Numbers 21:5-9

Murmuring Punished

Num 21:5-9

About the extreme probability of the whole story of the wandering of Israel there can be no doubt. Nothing occurs out of time in the story, nothing out of place; nothing is in false colour or tone. Looking upon the story from a merely literary point of view, there is not one line of improbability discoverable in it. Not a single decade, much less a century, is anticipated in the speech of the people. They are children always, with children's whims, faults, desires, amusements, hopes, fears. It is the story of children overgrown, often too much indulged, not knowing the meaning of the thong of chastisement, and not measuring the process by the end. It is a child's life, shut up within the present day and receiving no glory from the promised land. What was the talk of the children of Israel? It was always about the body want of food, want of water, fear of death, inconvenience, sudden alarm, and pain of body. It was, therefore, just the talk for the age. There is no soul in it, no immortality, no aspiration after liberties immeasurable as infinity. The whole speech is of the earth, earthy. It never throbs with noble passion; it beats fiercely with the excitement of selfishness, beyond that it never goes into the region of vital and solemn tragedy. Is there any improbability in such a statement? We cannot conceive the improbability because we ourselves too frequently literally repeat the experience. Examine any specimen of modern talk: let it be written down and set before the eye in plain print, like the story of Israel, and say what better is much of it. It is the talk about the body, the weather, the state of business, the income and the outgoing; it is a mean speech about balances and counter-balances, and the politics of the day, and who is to be first, and who will win, and who will lose; the talk is about bullocks in the field, and about balances in the marketplace, and about health at the fireside. Is not much human talk now going on around us about trials and circumstances, want of bread, want of water, want of enlargement of domestic comfort, pining for further fields and larger resources? Where is the altar? Where is the harp? Where is the vision that divides the clouds and pierces beyond them, and sees that this little earth is but a help towards some vaster universe? We do discover it in our case; did we not, shame would be ours more burning than fire, for then the centuries would have been wasted upon us and we should have neglected the plainest revelations of Providence; but an inquiry into our own methods and experiences, and analysis of our own conversation will show the extreme probability of every line that occurs in the portraiture of the wilderness life of Israel. Where do you find the children of Israel in rapture about the tabernacle? Where is there any noble speech about it? Where the wonder that after becomes religion? Where the solemn amazement that stands next in rank and quality to prayer? The same question might be asked in modern days. If we were careful to take the lowest view of current life, we might establish an analogous case to-day, but we are bound to take in other elements and circumstances which illuminate and colour and enlarge the spectacle and give it some charm and dignity of divinity; still there is enough in ourselves and about us to establish beyond all successful disputation the probability of the story as it is written in the Pentateuch.

The children of Israel complained because their soul loathed the light bread, they wanted change of food. We do not complain perhaps along the same line; but are we quite sure that we have lost the spirit of murmuring, with regard to all the sustenance by which the mysterious human life within us is sustained and nourished? Let it be granted that we have of bread enough and to spare for the body abundance, even to luxury, so that we never complain: we are thankful for a loaded table: we bless Providence for an abundant supply of all necessaries for the body; but does the speech end there? Is there not one within who requires food and whose hunger must be attended to if death would be averted? Are we all body? Is our little life now dwarfed into the measure of such hunger as can be felt by the flesh? Have we no mind to feed, no soul to nourish, no inner nature to brace and strengthen, to inspire, and to complete in strength and perfectness of moral beauty? If we examine the outer man, he expresses himself in terms of contentment; but what if we subject the inner man to cross-examination? What is the tone of his reply? It is pungent with reproach, it is bitter with complaining; it is the utterance of a dissatisfied and morbid spirit. Who is content with the spiritual food which God has been pleased to supply for the nourishment and culture of the soul? Is there no complaining in the Church? Is there no disposition amongst the spiritual children of Israel to rise and say, We are tired of this food, or of that? Where is the spirit of genuine contentment heart and soul satisfaction? If the food is solid, partaking of the nature of scriptural exposition, full of instruction, solid in thought, noble in knowledge, ample in intelligence, demanding attention, constraining the soul to take heed or it will miss the luminous point, then do not many fall away saying that during the week they are so vexed by difficulties and so strained in their attention that on the Sabbath day they have no appetite for such solid provision? If it is light, moving, not with fluency only, but with some glibness from point to point, digging nowhere, building nowhere, flying like an uncertain bird in the air; then is there not complaining from the other side of want of solidity, and depth, and rock-like massiveness? If the teaching is historical, going far back to find out the way of God in the ancient time, then is there not a voice which says, All that is dead and gone; the ages have had their turn, they have lived, flourished, died, why exhume the centuries? And if it be of the nature of current criticism, referring to living men, contemporaneous events, the immediate fever and passion of the time, then is there not a voice saying, All this we can read during the week; we can keep abreast with this to-morrow; on this one brief day called Sabbath day be nobler, grander, deeper, vaster in intellectual reach, and keener in spiritual perception? Surely an assembly of contentious and unruly guests! There is nothing right. The host's attention has been stretched to the utmost, and behold the viands are rejected! How few remember that they need not eat the whole of the viands! How few remember that a little here and a little there may be enough to satisfy the hunger of the mind! One line may be a revelation; one little jewelled sentence may be perfectly sufficient; one cry to Heaven in opening or concluding prayer may be equivalent to inspiration. The contented soul will always find enough to be contented with; that soul will say, This is better than I deserve; I have not earned this by my own strength or wit or industry; this prey has been taken for me by the mighty hunter on the mountains of the Lord, and I will bless the Giver in heaven, and I will bless the provider on earth for venison which the soul may relish. The discontented man never can be satisfied do not attempt to please him; have no connection with or relation to him; ignore him; pass by him and turn away. He hinders all growth, he disturbs all serenity, he is a plague in the feast. We must not, therefore, set ourselves against the children of Israel as if we had come to a larger manhood altogether. It is perfectly certain that we have an abundance of food; we are not confined to the eating of this light bread which caused the soul of Israel to experience a sensation of loathing; we have enough, we say, and to spare, and there is no complaining about earthly abundance. Stop! you must not steal even the meanest heaven. What about your soul's food? What about the mean whine There is no food for the soul? What about weariness with the Book? What about the desire to add some other book to it? Who would not rather hear some other publication read than the inspired volume? Who is not best pleased by snatches of verse from some human singer? Who would not suspend the harp of David to listen to some instrument of modern invention? Let these inquiries stand in that impersonal form, and let each take up the interrogation and test himself by it; and may God give sound judgment to all! Did these people desire knowledge? Did they ever gather around their leaders and say, Give us a brighter revelation from heaven; we feel that we are more than mortal: we are too large lor this wilderness; within us there is a voice which says, Give; but let the donation be knowledge, light, revelation? When did they ever utter large prayer, noble desire, and express the kind of discontent which is pleasing to Heaven that is to say, discontent with present acquisitions, discontent with intellectual darkness, discontent with the prison of earth, longing for the liberty of heaven? When do we hear that expression now? Who cries out for more Bible a larger reading of the holy volume? Who would be content to read through one whole book of the inspired volume, taking it in its entirety and enjoying the reading as men might enjoy honey brought from the very garden of heaven? Who would not weary were the leader of public worship to read through the whole of the Epistle to the Romans? What man would stand up and say, Begin again: no music like it; repeat its rolling thunder, its tender persuasion, its triumphant anthem, its connected and culminating reasoning? Judging ourselves by false standards, we have made great progress; but judging ourselves by the standard of the Sanctuary, who stands? There is none righteous, no, not one. When did the children of Israel pray for likeness to God, expressing, in some indirect way, almost jealousy of Moses that he should have seen more of the divine personality, that he should have been nearer than anyone else the very throne of God? Who called upon him to show how this mortal might put on immortality and this corruptible put on incorruption? If it could not be done at that time of day, it can be done now; and the question is still pertinent Where is the soul that longs for transfiguration, that desires above all things holiness, likeness to God, the exact reproduction of the divine image, and the very brightness of the eternal glory? It is not enough to long for instruction; instruction may be but a load of knowledge. Knowledge is not enough; it may but puff up. Knowledge has to become wisdom, wisdom become inspiration, and inspiration become almost identification with God a mysterious ascension of the soul, but not beyond the experience which the divine education contemplates.

The people complained. The complaint was heard. When we complain, we complain against God. It is God's universe, not man's. Man did not make a single blade of grass in all the earth's green crop; man did not light a single jet in all the sky burning with stars. When we complain, therefore, we touch the Head of the house, we lay our finger upon currents which report the pressure to the very Heart of creation. We forget this solemn view of things. We treat life as a mere game of chance; we think it is all of our own handling, or of the handling of other men; whereas written upon the earth and inscribed upon the heaven is this declaration: "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof." To complain is to be atheistic, to murmur is to throw down the altar, to adopt a reproachful tone regarding the necessary education of life is to challenge divine wisdom. The complaint was punished as complaining must always be. Fretfulness always brings its own biting serpent along with it. Charge what improbability you may upon the particular account of serpents in the text get rid of them if you can from the historical record, there remains the fact, that the fretful spirit burns itself, the discontented soul creates its own agony, the mind wanting the sweet spirit of contentment stings itself night and day and writhes continually in great suffering. Discontent never brought joy, peevishness never tranquillised the home life, fretfulness in the head of the house, or in any member of the house, creates a disagreeable feeling throughout the whole place. Complaint punishes itself. Every complaint has a corresponding serpent, and the serpent bites still. The people complained of the light food then God sent them fiery serpents. There is always something worse than we have yet experienced. The children of Israel might have thought the bread was the worst fate that could befall them. To be without water, and to be continually living upon manna surely there was nothing worse? We cannot exhaust the divine resources of a penal kind. There is always some lower depth, always some keener bite, always some more painful sting, always some hotter hell. Take care how you treat life. Do not imagine that you can complain without being heard, and that you can be heard without punishment immediately following. This is the mystery of life; this is the fact of life. We cannot reason ourselves out of it. Whatever metaphysical universe we may construct, we have to lie down at night in the concrete universe which the almighty God has made and is governing. It is not enough to find fault with marvellous things in the Holy Book, as if they never could have been real in the narrow sense in which we define reality, because, when our peddling criticism has done its utmost, there remains the fact, that complaint means suffering, peevishness means agony, discontent means the failure of every sanctuary of rest and every refuge of confidence. "Go: sin no more," said Christ, "lest a worse thing come upon thee." There is always a worse thing to come. Do not press God; do not challenge the Most High. Do not say, If there is anything worse than this I cannot imagine it. Things are not limited by our imagination. The chariots of God are twenty thousand, and as for the number of his weapons, no man has been in his armoury to reckon up the sum-total of the weapons. God is a consuming fire. God's wrath cannot be directed by the futile hand of man. How, then, is the fire to be extinguished? How is the wrath to be turned aside, or to be pacified, or to be brought into the harmonic movement of the universe? To that human riddle there is no human answer. He who sent the serpent must remove it; he who inflicted the punishment must lift his hand, for we cannot turn it aside. So we find God not only the Punisher of Israel but the Saviour of his Church and people in the wilderness. Moses was commanded to make a serpent of brass, to put it upon a pole, to set up the symbol; and whosoever looked towards it, having been bitten of the fiery flying serpent, was healed because he looked. In wrath God remembers mercy: he will not impose severe efforts upon those who have been punished by the fiery flying serpent; he will have but the turned eye, the significant look, the glance that means the soul. His terms are easy; his burden is not heavy; his yoke is not oppressive. The great condition is Believe, and thou shalt be saved. Look unto him, all ye nations of the earth the look of the heart and the answer will be redemption, salvation, pardon, heaven. This is very easy, and yet it is not so easy as it appears to be. The look must not be merely a glance of distress; it must be the expectancy of faith, the eager look which means God will give salvation to the eyes that are directed towards him. To adopt a Christian term, this vision means "faith"; to preach a Christian gospel my words must be brought from the Scriptures themselves: "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." How? By reasoning? by argument? by high controversy? by some pitched battle of words? No; but by self-renunciation, and by the look that means prayer, and by the expectation that expresses the trust of the soul. Why preach on this ancient incident? It is not so ancient. Why now refer to a brazen serpent? Because Christ referred to it, because Paul referred to it. The New Testament records the story. Christ believed it, Paul believed it I will not separate myself from them and create some instance of unbelief or rejection; I will rather say with Paul, Take care: do not murmur as some of the Israelites murmured in the wilderness and were bitten of fiery flying serpents. I will use the incident as a warning. I would rather say with Christ "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." If Paul believed it, if Christ applied it, I know enough of them to know that they did not avail themselves of myths, of incidents that never occurred, of imaginary instances. I know enough of their general character and temper and spirit I know what they did for the benefit of their race and day, and for the benefit of the whole world, to be fully aware that where they adopted a history it would be unwise upon my part to reject it. Let us, therefore, gather around the incident as a solemn warning; and, having been all but overpowered by the awfulness of the example, let us turn in the upward direction, see the descending God, listen to his instructions to his servants, look upon the brazen serpent as a symbol; let us pass from the symbol to the reality the uplifted Son of God. One look of the soul, and we shall be healed; one expression of deepest trust, and the load of guilt shall be removed; one vision of the meaning of the Cross, and all the pain and shame and death, consequent upon guilt, shall be done away; and we shall know the meaning of Christ's own words: "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."

Prayer

Almighty God, we bless thee for great gospels, wondrous speeches of love, revelations of mercy, mysteries which astound the imagination, and appeals which seek and secure the deepest confidence of the heart. We come to thee, in the name that is above every name, as through a. wide open gate, set open on purpose that we might be admitted to the throne of the heavenly grace, there to sing our psalm, charged with joy and adoration, and there to breathe our thanksgivings and utter our desires. We love the name of Jesus Christ. We love it most when we are most heart-broken; we cling to it with the greater tenacity when we know that there is no redeeming help in ourselves, and that our salvation is of God and not of man. We bless thee for a sweet gospel that can wait that will wait, that will come to us in the darkness as if we had not affronted it, and offer again its great offers of mercy and pity, love and help, and will seek to win us to the light and to the truth. We cannot have peace until we have God's pardon and is not abundance of pardon succeeded by a peace that passeth all understanding? Is not the blessing equal to thy great speech of love? When thou dost release us, thou dost seal the release with a calm like thine own tranquillity. Regard all worshipping spirits, all up-looking and mightily-praying hosts, and astonish thy Church by the brightness of thy rising, and set upon every believer the stamp of thy personal majesty. Thus shall we be known in our day and generation as not of this world, but always seeking a country out of sight. May we, with sandals upon our feet and staves in our hands, be constantly moving on to the city which hath foundations whose Builder and Maker is God, doing all the work of the present little space with the eager haste which tells how the heart longs to be at home in the fuller liberty and in the larger service. Amen.