Verses 1-20
The Plan of Life
This chapter may be considered as laying down the sacred and stimulating doctrine that our life is planned and ordered for us as to its divine side and moral obligation. We are not called upon to consider the great questions of moral duty or righteousness or good conduct in any of its vital springs, with a view to conceiving some plan of our own as to the realisation of perfect character. The idea of this chapter is that all moral duties have been defined and all moral limits have been divinely described and imposed, so that all we have to do is to concede the homage of rational and thankful obedience. This is a difficult lesson for the unrenewed human heart to learn; it is, however, the one lesson which runs through the entire scope of revelation from end to end. It would seem to be a tribute to human sagacity, and even a recognition of human responsibility, to have left every man to define right and wrong for himself and to discover on his own account the shortest and safest way to heaven. A conception of this kind represents a profound and fatal mistake; that mistake being that we are in any sense upon equal terms with the Creator and Preserver of our spirits. To begin truly we must begin with the assumption that we are of yesterday and know nothing, and that appearances alone reveal themselves to our imperfect vision, the spiritual and eternal reality of things being of necessity hidden from faculties which could not comprehend it. Thus the Biblical doctrine is one of human dependence upon divine revelation. All our quests after first principles and final issues are in reality expressions of the heart's desire to find and understand the will of the eternal God. We may shrink from that form of expression as being perhaps almost superstitious to our present incomplete reason, but viewed in its largest issues it comes to this that man is everywhere seeking for the complete word, the divine term, the sure and everlasting rock. Having the spirit of little children, and coming to the Bible tenderly reverent to know definitely what God would have us do, we shall receive from the sacred page light for every day, comfort for every sorrow, and inspiration for every duty. If we appeal to the law and the testimony for the sake of finding materials for argument or abstract philosophy we shall kick against the pricks and involve ourselves in endless vexations. The Bible has nothing to say to such a spirit. It will only speak to the meek and lowly in heart, and to men who ask with reverent earnestness what God would have them do.
The plan of life is happily vindicated by the experience of life. Moses calls upon Israel to "remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years." This is the happy issue of faith. Faith began without evidence of an external and positive kind, but as life advanced one day after another shaped itself into indisputable testimony, and so fortified the faith with a sacred and unimpeachable experience. We must begin with the faith and end with its verification. God will not allow us to begin at the other end: his plan is to train by trust, and to vindicate himself by the illumination which he vouchsafes to every day, so that the night shall corroborate the morning, and at eventide men shall praise God for the trust with which they began the day. Israel was not called upon so much to remember the literal road, but "the way," that is the manner or method, or, as we might say, the genius of the whole journey. In the Acts of the Apostles the Christian life is more than once called "the way." The journey of life is not made up of mere details and separate incidents; all these are strung upon what we may describe as the thread of a divine purpose, and it is to that thread we must constantly look if we would see the unity and the direction of the divine intent. It comes to this then, that every Christian believer must fall back upon his personal experience of "the way." To personal knowledge the Christian may add the history of the whole Church. Individual experience and universal history concurring in an indivisible testimony, the result is a conviction which no mere argument or intellectual scepticism can either obscure or disturb. When Christian life is thus verified, Christian testimony will assume a lofty and definite tone. No longer will Christianity be found in the attitude of a mere apologist; it will rise to the dignity of a living witness conscious of perfect and even divine veracity. Without such consciousness what is preaching? what is public profession? what are Christian institutions? Everything depends upon the reality of the personal life, the true, deep joy of the renewed heart; to these experiences there is no answer, the attempted reply of mere words being without point and without effect.
In the third verse Moses lays down by inspiration the sublime doctrine that the sustenance of life is not confined to one method. His words are most remarkable: "And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live." These words were used by Jesus Christ in reply to the temptation of Satan. The sustenance of human life has ever been a divine mystery on which God has never condescended to cast any light. God will sustain life in his own way. He gives it "manna," a term which itself requires definition, and which has baffled all the attempts of investigators adequately and finally to solve. It is an utter mistake to suppose that God could not sustain human life or any other life without what is known as bread. We call bread the staff of life, and, as a general expression, the term is sufficiently accurate: but God is not dependent upon the processes of nature; he could support human life as he supports the angels in heaven: if he has made the eating of bread apparently necessary to the sustenance of the bodily frame, it is that he might make the cultivation of bread a practical means of human training and a bond of social union. It is not God who is dependent upon the bread as an instrument; it is man who is dependent upon it as a condition of commerce and the unit of the commonwealths of the world. By allowing the mind to assume that by bread only man can live, we direct our thoughts into a narrow and unworthy channel. We make man a debtor to the earth and a debtor to his own invention. The sublime doctrine of inspiration is that we live and move and have our being in God, and are in no sense, other than is involved in the divine sovereignty, either children of the dust, or debtors to anything which the ground can supply. He who is most conscious of his highest nature is least conscious of his bodily requirements. Now and again we have had happy experiences which at least remotely indicate that a time may come when life will be an expression of thought and feeling and worship, rather than a result of gratified appetite, or the cultivation of meaner things. All this cannot be expressed in words. We are thankful to have now and again a hint of that larger being, that holy consciousness which is best described by the thrilling word Immortality. Wonderful are the words of Christ upon this matter of the sustenance of life: "He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."
The seventh verse reminds us that obedience is always associated with reward: "For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills," and so the promise rolls on in noble eloquence, "A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil, olive, and honey." This has been the divine method of cultivating and ennobling the human race from the beginning. Men can understand reward, or the coming in to great and abundant possession of such things as can be immediately used in the promotion of human comfort and human security. God has always availed himself of the principle of rewards and punishments in the training of mankind. His delight has been in pointing to an infinite and glorious heaven as the crown and glory of human obedience. It is not to be supposed that any appeal is thus made to the meaner nature, or the baser motives by which conduct is moved. Man needs kindly stimulus, a gracious impulsion on the way towards the city of light. It is possible that Christians may have outgrown the whole idea expressed by terms which ancient Israel could understand, but the very outgrowth is itself a testimony to the reality of the principle which is found in this chapter. A purely spiritual heaven would have had no meaning in the days of the Israelites. Moses and his people could only understand such words as brooks, fountains, wheat, barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranates; God meant all these words to be the beginning of spiritual terms, and the spirituality of the terms never could be realised until human experience had passed through all the consciousness excited and sustained by these practical promises.
Moses does not shrink from propounding the apparent contradiction that even a life of obedience must also be a life of chastening: "Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee. Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God to walk in his ways, and to fear him" ( Deu 8:5-6 ). It might be thought that obedience would escape chastening, and no doubt it would if the obedience were perfect; but obedience itself being, under present conditions, partial or imperfect, chastening is needed for the purification of motive and the subjugation of will. The wise man says that a wise parent seeketh chastening for his son. "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth" is a doctrine which the greatest teachers of Christianity have not shrunk from declaring. Chastening does not always mean what is generally understood as punishment. Chastening may mean a trial of patience, so that the will may be taught the habit of waiting, and expectation may become the beginning of prayer. God has always recognised the value of the element of time in the schooling of the human race. He did not give all his revelation at once, he did not send his Son into the world at the beginning: he does not immediately answer all prayers: the mystery of the operation of time has never yet been fully understood; day is to be added to day, and one event is to be linked on to another, periods of rest are to intervene between periods of activity, and the judgment which man may pronounce upon God is to be deferred until the divine way has been perfectly accomplished. The purpose of chastening is to reveal a man unto himself: "To humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart;" we do not know ourselves until after the test cf many days. We are surprises unto ourselves. By the utterance of language, the adoption of policies, the accumulation of companionships and responsibilities we amaze ourselves by the variety, the subtlety, and the persistency of life. We learn in hunger what we could never understand in fulness. To be kept standing throughout the night dews and knocking at inhospitable doors may give us definitions of home and security which the enjoyment of such blessings might never originate. The humble and obedient soul rejoices that life has not one burden too many to carry, or one tear too hot to shed, or one difficulty too severe to encounter; it says, All these things are appointed as gracious necessities in the perfecting of my education; I know that my Redeemer liveth; I know that all things work together for good to them whose love is set upon the living God. This spirit drives away the demon of impatience and blesses and tranquillises the soul with the angel of heavenly confidence. If the children of God suffered nothing but punishment, those who look on from the outside might well wonder as to the rewards and issues of virtue even in this world: but chastening is not punishment, it is training, it is education, it is experience, it is part of an inscrutable but beneficent method. Blessed are they who wait until the end, and who speak not of the judgments of God until they have seen all the glory of heaven.
It would seem that in this direction the thought of Moses steadfastly moved. What was God's object in bringing out Israel from the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and leading the people through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents and scorpions and drought, where there was no water? Why did God bring forth water out of the rock of flint? Moses gives the tender and noble reply: "That he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end." That is the sublime purpose! If we exclude the "latter end" from our view of divine methods we shall certainly be entangled in the thicket of details. The latter end is not in our keeping; but it is set before us in order to restrain our passion and attemper our imagination and cultivate our patience. It is something to know that at the end God means to do us good. That should be a steadfast fact in the mind, and may be used in many different relations, but all for the same purpose. What of the difficulties of the way if the end is to be bright and beautiful heaven? What of the battle and storm here and now if according to our steadfastness and loyalty to divine principles is to be the splendour of the divine recognition in the land of glory? Thus we draw ourselves on by the latter end. Again and again we tenderly exclaim: "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his." The latter end will explain everything. On the last day of life we may see more than we have ever beheld during the whole course of our pilgrimage. Sudden glory may drive away every cloud and shadow, and bring in eternal day. One whisper from the upper spheres spoken to the dying may dissolve every doubt, break down every bound and barrier separating the soul from God, and admit the spirit into celestial liberty. We will not be deterred by today's difficulties. We shall not be tempted by sneering opponent or bitter sceptic or godless life to regard the providence of heaven as bounded by any one day. Give God whatever time he requires, and when he has accomplished the hours claimed by his purpose and has declared the consummation of his design in our life, we may be permitted to give some opinion as to "the way" by which we have been led and the method by which our best life has been sustained.
But Moses will not stop at this point. He becomes eloquent in lofty religious warning. Towards the close of the chapter he says: "And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the Lord thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish. As the nations which the Lord destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the Lord your God" ( Deu 8:19-20 ). Thus the way of the Lord is equal. Disobedience means penalty as certainly as obedience means reward. The two courses are openly set before us. It is undoubtedly within our liberty to oppose God, to set up an altar of our own, to invent commandments out of our own imagination, and to serve whom we will and as we will; in these matters we have no right, but according to our moral constitution we have the liberty: but God has not hidden from us the consequences of such perverseness and idolatry: nor are those consequences partial in their operation or alterable in their pressure; they are tremendous consequences, too awful to be expressed in words, too appalling to be encompassed by the imagination. This is where I rest in the matter of everlasting punishment. What that term may mean it is impossible for any human mind to conceive. It would seem as if God himself felt the inadequateness of language to express the infinite idea. The prayer of every man should be, My soul, come not thou into this secret. Men should never trifle with the idea of the punishment of sin; it is everlasting punisnment; it is eternal penalty; it is an expression of the horror of God as his infinite holiness looks upon the abomination of sin. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." This is not a one-sided law; it is the impartial law which holds within its ample scope all that is terrible in the idea of perdition and all that is sublime in the promise of heaven.
Prayer
Almighty God, we seek the truth. Jesus Christ said: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." We would see Jesus; we would fix the attention of our love and expectation upon thy Son, and receive from him what he alone can give life, pardon, peace. Without him we can do nothing. We are powerless when cut away from the Vine and the upper life, the divine and eternal; then we fall back into the dust: we are without spirit or force or goodness of will. We can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth us, yea, we can bear much fruit and make the Father glad. May we abide in Christ; may we look to the Son of God; may we fix our whole love upon Jesus, and, studying his law with a complete attention, may we obey it with a consenting will. We thank thee for all the words spoken by the Son of God; they are spirit, they are life, they are full of tenderest love; they lift the cloud from the outlook of the mind and shed eternal glory on things beyond. Never man spake like this Man. We wonder at the gracious words which proceed out of his mouth, how full of wisdom! how tender with heavenly unction! how adapted to our necessity and pain! When he concludes his speech the heart, grateful and enraptured, says, My Lord and my God! May Christ ever speak to us, ever abide with us, walk with us on the evening road, and begin at Moses and all the Prophets and the Psalms, and show unto us the things concerning himself; and as the wondrous speech proceeds our heart shall burn within us, and we shall know that we are near the bush out of which the Lord spake unto Moses. We bless thee for thine house, its security, its quietness, its spirit of holy peace. Be near us, every one. Touch the sad heart, and give it one hour's release from burdensomeness. Look upon the struggling life, and the glance of thine eye shall be as a guarantee of hope and conquest Bring back the prodigal; he has many a weary mile to return, but if it shall come into his heart that thou art expecting him and longing for him with all the yearning of love his steps may be hastened, and the miles will soon be passed. Comfort us in our sorrow; carry our burdens a while for us. Seal our eyelids in peaceful sleep, and on the morning we shall rise invested with new energy and inspired with new hope.
This prayer we say, every word of it, in the name of him who, once crowned with thorns, is now crowned with all the crowns of heaven Amen.
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