Verses 26-45
Divine Sovereignty
Is this ancient history? Is there no inquiry of this kind propounded in heaven to-day? Has the generation ceased to be evil? and is God no longer made angry by repeated and aggravated disobedience? Because the thing was once written, we must not conclude that it was only once done. There are some things we cannot keep on writing, and we cannot continue to speak; we write them once, and the words must stand for ever as our one testimony; other things we say once for all: we could not bear to re-utter the complaint, so bitter, so trying, so destructive to the utterer: we pass from words to signs; sometimes we do not even make the sign, unless it be found in some broken sob or sigh, full of unutterable meaning. We shall put ourselves in a right relation to this inquiry, if we make answer that the generation is still evil, the Lord is still forbearing, the attitude of Heaven is a posture expressive of wonder and sorrow, and the answer of the earth to that posture is a repetition of rebelliousness and disobedience. A tender word is this word bear "How long shall I bear with this evil congregation?" And yet the word bear is put in by the English writer; it seemed to him to express the divine meaning most fully. But another word might have been inserted here, and is inserted by the best commentators upon the sacred text. "How long shall I forgive this congregation?" Forgiveness itself becomes a kind of weariness; the repetition of pardon becomes a bitter irony and most vexatious mockery of the man who pardons; an awful thought, verified by our own experience, needing no long and wordy argument to establish it. There does come a time in heart-history when the utterance of another pardon would seem to dispossess the man himself of judgment, responsibility, or sense of rightness; he is driven to say, No, the pardons have all been lost, the noble words have been thrown into the sea, or they have died upon the idle wind, and I will say them no more. So there comes a day of withdrawal, even in human relations: a time when we say, We cannot repeat our supplication for pardon addressed to Heaven on the part of one who has seen a thousand pardons trampled under foot. Is this ancient history? It is the story of this present day; it is a line from every man's biography. Could we rid ourselves of the distance of mere time and look with eyes cleansed and strengthened from on high at this passage, we should feel that it set before us the very agony of God in relation to our own accumulated and intolerable guilt.
What is the great all-determining thought arising out of this reasoning on the part of God and this determination to judge and destroy the men who have so long defied him? That thought is, that it is impossible to resist God and live. Were it possible to live in a spirit of resistance to God, that very possibility would dethrone the God who is defied. He is not God who can be resisted, and yet the rebel enjoys all the delights of immortality and all the security of heaven. This is not fatalism. Fatalism can play no part in the distribution and action of men who are morally constituted. It is a contradiction in terms to assert that a man who is morally constituted can be fated. Wherever moral purpose asserts its presence and influence, fatalism is impossible. By the very circumstances of our nature God has rendered predestination, of the narrow and selfish kind, impossible. We cannot predestinate moral beings. By the very act of predestination, narrowly construed, we take out the moral element which we are supposed to have fatalised and predetermined. To have a moral constitution is to have rights. God made of one blood all nations of men not in any merely physical or animal sense; but he made of one kind all men one kin, one fellowship, one soul one central and unchangeable relation to himself. That is the full meaning of the declaration that men are one, that humanity is one. But is there not a difference amongst men with regard to genius, force, capacity, all kinds of accent and individuality? Certainly; but all these bear no relation whatever to the eternal destiny of the soul. There is a difference in the things of nature, the little flower, the great tree; the tiny insect, and the sun-darkening eagle that lives at its gate; but all these have a common centre: all these are, so to say, gravitated around the one centre: all these plants, trees, flowers, grasses, are rooted in the same soil, are baptised by the same cloud, are warmed by the same sun. The difference is a difference of expression and relation; but the root is fed by the same great bounty. So differences of capacity and of influence, and differences of all kinds must be regarded within other boundaries than those which men attempt to set up as describing the fatalism of life. God makes no experiments upon his creatures. God did not create a man with the view of satisfying the divine wonder as to how that man would work out the mystery of life. The purpose of God is one. The Bible reveals the unity of that purpose. It never changes. It is one of two things in relation to the ages: salvation or destruction, complacency or judgment; heaven or hell. We are not justified in making experiments even upon one another in any sense that involves the possibility of an awful destiny. When we inflict pain, when we occasion disappointment, when we subject our nearest and dearest ones to all kinds of suffering, we can only justify ourselves by saying that the process will be consummated in a result that will repay all the trial of the road, and glorify it, and make its memory sweet, so that our very sufferings shall add to the richness and intensity of our joy. You have no right to subject anyone to the pain of travelling its disappointment, its humiliation, and its sorrow, say to all the agony of the sea merely for the sake of watching the sufferer writhe under the torment; but knowing that all the heaving billows and stormy winds, and all the evils incident to such travel, mean final escape, the attainment of a desired haven, the hospitality of a new world, the liberty and progress of ennobled conditions, you say, Bear up; cheer thee; be brave; to-morrow there will be land ahead, or presently you will see those whose faces you have desired, and one glimpse of them, one clasp of united hands, and the sea is forgotten, and your enjoyment of your escape is none the less because of your recollection of many a discomfort and your memory of many a pain. So God is conducting this congregation of Israel through the wilderness; but he will have his own way. If it were an exercise of merely arbitrary judgment and wisdom, we might feel unable to accept the story; but the purpose of it is liberty, enjoyment, progress, a great Canaan, a place of summer and fruitfulness and home. Where the purpose is beneficent the process must partake of its nature, and the process is justified by the beneficence of the end. Who could justify God, even within the narrow boundaries of this earth, if our present experience were to end in itself? The days so few a handful at the most so troubled, so storm-darkened, so shaken by a thousand alarms; the body so ailing, so frail, always cowering under the fear of approaching death; disappointments thick as thorns upon the tree; who could justify even God himself, who set us in this life, if this life were all? Who then could refrain from the cry, "If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable," because our standard is wrong, and our expectation is a deception? Take in the whole horizon; embrace the whole purpose of God; then you will be enabled to say, "All things work together for good to them that love God." We must not interrupt the process saying, We will judge God here, or there; we must wait until he says, It is finished, and then give our judgment.
It is impossible to obey God and die. Those who went out to spy the land and brought back a whining report filled with trouble and discontent died. The divine contempt killed them. God's laugh drove them away like a bitter wind. But Caleb and Joshua lived. Why did they live? Because they wrought in harmony with the divine purpose. They brought back the gospel not a gospel of sensuous ease and indulgence, calling upon men to fold their arms and wait in slumbrous tranquillity until heaven descended into their hearts; but the braver gospel: Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well able to do this; the Lord's hand is mighty enough to win this battle for us. Such men cannot die. God will protect their immortality. Our cheerful singers cannot perish; their songs belong to the ages; their words of joy and stimulus and inspiration are at once taken in by every heart and are welcomed into every home. Analyse human history: go into origins, and roots, and central springs, and fountains, and you will find that the gospel spirit of Caleb and Joshua is the victor spirit; the cheerful spirit, is the spirit immortal.
All fear tends to death; it darkens the mind; it shuts out complete views of things; it distempers all colour; it disqualifies a man for using his own resources. "The fear of man bringeth a snare." Wherever there is fear, there is not a sound mind or a perfect will or a united strength. This is well known in all circles. If the speaker utters his discourse under fear either of criticism or misunderstanding, by so much that fear binds the wings of his mind, puts out the eyes of his genius, shears the locks of his strength, and throws him down in humiliation and helplessness; but when he is himself in very deed, living in the joy of the hearer, answering with gracious response the appeal of radiant faces, at home in the mystery of his subject, then he wins: every sentence is a victory, every argument a conquest, the closing of every paragraph the waving of the white banner of entire victory and success. Fear cannot read the Bible; fear cannot hear the Gospel; fear cannot understand the darkness. Let us beware of the spirit of fearfulness; nor let us distress ourselves by imagining that fearfulness arising from physical conditions is a sin before God. Your fearfulness may not be the result of unbelief but of some subtle trouble in the body. God will understand that difficulty. He knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are but dust a wind that cometh for a little time and then passeth away. He will not plead against us with the thunder of his power; he will comfort us in the day of our weakness. But whilst this word of tender solace is spoken to some, it must not be taken as a justification of fearfulness or timidity arising from partial belief; under such circumstances Christ's question is "Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?" We wound him by our unbelief; we break in two his miracle by our want of perfect trust in wisdom and truth.
The men who brought the report died, and their children had to wander in the wilderness a year for every day that their fathers were away searching out the land. The children had to bear the burden. If there were no Bible, this would still be the case. This is the Bible of fact, not the Bible of speculative theology. We see this every day: that we are bearing the burdens left us as a heavy inheritance of trouble. The lines upon your face would not have been so deep but for the sin you may not name. You would not at five-and-forty years of age have been an old man, out of whose voice all tones of joy have been taken, but for the sins of those now dead whose names you will not even mention aloud, lest the utterance of them should double the sorrow already too much. This mystery is in life. The Bible does not invent a fanatical Providence or set up some wonderful scheme built upon the baseless fabric of imagination. We have facts occurring around us: experiences of our own: a consciousness that cannot be destroyed in our own hearts; and all these gather themselves up into a poignant and firm corroboration of what is found written in the Holy Scriptures. The children do suffer for their forefathers' misdeeds. The battles of one century are occasioned by the misrule of centuries long forgotten. We carry our dead about with us in many forms day by day. Are we, then, to content ourselves with this retrospective contemplation, saying, My diseases are due to my forefather, my sorrow is a black inheritance, my weakness has a history stretching far back through my ancestors? We may indulge in that retrospect, but only for a moment. It is a selfish retrospect if pushed too far. It becomes gracious, Christian, a noble stimulus if coming out of it we say, Then by so much as I have been injured by the past, I must take care in God's grace and strength to do what I can for those who are to come after me; I will prevent their carrying a burden if I can possibly do so, in the strength and grace of God; I will try to live so wisely, simply, purely, obediently, as not to leave any great black cloud resting over my house and name. If the retrospect lead to that noble decision, then it is of the quality of prayer, and belongs to the holy class of the most spiritual and sacred oaths. Beware of sentimentalism. Recognise the reality of history and turn it into an inspiration in view of all the untravelled and unknown future.
The people were like ourselves. Having heard from Moses what the Lord had resolved upon for "Moses told these sayings unto all the children of Israel" "the people mourned greatly. And they rose up early in the morning, and gat them up into the top of the mountain, saying, Lo, we be here, and will go up unto the place which the Lord hath promised: for we have sinned." But Moses said, No. Men cannot work out of time. There is a providence of time; there is a providence of opportunity. The people, smarting, perhaps, more in consequence of the effects of sin than in consequence of a thorough perception of the nature of sin, said, We will now go up. But Moses said, Do not be foolish; if you go, the Ark of the Covenant will not depart out of the camp and go with you; you are out of time; you are too late; you had the opportunity and neglected it. Men cannot create opportunities after this fashion. There are prayers that become idle cries; there are religious services that become, because untimely, mere mockeries. There is a reading of the Bible which gets nothing out of the sacred Book; you let the hour of light pass by, and now in these dark troubled clouds you can read nothing of truth, of grace. Redeem the time! "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." Work while it is yet day, for the night cometh wherein no man can work. You will pray by-and-by? There is no by-and-by. You will go up presently? There is no presently. You mean one day to shake off the devil and be free? There is no promise of such day, "now is the accepted time... now is the day of salvation." "To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your heart, as in the provocation in the wilderness." Be wise! be wise in time!
Prayer
Almighty God, show us that we are living under thy rule, and that thy rule is best because it is thine. God is love; God is light: in him is no darkness at all. God knoweth the end from the beginning, and every step of the long road; therefore will we take our marching orders from thyself, going as thou dost command, halting where thou dost please, and going quickly, or slowly, or standing still, as we may receive word from God. We never thought we should have said this; it is not natural to us. We love our own way; we think our wisdom quite divine; we are obstinate and self-regarding; but thou hast wrought upon us directly and indirectly, by light, by opening of the mind, by bitter portions, by stinging disappointment, by showing us that the road we thought led to liberty led nowhere. So we have come back again, humbled, much enlightened, conscious of our own folly, and modestly desiring to be taught of God. We thought we were mighty, until we lifted our arm and found it was but a straw; we said we would run all the way and know no weariness, and, behold, in one hour we were laid down in fatigue and pain and distress. Thus thou dost teach men, not always by doctrine and argument and exhortation in words which men can answer again with vain impertinence of mind, but by overthrow, confusion: night suddenly encroaching upon day, and all things set upside down in bewilderment that cannot be ordered into straight lines. So are we taught, and taught of God. We call it experience, because we are afraid to use some noble and truer term. Yet even here thou art patient with us, so that now many men who once spake of experience venture to speak of God. We would be found in the number; we would not be of those who are afraid to give the right names to things. Open thou our mouth that we may show forth boldly our testimony on thy behalf. It will do us good to speak the word that fills the mind. If we could once speak it, we could speak it again, more easily, with more familiarity and even tenderness. Help us to say, God did thus for me; God led me in this wise; God is my Maker, my Portion, my Redeemer, my All; God is his name, and God is love. We bless thee for this use of words; we are the better for it; we feel as if we had opened a channel through which purest water had streamed from fountains in heaven the very words purify the channel through which they flow. Thou hast led us all our days. We see it now; it is perfectly clear to minds that once could see nothing because of spiritual blindness; we see now why the message came in the night time and not in the morning, why the flower was plucked in the bud before it opened the secret of the mystery of its beauty; we see now how, though the night was crying, the tears were morning dew. We understand things better than we did. Time has altered itself to us; it is nothing: it is a breath a wind; sometimes a mere mockery of duration, without substance flying, dying, whilst we speak of it. So now we take our stand upon thy word. We are sure, through Jesus Christ thy Son, that thy purpose concerning us is full of mercy; thou hast no pleasure in the death of men: thy delight is in life, in liberty, in immortality. Life and immortality are brought to light in the Gospel by thy Son, our one Saviour, almighty in power, infinite in love. We give thee thanks for all the mercies of our little life. If we have escaped the sea and are again on firm land, we say, The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof, the sea and they that dwell upon it; and we bless thee for nightly protection, daily care, for family reunion, and the incoming of the hopes which make our life worth living. Accept the praises of those who in reunion bless the Lord in family rejoicing and sacred song. If we have been brought through perplexity, business difficulty, if controversies have been settled, if the dark cloud has been lifted, if the pain at the heart has been somewhat lessened, if the sorrow-flood has assuaged a little we bless thee: it is God's doing, it is the Father's revelation of himself in the night of our distress, and we will rejoice and be glad, and with instruments of music will heighten the song which our own voices cannot fully express. Tell the old man that he has hardly begun to live: that the ages in the flesh are not in the soul. Take up the little child, and show it wonders in all the blue heaven, and bid it be glad whilst it may, and to know nothing of the mystery of tears Whisper to the dying that death is the gate of immortality. Speak to the lonely; startle his solitude into mystic and solemn communion. Bring back the bad man; we cannot reach him; he is to us as hell: no water can drown the flame; no speech of ours can be heard by badness so wicked. The Lord hear us, pity us, spare us a little while; and then, the shadows thickening, lengthening, darkening, may there be beyond a glint of light, which means dawn, morning, heaven. Amen.
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