Numbers 21:1-4

Discouragements

Num 21:4

The people wanted to take a straight course through the land of Edom, and the people of Edom said they should not pass through their provinces even though Israel promised to "go by the king's high way," and not to enter the vineyards, and not to take a drop of water out of the wells, or if they did take any water to pay for it. But Edom was resolute. The people, therefore, had "to compass the land of Edom" to take a roundabout course; and it was so long, so wearisome, so heavy with monotonousness, and altogether so unlike what the other way would have been, that "the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way." Discouragement is a kind of middle feeling; it is, therefore, all the more difficult to treat. It does not go so far down as cowardice, and has hardly any relation to a sense of triumph or over-sufficiency of strength; but the point of feeling lies between, deepening rather towards the lower than turning itself sunnily towards the higher. When that feeling takes possession of a man, the man may be easily laid down, thrown over, and may readily become the prey of well-nigh incurable dejection. Discouragement is not far from despair. The feeling, then, is: Let us return, why did we come out at all? the short way is the way backward: let us undo the journey and return to the origin whence we started. That is a human feeling; that is the feeling of every man at some point in his education. You take up a new language: you say you will certainly master this tongue. But the way 13 circuitous. For a little while it is bright enough and easy enough, and we think we might take children with us along a way so broad and sunny; suddenly we come to irregularities, exceptions, endless variations and shadings; we confuse moods with tenses, and tenses with moods; we ask for things we do not want, and we name things by names that are all but comical mistakes; and we say at this point of our progress, Let us return to the Egypt of our ignorance: this task is too heavy this penalty is a burden; would we had never started from Egypt, where we could speak what little language we needed quite fluently and could ask in it for more things than we were ever likely to get! The student is discouraged, yea, much discouraged because of the way. Let him persevere a month or two, or six, or twelve; let him get beyond the middle point and begin the joy of acquisition, and taste the sweetness of liberty, and know the magic of thinking in another tongue than that in which he was born; and nothing can take him back to the Egypt of ignorance, to the captivity of intellectual darkness. What wonder, then, if in learning a language, or science, or any other complicated lesson, we come to a point of discouragement, that there should be kindred discouragements in all upward ways? The right way is uphill. It is easy to go downhill: we think we are not tired in going downhill; yet it is most weary work to climb the steep ascents. But the temples are all on the top of the steep; the heavenly cities are away above the valleys. We have, therefore, to consider one of two things: whether we will succumb to an innate indolence that simply wants to be let alone and to be amused or gratified without expense; or whether we will clear the valleys, leave all the lower levels behind us, and go up with ever-increasing vitality and ever-brightening hope, until there comes into the soul a sense of joy Which can never permit the soul to go back to the places where the fog thickens, where the damps choke, and where there is nothing broad, grand, eternal. But we have to be very careful with the discouraged soul. When the young student feels his eyes moistening because he cannot subdue the unruly irregulars and exceptions, we must not shout at him or speak to him roughly, but tell him that once we were exactly at that very point, and we cried our eyes out for very vexation that these unruly things would not be set in order and would not do just what we wanted them to do; then the little learner, the young soul, remembering that we fought a battle just there, may take heart again, and come up to-morrow with reinvigorated motive and strength. Power is rightly used when it is employed to sustain and inspire the discouraged; it ceases to be power it becomes a merely exaggerated strength and an unruly despotism when it is employed to threaten, to distress, and to grieve the soul that is already too much troubled.

There are necessary discouragements. How awful it would be if some men were never discouraged! they could not bear themselves, and they could not act a beneficent part towards other people. It is well, therefore, for the strongest man occasionally to be set back half-a-day's travelling and have to begin to-morrow morning at the point where he was yesterday morning. If he could go on with continually enhancing strength, he would become a severe critic of other men, and would himself be turned into the severest discouragement which could be inflicted upon competitors. It is well, therefore, that some supposed bargains should turn out mistakes; it is best that some strokes that were going to cleave the rock right in two should strike the smiter himself that he may tremble under the force of his own blow. Otherwise, who could live with some men? They would be so outblown, so self-flattered; they would be so conscious of their superiority as to fill the whole street in which they lived and the whole city which they plagued by their presence. It is of God that the strongest man should sometimes have to sit down to take his breath. Seeing such a man tired, even but for one hour, poor weak pilgrims may say, If he, the man of herculean strength, must pause awhile, it is hardly to be wondered at that we poor weaklings should now and then want to sit down and look round and recover our wasted energy.

We must not forget that a good many discouragements are of a merely physical kind. We do not consider the relation between temperament and religion as we ought to consider it. We are apt to be too abstract and spiritual, and therefore exacting and tyrannous in our judgments of one another. Many a man would have been abreast with the foremost of us to-day but for some physical peculiarity of temperament over which he has no control. His sunny moments are but brief and very few in number; when a ray of light does strike him, he can smile with the merriest and play with the most free-handed; but suddenly the clouds shut, and then he is as blank and cold and fear-driven as ever. We ought to speak gently to such a sufferer. Your inability to pray to a bright heaven arises entirely if you could see your own physiology from a little pressure here, and a little congestion there, or some imperfect action yonder; this trouble is not in the soul of you, and it has nothing to do with your standing before God and your citizenship in heaven: it is a physical disturbance, it is a purely temporary affair; and if you can seize that thought, and accept the assurance which it involves, you will pray as gladly into a thick cloud as into a radiant morning, because you will know that the cloud is not in the heavens, it is only a covering before your own disordered vision. These views are needful to a right judgment of life. Sometimes, too, men's physical strength is utterly exhausted, and therefore their intellectual energy and their spiritual vitality may be by so much impaired. The wheel cannot go on for ever. The strongest giant begins to totter, Hercules asks for a staff, and Samson begs to be allowed to retire awhile, promising to come up as bravely as ever to-morrow, if he can but steep his soul in one short night's oblivion. Consider, therefore, that you are not necessarily unfaithful, disloyal, unworthy, because, for the moment, you have lost your gift of vision, your faculty of prayer, your priestly standing which men have so often recognised as being full of power the power of prevailing sweetness; your soul has not gone down, your spirit is not impoverished, but the poor flesh gives in; you have been working too many hours: you thought you would make six days almost into seven, and that is a miracle you cannot perform; you have said you would light the lamp and keep it aflame an hour longer than usual; and the lamp got the better of you. In your very soul's soul you are just as good as you ever were, and just as true to God and as anxious to serve him and follow all the way of his finger; but your body is being overworked, and you must stop to get the candlestick repaired, or the candle may drop out of it, and there may be a destructive fire in your premises. Examine yourselves, whether the discouragement comes out of some spiritual fault some inner secret which no eye can see but your own; or whether it is accidental, physical, and therefore transient. Be rational in your inquiry into the origin of your discouragement, and be a wise man in the treatment of the disease.

There are exaggerated discouragements. Some men have a gift of seeing darkness. They do not know that there are two twilights the twilight of morning, and the twilight of evening; they have only one twilight, and that is the shady precursor of darkness. We have read of a man who always said there was a lion in the way. He had a wonderful eye for seeing lions. Nobody could persuade him that he did not see a ravenous beast within fifty yards of the field he intended to plough not there only, but absolutely in the street, so that you do not find him half-way to the field, but peering out of his own side-window and beholding a lion in the very middle of the way. That is an awful condition under which to live the day of human life. But that lion is real to him. Why should we say roughly, There is no lion, and treat the man as if he were insane? To him, in his diseased condition of mind, there is a lion. We must ply him with reason softly expressed, with sayings without bitterness; we must perform before him the miracle of going through the very lion he thought was in the way; and thus, by stooping to him and accommodating ourselves to him, without roughness or brusqueness, or tyranny of manner and feeling, must bring him round to the persuasion that he must have been mistaken. We read of a man who would not sow because he had been observing the wind. That man still lives. He is sure the wind is in a cold quarter. It is absurd on your part to attempt to prove to him that it is breathing from the warm south-west; upon you it may be so breathing, if you like to feel it so; but he says, I know by my own sensations that the wind is breathing from the north-east, and if I go out the seed will be blown into some other man's field, and my own life will be sacrificed to the cruelty of the wind. So we have men much discouraged by lions that do not exist, by winds that do not blow, by circumstances that are purely imaginary; but we must recognise these facts, and address ourselves to them with the skill of love, as well as with the energy of conviction.

Discouragement does not end in itself. The discouraged man is in a condition to receive any enemy, any temptation, any suggestion that will even for the moment rid him of his intolerable pressure. Through the gate of discouragement the enemy wanders at will. The gate of the mind is not open, the gate of a sacred purpose is not open; every gate of entrance into the mind's inner life is shut but one, the gate of discouragement swings back and forward and seems to wave a welcome to any thought that will prey upon the mind and to any enemy that chooses to desolate the heart. Therefore be tender with the discouraged, help them to swallow their tears, tell them that you have had kindred experiences with their own, show them how you were led through that gate out of the bondage into the sweet liberty, and say you will stop with them all night. The discouraged man likes to feel himself in the grip of a strong hand. Some men cannot stop up all the night of discouragement by themselves; but if you would sit up with them, if you would trim the light and feed the fire, and say they might rely upon your presence through one whole night at least, they might get an hour's rest, and in the morning bless you with revived energy for your solicitude and attendance. If the prophet had bidden thee do some great thing, thou wouldest have done it: the prophet bids thee do some little thing, some act of gentlest patience and love, and to do it as if not doing it to do it as if by gracious necessity, to do it as if conferring an obligation on thyself. Not the thing done but how done, is often the question which must be determined by the doer.

Discouragements try the quality of men. You cannot tell what some men are when their places of business are thronged from morning until night, and when they are spending the whole of their time in receiving money. You might regard them as really very interesting characters; you might be tempted to think you would like to live with them: they are so radiant, so agreeable, so willing to oblige; they speak so blithely that you suppose you have fallen upon some descendant of the line of angels. That is quite a mistake on your part. If you could come when business is slack, when there are no clients, customers, patrons, or supporters to be seen, you would not know the lovely angels, you would not recognise the persons whom you thought so delightful. Look at the face, how cloudy! Hear the voice, how husky! Observe the action, how impatient! Mark the eye, how furtive and angry! Now you see what the man really is. Adversity tries men. We are in reality what we are under pressure. The year is not all summer; the year has long rains and heavy snows and biting frosts, and the entire year must be taken in if we would make an accurate survey of the whole land. Do not let us deceive ourselves. We have times of a little excitement and triumph and gladness, when people think us kind and amiable and delightful; but we know we are saying within ourselves, If these people could only see us at other times when we snap like mad dogs, when nothing pleases us, when feathers are hard, when summer is winter, when our best friends are burdens to us, they would not form such judgments of our delightful qualities. The meaning of all this is that the Christian has to show, whatever other men have to do, that Christianity is a religion for night, and winter, and ill-health, and loss, and discouragement; a religion that sits up all night, a religion that does not run away when the dogs of war are let loose, but that comforts, and sustains, and animates under deprivations of the severest kind.

What is the cure of this awful disease of discouragement? Men are not to be laughed out of their discouragements as if they were merely illusory, or as if they were assumed for the purpose of affectation. Let us repeat to ourselves again and again, that discouragement is positive and actual to the man who suffers from it. The very first condition of being able to treat discouragement with real efficiency is to show that we know its nature, that we ourselves have wandered through its darkness, and that we have for the sufferer a most manly and tender sympathy. What is the discouragement? Loss in business? We have all lost in business. Ill-health? We have all suffered from ill-health. Bereavement? Where is there a hand that has not dug a grave? Temptations from hell? Who lives that has not felt the devil's hot breath upon his soul? We must be one with the discouraged man. Identification is the secret of sympathy, and sympathy spoken tremblingly that realises the meaning of the apparently contradictory words, "When I am weak, then am I strong."

Then are there no encouragements to be recollected in the time of our dejection? Do the clouds really obliterate the stars, or only conceal them? The discouragements can be numbered, can the encouragements be reckoned encouragements of a commercial, educational, social, relative kind, encouragements in the matter of health or spirits or family delights? Is it rough in the marketplace? Possibly; but how tranquil is it at home! and what is any marketplace when home is quiet with the peace of heaven? Are there losses and trials? Possibly; but are there no spiritual gains, acquisitions, subtle accretions of moral power, so that a receding earth means an approaching heaven? Do the papers bring you bad news this morning? What about the letters that are lying in your lap letters from children at school, from children in business, from friends who are giving you thanks for assistance lent years ago? Why, all these letters are like the gathering up of sunbeams. God forbid I should say to you, Do not write down your discouragements. Take slate enough and pencil enough to put down the whole black list; but God forbid I should forget to say, Now write on the other side your encouragements, your sources of happiness, your springs of strength, your inspirations, and your hopes; put them down with a firm hand, and you will have to turn the slate over to accommodate the growing list.

The great cure for discouragement is a persuasion of being right. We have really very little to do with mere circumstances; we are not masters of the weather, we cannot control the atmosphere, nor have we any magical wand by which we can do things which are of a supernatural kind. The eternal consolation is in the fact that the purpose is right, the heart is sound, the suppliant means his prayer, the student grasps the truth; all other changes are atmospheric, climatic, transitory, damping enough and discouraging enough in the meanwhile, but forgotten to-morrow. The devil has but a short chain, and he cannot add one link to its length. This is eternal life, to know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. The clouds do not throw down the house: the house is founded upon a rock; think of the rock, not of the falling snow; think of the eternal foundation, and not of the changing clouds. "The foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his."

Then the chief cure, the master remedy, the sovereign assurance, must be found in the example of Christ. He was much discouraged because of the way. "He marvelled because of their unbelief;" "he did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief;" but when he was come nigh the city, he wept over it, and said: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen doth gather her young under her wings, and ye would not!" They went out against him with swords and staves as against a thief; but for the joy that was set before him he endured the Cross, despising the shame. It is worth waiting a whole winter night to behold the brightness of the coming summer. A little rain, a high wind, a fall of snow, unexpected frost, a little bitterness in the cup; these things come and go, but we, being in Christ, seek a kingdom which cannot be moved. If we are seeking nothing, then discouragements will prevail; in the absence of definite purpose, distinct assault will have a tremendous effect upon us; but if our eye be single and our whole body be full of light, and if our vision be set upon a given destiny, and that destiny be a city which hath foundations whose Builder and Maker is God, then apostles will shake off the viper into the fire, lions will shake the dewdrops from their manes, sleepers will throw back the garments in which they have been slumbering, and brave men will find in the end more than compensation for the way, and one glimpse of heaven will cast into eternal forgetfulness all the little troubles of earth.

Note

Crossing the Arnon, we reach in succession, Rabbath Moab, still called Rabba, in the midst of a wide plain, where we find more broken cisterns, fallen columns, and ruined heaps, betokening former greatness and importance. Farther on is Kerak, the Biblical Kir-Moab, or Kir-hareseth, on the brow of a hill which juts out from a yet higher range in the form of a peninsula, flanked by stupendous ravines on three sides. It is a position of great strength, as seems intimated by the Scripture references; and it was here that in desperation at the long siege by Jehoram and Jehoshaphat, the King of Moab offered his firstborn son as a sacrifice upon the walls. During the Crusades, Kerak became again famous, and the Crusaders castle still remains. The population of the modern town is between seven and eight thousand, of whom nearly one-third are reckoned as Christians belonging to the Greek Church. Their bishop takes his title from Petra, probably because, when the see was founded in the twelfth century, the place was mistaken for the great "rock city" of ancient Edom.

The journey now assumes a new character; and while more desolate and even dangerous, from the bands of roving Bedawin, has a wonderful interest. For, in Bible language, we have passed from Moab to the confines of Edom. The Dead Sea is left behind, on our right is Mount Seir, a range of hills, averaging two thousand feet in height, on this side chiefly of limestone, swelling gradually upwards from the desert, and crowned by ridges of a reddish sandstone, through which crop up masses of basalt. The mountain wall is broken by deep clefts clothed with every variety of herbage, while on every level terrace, and on all the less precipitous slopes, shrubs and flowers luxuriantly grow. "It is indeed the region," remarks Dr. Robinson, "of which Isaac said to his son, 'Behold, thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above.'"

On the left hand stretches the wilderness in which the last months of Israel's "wanderings" were passed the dreary arid waste to which they were driven by the inhospitality of Edom; in which "the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way," the wilderness of the fiery serpents, and still the most dreaded part of the pilgrim's road to Mecca. It is not, however, necessary for the traveller to descend into this fearful desert. Strongly escorted, and paying due tribute to the Bedawin tribes along his route he may pursue his way in safety, on the skirt of the hills, passing through several large villages beautifully placed upon the heights until he reaches Petra.

Dr. Green's Pictures from Bible Lands.

Prayer

Almighty God, thou art always healing men; thou healest all their diseases. Thou knowest our frame; thou rememberest that we are but dust. Thou dost not send affliction willingly upon the children of men, nor grieve them for thine own pleasure; thou dost chasten men for their profit, and thou dost mean affliction to lead to the throne of grace. We would not accept affliction rebelliously, but would endeavour to receive it even thankfully, that, in the long run, we may say, It was good for me that I was afflicted: before I was afflicted I went astray. Thou dost send punishment upon the evil-doer, and we are called upon to say with our whole heart, This is a judgment that is righteous. Thou dost pain the wrong-doer; thou dost baffle the evil-minded man; thou dost turn to confusion the council of thine enemies. This is the Lord's doing; in it we find rest, security, and eternal hope. The wicked shall not prevail against thee; all his bows shall be broken, and his sword shall be turned upon his own heart. The good man shall live before thee because he is good; the gracious soul shall have more grace, and the praying spirit shall be enriched with great replies. This is thy government, thy purpose, thy way in the hearts of men and among the nations of the earth. We accept it; we do not only submit to it, but receive it with open hearts, with thankfulness of spirit, knowing that the Lord reigneth and in the end his throne shall be established and there shall be no rebellion. Thou hast set up a great vision for men to gaze upon: thou hast erected the Cross; upon it we behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world; we hear thy voice saying, Look unto him, all ye nations of the earth, and be ye saved: believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and ye shall be saved. We look: we behold the amazing scene. We cannot understand the mystery, we feel its solemnity, we answer its pathos; but the miracle of the righteousness, and the law, and the mercy, and the divine intervention, we cannot understand. Help us to look steadfastly to the Cross; enable us to keep our eyes evermore upon the one Saviour of mankind; may we be found in that posture living, dying, throughout all our days; then shall our sin have no power over us, and our guilt shall lead us into deeper acquaintance with the mystery of the love of God. We bless thee for the Cross: God forbid that we should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. We find in it all that the soul needs an answer to a mystery, help in the time of distress, joy in the night of sorrow, balm for every wound. So do we rejoice in the Cross; we will not turn away our eyes from it; it is the Tree of Life, the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations. May all eyes be fixed upon it; may all hearts be moved to great expectation; may we know that the Cross is the way to pardon, that the Cross receives the crown, that there can be no peace until there is forgiveness. May forgiveness be granted unto every one of us according to the measure of our sin yea, and beyond it, that in the abundance of the pardon we may begin to see that sin is swallowed up. Amen.