2:8-9; 1 Peter 2:11-12).
II. To give a
general explication of the nature of that love to God which is demanded and
prescribed in His law. Here the following preliminary remarks are to be
attended to:
1. That we are now to speak of the love of God not as it is found in
saints on earth, mingled with contrary corruptions, but as it is prescribed in
the law of God, and as it is found in such creatures as are perfectly conformed
thereto.
2. It is difficult for us to attain just and lively conceptions of
the nature of this perfect love, because we never had any experience of it--no,
not for a moment.
3. Such a knowledge of it is attainable as is sufficient to answer
the purposes of the glory of God which are intended to be answered in this
life, such as to excite high thoughts of the glorious excellences of God as
appearing in His law, to discover the preciousness of the righteousness of
Christ, the imperfection of our present attainments, the necessity of progress,
and the amiableness of that state of perfection which is the “prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
4. Our thoughts may be assisted and elevated on this subject by
considering the highest attainments of Christians on earth, and adding
perfection of purity and continuance thereto.
I shall now apply myself to the direct consideration of this most
fundamental subject, namely, “What is that perfection of love to God prescribed
in His holy law?”
1. What are those views and character of God in which He is
contemplated while perfect love is exercised?
2. The different motions of the faculties of the soul in bringing
forth the actings of this love may be represented in this order.
3. In the course of these motions of the faculties of a perfect
creature, the various acts of love in their distinct kinds and in their
connection with each other are brought forth.
Application:
1. Give glory to God, the author of this law.
2. See the greatness of our fall from a state of perfect,
uninterrupted love to a state of enmity.
3. See the preciousness of that redemption by which men are restored
to a state of perfect, endless conformity to this spotless standard. (John
Love, D. D.)
Supreme love of God
I. The command.
1. None will dispute for a moment God’s right to the affection of all
His creatures. Surrounded as we are by the amazing proofs of God’s love to us,
hourly as we are the recipients of His bounty, it is to the lasting disgrace of
every member of the human family that such a command as this should be needed.
2. But will the mere command produce love? No, it will not. The
severest injunctions, the most formidable threatenings, are insufficient to
produce love in the human heart. The penalties attached to disobedience may
excite a slavish fear, but they cannot excite love. A child does not love its
parent because commanded to do so; it may obey that parent by the outward act,
but to excite love something more is needed than a command. And that something
more is found in the affectionate kindness and watchful care of the parent, and
this it is which, shown in a thousand varied ways, calls forth the love and affection
of the child. If I want my neighbour to love me, it is not by merely expressing
the wish for it that I shall gain his affection, but by embracing every
opportunity for the exercise of benevolent feelings towards him. And thus it is
that the love of God will be awakened within the heart of any one of us. And
therefore, in exhorting you to obey the command, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God,” we should set before you those dealings of God towards you which are
calculated to kindle in your breasts the emotions of love.
II. Its extent.
What is the degree of love which God demands?
1. It must be supreme--with all the heart. You are to love God not as
you love your friends, your relatives, your children, but above, all things. He
will allow no rival to share with Him the throne of your heart’s affections.
Not even any lawful affection must be set above that which we give to God, much
less the love of sin or of the world.
2. It must be an intelligent love--with all the soul or
understanding. By this you will have a clear perception of why you love God,
and of the many motives which should excite you to give Him your heart’s
undivided affections. The thoughtful Christian will see the reasonableness of
the adoration he pays to God.
3. It must be also a strong and fervent love--“with all thy might”--a
love deeply rooted in the heart, and so closely intertwined with all your
thoughts and feelings as to defy the power either of sin or Satan to tear it
from your breast. (R. Allen, M. A.)
On God’s love of being loved
One of the loudest outcries of present-day scepticism against
Christianity is that it is based on an anthropomorphic or too manlike view of
the nature of God, which is said to be degrading to the Unseen Everlasting
Cause and to be contrary to scientific fact. Now clearly there must be some
limits to thinking of God as “such an one as ourselves.” When men have, for
example, represented the Divine nature by fabricating and consecrating an image
of the human body, as in the case of the whole idolatrous world; or when they
have conceived of the Divine character in the moral likeness of wicked men, as
in the case of nearly all the gods and goddesses of paganism, there is reason
in the outcry of these sceptics and in the demand for loftier and purer ideas
of the Deity. But where objection is made to the formation of ideas of the
Divine nature based on any similarity to man’s nature, or to ideas of the
Divine providence based on our notions of great and small--as if so small a
world as this and so minute a creature as man were unworthy of the special
attention of an Infinite Being--then the objection is in fact founded on
another kind of anthropomorphism or too much manlikeness--an error which is at
least as vulgar as that which it condemns, and then the basis of so-called
scientific unbelief is open to the same accusation which it brings against the
Christian faith. For, of all indefensible notions, this must be the most
indefeasible--that the Infinite Being measures the value of objects in
proportion to their size. Does any man really believe that if there be a God at
all who is an intelligent Being, even if He were only as intelligent as a man
may be, that He values things elderly according to their cubic contents, so
that what you call a “little” world has no chance of the notice of the
Everlasting Mind? Everything that we know here of mind leads us to conclude
very differently. Men do not value each other chiefly according to their size,
or anything else, when they are educated into some right perception. The noblest
nations have not inhabited the largest territories. It is not the largest
buildings, the largest works of art which are of the highest value. We may be
certain, then, to begin with, that suns and planets do not rank in the Creative
Mind according to their cubic contents. He who made man in His own image of
reason and love cannot possibly account man unworthy of notice because of his
littleness. Nothing is too great for the Mightiest One, and nothing is too
minute for His care. But now comes for consideration the deeper question of the
nature of God, as capable or incapable of real feeling towards man--as caring
or not caring for our affection--so as to be fitted to win our love to Him, a
personal and everlasting love. Nothing is clearer in the Sacred Writings than
that they all alike represent God not only as essential Love, but as asking for
our love, and delighting in it, as the love of His children, to whom He has
given all things. God’s love of being loved is, perhaps, the foremost quality
of the Divine Nature as described to us in revelation. Consider how strange it
would be if God were not such a Being as this--if the Creator of all sensitive
souls were the One Spirit devoid of real sense and feeling. Oh, surely this
great world of sense and feeling was born out of a nature all sentient and
vital, and rose like some form of beauty from a wondrous ocean of Deity, full
of the life whence she sprang. Consider, too, what an effort seems to be made
in the physical world to convey to our minds on all sides the impression that
there is real and personal feeling towards man in the Most High. Does not every
living form in plant or flower, every delicious landscape, or breadth of ocean,
lighted with the radiance of the morning or the evening sun, breathe forth to
us the feeling of some unseen, but not far distant, and Omnipotent Artist, who
loves His children? But it is true that our sense affords no sufficing
revelation to the soul. She cries out still for the Living God. We require a
richer, fuller, nearer communion, and we have it in Christ. In Jesus Christ the
Infinite is revealed, not only as a Person, but as one “full of compassion.”
And now we are more ready for the reception of the truth that, if “God is
Love,” it follows that next to the satisfaction of His own Almighty love in
blessing His creatures, and saving the lost by His own sacrifice, that Nature
must seek for its sweetest delights in the love of His children. And this is
the revealed but too often forgotten fact that God loves to be loved . . . When,
then, of old, God spake by Moses, “Thou shalt love, etc., this was not the
terrible and menacing demand of a Potentate requiring love as a debt, and
threatening its non-payment with perdition. But it was Eternal Love crying out
for the love of a world of revolted souls, and determined not to rest until it
conquered the rebellion by the sacrifice of itself. But what that union of
souls with God will be in eternity, in the embrace which no created power can
unlock, and which the Uncreated never will, no earthly tongue can tell. The
infant spirit will have grown up to its adult and angelic strength and the
faint answering smile of its earlier days shall have passed into the effulgent
sunlight of an intelligent and immortal passion--a love forever strengthening
in the experience of the Love Divine, and thrilling the Infinite Nature with
the gladness that the saved alone can give it, because they alone love with the
ardour kindled by redeeming grace. (E. White.)
God must be loved
A man is not a Christian because he is socially loving and kind
any more than a person is a good son because he loves his brothers and sisters,
leaving out his father and mother. Men would not wish to be treated by their
children as they propose to treat their Father in heaven. They would not be
satisfied to have their sons and daughters act on the principle that to love
each other is the sufficient and only way by which children ought to love their
parents. I should not like to hear my children say, “To be kind to each other,
and not care for father and mother, is the way for us to be good children
towards them.” (H. W. Beecher.)
The service of the heart
All men know, or think they know, what love is. The poets have
sung its praises, and the philosophers have analysed it, and the moralists have
assigned it a niche, under one name or another, among their virtues; but all
have alike regarded it as too irrational, too capricious, too transitory a
thing to be an adequate foundation for morality. Christianity alone has made
love at once the guide and goal of life, the condition of perfection, the
fulfilling of the law. The principle of love is universal, without being
abstract, it is a fact, a plain, obvious, palpable reality, which all men agree
to recognise, and to recognise as ultimate and fundamental. Its analogues are
broadcast throughout the universe, from the laws of gravitation upwards. It is
universal, it is real, and further, it is vital. It is its own dynamic. It
lives and grows and expands and fructifies, and sows its fiery contagion
broadcast with an importunate, an imperious necessity of its own inner nature,
which admits of neither help nor hindrance from without. The command,
therefore, to love appeals to an instinct which is co-extensive with humanity,
which is real beyond touch of controversy, and endowed with a vital force that
is exclusively its own. But the very instinctive nature of love often misleads
men into many other fallacies, owes its plausibility to its containing half a
truth. Love is indeed irresistible; many waters cannot quench it. But like
other irresistible forces--the lapse of a river, the electric energy, the
current of a flame--it can be guided, and by guidance be controlled. “Learning
to love” is too deep-set a phrase in our language ever to have arisen, if the
act which it describes were after all impossible. And love, like the instincts
in a being that is rational, not only can be, but must be, directed by the
will, as the sole condition of attaining its true end. To assist us to that end
let us look at love as we find it among men. In the first place, love is a
relation existing between persons. The will need not have for its field of
exercise more than a law, nor the mind more than an abstract object; but it is
only in a derived and secondary sense that we can speak of loving anything
other than a person. We may love him for the possession of this or that
attribute of loveliness; but it is the self behind the attributes--the
person--that we love. And then, though we cannot analyse this mysterious element
of our being, we may see one thing about it clearly, that it moves between two
poles--desire and sacrifice. The family, the earliest home of love, shows both
these elements in their simplest form. The love of the child for the parent is
one of simple, unreflective, self-referent desire; that of the parent for the
child one of increasingly unselfish sacrifice. Both factors, of course,
coexist, but in each case one predominates, and gives character and colour to
the whole. To love is to be lifted or degraded by our love, in proportion as we
repudiate or welcome the law of sacrifice. The forms which that sacrifice may
take are infinite, but the fact of it needs no proof. Love, then, as we know
it, is a relation between persons, founded on desire, tending to self-sacrifice,
needing for its true development the guidance of the will. And further, it is
never stationary. It withers unless it grows, and in growing gathers purity,
intensity, perfection. This is the faculty which we are bidden to enlist wholly
in God’s service: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.” How is
this to be done? Different forms of personal beauty, different graces of mind
or character, wake the love of different men. But once let a man be confronted
by the congenial character, the appropriate grace, and nature does the rest. So
with the love of God. He attracts us through many avenues. Our part is to
direct our mental vision by the will; and then
“We
needs must love the highest when we see it.”
But it is in this direction of our vision that we fail. Our eyes
are feeble, and we cannot bear the light. “He left not Himself without
witness,” but we interpret it amiss. The simplest of all witnesses is our
natural desire for God. “All men yearn for the gods,” said the Greek. “My soul is
athirst for God,” said the Hebrew poet. In spite of such utterances, a century
ago philosophers could still maintain that religion was artificial. But in the
light of our larger knowledge this is no longer possible. For however far we
look back over India, or Babylon, or Egypt, or abroad over the savage inmates
of the islands of the sea, the religious instinct is there; not merely a fear,
or a sense of infinitude, but a yearning, a desire, the beginning of a love. So
universally is it found to be part of our primitive endowments, that zoologists
have proposed, for their special purpose, to classify mankind as “the religious
animal.” This desire is the foundation of all our love. Our capacity for loving
God and our capacity for loving man are one and the self-same thing. Or to put
it otherwise, we have an infinite capacity for loving, which points to an
Infinite Being as its only final object. Limit your love exclusively to any
finite thing or person, and what is the result, and why? Sooner or later it will
begin to flag; it will fail; it will become disgust; and that because you have
thought to limit what never can be limited. We are all of us endowed, then,
with an emotional capacity, whose final cause is the love of God. And every
phase of human emotion should be, and may be if we will, a stage in the
training of this faculty for its destined end and goal. There is, for instance,
the love of nature--of the beauty of earth and sea and sky, and of all the
various life with which they teem. Contemplate nature, and its loveliness will
strengthen and develop your emotions, but in doing so will point them on, with
irresistible suggestiveness, to One lovelier than itself. And then there is the
love of art. Art selects and rearranges nature, with a view to bring its
lessons more intimately home. Our duty is to use all art that will kindle our
emotions nobly, but sternly to forego, oven in what may seem the neutral region
of amusement, all that is insidiously poisonous to us, and yet may innocently
brighten and help the lives of other men. This fact needs insisting on; for
artistic influences elude observation, and we are hardly aware of how
profoundly painting, music, drama, poetry, and the immense literature of
fiction mould and modify for good or evil every fibre of our modern life.
Again, there is the love of humanity, the most universal of all schools of
love. In the early dawn of affection we idealise our dear ones with an
instinctive insight that is in truth prophetic of what they may one day be. But
hero and now they are finite beings--weak, sinful, incomplete. Differences of
taste and temper, inadequacies, imperfections, cannot but disclose themselves,
as time goes on. But if our love he true, we shall learn to efface our
selfishness in helping other lives to overcome their insufficiencies; and every
sacrifice this costs us will deepen our power of sympathy; we shall feel not
only for the grace and beauty, but for all the pathetic frailty of the
struggling human soul; and as we learn, by loving more profoundly, the
limitless nature of our love, we shall see that its only adequate satisfaction
is in God--“Nor man nor nature satisfies whom God alone created.” There is one
more school of affection; but we can only learn its lessons if we come to it,
at least in sonic degree, prepared; for it is the school of bereavement. To the
idolater of nature, or of art, or of humanity, we know what the shattering of
his idol means--hopeless, helpless, impotent despair; weeping and wailing and
gnashing of teeth. And yet it was not meant to be, it never need be, so. If
once we have risen to realise that what we love on earth can have derived its
loveliness from no other source than God, bereavement, however bitter, is full
of earnest meaning. Our concern is with the fact that bereavement reveals to us
new and mysterious vistas in the life of love. All along we have seen that
sacrifice of one kind or other must be present. But bereavement shows us how
intensely real that sacrifice must be. All else seems to vanish before it; and
the very name of love acquires an awfulness which makes its light misuse seem
blasphemy. Such are the common means by which we may learn to fulfil the
commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.” The genius
can dispense with the ordinary methods of education; and so too can the saint;
but for most of us it is otherwise. The things that lie around us, the stuff
that life is made of, the field of our daily exercise--nature, art, society,
marriage, friendship, partings, death--these are the appointed channels that
should guide the heart to God. Our mistake is to think such things indifferent,
as if there were a neutral region, neither good nor ill. Nothing is
indifferent, except to our blindness. Every object of human interest lifts us
up or drags us down. (J. R. Illingworth, M. A.)
Love of God the best basis of life
There was once a great painter who had three scholars. They were
all anxious to learn the secret of their master’s power, and become great
painters themselves. The first spent all his time in the studio at his easel.
He copied incessantly the great master’s pictures, studying deeply into their
beauties, and trying to imitate them with his own brush. He was up early, and
was the last to leave the workroom at night. He would have nothing to do with
the master himself, attended none of his lectures, never went to him with any
question, nor spent any time in talking with him. He wanted to be his own
director, and make his own discoveries, and be self-made. This scholar lived
and died without notice, and never expressed on canvas a single one of the
noble characteristics of his master. The second scholar, on the contrary, spent
little time in the studio, scarcely soiled his palette, or wore out a brush. He
attended every lecture on art, was constantly asking questions about the
theories of perspective, of colouring, of light and shade, of grouping figures,
and all that, and was a zealous student of hooks. But for all his study he died
without producing a single worthy picture to help and delight mankind and
perpetuate his master’s glory. The third was as zealous in the practical work
of the artist as the first, and as zealous in the theoretical as the second,
but he did one thing which they never thought of doing: he came to know and
love the master. They were much together, the young artist and the older one,
and they had long talks about all phases of an artist’s life and work. So close
and continual, in fact, was their communion that they grew to talk alike, and
think alike, and even, some said, to look alike. And it was not long before
they began to paint alike, and on the canvas of the younger glowed the same
beauty and the same majesty that shone from the canvas of his master. The
parable is not hard to interpret. If the Christian has been seeking to know
God, and express God’s beauty on the canvas of his human life, it has been in
one of these three ways. If it has been by the way of practical living merely,
by attempting with one’s own unaided wisdom and power to be kind and helpful and
influential, the attempt has failed. If it has been by the way of theory
merely, if by searching of books alone the Christian has sought to find out
God, he has failed. Our search for a noble and inspiring and fruitful basis of
life will succeed only as, without by any means neglecting good deeds or study,
we seek with all the might of the spirit God has given us for communion,
personal love and communion, with the Spirit who made our spirits, until, in
Jesus’ words, we are one with Christ, even as He is one with the Father.
How to begin to love God
It will not be so difficult for you to love God if you will only
begin by loving goodness, which is God’s likeness, and the inspiration of God’s
Holy Spirit. For you will be like a man who has long admired a beautiful
picture of someone whom he does not know, and at last meets the person for whom
the picture was meant--and, behold, the living face is a thousand times more
fair and noble than the painted one. You will be like a child which has been
brought up from its birth in a room into which the sun never shone, and then
goes out for the first time, and sees the sun in all his splendour bathing the
earth with glory. If that child has loved to watch the dim, narrow rays of
light which shone into his dark room, what will he not feel at the sight of
that sun from which all those rays had come! Just so will they feel who, having
loved goodness for its own sake, and loved their neighbours for the sake of
what little goodness is in them, have their eyes opened at last to see all
goodness, without flaw or failing, bound or end, in the character of God, which
He has shown forth in Jesus Christ our Lord, who is the likeness of His
Father’s glory, and the express image of His Person, to whom be glory and
honour forever.
Our obligation to love God
If a great potentate did make subject unto thee his whole kingdom
and all his dominions, nobles, and strong, powerful men, nay, all his subjects,
and did command them to guard, defend, preserve, to clothe, cure, and feed
thee, and to take care that thou shouldest want nothing at all, wouldst thou
not love him and account him to be a loving, bountiful lord? How, then,
oughtest thou to love the Lord thy God, who hath kept nothing back for Himself,
but appointed to thy service all that is in heaven, and from heaven, and all
that is upon earth, or anywhere? For He wants no creature for Himself, and hath
excepted nothing from thy service, neither in all the hosts of holy angels, nor
in any of His creatures under the stars. If we will, they are ready to serve
us; nay, hell itself must serve us, by bringing upon us fear and terror, that
we may not sin. (John Arndt.)
Why we ought to love God
1. We ought to love God. It is our duty to love God. We are commanded
to love God. The Old Testament and the New Testament unite in emphasising that.
It is not likely, however, that this text ever persuaded anybody into loving
God. Love laughs at injunctions, pays no heed to duty, absolutely cannot be
commanded. Obedience can be got that way, but love--never! It is of the very
nature and essence of love that it must grow in a willing heart. Love is the
manifestation of an untrammelled choice.
2. It may be that God set temptation within the reach of man, that He
might thus make it possible for us really to love Him. The test of love is
preference. Love comes out into the light, and is discovered when there is a
choice to be made between two, or for or against. The best way in the whole
world for a man to show his love for God is to say “no” to the devil, and to
stand up on the side of God. But we must not do that because we are commanded
to do it, because we are afraid not to do it, but because we want to do it, if
there is to be any real love in it.
3. The purpose of this command is not to establish obedience, but to
proclaim an ideal. The spirit of it is not that we must love God because we
must, but that God wants us to love Him. “We love Him because He first loved
us.”
4. Christ is the only authoritative teacher of the love of God.
Love for God a real motive power
It is said that one of the greatest statesmen that we have ever
had, having gone to hear an evangelical preacher, was heard growling as he left
the church, “Why, the man said that we were to love God,” evidently thinking
that the very height of unreasonableness. And when Wilberforce attacked the
fashion of religion in the beginning of the nineteenth century, this was the
point on which he fixed--that not only was God not loved, but people did not
even think that to love God was reasonable. Going to work philosophically, he
demonstrated, first, that what he called passion--meaning love--is the
strongest force ill human affairs; and secondly, that religion requires exactly
such a stimulus, because of the difficulties that it has to overcome. We are now
living in a far warmer atmosphere everywhere than that in which Wilberforce was
living, and we have no difficulty in acknowledging the power of emotion, or
passion, or love in any department of human affairs. In politics, it is
enthusiasm that carries the statesman through. In war, it is enthusiasm that
makes heroes. It was the passion of friendship that made Jonathan able to lay a
kingdom at David’s feet. Love between the sexes is the grand mainspring of
human refinement and industry, and affection in the home sweetens adversity,
and enables even the weak to bear up under intolerable burdens. But, my people,
there is one kind of love for which the human heart was made which is deeper
and more influential than any other kind, and that is the love of God. I daresay
that you and I would claim that we had tasted the other kinds of love, perhaps
all the kinds, and we know well their power of developing energy and rewarding
endeavour, and sweetening what is bitter in life; but let me press this
question home on you--do we know the highest love of all? has this blossom
burst yet on the tree of our being--love to our Father in heaven? It is to be
what we call an absorbing, an overmastering love, pervading the whole being,
and setting every power within us in motion. If the love of God be in us
anything like the absorbing and over-mastering passion that Jesus means it to
be it will lead us also to love everything belonging to God--His day, His
house, His people, His call, and so forth; and wherever there is any deep love
for the Sabbath, or the Bible, you will find when you come to the bottom of it,
that it is due to love of God Himself, wakened in the heart in the way that I
have indicated. But there is especially one part of worship) which Jesus
connects very closely with the love of God, and that is prayer. You know those
who love must meet: The oftener they meet the higher rises the flame of love,
and prayer is the trysting place between God and the soul. (J. Stalker, D.
D.)
These words . . . shall be in thine heart.
The Scriptures to be laid to heart, and diligently taught
I. The words
concerning which the command is given, their nature and importance.
1. Their supernatural origin.
2. The extraordinary manner in which God has sanctioned them, in the
signs and wonders performed by those who spoke or wrote the things declared in
them.
3. The evident excellence and useful tendency of their contents, “to
make us wise unto salvation.”
II. The command
given concerning these things.
1. We must not be indifferent, but deeply impressed with, and
concerned about, these things; that is, about Divine revelation in general, its
truth, its importance, its contents; and about that religion set forth in this
passage, as above explained, consisting in the knowledge and love of God.
2. We must see that this is religion, and this alone; and that if we
rest short of this, we rest short of religion.
3. We must be concerned to have proper views of, to experience, and
to practise this religion.
III. The obligations
which lie upon us to obey this command.
1. Gratitude; for this book lays us under great, yea, infinite
obligations. Consider what would have been our condition had we not had the
Bible--how ignorant, sinful, and miserable!
2. The express command of God, who gave us the Scriptures, lays us
under an indispensable obligation: He is our Creator, Benefactor, Redeemer,
Lawgiver, and Judge. He solemnly enjoins us to have these things in our hearts.
3. The example of our Lord Jesus Christ and His apostles, etc., who
all made these things the subjects of their chief study and discourse from day
to day.
4. Compassion for and love to our children--mortal and immortal
beings; to whom, under God, we have given being, and who are committed to our
care by Him, the great proprietor and governor of all, who says, “All souls are
Mine.”
5. Our own interest should influence us; and that for time and for
eternity. For if we have not God’s Word in general, and the knowledge and love
of God in particular, in our own hearts, we shall be miserable here, and perish
everlastingly hereafter. And if we do not inculcate these things on our
children and dependants, and those on whom we might inculcate them, and they
perish, God will require “their blood,” their souls, at our hands. (J.
Benson.)
An ever-present religion
I. Religion claims
to take a foremost place in human affairs. The law is to be everywhere set
forth clear and conspicuous. As the ancient Egyptians are said to have worn
jewels on the forehead and arm inscribed with sacred words and amulets, and as
the Mohammedans now paint over their doors sentences from the Koran, such as
“God is the Creator,” “God is one, and Mahomet is His prophet,” so the Jews carried
on their bodies, and wrote upon their houses, some of the most important
passages of their law. Such a practice was liable to the abuse of ostentatious
vanity. But are not we in danger of falling into the opposite fault through the
intense reserve in which we hide our religious life? When we do recognise the
right of religion to take its true place in the world, what shall we dare to
set before it? This right is based on two grounds:
1. The essential value of the subjects treated by it.
2. The authority which it carries. Our religion must not be a mere
matter of taste, of sentiment, and of philosophic speculation. It must be
regarded as obedience to the will of our supreme Lord and Master.
II. Religion needs
to be constantly impressed upon us. We do not have to set up maxims about our
streets urging us to make haste to get rich, nor in our houses to prevent us
from forgetting our daily meals. But the spiritual appetite is less keen, and
requires to be whetted by constant teaching, by “line upon line” and “precept
upon precept.”
III. Religion must
begin in the heart. It is impossible to have religion in the outer life unless
it grow from within. Nothing is easier than to put on the show of it. Anyone
can hang texts about his house. But to infuse real religion into the home is
impossible except it grow out of inward spiritual devotion. The fruit cannot
grow without a root. To be in the heart the Divine Word must be--
IV. Religion should
grow out into every branch of life. Though it begins in the heart it cannot
contain itself there forever; if the fountain is ever bubbling up it must issue
in the flowing stream. When there is life in the root it is impossible to
prevent the tree from breaking out into leaves, sooner or later. Like the
sunlight pervading hill and plain, like the fragrant odour of incense
penetrating to the inmost recess of the sanctuary, true religion must spread
itself abroad, and reach down to the minutest details of life. (W. F.
Adeney, M. A.)
Words in the heart
1. The style of the Book of Deuteronomy is unlike that of the
preceding books of the Pentateuch, and this may be accounted for by the fact
that the contents are very different. The language of Deuteronomy is in the
main hortatory.
2. The lawgiver is seen in this book to be full of zeal for God, and
of earnest desire for the well-being of the people. His exhortations to
obedience have been truly said to be “deeply fraught with holy and patriotic
feeling.”
3. There is something of a valedictory tone throughout these pages.
The forty years’ wanderings are almost concluded, and the death of Moses is
near at hand. Moses, giving injunctions to Israel before his departure, is
typical to the final commands of Jesus Christ before His Ascension.
I. The words were
to be in their heart.
1. What words? The commandments of God, as summed up in the verses
which precede the text. Having first asserted the truth that “God is a Spirit,”
for the people were reminded, when the Lord spake unto them out of the midst of
the fire, that they “heard a voice, but saw no similitude” (Deuteronomy 4:12); so now, the Unity of
the Godhead is clearly revealed: “The Lord our God is one Lord.” Further, Moses
drew from the doctrine of the Divine Unity that God must be the sole Object of
Israel’s love and obedience--of a devotion which claimed “all” the heart and
soul and might for its rightful exercise.
2. These words were to be in their heart, or “upon” their heart, as
something written and engraven upon the memory. This faculty was to be the
treasure house of the Law of God. Constantly in Holy Scripture exhortations and
institutions had for their object the prevention of forgetfulness of the Divine
Law and Divine mercies: “My son, forget not My Law,” (Proverbs 3:1). The Sabbath was a reminder
of Creation; the Passover, of the deliverance from Egypt; and twelve stones
were set up for a memorial of the passing over Jordan. To remember the presence
of God and the commandments of God and His goodness was a stringent duty, for
these were to form the guide of life and the stimulus of devotion.
3. To forget God was a sin in itself. “Beware lest thou forget the
Lord,” the prophet continues, especially in days of affluence and prosperity in
Canaan. It was Moses’ reproach--almost his dying reproach: “Of the Rock that
begat thee, thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee” (Deuteronomy 32:18). And forgetfulness of
God leads to all sin.
II. “Thou shalt
teach them diligently unto thy children.”
1. There never was a time when this Divine command needed more to be
accentuated than at present. Secular education is only partial education; it
omits to train the moral and spiritual, the higher elements of our being. It
has been wisely said by a French statesman, “Strong, definite, religious
convictions constitute the real strength of any country.” He might have added,
“of any soul.”
2. Religious instruction of the young is necessary, because God
commanded it. That is a clear and definite ground to go upon, for all who
believe the Scriptures. Further, it stands to reason that if religion is to be
our guide in the midst of a sinful world, we want that guide for all ages.
Childhood as well as maturity belongs to God, and must be sanctified by God.
The image of the Child Christ, with the words, “Hear ye Him,” placed by Dean
Colet over the master’s chair in St. Paul’s Grammar School, was his way of
showing the importance of religious education, and of teaching children that
they should follow Christ and be made like unto Him, if they would become true
men and women.
3. Moreover, youth is the time when powers are fresh, and the truths
which God has revealed can be best taken in and assimilated. “Remember now thy
Creator in the days of thy youth” (Ecclesiastes 12:1). It is the time for
acquiring deep convictions and of forming habits (Proverbs 22:6).
4. Youth is an age when we are more liable to be led astray by
passion and the first taste of the world; and therefore the restraining and blessed
influences of religion are the more necessary.
III. Lessons.
1. To strive to remember the Divine commands and the presence of God.
2. “In the heart.” Not merely an intellectual action, as “learning by
heart,” though this is important; but by loving obedience to God, and devotion
to Him.
3. To teach religion to thy children. A ground for forcing the
importance of religious instruction in our schools, and that definite. The text
says, “these words.”
4. But further, a lesson for parents, upon whom the task devolves,
that in the home, as well as at the school, the children should be instructed
in the truths of Christianity, as the most momentous of parental duties. (Canon
Hutchings, M. A.)
The duties and privileges of pious parents
I. The duties of
believing parents.
1. Love to God is the first and great duty of every moral being.
Without this there can be good neither in the individual nor in his life and
actions.
2. The Word of God should be the object of constant and unremitting
study. This is a work for life.
3. The Word of God should dwell in the heart of the believer richly;
and at all times, and in all places, it ought to be the chief employment of his
mind. This leads to saving knowledge of God and of His will; and this, by the
teaching of the Holy Spirit, will make the believer “wise unto salvation,” and,
by the blessing of the Holy Spirit, will do so likewise unto his children.
4. We should make the Word of God known to others--such as our
friends, our associates, our neighbours, and that, too, as extensively as
possible. Thus the believer is kept constantly in communion with God by love,
and by the Scriptures; and thus he becomes more and more conformed to God’s
image every day.
5. But the believer should make known the Word of God to the world as
far as possible, by recommending it, and by circulating it, as far as possible,
amongst his necessitous fellow creatures.
II. The privileges
of pious persons.
1. They are great gainers themselves; for, by “loving the Lord their
God with all their heart,” they have the experience of heaven begun in their
soul: all is life, power, readiness, willingness, and ability to do the whole
will of God--and heaven just consists of this in perfection. This gives
satisfaction; this gives “joy and peace in believing.”
2. They are great gainers, because their whole intellectual powers
are satisfied with Divine influences: their understanding is satisfied with
knowledge of the Divine nature, the Divine perfections, the Divine persons, the
Divine will, the Divine promises, the Divine blessings, and the Divine word.
3. They are great gainers, because the whole man, soul and body, with
the members, powers, and faculties, are dedicated to God, and are employed in
His service and enjoyment. This is employment for the real Christian both in
this world and the next.
All Christians should daily be thus occupied, for this is
answering the end of their creation.
1. But another unspeakable privilege is comprehended in our text, and
that is, “These words which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart.”
This is to be conformed to the Divine image; this is to be like the Lord Jesus
Christ.
2. Another unspeakable privilege is comprehended in our text, and
that is, the instruction and edification of children.
3. This privilege is extensive, and may embrace not only the
children, but also the servants, and all others connected with the family, by
consanguinity, friendship, or otherwise.
4. The believer’s privilege extends to all men, as far as in his
power. Thus, the circle extends from the point--self--round the circumference
of the globe! How exalted the consideration of being instrumental in the hand
of God, of being so extensively useful in increasing the Church on earth, and
the Church in heaven--of profiting the souls and bodies of men--of promoting
the glory of God both in time and through eternity! (James Kidd, D. D.)
Familiarity with the Word of God
I. The words of
God are the treasure of the heart. Wherever they be, if they are not in the
heart they fail to answer the Divine intention. They are made for the heart,
and the heart is made for them. Let them be there first, and it will follow
that they will be everywhere else where they are needed.
II. The words of
God are the theme of the conversation. There is a picturesque completeness in
the enumeration of the occasions upon which these words are to be talked of--at
home, abroad, evening, and morning. Though His words in origin, they are our
words in use.
III. The words of
God are the ornament of the life. The Jews adorned their persons with texts of
Scripture, written upon papyrus or parchment, and enclosed within little boxes
or cylinders, which were worn upon the hand or the brow: an emblem of their
intimacy and familiarity with Divine truth, and to us a reminder that our life,
our politics, our literature, our art, should all be governed by the principles
and motives presented in revelation.
IV. The words of
God are the law of the home and household. Scraps of Scripture were suspended
by the threshold of the house surely to intimate that in a sense every
Israelite’s home was a temple sacred unto the Lord. Our households are
protected, and guided, and hallowed, when the Divine Word is their supreme
authority.
V. The words of
God are the inheritance of our children. Whatever parents fail to do for their
offspring, to bequeath to them, let them, above all things, hand down to them
the precious and sacred deposit of truth, teaching diligently unto their
children what they themselves have received from those who have gone before
them. (Homilist.)
The Bible not too good to be used
Some years ago I had occasion to send a parcel to an
honest, hardworking bricklayer who lived in the country. It contained, besides
sundry little presents for his wife and children, a trowel for his own use, made
in a superior way, with a mahogany handle; and often did I fancy that I saw him
hard at work with the trowel in his hand. Last summer, being in the
neighbourhood, I called at the cottage of the honest bricklayer, when, to my
surprise, I saw the trowel which I had sent him exhibited over the
chimney-piece as a curiosity. It had been considered too good to use, and
consequently had never been of the slightest use to its owner. (George
Mogridge.)
Thou shalt teach them
diligently unto thy children.
On the religious instruction of children
I. To mention some
of those things which parents are commanded to teach their children.
1. In the first place, then, inculcate upon them an early reverence
for God. Teach them this duty even before they can understand who and what He
is; and let them see it exemplified in yourselves, by your seriousness in
speaking of Him, and by your humility in every act of Divine worship.
2. Teach them also an early value for the Scriptures. Let them know
that the Bible is the Word of God; that it is the best book in the world; that
it is more to be desired than gold; and that, if it were not for the
discoveries, instructions, and promises contained in it, they and you, and all
mankind, would be ignorant and wretched beyond imagination.
3. Let them also acquire an early sense of a future state, blest
children are giddy and thoughtless. The trifling engagements of the present
hour are all that they regard; and it often happens that the world with its
baubles strikes so strongly upon their imaginations, and fixes such an early
and rooted prejudice in its favour as is not easily eradicated. You should,
therefore, endeavour to convince them, as soon as possible, that the present
state is only a passage to another.
4. Forget not to inculcate upon them an early love to our Lord Jesus
Christ. Take the first opportunity to inform them of their obligations to Him;
and let them know that if they have any comfort in this world, or any hopes as
to a future, they owe it all to the kindness of the blessed Redeemer.
5. Habituate your children to the early practice of prayer.
II. To suggest some
directions to parents in this important and difficult work.
1. Take care, then, to he well instructed yourselves.
2. Begin with them very early.
3. Continue your instructions with diligence and perseverance.
4. It is also of great importance that you maintain a proper
authority.
5. I would further advise you to accommodate yourselves to their
tempers and capacities.
6. Be concerned especially to set them a good example; walk before
them in the way in which you would have them go; and show them, by your
practice, that you by no means require impossibilities. Let them see in you the
amiableness and advantages of self-government and universal piety.
7. Sanctify all by your prayers.
III. The
encouragements which parents have to teach their children diligently. Nature
and grace, reason and religion urge this strongly.
1. It will be a good evidence of your own sincerity.
2. It is also the best proof of love to your children. It should
encourage you in the discharge of this duty to consider that it is the best
means of promoting the glory of God and the revival of decaying religion.
3. These pious efforts will also comfort you on the death of your
children.
4. That an attention to the spiritual welfare of your children will
afford you unspeakable consolation in the hour of your death.
IV. To obviate some
of the most common and material objections against this important and necessary
duty. Various are the excuses that are made; but they are generally dictated by
indolence, rather than by real conviction. Some object their want of ability.
“We would gladly instruct our children,” you say, “but we are ignorant
ourselves. Ministers are the fittest persons to undertake it, for it is a part
of their office.” If your ignorance be real and not merely a pretence to
silence conscience, if you really do not know the plain principles of religion,
it is high time for you to learn. Had you your own souls only to attend to, it
were a shame to continue unacquainted with the glad tidings of salvation. But
if you only mean that you know not how to communicate that little knowledge
which you have to your children; that you cannot talk to them so pertinently
and fluently as others; I answer that not strength of genius, but a willing
mind is required; and if you once undertake it, you will find your abilities
increase by exercise. Others object their want of time. But while you have
sabbaths you surely cannot plead want of time for the neglect of your duty.
Remember that you must all find time to die. Let me beseech you to attend to
this duty, which will contribute greatly to make your deathbed easy. Others,
again, object their want of success. But do you expect to pass through the
world without difficulties and discouragements? You have met with
disappointments in your worldly business, and yet yon did not presently give it
up in despair. It is more than probable that your want of success may be traced
to some guilty defect in yourselves. But if you have been never so diligent and
faithful, and with little apparent success, persevere notwithstanding. The last
thing you say to them may reach their hearts. The last effort which you make
may be successful. You will, at least, “deliver your own souls”; and you will
have the testimony of a good conscience. (S. Lavington.)
The importance of scriptural education
The truth that the Word of God is God’s instrumentality for
reforming and saving man, is the foundation of our present argument for the
religious education of our children. We would enlarge the mind, elevate the
character, and ennoble the nature of our children; we would lift them up above
the mere degradation of working animals; we would ennoble them so as to give
them a capacity for intellectual enjoyment and rational happiness; we would
wish to make them not only loyal and faithful subjects of their earthly
sovereign, but devout servants of the King of kings; we would endeavour to
cheer them amidst the privations and agonies of poverty they are frequently called
to endure, with a view of the glorious hopes that are created in us by the
Christianity of the Scriptures; and it is because we desire this that we would
give them a Christian education. We live in times when thrones are utterly
shaken to pieces, when sceptres are shivered to atoms; a moral earthquake is
heaving the foundations of society. In times like these we may well turn our
thoughts to the right instruction of our children; in times like these, when
the freedom of the press has been proclaimed, when all men seem to be
speculating as to the best means of securing national prosperity and individual
happiness; in times like these, fraught with incalculable evil, as well as with
immeasurable good; in times like these, so peculiar, so startling, we may well
apply ourselves to the imparting of the sound principles of true religion to
our children, that so those who are now the youth of our land may grow up to be
a rightly-instructed as well as holy people. We have seen in that nation which
hath, in a century gone by, flung aside the law of God and lightly regarded the
Word of Jehovah, judgment following judgment, in revolution following
revolution. Truly there is a judgment from heaven upon that nation that will
not acknowledge God, and who lightly esteem the Word of God. But if we would
express ourselves thus strongly of the neglect of the Word of God in education,
we would also express ourselves strongly in reference to the blessedness of the
country where that Word is honoured by being employed in the education of the
people. Education without religion is education without God, and therefore
education without the blessing of God; and if we, in the education we impart to
our children, mingle the truths of our holy religion with everything, we shall
draw down a blessing upon our homes and happiness upon our hearts; we shall be
blessed in our mountains and in our valleys, and the whole land will be glad
and rejoice in the presence of God. (M. H. Seymour, M. A.)
Family training
I. When the family
has been constituted in accordance with God’s natural laws, parents may have
encouragement that all the laws of nature are working in their favour. Like
produces like. This tendency may be modified, and in extreme cases overruled,
by antagonistic laws; nevertheless, this is the course that is provided for.
And, with a single exception here and there, children, comprehensively
regarded, tend to become what their parents were, and their parents.
They represent their ancestry. And this is as true morally as in feature, in
intellect, or in any ordinary disposition. Nothing shows more strikingly the
power of blood and this great law than the recuperative power of different
kinds of men when they have fallen into evil. Anybody can fall into evil. The
difference between one man and another is not in their slipping into the river,
but in their extricating themselves when they have once slipped in. Everybody’s
child may fall into temptation through inexperience; but, after having fallen
into temptation, it is not everybody’s child that can recover himself. The
child of parents that have the resiliency of a moral constitution will be apt
to recover himself; whereas, the child of parents that have no such resiliency
will be apt to go from bad to worse, clear down to the desolating end.
II. While this
general tendency should encourage us, it may also inspire hopefulness, in
special cases and difficulties.
1. Many of the infelicities of our children spring more from our
ignorance than from any evil that is in them. Your child has in many respects
just the same tendencies that you have. Yet we treat our children almost as if
we were not to bear their burdens, to be conscious of their tastes of mind, and
to administer according to their wants.
2. Many dangerous traits in childhood, that would be exceedingly
discouraging if they were to hold on, will disappear in later life, and that
too by the force of natural causes. Children, you know, have to run through
certain diseases of the body. So they do of the mind. There are times when children
will lie. There are periods when children will steal. There seems to be mumps
of obstinacy, and rash of irritability, and measles of lying--and there are no
measles half so bad as those. And many parents, seeing these early indications,
reason upon them in this way: “How could this child do that thing? Why, as far
back as I can remember, I did not do it.” How is it with your husband? Suppose
he says: “Though I never consciously told a lie, my child lies inveterately;
and what will become of it?” I will tell you what will become of it. If the
child has a tendency to this perversion, it will require all your care, both of
personal instruction and institutional training, to keep his childhood from
developing into a manhood of deceit. But if you are careful to train the child
aright, just as quick as the whole of its nature is developed, one part will
take care of other parts, and help other parts.
3. Many of the deficiencies of children, and of the difficulties of
managing them, arise from the fact that the stimulating nature of society and
civilisation in our day develop the child prematurely, and that he cannot be
held properly until the forces of life are concentrated upon him. If you want
your children to behave, you must give them something to do. Society is the
training ground of the human race. It is a school of practice, where God means
that men shall be disciplined. Your child must go into that society and that
life; and if you have brought him up right, he may now and then swerve from the
right course, but the probabilities are that he will come out right in the end.
4. Many of the faults of children are only the rude forms of
excellences that are not yet ripened. I should be very sorry to have a man
judge of my Duchess pears by tasting them now, in July. I should hate to have a
man judge of my Delaware grapes by tasting them now. They are sour enough. But
a great many parents taste their children’s qualities when they are children;
and, because they do not taste good, they are very much alarmed. There are many
things to be done before a man is ripened. There is much juice to be changed
and elaborated in the child before it can be brought to its normal rendition.
5. Let me speak of one or two of those qualities which secure our
children, and which are very few and very simple.
Children taught Christian truths
Children should be taught the principles which they understand
not.
1. That they might have occasion much to think of the things that are
so much and commonly urged.
2. That if any extremity should come, they might have certain seeds
of comfort and direction to guide and support them.
3. That their condemnation might be more just, if having these so
much in their mouths, they should not get something of them into their hearts.
(J. Trapp.)
On the religious and moral education of the young
I. In what the
young should be instructed.
1. It is the duty of parents to teach them to form just sentiments of
the Deity. Just views of the perfections and character of God are necessary to
all acceptable worship; they elevate the intellectual and moral faculties, and
excite in the heart many pleasing emotions.
2. The young should be instructed in the statements of Scripture
respecting the fall and the ruin of man.
3. The young must be instructed in the mission and character of the
Redeemer, and in the regards which they owe to Him.
4. There are certain qualities which you ought to cultivate in the
young, by setting before them their necessity and their importance. Teach them
reverence for things sacred. The name of God demands their fear. Teach them to
venerate the Word of God. Show them how “He hath magnified it above all His
name,” by the bright impressions of a Divine origin which He hath impressed on
it, by the important purposes which He accomplishes by it, and by appointing it
to be the rule of judgment when the quick and the dead shall be summoned to
meet the Lord in the clouds. Children should be taught to respect the worship
of God. Suffer them not to be absent from your family devotions without a real
necessity; and beware of performing these in that hurried, careless, or languid
manner which will induce them to think lightly of domestic worship. Children
should also be taught to venerate the wise and the good, and to consider the
Christian virtues as constituting the noblest respectability. The saints may be
depressed by poverty, and scorned by those whose respect is attracted only by
the titles and the wealth of this world, but they are the excellent of the
earth. Inculcate the reverence which is due to the Divine government of the
world, and which will maintain faith and patience till calamitous times are
past, and preserve from that wantonness and insolence in prosperity by which
the goodness of God is so often abused. Mercy is another quality which you should
labour to cultivate in the hearts of the young. To impress the lessons of mercy
on the heart, some have wisely recommended it to parents, to make children
their instruments in dealing their alms to the poor, and in giving instruction
to the neglected. The books which you put into the hands of your children,
should be such as are adapted to cherish benevolence. Sobriety is another
quality which you ought to cultivate in the young. I mean not to intimate that
you should labour to repress the sprightliness of childhood and the vivacity of
youth, or to recommend a mean, sordid, and gloomy temper. There are gaieties in
which they should be indulged, and to debar them from these is to make them
detest religion, and count a father’s house, where all is morose and cheerless,
no better than a prison. But while you allow them to rejoice in their youth,
check all merriment that is unseasonable, unbecoming their characters, or
excessive in degree. They must be taught to keep their appetites and passions
under the control of reason, and to shun every pleasure which may be dangerous
to innocence. Justice is another quality which must be cultivated in the young.
Children often discover an impatient desire to possess whatever strikes their
fancy: but in this they ought not to be gratified. Children must also be taught
to maintain a strict regard for truth. Lying, in children, often arises from
vanity and envy, from a wish to aggrandise themselves, and to depreciate the
merits of others. To guard them against this practice they should be told how
disgraceful it is deemed by men, and how odious it is in the sight of God; that
what is gained by lying is but a poor compensation for the dread of detection,
and for the infamy which it brings; that the liar forfeits all the confidence
of the world; that this is the character of the devil, that he is the father of
lies; and that none who love or make falsehoods shall be permitted to enter the
heavenly city.
5. Children must be taught to look up to the Holy Spirit for light,
grace, and comfort. There are many things mysterious both in the nature and
manner of the Spirit’s operations; but you can find statements in Scripture
sufficiently plain to enable you to teach them what they may derive from Him.
The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the doctrines of
Christ; and you must assure them that it is He alone who can exhibit Divine
truth in its glory and power, and that without His illumination no instructions
of yours, or of the holiest and wisest teachers, can impart to them saving
knowledge. He is also a Spirit of Holiness; and you must teach them that the
qualities which they ought to cultivate must be implanted by Him, and that
whatever semblances of these may be exhibited by unrenewed men, are produced by
no sound principle, influenced by no proper motive, and are devoid of all
stability. You must likewise explain to them that He is the Comforter whom
Christ sends to cheer His disciples amidst all their sorrows; and that by His
influence martyrs have gloried in tribulation, and the righteous hope in their
death. To Him they must look for support in every afflicting incident; and you
may assure them that the pious heart shall find Him ready to relieve, when
other comforters are silent, and other friends are no more.
6. The young should be led to serious views of death, judgment, and
eternity. Lead their views to the heavenly world, where the good are forever
happy in their Father’s house, and in a land where sin, and sorrow, and death
are unknown; where they are employed in the everlasting celebration of their
Redeemer’s love; where His image sheds over them the perfection of beauty;
where there is social intercourse without jealousy or rivalship, perpetual
worship without languor, and pleasures that never lose their relish.
II. The manner in
which that instruction should be communicated and enforced.
1. The instructions which you communicate must flow from the heart.
Unless you feel a love of the truth, and a zealous concern to impart it, your
lessons will be delivered in a manner so cold that your children will hear them
with no interest. They easily discern, when you speak from conviction and
feeling. Instructions which are marked by parental affection and pious
solicitude will awe the giddiest into attention, and soften the most stubborn.
2. The lessons of religion and morality should be taught with
diligence. Much attention will be requisite to find out the evil principles
which are most likely to influence your children, and the quarter in which they
are most vulnerable by temptation; and when you are aware of these, you must
labour to mortify their corrupt propensities, and to guard what is most exposed
to danger.
3. The young must be instructed frequently. In walking with them on
the highway or through the fields there are many objects which call your
attention to these lessons; and in teaching them to contemplate the scenes of
nature in the spirit of devotion, you will cherish in them a relish for the
purest pleasures, and open to them a source of unfailing entertainment during
the whole of life. Your duty requires many of you to leave your dwellings early
in the morning, yet go not forth till you have given, if it is possible, a
serious counsel to the young. It may work in their minds during your absence,
and will probably suggest such a thought as this, “My father’s heart must be
strongly set on my being wise and good, since he can never leave me without
urging me to it.” In the evening, ere you retire to rest, forget not to ask how
they have spent the day, and what improvement they have made since you left
them. The idea of such an inquiry will be a powerful incitement to the
diligence of your children. On the morning of the Lord’s day your instructions
should commence as early as possible. Improve every incident that happens in
the family, or in the neighbourhood, to enforce religious instruction. I shall
only state further on this topic this short maxim, “Let instruction be your
daily task, and it will be your daily pleasure.”
4. Instruction should be communicated in a familiar manner. Your
ideas must be expressed in simple language, and illustrated from objects with
which they are acquainted.
5. Your instructions must be enforced by a suitable example. Piety
appears most venerable in a father’s devotion, and love to Christ most
delightful in a mother’s praise. Nowhere does integrity seem so noble as in a
father’s abhorrence of all that is base and deceitful; nor charity so lovely as
in a mother’s sympathy with the mourner. Nowhere does patience appear more
amiable than in their silence while in agony; nor faith more triumphant than in
the support which it gives them in their last struggle, and in their last
farewell.
6. Prayer to God must accompany all your instructions. You must pray
that your children may be enlightened by the spirit of wisdom; that their
tempers may be softened by the grace of meekness; that their hearts may be
sanctified by the washing of regeneration; that their education may be blessed
by the care of heaven, and their lives adorned with the fruits of holiness. Let
these prayers be sometimes put up before them. In such a situation the young
will be led to such reflections as these, “Can I continue an enemy to that God
whose mercy a parent is now imploring for me? Can I cherish these evil
propensities, the destruction of which he now supplicates? Shall I despise
those graces which he entreats the Father of goodness to work in me? or turn
away my ear from that law which he wishes may be written on my heart?”
III. Some motives.
1. Let parents consider that the vows of God are upon them. When your
children were baptized you acknowledged that it was your duty to train them up
in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and solemnly engaged before God and
His Church to perform it. And can your conscience permit you to be inattentive
to the best interests of the children of your vows?
2. Consider the examples which are set before you to direct and
encourage you in this duty (Genesis 18:19; Psalms 34:11).
3. Consider how much the success and the happiness of your children
in life depend on your early care. Nothing is so likely to secure success in
any business or profession, as industry and sobriety, justice and truth. And
you know how much happiness depends on the state of the mind, and on the nature
of the habits. Evil passions will make the heart wretched in the midst of
honours and abundance, while piety and contentment will keep the soul in peace
in every affliction. Habits of fickleness and indolence, precipitance and
indecision, will involve men in perplexities, losses, and disgrace. By the
counsels of religion, you secure for them a companion and a monitor, who will
abide with them when you depart to the Father, and who will talk with them when
you are silent in the grave.
4. I appeal to your regard to the Church, and to your country. Can
you bear the thought that the institutions which you delighted to support will
be deserted by your children?
5. I may plead with you from the regard which you feel for your own
credit and happiness. Impious, profligate, and thriftless children will be the
bitterest of your sorrows. On the other hand, virtuous children are the honour
of their parents. There is no friend on whom the old man can lean with such
pleasure as on the son in whom the kind affections are strengthened by
Christian principle; and nowhere is the aching head so easy as on the pillow
which filial piety has smoothed.
6. The common neglect of this duty should excite you to perform it.
7. Think on the efforts which are now made to corrupt the rising
generation. If the lessons of religion are not taught, vice and folly will
seize on the unoccupied mind, and acquire an influence there which no future
exertions may be able to subdue.
8. Consider what comfort the discharge of your duty will yield you in
the death of children.
IV. Reflections and
exhortations.
1. What a blessing, to the young has the Bible been! Happy are the families
which dwell under its shadow.
2. Let parents lay up in their memories the counsels and motives
which they have heard. Listen to no suggestions that would detach you from your
duty.
3. Let little children be thankful to God if they have parents who
teach them the good ways of the Lord. Endeavour, by your meekness and docility,
to render their duty more and more pleasing.
4. Let the young, whose parents are still continued with them, beware
of imagining, that because they are now near to manhood they are above their
counsels. Solicit their advice in your perplexities, and open your hearts to
them in your sorrows. Give them the satisfaction of seeing in your temper and
conduct the fruit of their early toils; and let them have reason to say that, so
far from disappointing them, you are wiser and better than they hoped. (H.
Belfrage.)
Religious education
What is the true idea in the religious instruction of the young?
It is that they have in them a moral and spiritual nature to be unfolded, or,
in other words, an original capacity for religious thought, feeling, faith, and
affection. It is indeed a great idea, to be realised only by a long and arduous
process, carrying the soul not only far away from, but infinitely above, its
original rudimental state, where the powers of good and evil, as yet unstirred,
slumber together. To the negative care of not hurting the child must be added
the positive, of helping him according to his great, pressing want. We need not
fear to lay a vigorous hand upon his spirit in prosecuting this work. For that
spirit is not the already delicately shaped, perfect excellence some suppose,
like beautiful frostwork, which a breath may mar; or frail porcelain,
exquisitely fashioned, which is easily shattered; but an undeveloped ability to
fear and love and serve God, which we are by all means, and with all our might,
to stimulate and bring forth. It is a work of difficulty. As the apostle says
“First is that which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual.”
Leaving out extraordinary eases of those, on the one hand, apparently
sanctified from birth with singular tenderness of conscience and nobleness of
feeling, or, on the other hand, of a strangely stubborn and incorrigible
temper--the being we have to deal with, beheld not as transfigured by our
imagination, but in his real condition, is a being of undeveloped spiritual
nature. Nor is this all. While the germ of the spirit is in him, the germ of
what in Scripture is called the flesh is in him too. He is capable, not only of
religion, but of selfishness, irreverence falsehood, unkindness, impurity. You
may have seen the German drawing of “the game of chess,” in which a youth plays
with the devil, the stake being his soul; while the guardian angel bends as a
good genius over the contest. That game is in the heart: our task is to
encourage and assist the good principle against the bad. But the difficulty is
not only within. From the evil that is in the world too, from the general level
of human conduct, flows a mighty stream of influence, tending to carry the
child either into sin or a mean mediocrity of character. How lift him out of
that stream? How get him above the unworthy temper that not only arises within,
but predominates around and insinuates itself into him, like an unwholesome
atmosphere, at every pore? I have but one comprehensive means or instrument to
propose, and that is Christian truth--which Christ in His own prayer relies
upon to sanctify His disciples. Truth is the magazine and armoury, by winning
which into our possession and vigorously bringing to bear upon our object, we
can effect our threefold object of developing the spiritual nature,
subordinating the animal nature to its right place and proportions, and giving
a check or antidote to the corruptions of the world. But it must be truth
taught and exemplified; for otherwise it is hardly the truth, but only its body
without the soul--truth flowing audibly from the lips and silently from the
character--truth in our conduct, feelings, affections, and principles, as well
as in our patient speech and persuasion. In the religious education of a child,
you aim at a great effect. Do you complain that you see little fruit from your
exertions? But have you put in motion a power or cause, great in correspondence
to the effect you would produce? If not, you are as unreasonable as the man
spoken of in Scripture who would build a tower without counting the cost, or as
it would have been to expect the fountain of refreshing waters to gush up in
our sight, before the rock had been bored and the quicksand bridged to conduct
the stream. The moral faculty, in an immortal soul, is not a flower like that
which opens in the morning to shut at night, but nearer resembling the
century-plant; and we must be content to nurse it through grade after grade of
growth, slowly approximating the bright consummation, which, even in the saint,
is but partially revealed in this earthly life. Only for our good cheer, in
this gradual and perhaps tardy process, let us have faith in the law of cause
and effect, as operating no less surely in the moral than in the material
world. No more certainly will the sonorous church bell answer to its clanging
tongue, calling us to worship, or the liquid water spread its successive
circles from the falling stone, or our own voice penetrate the listening ear,
than, sooner or later, will the sincere and vital truth we utter or practically
manifest produce an influence upon all within our sphere, especially upon the
susceptible young. As the engineer in the steamship or at the locomotive, if he
observe the wheels slacken, increases the speed by increasing the power, acts
on the circumference by first acting on the centre, and quickens the pulsations
of that great heart of brass and iron which he wields, that he may hasten the
motions of his car or vessel; or as the aeronaut, if his balloon will not carry
the given weight into the atmosphere, does not sceptically sit down to repine,
but only sets to work to generate more of the buoyant force; so are we not to
be dispirited and unbelieving, when our moral ends in the minds and lives of
the young are not accomplished as rapidly as we desire, and they do not rise to
the height of purity above the world we would fain see them maintain: but we
are to replenish our own spiritual stores, and clear a new passage for the
perhaps obstructed waters of that well within, which springeth up into
everlasting life. If the explosion, the precipitate, or the transparency does
not follow upon the mingling of the chemist’s ingredients, as he expects, he
attributes the failure of his experiment, not to any mysterious fatality or
insuperable hindrance, but at once to his neglect of some of the requisite
conditions; for nature does not lie, or ever prove treacherous. If the
architect’s roof settles or his tower leans, he judges he has made some mistake
in his foundation, his materials, or construction. If the artist’s canvas
presents an untrue portraiture, his eye has been at fault as to the colouring,
or his hand in the proportions. If a political movement, business plan, worldly
speculation, or trial in husbandry, turns out badly, there has been some want
of discernment, contrivance, or forecast. So the failure of our moral
experiment upon the hearts of the young indicates the absence of some necessary
ingredient. The weakness of our spiritual building proves that we have taken
the sand for our basis, instead of having been at the pains to penetrate to the
rock. And if there be no success, no return, no fruit, from our religious
calculation and culture, the first and most likely inference is, that we have
not endeavoured wisely, anticipated prudently, grappled with the real
difficulties, taken advantage of favouring circumstances, or well prepared this
living soil for the seed of God’s Word. I know, and do not forget the
peculiarity involved in the fact, that we are not working in gross matter, as
wood or stone, or dealing with such things as the wind and the rain in our
planting, or wielding the mechanical elements of any earthly economy; but
trying to impress a spiritual substance, essaying to guide a self-moving and
free being, whose liberty and inclination and individuality of nature, whose
situation and exposure to change and temptation beyond our reach, give a
singular character to the terms upon which we can stand with or approach him.
But all this does not make void, or even for a moment bring into the slightest
question, the principle that has been laid down. Whatever may be done to the
child by others, or whatever he may do to himself, our action upon him will
nevertheless tell the full tale of its own quality and amount. The ship sailing
across Atlantic seas may be retarded by the shellfish that fastens on her
smooth sides, or be swept out of her course by the Gulf stream; nevertheless,
the breezes of heaven, that have blown upon her, have produced their entire
effect; and she would have been more retarded or further diverted, had those
breezes intermitted their constancy, or abated their stress. Much of the force
in all machinery is lost in friction; but the artisan does not therefore doubt
the virtue of the central motive power, however much of it may be neutralised
on the way. So our exertions, whether cancelled by hindrances or producing
their free results, are fully reckoned in a positive or negative way. And we
know that God Himself conspires with our enterprise; that we are humble,
privileged co-workers with Him; setting our action in the line with His
friendly providence; fulfilling what will ever more reveal itself, as dearer to
Him than the making of worlds, kindling of suns, and balancing of
constellations; sowing our seed, and preparing its tender sprout and blade for
the dew He promises of His Spirit, and the rain that will descend of His grace.
Said a wise elder in the ministry of the Gospel to a younger labourer in the
vineyard, “If you want to save the souls of your people, you will.” So, if it
be the real absorbing object of your desire and devotion to lead your little
flocks into the ways of pleasantness and peace, you will at least set them in
that blessed direction. And what reward of your labours greater than even their
partial and commencing success? What should one so desire to do in the life he
lives in this world, as to give to a soul the tendency of virtue, and inflame
it with the love of God? (C. A. Bartol.)
On the religious instruction of the young
I. To discourse of
the cluster of admonitions contained in the words of my text.
1. These admonitions are addressed to the children of Israel and to
everyone who professes to be an Israelite indeed.
2. That little children must be instructed with patience and
perseverance.
3. That the statutes and judgments of the Lord should habitually be
the conversation of His people, in the presence of their children and
domestics.
4. That the statutes and commandments of the Lord should be
constantly kept in view, habitually read and remembered.
5. That the doctrines of Divine revelation and the laws of heaven are
to be perpetually practised.
II. To specify some
of the reasons why great attention is to be paid to the duty recommended in my
text.
1. The authority of heaven binds you to this duty.
2. The love of God and of Christ should constrain you to the
discharge of these duties.
3. The near relation in which you stand to them, and the engagements
under which you have come for them, should excite you to the discharge of this
duty.
4. You are obliged to discharge this duty, that the entail of
religion may not be cut off from your family.
5. The consideration that this is the way to be a blessing both on
the rising Church and the rising State, should excite you to the discharge of
this duty.
Lessons:
1. From what has been said, let such as have been negligent in
teaching their children and the rising generation in the knowledge of the
statutes of the Lord, be convicted and reclaimed.
2. Learn to begin this pleasant and important task as soon as you
possibly can.
3. Consider that this is the leading duty which you ought to
discharge towards your children and the rising generation.
4. Learn from this subject to expect difficulties and discouragements
when instructing your children in the ways of the Lord.
5. That you must not think of rolling the burden of the religious
instruction of your children from off your own shoulders. (John Jardine.)
Parental obligations
I. The command.
1. It emanated from the highest authority, the Lord Jehovah.
2. Fraught with the utmost importance; extending both to the
cultivation of personal religion and to the furtherance of youthful piety by
the special inculcation of Scripture truth.
3. Demands implicit obedience.
II. To whom given.
To Moses, as the temporal head, legislator, and judge of Israel, was confided
the solemn and important charge of carrying into execution the commands of
Jehovah. Thus, as a wise and faithful legislator, he “spake unto the people all
that the Lord God had spoken unto him” (verse 27, etc.); to the intent “that
they should make them known to their children, that they might set their hopes
in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments” (Psalms 78:5-7).
III. How far the
conduct of Moses is worthy of our imitation. Although the Divine command
delivered to Moses was intended for the Israel of God collectively, he regarded
it as having reference to them also individually; and consequently, as
obligatory upon himself, and intended, like every other Divine command, for the
real happiness of man. Oh, ever let us receive the Word and command of God
first for our own individual instruction; for it behoveth us, amid all our
anxiety to impart, by personal exertions or by pecuniary supplies, the Word of
God to others, to take good heed that we ourselves have “received that Word
with pure affection” into our own hearts. Thus received, it will be the grand
stimulus to personal holiness and to individual activity in the service of God.
And besides, being brought through grace to “hope in God’s Word,” it is also a
source of unspeakable comfort; and it furnishes the believer’s plea with
God--“Remember the Word unto Thy servant, upon which Thou hast caused me to
hope.” And when his hope is beclouded, or his faith is “faint and sickly” in
the hour of languishing and depression, the believer can say, “This is my
comfort in my affliction: Thy Word hath quickened me; Thy statutes have been my
song in the house of my pilgrimage.” Nay, more, he can say, with the written
Word of God in his heart--with Christ, the Eternal Word, formed therein “the
hope of glory,” “Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And there is none upon earth
that I desire beside Thee” (Psalms 73:25). This gracious and happy
state of mind, we shall do well to imitate the conduct of Moses, in regarding
the command as specially obligatory upon ourselves. But is not the conduct of
Moses in his social or domestic character also highly worthy of our imitation?
Parents, do you love your children? I know that you do. Availing himself,
therefore, of the period of childhood and youth (when the mind is most
impressible, and impressions, good or bad, most permanent), the Christian
parent seizes upon every opportunity for the inculcation of those principles
which will best regulate the affections of the heart and guard against
temptations to outward sin; nay, more--“which are able to make wise unto
salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” But what was worthy of
imitation in the judicial and legislative conduct of Moses? All should respect
the authority of God as revealed in His Word--the one grand standing statute
book of the King of heaven, which ought to be the basis of every law enacted by
the kings of the earth. The perfection of human law is the measure of the
approximation of its principle to the Divine. The real prosperity and happiness
of a nation will, therefore, always be in exact ratio with its practical
knowledge of the Word of God. Lawgivers, and all who are entrusted with the
administration of the law--magistrates, and all who bear office under
them--would do well to imitate the zeal and fidelity of Moses, in enforcing by
precept and example the inculcation of the Word of God as a national concern. (M.
Seaman, D. D.)
The necessity and advantages of early religious education
I. What need there
is of the earliest instructions, with the most constant care afterwards to
reinforce them, in order to make and keep men wise, virtuous, and religious. To
express this to us by similitudes both just and beautiful, some philosophers
compare a human soul to an empty cabinet of inexpressible value for the matter
and workmanship, and particularly for the wonderful contrivance of it, as
having all imaginable conveniences within for treasuring up jewels and
curiosities of every kind. But, then, we ourselves must collect and sort them,
and we shall ill deserve such a present from the Maker if we keep it empty or
fill it with trifles; nay, if we do not, as we have opportunity, furnish and
enrich it with whatsoever is of use or worth in art or nature. This ought indeed
to he the main business of our lives. Others, with equal truth and justice,
have likened the minds of children to a rasa tabula, or white paper,
whereon we may imprint or write what characters we please, which will prove so
lasting as not to be effaced without injuring or destroying the beauty of the
whole; even as experience shows, and the son of Sirach advises, “My son, gather
instruction from thy youth up” so shalt thou find wisdom till thine old age” (Sirach 6:18). These first characters
therefore ought to be deeply and beautifully struck, and the learning they
express should be of great price. And this, if timely care be taken, may be
done with ease, because the mind is then soft and tender, and because truth and
right are by the nature of things as pleasant to the soul as light and
proportion to the eye or as sweet as honey to the taste (Proverbs 11:10; Proverbs 24:13-14).
II. What advantages
are likely to follow from such instructions and such care, as well to the
persons who are objects of them as to the communities wherein they live.
1. As to persons themselves. Without a good education the best
natural parts would profit little, and could never exert and show themselves to
advantage. Men would be raised thereby no higher than savages in knowledge or
virtue, and might degenerate into that ignorance and brutality which travellers
relate of Hottentots. Good natural parts are indeed like jewels, which in their
natural state show little of their worth and few of their inherent beauties,
till the skill and labour of the artist have taken off their roughness, decked
them with light, discovered their different waters and colours, and spread
through every part an amazing brightness and glory. Education, after like
manner, if it have its perfect work upon a human soul, will throw out to view
and give a lustre to every latent virtue and perfection which otherwise might
never have made an appearance, much less a figure, in the world. Thus,
likewise, to speak in vegetable metaphors, the choicest seeds will prove of no
value if we sow or plant them in bad ground where they will decay or die; and
if they fall into good, they will be overrun and choked with weeds, which are
ever most rank in the richest soils, unless constant care be taken to root them
out. They certainly can never grow and flourish in any soil so as to bring
their natural fruit to perfection, without cultivating, manuring, watering,
pruning, and all the other arts of skilful management that the best of
gardeners or husbandmen can exercise.
2. Without having any view to the good and happiness of private
persons, a religious and wise education of children is of so great concern to
the communities wherein they live, that in all the best ordered governments of
old time, public care was taken of it; and in some of them it was thought right
and necessary to take them wholly out of the hands of bad, ill judging, or
over-fond parents, and to place them in public schools and seminaries. And
though the natural claim of parents may, all things considered, be the best,
yet we shall see great reason for the other practice if we consider too that
religion and virtue is the only true cement of all society; that the principles
of both must be conveyed by education; and that (as private vices spread their
poison through the whole community) most of the disorders, mischiefs, and
confusions which disturb and harass any state, or the members of it, may be
justly charged upon the want of it. (John Donne, D. D.)
Child trained for Christ
A father whom I knew had a son who had long been ill and whose end
was approaching. One day when he came home the mother told him that their child
was like to die, and the father went at once to his bedside. “My son, do you
know that you are dying?” said he. “Then I will be with Jesus tonight,” was the
answer. “Yet, father,’ he added, “don’t you grieve for me, for when I get to
heaven I will go straight to Jesus and tell Him that you brought me to Him when
I was a child.” (D. L. Moody.)
The Bible the standard of education
If we do not adopt the Bible as our standard in training the
young, combined training is impossible. If in moral principles every man is his
own lawgiver, there is no law at all, and no authority. You may train a fruit
tree by nailing its branches to a wall, or tying them to an espalier railing;
but the tree whose branches have nothing to lean upon but air is not trained at
all. It is not a dispute between the Scriptures and some other rival standard,
for no such standard exists or is proposed. It is a question between the Bible
as a standard and no standard at all. But training without an acknowledged
standard is nothing--is an empty form of words, by which ingenious men amuse
themselves. There are some who would borrow from the Bible whatever moral
principles they have, and yet are unwilling to own the Scriptures, in their
integrity, as an authority binding the conscience; because, if it is binding in
one thing, it is binding in all. (W. Arnot.)
A whole family trained for God
I happened to know two aged ministers of the Gospel. One of
them told him that he prayed that he might never have a child who was not a
child of God by faith in Jesus Christ. God gave him ten children, and he said
to me, on his dying bed, “Nine of my children are God’s children, and I am
dying full of faith that the tenth will be also His.” It was my privilege to be
the instrument in God’s hands of leading the tenth to the Saviour. (W.
Grant.)
Training of children
The first thing to be instilled into the minds of children is to
fear God. This is the beginning, the middle, and the end of wisdom. Next, they
ought to be induced to be kind to one another. Great care ought to be taken to
guard against speaking on improper subjects in their presence, since lasting
impressions are made at a very early age; on the contrary, our conversation
ought to be on good and instructive topics. Imperceptibly to themselves or
others, they derive great benefit from such discourse, for it is quite certain
that children take the tinge either of good or evil, without the process being
discovered. (Philip de Mornay.)
Religious training
“It is already a hard case with me,” the Queen says, when she
speaks of the pressure of public business which prevented her from giving to
the little Princess-Royal all the attention she wished, “that my occupations
prevent me from being with her when she says her prayers.” And we may quote
entire the note of instructions in respect to religious training which the
young mother of twenty-five put down for the guidance of her deputies in this
important work: “I am quite clear that she should be taught to have great
reverence for God and for religion, but that she should have the feeling of
devotion and love which our Heavenly Father encourages His earthly children to
have for Him, and not one of fear and trembling; and that the thoughts of death
and an after life should not be presented in an alarming and forbidding view,
and that she should be made to know as yet no difference of creeds.”
Training of children
Be very vigilant over thy child in the April of his understanding,
lest the frost of May nip his blossoms. While he is a tender twig, straighten
him; whilst he is a new vessel, season him; such as thou makest him, such
commonly shalt thou find him. Let his first lesson be obedience, and his second
shall be what thou wilt. Give him education in good letters, to the utmost of
thy ability and his capacity. Season his youth with the love of his Creator,
and make the fear of his God the beginning of his knowledge. (F. Quarles.)
Training children for God at the start of life
I do not think I was ever so much impressed by a picture as I was
by one, although it was only a rough woodcut, that I saw in Chamouni,
Switzerland. It was a representation of a group of people that had been trying
a few months before to climb the Alps. You know that people who climb the Alps
have a rope put around the waist, and guides go first and guides come after.
The rope connects them all together, so that if one slips the others may save
him from fatality. Well, this group of eight or ten people were on the side of
the mountain, all tied together, passing along on a very slippery place, and
one slipped and dropped, and the others slipped and were going down this
precipice, when one man with more muscular power than the others, halted on the
ice--stuck his feet into the iceberg and halted; but; the rope broke! Fifty
years from now, at the foot of that glacier, the rest will be found. Here is a
whole family bound together by a cord of affection wandering on the slippery
places of worldliness and sin. All given up to the world. No Christ in that
family. All bound together and on the slippery places. Passing on down, the
father, at fifty years of age, strikes his foot on the Rock of Ages, and halts.
But the rope broke! the rope broke! A ship carpenter in New York walks up and says:
“That vessel has been gone three days at sea. Why, there is a timber in that
vessel that ought not to have been there. It was worm-eaten.” Or, “I had a
timber put in that ship that was the wrong kind of wood. Oh! I am so sorry
about it, I am so very sorry. I will correct it. I have another piece of timber
to put in the place of it.” Correct it! That ship went down last night in a
cyclone. Oh! the time to train our children for God and for heaven is at the
start; it is at the start. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Write them upon the posts
of thy house.--
God’s laws to be remembered
1. At the time this command was given there were few written copies
of the whole law, and the people had it read to them only at the Feast of
Tabernacles. God, therefore, seemed to have appointed, at least for the
present, that some select sentences of the law should literally be written upon
their gates and walls, or on slips of parchment to be worn about their wrists
or bound upon their foreheads.
2. The spirit of the command, however, and the chief thing intended,
undoubtedly was that they should give all diligence, and use all means to keep
God’s laws always in remembrance; as men frequently bind something upon their
hands or put something before their eyes to prevent forgetfulness of a thing
that they much desire to remember. But the Jews, forgetting the spirit and
design of this precept, used these things as superstitious people do amulets or
charms. They used also to put these slips of parchment into a piece of cane or
other hollow wood, and fasten that to the door of their houses, and of each
particular door in them, and as often as they go in and out they make it a part
of their devotion to touch the parchment and kiss it. (J. Wilson.)
Cities which thou buildedst not.
The Divine transference of man’s property
I. God’s right to
the secular property of men. Not merely the and, but also all productions of
labour, belong to Him.
II. The fate of all
earthly possessions. The only property that we can retain, that we can carry
with us, and which can bless us wherever we go, is moral--the property of a
holy character.
III. The principle
of entail in God’s government of man. One man labours, and another man enters
into his labours. So it has ever been, so it is now.
1. It is so politically.
2. Socially.
3. Religiously.
IV. A type of a
good time that is coming. The Church shall take the property of the world.
V. The primary
condition of man’s well-being in every age. “Beware lest thou forget the Lord.”
1. That forgetfulness of the Lord is an immense evil.
2. That worldly prosperity exposes us to this immense evil. (Homilist.)
Beware lest thou forget
the Lord.
The dangers of prosperity, and the means of avoiding them
I. The dangers of
prosperity. One danger to be apprehended from prosperity is, that a man may
thereby be led to forget God as the Author of his blessings, and the Sovereign
Disposer of those events which have issued in success. Alienation of heart from
God is the result of our fallen state. Should prosperity come upon us
unexpectedly, without any previous effort on our part, there is fuel, as it
were, applied to the unhallowed fire within, which causes the natural carnality
of our hearts to exhibit itself with a force before unknown. Should, however,
man’s prosperity in this world be the result of well-directed efforts of his
own, there is a temptation lest we should forget God who has given us power to
succeed in our endeavours, lest we should attribute to our own strength or
wisdom what is due chiefly to Him of whom we have received our all, and to whom
all the praise is due. But we may notice other dangers connected with worldly
prosperity. There is a security sometimes issuing out of it which is altogether
inconsistent with man’s frail and uncertain tenure (Psalms 30:6; Psalms 49:11; Job 29:18; Luke 12:16; Luke 12:19; Luke 12:21). We should not undervalue the
blessing of temporal welfare; it is God’s gift, and ought to be enjoyed with
thankfulness in Him. It is then sweetest when it is possessed as the fruit of
His goodness towards us, and when we consider ourselves as accountable to Him
for the use of it. But dependence upon our worldly treasures is at once
irreligion and folly. To look for happiness, as issuing out of anything in this
present world independent of God, is to search for bright colours in the
dark--is to mistake the end of our being, and to occupy ourselves with a
fruitless toil.
II. Methods by
which these dangers may be counteracted.
1. First and chiefly: God must be before our eyes. We should enshrine
Him in our heart and memory, not only as our omnipotent Creator, but as our
Protector--as our Governor--as “the Author and Giver of all good things”--as
the Sovereign Disposer of all events--by whom the ravens are fed, and thy
lilies of the field do grow and clothe themselves with beauty.
2. Another means for avoiding the danger of prosperity is this:
meditation upon God. Our danger arises from thinking too much of ourselves. To
overcome this danger we must meditate often upon God; upon His goodness, glory,
and majesty.
3. But last of all, that we may not be overwhelmed by the dangers
which threaten us from worldly prosperity, we must meditate much and deeply
upon the superior glory of eternal realities. Our hearts must be imbued with the
love of Christ. Our hearts must dwell on His matchless grace in dying for us.
In this way we must endeavour to form some estimate of the glorious salvation
which is in store for us hereafter. Against the riches, honours, and comforts
of this present world we must set the riches which no moth corrupteth, the
honour which cometh only from God; the consolations of His Spirit, and the
happiness of the redeemed. (H. J. Hastings, M. A.)
Sudden prosperity fatal to religion
I. That a just
sense of the Supreme Being is the best security for a man’s virtue. I say a
just sense, because wrong apprehensions of the Deity have generally had a very
unhappy influence on the interests of virtue; as is evident to everyone who
compares the religion and manners of the heathen world. This was probably the
reason why Moses was so solicitous to suppress all personal representations of
the Deity through his whole economy; he knew very well that the people would
naturally borrow their idea of God from the representations they saw of Him,
and that the idea of their God would be the measure of their morality. There
are few things that have contributed more to the extent of vice than the hope
of secrecy, which vanishes at the very apprehension of a Being who seeth in
secret. But our idea of the Deity stops not here; we consider Him not barely as
a spectator of our actions, but as a judge of them too; and he must be an
insolent offender, indeed, who will dare to commit a crime in the sight of Him
who he knows will judge him, who he is sure will condemn him for it. The hope
of reward and fear of punishment add fresh vigour to the cause of virtue.
II. This sense of
God is often much effaced, sometimes absolutely lost, in a state of ease and
affluence. The observation of Moses has its foundation in nature, is evident to
experience, and confirmed by a greater than Moses, who tells us how difficult
it is for those who trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God; and we
find how difficult it is for those who have them not to trust in them. When we
are under any immediate presence of affliction, when we are despised and
deserted by men, we look upon God as a present help in trouble; but that
exigence is no sooner over than we begin to see Him at a great distance. We no
longer call to heaven for that satisfaction which we can now find from earth,
but depend upon the second cause for that support which can never be attained
but from the First. We begin to fancy ourselves established even beyond the
reach of providence, or the possibility of change. There is something in the
very nature of ease which is apt to enervate the mind and introduce a languid
effeminacy into all its faculties. The senses, by an habitual indulgence, gain
ground upon the understanding and usurp the province of reason, which must
inevitably decline in proportion as the sensual affections prevail; the spirit
becomes less willing as the flesh grows more weak; we sink into an indolent
oblivion of our Maker, and fall amongst the number of those who are “lovers of
pleasures more than lovers of God.” It is obvious to observe here, that as
every corruption in our principles is followed by proportionate decay in our
practice, so every corruption in our practice is attended with an equal decay
in our principles; from whence it appears that religion and virtue are
inseparably united, they must flourish and fall together; they are lovely in
their lives, and in their deaths they cannot be divided.
III. A state of ease
and affluence, as it tempts us strongly to lose, so it lays us under greater
obligations to retain and improve that sense of God upon our minds. You, who
inhabit great and goodly cities which you did not build, who inherit houses
full of all good things which you did not fill; you, whose fortunes seem to be
showered upon you directly from heaven, while others are forced by the sweat of
their brows to raise them from the earth; as you are blessed with higher
degrees of the bounties of God, so are you more eminently obliged to preserve a
stronger sense of them. Your duty increases with the eminence of your station,
and your obligations to it are multiplied by the number of your advantages.
IV. I shall now
point out to you, in the last place, some of those means which seem most likely
to preserve and improve those conceptions upon our minds. And I think there can
be no better than those which Moses recommends to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 6:6-7. When you thus begin
and end sour day, when you thus open your morning and close your evening, you
cannot absolutely forget the Lord, especially if you make Him the subject of
your conversation too. The next direction is, to teach the commandments of God
to your children; but a man cannot well teach that to another of which he is
ignorant himself. And every time you endeavour to imprint a sense of God upon
the minds of your children, you must necessarily make so strong an impression
of it upon your own that you can never be able to forget the Lord. (T.
Ashton, D. D.)
Forgetfulness of God
It is remarkable how frequently in the Book of Deuteronomy, when
God is giving His final summary of instructions to the Israelites, the warning
is repeated, that the Jewish Church forget not God and His dealings with them
in connection with their deliverance from Egypt. Such warnings strike us the
more forcibly, because the people to whom they were addressed had come into the
closest contact with God, and had been favoured with the clearest visible
evidences of His presence. To have seen Jesus in the flesh, to have witnessed
His miracles, these would have been privileges the memory of which could have
never passed away. Now, all such reasonings are mere self-deception. That there
is a deep fallacy involved therein is manifest from the fact that the Jewish
Church, which had the most abundant ocular demonstration of God and of His
power, is so repeatedly cautioned against this forgetfulness of God. With this
fact impressed upon our minds it will be profitable to consider the ways in
which forgetfulness of God displays itself.
1. This tendency will be perceived in respect to God Himself. We
acknowledge that it is in God that we live and move and have our being; yet we
rarely find a sustained recognition of God. We do not walk day by day as seeing
by the eye of faith Him who is invisible. What an importance would it give to
life could we attain to that deep sense of the consciousness of God’s immediate
presence and majesty which is implied in the brief but full description of the
spiritual life of those of whom it is recorded, that they walked with God.
2. But besides this forgetfulness of God in His abstract nature and
perfections, we trace this evil in a similar forgetfulness of Him in His
operations. God in His glorious majesty dwelleth in the highest heavens, but in
His operations and providential dealings He is ever, as it were, coming down to
earth and meeting us closely and continually in the pathway of our lives. Every
comfort is held out to our acceptance by the hand of God; in every trial we may
trace the discipline of God. But this we over’ look: human agency, second
causes, personal effort, self-dependence, come in between us and God.
Backsliding Israel at length reached this point, that they knew not that it was
God who gave them their corn and wine and oil, and multiplied their silver and
gold, which they prepared for Baal.
3. Forgetfulness of God also displays itself in respect to that
covenant which He has made with us in Christ. The Jewish Church had a special
warning upon this head: Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant
of the Lord your God which He made with you. A covenant with man is not
disregarded nor trifled with. We are less scrupulous with respect to God. Our
covenant with God goes beyond that of the Jewish Church, in that it brings
Christ before us in His finished work, and no longer veiled in types and
shadows. All that God can give to sinful man is our covenant portion in the Son
of His love, the Lord Jesus Christ.
4. Another painful feature of this infirmity is to be found in the
forgetfulness of the Lord Jesus as our Saviour. It is noted as one point in the
sinfulness of Israel, that they forgat God their Saviour, who had done great
things in Egypt. The Passover was to be the means of maintaining a devout remembrance
of this deliverance. In like manner the Lord’s Supper was to be a commemorative
ordinance to keep ever before the minds of His people a lively remembrance of
their greater deliverance by the death and sufferings of the Redeemer. Do this,
says our Lord, in remembrance of Me. The grace and condescension, the tender
love and never-failing compassion of the Saviour, His sufferings, and agony,
and death, fade from our recollection.
5. We may notice one other form of this forgetfulness of Divine
things. In addition to those ordinary influences of the means of grace upon the
soul which the believer experiences, there are some occasions of special
blessing. Some striking or alarming providence of God brings us, as it were,
into His immediate presence; under the preaching of the Word, or in the
prayerful study of it, the mysteries of spiritual truth are opened to the mind;
it is a time of bright light, of quickened affections, of holy aspirations, of
heavenly communion with God. In the moment of such ecstasy we feel how good it
is to be here, and imagine that we shall go forth with the holy influence of
such a season abidingly with us. It is a new era in our spiritual life. We can
never be again engrossed, as in times fast, with the vanities of time. Yet the
memory here again betrays its trust. Forgetfulness of the heights which we have
reached lowers the tone of our spiritual life; coldness creeps over the soul;
and it is well if we escape the state of backsliding Israel, when she “went
after her lovers, and forgot Me, saith the Lord.”
6. This forgetfulness of God cannot be confined to any one period of
life; it meets us everywhere. As we look back upon the sins of our youth, this
rises up as one of the most overwhelming. Amidst the buoyant spirits of our early
days, and the cheerfulness of home, and the freshness of our first affections,
where was God? What place did He occupy in our minds and in our hearts.
“Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth. But as years pass on, and
manhood succeeds to youth, other objects engross the thoughts to the exclusion
of God. The cares and anxieties attendant upon the start in life, the turmoil
of business, the engrossing and ensnaring contact with the world,--these
present no atmosphere favourable to the cultivation of habitual converse with
God. Nor, if we follow on our search into advanced life, do we find it
otherwise. Grey hairs and decreasing strength would seem to give a sufficiently
solemn warning to prepare to meet God; but it is remarkable how entirely indifference
and insensibility to Divine things mark an old age which succeeds a manhood of
worldliness and a youth of thoughtlessness. Thus does forgetfulness of God
accompany the worldly man through every period of his earthly life; and, in the
case of the believer, the danger is equally present, and forms a main element
in the severe conflict of his inner life. But though sin has introduced this
infirmity into our fallen nature, God has not left us without a remedy.
The evil may, through grace, be counteracted and overcome; and in
order to this, the following suggestions are offered to the earnest Christian.
1. Realise the danger. Understand that the memory has a tendency to
betray its trust, and neglect its duty in that which relates to God. There are
many circumstances in our ordinary life which never pass away. Let a man be
exposed to shipwreck, or to a railway accident, the horrors of the scene would
be ever before him. There are many scenes of domestic interest which never lose
their freshness. But it is otherwise in our spiritual life; and we should know
it and feel it. Many an Israelite probably thought that he never could forget
the passage through the Red Sea, or the terrors of Mount Sinai; but they did
forget them. And so we think that the strong impression and deep conviction is
to abide with us. Or we think, perhaps, that though gone for a while, it is
only hidden in some secret place of memory’s storehouse, and when needed will
be produced again. But we are mistaken; and when we sit down to recall the past
dealings with God, memory retains little beyond the bare fact; all the lesser
yet perhaps more striking and instructive peculiarities of the dispensation are
lost.
2. With this danger realised we next observe the need of much
diligence and pains to counteract it. The natural faculty of memory differs
greatly in its power in different individuals; but when weak, either generally
or in any particular respect, we have recourse to certain means and helps for
assisting and strengthening it. A careful and systematic classification of
events, or the aid of a Memoria Technica, or a well-arranged commonplace book,
will go far to supply the deficiencies of memory. Men will think no pains too
great which will enable them thus to master the events of history or the facts
of science. But when we pass from the subjects of human learning to the record
of God’s dealings with the Church and our own souls, all such efforts on our
part are deemed useless and superfluous. We must be careful, too, in carrying
out into corresponding action any impressions which have been made upon our
minds, so as to fix them in the character by habits resulting from them. And we
must note any dealings of God with us in providence or in grace which seem
calculated to bring us nearer to Himself, in patient dependence or in grateful
love.
3. In the use of these and like helps it is necessarily implied that
the soul will be seeking by earnest prayer the effectual aid of the Holy
Spirit. We have viewed this forgetfulness of God as an inseparable consequence
of our fallen nature, and one which no amount of outward and sensible evidence
or impression can of itself obviate, as the case of the Israelites hilly
proves. A similar, and even stronger, proof is presented in the case of the
apostles. They had enjoyed unrestrained intercourse with our blessed Lord for
several years. His conversation, His teaching, never could be forgotten. Yet
the mere moral and physical effects of this teaching would be counteracted by
the weak and treacherous nature of human memory; and hence our Lord promises a
direct operation of the Holy Spirit to remedy this infirmity: “The Holy Ghost,
whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring
all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” (Christian
Observer.)
The danger of forgetting God
I. The tendency
that there is in us to forget God.
1. Forgetting the presence of God.
2. Forgetfulness of God in worship.
3. Forgetting the commandments of God.
4. Forgetting God’s redeeming love.
II. The cause of
forgetfulness of God. Prosperity.
III. The danger of
this forgetfulness. Now, just let me show you that the Scripture tells us that
they “shall be turned into hell” who forget God. “Now consider this, ye that
forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver!” But the
danger of living without God is the danger of dying without God; and the man
that dies without God dies without hope. You will recollect that God in a
special manner complains of this with reference to His ancient people. In the
first chapter of Isaiah we are told that He had nourished and brought up
children, but that Israel bad rebelled against Him; that the ox knew his owner,
and the ass his master’s crib, but Israel, God’s own people, did not consider. Are
there not many amongst you that do not consider? Are there not some amongst us
that have forgotten God? But so strongly has the Scripture laid down the danger
which awaits the forgetters of God, that we find that God in a special manner
has condescended to help us that we may remember Him. For instance, let us look
at the very text, and at that part of the text to which I was referring just
now. “Beware lest thou forget the Lord, which brought thee forth out of the
land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. Why, what great things God has done
for us to remind us of redeeming love? What a blessing it is that we have a
special ordinance, which it is impossible to approach with any light in our
minds, without reflecting that it represents the dying love of Jesus, and is,
as it were, bidding us ask ourselves whether we have a thankful remembrance of
the death of Christ! What a blessing it is that God has appointed men in a
special manner to go forth and to preach that Gospel which shall remind their
fellow sinners of that same redeeming level God has done everything to prevent
our forgetting Him, and lead us to consider our ways, and consider our personal
relationship to Him, to consider our daily dependence upon Him for the things
of this life, and to consider our complete dependence upon Him for the things
of the life to come. (Bp. Villiers.)
Beware of prosperity
Mark the conception which Moses formed of all advancing
civilisation. How much we have that we have not done ourselves! We are born
into a world that is already furnished with the library, with the altar, with
the Bible. Men born into civilised countries have not to make their own roads.
We are born into the possession of riches. The poorest man in the land is an
inheritor of all but infinite wealth, in every department of civilisation. In
the very act of complaining of his poverty he is acknowledging his resources.
His poverty is only poverty because of its relation to other things which
indicate the progress of the ages that went before. Young men come into
fortunes they never worked for; we all come into possessions for which our
fathers toiled. We could not assemble in God’s house in peace and quietness
today if the martyrs had not founded the Church upon their very blood. Men
today enjoy the liberty for which other men paid their lives. Coming into a
civilisation so ripe and rich, having everything made ready to our hands, the
whole system of society telephoned so that we can communicate with distant
friends and bring them within hearing, the table loaded with everything which a
healthy appetite can desire--all these things constitute a temptation, if not
rightly received. Moses drew the picture, and then said, “Beware.” In the time
of prosperity and fulness, “then beware lest thou forget,” etc. Prosperity has
its trials. Poverty may be a spiritual blessing. The impoverishment and
punishment of the flesh may be religiously helpful. There are anxieties
connected with wealth as well as with poverty. The high and the mighty amongst
us have their pains and their difficulties, as well as the lowliest and weakest
members of society. Ever let men hear this word of caution, “Beware.” When the
harvest is the best harvest that ever was grown in our fields, then “beware.”
When health is long-continued and the doctor an unknown stranger in the house,
then “beware.” When house is added to house and land to land, then “beware.”
Men have been ruined by prosperity. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Danger of prosperity
Many are not able to suffer and endure prosperity; it is like the
light of the sun to a weak eye; glorious, indeed, in itself, but not
proportioned to such an instrument; Adam himself (as the Rabbins say) did not
dwell one night in paradise, but was poisoned with prosperity, with the beauty
of his fair wife, and a beauteous tree: and Noah and Lot were both righteous
and exemplary, the one to Sodom, and the other to the old world, so long as
they lived in a place in which they were obnoxious to the common suffering; but
as soon as the one of them had escaped from drowning and the other from
burning, and put into security, they fell into crimes which have dishonoured
their memories for above thirty generations together, the crimes of drunkenness
and incest. Wealth and a full fortune make men licentiously vicious, tempting a
man with power, to act all that he can desire or design viciously. (Bp.
Taylor.)
Forgetfulness through prosperity
Strolling along the banks of a pond, Gotthold observed a pike
basking in the sun, and so pleased with the sweet soothing rays as to forget
itself and the danger to which it was exposed. Thereupon a boy approached, and
with a snare formed of a horsehair and fastened to the end of a rod, which he
skilfully cast over his head, pulled it in an instant out of the water. “Ah
me!” said Gotthold, with a deep sigh, “how evidently do I here behold shadowed
forth the danger of my poor soul! When the beams of temporal prosperity play
upon us to our heart’s content, so grateful are they to corrupt flesh and blood
that, immersed in sordid pleasure, luxury, and security, we lose all sense of
spiritual danger, and all thought of eternity. In this state many are, in fact,
suddenly snatched away to the eternal ruin of their souls.”
Forgetfulness of God but too easy
The solemn possibility is the possibility of forgetting God and
God’s providence in human life. We may not have endeavoured to expunge, as by
an express and malicious effort; but memory is treacherous; the faculty of
recollection is otherwise than religiously employed, and before we are quite
aware of what has been done, a complete wreck has been wrought in the memory of
the soul. There will settle upon the intellectual faculties themselves, and
upon the senses of the body, a stupidity amounting to sinfulness. The eye is
meant to be the ally of the memory. Many men can only remember through the
vision; they have no memory for things abstract, but once let them see clearly
an object or a writing, and they say they can hold the vision evermore. (J.
Parker, D. D.)
Thou shalt not go after other gods.
The forbidden path
In all our hearts there is a tendency to depart from God, to
forget what He commands, “to go after what He forbids. This forbidden path is described.
1. It is entered by many. The path of “the people,” “the gods” of the
age. Idolatry of every kind is the root and nourisher of error and
superstition--the expression and epitome of human nature--the foul dishonour to
God and His supremacy. “Go not after other gods to serve them and to worship
them” (Jeremiah 25:6).
2. It is offensive to God. It stirs up God’s anger and rouses His
jealousy. Bishop Patrick observes that we never find in law or prophets, anger,
or fury, or jealousy, or indignation attributed to God, but upon occasion of
idolatry.
3. It is destructive in its end. “Destroy thee from off the face of
the earth.” Idolatry corrupts the body and petrifies the heart. Like a
withering mildew it overspreads the earth and blights the nations. The warning
voice from above should be heard: “Ye shall bear the sins of your idols, and ye
shall know that I am the Lord God.” (J. Wolfendale.)
Jealousy the shadow of love
All sin is a caricature of virtue, and sin never looks so shameful
as when we put it beside the virtue which it caricatures. The Bible seems to
attribute human passions to God. He is a jealous God, an angry God. But
jealousy and anger are distortions of virtue, as the face of the man in anger
is a distortion of the same face in repose. The very passions of men, rightly
inspired and rightly guided, are Divine. For this very reason, wrongly caused,
wrongly inspired, wrongly guided, they are the more detestable. What is worse
than jealousy? Read of it in Othello. But is jealousy always wicked? Was it
wicked in Elijah when, looking out upon a devastated and desolate kingdom, with
Israel’s allegiance swept away from God, he cried out in agony of prayer to
Him, “I have been jealous for Thy name, O Lord of Hosts”? Was it wicked in Paul
when, writing to the Corinthians, who had at one time held firmly to their love
for Christ, and had been swept away from their allegiance, the apostle cries
out, “I am filled with a godly jealousy for you”? Jealousy is the shadow love
casts; and the greater the love the greater the possibility of the shadow.
Jealousy is the revulsion of feeling against that which assails love. And as
the musician, full of keenness of ear and ecstasy of pleasure in fine music,
revolts against a discord, so the soul that is rich in love and sensitive to
all the pulsations of love revolts against whatsoever impinges upon and
violates love. (Lyman Abbott.)
Ye shall not tempt the Lord.
Christ tempted through unbelief
We know that though God cannot be tempted with evil, He may justly
be said to be tempted whenever men, by being dissatisfied with His dealings,
virtually ask that He will alter those dealings, and proceed in a way more
congenial to their feelings. Suppose a man to be discontented with the
appointments of Providence, suppose him to murmur at what the Almighty allots
him to do or to bear: is he not to be charged with the asking God to change His
purposes? And what is this if it is not tempting God, and striving to induce
Him to swerve from His plans, though every one of those plans has been settled
by Infinite Wisdom? Or again, if anyone of us, notwithstanding the multiplied
proofs of Divine loving kindness, question whether or not God do indeed love
him, of what is he guilty, if not of tempting the Lord, seeing that he solicits
God to the giving additional evidence, as though there was a deficiency, and
challenges Him to a fresh demonstration of what He has already abundantly
displayed? In short, unbelief of every kind and every degree may be said to
tempt God. For not to believe upon the evidence which He has seen fit to give
is to provoke Him to give more, offering our possible assent if proof were
increased as an inducement to Him to go beyond what His wisdom has prescribed.
And if in this, and the like sense, God may be tempted, what can be more truly
said of the Israelites than that they tempted God in Massah? Was there ever a
people for whom so much had been done, on whose behalf so many miracles had
been wrought, or for whose protection there had been such signal displays of
Omnipotence? And, indeed, we are perhaps not accustomed to think of unbelief or
murmuring as a tempting God, and therefore we do not attach to what is so
common, its just degree of heinousness. Yet we cannot be dissatisfied with
God’s dealings, and not be virtually guilty of tempting God. It may seem a
harsh definition of a slight and scarcely avoidable fault, but nevertheless it
is a true definition. You cannot mistrust God, and not accuse Him of want
either of power or of goodness. So that your fear, or your despondency, or your
anxiety in circumstances of perplexity or peril are nothing less than the
calling upon God to depart from His fixed course--a suspicion, or rather an
assertion, that He might proceed in a manner more worthy of Himself, and
therefore a challenge to Him to alter His dealings if He would prove that He
possesses the attributes which He claims. But it is now in His mediatorial
rather than His Divine capacity that we would wish to show you how Christ may
be tempted. There is a great general similarity between the two cases, for in
both the Supreme Being is tempted if we practically undervalue what He has done
for us--throw scorn upon the proofs already given of His love, and thus
virtually challenge Him to do more or give greater. Ah, this may be putting
neglect of Christ and His Gospel under an unusual aspect; but prove to us, if
you can, that it is not just. We affirm, that by every refusal to turn from
your sins, and to seek that repentance and remission which Christ died to
procure, and lives to bestow, you are as literally guilty of tempting Christ as
were the Israelites in the desert, when they provoked God by their repining and
unbelief. You tempt Him precisely in the sense in which the Israelites tempted
God, by practically denying that what has been done on your behalf has bound
you to His service; and therefore, by practically demanding that He interfere
again and again, and with mightier tokens of supremacy and compassion. And how
little had been done for the Israelites by God in comparison with what has been
done by Christ Jesus for us! It was much that God had wrenched from the neck of
a captive people the yoke of an oppressor; but think of your emancipation from
the thraldom of Satan! By plague and prodigy had the Egyptians been
discomfited: but what is this to death vanquished, the grave rifled, and heaven
opened by the triumphs of the Mediator? God gave the people manna from heaven;
but what is this to Christ giving the true bread--His own flesh--for the life
of the world? The tabernacle was set up, and Aaron, with the Urim and Thummim
on his breast, could intercede with God, and gain oracular response; but what
is this to our having a High Priest within the veil, having at His disposal all
the gifts of the Spirit? Ay, if it show great hardness of heart, great
ingratitude, great perverseness, that men who had seen waters turned into
blood, and the sea divided, and the food brought in profusion by the stretching
forth the rod of the lawgiver, should have been fretful and mistrustful in
every new trial, what is evidenced by our conduct if we continue to be careless
and unbelieving--we before whose eyes Christ Jesus is evidently set forth
crucified amongst us? I dare no longer compare that tempting of God with which
the Israelites were charged, with that tempting of Christ of which numbers
amongst ourselves are continually guilty. It were to say that a temporal
deliverance and a temporal Canaan gave as great evidence of the love of the
Almighty towards men, and of infinite power being engaged in their succour, as
redemption from everlasting death, and an inheritance that fadeth not away. Oh,
no! there is sameness in the mode of temptation, but there is vast difference
in the degree of guiltiness. Yet the Israelites were terribly visited. And “how
shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation”? (H. Melvill, B. D.)
Fear the Lord thy God, and serve Him.
Moses’ serious and affectionate charge to Israel
I. A solemn charge
given.
1. Hear the Word of the Lord. This message is neglected or abused--
2. Observe the Word of the Lord. Observe--
respecting
our obligation to obedience, from gratitude, fear, hope, etc.
3. Obey the Word of the Lord. “Observe to do it.” This refers to what
in Deuteronomy 6:1, Moses called “the
commandments, the statutes, and the judgments which the Lord your God
commanded.”
II. Important
benefits proposed. As a stimulus to the Israelites to devote themselves to the
service of Jehovah, Moses proposes--
1. Their safety; their well-being--“that it may be well with thee.”
By way of contrast, look at Deuteronomy 4:23-26; Deuteronomy 27:26; Deuteronomy 28:16-20. Disobedience always
exposes to danger, to destruction. But “say ye to the righteous” - the obedient
believer - “it shall be well with him. He shall be well instructed” (Psalms 25:9; 1 John 2:20); well defended (Deuteronomy 32:9-11); well provided (Psalms 34:10; Philippians 4:19). It shall be well with
such, not only through life, but also at death (Psalms 116:15); at judgment (Matthew 25:34; 2 Thessalonians 1:10); and forever (Psalms 16:11). But we must return to
observe that Moses proposes--
2. Their prosperity--“that ye may increase mightily.” This may have
respect--
1. Individually, we may be blessed with a sense of pardoning love,
and fellowship with God through His Son (1 John 1:3); may be enriched with
the fruits of the Divine Spirit, “love, joy, peace,” etc. (Galatians 5:22-23); strengthened with
“might in the inner man” (Ephesians 3:16); and continue to “grow in
grace,” etc. (2 Peter 3:18). Hence we shall be
enabled to bear temptation more easily; and in our conflict with Satan and his
servants, our having prospered “mightily” will appear in our effectual
resistance and our final triumph. And hence--
2. While the members of churches adorn their profession, we may hope
that the churches collectively will receive an accession of members who, won by
our Christian deportment, shall glorify God on our behalf. (Sketches of Four
Hundred Sermons.)
Serve God
I. What is it to
serve God?
1. To dedicate ourselves wholly to Him.
2. To make His laws the rule of our lives.
3. To endeavour to please Him in all things.
II. Why serve God?
He is our Maker, Preserver, Redeemer, etc,
III. Exhortation.
“Serve God”--
1. Spiritually.
2. Obediently.
3. Willingly.
4. Cheerfully.
5. Faithfully.
6. Humbly.
7. Thankfully. (W. Stevens.)
When thy son asketh thee.
Remembrances of holy privileges
We are also favoured with Divine ordinances, as were the Israelites;
and for the same purpose, for a pious testimony to keep alive upon the earth a
remembrance of God’s surpassing love. As to them pertained “the adoption and
the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the service of God
and the promises,” so to us pertain the gracious promises of life and
salvation, and all the privileges and ordinances of the Christian covenant. So
that when children, as reason begins to dawn, and they find themselves growing
up amid certain religious ordinances, shall ask the meaning, we may always be
able to point, with humble gratitude, to the origin and intent of every duty
and service. The lisping babe is given to hear, perchance is taught to sing, of
the cross which was traced on its forehead in infancy; and the pious mother is
asked, What did it signify? She will point with tenderness to the Cross of
Christ, to the sacrifice of the spotless Lamb; and the holy emblem, thus
stamped upon the youthful mind and heart, may be there forever fixed by the
Holy Spirit of God, as a living image of the truth in Jesus, as an everlasting
memorial of His dying love. The child lifts up its hands in prayer; and
wherefore lifted up? To its Father in heaven; to the mercy seat at which a
Saviour pleads; and from which the Holy Spirit, with His manifold gifts, is
sent down, gifts for childhood and youth, for manhood and age: and this in
obedience to that Saviour’s word (Matthew 7:7; John 14:13; John 15:16). The child learns to read;
the Bible is opened; and every page is fraught with grace, is glowing with
mercy. Here are tender invitations which the youngest can understand and feel.
And thus our youth have in their hand a constant remembrancer of God Almighty’s
goodness; the Word written by the Spirit, and taught by the Spirit, to each
obedient heart of old and young. The points are but few, respecting children,
upon which we can now touch; but there is yet another, which marks rather the
transition state between the child and the man, at least where greater
responsibility beans. The children of the Church are brought to the bishop to
be confirmed and here is a mighty memorial. All the privileges of holy baptism
are then placed in view, and impressed powerfully on the heart. And over the
whole of our Christian life and walk the tokens and reminiscences of God’s
goodness are plentifully spread; in all our Divine ordinances and services, and
in all our providential experiences. Every Sabbath, what a blessed memorial!
How does it remind us of the great Creator, and of His resting from all His
works! how of our own rest in Him and in heaven! There is likewise that holy
rite and service which the Lord Himself appointed with His dying breath as the
sacramental emblem of His love. This is the most perfect of all the
testimonies: a perpetual representation of the sacrifice before the Church, for
the benefit of the faithful, for the conviction of all; a perpetual application
of it, through the power of the Spirit, to the believer’s heart and soul. And
our faithful Church, in all her constitution and services, has acted upon this
monitory plan; has sought to stir up continually the pure minds (of her
children) by way of remembrance; and to keep the wonders of Divine grace, one
after another, always before our eyes. At various seasons of the year she sets
before us the marvellous acts of redeeming love, all that Jesus has done and
suffered on our behalf: the mystery of His holy incarnation; His holy nativity
and circumcision; His baptism, fasting, and temptation; His agony and bloody
sweat; His cross and passion; His precious death and burial; His glorious
resurrection and ascension, and the coming of the Holy Ghost. And besides her
faithful dealing on these great occasions, she is continually bringing to view
other objects also, other tokens of love, other means of grace, of high
importance to be borne in mind and diligently observed. The lives and deaths of
her apostles and martyrs are set in order, as so many patterns of
righteousness, so many beacons of grace, etc. And there are other dealings of
God with us to be treasured in the memory; the mercies of His providence and of
His grace experienced in our own persons. We have been cast on a bed of
sickness; who raised us up? in danger, who delivered us? in the deep of
affliction, who sent the Comforter? We have sinned: we have been alarmed; we repented,
prayed, promised, and were spared; and should not that holy season, should not
all these days of grace, be kept in mind? Let us not unfrequently shut up the
busy present, and muse upon the solemn past. God give us grace to deal
faithfully; to prize the privileges, to look upon the blessings showered down
upon us, to keep them in grateful remembrance, and so fix our affections upon
the one thing needful. (J. Slade, M. A.)
Questions and answers
Suppose that one wholly uninstructed as to Christian faith and
doctrine and practice should ask us--What mean ye?--account for yourselves;
what are you doing? and why do you act as you do?--it would be pitiful to the
point of unpardonableness if in the presence of such an inquiry we were dumb;
our speechlessness would show that our piety is a mere superstition. It is
surely, therefore, incumbent upon us to be able to give some reason or
explanation for the faith and the hope that are in us. We cannot adopt a better
reply than the answer suggested by Moses. No originality of answer is required.
The leader of Israel gave the only reply that will stand the test of reason and
the wear and tear of time. All we need is in this paragraph. Adopting this
reply, what answer should we make to the kind of inquirer now supposed? We
should, first of all, make the answer broadly historical. We are not called to
invention, or speculation, or the recital of dreams: we do not want any man’s
impressions as a basis of rational and universal action; we call for history,
facts, realities, points of time that can be identified, and circumstances that
can be defined and have a determinate value fixed upon them. We could enlarge
the answer which Israel was to give, and ennoble it. We, too, were in a house
of bondage. That must be our first point. The house was dark; the life of the
prison was intolerable; no morning light penetrated the dungeon; no summer
beauty visited the eyes of those who were bound in fetters. Human nature had
gone astray. The Christian argument starts there. All Christian doctrine is
founded upon that one fact, or bears direct and vital relation to it. We, too,
could add with Israel, human nature was Divinely delivered. The action began in
heaven. No man’s arm delivered us; no man’s eye could look upon us with pity
that was unstained and unenfeebled by sin. God’s eye pitied; God’s arm was
outstretched to save. Then we could change, but their inner meaning is an
eternal truth: it abides through all the ages, for every purpose of God in the
miracles which were wrought was a purpose of life, growth, holiness,
transformation into His own image. The purpose is in reality the miracle. That
being so, the miracles never cease, for today the Gospel performs nothing less
than the miracle of making the dead live, and the blind see, and the dumb speak
in new and beauteous eloquence. In the next place, still following the idea
laid down by Moses, we must make this answer definitely personal:--“thou shalt
say unto thy son” (Deuteronomy 6:21). Speak about
yourselves, about your own vital relation to the historical facts. The history
is not something outside of you and beyond you: it is part and parcel of your
own development, and your development would have been an impossibility apart
from the history; let us, therefore, know what this history has done for you.
The answer will be poor if it be but a recital of circumstances and occurrences
and anecdotes--a vague, although partially reverent, reference to ancient history.
The man who speaks must connect himself with the thing which is spoken. The
answer is still incomplete. It is broadly historical, and therefore can be
searched into by men who care for letters and events and ancient occurrences;
the answer is definitely personal, and therefore the character of the witness
has to be destroyed before any progress can be made with his particular view of
the history; now the answer must, in the third place, be made vitally
experimental. The twenty-fifth verse thus defines this conclusion: “And it
shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments before
the Lord our God, as He hath commanded us.” One targum says, “it shall he our
merit.” The general meaning would seem to be--“it shall be accounted unto us for
righteousness”: the attention and the service shall not be disregarded or put
down into any secondary place, but what we do in the way of attention and
observance and duty and service shall be reckoned unto us as a species of
righteousness. What is the meaning to us in our present state of education and
our present relations to one another? The meaning is that out of the history
and out of the present relations to that history there will come a quantity
which is called character. God is all the while forming character. His object
has been to do us “good always, that He might preserve us alive, as it is at
this day.” Without the righteousness where is the history? Without the
character what is the value of our personal testimony? We may be speaking from a
wrong centre--from mental invention, from intellectual imagination, from
spiritual impulse, from moral emotion; we may not be standing upon vital facts
and spiritual realities. The outcome, then, is righteousness, character, moral
manhood, great robustness and strength, and reality of life. The Christian
man’s history is to himself worthless if it be not sealed by character. (J.
Parker, D. D.)
Children’s questions
Children often break upon their parents with very tough questions,
and questions that wear a considerable looking towards infidelity. It requires,
in fact, but a simple child to ask questions that no philosopher can answer.
Parents are not to be hurried or flurried in such cases, and make up extempore
answers that are only meant to confuse the child, and consciously have no real
verity. It is equally bad if the child is scolded for his freedom; for what
respect can he have for the truth when he may not so much as question where it
is? Still worse, if the child’s question is taken for an evidence of his
superlative smartness, and repeated with evident pride in his hearing. In all
such cases a quiet answer should be given to the child’s question where it can
be easily done, and where it cannot, some delay should be taken, wherein it
will be confessed that not even his parents know everything. Or, sometimes, if
the question is one that plainly cannot be answered by anybody, occasion should
be taken to show the child how little we know, and how many things God knows
which are too deep for us--how reverently, therefore, we are to submit our mind
to His, and let Him teach us when He will what is true. It is a very great
thing for a child to have had the busy infidel lurking in his questions, early
instructed in regard to the necessary limits of knowledge, and accustomed to a
simple faith in God’s requirement, where his knowledge fails. (H. Bushnell.)
Let the Bible speak
The mother of a family was married to an infidel, who made a jest
of religion in presence of his own children; yet she succeeded in bringing them
all up in the fear of the Lord. I one day asked her how she preserved them from
the influence of a father whose sentiments were so openly opposed to her own.
She answered: “Because to the authority of a father I did not oppose the
authority of a mother, but that of God. From earliest years my children have
always seen the Bible upon the table. This Holy Book has constituted the whole
of their religious instruction. I was silent that I might allow it to speak.
Did they propose a question; did they commit any fault; did they perform any
good action; I opened the Bible, and the Bible answered, reproved, or
encouraged them. The constant reading of the Scriptures has alone wrought the
prodigy which surprises you.” (A. Monod.)
The significancy of the Jewish passover
The ordinances of Israel were the ordinances of a redeemed people,
and they were the signs and memorials of the fact of their redemption.
Selecting the passover, then, as the most prominent of these ordinances, let us
inquire what it was designed to teach.
1. In the first place, we see in it a memorial of Divine sovereignty.
Could the Jew look back upon the history of his forefathers, and doubt that it
was not their own might nor their own wills that carried them forth from the
land of tears?
2. Again, we see in it a memorial of Divine goodness and truth. It
was a promise that God would not forget, that Abraham’s seed should inherit the
land of Canaan; and now that he was in possession of all this, was it not well
that Abraham’s child should be reminded of what had been done for him? In the
passover, then, he learned how true and gracious the Lord had been to him and
to his fathers. What would he trace but mercy and faithfulness in all His ways?
3. These were the aspects of the ordinances as they looked Godward;
but there were others which reminded him of his own personal position. Could
the Jew, for example, forget the Egyptian yoke, as he stood up, year after
year, his loins girded and staff in hand, to eat the Lord’s passover? Is it not
a little remarkable, that though they have lost the Sacrifice, this is the only
ordinance the Jews celebrate to this day? Even in a strange land, and at such
an interval of time, they fail not to call to remembrance the bondage of
Pharaoh. How often does God set this before His people in the course of His
dealings with them! “Thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt.” He frequently
reminds them. He would have kept them in a due subordination, that they might
not be lifted up to their own destruction.
4. But we see in the passover, lastly, a memorial of present
deliverance. As long as the Jew could celebrate it in his own land, he was
reminded of his deliverance from Egypt. In this respect the redemption of
Israel from the house of bondage has been always a present blessing. As a
nation, and therefore as a type of the Christian Church, they have never been
enslaved a second time in Egypt. Once delivered, they were delivered forever
from that bondage. Most truly, therefore, could the Jewish parent teach his
son--“We were Pharaoh’s bondmen in Egypt.” That was a past history of terrible
suffering and disgrace, and the remembrance of it could call up nothing in the
heart of a faithful Jew but thankful, peaceful joy. The passover, consequently,
was eminently a joyous festival; it was a feast upon a sacrifice; it was a
celebration of Divine mercies, and of the entire destruction of the Egyptian
yoke. And is not the Christian ordinance and history a counterpart of this? (W.
Harrison, M. A.)
The Lord brought us out of
Egypt.--
Deliverance from Egypt
It has been said that the earth is but the shadow of heaven, and
that things therein are each to other like, more than on earth is thought. This
may be a great truth, for in the Scriptures earthly things are used as types
and symbols of heavenly. It is so in the words that I have read to you. Egypt
was the symbol of captivity, darkness, and death; and the land of promise, the
type of heaven, where there is freedom, light, and life without end. And so,
the deliverance of the Israelites out of the bondage of Egypt by the mighty
hand of God, and their entrance into the land of Canaan, are typical of our
deliverance from the bondage of sin and the devil, and entrance into the
kingdom of heaven, through Jesus Christ our Saviour. Hence we shall consider
these words: first in their literal sense; and, secondly, in their spiritual
meaning.
I. First, we shall
consider these words in their literal sense. Nearly four thousand years ago, a
period soon after the deluge, Egypt appears to have had its kings and princes,
and to have been great as a kingdom of this world. Nor is it only remarkable
for its antiquity, but also for its physical phenomena, its worldly wisdom, its
idolatry, and its monuments. It was peopled by the descendants of Ham, and was
dedicated to him, and therefore, from the earliest times, in the hieroglyphics
and Scripture, it was called “the land of Ham.” Now Ham, as a deity, was
reverenced as the sun, and no doubt he was the sole introducer of the worship
of the sun after the deluge. That Egypt was addicted to sun-worship there can
be no doubt; for it is not only seen in the hieroglyphics or sacred writings,
but also by means of several of its most ancient names. The theology of Egypt,
however, being so closely connected with astronomical principles, underwent as
many changes as the planets themselves. Hence it is that there are so many and
various opinions upon it. One thing is clear, that they paid great honours to
brute animals, and employed them as representatives of their deities. Thus God
manifested His power, and mercy, and faithfulness. His power in delivering a
defenceless people from the oppression of one of the greatest military nations
of the ancient world; and His mercy in giving them the land of Canaan; and His
faithfulness in performing the oath which He sware unto Abraham, that He would
give them.
II. We shall now
consider the spiritual meaning of the words of our text. And here it will
assist us very much to know that Egypt had several names; and we have found,
after much research, that under whatever name we contemplate this land of
spiritual darkness, we perceive the same root and source of post-diluvian
idolatry--Ham associated with the sun; and along whatever line we pursue our
investigations in the etymology of this land of spiritual wickedness, we arrive
at the same goal. Here let us learn a lesson on worldly wisdom and human power.
1. Egypt was the mother of learning and of gross idolatry; of worldly
light and spiritual darkness. It was sacred for a time to the physical sun, the
source of light and life in the natural world; but it will be forever an emblem
of darkness and death. It reared its pyramidical temples to the sun,
symbolising its worldly greatness and light; but it was as full of darkness and
dead men’s bones as the pyramids themselves. In human language, Egypt, with its
various names, means light; in the language of heaven, darkness; in the
language of earth, life and fruitfulness; but in the language of heaven, death
and corruption. Hence it is that Egypt in the Scriptures symbolises the present
world. It was the source of worldly wisdom and gross idolatry. The Egyptians,
professing themselves to be wise, became fools; for the wisdom of this world is
foolishness with God. We read the wisdom of this world in the ruins of Egypt,
Assyria, Palestine, Greece and Rome. The kingdoms of this world may build their
nests in the rocks, as the Kenite of old; nevertheless they shall be wasted,
and their palaces shall be for beasts to lie down in.
2. Egypt is synonymous with the world, and we know that the world is
enmity against God. Let us, therefore, cast off the world, and its Egyptian
darkness, and its enmity to God and truth. Let us turn from the world, so full
of error, darkness, folly, and death; let us come out of it; let us walk worthy
of our high calling; let us walk as children of light and children of the day.
Now the deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage was typical of our
deliverance from sin and Satan. We know very well how great the oppression of
Egypt was. We know that their cries pierced the clouds, and found their way to
the throne of God, and He came down to deliver them; and He accomplished this
by His own power, and wisdom, and mercy, and gave them the land of Canaan, and
a code of Divine laws. Now this faintly shadows forth the deliverance of all
mankind from the slavery of sin and the devil, than which a more cruel slavery
never oppressed the family of man. Our text admits a still higher development,
namely, that the entrance of the Israelites into Canaan was typical of the
entrance into heaven of all true believers. Of that glorious place, the
brightest scenes of earth are but shadows dim and dark. The Israelite in Egypt
never looked to the land of Canaan with the earnest longing of the disciples of
Jesus for the heavenly Canaan; and why? Our title to it is clearer. It is our
heavenly inheritance, purchased for us with the precious blood of Christ; and
it is kept for us by the power of God through faith. We dwell on earth; but our
heart and our life are there, hid with Christ in God. (A. Jones.)
He brought us out from thence, that He might bring us in.
The outbringing and the inbringing of Israel
There were many things in the history of ancient Israel which
repeat themselves in the history or experience of the Christian Church. Our
text may be regarded as--
1. God’s answer to man’s question: What is the meaning of human life?
Everywhere we see beginnings and advances, but where are the issues or ends?
Human life in general has its beginnings or outgoings, but who can foresee its
incomings? We may regard human life as a promise or as a prophecy, but to many
it is also an insoluble problem. Throughout the kingdom of nature we find
everything comparatively plain. We find nothing of the nature of chance or
caprice. Certain causes are invariably followed by certain definite effects.
“From the greatest planets to the tiniest plants, all things are under the
operation of fixed laws. Everything comes to pass in its time, and with all the
beauty of that “order which is heaven’s first law.” Things in the natural world
are thus ordered in all things and sure. Are they not equally so before God in
the moral and spiritual worlds? Verily He knows all our outgoings and
incomings, our sittings down and risings up; He is entirely acquainted with us
in all our ways. He knows the end from the beginning in every case. There are
no accidents with Him, and He is never taken by surprise. God has no new
thoughts, and He makes no new discoveries; the darkness and the light are both
alike to Him always.
2. This reveals God’s purpose. God’s purposes may be far beyond the
scope of human vision, but they are fixed as the laws of the material universe;
they may lie far beyond the hills and mountains of man’s higher thoughts and
best conceptions, but they are realities and pregnant with good, and they are
always being fulfilled in the experience of His own people. God has done something
that man might do something else, and that something else man must either do or
perish. What has God done?
3. God’s work. “He brought us out from thence.” It was not Moses that
brought them out. Moses himself was only a weak instrument. In wisdom he might
be greater than Lycurgus, in skill greater than Alfred, in efficiency more
powerful than Cromwell, in patriotism greater than Washington; but the work to
be done required Divine wisdom and power. Moses was an efficient agent because
God’s Spirit was in him to will and to do as God required.
4. Man’s work. Man must ever be regarded as left to the freedom of
his own will, for he was so created. When God completed the work of creation,
He said in effect, “It is finished. Take the earth, Adam, as I have made it;
till it, and live on it; make the best of it; have dominion over it.” When God
completed the work of man’s redemption on the Cross, He said, “It is finished.
Take it, ye children of men, and work out your own salvation.” When God took
the Hebrews out of Egypt, He said in effect, “Follow My servant Moses through
good and evil report, and I’ll take you into the land which I sware unto your
fathers.” In other words, God promised to save them only if they were willing
and obedient. But alas l they were neither willing nor obedient, and hence we
read, “they entered not in, because of unbelief.” They were willing to go out,
because of their bitter bondage, but they were not willing to go on
because of the trials and sorrows of the wilderness. They were discouraged
because of the way.
5. The Hebrews were a typical people--
Profit and loss
Israel, brought out of Egypt, for awhile wandered in the
wilderness. But they were not left in the wilderness; it was no part of God’s
purpose to leave them there; He brought them out from the house of bondage that
He might give them the land large and good.
I. The text has
direct teaching for us when the Divine Spirit leads us out of the carnal life.
“He brought us out from thence.” The redeeming God finds us in the Egypt of the
fleshly, mind and the worldly life; finds us under a harsh, debasing rule;
finds us full of bitterness; and by His good Spirit He moves us to go forth to
a freer, brighter life. Let us be sure that we permit Him to bring us
thoroughly out of the sordid, sensual past. To a large extent it was the
ruinous mistake of Israel that they never truly and fully got out of Egypt.
They remembered it too frequently, they talked about it too much, they recalled
far too often and too vividly its coarse pleasures. Conversion, regarded
etymologically or Scripturally, means a total change, an emphatic turning of
the back on the far country, the steadfast setting of the face to Jerusalem.
See to it that you cast no lingering look behind; drop the entangling friendships,
the compromising habits, the unseemly tempers of the old guilty, godless life.
But be absolutely sure that if you heartily renounce the carnal life God will
bring you into a rich inheritance. The first experiences of the wilderness were
very strange to the Israelites. All their habits of life had been suddenly
changed: they had lost the leeks without getting the pomegranates; and in those
days of transition they became impatient and disobedient. Had they persevered a
little all would have come gloriously right. It is often thus with
newly-converted men and women; there is an intermediate state in which the old
world has been renounced, and in which the new world has not been realised, and
this intermediate state is full of peril to the pilgrim soul. Wait, trust,
hope, persevere, and the inheritance shall grow upon you. It is grand enough to
be worth a little waiting for. We are all familiar with a certain class of
emigrants who go forth with rosy expectations to distant lands, and who soon
return utterly disappointed. In starting the higher life we have need of
patience, patience that will not make us ashamed. Following on to know the
Lord, new interests will spring up, new friendships will inspire, new hopes
will dawn, new activities absorb and delight, new charms will disclose
themselves in work and worship, new and richer meanings will shine through all
things.
II. The text is a
message for us when the Divine providence suddenly and radically changes our
circumstances. Life is continually changing, but in some periods its whole
aspect is changed by some unexpected event, and we go out as Israel went out of
Egypt, as their father went out not knowing whither he went. Some event occurs
breaking up the business which seemed so well established, and the merchant
driven from his old anchorage is in fear of quicksands amid strange waters. The
working man with the least ceremony is discharged from the berth in which he
has been able to secure for himself and others daily bread, and in the crowded
labour market must find himself a fresh job as best he may. We are familiar
with facts like these in this world of vicissitude, but who can express all the
uncertainty and solicitude and sorrow they imply? It is a time of peculiar
exposure, suffering, and peril to the creatures of the sea who have shed their
old shell, and not yet got a new one; and birds of passage often perish in
multitudes on their journey from one land to another. So the Christian, turned
out of his nest, stripped of his shell, experiences a phase of life full of
peril to faith and temper and character. The disruption of our circumstances is
frequently followed by serious and even fatal moral and religious consequences.
But be sure that if you fear God and follow His leading He has brought you out
of the familiar life that He may give you a richer inheritance. “When one door
shuts another opens.” But you say, “Will the door that opens, open upon a
situation as pleasant as the old?” It may open upon one a great deal better.
Most men who have found their way to fortune owed their success to the fact
that some door or other was once slammed in their face; but even should the
opening door open on a more sombre situation, be sure that it opens up to you
possibilities of far grander character and experience. I say, then, if God is
leading you out of the old set of associations, do not be afraid; He is
preparing you for something better, preparing something better for you. When
God brought the Pilgrim Fathers out of this country they tasted to the full the
bitter sorrows of dispossession; for dreary months they were tossed in the
Mayflower, and then found it hard work to get foothold upon the strange coast.
But in due time God brought them into the good land, giving them liberty of
conscience and all else that makes life worth living. Whatever else may come to
pass you shall finally acknowledge that disinheriting you, transporting you,
God has brought you into a deeper faith, a stronger character, and set your
feet in a large place of moral wealth and spiritual blessing.
III. The text is
full of encouragement as though the Divine grace we pass into a new year. Time
is even a greater leader than Moses, conducting us out of the familiar into the
unknown. “We attempt to settle ourselves in what we conclude to be a fairly
happy condition of things, to adjust our ideas, interests, and hopes to a fixed
and permanent environment, but it is all in vain. But let us not repine. He
brings us out from thence that He may bring us in to give us the land.
Dispossessed so many times, it is that we may be made meet for an inheritance
incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away. Sir Samuel Baker writes in
his diary as he penetrates the great unknown land, “It is curious in African
travel to mark the degrees of luxury and misery; how one by one the wine,
spirits, bread, sugar, tea, etc., are dropped like the feathers of a moulting
bird, and nevertheless we go ahead contented.” And despite the fact of their
constantly dropping the conveniences of civilised life they might well go ahead
contented, for were not their eyes every day looking upon the wonders of a new
land of surpassing wealth and splendour? Our earthly losses are richly
compensated in the growing wealth of our spirit. Let us take care that by our
discontent and unbelief and disobedience we do not permit some painful and
perilous hiatus to come between the losses of the material life and the
accessions of the grace and glory of the higher life; let us grow into the
diviner as we grow out of the coarser.
IV. The text has gracious
consolation for us when the Divine Will ends this mortal life. We do not take
kindly to that last dispossession. “We brought nothing into this world, and it
is certain that we can carry nothing out.” We cannot take out as much as Israel
took out of Egypt. But let not our faith fail us. He brings us out from this
terrestrial life that He may bring us into the celestial. Cicero tells of a
prisoner who had always lived in prison; he had never once seen the outer
world. And so when he had become an old man, and they began for some reason or
other to pull down the walls of his prison, he broke into bitter lamentings
because they would destroy the little window through whose bars he had got the
only bit of light that had ever gladdened his eyes. He did not understand that
the falling of the walls would let him into a broad, bright world, would open
to him the wide glories of sun and sky and summer. And so when we see the body
sinking ruinous in decay it seems as if we were about to lose everything,
forgetting that the senses are but the dim windows of the soul, and that when
the body of our humiliation is gone the walls of our prison-house are gone, and
a new world of infinite light and beauty and liberty bursts upon us. (W. L.
Watkinson.)
Coming back again
We are face to face with a great providential plan. Men do not go
out and in by haphazard if they be wise men, true in heart, obedient in will.
There are no outlying provinces and colonies on which the Sovereign’s eye does
not rest. We must not bring ourselves out. How prone man is to do this! He will
handle himself. It is comforting, it is self-elevating, it has a look of
business and energy about it; as who should say, I am awake, I will do this
with mine own hand. Why bring yourselves out? You cannot take yourselves back
again. A continual restraint of the appeals and voices and seductions that
would carry us from the providential way is part of the discipline of life. Do
not take yourselves out of anything; for God’s sake and your own, let your
lives alone. If you are always taking up the tree to see whether it is growing
you will make growth impossible. Only when God brings us out will God bring us
in. We are too much given to tempting God, saying, We will make a bad bargain,
and ask God to complete it and make it up to us as if we had done nothing
foolish; we will adventure ourselves down this unfamiliar road ten miles, and
when we find we are on the wrong path we can begin to pray. Why will not men
look at both ends of a covenant, an arrangement, or action? Give your whole
life every day, and every hour, and every moment, to God, saying, “Jesus, still
lead on”; saying, Except Thy presence, Thou covenant God, go with me, take me
not up hence: I weary for something else, I pant for some new opportunity; but
if it be Thy will that I should not go, then make me glad, if not with rapture,
yet with quiet content of soul. God brought His people out of bondage that He
might bring them into liberty. Bondage is a large word, signifying a large
experience, and signifying also an experience that is necessary--that is to
say, an essential part of any true solid and perpetual growth. We are all in
the bondage of littleness. God is continually leading us out of littleness that
He may bring us into largeness. We shall know whether God brought us out of our
littleness by the largeness into which we have entered. If our charity is
larger, if our impulses are nobler, if our prayers take upon themselves a new
grandeur of desire, then know that it was God, whose key turned the lock, it
was God whose voice called us out of our dwarfed estate into largeness of
manhood. There is a bondage of darkness, a bondage of bigotry, a bondage of
thinking that we are the people, and the temple of the Lord are we; and all
people who do not go with us are wrong, benighted, and foolish. God will lead
us out of these misconstructions of others that He may lead us into a true
appreciation of our brethren. Sometimes God leads us out of wealth that He may
lead us into it. If God takes away our wealth He means to give us more and
more; if God is at the beginning of Job’s distresses He will be at the
completion of Job’s fortunes; if Job shall take the case into his own hands he
shall fight it with his own hand, but if God begin to strip him and to bruise
him we must wait until the latter end comes and then interpret the purpose and
the scheme of heaven. Things must not be judged in their fermenting processes;
they must be judged when God says concerning each of them, It is finished. God
brings us out of youth that He may bring us into manhood. That is His purpose.
Youth itself is good and beautiful, excellent, but not enough. God leads us out
of the letter that He may bring us into the spirit. Most of us are prisoners of
the letter. At the first it is necessary that literal bondage should test us;
but we are not under God’s guidance fully and consentingly unless we are daily
growing away from the letter--not to make the letter a stranger or to isolate
ourselves from it, but growing away from the letter as the edifice grows away
from the foundation, and as the tree grows away from the root; not leaving it,
but carrying it up to higher significance, into blossom and fruitfulness. We
have a familiar saying amongst us which is not true; we say of certain things,
“As easy as A B C!” Now there is nothing in all literature so hard as these
letters; there is no reading in all the world so hard as the alphabet. It is in
the alphabet that we find the difficulty; the years will come and go, and then
the mechanical will be forgotten, because we have entered into a spiritual
consciousness, and now everything that is mechanical and arbitrary is under our
feet; we are masters of that department of the situation. It is even so with
God’s Book; it is even so with God’s own Son. The Apostle Paul says,
“Henceforth we know no man after the flesh, yea, though we have known Christ
after the flesh, yet henceforth know we Him no more.” The reader does not know
the alphabet in the sense of that alphabet being an irritation or an exasperation
to him. He knows it so well that he is not conscious of knowing it. Thus the
letter may be translated into the spirit; thus the creating Hand and the
redeeming blood may be carried up into what is called the Holy Ghost--the
final, the eternal Personality. Have ye received the Holy Ghost? God thus leads
us out of law that He may bring us into grace. The law is hard, the law is
graven on stone or written in iron. We must pass through that school of the
law, we must obey; but obedience makes law easy and gracious. “Practice,” we
say, “makes perfect.” That little maxim has its application to things
spiritual; doing the will, we learn the doctrine; obeying the law, we come into
the grace. We shall know how far we have grown in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
by the ease and the delight which we realise in obedience and service and
sacrifice. God has led some of you out, and you do not know where to. There is
no need for you to know. Let God alone. Did He place you where you are? Have
you reason to believe that you are in your providential position? Then stop
there. But by taking one step across the road I could do wonders! So you may:
how long will the wonders last? What are these yellow wonders, these rocket
blazes of earth? Better have a crust with God than try to banquet on the wind.
How sweet it is to realise the providence of life; how comforting to know that
everything we say, think, or do, is of consequence to God! (J. Parker, D. D.)
The eternal purpose
A glance at the text will suffice to show that the honour of
Israel’s redemption, from beginning to end, is due to Israel’s God. No mention
is made of any other power; God and God alone is responsible for Israel. ‘Twas
He that brought His people out, ‘twas He also that led them in. So may it be
with us, for our salvation, too, is of the Lord. The other thought is almost as
manifest, namely, that God’s redemptive work, from its initial stage to its
glorious consummation, is a scheme or plan which He conceived in His loving
heart, and wrought out by His mighty hand. It is not the result of haphazard,
nor of casual thought. It is no experiment, no afterthought, but the outcome of
a settled and unalterable purpose. “He brought us out, that He might bring us
in.”
I. Salvation is of
God. Israel’s redemption, from first to last, was Jehovah’s doing. Notice this,
will you, that the Lord our God in the matter of our salvation both brings us
out and brings us in. From Him we received our first convictions; ‘tis He that
wakes within the slumbering soul the earliest desire for better things. And
just as certainly as that God works in us those earliest aspirations and
desires, so certainly does He crown the work at last.
1. Note, first, that He brings us out. How was it with these people
in the early days? We have here a short record of their wonderful experience.
“We were Pharaoh’s bondmen in Egypt.” “The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a
mighty hand.” They would have tarried still among the brick kilns if the Lord
had not interposed on their behalf. He heard their cry. The things that
accompany our salvation are not less remarkable than the wonders God wrought in
the land of Ham. He has had pity, and shown His mighty power to us-ward. His
compassions have not failed in our case, and He has wrought miracles that eclipse
altogether the wonders that Zoan saw.
2. Equally true is it that He brings us in. Canaan was a long way
from Egypt, but the Lord had determined to do the work thoroughly. It was not
enough to cross the Red Sea, nor even to pass the desert; the chosen people
must ford the Jordan, and enter the promised land. Oh, believe me, the Lord is
prepared to do just this in the realm of spirituals for all His believing
people. Whom He justifies them He also sanctifies, and whom He sanctifies them
He also glorifies. He is all our salvation and all our desire. At the first He
gives us by His Spirit all needed grace that we may come repentingly, look
believingly, and go on our way rejoicingly. ‘Tis He produces joy, and peace,
and hope, and love.
II. And this
salvation is the result of planning. God’s purpose and God’s power go together.
As I have told you already, there was a scheme at the back of this. They did
not happen or come to pass by chance; they were all devised and designed by the
loving Father. I do not think that we should marvel particularly at this. We
ourselves have plans and purposes. They do not always come off, it is true; too
often we fail to see what we have hoped to view, and our best laid plans
deceive and disappoint us. Not so with God; all that He arranges for surely
comes to pass, for His power and His purpose go hand in hand. Now apply this to
our case and to spiritual things.
1. Thank God there was a loving thought in His dear heart. I know not
when it first sprang up. God has never been aught but love, and I cannot
conceive that there could ever have been a time when He had not set His heart
upon the salvation of men whom He would yet create, and who He knew would sin.
You do not wonder either, that, having such a thought in His heart toward us,
it found expression in words.
2. The gracious promise proclaimed the loving purpose.
3. Then came the mighty deed, the baring of his arm, the showing of
His mighty power, the deliverance of His people from the heel of the tyrant--a
deliverance so complete that they did not leave so much as a hoof behind them.
Not they and their children merely, but their cattle and their chattels were
all delivered from the house of bondage.
4. Then began the ceaseless care of Jehovah towards His people. He
did not lead them over the Red Sea that He might forsake them in the desert,
nor did He conduct them across the desert that He might see them drown in the
Jordan. No, no! He led them all the way; nothing interfered with His purpose;
there were obstacles, but He overcame them. He did not bring them out from
Egypt merely as a demonstration of His power; as one of the great powers, for
instance, will make a naval demonstration, and secure a certain result, and
then it is all past and over. This was only the first step and stage in the
glorious process of complete deliverance for Israel, and of the fulfilling of a
gracious promise ratified by oath to Abraham. He did not bring them out that He
might slay them in the wilderness, as the enemies of Israel insinuated when
they heard how He punished them. Certainly He did not bring them out that they
might go back again, as they themselves, alas! were prepared to do when they
got into difficulties. Grace is glory in the bud. (Thomas Spurgeon.)
The Lord commanded us to do all these statutes.
The moral significance of God’s laws
The doctrine of this text is that God’s laws are for the good of
His subjects; that the basis of all His laws is benevolence; that their
foundation is love.
I. This fact is
well attested.
1. In the nature of the commands.
2. In the experience of His subjects. The loyal have ever been the
happiest.
II. This fact
reveals the divine character.
1. Unbounded love.
2. Complete wisdom.
3. Absolute independence.
III. This fact
explains the condition of all human happiness. What is it? Not the search for
it as an end. “He that seeketh his life shall lose it.” Obey, because it is
right to obey the Infinitely Holy and the Supremely Good. (U. R. Thomas.)
Obligation, nature, and advantages of religion
I. The obligation
of religion. “The Lord commanded us.”
1. The will of God is the proper ground of moral obligation.
2. The will of God, as made known to us, is the statement and rule of
religion.
II. The particular
nature of religion.
1. “To fear the Lord our God”--the mind constituted so as that
certain affections may be produced by certain objects. The true knowledge of
God will produce reverence, admiration, and dread. At first this, with a deep
sense of guilt, will be the spirit of bondage unto fear. When the Spirit of
adoption is received the fear is filial, reverential, producing hatred to sin.
2. “To do all these statutes.” Religion is to be practical and
external, as well as experimental and internal.
III. Value and
advantages of religion.
1. “It shall be our righteousness.” Mercy comes only through merit
and intercession of Christ. Is at first received only by faith. Still, He is
Author of eternal salvation only to them that obey Him. For Christ’s sake
continued obedience to the law of our dispensation is the channel of continual
acceptance.
2. “For our good always.” We enjoy the favour of God, and the light
of His countenance is our happiness. His providence takes care of us. His glory
will receive us. (G. Cubitt.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》