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Deuteronomy Chapter
Ten
Deuteronomy 10
Chapter Contents
God's mercies to Israel after their rebellion. (1-11) An
exhortation to obedience. (12-22)
Commentary on Deuteronomy 10:1-11
(Read Deuteronomy 10:1-11)
Moses reminded the Israelites of God's great mercy to
them, notwithstanding their provocations. There were four things in and by
which the Lord showed himself reconciled to Israel. God gave them his law. Thus
God has intrusted us with Bibles, sabbaths, and sacraments, as tokens of his
presence and favour. God led them forward toward Canaan. He appointed a
standing ministry among them for holy things. And now, under the gospel, when
the pouring forth of the Spirit is more plentiful and powerful, the succession
is kept up by the Spirit's work on men's hearts, qualifying and making some
willing for that work in every age. God accepted Moses as an advocate or
intercessor for them, and therefore appointed him to be their prince and
leader. Moses was a type of Christ, who ever lives, pleading for us, and has
all power in heaven and in earth.
Commentary on Deuteronomy 10:12-22
(Read Deuteronomy 10:12-22)
We are here taught our duty to God in our principles and
our practices. We must fear the Lord our God. We must love him, and delight in
communion with him. We must walk in the ways in which he has appointed us to
walk. We must serve him with all our heart and soul. What we do in his service
we must do cheerfully, and with good will. We must keep his commandments. There
is true honour and pleasure in obedience. We must give honour to God; and to
him we must cleave, as one we love and delight in, trust in, and from whom we
have great expectations. We are here taught our duty to our neighbour. God's
common gifts to mankind oblige us to honour all men. And those who have
themselves been in distress, and have found mercy with God, should be ready to
show kindness to those who are in the like distress. We are here taught our
duty to ourselves. Circumcise your hearts. Cast away all corrupt affections and
inclinations, which hinder you from fearing and loving God. By nature we do not
love God. This is original sin, the source whence our wickedness proceeds; and
the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God,
neither indeed can be; so then they that are in the flesh cannot please God, Romans 8:5-9. Let us, without delay or reserve,
come and cleave to our reconciled God in Jesus Christ, that we may love, serve,
and obey him acceptably, and be daily changed into his image, from glory to
glory, by the Spirit of the Lord. Consider the greatness and glory of God; and
his goodness and grace; these persuade us to our duty. Blessed Spirit! Oh for
thy purifying, persevering, and renewing influences, that being called out of
the state of strangers, such as our fathers were, we may be found among the
number of the children of God, and that our lot may be among the saints.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Deuteronomy》
Deuteronomy 10
Verse 2
[2] And
I will write on the tables the words that were in the first tables which thou
brakest, and thou shalt put them in the ark.
I will write on the tables — Tho' the tables were broken, because they broke his commandment, they
were now renewed, in proof that his wrath was turned away. And thus God's
writing his law in our inward parts, is the surest proof of our reconciliation
to him.
Verse 6
[6] And the children of Israel took their journey from Beeroth of the children
of Jaakan to Mosera: there Aaron died, and there he was buried; and Eleazar his
son ministered in the priest's office in his stead.
This following history comes in manifestly by
way of parenthesis, as may appear from Deuteronomy 10:10, where he returns to his
former discourse; and it seems to be here inserted as an evidence of God's
gracious answer to Moses's prayers, and of his reconciliation to the people,
notwithstanding their late and great provocation. For, saith he, after this
they proceeded by God's guidance in their journeys, and though Aaron died in
one of them, yet God made up that breach, and Eleazar came in his place, and
ministered as priest, one branch of which office was to intercede for the
people.
Verse 8
[8] At
that time the LORD separated the tribe of Levi, to bear the ark of the covenant
of the LORD, to stand before the LORD to minister unto him, and to bless in his
name, unto this day.
At that time —
About that time, that is, when I was come down from the mount, as was said, Deuteronomy 10:5.
To stand before the Lord — A phrase used concerning the prophets, 1 Kings 17:1; 18:15, this being the posture of ministers.
Hence the angels are said to stand, 2 Chronicles 18:18; Luke 1:19.
To bless —
The people, by performance of those holy ministrations for the people, and
giving those instructions to them, to which God's blessing was promised; and
this they did in God's name, that is, by command, and commission from him.
Verse 9
[9]
Wherefore Levi hath no part nor inheritance with his brethren; the LORD is his
inheritance, according as the LORD thy God promised him.
The Lord is his inheritance — That is, the Lord's portion, namely, tithes and offerings, which belong
to God, are given by him to the Levites for their subsistence, from generation
to generation.
Verse 11
[11] And the LORD said unto me, Arise, take thy journey before the people, that
they may go in and possess the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give
unto them.
Take thy journey before the people — 'Twas fit that he who had saved them from ruin by his intercession,
should have the conduct and command of them. And herein he was a type of
Christ, who, as he ever lives to make intercession for us, so has all power in
heaven and in earth.
Verse 12
[12] And
now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD
thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy
God with all thy heart and with all thy soul,
What doth he require — By way of duty and gratitude for such amazing mercies.
Verse 14
[14]
Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the LORD's thy God, the earth
also, with all that therein is.
The heaven —
The airy and starry heaven.
The heaven of heavens — The highest or third heaven, called the heaven of heavens for its
eminency.
All that therein is —
With all creatures and all men, which being all his, he might have chosen what
nation he pleased to be his people.
Verse 15
[15] Only
the LORD had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed
after them, even you above all people, as it is this day.
To love them — He
shews that God had no particular obligation to their fathers, any more than to
other persons or people, all being equally his creatures, and that his choice
of them out of and above all others, proceeded only from God's good pleasure.
Verse 16
[16]
Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.
Circumcise —
Rest not in your bodily circumcision, but seriously set upon that substantial
work which is signified thereby: cleanse your hearts from all filthiness and
superfluity of naughtiness, fitly compared to the foreskin, which if not cut
off, made persons profane, unclean and odious in the sight of God.
Verse 17
[17] For
the LORD your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and
a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward:
Regardeth not persons — Whether Jews or Gentiles, but deals justly and equally with all sorts of
men; and as whosoever fears and obeys him shall be accepted, so all
incorrigible transgressors shall be severely punished, and you no less than
other people: therefore do not flatter yourselves as if God would bear with
your sins because of his particular kindness to you or to your fathers.
Verse 18
[18] He
doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger,
in giving him food and raiment.
He doth execute —
That is, plead their cause, and give them right against their potent
adversaries, and therefore he expects you should do so too.
Verse 20
[20] Thou
shalt fear the LORD thy God; him shalt thou serve, and to him shalt thou
cleave, and swear by his name.
To him shalt thou cleave — With firm confidence, true affection, and constant obedience.
Verse 21
[21] He
is thy praise, and he is thy God, that hath done for thee these great and
terrible things, which thine eyes have seen.
Thy praise —
The object and matter of thy praise, as Exodus 15:2, whom thou shouldest ever praise.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Deuteronomy》
10 Chapter 10
Verse 1
Two tables of stone.
The tables of stone-What do they symbolise
These were made before any part of the tabernacle furniture. Their
history heralds forth their transcendant importance. No compend of moral truth
may pretend to compare with them, for glory and grandeur of origin; for
simplicity and completeness of adaptation to man’s necessities, or for sublime
exhibitions of the Divine perfections. Such an illustrious transcript of the
moral attributes of God and His claims upon the supreme adoration of men, and
of their obligations to one another, is sought for in vain among the records of
human wisdom. Who but Jehovah Himself can reveal the perfections of His own
being? Whose right is it to dictate law to the moral universe, if not its
Author? But Jehovah exists as the Elohim--the plurality of persons in the
essential unity. Has the issuance of these ten words any special reference to
this personality? Certainly; the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
All that man knows truly of the Divine perfections, he knows through the
teachings of the second person in the Elohim--the Divine Loges, by whom the
world was made and without whom was not anything made that was made. It was the
voice of the Word, afterwards made flesh--the same Word which said Let there be
light, and there was light, that thundered from the summit of the burning
mountain these ten words, and afterwards delivered them to Moses along the
ranks of angels. This will be evident upon a comparison of a few Scriptures (Psalms 68:17-18; Psalms 68:20; Ephesians 4:1-32; Deuteronomy 33:2). The entire system of
ceremonial observances is evangelical--all relate to the Gospel scheme of
salvation. “For unto us,” says Paul (Hebrews 4:2) “was the Gospel preached, as
well as unto them.” As to the kind of stone used, we are left even more in the
dark than as to the wood, and therefore infer it to be a matter of no
consequence. Only this is plain, that they were fragile, being shattered to
pieces when thrown from Moses’ hands. Nor have we anything specific as to their
size, unless it be that Moses seems to have carried them down the mount (Exodus 32:19), in his own hands, whence
we may infer they were not very thick, and they could not have been more than
forty-two or three inches long, and twenty-six wide. The first suggestion of a
symbolical meaning is durability. Engraving on stone intimates permanency. Job,
in his sorrows, exclaims (Job 19:23), “Oh, that my words were now
written! oh, that they were printed in a book! that they were graven with an
iron pen and laid in the rock forever.” Then he proceeds to express his faith
in the living Redeemer, and his hope in a glorious resurrection: truths these,
which he wished to perpetuate forever. The first tables represented the law of
God as written in the heart of man at his creation: or, we may say, human
race--Adam, with the law created in him. The breaking of the tables sets forth
the fall of man and the utter defacement of God’s law and image. The
replacement of the tables by Moses, and the rewriting of the law upon them, by
the power of the great Redeemer, forcibly illustrates His entire work of
restoring man to the full dominion of the holy law, or, in other words, the
restoration of the law to its ruling power over him; or may we not say the
second Adam, the pattern of all the redeemed. The bringing of man under the
power of law, the protection of the law from violence and profanation, and the
security of its rightful dominion, is the grand idea herein set forth. All
around it is encased within its golden enclosure. The casket indeed is
precious, costly, and beautiful, but the jewels it contains are the priceless
treasure. In connection, however, with the remarks above, that the ceremonial
ordinances are Gospel ordinances, it is important to distinguish them from the
legal matter of the old covenant. The ten words and the various applications of
their principles throughout the Pentateuch, are quite different from the sacrifices,
the lustrations, the incense burnings, the cities of refuge, etc. The former
are legal, and whenever separated from the latter become a law of works--the
very covenant made with Adam. But the latter, coalescing with and qualifying
and pointing out the way of fulfilling the former, transmute the whole into the
new covenant, or true Gospel, which was revealed to Adam before his expulsion
from Paradise. (George Juntem, D. D.)
The new tables
I. The breaking of
the tables. The tables themselves were in every respect most remarkable. Mark,
first, that they were “the tables of the covenant.” God said: “These are My
commands, keep them, and I am your God, I will be a glory in the midst of you,
and a wall of fire round about you; break My commands, disobey My will, there
is an infraction of the covenant, and the safety is departed, the glory gone.”
Sin was the violation of the covenant; sin was the overturning and the breaking
to pieces of the covenant. The sin being committed, the transgression having taken
place, the covenant was at an end. This is indicated by God in the fact that
Moses breaks the tables of the law, because Moses in this matter acts as
mediator for God; he is invested with the Divine authority, and ordered to do
what he did in that capacity and in God’s name. It is said that he was in great
anger, his anger waxed hot; but it was a holy and a justifiable anger, caused
by great and elevated zeal for truth and for God, and so no censure is
pronounced upon it. This act of breaking the tables resembled figurative
actions performed by Hebrew prophets in later times. It is like Jeremiah
breaking the bottle, and saying to the elders of the Jews, “Even so shall this
people and this city be broken.” Or when he is commanded to take a girdle, and
to go with it to the river Euphrates, and to put it in a damp place until it
becomes rotten and worthless: then it is--“After that manner you shall be
carried captive into Babylon.” Ezekiel, in like manner, is ordered to take the
goods of his house, his “stuff,” and to remove it upon his shoulders from one
dwelling to another afar off--a figurative action, indicative of the same
truth, that there was to be a removal of the people far away. And we have one
instance in the New Testament where Paul’s girdle is taken: “Thus shall the man
be bound,” it was said by Agabus, “that owneth this girdle.” It was a customary
mode of instruction, ordained on the part of God to be used by His prophets and
the teachers of the Hebrew people; and I suppose this act of Moses breaking the
tables is the most striking and exemplary instance, as it stands at the head
and is apparently the first. The breaking of the tables by God’s mediator
signifies to the people on God’s part the abrogation of the covenant, and that,
so far as He is concerned, He is not their God any longer, and will hide His
face from them. Precisely the same in essence, I think, it is with another
memorable instance recorded in the New Testament. When Christ died, when He
said upon the Cross, “It is finished,” “the veil of the temple was rent in
twain from the top to the bottom,” and God said, “Let us go hence; this is no
longer My house; this people is no longer My people.” As there had been
violation of the covenant by sin, there is repudiation of the covenant on the
part of God. Finally, I think it intimates that the covenant upon the same
principle should never be renewed, for the tables were broken in pieces. It was
not simply in two pieces; they were probably smashed together in Moses’ hand
before they were dashed upon the ground; they were broken into shivers, so that
the parts could not be brought together again. It was one offence which
occasioned the expulsion from the garden--it is one offence which occasions the
breaking of the tables of the covenant; and if there be one transgression in
any moral agent, innocence is gone, guilt is come, and justification by the law
is henceforth and forever an utter and profound impossibility.
II. The renewing of
the tables. I suppose there is a mystery in it--that there is more intended
than first meets the eye. Moses, you observe, is commanded to prepare fresh
tables, and to come up to the mount with them in his hand. He is represented as
doing this according to the Divine commandment; and, that you may understand
the mystery and see the point distinctly which I am attempting to open to you,
will you mark first the things that preceded the writing of the Ten
Commandments again upon the tables which Moses brought. They were these. The
sin of the people was forgiven; Moses interceded on their behalf, and God said,
“I have pardoned them at thy word.” Before the law is rewritten God takes the
tables out of Moses’ hand to do that work; He forgives the iniquity of His
people; and I suppose that act of indemnity, that forgiveness on the part of
God, was in connection with the ulterior and remoter sacrifice to be made for
sin by the Son of God, when He should come in the flesh; and when He did come
in the flesh He is said to have declared the justice of Deity, in the remission
of sin. The Hebrew believers are especially said to have received the
redemption of the antecedent ages, the forgiveness of their transgressions
which they had committed under the old covenant, when Christ died, and they
became established in the everlasting inheritance in consequence of that great
truth and principle: and so sin, I think, has ever been remitted of God. God
affirms His sovereign right--His right to condemn the guilty, His right to
reprieve them according to His own infinite and glorious will. Here is
forgiveness of sin and the affirmation of grace. Here is the promise of His
presence. Moses said, “If Thy presence go not with us, carry us not up hence”;
God says, “My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.” You will
find this in the chapter which precedes the account of the rewriting of the law
by the Divine finger upon the tables of stone. Then there is the showing of
Godhead. Moses said, “I beseech Thee, show me Thy face”; and that remarkable
vision in the cleft of the rock, Moses being put into it by God, and God
passing by, him, I think the same may be said of it as was said in after ages
respecting Isaiah’s vision in, the sixth chapter of his prophecy--“These things
said Moses, when he saw Christ’s glory and spake of Him.” Then there is the
proclamation of the Divine name--“The Lord, the Lord God, pardoning iniquity,
transgression, and sin”; and when that announcement is made it is said, “Moses
bowed down and worshipped.” Then, will you mark, here is the forgiveness of
sin, affirmation of the Divine grace, promise of the Divine presence, showing
of Christ’s glory, proclamation of that amazing name, antecedently to the
rewriting of the tables?--which proves, I think, that the rewriting of the law
was not the going back to the old covenant, or making a second trial of that
principle in relation to the Israelites, but that it was upon altogether
different principles--the principles which are enumerated--free forgiveness,
revelation of Christ, His presence in the midst of His people, His name full of
mercy and love. And see the effect of this: He writes the law a second time;
and upon these principles it is said, “Well, go and be obedient.” For it
strikes me that that is the great truth which comes out in the Gospel
revelation and economy--not that we are to obey the law, and then make our
appeal to God’s grace and mercy, but that God, manifesting His grace and mercy
in a free and overflowing salvation, then says, “Let My law be rewritten; go
and obey it.” Secondly, what was done with the second tables? The commands were
unaltered; what was written on the tables was exactly the same; but what was
done with the second tables? They were not exalted, like the brazen serpent,
upon a pole: they were not used as a banner, floating before the eyes of the
people as they advanced to their respective encampments--they were not, as Job
desired his words might be, “written with an iron pen, and graven upon a rock
forever”; none of these things was done, and nothing resembling them: they were
put into the ark, the chest of which we read so much, and which was, I suppose,
the very first article prepared by Moses under the guidance of the Holy Ghost.
That chest represented, I think, Christ. The law, never kept by angels, never
kept by man in his innocence, nor by man in his restoration, nor by any moral
beings in the universe, as the law was kept by God’s own Son; the law, then,
was put into the ark. Christ obeyed not only for Himself in person, but as the
Surety and Representative of His people; “He is the end of the law for
righteousness to everyone that believeth.” As I put the finger of faith on His
person and on His life, I feel that He obeyed the law and kept the law for me.
The law is in Christ fulfilled, and fulfilled for them whose cause He espoused
and whose interests He had undertaken. Mark another thing. The lid upon that
sacred chest was a plate of pure gold, upon which the blood of the sacrifice
was to be sprinkled according to the Divine command. In order to the fulfilment
of law, the rendering to law and justice everything that can be required, there
are but two things. The first is, perfect obedience. If there be perfect
obedience, the law is satisfied; but if the law be broken, the next thing is
the penalty; and if the penalty is fulfilled, the law is satisfied and asks no
more. Penalty and obedience, the only two things with which the law is
conversant. We say that in Christ the penalty was paid: we say that the
iniquities of man were transferred to Christ, and that He suffered for
him--that “we have redemption through His blood.” So I come to the blood of
Christ for the expiation of my sins, put the finger of faith on His sacrifice,
and feel that I am secure. Mark once more: upon this lid was the mercy
seat--or, it constituted the mercy seat; and God said to Moses, “Come to the
Mercy seat,” and to all the people, “Come to the Mercy seat.” Through that
every communication was made from them to God, and from God to them; and from
that hour to this--or to the clays of Daniel and the captivity--they turned
their faces when they prayed towards God’s presence, exalted and enthroned in
grace and in mercy there. It betokened the great principle--“faithful and just
to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”; answering
prayer in the exercise of consummate rectitude and justice, as well as of
clemency, condescension, mercy, and grace. One thing more I notice; and that
is, that upon either end of this plate of pure gold was the cherubic figure, in
reference to which the Apostle Peter says, “which things the angels desire to
look into, to the intent that to the principalities and powers in the heavenly
places may be made manifest by the Church the manifold wisdom of God.” I infer,
from all I have said, that the renewal of the writing of the tables is not the
renewal of the old covenant, but a representation of God’s mercy and grace in
Christ Jesus, as antecedent to the law being rewritten, and written upon the
hearts and upon the consciences of men. I only note, further, what followed. After
the rewriting by God’s own finger Moses came down. How did he come down? With
the glory upon his face, so that they could not steadfastly look upon him; and
the apostle says it intimated that there were things intended which the Jews
had not the capacity at that time to understand. It was not proper that they
should know them. The veiling of Moses’ face intimated the veiling of certain
profound principles which were to have a future and after manifestation. Thus
in the same way, I think, the breaking of the tables and the renewing of them
intimates that the law never would be fulfilled but in Christ, and that it
could not be safely enforced upon man--at least, it could produce nothing but
condemnation--irrespectively of Christ and the obedience which He has already
rendered. But what followed besides? The completion of the tabernacle in all
its parts and proportions, the ordination of priests, the crossing the Jordan,
the entering into the promised land--of which things we cannot now speak; but
it comes out, I think, in most beautiful conclusion, that if these matters
preceded the rewriting of the tables, and the tables then written were placed
in the peculiar circumstances which the passage represents, and if such things
transpired when this was done, then it is not the old covenant of works, but
the new covenant of grace, mercy, and salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ; and
so “the law is a schoolmaster, bringing unto Christ.” (J. Stratten.)
The tables of the law
1. In the next verse it is said that Moses “made an ark of shittim
wood” before going up into the mount with the two tables in his hand; whereas,
according to the Book of Exodus (Exodus 37:1), Bezaleel is said to have
made the ark. Those who seek to trace contradictions in the Scriptures, or
variety of authorship, of course, point out this “discrepancy.” The obvious
remark that one may be said to do what he directs another to do is probably a
sufficient reply to this difficulty.
2. It is not, however, with the ark, but with the tables of the law,
we are now concerned.
3. The delivery of the law, on the fiftieth day, according to the
Jews, after the Exodus--an event celebrated by the Feast of Pentecost--reminds
us of the contrast between the circumstances under which the old and the new
law were promulgated. The thick cloud, the darkness, the thunder, the
lightning, filled the Israelites with alarm. How very different are the
approaches to God in the New Testament! (Hebrews 12:18-24.) But the same moral law
is binding in both; and it is to this fact, God’s condescension in writing a
second time the words of the Decalogue, our thoughts are invited in the lesson.
Let us consider some reasons for keeping the Ten Commandments; and then, how we
are to obey them.
I. Reasons for
keeping the commandments.
1. They come from God. This may be said of the whole law, ceremonial
and judiciary, as well as moral. But surely there is a difference. Not only
were the Ten Commandments promulgated, as a French writer says, “avec eclat,”
and the people warned to prepare for the solemn event (Exodus 19:10; Exodus 19:15), but they were given
directly by God. The first tables were “the work of God, and the writing was
the writing of God, graven on the tables.” The second tables were the work of
man, but the writing was still the writing of God (Exodus 34:1). They stand above the
ceremonial law, as an abridgment of the duties of man, and are of lasting
obligation.
2. They agree with the law written in man’s heart. They are in full
accord with our moral intuitions. The Divine Law was not a brand new code of
ethics, but it was necessary, if man was to attain to a supernatural end.
Moreover, man’s moral sense was liable to be tampered with and impaired, so as
at last to give an uncertain judgment: neither was it able to discern clearly
always between good and evil; nor did it reach into the sphere of thought and
motive. If man had been entirely dependent upon a written law, its promulgation
would not have been delayed till the time of Moses. It is altogether a mistake
to suppose that the Decalogue made murder, theft, adultery, and the like
sinful. It forbade them because they were sinful. It fixed man’s moral
intuitions so that they could not be dragged down by human passion and
selfishness. It made them clearer and more distinct. It clothed them with a new
sanction and authority.
3. We find, when we examine the period before the law was given, a
sense of the evil of the actions which it forbids. “Jacob said, Put away the
strange gods that are among you.” This is an anticipation of the First
Commandment. Perhaps the previous observance of the Sabbath may be gathered
from Exodus 16:23. So the Sixth Commandment
was already in force (Genesis 9:6). Sins against purity were
abhorred (Genesis 34:31; Genesis 38:24), showing that the Seventh
Commandment was no novelty. Joseph’s brethren were shocked at being charged
with stealing the cup (Genesis 44:7). The sin of coveting “thy
neighbour’s wife” was evidently recognised by Abimelech as “a great sin” with
regard to Sarah (Genesis 20:9). All these statements--and
there are others before the giving of the law--are witnesses to the moral light
which God has given to man, irrespective of external guidance or enactment.
4. The moral law did not make sin to be sin, though it added to its
malice; but it clearly revealed the amount of human transgression, which was
veiled in a mist before. It was like a clinical thermometer which measures the
height of the fever, which might have been unknown before. It reveals the
temperature of the patient, and so the seriousness or lightness of the case.
“By the law,” says the apostle, “is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20).
5. Further, obedience to the moral law of God is necessary for
salvation. “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:16-17). St. Paul declares the
same (Romans 13:8-9). Again, “Circumcision is
nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of
God” (1 Corinthians 7:19) St John the same
(1 John 3:22; 1 John 3:24).
II. How are we to
keep the commandments?
1. With the help of Divine grace. The law cast light upon the sinful
principle in man, and by his inability to overcome it, aroused the sense of
need and longing for a Saviour. Moses gave the law without the Spirit, says a
commentator, but Christ gave both. Whilst on the one hand we realise that we
can do nothing without grace; on the other, we must remember that we can do
everything with it.
2. We have to keep all the commandments. Not nine out of ten. The
commandments are not isolated precepts, so that the violation of one does not
touch another. They form, if I may say so, an organic body of moral truth, as
the Creed an organic body of dogmatic truth. “Whosoever shall keep the whole
law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2:10).
3. Christians have to read the commandments in the light of “the
Sermon on the Mount,” and so to see how deeply they cut. They not only touch
the outward action, but thought and motive.
III. Lessons:
1. To seek by meditation upon the law of God to know how much that
law demands of us as Christians.
2. To examine the conscience by the Ten Commandments, so as to
discover, by the help of the Holy Spirit, wherein we have broken them--in
thought, word, deed, or omission.
3. They are the way of life. (Canon Hutchings, M. A.)
Verse 9
The Lord is his inheritance.
The Lord the Christian’s inheritance
The obvious meaning of having the Lord for our inheritance is,
that we have dedicated ourselves to His service, that we have surrendered
ourselves altogether to Him, the energies of the body and the faculties of the
mind, to do His will and advance His kingdom and glory; again, that we have
secured Him as our own forever, that we are attached to Him as a man to a
possession which he cannot alienate; further, that we have, as it were, the use
of the Lord God Almighty, that His perfections and His grace are guaranteed to
us to be employed for our personal advantage; and, lastly, that we are in the
actual enjoyment of those blessings which belong to living in a state of favour
with the righteous Governor of the universe.
I. In life the
true believer realises the promise, and has the Lord for his inheritance.
1. Because he deliberately chooses Him in preference to the charms
and allurements of the world. In proportion as he is separated from the world,
does the Lord become his inheritance; he is more closely united to Him, and
more exclusively employed in His service; he perceives the wisdom of his
choice, tastes of the blessings that are at God’s right hand, and finds a
supply of all his wants from the fulness that is in Christ Jesus; that the Lord
is his portion and his sole inheritance, he has taken Him for his own, and
every other less perfect and substantial he has absolutely and utterly
renounced.
2. The Christian has the Lord for his inheritance, in that all things
are working together for his final salvation.
3. The true believer has the Lord for his inheritance, because he has
the peace of God shed abroad in his heart. The voice of Christian experience is
unanimous. God does not hide Himself from those whom He has given to His
beloved Son.
4. The true believer has surrendered to him the Lord Christ Himself
as his inheritance; he has Him for his own. It is the assurance of St. John
that “he that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son hath not
life.”
II. But not only in
this life, but also after death--not only in time, but also in eternity, has
the Christian the Lord for his inheritance. He is not deprived of his portion
by the separation of soul and body, by the change of scene, nor the
commencement of a spiritual existence. Not only is it his own now, but also in
the world to come.
1. For, first, He is eternally with him. Wherever is the heaven where
Christ lives and reigns, there is the habitation of His chosen people. They are
with Him where He is, they see Him as He is, they walk in the light of His
countenance.
2. But the great truth stands out in all its excellency when we find
it is the presence of the Lord that constitutes the believer’s happiness and
joy. Every joy and blessing of those blessed places originates in the fact,
that we are to dwell in the presence of the Lord. His presence is the fountain
and spring of happiness to every individual of His glorified Church.
Conclusion: Let us bear in mind--
1. That whether we have made the Lord our inheritance must be the
criterion of our hopes. To have no part in Him is to be an outcast from the
promises, to live with the Divine wrath upon our heads.
2. Let us also seriously inquire, what will be the state of those in
the next world who have not made the Lord their inheritance? Can their souls be
conceived in any way capable of participating in heavenly joy? Is there
anything in the circumstances or employments of redeemed spirits which can fill
up the measure of their cup, and make them perfectly and forever blessed? (H.
Hughes, M. A.)
Verse 12
Deuteronomy 10:12; Deuteronomy 10:18
What doth the Lord thy God require of thee.
The true life of man
The true life of man is the life of practical conformity to Divine
claims. All is summed up and expressed here.
I. Loving
reverence.
1. Fear of not acting worthily of the object of love.
2. Fear of offending the object of love.
II. Practical
obedience.
1. God has “ways,” that is methods of action--
2. To walk in God’s ways is--
III. Hearty service.
1. Perfect freedom.
2. Sunny cheerfulness.
3. Thorough completeness. All the powers fully employed. (Homilist.)
Educated towards spirituality
That was the Divine intention from the very beginning. God does
not disclose His purpose all at once, but out of consideration for our
capacities and our opportunities and our necessities He leads us one step at a
time, as the wise teacher leads the young scholar. What wise teacher thrusts a
whole library upon the dawning mind of childhood? A picture, a toy, a tempting
prize, a handful to be going on with, and all the rest covered by a genial
smile: so the young scholar passes from page to page until the genius of the
revelation seizes him, and life becomes a sacred Pentecost. This thought
supplies a standard by which to measure progress. What are we? To what have we
attained? Are we still among the beggarly elements? Do we still cry out for a
kind of teaching that is infantile and that ought to be from our age altogether
profitless? Or do we sigh to see the finer lines and hear the lower tones and
enter into the mystery of silent worship--so highly strung in all holy
sensibilities that even a word jars upon us and is out of place under
circumstances so charged with the Divine presence? Still keeping by this same
line of thought, notice how the promises were adapted to the mental condition
of Israel. What promises could Israel understand? Only promises of the most
substantial kind. Moses addresses himself to this necessity with infinite skill
(Deuteronomy 10:22; Deuteronomy 11:11-12). Still preserving
the marvellous consistency of the whole economy, we cannot fail to notice how
beautifully the sacrifices were adapted to the religious condition of the
people. This explains the sacrifices indeed. What was the religious condition
of the people? Hardly religious at all. It was an infantile condition; it was a
condition in which appeal could only lie with effect along the line of vision.
So God will institute a worship accordingly; He will say to Israel, Bring
beasts in great numbers, and kill them upon the altar; take censers, put fire thereon;
spare nothing of your herds and flocks and corn and wine; have a continual
burnt offering, and add to the continual burnt offering other offerings great
in number and in value. Israel must be kept busy; leisure will be destruction.
There must be seven Sabbaths in the week, and seven of those seven must be
specialised by fast or festival or sacred observance. Give Israel no time to
rest. When he has brought one bullock, send him for another; when he has killed
a ram, call for a thousand more; this will be instructive to him. We must weary
him to a higher aspiration; to begin this aspiration would be to beat the air,
or to speak an unknown language, or to propound a series of spiritual
impossibilities. Men must be trained according to their capacity and their
quality. The whole ceremonial system of Moses constitutes in itself--in its
wisdom so rich, its marvellous adaptation to the character and temper of the
times,--an unanswerable argument for the inspiration of the Bible. So far the
line has been consistent from its beginning, what wonder, then, if it culminate
in one splendid word? That word is introduced here and there. For example, in Deuteronomy 10:12, the word occurs; in Deuteronomy 11:1, it is repeated. What is
that culminating word? How long it has been kept back! Now that it is set down
we see it and acknowledge it; it comes at the right time, and is put in the
right place:--“To love Him.” (J. Parker, D. D.)
Exhortation to serve the Lord
Who obeys this command? A part of my hearers obey it in some
degree. They esteem God above every other object. They consider His glory as
their highest interest, and communion with Him as their supreme happiness. It
is their greatest grief that their treacherous hearts are so prone to wander
from Him. Their most fervent desires pant after Him. And when in a favoured
hour they find Him whom their “soul loveth,” they hold Him fast and will not
let Him go. I have no reproaches for these. But are all such? Would to God all
were. But there is no service without love. “Love is the fulfilling of the
law.” Supreme love to God will certainly produce self-denial for His sake. It will
habitually avoid everything which He has forbidden, and obey, not a part, but
all He commands. Supreme love will seek communion with its object more than any
worldly pleasure. It will pant after Him and after greater conformity to Him;
it will seek His glory as the highest interest; it will renounce the world and
idols and cultivate a heavenly mind. Unless we have that which will produce all
these effects, we have no supreme love to God; and if we have no supreme love,
we have no love at all; and if we have no love, as there is no neutral state,
we are His enemies. It was God that made you what you are, and put you into a
world which He had richly furnished for your use. Have you nothing to do with
Him, or He with you? Do you imagine that He created you and raised you so much
above the brutes, and put you into a world on which He had expended so much
labour, that you might wander from Him in the regions of darkness? that you
might seek your happiness out of Him, and live in rebellion against Him? that
you might spend your life only in preparing to live in this transitory state?
or that you might live only to eat and drink? As God is true, He sent you into
His world for the same end that a master sends a servant ‘into his vineyard--to
labour for Him. He has sent you into the field abundantly furnished with powers
and means to serve Him, and has strictly commanded you to use these talents in
His service. Say not that He is too far above you to be apprehended. He has
brought Himself down, and spread Himself out before you in His works and word,
and it is only to unbelief that He is invisible. Having sent you into His
vineyard, He looks after you to see whether you are faithful or not. Has He
nothing to do with you? His eyes are upon you every moment--upon the very
bottom of your heart. Did your Creator turn you loose into the world, to run
wild in pursuit of your own imaginations, without law or restraint, intending
to look no further after you, but to throw you out from His care? Woe to you if
He had done this; though this, I fear, you have often wished. But He did no
such thing. His intention was still to follow you with His care, as beloved
creatures, whom His own hands had formed--to exercise government over you--to
establish eternal communion with you--to lead your desires up to Him--to fill
you with His own sublime happiness, and to make you a part of an harmonious,
blessed, and glorious kingdom. To accomplish these ends He put you under law--a
law admirably calculated to unite you to Him and to consummate your happiness.
The unreasonable will complain of anything, and murmurs have filled the world
because this law requires the heart. But were it otherwise--were God to
relinquish His claims on the heart and compound for outward service only, would
it be better then? Could they be happy here, could they be happy in heaven,
without a holy heart? They had better never been born than be excused from
loving God. Should God give up His law, still they are wretches to eternity
without love to Him. The law enjoins nothing but what in the nature of things
is essential to happiness. From this moment you must either renounce your
Bible, or understand that God accounts you rebels for not loving and serving
Him with all the heart and soul. He admits no excuse. Your plea that you
cannot, is only pleading guilty. A heart that refuses to love the Creator and
Redeemer of the world, is the very thing for which God condemns you--is the
vilest rebel in the universe. (E. Griffin, D. D.)
God’s requirements
God’s exactions, if we be Christians, are our own free-will
offerings. What God demands is what thankful hearts should gladly give.
1. First of all “to fear” Him. Not to be terrified, that is the
natural man’s religion. Unless taught of God men look upon Him with alarm.
Hence religion is a sepulchral and gloomy thing to them. To the Christian all
is reverse. He has no alarm; he courts God’s presence and feels that presence
to be the inspiration of hope and joy.
2. Next “to walk in all His ways.” All the ways proceed from one
source and terminate in the same again. There are varieties of expression, but
one religion. A way of righteousness, a way of truth, a way of peace, and a way
of pleasantness.
3. Then “to love Him.” If the fear enjoined were terror, it would be
impossible to love. Love is the germ in the heart that blossoms and bursts into
all the fragrant fruits demanded by God’s holy law. The law, like the imperious
taskmaster, says, “Give me fruit,” and you cannot; but love softly,
progressively, originates and develops all the fruits of the Spirit. The
absence of this love is the absence of Christianity. This love, lost in the
Fall, regained by the Cross, is the result of seeing God’s love for us. The
measure and extent is “all your hearts.” Not cold, calculating preference; but
warm, cordial attachment--attachment not blind and unintelligible, but with all
the soul.
4. Also “to serve” Him, service in the sense of worship. The word
liturgy strictly means service; here service means adore, pray, and praise;
worship outwardly, publicly, and privately with all the heart. We learn the
essence of all true acceptable worship before God. Not material glory, ritual
splendour; but depth of sincerity, intensity of love, the supremacy of God in
the heart.
5. What is the end of all this? First, God asks this, not for His
benefit, but for our good. Is there no benefit in meeting together in the house
of God, in unloading the thankful heart in praise? When you give the greatest
glory, worship, and homage to God, the reaction of it is showers of blessings,
mercies, and privileges upon yourselves. God requires this in His Word, in
seasons of affliction and prosperity. He requires it that holy effects may be
seen, and that men may feel that religion purifies. It is also good for the
world. The best evidence that you are Christians is in what you feel, suffer,
sacrifice, and do; not as servants obeying for reward, but as sons serving God
out of affection. (J. Cumming, D. D.)
An imperative demand
Yea, and what does the Lord require of us?
1. Reverence--“But to fear the Lord thy God.”
2. Obedience “To walk in all His ways.” To go when He tells us, and
to take the way He has prepared for us. Matthew Henry says, “It ought to be the
care of every one of us to follow the Lord fully. We must, in a course of obedience
to God’s will, and service to His honour, follow Him universally, without
dividing; uprightly, without dissembling; cheerfully, without disputing; and
constantly, without declining: and this is following Him fully.”
3. Love--“And to love Him.” This exhortation comes in beautifully to
prevent the possibility of reverence becoming a terror, and obedience
servility.
4. Service--“And to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and
with all thy soul.” Conviction, principle, truth, sentiment, and emotion find
their level in service, as the waters of the river do in the sea. Life, of
every kind, is energy from within towards an outward object.
5. Diligence--“To keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes,
which I command thee this day for thy good.” (T. Davies.)
Verses 14-16
He chose . . . you above all people.
Election and holiness
I. In setting
forth election, I must have you observe, first of all, its extraordinary
singularity. God has chosen to Himself a people whom no man can number, out of
the children of Adam. Now this is a wonder of wonders, when we come to consider
that the heaven, even the heaven of heavens, is the Lord’s. If God must have a
chosen race, why did He not select one from the majestic order of angels, or
from the flaming cherubim and seraphim who stand around His throne? Why was not
Gabriel fixed upon? What could there be in man, a creature lower than the
angels, that God should select him rather than the angelic spirits? I have
given you, then, some reason at starting, why we should regard God’s Election
as being singular. But I have to offer others. Observe, the text not only says,
“Behold, the heaven, even the heaven of the heavens is the Lord’s,” but it
adds, “the earth also, with all that therein is.” Yet one other thought to make
God’s Election marvellous indeed. God had unlimited power of creation. Now, if
He willed to take a people who should be His favourites, who should be united
to the person of His Son, why did He not make a new race? When Adam sinned, it
would have been easy enough to strike the world out of existence. But no!
Instead of making a new people, a pure people who could not sin, He takes a
fallen people, and lifts these up, and that, too, by costly means; by the death
of His own Son, by the work of His own Spirit; that these might be the jewels
in His crown to reflect His glory forever. Oh, singular choice! My soul is lost
in Thy depths, and I can only pause and cry, “Oh, the goodness, oh, the mercy,
oh, the sovereignty of God’s grace.” Having thus spoken about its singularity,
I turn to another subject.
2. Observe the unconstrained freeness of electing love. In our text
this is hinted at by the word “only.” Why did God love their fathers? Why, only
because He did so. There is no other reason. I come to the hardest part of my
task. Election in its justice. Now, I shall defend this great fact, that God
has chosen men to Himself, and I shall regard it from rather a different point
of view from that which is usually taken. You tell me, if God has chosen some
men to eternal life, that He has been unjust. I ask you to prove it. The burden
of the proof lies with you. For I would have you remember that none merited
this at all. God injures no man in blessing some. I defend it again on another
ground. To which of you has God ever refused His mercy and love, when you have
sought His face? Doth not His Word bid you come to Jesus? and doth it not
solemnly say, “Whosoever will, let him come”? You say it is unjust that some
should be lost while others are saved. Who makes those to be lost that are
lost? Did God cause you to sin? Has the Spirit of God ever persuaded you to do
a wrong thing? Has the Word of God ever bolstered you up in your own
self-righteousness? No; God has never exercised any influence upon you to make
you go the wrong way. The whole tendency of His Word, the whole tendency of the
preaching of the Gospel, is to persuade you to turn from sin unto
righteousness, from your wicked ways to Jehovah.
II. We now turn to
election in its practical influences. You will see that the precept is annexed
to the doctrine; God has loved you above all people that are upon the face of
the earth; therefore, “circumcise the foreskin of your hearts and be no more
stiff-necked.” It is whispered that Election is a licentious doctrine. It is my
business to prove to you that it is the very reverse. “Well, but,” cries one,
“I know a man that believes in Election and yet lives in sin.” Yes, and I
suppose that disproves it. So that if I can go through London and find any
ragged, drunken fellow, who believes a doctrine and lives in sin, the fact of
his believing it disproves it. Singular logic, that! But I come back to my
proof. It is laid down as a matter of theory that this doctrine is licentious.
The fitness of things proves that it is not so. Election teaches that God has
chosen some to be kings and priests to God. When a man believes that he is
chosen to be a king, would it be legitimate inference to draw from it--“I am
chosen to be a king; therefore I will be a beggar; I am chosen to sit upon a
throne, therefore I will wear rags”? Why, you would say, “There would be no
argument, no sense in it.” But there is quite as much sense in that as in your
supposition, that God has chosen His people to be holy, and yet that a
knowledge of this fact will make them unholy. No! the man, knowing that a
peculiar dignity has been put upon him by God, feels working in his bosom a
desire to live up to his dignity. Again, not only the fitness of things, but
the thing itself proves that it is not so. Election is a separation. God has
set apart him that is godly for Himself, has separated a people out of the mass
of mankind. Does that separation allow us to draw the inference thus:--“God has
separated me, therefore I will live as other men live”? No! if I believe that
God has distinguished me by His discriminating love, and separated me, then I
hear the cry, “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch not the
unclean thing, and I will be a Father unto you.” It were strange if the decree
of separation should engender an unholy union. It cannot be. (C. H.
Spurgeon.)
All things subserve the welfare of God’s elect children
I see a mother that, as the twilight falls and the baby sleeps,
and because it sleeps out of her arms, goes about gathering from the floor its
playthings, and carries them to the closet, and carries away the vestments that
have been cast down, and stirring the fire, sweeping up the hearth, winding the
clock, and gathering up dispersed books, she hums to herself low melodies as
she moves about the room, until the whole place is once again neat, and clean,
and in order. Why is it that the room is so precious to her? Is it because
there is such beautiful paper on the walls? because there is so goodly a carpet
on the floor? because the furniture in the room is so pleasing to the eye? All
these are nothing in her estimation except as servants of that little creature
of hers--the baby in the cradle. She says, “All these things serve my heart
while I rock my child.” The whole round globe is but a cradle, and our God
rocks it, and regards all things, even the world itself, as so many instruments
for the promotion of our welfare. When He makes the tempest, the pestilence, or
the storm, when He causes ages in their revolutions to change the world, it is
all to serve His own heart through His children--men. When we are walking
through this world, we are not walking through long files of laws that have no design;
we are walking through a world that has natural laws, which we must both know
and observe: yet these must have their master, and Christ is He. And all of
these are made to be our servants because we are God’s children. (H. W.
Beecher.)
God’s elective call
These words were intended to make it plain to the Israelites how
greatly they had been honoured of God in being given such preeminence among the
nations. So we must ever keep in view who calls us through the Gospel and has
come near to us in it. It is God, whose are not only the earth but the heaven
of heavens. From these words of Moses we may gather--
I. How great and
mighty is the God who calls us to Himself--how wise and solicitous for men’s
good, and how He has proved this in all the regions of the creation which
belongs to Him.
II. He who holds
all things in His hand and cares for all, can have a special and peculiar care
for each individual: and thus we may have fullest confidence in Him.
III. It should make
us astonished and confused beyond measure to think that the great God should
have called us weak and puny creatures to so great grace and favour; that He
should even have sent His Son for our redemption, and that He would have us
become temples of the Holy Ghost. Many indeed find it inconceivable that God
should have destined our globe--one of the smallest of the worlds--for such
high honour. This appears to them so absurd, that on this account they would
throw over Christianity. They forget that the greatness of God lies in this,
that He attends to and cares for the small as well as the great. To the
infinite Jehovah the distinction between small and great is not as it appears
to us. Moses understood this.
IV. In these words
there appears the hint of a comprehensive Divine plan which God designed with
regard to the creation through that which He accomplished toward this lower
portion of it. So had He already proclaimed to that people chosen before all
others. “As truly as I live, saith the Lord, all the earth shall be filled with
the glory of the Lord” (Numbers 14:21). He thus proclaimed that
through the choice of Israel He had in view the salvation of all the peoples; a
truth already revealed in the blessing of Abraham, in whose seed all nations
are to be blessed. Even so we may say that, in the choice of our globe for this
special design, He contemplates the renewal and glorification of the universe.
“In Christ, in the fulness of time, He will gather together all things, both
which are in heaven and which are on earth” (Ephesians 1:10; Colossians 1:20). How this is to be
accomplished we must leave to the care of Him whose are “the heaven and the
heaven of heavens.”
V. The
responsibility of those so highly favoured will be the greater if they should
turn away to unbelief and disobedience. If these things be so, Moses’ words
give us sufficient inducement to hold fast with decision and faithfulness what
is offered us in the Gospel and in the revelation of God’s will. Let us not
fail in our part, as we may be assured He will not fail who has come down so
far in Christ unto us. (J. C. Blumhardt.)
Circumcise therefore the
foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked.
Circumcision as compared with baptism
I. Spiritual
circumcision--its meaning.
1. Declared in the Old and New Testaments, as, in the text, also in Jeremiah 4:4, and elsewhere.
2. Spoken of as a seal of the righteousness of faith (Romans 4:11).
3. Spoken of as representing the renunciation of, and cutting off of,
the superfluity of the flesh (Colossians 2:11).
4. Therefore true circumcision is of everlasting and universal
obligation.
II. Literal
circumcision. Temporary and preparatory.
1. For males only.
2. Superseded by baptism.
III. Circumcision
and baptism.
1. Two points in which they differ.
2. Three points of resemblance.
The cure of wilfulness
It is a thing much to be observed, that many of the outward and
visible signs, which God has ordained His people to use in worshipping Him,
have somewhat in them to remind us in some way of suffering, affliction, pain,
self-denial, death. Thus the Holy Communion is the remembrance of our Saviour’s
death, His violent and bitter death. But of all Church ceremonies, there is
none which so distinctly sets before us our call to suffer, as that which has
from the beginning always gone along with baptism; the signing the newly
baptised with the sign of the Cross. The Cross is the very height and depth of
all suffering. Now such as the baptismal Cross is in the Christian life, such
was circumcision among God’s ancient people. It was His mark, made for life, in
the very flesh of those who belonged to Him, setting them apart, in a manner,
for suffering and self-denial. It was a foretaste of the Cross; add, as such,
our Saviour Himself received it. Thus, whether we look to our Lord’s own
example, or to the sacramental ways which He has ordained, both of old and new,
to bring His people near Him, either way we are taught to count them happy
which endure; to consider affliction and trouble as God’s seal, set upon those
who particularly belong to Him, and to fear nothing so much as receiving our
consolation in this world. But if this be so, then just in such measure as we
are going on prosperously and at ease, have we need to mortify ourselves, and
keep our passions in order; that by our own doing, if so please God, we may
provide for ourselves something like that due chastening, which our afflicted
brethren really have to endure. This, our self-denial, we must practise in
little matters: it should accompany us in our everyday walk, as every Jew bore
about with him the mark of circumcision, visibly impressed on his flesh. We
must not keep our patience and self-command to be exercised only on great and
solemn occasions; we must be continually sacrificing our own wills, as
opportunity serves, to the will of others. There is no end, in short, of the
many little crosses which, if quietly borne in a Christian way, will, by God’s
grace, do the work of affliction, and help to tame our proud wills by little
and little. I say, tame our proud wills, because Holy Scripture sets forth this
as one of the particular objects for which circumcision was appointed, that
God’s people might learn by it, not only to get over what are commonly called
the lusts of the flesh, but the angry and envious, and proud feeling also; as
the text seems specially to hint: Circumcise, therefore, the foreskin of your
heart, and be no more stiff-necked. As if stubbornness and obstinacy, and, in
one word, wilfulness (for that is the meaning of a stiff neck), were to be
cured by the same kind of discipline as sensual passions, lust, and greediness.
In short, it is not hard to understand how the body, which greatly affects the
mind, may be tamed and brought into subjection, by a quiet and discreet method
of fasting, accompanied, of course, with alms and prayer. And a little
consideration will show that the same discipline must do great good to the
passions of the soul too. If we abstain from indulging our bodily appetites,
for the sake of pleasing God and obtaining His grace, is there not so far a
better chance of our remembering Him, when we are tempted to indulge
discontented, unkind, proud thoughts, wilful tempers of any sort? I do not of
course mean that this benefit follows upon the mere outward exercise of
fasting, but only if a person sets about it religiously, in the fear Of God, in
desire to draw near to Christ, and in humble obedience to His will, made known
in His Gospel and by His Church. Otherwise mere fasting, as well as mere
prayer, or mere reading, or mere going to church, may be turned into a snare of
the devil. But it is not therefore to be omitted, any more than those other
holy exercises; but practised, as I said, in the fear of God, the want of which
fear alone it is, which can ever make any person easy in depending on one or
other holy duty, so as to leave out the rest. (Plain Sermons by Contributors
to “Tracts for the Times.”)
Verse 18
Deuteronomy 10:12; Deuteronomy 10:18
What doth the Lord thy God require of thee.
The true life of man
The true life of man is the life of practical conformity to Divine
claims. All is summed up and expressed here.
I. Loving
reverence.
1. Fear of not acting worthily of the object of love.
2. Fear of offending the object of love.
II. Practical
obedience.
1. God has “ways,” that is methods of action--
2. To walk in God’s ways is--
III. Hearty service.
1. Perfect freedom.
2. Sunny cheerfulness.
3. Thorough completeness. All the powers fully employed. (Homilist.)
Educated towards spirituality
That was the Divine intention from the very beginning. God does
not disclose His purpose all at once, but out of consideration for our
capacities and our opportunities and our necessities He leads us one step at a
time, as the wise teacher leads the young scholar. What wise teacher thrusts a
whole library upon the dawning mind of childhood? A picture, a toy, a tempting
prize, a handful to be going on with, and all the rest covered by a genial
smile: so the young scholar passes from page to page until the genius of the
revelation seizes him, and life becomes a sacred Pentecost. This thought
supplies a standard by which to measure progress. What are we? To what have we
attained? Are we still among the beggarly elements? Do we still cry out for a
kind of teaching that is infantile and that ought to be from our age altogether
profitless? Or do we sigh to see the finer lines and hear the lower tones and
enter into the mystery of silent worship--so highly strung in all holy
sensibilities that even a word jars upon us and is out of place under
circumstances so charged with the Divine presence? Still keeping by this same
line of thought, notice how the promises were adapted to the mental condition
of Israel. What promises could Israel understand? Only promises of the most
substantial kind. Moses addresses himself to this necessity with infinite skill
(Deuteronomy 10:22; Deuteronomy 11:11-12). Still preserving
the marvellous consistency of the whole economy, we cannot fail to notice how
beautifully the sacrifices were adapted to the religious condition of the
people. This explains the sacrifices indeed. What was the religious condition
of the people? Hardly religious at all. It was an infantile condition; it was a
condition in which appeal could only lie with effect along the line of vision.
So God will institute a worship accordingly; He will say to Israel, Bring
beasts in great numbers, and kill them upon the altar; take censers, put fire
thereon; spare nothing of your herds and flocks and corn and wine; have a
continual burnt offering, and add to the continual burnt offering other
offerings great in number and in value. Israel must be kept busy; leisure will
be destruction. There must be seven Sabbaths in the week, and seven of those
seven must be specialised by fast or festival or sacred observance. Give Israel
no time to rest. When he has brought one bullock, send him for another; when he
has killed a ram, call for a thousand more; this will be instructive to him. We
must weary him to a higher aspiration; to begin this aspiration would be to
beat the air, or to speak an unknown language, or to propound a series of
spiritual impossibilities. Men must be trained according to their capacity and
their quality. The whole ceremonial system of Moses constitutes in itself--in
its wisdom so rich, its marvellous adaptation to the character and temper of
the times,--an unanswerable argument for the inspiration of the Bible. So far
the line has been consistent from its beginning, what wonder, then, if it
culminate in one splendid word? That word is introduced here and there. For
example, in Deuteronomy 10:12, the word occurs; in Deuteronomy 11:1, it is repeated. What is
that culminating word? How long it has been kept back! Now that it is set down
we see it and acknowledge it; it comes at the right time, and is put in the
right place:--“To love Him.” (J. Parker, D. D.)
Exhortation to serve the Lord
Who obeys this command? A part of my hearers obey it in some
degree. They esteem God above every other object. They consider His glory as
their highest interest, and communion with Him as their supreme happiness. It
is their greatest grief that their treacherous hearts are so prone to wander
from Him. Their most fervent desires pant after Him. And when in a favoured
hour they find Him whom their “soul loveth,” they hold Him fast and will not
let Him go. I have no reproaches for these. But are all such? Would to God all
were. But there is no service without love. “Love is the fulfilling of the
law.” Supreme love to God will certainly produce self-denial for His sake. It
will habitually avoid everything which He has forbidden, and obey, not a part,
but all He commands. Supreme love will seek communion with its object more than
any worldly pleasure. It will pant after Him and after greater conformity to
Him; it will seek His glory as the highest interest; it will renounce the world
and idols and cultivate a heavenly mind. Unless we have that which will produce
all these effects, we have no supreme love to God; and if we have no supreme
love, we have no love at all; and if we have no love, as there is no neutral
state, we are His enemies. It was God that made you what you are, and put you
into a world which He had richly furnished for your use. Have you nothing to do
with Him, or He with you? Do you imagine that He created you and raised you so
much above the brutes, and put you into a world on which He had expended so
much labour, that you might wander from Him in the regions of darkness? that
you might seek your happiness out of Him, and live in rebellion against Him?
that you might spend your life only in preparing to live in this transitory
state? or that you might live only to eat and drink? As God is true, He sent
you into His world for the same end that a master sends a servant ‘into his
vineyard--to labour for Him. He has sent you into the field abundantly
furnished with powers and means to serve Him, and has strictly commanded you to
use these talents in His service. Say not that He is too far above you to be
apprehended. He has brought Himself down, and spread Himself out before you in
His works and word, and it is only to unbelief that He is invisible. Having
sent you into His vineyard, He looks after you to see whether you are faithful
or not. Has He nothing to do with you? His eyes are upon you every moment--upon
the very bottom of your heart. Did your Creator turn you loose into the world,
to run wild in pursuit of your own imaginations, without law or restraint,
intending to look no further after you, but to throw you out from His care? Woe
to you if He had done this; though this, I fear, you have often wished. But He
did no such thing. His intention was still to follow you with His care, as
beloved creatures, whom His own hands had formed--to exercise government over
you--to establish eternal communion with you--to lead your desires up to
Him--to fill you with His own sublime happiness, and to make you a part of an
harmonious, blessed, and glorious kingdom. To accomplish these ends He put you
under law--a law admirably calculated to unite you to Him and to consummate
your happiness. The unreasonable will complain of anything, and murmurs have
filled the world because this law requires the heart. But were it
otherwise--were God to relinquish His claims on the heart and compound for
outward service only, would it be better then? Could they be happy here, could
they be happy in heaven, without a holy heart? They had better never been born
than be excused from loving God. Should God give up His law, still they are
wretches to eternity without love to Him. The law enjoins nothing but what in
the nature of things is essential to happiness. From this moment you must
either renounce your Bible, or understand that God accounts you rebels for not
loving and serving Him with all the heart and soul. He admits no excuse. Your
plea that you cannot, is only pleading guilty. A heart that refuses to love the
Creator and Redeemer of the world, is the very thing for which God condemns
you--is the vilest rebel in the universe. (E. Griffin, D. D.)
God’s requirements
God’s exactions, if we be Christians, are our own free-will
offerings. What God demands is what thankful hearts should gladly give.
1. First of all “to fear” Him. Not to be terrified, that is the
natural man’s religion. Unless taught of God men look upon Him with alarm.
Hence religion is a sepulchral and gloomy thing to them. To the Christian all
is reverse. He has no alarm; he courts God’s presence and feels that presence
to be the inspiration of hope and joy.
2. Next “to walk in all His ways.” All the ways proceed from one
source and terminate in the same again. There are varieties of expression, but
one religion. A way of righteousness, a way of truth, a way of peace, and a way
of pleasantness.
3. Then “to love Him.” If the fear enjoined were terror, it would be
impossible to love. Love is the germ in the heart that blossoms and bursts into
all the fragrant fruits demanded by God’s holy law. The law, like the imperious
taskmaster, says, “Give me fruit,” and you cannot; but love softly,
progressively, originates and develops all the fruits of the Spirit. The
absence of this love is the absence of Christianity. This love, lost in the
Fall, regained by the Cross, is the result of seeing God’s love for us. The
measure and extent is “all your hearts.” Not cold, calculating preference; but
warm, cordial attachment--attachment not blind and unintelligible, but with all
the soul.
4. Also “to serve” Him, service in the sense of worship. The word
liturgy strictly means service; here service means adore, pray, and praise;
worship outwardly, publicly, and privately with all the heart. We learn the
essence of all true acceptable worship before God. Not material glory, ritual
splendour; but depth of sincerity, intensity of love, the supremacy of God in
the heart.
5. What is the end of all this? First, God asks this, not for His
benefit, but for our good. Is there no benefit in meeting together in the house
of God, in unloading the thankful heart in praise? When you give the greatest glory,
worship, and homage to God, the reaction of it is showers of blessings,
mercies, and privileges upon yourselves. God requires this in His Word, in
seasons of affliction and prosperity. He requires it that holy effects may be
seen, and that men may feel that religion purifies. It is also good for the
world. The best evidence that you are Christians is in what you feel, suffer,
sacrifice, and do; not as servants obeying for reward, but as sons serving God
out of affection. (J. Cumming, D. D.)
An imperative demand
Yea, and what does the Lord require of us?
1. Reverence--“But to fear the Lord thy God.”
2. Obedience “To walk in all His ways.” To go when He tells us, and
to take the way He has prepared for us. Matthew Henry says, “It ought to be the
care of every one of us to follow the Lord fully. We must, in a course of
obedience to God’s will, and service to His honour, follow Him universally,
without dividing; uprightly, without dissembling; cheerfully, without
disputing; and constantly, without declining: and this is following Him fully.”
3. Love--“And to love Him.” This exhortation comes in beautifully to
prevent the possibility of reverence becoming a terror, and obedience
servility.
4. Service--“And to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and
with all thy soul.” Conviction, principle, truth, sentiment, and emotion find
their level in service, as the waters of the river do in the sea. Life, of
every kind, is energy from within towards an outward object.
5. Diligence--“To keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes,
which I command thee this day for thy good.” (T. Davies.)
Verse 19
Ye were strangers.
The stranger’s claim
In both Jewish and Christian economy special kindness was to be
shown to the stranger.
I. The stranger’s
claim does not rest upon any doctrine of abstract right, but upon the
disadvantage of his position. He can hardly be said to have any right at all.
He is a foreigner. He comes uninvited. He seeks only his own advantage. Why
should I befriend him? He is seeking only to make his own way, and to secure a
footing, probably at my cost, or that of my neighbour. Besides, it is
impossible to befriend him without risk. Nothing is known of his history or his
character. Why did he leave the place where he was known? If he couldn’t
succeed there, why should he expect to succeed here? The very fact that he had
to come among strangers and start life afresh is a reason for caution and
reserve. All this is true. Why should you trouble about him? Yet you must
trouble. And the simple reason is, that his strangeness places him at a
terrible disadvantage. In the Old Testament he is always classed with the widow
and the orphan. They are the defenceless class. And because they are an easy
prey of cunning and wickedness, God makes special provision for them. He comes
into a community ignorant of all the well-established order of its life. The
common places of their life are novelties to him. What an object for fleecing!
The sailor on shore, and Young Evergreen on the turf, are striking examples of
the readiness with which the simple-minded stranger falls a victim to wily and
wicked men. The same thing happens in business and society. Most people regard
it as quite the proper thing to make the stranger pay for his experience, and
do not scruple to take advantage of his ignorance. The glory of our Jehovah is
that He is the Defence and Champion of the helpless and oppressed. The world
bullies the widow, exploits the poor, and considers the stranger fair game for
plunder. But God says, My people shall protect the weak, provide for the poor,
and show kindness to the stranger. One reason why they were to show kindness to
the stranger was because he is especially sensitive to first impressions. His
loneliness and comparative helplessness lay him open to the first influences
that come upon him. He is ready to enter any door that opens. How much depends
upon those first influences! He will form his estimate of the new community
from the people who first get hold of him. The stranger’s first impressions of
Israel would be gathered from his first experiences among them. First
impressions last. God was jealous for His name among the heathen and the
stranger. The stranger is nervous, uncertain, apprehensive. He is easily
offended, and apt to see slights where they do not exist. But he is just as
easily pleased, and responds readily to kind and sympathetic interest. I am
persuaded our churches have suffered great loss in our towns and cities through
their neglect of the stranger. It would be safe to affirm that no church
prospers that is not mindful of the stranger. “Forget not to show love unto the
stranger.” He is altogether a pathetic figure. Often behind him is a history
full of tragedy; his heart is sore, sometimes even unto breaking; always he is
in need of kindly and helpful sympathy.
II. Our duty to the
stranger. Our duty runs along the line of his need. The Old Testament law
protects him against oppression, wrong, and vexation. No advantage was to be
taken against him. But they were not to stand aloof, and let him severely
alone. They must deal hospitably with him. He with the poor was to have the
gleanings of the field, that he might secure his daily bread. In the New Testament
the hospitality is extended. To care for the stranger was one of the marks of
Christian character (Romans 12:13; 1 Timothy 5:10). He was to be
treated both in the Old and New Covenant as home-born, and admitted to the
privileges of national and social life (Leviticus 19:33-34). The reason for such
generous treatment was three fold.
1. The stranger’s need. That in itself ought to be sufficient. The
Good Samaritan does not stop to inquire into the merits of the man naked and
bleeding on the roadside. His need is a sufficient passport to sympathy.
Philanthropy in the guise of a detective is a very poor thing. The
large-hearted pity of Jesus did not wait for a certificate of merit and
respectability before it healed the sufferer or fed the hungry. The stranger’s
hunger is for brotherliness, rather than bread. Feed him, then, out of the
fulness of your heart.
2. “Ye know the heart of a stranger.” One would think such would need
no exhortation to be considerate to strangers. The remembrance of a fellow
feeling ought to make them kind. But it does not. The cruellest slave driver is
the man who has been a slave. Suffering unsanctified by grace does not soften
and sweeten; it hardens and sours. But the law ought to hold good. If suffering
does not make us appreciate the troubles of those who may afterwards be passing
through the same experience, what can we appreciate? We are comforted of God,
that we in turn may comfort others in like affliction. We have all been
strangers, for we began life as “the little stranger.” Recall your experiences,
and when you see a stranger, do unto him as you would that others should have
done unto you.
3. God loves the stranger. “The Lord your God is God of gods, the
Lord of lords, a great God,. . .and loveth the stranger. Love ye therefore the
stranger” (Deuteronomy 10:17-19). The love of God
overflows the boundaries of the elect. It compasses the heathen as well as the
Israelite. Be ye imitators of God. Because God loves him, you must love him for
God sake. This motive is greatly strengthened in Jesus Christ. For His sake we
are debtors unto all men. For His sake we must take up our cross and crucify
the flesh with its narrow affections and selfish lust. In the stranger you may
find an angel. Not that every stranger is an angel. Some are sharks. You are
not asked to abandon the ordinary rules of prudence and common sense. There is
all the difference in the world between being kind to a stranger and making him
your bosom friend straight off. But in the stranger there are great
possibilities. When God gave His great promise unto Israel, we are told “they
were few men in number, yea, very few, and strangers in the land” (Psalms 105:11-12). Only a few feeble
strangers, but heirs of a great promise. Angels have a trick of dwelling in
unsuspected places; they delight to travel in disguise, and be entertained
unawares. In the stranger you may find appreciation and gratitude. St. Luke
tells us that when Jesus healed ten lepers none returned to express their
thanks, save only he who was a Samaritan and a stranger (Luke 17:18). In the stranger you may find
more than an angel. You may find in him your Lord. At the last day you will be
surprised to find you have been ministering not unto a needy brother, but to
the Lord Jesus Christ. “I was a stranger, and ye took me in.” (S. Chadwick.)
Experience a stimulus to generosity
Diderot rose on Shrove Tuesday morning and groping in his pocket
found nothing wherewith to keep that day, which he spent wandering about Paris
and its precincts. He was ill when he got back to his quarters, went to bed and
was treated by his landlady to a little toast and wine. “That day,” he told a
friend in after life, “I swore that if ever I came to have anything, I would
never in my life refuse a poor man help, never condemn a fellow creature to a
day so painful.” (Francis Jacox.)
Kindness to a stranger
A Pittsburgh pastor writes: “It was at the close of the evening
service last Sunday that, according to my wont, I stepped down from the pulpit
and moved towards the door to greet old friends and welcome strangers.
Presently there stood before me a shy, intelligent-looking lad, who grasped my
hand with so much cordiality that, looking him in the face, I said, ‘What is
your name? Do you live somewhere near by?’ ‘My name,’ said he, with a charming
accent, ‘is John Silas. I do not live here, I work at the K-- Hotel.’ ‘How did
you find your way here?’ ‘I looked for you many days,’ responded the boy; ‘I
come from Germany one year ago--no father, no mother. I meet you one night, you
preached at W-- (one of our suburbs); you shook hands with me, and said you
were glad to see me, and I’ve been looking for your church ever since.’ The
incident deeply touched several who were standing by, and hospitality to
strangers will seem to us all more valuable than ever before.”
Verse 21
Done for thee these great and terrible things.
The great doings of God
I. In what the
great deeds of God consist.
1. In Salvation. God, who delivered Israel from the bondage of Egypt,
has wrought a great work of deliverance on behalf of the human race. Greater
than any deed of vengeance is the Divine interposition by which mankind is
saved from the penalty and the curse of sin.
2. In the supply of all wants. The Lord, who gave Israel bread from heaven
and water from the flint rock, has made, in the dispensation of His grace, a
sufficient supply for the spiritual needs of all mankind.
3. In protection and deliverance from all dangers, and from the
assaults of every foe.
II. By what the
great deeds of God are prompted.
1. By the spectacle of the need, the misery, the helplessness of men.
2. By the pity and loving kindness of the Infinite Heart.
III. To what the
great deeds of God should lead those who profit by them.
1. To gratitude and praise. “The Lord hath done great things for us,
whereof we are glad.” “Bless the Lord, O my soul.”
2. To cheerful obedience. The memory of Divine favours should not
only awaken gladness; it should remind us of God’s claims upon us, upon our
love, our life, our all. (Family Churchman.)
Praise and obedience
He who would serve God must begin by praising God, for a grateful
heart is the mainspring of obedience. We must offer the salt of gratitude with
the sacrifice of obedience; our lives should be anointed with the precious oil
of thankfulness. As soldiers march to music, so while we walk in the paths of
righteousness we should keep step to the notes of thanksgiving. Larks sing as
they mount, so should we magnify the Lord for His mercies, while we are winging
our way to heaven. Our thanksgiving is not a swallow which is gone with the
summer. The birds within our bosom sing all the year round, and on such a day
as this their song is doubly welcome. The fire of gratitude will help to warm
us--heap on the big logs of loving memories. No cold shall freeze the genial
current of our soul; our praise shall flow on when brooks and rivers are bound
in ice. Let us see who among us can best rejoice in the Lord in all weathers.
──《The Biblical Illustrator》