Deuteronomy 32
SONG OF MOSES AND ANNOUNCEMENT OF HIS
DEATH
In accordance with the Divine injunction, Moses composed an
ode, which he recited
in
the hearing of the people, and committed to writing, to remain with them as a
witness
for
God against them. With this end in view, the ode is directed principally to a
contrasting of the unchanging
faithfulness of the Almighty with
the anticipated
perversity and unfaithfulness of His people. The poem may be divided into six parts:
be delivered is announced.
the corruptness and perversity of
18).
declared (vs. 19-23).
upon the rebels, whilst mercy
and favor should be showed to those that
repented and were humbled under
the hand of God (vs. 24-34).
Moses displays the genius
of the poet, as in the other parts of this book he
has showed the sagacity of
the legislator and the skill of the orator. Vigor
of diction, elevation of
sentiment, vivacity of representation, beauty and
sublimity of imagery,
characterize this ode throughout. Nor is the piety less
noticeable than the poetry;
zeal for God, earnest desire far His honor, and
devout reverence of His
majesty pervade and inspire the whole. Remarkable
also is this ode in relation to
the later prophetic utterances in
condensed in a song the
prophetic contents of his last address in chapters
27-30, wherewith he lives on in
the memory and mouth of the people. He
here sets before them their
whole history to the end of the days. In this ode,
each age of
1 “Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will
speak; and hear, O earth, the
words of my mouth.” Heaven and
earth are summoned to hearken to his words,
both because of their importance, and because heaven and earth
were interested,
so to speak, as witnesses of the manifestation of God’s
righteousness and
faithfulness about to be celebrated (compare ch. 4:26; 30:19; 31:28-29; Isaiah 1:2;
Jeremiah 2:12; 22:29).
2 “My
doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as
the small rain upon the tender herb, and as
the showers upon the grass:”
The Hebrew verb here and in ch.33:28 is properly rendered
by “drop;” it expresses
the gentle falling of a genial shower or the soft
distillation of dew. The
clause is best taken imperatively, as it is by the Sepuagint, the Vulgate, and
Onkelos: Let my doctrine drop as the rain, let my speech
distil, etc. The
point of comparison here is not the quickening,
fructifying, vivifying
influence of the rain and dew, so much as the effective
force of these
agents as sent from heaven to produce results. So might His
doctrine come
with power into the minds of his hearers. Doctrine
(לֶקַה from
לָקַח to
take); that which takes one (Proverbs
7:21, “fair speech,” By which
one is captivated), or which one takes or
receives, viz. instruction
(Proverbs 4:2; Isaiah 29:24). Small
rain; gentle showers, such as
conduce to the growing of herbs. The
Hebrew word (שְׂעִידִים) primarily
means hairs, and is here used of rain coming down in thin
streams like hair.
Showers; heavy rain (רִבִיבִים from
רָבַב, to be much or many, equal to
multitude of drops).
3 “Because I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe ye
greatness
unto our God.” The hearers of
the song are summoned to join in the celebration
of the Divine majesty.
The word rendered “greatness” occurs
only in this book
(ch.3:24; 5:24; 9:26; 11:2), and in Psalm 150:2. It is the greatness of God as the
Almighty that is
here celebrated.
Beneficial
Teaching (vs.1-3)
Moses was directed to instruct the people by composing for
their use a
song (ch. 31:19, 21). A song is:
1. Memorable.
2. Easily handed down
from mouth to mouth.
3. Of singular power
to awaken sympathetic feeling (compare influence of
ballads, of Jacobite songs, of
the ‘Marseillaise,’ of popular hymns). The
action of song is not violent, but gentle and persuasive.
It steals about the
heart like rippling water or like sunlight, trickles into
its pores, works as if
by spirit-influence on its seats of laughter and tears,
explores its innermost
labyrinths of feeling. Here compared (v. 2) to the gently
distilling dew
and rain.
·
THE DEW AND RAIN AS EMBLEMS OF THE TEACHING MOST
LIKELY TO PROVE EFFECTIVE. Their action is:
o
gentle,
o
silent,
o
pervasive,
o
kindly; yet:
Ø
Invigorative. They revive, refresh, stimulate.
Ø
Powerful. Rocks are shattered by drops of water in
their pores and
crevices.
Ø
Deep-reaching. They act on plants by watering their roots. Take a
lesson from them. It is not the
best kind of teaching which is loud and
violent, which tries to force
men’s convictions. Convictions must have
time to grow. Teaching must be loving. (“And the servant of the Lord
must not strive;
but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient.”
II Timothy 2:24) The earthquake, the whirlwind, the fire, have
their
own place, but “the
still small voice” is needed to succeed them
(I Kings 19:12). The Lord is peculiarly in that. Angry
scolding,
petulant rebuke, biting censure,
clever satire, seldom do much good.
Love alone wins the day.
·
THE DEW AND RAIN AS EMBLEMS OF THE TEACHING MOST
SUITABLE IN THE INSTRUCTIONS OF RELIGION. Moses employed
it here. Christ employed it. “He
shall not strive nor cry,” etc. (Matthew
12:19). Paul commends “truthing it in love” (Ephesians 4:15). “The
servant of the
Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to
teach, patient, in
meekness instructing those that oppose themselves”
(IITimothy
2:24-25). This kind of teaching harmonizes best:
Ø
With the subject of religion — “the Name of the Lord” (v. 3). God
had revealed His Name to Moses
(Exodus 34:6-7), and the attributes of
mercy preponderate.
Ø
With the end of religion — the ascription of greatness to God (v. 3).
Religious teaching fails if it
does not inspire men with such convictions
of God’s greatness as will lead them to:
o
fear,
o
honor,
o
worship,
o
praise, and
o
serve HIM!
Ø
With the special theme of the gospel — peace, love,
good will to men.
This song of Moses has to deal
with stern truths, but even in its sternest
passages it breathes the pathos of
tender and sorrowful affection. It
dwells largely on God’s
kindnesses and the people’s ingratitude, and
ends
with loving promises. The song has numerous echoes in Isaiah.
4 “He is the Rock, His work is perfect:” - rather, The Rock! His work is perfect,
i.e. blameless,
without fault. God is called “the
Rock” (הַצוּר), as the unchangeable
Refuge and Stronghold of His people, by which they
are sustained, and to which they
can resort for defense and protection at all times. The
epithet is applied to God four
times besides in this song (vs. 15, 18, 30, 31); it
occurs also frequently in the Psalms
(compare Psalm 19:14; 28:1; 31:2-3; 62:2, 7). The Hebrew
word, tsur, gut,
or zur, appears in several
proper names of the Mosaic period, as e.g. Pedahzur,
“Rock delivers” (Numbers 1:10), a name of the same import
as Pedahel, “God
delivers” (Ibid. ch.34:28); Elizur,
“God is a Rock” (Ibid. ch. 1:5); Zuriel (Ibid.
ch.3:35) and Zurishaddai,
“the Almighty is Rock” (Ibid. ch. 1:6; 2:12).
Jehovah,
is here called Rock, without any qualification, the
reason is that He is the only
True Rock, and
all the strength and firmness of earth’s stones is but an ectype
of His unchangeable faithfulness and rectitude - “for all His ways are judgment:”
- i.e. accordant with rectitude (Psalm 145:17) - “a God
of truth” - rather, of
faithfulness (אְמֶוּנָת, from אָמַן, to stay, or be stayed, to be firm) - “and without
iniquity, just
and right is He.”
God the Believer’s Rock (vs. 1-4)
In the last song which Moses utters ere he climbs the mount
of Nebo to die, he declares,
“I will publish the Name of the Lord.” Moses is qualified
to draw attention to the
moral perfections of God because God had appeared to him
(Exodus 34:5-7) God’s
ways are judgment but they are according to justice! His way is perfect and all moral
perfections are centered in Him!
immutability, pure being,
personality. “I AM THAT I AM!”
was Moses hidden. From the
smitten rock the waters gushed forth. How natural
for Moses to apply this
figure to the eternal God! In v. 31, Moses speaks of God
as “OUR ROCK.” He was known to
ground of strength, through all
the changing years!
THIS DOCTRINE OF
THE LIVING GOD AS THE ROCK IS FRAUGHT WITH
COMFORT AND
REFRESHMENT FOR MAN (v. 2) - i.e. what
the rain is to the
herb, what the showers
are to the grass, that is this teaching concerning God to
the soul of man.
Ø
Gentle and
invigorating. It revives, refreshes,
stimulates.
Ø
silent, but
powerful. Rocks are shattered by drops
of water in their
pores and crevices. (“For the Word of God is quick and powerful,
and sharper than
any two edged sword, piercing even to the
dividing asunder
of soul and spirit, and of the joints and
marrow, and is a
discerner of the thoughts and intents of the
heart.” (Hebrews
4:12)
Ø
pervasive,
Ø
kindly; yet: deep-reaching.
They act on plants by watering their roots.
Take a lesson from them. It
is not the best kind of teaching which is loud
and violent, which tries to
force men’s convictions. Convictions must have
time to grow. Teaching must
be loving. The earthquake, the whirlwind,
the fire, have their own
place, but “the still small voice” is needed to
succeed them. The Lord is peculiarly in that. Angry
scolding, petulant
rebuke, biting censure,
clever satire, seldom do much good. Love alone
wins the day.
Religious teaching fails if it does not inspire men with
such convictions of God’s greatness
as will lead them to fear, honor, worship, praise, and
serve Him. The special themes of
the gospel are peace, love, and good will to men. This song of Moses has to deal with
stern truths, but even in its sternest passages it breathes
the pathos of tender and sorrowful
affection. It dwells largely on God’s kindnesses and the
people’s ingratitude, and ends with
loving promises.
Our heart wants God! (“O God, thou art my
God; early will I seek thee: my
soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth
for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where
no water is.” (Psalm 63:1; 84:2). Spiritually, this God is as rain and as dew:
refreshing, enlivening, restoring. This
doctrine of God is meant to make the heart
productive of holiness. God’s
revelation of Himself is meant to draw men to Himself; in
doing this God saves them! Moses
would summon all to hear it. It is:
o
For all classes.
o
For all lands.
o
For all the ages.
The day will never come when this doctrine of God will be
obsolete!
God the Rock (v.4)
(Compare vs. 15, 18, 31, 37.) This name for God occurs chiefly
in this song of
Moses, and in the compositions of David and of later
psalmists. It was a name full of
significance to those familiar with the desert. Rock, rock,
rock!
else during the thirty-eight years of wandering. The older
men could remember the
seclusion and granitic sublimity
of the rock sanctuary of Sinai. The congregation had
mourned for Aaron under the shadow of
sky, like a huge, grand, but shattered rock-city, with vast
cliffs, perpendicular
walls of stone, pinnacles, and naked peaks of every shape.”
They had
witnessed the security of
ruin of
When David was hunted in the wilderness, he, too, was often
led to think of God,
his Rock (>Psalm 18:2; 61:2; 62:2, 7). It is wilderness experience
which still makes
the name so precious.
is not an arbitrary one. Nature
abounds in shadows of the spiritual. It is
what the mind puts into the
objects of its survey which makes them what
they are. The Alps and
combines them, and stamps on
them the conception of the everlasting hills.
resistless power which the
beholder feels. The ocean, wave behind wave, is
only great when the spirit has
breathed into it the idea of immensity. If we
analyze our feelings, we shall
find that thought meets us wherever we turn.
The real grandeur of the world
is in the soul which looks on it, which sees
some conception of its own
reflected from the mirror around it; for mind is
not only living, but life-giving,
and has received from its Maker a portion
of His own creative power. Rock
is thus more than rock — its awfulness,
grandeur, immovability,
everlastingness, strength, are born of spiritual
conceptions. These attributes do
not in reality belong to it. Rock is
not everlasting, moveless, abiding,
etc. Old rocks are being worn away,
new rocks are being formed; the
whole system had a beginning and will
have an end (Psalm 90:2). It is not that these attributes belong to rock,
and are thence by metaphor
attributed to God; but
these attributes of God,
being dimly
present in the mind, are by metaphor attributed to rock.
GOD is the TRUE ROCK, the other is the
image. God is rock, in virtue of:
Ø
The eternity of His existence (Psalm 90:2).
Ø
The omnipotence of His might (Daniel 4:35).
Ø
The wisdom
of His counsel (Isaiah 40:13).
Ø
The immutability
of His purpose (Psalm 33:11; Isaiah 46:10).
Ø
The faithfulness of His Word (Psalm 119:89-90).
Ø
The rectitude of His government (Psalm 145:17). Whence:
Ø
The perfection of His work.
CHRIST IS LIKE
THE FATHER:
Ø
Eternal (Revelation 1:11),
Ø
Unchangeable (Hebrews 13:8),
Ø
All powerful (Matthew 28:18),
Ø
Faithful (John 13:1; 14:18-20),
Ø
Righteous (Revelation 19:11), and
Ø
All Wise (Isaiah 9:6).
·
ROCK A NATURAL IMAGE OF WHAT, IN VIRTUE OF HIS
ATTRIBUTES, GOD IS TO HIS PEOPLE.
Ø
A Shelter (Psalm
61:3).
Ø
A Defense (Psalm 18:2;
62:6).
Ø
A Dwelling-place
(Psalm 90:1).
Ø
A Shadow from the heat (Isaiah 32:2).
Ø
A Move-less standing-ground
(Psalm 40:2).
Ø
A Foundation (Matthew
7:24-27). The rock smitten in the
wilderness furnishes the
additional idea of:
Ø
A Source of Spiritual Refreshment.
o
Christ, the Rock
on which His Church is built
(Matthew 16:18),
o
The smitten
Savior (I Corinthians 10:4),
o
The spiritual Refuge
and Salvation of His people
(Romans 8:1, 34-39).
And let us not forget Toplady’s
hymn, “Rock of Ages.” A
hymn used by
God’s people for many ages!
5 “They have corrupted themselves, their spot is
not the spot of
His children:
they are a perverse and crooked generation.”
Of this difficult passage the following seems the best
construction and rendering: —
A perverse and crooked
generation not his children, [but] their spot — has
become corrupt towards
Him. The subject of the verb at the beginning of the
verse is the “perverse and
crooked generation,” at the end of it,
and between
the verb and its subject there is interjected
parenthetically the clause, “not his
children, but
their spot.” Spot is here used in a moral sense, as in Job 11:15;
31:7; Proverbs 9:7. These corrupt persons claimed to be
children of God, but
they were not; they were rather a stain and a reproach to
them (compare II Peter
2:13; Isaiah 1:4).
The Geneva Version, has “They
have corrupted themselves
towards Him by their vice, not being His children, but a froward and crooked
generation.”
6 “Do ye thus
requite the LORD, O foolish people and unwise? is not
He thy father
that hath bought thee? hath He not made thee, and
established
thee?” Instead of gratefully acknowledging the Divine beneficence,
and dutifully obeying the Divine will,
requited the Lord for all His benefits, by apostasy from
Him. Do ye thus
requite? The verb here signifies
primarily to do to any one either good or
evil, whether in return for what he has done or not
(Compare Genesis 50:15;
I Samuel 24:18; Proverbs 3:30); then, as a secondary
meaning, to reward, repay,
requite, as here and Psalm 18:21. To bring more forcibly to
their view the
ingratitude and folly of their conduct, Moses dwells upon
what God was and had been to the nation: their Father, in that He had, in
His love, chosen, them to be His people (Isaiah 63:16;
64:7; Malachi 2:10); their
Purchaser, who had acquired possession of them by delivering them
out of
(compare Psalm 74:2); their Maker, who had constituted them a nation; and their
Establisher, by whom they
had been conducted through the wilderness and settled
in
bondage, and the times during which successive generations
had lived and
experienced the goodness of the Lord. The form of the word
rendered “days” is
poetical, and is found only here and in Psalm 90:15, which
is also ascribed to Moses –
“consider the
years of many generations:” - literally, years
of generation and
generation; “ - “ask thy
father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they
will tell thee.”
God’s
Vicegerent as Poet (vs. 1-6)
The true poet is God’s messenger. He that sings not of
truth and goodness
is
not a genuine poet; he is but a rhymester. As the swan is said to sing
sweetly only in the act of dying, so, on the eve of his departure,
Moses
sings his noblest strains.
·
OBSERVE THE POET’S AUDITORY. He summons heaven and earth
to hear. We read in ancient story that when Orpheus made
music with his
lyre, the wild beasts listened, and the trees and rocks of
him about. This may serve as a just reproof to some men, who,
having
ears, act
as if they had them not.
Ø
Heaven and earth may denote both angels and men. For even “the
principalities of heaven learn from the Church the manifold wisdom
of God.” (Ephesians 3:10)
Ø
Heaven and earth may denote all classes of the people, high and low.
Frequently in Scripture great men
are represented as the stars of heaven.
The man of ambition is said to
lift his head to the stars. The righteous
are to shine as the brightness of the firmament. (Daniel 12:3)
Ø
Heaven and earth may denote the intelligent and the
material creation.
On account of man’s sin, “the
whole creation groaneth” (Romans 8:22);
and the effect of man’s obedience will be felt beneficially on
the material
globe. It will increase its fertility, its beauty, its
fragrance, its music.
“Truth” shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall
look
“down from heaven.” (Psalm
85:11) “Then shall
all the trees of
the wood rejoice.” (ibid. ch. 96:12; I Chronicles 16:33)
·
THE POET’S BENEFICENT INFLUENCE. “My doctrine shall drop
as the rain,” etc. (v.
2). This imagery teaches us:
Ø
The silent, unobtrusive
power of truth. It finds it way,
quietly and
unobserved, to the roots of human judgment and feeling.
Ø
It is refreshing. What a draught of clear water is to a thirsty man,
truth is to a healthy, active soul.
Ø
It is fertilizing. It nourishes all good affections, and strengthens every
virtue.
Ø
It is most suitable. No fitness can be more manifest than dew for tender
grass. Poetic truth is suited to every grade of human
understanding.
·
THE POET’S LOFTY THEME.
His theme is God; but God is only
known as He reveals Himself in His Name.
Ø
He descants upon His majesty, His
supreme power, and the splendors
of His state.
Ø
He touches upon His eternal
stability. What the unchanging rock is
amid the shifting sands, God is — unalterably the same.
Ø
He dwells upon:
o
the perfections of His character (“just and right is He”);
o
the perfection of His works, which are incapable of any
improvement;
o
the perfection of His government (“all his ways are
judgment”); and,
o
the perfection of His speech. He is “a God of truth.”
He alters
nothing, retracts nothing.
·
THE POET’S MORAL PURPOSE. To restore harmony between man
and God.
Ø
He proclaims man’s fallen state: “they have corrupted themselves.”
Human nature is not as it was when
it came from the hands of God.
Man holds this tremendous power
of ruining his own nature.
Ø
The mark of sonship has
disappeared. “Their spot is not the spot
of His children.” Childlike docility and submissiveness form the
family lineament.
Ø
This depravity has spread like the virus of disease. The whole race
is infected. “They are a
perverse and crooked generation.”
Ø
Such conduct is suicidal folly. It is most antagonistic to self-interest.
No
madman could have acted worse.
Ø
Such conduct is the basest ingratitude. “Do ye thus requite the Lord?”
Consider His claims:
o
Did He not create
thee?
o
Has He not been a
Father to thee?
o
Has He not redeemed
thee?
Tender expostulation with the
conscience is the poet’s mission.
For this vocation he has been
specially inspired by God. A heavenly
spirit breathes through his every word. No higher honor can man
attain on earth.
God’s Righteousness and Man’s
Iniquity (vs. 4-7)
The sin of man is only fully seen in contrast with God’s
righteousness and love. The
light is needed to bring out the depth of the shadow. It
reveals the “spot.”
marked by:
Ø
Rectitude (v.
4). He had done everything that was just and right to
them. His ways had been
equal. He had given them just statutes. His
covenant-keeping
faithfulness had been signally manifested. There was
not the shadow of
a pretence for accusing God of injustice or of
infidelity to His
engagements.
Ø
Love. Love and grace had been more conspicuous in His treatment
of
them than even justice. It
was shown in their election, in the deliverance
from
many and undeserved favors
which had been heaped upon them (compare
vs. 9-14). Rectitude and love have reached their FULLEST
MANIFESTATION IN
THE GOSPEL!
The cross displays both.
It harmonizes their
apparently conflicting claims, and exhibits them in new
glories. GOD’S CHARACTER revealed IN
CHRIST, is the
condemnation of an unbelieving world.
requital was an incredibly base
one. They corrupted themselves. They
wantonly
departed from the ways of right. They behaved ungratefully.
Instead of imitating God in the
example of rectitude He had set them, and
walking before Him “as dear
children,” they flung to the winds the
remembrance of His mercies, and
brought disgrace upon His Name. He was
their Father (v. 6), but instead of reflecting the features of His
image, they
dishonored and discredited it (compare Isaiah 1:2-4, which appears to be
based on this passage). Their
sin was:
Ø
Self-caused. There was nothing which they had seen in their God to
cause it, to account for it,
or to excuse it.
Ø
Irrational. Their powers, given by God, ought willingly to have been
devoted in His service.
Obedience is the normal condition. Heaven and
earth, undeviatingly
obeying the law of their existence, condemn man’s
apostasy (v. 1). The very
brute creation testifies against him (Isaiah 1:3).
Ø
Ungrateful. God had bought them for Himself, had made a nation of
them, and established them
in
cast off His yoke.
Ø
Foolish. The way
they chose was the way of death, whereas in God’s
favor was life (v. 47),
with every blessing that heart could wish for. The
same remarks apply
to sinners — despising the gracious
overtures
which God makes to them, with
all the favors, temporal and spiritual,
He has actually shown them,
and careering on to their eternal ruin.
“O foolish people and unwise!”
8 “When the Most High divided to the nations their
inheritance, when
He separated the
sons of Adam,” – From the very beginning, when God first
allotted to the nations a place and a heritage, He had
respect in His arrangements
to the sons of
in view in all that He appointed and ordered. “He
set the bounds of the people
according to the
number of the children of
portioned out to the nations the heritage of each, He
reserved for
people of His choice, an inheritance proportioned to its
numbers. The Septuagint
has “according to the number of the angels of God,” an arbitrary
departure from
the original text, in accommodation, probably, to the later
Jewish notion of each
nation having its guardian angel.
The World Ruled for the
Benefit of the Church
(v.
8)
What this verse asserts is that in the providential
distribution of the nations,
and assignment to them of their special territories,
respect was had from
the beginning to the provision of a suitable dwelling-place
for the chosen
race. Our subject is — The government of the world conducted
with a view
to the
interests of the Church.
·
A TRUTH FREQUENTLY TAUGHT IN SCRIPTURE. Both by facts
of history, and by express
statement.
contact, not only with petty
neighboring states, but with the mightiest
empires of East and West. These
appear in Scripture only as they affect the
chosen race, but it is then made
manifest how
entirely their movements are
directed and controlled by DIVINE
God’s purposes is always
Ø
“For your sake,” says God, “I have sent to
brought down all their nobles, and the Chaldeans, whose cry is
in the ships” (Isaiah 43:14; compare vs. 3-4).
Ø
Is
The
design is the working out of a certain plan in the chain of God’s
appointments for
Ø
Is a Cyrus raised up
in
and shall perform all my pleasure,” etc. (Isaiah 44:28).
So is it throughout.
in all their relations with
executors of the Divine purposes, and
their power is strictly limited by their
commission.
In harmony with this prophetic teaching are the express
testimonies of the Epistles
(e.g. Romans 8:28; Ephesians 1:20-23; 3:9-11).
(1) Nature,
(2) history, are ruled for the benefit Of the Church.
·
A TRUTH IN ITSELF REASONABLE. Once admit the goal of
history to be the establishment
on earth of a universal spiritual kingdom —
a gathering together in one of
all things with Christ as Head (Ephesians
1:10), and it is certain
that herein must lie the key to all historical
developments, the explanation of all arrangements and
movements of
Divine providence.
The center of interest must always be that portion of
the race with which for the time
being the
“Just as, in tracing the
course of a stream, not the huge morasses nor the
vast stagnant pools on either
side would delay us: we should not, because
of their extent, count them the
river, but recognize that as such, though it
were the slenderest thread, in
which an onward movement might be
discerned; so is it here.
stagnant morasses on either side
of the river; the Man in whose seed the
whole earth should be blessed,
he and his family were the little stream in
which the life and onward
movement of the world were to be traced They
belong not to history, least of
all to sacred history, those Babels, those
cities of confusion, those huge
pens into which by force and fraud the early
hunters of men, the Nimrods and Sesostrises, drove and compelled their
fellows... where no faith
existed but in the blind powers of nature and the
brute forces of the natural man” (Archbishop Trench).
·
A TRUTH FRAUGHT TO THE CHURCH WITH COMFORT AND
ENCOURAGEMENT.
Ø
When the powers of the world are threatening.
Ø
In times of internal decay.
Ø
Under long-continued trials.
9 “For the LORD’s portion is His
people;” - (compare
Exodus 15:16; 19:5;
I Samuel 10:1; Psalm 78:71). “Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.” - literally,
the cord, etc., the
allusion being to the measuring of land by a cord, equivalent to
the portion by measure which Jehovah allotted to Himself as
His inheritance
(compare Psalm 16:6).
[I recommend Deuteronomy ch.32 v. 9 –
God’s
Inheritance by Arthur Pink –
this web site – CY – 2012)
10 “He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling
wilderness;” - God’s fatherly care of
waste howling wilderness; literally, in the land of the desert, in the
waste
(the formless waste; the word used is that rendered,
Genesis 1:2, “without form”),
the howling of the wilderness.
without food or water, and surrounded by howling, ferocious
beasts, and
who must needs have perished had not God found him and
rescued him.
“He led him
about, He instructed him, He kept him as the apple of His eye.”
- literally, the mannikin
(אִישׁון) of his eye, the pupil; so called because in it, as in
A mirror, a person sees his own image reflected in
miniature, or because, being
the tenderest part of the eye, it
is guarded as one would a babe
(compare Psalm 17:8;
Proverbs 7:2; Zechariah 2:8). The use of the word mannikin here must be taken as
indicating that
AND TENDEREST CARE!
11 “As an eagle” - God’s treatment of His people is compared to that of an
eagle
towards its young (compare Exodus 19:4). In the Authorized
Version, the apodosis
of the sentence is made to begin at v. 12, and v.11 is
wholly understood of the eagle
and its young. To this arrangement it has been objected
that it overlooks the fact that
the suffixes to the verbs “taketh” and “beareth” are singulars, and are to be
understood consequently, not of the eaglets, but of
proposed to render the passage thus: As an eagle which stirreth up its nest,
fluttereth over its young,
he spread out his wings, took him up, and carried
him on his pinions.
The
Lord alone did lead him, etc. The comparison is thus
made to pass into a metaphorical representation of the Lord’s
dealing with
One feels that there is something violent in this, for
whilst God’s care for
is less fit to speak of God Himself as if He were an
eagle with wings which
He spread abroad and on which He bare
Authorized Version is on this account to be preferred, if
it can be
grammatically vindicated. And this it may on the ground
that the suffixes
may be understood of the “nest” as containing the young, or
the young may
be referred to individually, “taketh it, beareth
it,” i.e. each of them; or, if the
nest be understood, the whole body of them as therein
contained -“stirreth
up
her nest,” - i.e. its
nestlings. It is undoubtedly used generally in the sense of
rousing, exciting, stirring up, i.e. by the parent bird
coming to them with food.
This is certainly more in keeping with what follows; for
when the eagle nestles
or broods over her young, she does not excite them to fly -
“fluttereth
over
her young,” - :” rather, broods over, nestles, or cherishes
(יְרַחֵפ) -
“spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh
them, beareth them on her
Wings:” - “I once saw a very interesting sight above one of the crags
of
teaching their offspring, two young birds, the maneuvers of
flight. They began
by rising from the top of a mountain, in the eye of the
sun; — it was about
midday, and bright for this climate. They at first made
small circles, and the
young imitated them; they paused on their wings, waiting
till they had made their
first flight, holding them on their expanded wings when
they appeared exhausted,
and then took a second and larger gyration, always rising
towards the sun, and
enlarging their circle of flight, so as to make a gradually
ascending spiral” (Davy,
‘Salinertia;’ see also Bochart, ‘Hierozoicon,’ 2:181).
The general reference is to
God’s fostering care of
“He suffered their manners in the wilderness” (Acts 13:18), disciplined them,
and trained them for what they were appointed to do.
A Panorama
of Grace (vs. 10-14)
How
·
WHERE GOD FOUND HIM.
(v. 10.) Partly metaphorical — the
state of
desert; partly literal — it
being in the desert that God found the people
when He took them into
covenant. This is an image of the
helpless and
hopeless condition of the
sinner. Cut off from life, without shelter, provision,
resting-place, or final
home.
·
HOW GOD DEALT WITH HIM.
(vs. 10-11) That
in the wilderness so long was
his own fault. But grace overruled the
discipline for good. The
long sojourn in the desert made
a better type of our own.
There are ends to be served by this sojourn
(John 17:15). God showed
Himself:
1. Condescending to
2. Mindful of his ignorance. “Instructed him.”
3. Watchful of his safety. “Kept him.”
4. Careful of his training (v. 11).
The love and solicitude
implied in such phrases as, “kept him as the apple
of His eye” (v. 10), and “as an eagle stirreth
up,” etc. (v. 11), specially
deserve notice. The apple of
the eye is a sensitive part, which we protect
with the utmost care, and
from the slightest injuries. (The
best illustration
I have heard of this is the
image that reflects in the pupil when one looks
on another is what is
meant. CY – 2020) On the eagle, see below.
·
WHITHER GOD CONDUCTED HIM. ( vs. 13-14) To a
land of
plenty and rest. He made his defense the munitions of rocks. God
provided him with all that heart could desire. So does God bring the
believer to a large and
wealthy place — a place of “fullness of
joy,”
of richest satisfactions,
of most perfect delights. Spiritually, even
here,
where the most
unpropitious circumstances yield him
unexpected
blessings. Eternally hereafter it will be in perfected form!
Note: GOD ALONE did
all this for
The
Eagle (v. 11)
“The description is of a female eagle exciting her young
ones in teaching
them to fly, and afterwards guarding with the greatest care
lest the weak
should receive harm” (Gesenius). In
this picture of the eagle’s treatment of
her young, note:
·
HER AIM. She aims at
teaching them self-reliance. It is not God’s wish
that His children should be
tethered by leading-strings. They must be trained
to prompt, fearless,
self-reliant action. This was an aim of the discipline of
the wilderness. Our action is to
be in a spirit of dependence, but it is to be
active, not passive dependence.
·
HER METHOD. She stirs
up her nest. She does not leave her brood to
the ignoble ease they would
perhaps prefer. So God rouses His people to
action by making their place uneasy
for them. By placing them in trying
situations, by removing
comforts, by the stimulus of necessity, by the sharp
provocation of afflictions, He
goads them to think, act, and put forth the
powers that are in them. It is not for the good of Christians that they
should have too
much comfort.
·
HER CASE. The
experiment is not carried to the point of allowing
the young to hurt themselves.
She hovers over them, supports them on the
tip of her
wings, etc. God tries us, but not beyond our strength.
12 “So the LORD alone did lead him,” - (compare
Exodus 13:21; 15:13) –
“and there was no
strange God with him.” - i.e. along with Jehovah, as aiding him.
13 “He made him ride on the high places of the earth,” - To ride over or drive
over the heights of a country is figuratively to subjugate
and take possession of that
country (compare ch.33:29; Isaiah 58:14).
eat of its produce, -
“that he might eat the increase of
the fields;” – as his own –
“and He made him
to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock;”
olive trees, which grew on a rocky soil; as is still the
case in
14 “Butter of kine,” - The Hebrew word (חֶמְאָה) here used designates milk in a
solid or semi-solid state, as thick cream, curd, or butter.
As distinguished from this is
“and milk of
sheep,” - where the word used (חָלָב) properly denotes fresh milk,
milk in a fluid state, and with all its richness (חֶלֶב,
fatness) in it (compare Genesis
18:8; Isaiah 7:22) - “with fat of lambs,” - lambs of the best, “fat”
being a figurative
expression for the best (Numbers 18:12) - “and rams of the
breed of
literally, rams, sons of Bashan; i.e. reared in
“and goats,
with the fat of kidneys of wheat;” - with
the kidney-fat of wheat;
i.e. the
richest fat, the best and most nutritious wheat -“and thou didst drink the
pure blood of
the grape.” The blood of the grape is the expressed juice
of the grape,
which, being red, is compared to blood. The rendering “pure” here is not inapt.
The original word (חֶמֶר, from חָמַר;
to boil up, to foam, to rise in bubbles) describes
this juice as it appears when pressed into a vessel, when
the surface of the liquid is
covered with froth or foam. There is no ground for the
explanation “fery
wine” -
wine in such a state
was never among the Hebrews counted a blessing. That they
had and used fermented wine is certain; but what they specially esteemed as a
luxury was the
pure unadulterated juice of the grape freshly pressed out and
drunk
with the foam on it.
The
Fatherhood of God (vs. 1-14)
In this first section of the Divine song, the predominating
idea is God’s
fatherhood. It comes out in v. 6 in express terms; it is implied in
the care
that is attributed to Him for His children of
more tender idea of motherhood in the illustration of the eagle (v. 11); and
may
fairly be taken as the idea dominating the whole. It has been thought
that the fatherhood of God is almost altogether a New Testament idea; but
we
have it here expressly stated, and it underlies many portions of the Old
Testament. This whole song is, in fact, a paternal expostulation with
children that have been wayward in the wilderness, and will be more
wayward still in the land of promise. We shall notice in order the ideas
suggested by this section.
·
FERTILIZING DOCTRINE.
Divine doctrine, even in its severest forms,
has a gracious and fertilizing influence like rain or dew. It
comes down
upon the wilderness of human nature, and makes it a fruitful
field. It comes
down upon the tender herb of implanted graces, upon the grass
of humble
and useful piety, and makes all to grow more luxuriantly.
Nothing is so
important as “good doctrine.”
·
THE ROCK-STABILITY OF GOD. This is the first inquiry. Can God
be trusted as truly stable? The answer is that He is a Rock,
and that upon
His veracity and justice and
helpfulness we can constantly rely. Moses and
the Israelites had experienced this; as they wandered amid the
rocky
fastnesses of the desert, they had found Him as firm and as reliable
as the
rocks. Up to this time, the figure had not been applied to God.
The
Israelites have, indeed, from
the hard and flinty rock, had refreshing
streams; the rock was to them a fountain of waters; and doubtless
when
here the figure is for the first time applied to God, they
would find it
delightful to associate refreshment and shelter with him. Then in
course of
time it became a favorite figure, as the Psalms in many
passages show
(compare
Psalms 28:1; 31:2-3; 42:9; 62:2,7; 78:20, 35; 95:1). And we
rejoice to call our Redeemer “Rock
of Ages,” in the clefts of which,
according to Toplady’s idea, taken from
Exodus 33:22, we can take
shelter and feel safe.
·
PATERNAL APPEAL.
Although God is so worthy of trust, the
Israelites have corrupted
themselves; they are unwilling to have upon them
the mark or spot of the children of God, but the mark of some
other tribe;
and so as a Father He appeals to them because of their
ingratitude. Has He
not made them, bought them, and established them, and, in
consequence,
earned a right to different treatment from this? Fatherhood has
rights by
reason of service which no grateful child can overlook.
·
PATERNAL FORESIGHT. He
speaks next of the days of old, of the
years of many generations, which the fathers and elders could
testify about,
during which time the Father was but implimenting
His glorious plan,
separating and scattering the sons of Adam according to the interests
and
number of the children of
of men, “God so distributed the earth among the several
peoples that were
therein, as to reserve, or in His sovereign counsel to appoint,
such a part for
the Israelites, though they were then unborn, as might prove a
commodious
settlement and habitation for them.” Noble foresight, that is worthy of an
everlasting and infinite Father.
·
PATERNAL INSTRUCTION.
One element in fatherhood is a sense of
possession in the children. The father rejoices that the children are
his, and
will not part readily with his portion. So
with God. “The Lord’s portion is
His people; Jacob
is the lot of His inheritance.” (v. 9) Out of this sense
of
property comes the improvement of the children by faithful
instruction.
Hence
and led them about, instructing them, and keeping them as “the
apple of
the eye.” It was the Father educating them through His own
companionship,
and leading them
onwards in safety towards their home.
·
PARENTAL DISCIPLINE.
The song introduces (v. 11) the figure
of the eagle, and the motherly discipline to which she
subjects her brood.
“Naturalists tell us that
when her young are old enough to fly, the eagle
breaks her nest in pieces, in order to compel them to use their
powers of
flight; fluttering over them, that by imitation they may learn
how to employ
their wings, but, when unwilling to fly, spreading abroad her
wings, she
bears them upwards in the air, and then shaking them off,
compels them to
use their own exertions.” From this Mr. Hull deduces the truth that “the
Divine discipline
of life is designed to awaken man to the development of
his own powers.” We
see thus the kindness of the parental discipline, and
that it takes motherhood as well as fatherhood to
illustrate the Divine
relation (compare
Isaiah 49:15).
·
PARENTAL BLESSING.
Having exercised such parental care over
the people, the result was abundant temporal success and
blessing. This is
beautifully brought out as a “riding upon the high places of the earth.”
(v. 13) And then the whole panorama of
agricultural prosperity is presented,
“the increase of the fields” providing bread, the rocks affording shelter for
the bees which extracted abundant honey from the
flowers, the olives clinging
to the flinty rocks and affording abundance of oil,
while the kine in the fat
pastures gave butter, and the sheep milk, and the
lambs were choice food,
and the rams of the breed of
wine made the lot of
supplied their wants in such a fashion. God’s goodness was
exceeding
great. (Compare Psalm
81:16)
The “fatherhood
of God” had thus its grand
exemplification in the history
of
as reliable; who provided for His children long before they
were born; who
instructed and disciplined them, and brought them eventually to a
splendid
inheritance, — might well look for their trust and obedience. The Lord
shows a similar fatherly care still to all men, even those who do not return
a filial spirit; and if,
in His grace, they yield at length to His paternal appeals,
then He comes and gives them a fellowship such as they never
dreamed of.
“He that loveth me,” saith Jesus, “shall be loved of my Father, and I
will
love him, and will manifest myself to him” (John 14:21). (He
and the
Father also will come “and
make our abode with him.” - ibid. v. 23 –
CY – 2020)
Ungrateful
Men Interrogated (vs. 5-14)
In almost every clause of this paragraph there is some
specific allusion, for
the elucidation (make something clear, clarification – [for
the modern Progressive
of this era, “just to be clear, let us be clear, let me be
clear, etc.] – CY – 2020)
for the modern proof which the reader will refer to the
Exposition. The central
words around which the preacher’s expository thoughts may
gather are these —
“Do ye thus requite the Lord?” Three main lines of illustration are suggested.
·
HERE IS A REHEARSAL OF THE DIVINE LOVING-KINDNESS
AND TENDER MERCIES.
Ø
There is the mercy of redemption. “Is not he thy Father that hath
bought
thee?”
Ø There is the mercy of Divine choice of
made
thee, and established thee?” (see also vs. 7-8).
Ø There is Divine leadership. “He led him about,” etc.
Ø There is Divine guardianship. “He
kept him as the apple of His eye.”
Ø There is Divine help and training of
the most tender kind. A
wonderful
description is
given thereof in v. 11.
Ø There is abundant Divine provision
for the wants of the
ransomed ones
(vs. 13-14). Each one of these six points may be enlarged upon, as
applicable to
present gospel blessings and providential mercies.
·
HERE IS A STRANGE RESPONSE TO SUCH ABOUNDINGS OF
MERCY, The burden of Moses here is not unlike that of a far later
prophet, even Isaiah (see Isaiah
1:2-4). The moan of many of God’s
prophets has been the same ever
since; it is so now. The contrast between
God’s bounty and man’s
perversity causes a grief almost too heavy to be
borne. (Once again, consult
Psalm 81:11-16 – CY – 2020) Here are at
least
five complaints.
Ø
They are corrupt.
Ø
They are perverse, or false.
Ø
They are crooked, twisted.
Ø
They are foolish, not acting as reasonable men.
Ø
Instead of being like His children, they are a spot upon
them —
stain
(see Hebrew).
The question may fairly be
asked, Who are they of whom similar
complaints may be
made now?
We reply:
Ø
Those who profess to
be the people of God, and who show no signs
whatever
that their profession is real.
Ø
Those of God’s
children who are but half-hearted in their love and zeal.
(see
Revelation 3:16)
Ø
Those who are ready
with lip-service, but are grievously
defective in
Christian morality.
Ø
Those who have neither
yielded themselves to God nor yet made any
profession
thereof.
Of all such, similar complaints
may be made to those here laid against
of old.
·
HERE IS A REASONABLE QUESTION. It is, indeed, a reproachful
one. And if ever the servants of
God now take it up and apply it to the
heart and conscience of their
hearers, it should be done with the utmost
tenderness, even unto tears;
remembering, on the one hand, how infinitely
greater the mercies of God are
now, compared with aught that Moses
knew; and also considering themselves, how often they have been as
ungrateful
GRACE, would have been UNGRATEFUL STILL! The solemn
and
sorrowful interrogative — “Do
ye thus requite the Lord?” — may be
pressed home in a series of cumulative
inquiries. It may be asked:
Ø
Is this the natural
return for mercies so great?
Ø
Do not such love and
care demand a holy and
grateful life?
Ø
Can any reason
whatever justify so poor a response as God has yet
received?
Ø
Have men no remorse in the review of the contrast
between God’s
mercies and their/OUR
SIN?
Ø Should not
remorse lead on TO REPENTANCE?
Ø
And shall not this penitent life begin NOW? (“TODAY
IS THE
DAY OF SALVATION!” Isaiah 49:8; II Corinthians 6:2)
It is quite certain that, though
God is
long-suffering, “not willing that any
should perish, but
that all should come to repentance”
(II Peter 3:9), He will
not always allow His mercies to
be
thus trifled with (see Genesis 6:3; Amos
ch. 4). But why, why should men compel us to present
thus “the
terrors
of the Lord?” (II Corinthians 5:11)
He
would rather win by love.
Judgment is “His
strange work.”
History’s Testimony for God
(vs. 7-14)
A defective character often results from mental
indolence. Men
do not use
their faculties.
Did they consider, reflect, and ponder, they would be bettor
men. To call into activity all our powers is an imperative
and sacred duty.
For this purpose God has given them. Whose am I? whence
have I come?
what is my business in life? what are my obligations to my
Maker? — these
are questions possessing transcendent interest, and are
vital to our joy. Ask
intelligently and thoroughly; then act upon the answers.
God’s careful
provision for
Isaiah 5:1-5). No
less, probably greater, has been his considerate and far-seeing
provision for us.
Ø
Our earth has for
untold ages been undergoing preparation as a
suitable dwelling-place for
man. Rocks have been formed for man’s
use, treasures of coal and
metals have been stored up for his advantage.
The soil has been
pulverized to receive his seed. A marvelous and
painstaking preparation has
been made.
Ø
Equally conspicuous is
God’s wisdom in selecting special territory for
special nations. Amidst all
the hurly-burly of war, the unseen hand of
God has “divided to the nations their inheritance”
(v.8). Oceans and
rivers, mountains and
deserts, have been God’s walls of partition.
Ø
All these selections
have been subordinate to
lines of God’s government
met here. To
to bend.
Ø
The reason of this is
declared. “The Lord’s portion is His people.”
(v.9). Some location on earth was to be reserved
for Jehovah. He
too had chosen a
dwelling-place, an inheritance. And His habitation
was in the hearts of His
people
and with him dwell,
who is of an humble and contrite spirit and
trembleth at my word.” (Isaiah 66:2) “Jacob is the lot of His
inheritance.” (v.9)
Ø
Apart from God, earth
would be a barren desert. Man’s environment,
where God is not, would be
discordant, unsuitable, painful. The
flowers and fruits of life
are divinely provided.
Ø
Inscrutable are the
methods of God’s training. “He led him
about”
(v.10). A masterly hand is in the matter, and we are very incompetent
critics. Those marches and counter-marches in the wilderness were
all
needful to nourish robust
courage and simple faith in the Hebrews. In
God’s arrangements no waste
is permitted.
Ø
Tenderest kindness is here expressed. “He
kept him as the apple of His
eye” (Ibid.). We count the eye among our most precious
endowments.
It is protected by the most
clever contrivances. No part of the body is
so delicate or so
susceptible of pain. So God regards His chosen people.
As a man guards from harm
his eye, so God guards His own.
Ø
Consummate skill was expended
to develop the best qualities of
This is set forth by a
piece of impressive imagery. As the eagle knows
the perils of indolence,
and is anxious to train her young brood to early
self-exertion, she breaks
up the nest, takes the eaglets on her strong
pinions, bears them
heavenward, shakes them free, then, as they sink,
darts beneath them, bears
them up again, and encourages them to seek
the sun; so, by a thousand
kind devices, God taught His people “to seek
the things which are above.” (Colossians 3:2).
So precious an end is
worthy of the largest
expenditure of means.
GOD. In proportion as
man has loyally served his God, man has gained
earthly dominion. To Adam was
accorded sovereignty over all living things
in air, or earth, or sea; and of
the second Adam we read, “Thou hast put
all things under
his feet” (I Corinthians 15:27).
Ø
Victory over
enemies is secured. “He made him ride on the high
places of the earth” (v.13). Every mountain fortress was, one by one,
possessed. To ride is significant of military conquest.
The triumphs
of
Ø
The peaceful conquest
of nature followed. To the arts of industry, the
earth yielded in sevenfold profusion.
The olives on the rugged hills
filled their presses with
oil. Wild bees toiled early and late to lay up
stores of honey. Their
cattle, plentifully fed, yielded butter and milk
in abundance. (So also God has provided for the
now that we are in the
process of turning our back on Him, we
are starting to feel the
consequences and “O, how we howl!”
It is as if we can’t take
it and “the little selfish imp tries to wiggle
himself into notice
somehow!” – CH Spurgeon – CY – 2012)
Under the curse of civil
strife and petty feuds of the Canaanites,
crops had been devastated,
and flocks had been destroyed. Now,
peace reigned in every
valley, and the very trees blossomed with
ruddy gladness. Hill and
plain poured their unceasing tributes at
the feet of lordly man.
LORD ALONE did lead him.” “BY HIMSELF” - (Hebrews 1:3).
The deities of the Amorites
(if they had any power at all)
had bestowed on their votaries
an inheritance of lust and war and ruin.
(Basically, their own ideas and
vulgar thoughts – “They that make them
are like unto
them; so is everyone that trusteth in them.” – Psalm 115:8 –
CY – 2012) In whatever respect
was due to the beneficence
of Jehovah. He had blessed them with
an
ungrudging hand. ‘Twas the
indulgence of his native instinct to give
and to make glad. NO SANE MAN among them
could reach any other
conclusion than
that JEHOVAH WAS THE GIVER OF ALL! And
with one voice they should have
rung with many hearty hallelujahs:
“The Lord hath
done great things for us whereof we are glad.”
(Psalm 126:3). The gift was unique. It was conspicuously a
deed of grace.
15 “But Jeshurun” - This name, formed from rc"y;, righteous, designates
chosen to be a righteous nation; and in the use of it here lies the keenest reproach
of apostate
destined. By using the name righteous in place of
those who had swerved from rectitude; by recalling to
memory with what dignity they
had been endowed, he the more sharply rebukes the perfidy which was their crime.
(Compare the
name appears also in ch.33:5, 26, and in Isaiah 44:2; but
in these places without any
implied censure - “waxed fat, and kicked:” - (compare ch.6:11; 8:10; 31:20).
The allusion is to an ox that had grown fat through good
feeding, and had become
unmanageable in consequence - “thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou
art covered
with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly
esteemed”
- The Hebrew is
strongly expressive here: Thou hast treated as a fool
(נִבֵּל, from נָבַל;
to be foolish (compare Micah 7:6) - “the Rock of
his salvation.”
16 “They provoked Him to jealousy with strange gods, with
abominations
provoked they
Him to anger.” They provoked Him to jealousy.
God had bound
incited Him to jealousy (compare ch.31:16; Exodus 34:15;
Isaiah 54:5; Hosea 1.).
Strange gods (compare Jeremiah 2:25; 3:13).
17 “They sacrificed unto devils,” - shedim, a word which occurs only here and
Psalm 106:37. It stands connected with the verb שׁוּד, to rule, and means primarily
“lords.” The Septuagint renders by δαιμόνια – daimonia - demons. In Assyrian it
is said to be a name for demigodsn
-
“not to God;” - rather, to a not God,
a
composite term in apposition to shedim;
the meaning is rightly given in the margin of
the Authorized Version, “which
were not God” - “to gods whom
they knew
not, to new
gods that came newly up,” - The word rendered by “newly” (קָרוב)
properly means “near;”
it is an adjective both of place and of time; here it is the
latter, equal to of a near time, recently — gods recently
invented or discovered -
“whom your fathers feared not.”
18 “Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast
forgotten
God that formed
thee.” Moses here returns to the thought of v. 15, for the
Purpose of expressing it
with greater force, and also of leading on to the description
he is about to give of the Lord’s acts towards the nation
who had so revolted from
Him. Thou art unmindful; Septuagint -
ἐγκατέλιπες – engkatelipes - to
desert, forsake
or leave - That
formed thee; literally, that brought thee forth
or caused thee to be born.
God Provoked to Jealousy
by an Unfaithful People (vs. 15-18)
This paragraph is a continuation of the same theme as that
touched on in preceding
verses. It not only sets forth the waywardness of the
people but is a prophecy.
Moses sees the people in the enjoyment of all the blessings
of God’s providence;
he looks onward, and, with the seer’s eye, he beholds them
in the Promised Land,
their wanderings over, and their marches hither and thither
exchanged for a settled
life in a land of plenty and of delight. There they are prospering abundantly;
and if they only used their prosperity aright they would be
doubly blessed, even with
that blessing which “maketh rich, and
he addeth no sorrow therewith” (Proverbs
10:22). But, alas!
how different is the picture here drawn! And how precisely did the
after-reality answer thereto! There is in these verses a
logical order of thought, in the
sketch given, first, of
on the relations between them and their God.
.
IN THE MIDST OF WORLDLY PROSPERITY. There
are four steps in
the descent:
Ø
Prosperity
generates willfulness, and a resistance to the Divine claims.
If men can have their own
way entirely, for a while, and secure precisely
Their own ends, such
success, if not sanctified, will but create a self-will
and
self-assertion stronger than ever. “Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked.” The
restraints of duty,
conscience, and God, will be irksome, and will provoke to
resistance. Men will “kick against the pricks.” (Acts
9:5) (When I first
started coaching in 1966,
it was under Roy Woolum. He had a saying in
dealing with the
basketball team, “You guys can’t stand prosperity!”
This the team had in
common with the Israelites and apparently, with
the citizenry of the
Ø
Another stage will surely follow on.
The irritation which was at first felt
will subside, and
insensibility will steal over the soul. “Thou art waxen fat,
thou art grown thick.”
Stubborn obstinacy without the former stings of
conscience leads to “Past feeling”
(Ephesians 4:19) – which is a terrible
symptom of a MORAL and SPIRITUAL PARALYSIS!
Ø
To this there will
follow a third stage. “He forsook God...
and lightly
esteemed the Rock of
his salvation.” Here there sets in A THINKING
LIGHTLY OF GOD
ALTOGETHER and A
FORSAKING OF HIM!
How true is the picture
here given to the actual progress of
sin in the
soul everywhere!
Ø Then the problem is
compounded! To this succeeds not only neglect of
God, but the
substitution of other gods (vs. 16-17)! This actually came
about (see Jeremiah 2.,
specially v. 13). The
heart of man must have a
supreme object of love
(Why? God designed us that way! –
CY - 2012);
and if God be not enthroned in the heart, some rival will be seated
there.
Note — How very little all
possible worldly good can do for a man unless
there is a process of spiritual
renewal and culture going on, which will
enable him to sanctify all to
the highest purposes! Yea, more. If worldly
prosperity is not sanctified
to God and by Him, it
will be as a dead weight
upon the spirit. It will engender, first
resistance, then deadness, then
estrangement, then idolatry! This is the sure and certain effect of an
accumulation of worldly good,
when its possessor is not led by Divine
grace to use it wisely and
piously. It is an evil much to be lamented that so
many glory in the accumulation
of things, while neglecting the culture and
education of their souls. It
brings with it aa prodigious strength of self-will,
without the knowledge of
self-government. (The
achieved this stage as I
write - CY – 2012) And of all
men in the world,
they are of the least use to
their generation. (This is brought home
to us
as we decline as a nation of
influence in the world! - Why? Because it
is a natural result of sin in
the world! - CY – 2012)
o
How May Such Evil Be
Guarded Against?.”
§
Let us regard our
souls as of infinitely more important
than our possessions. What
we are is beyond measure
of more concern than what
we have. Our culture for
eternity is of the first
importance.
§
Let us from the outset
of life regard God as the Author of
all good, and as therefore
having the first claim on our regard.
§
Let us cultivate the
devotional habit of receiving all our
temporal comforts as from
God. If we have used means to
secure them, He it is who
has given us the means to use; who
has given us the power to
use them, and who has made those
means a success.
§
Let us seek wisdom
from above to hallow all our good for
God, and to “honor the Lord with our substance, and
with the first-fruits of all our increase” (Proverbs 3:9 –
see comments about tithing
in ch.14:22 – this web site).
§
Conscious of the
deceitfulness of the human heart, let us
entreat our God
to fill us with the power of the Spirit,
as well as to give us providential mercies. Then, the first
will ensure the
sanctification of the second. The larger our
possessions, the more we
need of the Spirit of God, to ensure
their becoming a blessing,
and to prevent their becoming a
snare.
o If We Have
Fallen into Such Evil, How May We be
Recovered
Therefrom?
§
Let the very
suggestion that a spiritual paralysis may have
stolen over the soul,
startle us into the inquiry. Is this the case
with us?
§
Let us inquire
solemnly, “What shall it profit a man, if be
shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his
life?”
(Mark 8:36)
§
Let us repent before
God of the wrong we have done to Him
in seeking from creature
comforts the joy which He alone
can give.
§
Let us implore His
renewing and sanctifying grace to enlighten
our understandings, to
regulate our affections, to mold our will,
to empower and transform
our life. If God fills us by His grace,
then will earthly good be
sanctified. Our God will be our
richest joy of all, He will be our Shield and
Exceeding
Great Reward!” (Genesis 15:1) - and
every worldly
comfort will yield us
double joy, when hallowed by Him and
for Him.
Jeshurun (vs. 15-18)
·
A GOOD NAME BELIED. Jeshurun, equivalent
to righteous. An
honorable name, but sadly
falsified by the conduct described. How many
Jeshuruns have thus forsaken the God of their early vows! Notice, a
good
name is of no account without
the good character. Balaam praised
righteousness, and wished to “die
the death of the righteous” (Numbers
23:10, 21); but it is the being
righteous, not the being called so, which
makes the happy deathbed.
·
AS EVIL EFFECT OF PROSPERITY. “Waxed fat — kicked.” How
common! The effect foretold or
warned against in earlier chapters
(ch.
8:12-18, etc.).
Ø
Prosperity,
Ø
then pride,
Ø
then stubborn
self-willedness.
The self willed heart:
Ø
refuses to
submit to God’s government;
Ø
throws off the
memory of past obligations,
Ø
treats God with ill-concealed
indifference
and
dislike; and,
Ø
turns from THE TRUE GOD to gods of its
own choosing.
There are two steps in the great
apostasy:
Ø
forsaking the fountain of living waters, and
Ø
hewing out broken
cisterns, that can hold no water!
(Jeremiah 2:13).
Such conduct is:
(1) wicked,
(2) ungrateful,
(3) irrational,
(4) fatal (vs. 22-25).
·
RESULT OF AN ITCH FOR NOVELTY. (v. 17.) The newness of
the gods was a chief attraction.
The worship of them was a change, a
novelty. It pleased them by
variety.
Ø
When God has been
abandoned, men are at the mercy of the most trivial
influences. “Itching ears” (II
Timothy 4:3); “every wind of doctrine”
(Ephesians 4:14).
Ø
When God has been
abandoned, novelty is greedily accepted as a
substitute for truth, in theories,
in creeds, in styles of worship, in
religious nostrums. (Half-time shows at the latest NFL Super
Bowl would not be far off in
parallel results. CY – 2020)
Ø
Apostasy from God
means transference of the affections to that
which is
degrading. In this case to “destroyers,” so the word means;
devils,
malignant deities. But we
worship devils, or the devil who offers each
of us the proposition, as he did
with Jesus Christ, “All these things will
I give thee, if
thou wilt fall down and worship me.” (Matthew 4:9),
when we bow in spirit to the
world’s modes and shows; when we serve
gold, or fashion, or the opinion
of society; when we are slaves to lust of
power; when we bow to a false gnosis, etc.
The Danger of Worldly
Success (vs. 15-18)
Success, when granted, bids for men’s trust. They
begin accordingly to
insinuate that the reliable Rock who begat them is not the source
of all
success, and that the
rill may be tracked to some nearer source. Hence new
gods, novelties of man’s imagination, or demons from the
waste, grateful
for even a false faith, are worshipped; and the ever-living and true God
FORGOTTEN
! Apostasy and scepticism, we would repeat, are born of luxury
and success. Men think, because they are
rich, that they can do bravely
without God.
·
IT IS WELL TO CONSIDER THE
DANGER OF WORLDLY
SUCCESS. Many a man was more religious when poor than after he
became rich. Increase of riches needs increase of grace; and, if men are not
watchful, riches only minister to backsliding. It is undesirable
independence
which proves independence of God. Better to trust God in the absence
of
wealth than to defy Him or ignore Him with it. Many a successful worldling
would have had more success in a poor station, through increase
of faith
and of heart. The success was at the price of leanness being
sent into his
soul. (Psalm 106:15)
·
THOSE WHO WILL NOT SACRIFICE TO GOD ARE ALWAYS
FOUND SACRIFICING TO THEIR FEARS. The credulity of unbelief is
one of the most curious questions of the time. When men deny
God His due
reverence and ignore His existence, their fancy haunts them with new
gods,
and powers whom they must propitiate — the luck and chance THAT THEY
ADVANCE TO THE THRONE.
The man alone is free from vain fears who
trusts in the living God; all others sooner or later prove adepts
at new religions,
and are devotees at fancy shrines.
·
THE DIVINE JEALOUSY IS JUSTLY PROVOKED BY SUCH
FORGETFULLNESS.
Jealousy is the anger of ill-requited love. It is what
has been called, as already observed, “love-pain,” and
is eminently worthy
of Him who is love itself. God cannot but feel He deserves
man’s love; He
cannot but desire it; He longs for it more intensely than ever
love-sick one
among the children of men has longed; and when He sees the love
He
deserves made over to another, when He sees His life of love and
death of
love ignored, — is it not eminently reasonable that He should
be jealous
and have His holy anger stirred?
Herein lies the danger, then, of success. It may decoy the unguarded soul
to mean fears and fancy shrines, and lead at length to the
encountering of
that jealousy which a God of love most justly entertains. Hence the prayer
of souls should be that:
Ø
with success may
come watchfulness;
Ø
with fatness may
come faith;
Ø
that out of goodness may come repentance.
Then success may help and not
hinder. Successful saints become a blessing to
their kind, and make success a stewardship. “It takes a steady hand to carry
a full cup;” so
says the proverb. Blessed be God, amid many shaky hands,
unequal to the task, there is a select few that carry their
success in a cool,
conscientious fashion!
God’s Casting Off of
19 “And when the LORD saw it, He abhorred them, because of
the
provoking of
his sons, and of his daughters.” When the Lord saw how they had
departed from Him to serve idols,
He abhorred (rather, spurned or rejected) them
in consequence of the provocation
which their unworthy conduct had given Him.
20 “And He said, I will hide my face from them, I will see
what their end shall
be: for they
are a very froward generation, children in whom is no
faith.”
God Himself comes forth to announce His resolution to
withdraw His favor from them,
and to inflict chastisement upon them; He would withdraw
His protecting care of them,
and see how they would fare without that; and He would also
send on them the tokens
of His displeasure. A
very froward generation, etc.; literally, a
generation of
perversities, an utterly perverse and faithless race.
21 “They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not
God; they have
provoked me to
anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy
with those
which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish
nation.” Because they had moved God to jealousy
and provoked Him to anger by
their vanities, their nothingnesses, mere vapors and empty exhalations (μyl;b]hi;
Jeremiah 10:6; I Corinthians 8:4);
as they had forsaken Him for a no-God,
He
would send retribution on them by adopting as His a
no-people, and giving to a
foolish nation, i.e. a nation not before
possessed of that true wisdom the
beginning of which is the fear of the Lord, the privileges and blessings which
savage tribe not yet formed into a community, but a people without God, and not
recognized by Him as in covenant
union with Him (compare Romans 10:19;
Ephesians 2:12; I Peter 2:10).
22 “For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto
the lowest
hell, and shall
consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the
foundations of
the mountains.” (Compare Jeremiah 15:14; 17:4; Lamentations
4:11.) The lowest hell; the lowest sheol, the
uttermost depth of the under-world.
The Hebrew sheol (שְׁאול) answering to the Greek ἅδης –
hades – grave –
hell –
by which it is
usually
rendered by the Septuagint, is a general
designation of the
unseen state, the place of the dead.
By some the word is derived from שָׁאַל; to
ask, because sheol is ever
asking, is insatiable (Proverbs 30:16); but more probably
it is from a root
signifying to excavate, to hollow, and, like the German holle,
means primarily a hollow place or cavern. The Divine wrath
kindles a consuming fire,
that burns down to the lowest depths — to the deepest part
of sheol — consumes
the earth’s produce, and sets on fire the foundations of
the mountains. This does not
refer to any particular judgment that was to befall the
national
description of the effects of the Divine wrath when that is
poured forth in judgments
on men.
23 “I will heap mischiefs upon
them; I will spend mine arrows upon them.”
I will inflict on them so many calamities that none shall
remain. The evils sent on
men by God are represented as arrows shot on them from
above. (Compare v.42;
Job 6:4; Psalm 7:13; 38:2; 45:5; 58:7; Zechariah 9:14).
24 “They shall be burnt with hunger,” - render: Sucked
out by hunger,
consumed with pestilential heat,
and bitter plague; I will send against them
the tooth of beasts and the poison
of things that crawl in the dust - “and
devoured with
burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also
send the
teeth of beasts
upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.” The
evils
threatened are famine,
pestilence, plague, wild beasts, poisonous reptiles, and war.
When hunger, pestilence, and contagious disease
had wasted and exhausted them,
then God would send on them wild beasts and poisonous
reptiles. Shall be burnt.
The Hebrew word occurs only here; it is a
verbal adjective, meaning, literally, sucked
out, Septuagint, τηκομένοι λιμῷ -
taekomenoi limo -
utterly exhausted; Tooth
of beasts and poison
of serpents; poetical for ravenous and
poisonous animals
(compare Leviticus 26:22).
25 “The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy” - literally, shall make
childless, shall
bereave, viz. the land which is thought of as a mother whose children
were destroyed. The verb is here sensu
praegnanti, shall bereave by destroying,
(compare I Samuel 15:23; Lamentations 1:20; Jeremiah 18:21)
-
“both the young
man and the
virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs.”
Sowing and Reaping
(vs. 15-25)
The connection between sin and suffering is natural,
organic, and universal.
Suffering, in some form, is the proper development of sin.
Like the plants
of
nature, sin has its seed within itself.
·
WE HAVE A CASE OF AGGRAVATED SIN.
Ø It was a wanton abuse of special kindness. The splendid gifts of
providence,
which ought to have bound them by golden ties of obligation
to God,
were erected into barriers to shut out God from them. An inner
principle
of selfish perverseness turned all food into poison. Instead of
gratitude,
there was scoffing; instead of loyalty, there was insolence. So it
often
happens that earthly wealth is an injury instead of a benefit. It detains
a man’s
faith and delight on itself. He exalts his riches into a god. Entering
a man’s
heart, as his professed friends, riches become his secret foes: they
sap
the foundations of his piety; they degrade and stultify the man.
Ø The flagrancy of sin is seen in the perversion of privilege.
The Hebrews
had been
chosen by God to a place of peculiar honor. They had been
admitted
to a nearer access to his friendship than any other nation. God
had
called them his sons and daughters. Nothing of good had God withheld
from
them. For these privileged persons to turn their backs on God, and
act as
traitors to their Lord, was sin of more than ordinary flagrancy. If
such fall
from their allegiance, how great must be their fall!
Ø The course of sin proceeds by perceptible stages. Sin often begins by
culpable omissions.
There is first negative good, then positive offence. The
people
began their downward course by being “unmindful”
of their Maker.
Their sense of
dependence on God declined. Then they quite forgot the
God who had so often rescued them. The next stage was openly to forsake
God. They
avoided His presence, neglected His worship. Soon they “lightly
esteemed” their Deliverer. If they thought of Him at all, it was
only to look
down on Him
— yea, to despise Him. Yet in a condition of atheism they
could not
long remain. Their nature demanded that they should worship
somewhat.
So they set up strange deities; they sacrificed unto demons.
They provoked
to jealousy, and to just indignation, the God of Israel.
Beyond this it
was impossible for human rebellion to proceed.
Ø Sin leads to a terrible alternative,
viz. the
worship and service of devils.
There is no
middle place at which a man can halt. He either grows up into
the image
of God or into the image of Satan.
·
WE HAVE A CASE OF EQUITABLE PUNISHMENT.
Ø It was the reversal of former good. He who aforetime had promised
them
prolific plenty now threatens to “consume the earth with her
increase.” Instead of the sunlight of His favor, He was about to “hide
His
face from them.” The wheels of providence were to be
reversed, and the
effect
would be to overthrow and to crush them.
Ø God’s judgments are tardy. He did not smite at once. His first
strokes
were
comparatively light, and then He patiently waited what the effect
might
prove. “I will see what their end shall be.” The long-suffering of God
is an
immeasurable store. He “is slow to anger.” Attentively He
listens, if so
be He may
catch some sigh of penitence. “I have surely heard Ephraim
bemoaning himself.” (Jeremiah 31:18)
Ø We may observe here the equity of God’s
procedure. By making His
punishments,
in great measure, like the sins, the Hebrews would the readier
detect
their folly and guilt. They had forsaken God: therefore God will
“hide His face from them.” They had “lightly esteemed” God:
therefore He
wilt
abhor them. They had “excited His jealousy,” by choosing
another
object of
worship: He will excite their jealousy by choosing another nation
to fill
their place. They had provoked His anger by their choice of vanities:
He will provoke
their anger by supplanting them with a “foolish
nation.”
The emotions
which exist in man have their correspondences in the nature
of God.
Thus, by stupendous condescension, God accommodates His
messages
to human understanding — employs
a thousand comparisons by
which to impress our hearts.
Ø God’s agents to execute His behests are
numerous and terrible.
A few
only are
mentioned here, but these may serve as samples of others.
Material forces
are pressed into service.
o
The
atmosphere will be a conveyer of pestilence.
o
Fire
is a well-known minister of God.
o
Earthquake
and volcano have often been commissioned to fulfill
Jehovah’s will.
o
As a
skilled warrior aims well his deadly arrows upon his foes,
so God
sends His lightnings abroad out of His quiver.
o
Famine
is decreed: “they shall be burnt with hunger.”
o
Sickness
and fever shall follow: they shall be “devoured with
burning heat.”
o
Pestiferous
insects shall assail them,
o
wild
beasts shall overrun the land.
o
The
sword of the invader shall fall with ruthless violence
upon
young and old — upon babe and veteran. They who escape
from one peril
shall fall under another.
From the hand of God release is
impossible.
An Unfaithful People Provoked to
Jealousy by God
(vs.
19-25)
This paragraph is the antithesis of the preceding one. In
form the
expressions are archaic. The principles underlying these
ancient forms of
expression are for all the ages. In fact, there are few of
the Old Testament
passages which are more pointedly referred to in the New
Testament; and
none, the principles of which are more frequently
reproduced. The various
clauses are seriatim (point by point) explained in the Exposition. We propose but
to develop the main thought, which is indicated in the
heading of this Homily.
Its contents are fourfold.
1. God was provoked to
jealousy by His people choosing a no-God instead
of Him.
2. The time would come
when He would, as a punishment to
a no-people instead
of them.
3. Those who had been
exalted in privilege should be deprived of their
privileges, and
should pass through the bitterest sorrows.
4. At the thought of
their privileges passing away from them, and passing
on to others,
Now, it would be a most instructive and impressive exercise
to compare
what is here said by God in His Word with that which
actually came to
pass. What does history say? Does it not confirm Moses at every
point?
The facts of history are these:
1. The people of
bring upon
themselves the remonstrance of prophet after prophet, and were
made in the
course of God’s providence to suffer sorrow upon sorrow.
2. The time did come
when the
and when they
were no longer, as they once had been, the favored people.
3. That
4. At its so passing
over, the Jews were exceedingly jealous and angry.
5. So much so was this
the case, that Paul makes use of the fact in
arguments to
quicken both the Jew and the Gentile, as the case may be.
The following passages of Scripture should be carefully
compared
together, bearing as they do alike on the history, the
principles revolved
therein, and their everlasting application:
From all which several all important truths of permanent
significance may
be clearly deduced and powerfully applied.
·
THESE ARE TIMES OF GREAT RELIGIOUS PRIVILEGE WITH
US. True, we are not
exclusively a favored race, in the same sense as was
with us. We have all that
of God is come
unto us.” The “word of faith” is nigh
us, in our mouth and
in our heart. We are bidden to “Behold
the Lamb of God, which taketh
away the sin of
the world,” (John 1:29)
·
IF THESE PRIVILEGES REMAIN UNIMPROVED, OUR
NEGLECT THEREOF WILL BE A GRIEVOUS SIN IN THE EYE OF
GOD. We have but to
read the Epistle to the Hebrews in order to find such
an argument as this repeatedly
presented, though in varying forms: If the
Law of Moses was trifled with
by any one, they did not escape punishment.
But Jesus Christ is greater than Moses. By as much as He is greater than
Moses, by so much are the sin
and danger of neglecting Him greater than
those of neglecting the lawgiver
of old.
·
BOTH CHURCHES AND NATIONS HAVE A DAY OF
PROBATION GRANTED THEM, DURING WHICH THEIR
PRIVILEGES ARE CONTINUED. (See Isaiah 49:8; II Corinthians
6:2; Luke 13:6-9; Revelation
2:5, 21; Luke 19:42-44.) An unending
probation is granted to no one.
·
IF THE PERIOD OF PROBATION PASSES BY UNIMPROVED,
OUR PRIVILEGES WILL BE TAKEN AWAY FROM US.
·
OTHER LANDS AND OTHER PEOPLES ARE READY, YEA,
EAGER TO RECEIVE THE LIGHT WHICH SOME APPRECIATE SO
LITTLE.
·
MANY, MANY WILL COME FROM LESS FAVORED LANDS
AND FROM LESS CULTURED RACES, AND WILL STEP INTO THE
of the kingdom
will be cast out into outer darkness.
Hear what our Lord
says to the Pharisees: “The
publicans and harlots will go into the kingdom
of God
before you.” (Matthew 21;31)
26 “I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make
the remembrance
of them to
cease from among men: 27 Were it not that I feared the wrath of
the enemy, lest
their adversaries should behave themselves strangely, and
lest they
should say, Our hand is high, and the LORD hath not done all this.”
Name’s sake. I said, I would scatter them into corners; rather, I should
say,
I will blow them away,
i.e. disperse them as
by a mighty wind. The verb here is
the Hiph, of פָאָה, to breathe,
to blow, and is found only here. The rabbins make
it a denominative from
פֵאָה, a corner, and this the Authorized Version
follows;
others trace it to an Arabic root, פאא, amputavit, excidit, and render,
“will
cut them off.” The idea intended to be conveyed is
obviously that of entire
destruction, and this is not satisfied by the representation of their being
scared or
driven
into corners. Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy. Various
renderings and interpretations of this
passage have been given.
be provoked to
wrath by the enemy ascribing the destruction of
their own
prowess.
meaning.
feared lest the
enemy should be encouraged to rise up against
ascribe their
destruction to their own valor. Of these that most generally
approved is the
first. (On this reason for sparing
Exodus 32:12; Numbers
14:13-16, Isaiah 10:5-7; Ezekiel 20:13-14.)
Should
behave themselves strangely; rather, should mistake or falsely pretend.
The verb is the Piel
of נָכַר; to look upon, to mark, and conveys the idea of
looking
on askance or prejudicially, hence being ignorant of,
mistaking, feigning, or falsely
pretending. Our hand is high; rather, was high, i.e.
was mighty in power.
The cause of
counsel and without understanding. Had they been wise, they would have
looked to the end,
and acted in a way conducive to their own welfare,
INSTEAD OF RUSHING UNTO RUIN! (vs. 28-33)
A God
Provoked (vs. 19-27)
Consider here:
·
THE REALITY OF WRATH IN GOD. Let it not be minimized or
explained away. “Instead of being shocked at the thought that God is
wrathful, we should rather ask, With whom? and For what? A God without
wrath, and a God who is wrathful on other accounts than for sin,
is not a
God, but an idol” (Hengstenberg). It is only, as this writer observes, when
“man
himself is not displeased with sin, when it assumes to him the
appearance of a bagatelle (pin ball game),” that he no longer perceives why
God should feel wrath at it. But man, we may
observe, is by no means disposed
to treat lightly sins
against HIMSELF! He never feels
that he does not “do well
to be angry” (as Jonah,
Jonah 4:4) on account of these or against the person
who does them. A very slight wound to his honor makes him clamor for
satisfaction. A God who is incapable of moral indignation would be equally
incapable of moral love, and could not, with truth, be spoken of as dispensing
mercy. Wrath and love are opposite poles of one affection.
Where there is no
offence, there needs no forgiveness.
·
WRATH IN GOD, WHEN IT BURNS AGAINST MEN, IS
TERRIBLE IN ITS EFFECTS. Two aspects of its
operation are:
Ø
Leaving men to
themselves (v. 20). When God hides His
face from
them, there need be little doubt what the “end” will be. Yet can the
sinner complain if he is at length permitted to eat the fruit of the
devices WHICH NOTHING CAN
PERSUADE HIM TO GIVE UP!
Ø
Heaping on them positive inflictions (vs. 22-25). It is a fire,
burning to
destroy them. It is noteworthy that the conflagration of the Divine wrath
is represented as not only taking in sheol, but as widening till it embraces
THE WHOLE EARTH! (v.
22). This, in connection with the glimpse
at the calling of the Gentiles in v. 21, points to the future universal
extension of the outward DISPENSATION OF GRACE! The extension
of the
Messianic
judgment (Matthew 25:31). The wrath of God is not
represented in less terrible
colors in the New
Testament than it
is in the Old. The individualized description of these verses (vs. 24-25)
figures out terrors of a future life too painful to
allow the mind to
dwell upon them.
·
WRATH IN GOD IS, IN THIS
LIFE, NOT DIVORCED FROM MERCY.
not at least so long as hope of recovery remains. GOD WOULD FAIN MAKE
PUISHMENT SUBSERVIENT
TO CONVERSION! This
is the thought in
v. 21.
by a transference of His regard to the Gentiles. His retaliation
has a merciful
as well as a
wrathful design. Mercy waits ON
EVERY SINNER, courting his
repentance.
·
THE MANIFESTATION OF WRATH IN GOD IS LIMITED BY
REGARD TO HIS HONOR. (vs. 26\-27.) God is jealous of
His honor.
He will take from His
adversaries the power of boasting against Him, by
marvelously restoring those who, had they received their full deserts,
would have been utterly destroyed. This stays His hand from
expending His
wrath against them to the uttermost. We may read this otherwise,
and say
that zeal for His honor leads God to spare them, that He may
glorify His
Name by causing mercy to rejoice
over judgment (James 2:13). THERE
IS MORE HONOR TO GOD here is in saving men than in destroying them.
And WHAT PROVOKES THIS WRATH IN GOD?
SIN — SIN ONLY!
Most especially the
sins of His own people.
Ø
“No faith” - want of fidelity to vows.
Ø
“Frowardness” - Stubbornly contrary and disobedient; obstinate,
persistence in sin
(v. 20).
Those who have stood in nearest
relations to Him, who have enjoyed most
favors, are those who will be most severely punished (Amos
3:2).
28“For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there
any understanding
in them. 29 O that they were wise, that they understood this, that
they would
consider their
latter end!” If they were wise
they would understand this,
the end to which
they were going, THE INEVITABLE
ISSUE OF THE
COURSE WHICH THEY WERE TAKING!
The True
Wisdom (vs. 28-29)
Consider:
·
IN WHAT WISDOM CONSISTS.
Ø
The choice of right
ends.
Ø
Of right means to
secure these ends.
Ø
In harmony with a just
and proportioned view of all the
circumstances of our situation.
When essential circumstances are
omitted in the calculation, when the
horizon is unduly narrowed, when all-important factors of the
situation are
left wholly out of account, — it is vain to speak of wisdom.
Absolutely,
and as regards our standing as moral beings, wisdom
embraces:
Ø
The choice of a true end, i.e. the choice, as our end in life, of
that end for
which we were created.
Ø
The practical
sharing of conduct with a view to that end,
and in
the way best calculated to attain it. And this:
Ø
In view of all the circumstances of the case, i.e. with right
apprehensions:
o
of God,
o
of the issues of moral conduct,
o
of eternity.
ü
What wisdom is more
to be desired than this?
ü What efforts ought to be put forth to attain it! (If ever there was
something in the world to do “diligently” [exercise thyself] – ch. 6:7 –
it should be in this matter! CY – 2020)
ü
What incalculable value ought to be set upon it!
·
SIN IS THE ABSOLUTE UNWISDOM (FOLLY).
Ø
For the true end of life it substitutes a false one! The end for which we
were made is holiness — the service of God with all our powers of:
o
soul,
o
body, and
o
spirit.
In this consists:
o
our life,
o
our happiness, and
o
our well-being. (To this I will add
an excerpt from notes on
various passages early in Deuteronomy. CY – 2020)
Success in all enterprise is
with thee.” (v . 3; ch. 4:40;
and Ephesians 6:3)
In pursuit of this end, our
nature works harmoniously with itself, and
with the general constitution of the world. But sin substitutes for
this
an end which:
o
violates,
o
disturbs, and
o
perverts
the harmony of EVERY SPHERE OF OUR EXISTENCE! of our
existence.
o
It asserts a
false independence of the creation.
o
It bids us use
our powers for self, and not for God.
o
It holds up as an
end a
shadowy good which is never
realized.
o
It cheats with insincere
promises.
By perverting the nature,
it gives to fleshly lusts:
o
a tyrannical predominance to
the flesh.
o
It degrades the spirit to the position
of a bondservant.
For unity there is thus established ANARCHTY (one of the signs
of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ – Matthew 24:12 – CY -
2020)
Each lust, as its own master,
seeks an independent gratification.
Life in this way falls asunder (yea disintergrates) and no longer
has a proper end.
THE STRIFE (in your body, soul and spirit) CONTINUES
UNTIL a new
equilibrium is established by one lust or passion
USURPING THE MASTERY over the rest.
Ø For the true
conduct of life it substitutes a course of conduct resting on
false bases. The false end yields its
natural fruit in false principles of life.
The sinner’s whole career, whatever
he may think of it himself, is one
issue of errors and illogicalities. If measured by the end he ought
to set
before him, it is seen to be a course leading
him wildly and hopelessly
astray. The more
skillfully and assiduously he applies himself to his
ends, only the more conspicuously does he convict himself of
folly.
Ø Instead of
taking all the factors of the case into account, it usually
leaves God and eternity out of it. This is that which most convincingly
brands the sinner’s course as folly. If God exists, and if He
have the power
to bless or blast our schemes, and if in the end we have to
meet Him as our
Judge, — it surely cannot be
wisdom to leave this fact unnoticed. So, if
we are beings made for eternity, destined to exist forever, he
must be a
fool who makes preparations for
everything but for ETERNITY! If,
again, the issues of obedience and sin are on the one hand life,
and on
the other death, he must be insane who deliberately makes a
preference
of the latter. Even
if the choice is not deliberately made, but the eyes are
kept closed (“...willingly... ignorant” – II
Peter 3:5 – CY – 2020) to the
issues, this does not alter the folly of the choice itself. We
can see,
therefore, how a man may be most wise as regards this world, and yet
a very fool as regards the whole scope of his existence. He
may be gifted,
talented, energetic, a shrewd man of the world, sagacious in
pursuit of
earthly ends, yet totally
blind to his eternal interests. He may be
neglecting the “one thing needful” (Luke 10:42):
o
making no preparation
for a hereafter,
o
missing the end of his
existence, and
o
treasuring up wrath and sorrow for himself at the end.
“Thou fool!” was the stern word of Heaven to a man who, in earthly
respects, was probably deemed very wise (Luke 12:20). (One of
the most expressive scriptures, to me, in the whole Bible is
“If therefore ye
have not been faithful in the unrighteous
mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?”
ibid. ch. 16:11 – CY – 2020)
The Divine Mind
Influenced by Reasons (vs. 20:28)
Moses, in uttering this song, is “borne along” (II Peter
1:21) by a power
working through him and yet not of him, to make a most
remarkable
assertion in the Name of Jehovah; viz. that
fear of the wrath of the enemy not to destroy them altogether! How is this
to be understood? Some might perhaps pass it over as a
piece of obsolete
anthropomorphism. So will not we. To us, many a sentence in
the grand
old volume, which at first sight seemed uncouth and almost
repellent in its
archaism, has on further study yielded up treasures of
delight with which
we would not willingly part. Perhaps it may be so here.
Note: The verb “I said,” in v. 26, is rendered by Keil, “I should say.”
This shows the sense more clearly, “I should say, I
will blow them away, I
will blot out the remembrance of them among men; if I did not fear wrath
upon the enemy [i.e.
“displeasure on the part of God at the arrogant
boasting of the enemy, which was opposed to the glory of
God” (Vitringa,
quoted by Keil, in loc.)] that
their enemies might mistake it, that they
might say, Our hand
was high, and Jehovah has not done all this. For,”
etc. If we analyze these words, we shall find that they are
separable into six
main thoughts, expressed or implied.
1. That
2. That they
consequently tried the patience of God, as falling very far
below His ideal
and their duty and honor.
3. That it would have
been no great loss to the world if they should
therefore be blotted out of
being, and should actually drop out of the
remembrance of the
nations.
4. That if this
extreme punishment should be meted out, then the adversary
would glory over
them and against them, and say that
could not or
would not guard the people whom He chose: that their
enemies were
mightier than their Redeemer.
5. That such a result
would veil the glory of Jehovah, and make men
uncertain whether God had a special people in
the world or no.
6. That consequently,
for His own sake, God would punish, but in measure;
He would scourge,
but not destroy. Hence there stands forth this great and
glorious truth, God will so
govern and discipline His people as to
reveal
His own glory in them and by them. This is the thought
we now propose to
develop in a
series of considerations arranged according to the structure of
the text.
·
GOD HAS AN
The redemption from
formation of a commonwealth, the
inheritance of
symbolic and typical of a greater deliverance, a nobler commonwealth, a
spiritual
pilgrimage, a heavenly home.
·
During the march of
the
world, GOD’S PEOPLE OFTEN FALL VERY FAR BELOW THE
IDEAL SET BEFORE THEM.
They try the patience of God, and excite
the wonder, the laughter, and
the ridicule of man. Think of what has been
done in the name of religion!
Think of the sharp controversies, the angry
words, and the prolonged strife
of Christendom! Think of the number of
inconsistent professors, who
cause our enemies to laugh among
themselves! etc.
·
SO GRIEVOUS HAVE BEEN THE STAINS AND BLOTS THUS
BROUGHT ON THE CHRISTIAN NAME, THAT MEN HAVE BEEN
TEMPTED EVEN TO THINK THAT GOD’S CHURCH WAS AN
________ IN THE WORLD;
yea, that it might, with advantage to
mankind, have ceased to exist.
For certain it is that the great God could,
even if his Church should become
extinct, create a purer and nobler people
in their stead, who would honor
him and bless the world!
·
MANY OF THE ADVERSARIES ARE WISHING FOR AND
SEEKING TO BRING ABOUT THE CHURCH’S EXTINCTION. They
would destroy the fellowship by
sapping the life thereof. They would sap
the life by undermining the
faith. And never more eagerly than now — they
are at work to educate men into the belief that God never
had a people,
that the people never had a God, and that all the faith
they have been
cherishing for ages has been based on a delusion and a lie! (This sounds
to me like secular education of
today trying to rewrite history! CY
– 2020)
·
IF SUCH A RESULT WERE TO ACCRUE, HOW WOULD THE
ENEMY GLORY! They
would say, “Our hand is high, and the Lord hath
not done all this.” If
only the Church should be driven from her
moorings,
if her anchor of hope should become unusable, and she should
be drifted out
to a wild, pathless, shoreless sea, — what glorying there would be in the
enemy’s camp! “Ha, ha! so we
would have it!” “How would the powers of
darkness boast if but one
praying soul were lost!”
·
SUCH A POSSIBILITY IS GUARDED AGAINST IN THE DIVINE
COUNSELS. It is just
such a provision that is indicated in the text. God
will not let the “adversaries behave
themselves strangely” in this way. They
will never have the chance! The Church is built on a rock, from which it
can never be dislodged. The day will
never come when it will cease to
exist; And ever will God
remember the word on which He has caused us to
hope!
·
GOD GUARDS AGAINST ANY SUCH POSSIBILITY, BY
DOING WHAT HE DOES FOR HIS OWN SAKE. The revelation of His
own honor and glory in the eyes
of men is too precious in His eye for Him
to let things so move on that
all trace thereof is lost to His own people (compare
Isaiah 43:5; Ezekiel 36:21-22,
32; Psalm 106:7-8; Ezekiel 20:9, 14, 22).
See too what argument Daniel
uses in prayer (Daniel 9:19). David also
(Psalm 25:11). For the
sake of His own honor, God will purify His Church
from all corruption by the
spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning;
and while thus jealous for His
people’s purity, He will as jealously watch
over them, so that “upon all the glory there shall be a
defense” (Isaiah 4:2-6;
compare I Corinthians 11:32; I
Peter 4:17).
·
IN CONCLUSION.
Ø
Let the righteous
rejoice, yea, let them exceedingly rejoice. God’s
supreme aim is that His glory
shall be revealed. The bringing of it
forth to clear light is the aim
and tendency of events, without let
or pause.
Ø
Let all men clearly
distinguish between the two providential processes
which are ever, ever in process
of fulfillment:
o
One, the purification
of the Church.
o
The other, the
condemnation and confusion of the world.
Ø
Let the wicked tremble.
Or if they are too benumbed to tremble, let
them
at least cease to make merry over the corruptions of the Church.
They may laugh now. They
will not laugh always. The severing
processes of God’s judgment are
going on now, and they will issue in
“everlasting contempt” to the ungodly, and in the
redemption of
from all his iniquities!
The Pleading of Divine Wisdom
(vs. 20-29)
The judicial anger of God is not an uncontrollable passion;
it acts in
harmony with infinite wisdom. The vast and varied interests of all God’s
creatures are tenderly considered in the act of judicial
retribution. We have
here:
·
GOD’S ESTIMATE OF
be considered, no penalty would be too severe as the award
for their high-
handed offences. Every vestige of merit has disappeared. The
consensus of
all righteous beings requires unreserved condemnation. Nor can
the
condemned offender himself escape this conclusion. When his
conscience
awakes to ponder his guilt, he joins in his own condemnation; he
confesses
the justice of his sentence. If the demerit of the sinner were the only
question to be solved, the answer would be at once forthcoming; the
verdict would be complete destruction.
·
WE SEE GOD’S FORESIGHT EMBRACING WIDER INTERESTS.
Ø
The advantage of other races is, by God, taken into the account. What
effect upon other nations will the condign punishment of
Will it make them
self-confident, arrogant, defiant? The true king has
at heart the well-being of all His subjects.
Ø
The honor of God Himself must be taken into account. The public
reputation of God is indissolubly bound up with the well-being of His
intelligent creatures. His honor is dear to Him; for His honor is
nothing
more than His native
excellence illustrated and made
known.
Ø How
graciously the Most High accommodates His speech to suit the
conceptions of men! As a man may fear the wrath of his foes, so God (to
bring his doings within the compass of the human understanding)
speaks of
himself as the subject of fear. In our present state, we cannot
rise to the
comprehension of God as he is; our knowledge of him is
conditioned by
our limitations of mind.
·
GOD’S GRIEF FOR HUMAN
FOLLY. The tender affection of God
in pleading with men to avoid sin is very impressive; but
more impressive
still are His exclamations of grief when the final step has been
taken, and
when, for many, recovery is impossible. Thus when Jesus looked
down
from Olivet upon the guilty metropolis, and knew that the die
was cast, He
nevertheless wept and said, “How often would I have gathered your
children, as a hen her brood; but ye would not! Behold, your house
is left
unto you desolate!” (Matthew
23:38) So too in the Psalms God thus
speaks,
“Oh that my people
had hearkened unto me! that
ways!” (Psalm 81:13-16) The measure of
God’s love TRANSCENDS ALL
KNOWN LIMITS; its forms are infinite in their variety! When
every remedial
measure has been tried in vain, love can only weep. (See II
Chronicles
36:14-16).
God’s
Pathetic Appeal to Men (v. 29)
Wisdom is far-seeing. Not content with estimating present
experiences and
fortunes, it embraces the remoter issues of our choice; it takes in
all the
possibilities of the future.
·
AS THERE HAS BEEN A BEGINNING OF THE PRESENT LIFE,
SO THERE WILL COME AN END.
·
THE END OF PROBATIONARY LIFE DEMANDS OUR SERIOUS
CONSIDERATION.
·
THE HIGHEST WISDOM FORECASTS THE WHOLE REACH
OF LIFE, BOTH PRESENT AND FUTURE.
30 “How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand
to
flight, except
their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had shut
them up?” If
through the help of the Almighty (Leviticus 26:8); but
having forsaken
Him, they were left by Him, and so came under the power of
the enemy.
31 “For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies
themselves
being
judges.” The heathen had also a rock in which they trusted — their
idol-gods; but even they knew and felt that their rock was
not as the Rock
of
could not but acknowledge that he was mightier far than the
gods whom
they worshipped (compare Exodus 14:25; Numbers chapters 33
& 34.;
Joshua 2:9-11; I Samuel 5:7). Moses is here himself again
the speaker.
(I would like to highly recommend Acts 17 – Dwight Moody Sermon –
The Great Redemption – this
web site – I apologize for the quality of
Its presentation but it will be well worth the effort! - CY – 2012)
The Superiority of the
Believer’s Rock (v. 31)
Few men but feel that they need a rock of
some kind. Only when their
mountain stands very strong do they feel as if they were absolutely
secure
and
independent (Obadiah 1:3-4). Even then their trust is in acquired
power and riches, which is a “rock” to them, though
their confidence often
proves delusive (i.e. Haman, Nebuchadnezzar). When men have lost
faith in religion, they frequently take refuge in the “rock” of philosophy.
The “rock” of the heathen is their idols and the
arts of the soothsayer. Men
tend to make a “rock” of those superior to them in power and wisdom. The
“rock” of nations is too
often their military and naval defenses, with arts of
diplomacy, and alliances with stronger powers (Isaiah 30.). The believer’s
Rock, which is the best of all, IS GOD!
·
THE SUPERIORITY OF THE BELIEVER’S ROCK SHOWN.
Ø
From the nature of this Rock. Grant that God is:
o
a Being, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable;
o
wise in His counsel,
o
omnipotent in His power,
o
faithful in His promises,
o
righteous in His actions,
o
infinitely gracious and merciful to those who put their
trust in Him,
o
a “strong Rock,”
o
“an House of
defense” to save them (Psalm 31:2),
o
a “Hiding-place” to
preserve them from trouble (ibid. ch. 32:7),
and the superiority of this Rock to every other needs no
further
demonstration. It is self-evidently
impossible to have
a SURER or a BETTER! What can man
ask more than that the
“ETERNAL GOD” should be his “REFUGE,” and
that underneath
him should be the “everlasting arms”? (ch. 33:27).
Ø
From the advantages derived
from this Rock. These are such as no
other can pretend to give. The believer’s life being hid with
God
(Colossians 3:3) and guaranteed
by the life of Christ in heaven
(John 14:19), and his inheritance
lying beyond death (I Peter 1:4),
no hostility of man can reach either. No other “rock”
can give the same
security, the same peace, joy, shelter, strength, comfort, and
refreshment,
as the believer’s.
To which considerations add the
following:
Ø
Many of these so-called “rocks” are nonentities. The idols of the
heathen are of this description. So with the arts and charms of
sorcery,
prayers to the Virgin, etc.
Ø
The surest of these “rocks” are not to be depended on. “Wisdom is
better than strength”
(Ecclesiastes 9:16); but wisdom, strength, riches,
rank, powerful friend, long-consolidated might, — all sometimes
fail
those who put their trust in them.
Ø
Not one of these
“rocks” can stand when God wills its overthrow.
God’s help, on the other hand, is real, always to be relied
on, and
invincible against
opposition.
·
THE SUPERIORITY OF THE BELIEVER’S ROCK CONFESSED.
It is often confessed, even by
the enemy. How often, e.g. have ungodly
men expressed themselves envious of the religious trust and
peace of the
believer! How often have they admitted its superiority to anything
possessed by themselves! How often, again, have they owned to their own
“rocks” failing
them in time of need! How often, even, when it came to the
end, have they lamented that they had not sought the Rock
of the believer!
Philosophy is admitted, even by
those who take refuge in it, to be but a
sorry substitute for religion. Passages could be culled from
current
literature showing very distinctly this need of the believer’s rock —
the
almost agonizing expression of a wish that belief were possible —
the
confession that in the surrender of Christian
beliefs a large part of life’s
hopefulness and joy has gone forever (see in Mallock’s “Is Life worth
Living?”).
32 “For their vine is of the vine of
Gomorrah: their
grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter:”
If the Rock of Israel was so much mightier than the rock of
their enemies, how
came it that
given: It was because
forsaken of the Lord and left to the power of their
enemies. Their vine; i.e.
itself (compare Psalm 80:9,
Isaiah 5:2; Jeremiah 2:21; Hosea 10:1 ). The vine of
plant, and different plants have been suggested as
deserving to be so
named. But it is more
probable that
advanced as types of what is depraved, and to the moral
taste nauseous
(compare Isaiah 1:10; Jeremiah 23:14). Gall
(compare ch. 29:18).
The vine of
1. It is tempting.
2. It is deceptive.
3. It always ends in disappointment and disgust.
Sin will take you farther than you want to go,
Sin will keep you longer than you
want to stay,
Sin will cost you more than you want
to pay.
(R.G.
Lee)
33 “Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of
asps.”
The wine of these grapes is poison and venom. Dragons;
tannin (compare
Exodus 7:9-10). Cruel [deadly] venom
of asps. The pethen,
one of the most
poisonous of snakes, the bite of which was immediately fatal. These figures
express the thought that
become abominable; probably also it is intimated that, as they had imitated
the impiety of the
inhabitants of
perish as they did.
Notwithstanding the iniquity of
God would have compassion upon them for His Name’s sake,
and would appear
for their vindication and defense. The “this” in v. 34 is by some understood of the
sinful doings of the Israelites which God should not forget
or overlook. So the Targum
of Onkelos: “Are not all their works manifest before me, kept against the
day
of judgment in my treasures?” But there is a more
‘comprehensive reference here.
Not only the deeds of the transgressors, but the judgments
that should come on
and also God’s interposition on their behalf, were laid
up in store with Him, and
sealed up among His treasures. All that had been done had been noted, and
all that should happen was decreed, and should certainly
come to pass. The
“this’ has thus both a retrospective and a prospective reference;
it includes
both the sin of the nation and God’s dealing with them
afterwards, as well
as His judgments on their enemies. (vs. 34-43)
34 “Is not this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among
my
treasures? My treasures. God’s treasures
contain not only a store of
blessing, but also instruments of punishment, which as He
sees meet, He
sends forth on men (compare ch.28:12; Job 38:22-23; Psalm
135:7).
35 “To me belongeth vengeance and recompence; their foot shall slide
in due time: for
the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things
that shall come
upon them make haste.” Render: Vengeance is mine, and
retribution for the time when their feet shall totter; for the day of
their
calamity is at hand, and that which is prepared for them maketh haste.
The tottering of the feet
represents the incipient fall. God would manifest Himself
as the Avenger
when their calamity began to come upon them.
The Devil’s Counterfeit Coin
(vs. 30-35)
It is not in the
power of Satan to originate any new
thing. Knowing that his
power is restricted, the utmost he can do is to make spurious imitations of
God’s good things. His base purpose is to deceive man with SPECTRAL
ILLUSIONS. His nefarious design is to raise before the world’s eye an
EMPTY MIRAGE OF A CARNAL
EXTERNAL TO HIMSELF.
To the men of the East, this external
foundation of trust was best
described as a rock. What the solid rock is
amid the loose alluvial soil of
desert, that God is designed
to be unto every man. Complete independence
is impossible to created man. He can never be self-contained nor self-
nourished. Pure atheism
has never been a permanent resting-place for the
human heart. When the invisible God
is forsaken, the human mind swings
toward idolatry. The carnal mind finds delight in a ground of confidence
that is visible and
tangible. (While they condemn those who
trust in the
God of the universe. Doesn’t make a lot of sense! - CY – 2012)
Some
god we must have, if it be only
the shadowy deity named Fate, or Law,
or Chance.
HUMAN TRUST. The only
point of similarity is the name. The devil
borrows this, so as the better to throw dust in the eyes of his followers.
“In whom the god
of this world hath blinded the minds of them
which believe not,
lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ,
who is the image
of God, should shine unto them.” (II Corinthians 4:4)
Our God is a Rock; the world
also has its counterfeit rock. By the
judgments and verdict of worldly
men, our Rock differs in toto from
theirs. Their rock, they acknowledge, is unstable and
unreliable. They
trust it simply because they
know not a better. It is misnamed a rock.
Their rock deserts them in the
hour of greatest need. Ah! fortune, say
they, is fickle. Very tyrannical and self-willed is fate. But our
God is a
Rock in very deed. He never forsakes His liege disciples. In the darkest
hour He is nearest — the “shadow of a great rock in a weary
land”
(Isaiah 32:2).
TRUST, THE FALSE IS A CLEVER IMITATION OF THE TRUE.
All through life, we find that
the false counterfeits the true. The thief puts
on the pretence of honesty. The
villain trains himself to use fair speech.
The adulterer wears the garb of
virtue. Beauty is the robe of God, but the
devil fabricates meretricious
tinsel. He, too, has his “Promised Land,” but it
is a
fool’s paradise. He has his vine, but his vine is the vine of
which generates drunkenness and unchastity. He also has his fields, but
they are fields
of
turn to ashes in the mouth.
There is the appearance of grapes, but lo! the
juice is gall — the clusters are
bitterness itself. And not only is the
experience disappointing, it is even
disastrous and deadly. This pretended
wine is only poison, it is a
gilded pill. Cruel deceit has provided this
counterfeit banquet. Beneath the
glamour of a fair exterior, there is the
“serpent’s
venom.” (For our perusal, I
offer the following excerpt
from Spurgeon’s Sermon – Number 1500 or Lifting Up the Brazen
Serpent – # 5a - this
web site – it contains the remedy – I recommend it
highly - CY – 2012)
What an awful thing it is to be bitten by
a serpent! I dare say some of you
recollect the case of Gurling,
one of the keepers of the reptiles in the
Zoological Gardens. It happened in
October 1852, and therefore some of
you will remember it. This unhappy man
was about to part with a friend
who was going to Australia and according
to the wont of many he must
needs drink with him. He drank
considerable quantities of gin, and though
he would probably have been in a great
passion if any one had called him
drunk, yet reason and common-sense had
evidently become overpowered.
He went back to his post at the gardens
in an excited state. He had some
months before seen an exhibition of
snake, charming, and this was on his
poor muddled brain. He must emulate the
Egyptians, and play with
serpents. First he took out of its cage a Morocco venom-snake, put it
round his neck, twisted it about, and
whirled it round about him. Happily
for him it did not arouse it so as to
bite. The assistant-keeper cried out,
“For God’s sake put back the snake,” but the foolish man replied, “I am
inspired.” Putting back the venom-snake,
he exclaimed, “Now for the
cobra.” This deadly serpent was somewhat
torpid with the cold of the
previous night, and therefore the rash
man placed it in his bosom till it
revived, and glided downward till its
head appeared below the back of his
waistcoat. He took it by the body, about
a foot from the head, and then
seized it lower down by the other hand,
intending to hold it by the tail and
swing it round his head. He held it for
an instant opposite to his face, and
like a flash of lightning the serpent
struck him between the eyes. The blood
streamed down his face, and he called for
help, but his companion fled in
horror; and, as he told the jury, he did
not know how long he was gone, for
he was “in a maze.” When assistance
arrived Gurling was sitting on a chair,
having restored the cobra to its place.
He said, “I am a dead man.” They
put him in a cab, and took him to the
hospital. First his speech went, he
could only point to his poor throat and
moan; then his vision failed him,
and lastly his hearing, His pulse
gradually sank, and in one hour from the
time at which he had been struck he was a
corpse. There was only a little
mark upon the bridge of his nose, but the
poison spread over the body, and
he was a dead man. I tell you that story
that you may use it as a parable
and learn never to play with sin, and
also in order to bring vividly before
you what it is to be bitten by a serpent.
Thus fares it with all
who leave their God. They find out the
bitter
mistake at last. So sang Byron in his last days
—
“The
worm, the canker, and the grief
Are
mine alone.”
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE WORLD. “Is not this laid up
in store
with me, and sealed up among my treasures?” (v.34) God knew
well what
the effects of an idolatrous
course would be, what bitter vexation
and
disaster would come
at last. But He foresaw that it was
better for men that
they should pass through this
experience than that He should remove the
possibility of it. He might have
prevented, by exercise of power, the
stratagems of the tempter. He
might have curtailed Satan’s freedom, and
put on him chains of darkness
from the first. But His infinite wisdom has
decided otherwise. He foresees more glorious results from this
method,
so He patiently waits; He calmly
watches the stages of the process.
“Their foot,” says He, “shall slide in due time …the day of their
calamity is at
hand” (v, 35). Now, it is
difficult to discern between a
grain of living seed and a grain
of dead sand; but put both into the
furrowed field, and give them
time, so when the day of harvest
comes,
the man who sowed the sand will
be covered with shame, while he who
sowed good seed will bear gladly
his sheaves into the heavenly garner.
Our business now is to
discriminate between God’s corn and
the devil’s
chaff. “The day will declare
it.” (I Corinthians 3:13; compare the
parable
of the Sower
and the Tares – Matthew 13:24-30)
The Short-sightedness of Sinners
(vs. 29-35)
“Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that
they would
consider their latter end!” Such is the moan with which this paragraph
begins. By “this” is meant the
consequence which will certainly follow on
their departure from God. By “their latter end” is meant the latter days of
their history, when sins which were beforehand in germ
should have
wrought out to full development. We need not again recount
the historical
aspects of this serious outlook. We will but note, in a
series of consecutive
thoughts, the truths which are here indicated, and
which are of universal
and perpetual
application:
o
to individuals,
o
families, and
o
nations.
NO HEED TO THE CONSEQUENCES OF A COURSE OF CONDUCT.
If men take no reckoning of
their “latter end,” it is the reverse of wise. Our
Saviour asks, “What shall it
profit a man?” etc. To take heed only
to
present appearances and to avoid
all preparations for the future, is folly in
the extreme.
BOUND UP WITH CONDUCT BY A LAW WHICH NO CREATED
POWER CAN AVERT OR MODIFY. They may be “sealed up” —
Hidden from sight at present,
but they are “laid up in store” (Romans 2:5;
I Thessalonians 5:3).
OF HIS OWN LAWS. “To me belongeth vengeance.”
Vengeance cannot
safely be entrusted to frail and
passionate man. Only in the hands of “THE
JUDGE OF ALL THE
EARTH” (Genesis 18:25) is there an absolute
guarantee that in its infliction there will be neither excess nor
defect.
No weakness will cause delay or
halt. No vindictiveness will induce any
variation from the right.
NOT BE POSTPONED TOO LONG. “Their feet shall
slide in due time”
(v. 35). Time is on God’s side. In the moral world
there is not a moment’s
pause. Character is ripening for good or for ill, and great issues are
working out at
every tick of the dial.
ISSUES OF CONDUCT THERE WILL BE AWFUL RESULTS ON
THE SIDE OF EVIL. The
figurative expressions in each clause are of
terrific significance. They
indicate:
Ø
The failure of the
refuge to which they had fled.
Ø
The collapse of their
strength in great emergencies.
Ø
Bitterness of misery.
Ø
Venomous poison as the
fruit of their vine of
Now is the day for accumulating;
hereafter will be the day for the
manifestation, of these hidden
treasures of ill.
SINNERS SUDDENLY. “The things that shall come upon them make
haste” (v. 35; compare
Matthew 24:36-44; Mark 13:35-37; II Peter 3:10).
It is one remarkable feature of
the Mosaic outlook, that the lawgiver scarcely
ever refers to another life, but
to the working out of God’s judgments in
this. The future life comes into
view in the New Testament. The law of
sowing and reaping holds good
for both worlds (Galatians 6:7).
THOUGHTLESSNESS OF SINNERS IS AN EVIL GREATLY TO
BE LAMENTED. “Oh that they were wise!” (v. 29; compare Jeremiah
9:1; Psalm 119:136). (I recommend Spurgeon
Sermon – Isaiah 1 – To the
Thoughtless – this web site – CY – 2012)
* Those who have to direct or influence national affairs
should remember that a wrong
policy is a
foolish one. No nation will continue to thrive that fights against God.
* Heads of families
should remember that, by a course of disloyalty to
God, they are
sowing the seeds of dishonor, grief, and shame in their
families, and are entailing
sorrow on the children of their care.
* Let each individual
learn that whatever a man soweth that shall he also
reap, both in this
world and in that which is to come. “Woe to him that
striveth with his Maker.” ( Galatians 6:7-8;
Isaiah 45:9)
36 “For the LORD shall judge His people,” - (compare Psalm 135:14; I Peter
4:17-18) -“and
repent Himself for His servants,” - rather, and have compassion
upon His servants - “when He seeth that
their power is gone, and there is none
shut up, or left.” The words rendered “shut up or left” are a proverbial
expression
for “every one, men
of all sorts” (compare I Kings 14:10; 21:21; II Kings 9:8;
14:26); but how the words are to be rendered or explained
is uncertain.
37 “And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom
they trusted,
38 Which did eat the
fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their
drink offerings?
let them rise up and help you, and be your protection.”
The Lord would show his people the utter worthlessness of
idols, and bring them to
acknowledge Him as the only true God. Their gods; the idols to which
turned, the strange gods which they had foolishly and sinfully preferred to Jehovah.
39 “See now that I, even I, am He,” - The
Hebrew is more expressive, See now
that I, I am;
Septuagint - ἴδετε ἴδετε ὅτι
ἐγώ εἰμι
– idete idete hoti
ego eimi –
behold, behold,
that I am He - (compare Isaiah 41:4; 48:12; John 8:24 18:5). Their
own experience of the utter impotency of these idol-gods to
help them or to protect
themselves from the stroke of the Almighty was enough to
convince them that they
were no gods, and that He alone was to be feared and
worshipped -“and there is
no God with me: I
kill, and
I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there
any that can deliver out of my
hand.”
The next two verses should be read continuously:
40 “For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for
ever. 41 If I whet my
glittering sword,
and mine hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance
to mine enemies,
and will reward them that hate me.” Lifting up the hand to
heaven was a gesture
intended to express that the person taking an oath appealed to
God as a witness
of his oath, and who would perish for falsehood (compare Genesis
14:22); and “as the Lord liveth” was a common formula in taking an oath (compare
Numbers 14:21; I Samuel 14:39, 45; Jeremiah 5:2). As God could swear by none
greater, He swore by
Himself (Exodus 6:8; Numbers 14:30; Isaiah 45:23; Jeremiah
22:5; Hebrews 6:17), that if He did come forth to avenge Himself of His enemies,
He would not spare, but would do thoroughly what He had come forth to do. —
Glittering sword; literally, lightning of sword (compare Ezekiel 21:10,15).
42 “I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword
shall
devour flesh;” - literally, shall eat flesh; the edge of the sword is called its mouth,
because, like a mouth, it is said to eat and devour - “and that with the blood of the
slain and of the captives, from the
beginning of revenges upon the enemy.”
Different renderings of this have been given: Septuagint
- ἀπὸ κεφαλῆς ἀρχόντων
ἐχθρῶν – apo kephalaes archonton echthron – from the heads of their enemies –
from the
head of the hostile princes; from the head of
the chiefs of the enemy, from
the hairy head
of the foe. פְרַעות, the plural of פֶרַע,
hair, locks, signifies primarily
hairs, and a head of hairs, and may be taken as equivalent to “a hairy head;” but the
word is also used in the sense of “princes” or “chiefs” (probably because such were
distinguished by copious flowing locks; compare Judges 5:2); hence the rendering,
“head of the chiefs.”
The former is to be preferred here, for why chiefs or princes
Should be
referred to in this connection does not appear (compare Psalm 68:22).
The rendering of the
Authorized Version is wholly unauthorized. This verse
presents an instance of alternate parallelism; each half
falls into two members,
and of the four members thus constituted, the third
corresponds
to the first, and the fourth to the second; thus —
a. “I will make my arrows drunk with blood,
b. And my sword shall devour flesh;
a’ With
the blood of the slain and the captives,
b’ From
the hairy head of the foe.”
43 “Rejoice, O ye nations, with His people: for He will avenge
the blood
of His servants,
and will render vengeance to His adversaries, and
will be merciful
unto His land, and to His people.” As this
song commenced
with an appeal to heaven and earth to give glory to the
Lord (vs. 1-3), so it very
suitably closes with an appeal to the heathen to rejoice
with his people on account
of the acts of the Lord”. Rejoice, O ye nations, with His people. The Authorized
Version here follows the Septuagint - εὐφράνθητε ἔθνη μετὰ
τοῦ λαοῦ
αὐτοῦ -
euphranthaete ethane meta tou laou autou
– rejoice ye Gentiles
with His people - and so Paul cites the passage in Romans 15:10. The Jewish
interpreters generally render, Praise His people, O
nations; and this several
Christian interpreters adopt. But it is the Divine
righteousness manifested
in the vindication
of His people from their enemies that is to be celebrated,
and not the people themselves, as what follows shows.
Here as elsewhere the
nations and the people
are in contrast.
Jehovah Reigns; Be Glad!
(vs. 36-43)
This paragraph has about it a remarkably martial ring. It
is not to be looked
at as bald and literal prose. It is part of a song; it is
laden with imagery, in
which the God of
can hinder, whose inflictions none
can withstand or evade. The style of the
song was precisely appropriate to the age in which it was
composed, and
suited to the people in whose hearing it was addressed. The
truths clothed
in such Oriental garb are for all lands and for all time.
For though there is
an abundance of figure, yet not all is figurative. There
are at least two
phrases which are plain in their phraseology, and which
furnish us with the
key for the right interpretation of the others. One of
these is found at the
beginning of the passage, the other towards its close.
* The first is in v. 36, “The Lord shall judge His people.”
* The other is in v.
43, “Rejoice,
O ye nations — His people.”
The former assures us that all the various processes of
judgment to which the seer’s
eye looks forward are in the hands of God. The second calls
upon the nations to
rejoice therein.
Between these two, the varied details in the paragraph fall naturally
into place. Our Homily will, therefore, be mainly an answer
to one inquiry, viz.
What
materials for joy are here given us? It is useless to bid any one to be glad
unless a reason is given them why they should be so. A somewhat careful study
of the paragraph in hand will show
at least eight reasons for holy and grateful joy.
·
It is matter for joy
that God reserves in His own hands the judgment of
His people (v. 36). Where else could
it safely be? Who else has the
power, the wisdom, the justice, the kindness, the
knowledge required?
If the scepter of power were in
any other hands, the guarantee of
righteous
administration would cease.
·
We may rejoice that in
His judging processes God will convince His
people of the folly of relying on any but on Himself (vs.
37-38). The
reason of the peculiar imagery
in these verses every student knows. The
underlying thought is clear. It
may be a sharp, but it is a necessary
discipline, that every prop should give way which would prevent us from
leaning on GOD ALONE!
·
We may rejoice in the
severity with which a righteous God will deal
with sin. Severity against sin
is mercy towards the sinner (v. 42). In the
early conquest of
mercy towards
Sapphira was mercy to the Church. In both cases the canker of dishonesty
and hypocrisy needed to be cut out by a strong and firm hand.
·
We may rejoice that
the ruling motive and the ultimate intent of God’s
dealings are love and mercy (v. 43). Beyond the blackest clouds Moses
sees in the horizon light and
glory. The twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth
chapters of this book, with all
their threatenings, are followed by the
thirtieth, with all its
promises:
Ø
Wrath in the process,
Ø
mercy as the product.
·
Let us rejoice that in
this law of recompense there is mercy in the
educational process therein
ensured (see Psalm 62:12). There is a wide
difference between a fatherly correction
and the infliction of a legal penalty.
It is the former which God metes
out towards His people. Their relation to
Him is one of grace, not of bare
law.
·
Let us rejoice that
mercy will regulate the mode, the time, and the
result of the chastisement.
Ø
The mode: “Their power is gone,” i.e.
their false props are destroyed.
Ø
The time: “He will repent Himself,”
i.e. He will not be wrath forever;
when the infliction has answered
its end, He will change His
dealings.
Though God never changes a plan, He may plan a change.
Ø The result: “He will be merciful unto His land,” etc., i.e. He will
be propitious. When His people are brought back from
their
wanderings, He will “cover
“ all their sin in eternal forgetfulness.
(Hebrews 8:12; Jeremiah 31:34; Micah 7:19)
·
Let us rejoice in the
clear and perfect discrimination which will mark
all the Divine dealings with His
people and with His adversaries; v. 43,
“vengeance — mercy.” Both form part of God’s governmental methods.
How can it be otherwise in a
world of sin? The perfections of Jehovah
guarantee that neither will
infringe on the other. Tenderness will never
weaken vengeance. Vengeance will
never lessen tenderness. God alone
knows the absolutely perfect adjustment.
·
Let us rejoice that
the eye of the seer beholds brightness in the far
distance. The gloom does but
intervene; it does not cover the whole
canopy of heaven, nor darken all
the outlook. “Light is sown for the
righteous.” (Psalm 97:11) “Joy
cometh in the morning” (v. 43; Psalm
30:5). Let all these several particulars be woven
together, and they will
make one glorious pattern — at
the sight of which we may well shout
aloud for joy.
·
LEARN:
Ø In such a review of the methods and
outcome of God’s providential
dealings only
those who are at peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ are in a position to understand
them. Enmity cannot
understand
love. And where men are “enemies in their mind by wicked works”
(Colossians
1:21), they are certain to
misunderstand God’s
nature, and
to misinterpret
His ways. Man’s first duty is to repent of sin and
obey
God. Till he
does this the mysteries of God will not be unveiled to him.
Ø When we understand something of THE REDEMPTION WHICH
IS
IN CHRIST JESUS, then
the true key to the interpretation of
providence
is in our hands (Romans
8:34). Hence we can “rejoice in
the
Lord” (Psalm 33:1; Philippians 3:1; 4:4; Psalm 97:1; chps.
96; 98.).
Ø In
proportion to the greatness of the love which furnishes the key for
unlocking providential mysteries
is the
greatness of the sin which turns
away
from and finally rejects God. (See the use of this paragraph in
Hebrews
10:30-31.) However deep the gloom which
Moses depicts,
he sees a rim of golden glory in the
horizon, as if another dispensation
were to follow. But the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews sees no after-light
for
those who TURN AWAY FROM CHRIST! “For if we sin willfully
after
we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth
no
more
sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment
and
fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries...... It is a
fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living
God.” (Hebrews 10:
26-27; 31) The contest of the sinner with God must
end in the
guilty one’s ignominious and hopeless
defeat!, “Because
I will do this
unto
thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.”
(Amos 4:12)
Moses, having composed this song, came, accompanied by
Joshua, and they
together spoke it in the hearing of the people; after which
Moses took occasion to
urge upon them anew the importance of keeping the commandments of God.
(vs. 44-47)
Retribution
(34-43)
·
VENGEANCE IS A PREROGATIVE OF DEITY. As just Judge of the
earth, God must avenge transgression. Vengeance is to be
distinguished
from personal vindictiveness. Of that God is incapable. But Scripture,
supported by reason and conscience, attributes to Him a holy and
inflexible
determination to punish sin — to visit on the wrong-doer the
consequences
of his transgression. The rule for individuals is, “Avenge
not yourselves,”
etc.; but the reason for this is
not that vengeance is unnecessary, but that
God will avenge
(Romans 12:19). Magistrates, however, bear from
God a certain delegated power to
punish public offences — to “avenge”
evil (ibid. ch. 13:4). He who “takes away vengeance from God, at the
same time takes it from God’s servant, the magistracy, which
carries the
sword of vengeance over evil-doers” (Hengstenberg). God has His own
time, as well as His own way, of avenging sin, and it is not for man to
anticipate this.
·
VENGEANCE IS ASSUREDLY IN STORE FOR GOD’S ENEMIES,
however delayed by His forbearance. Because judgment is not
executed
speedily, sinners take confidence (Ecclesiastes 8:11; II Peter
3:9-10).
But the sleepless eye of God is
all the while upon them, and the stroke
falls when they are least expecting it. Sooner or later, every transgression
and disobedience will meet with its due recompense of reward.
Note:
Ø
“Judgment begins
at the house of God” (vs. 35-36; I
Peter 4:17-18).
Ø
It will ultimately
extend to all who are God’s enemies (vs. 41-42).
We are taught that the Messianic
kingdom will be established on earth amidst
mighty displays of judgment (Revelation 19:11-21). There will
follow
the general judgment of quick and dead — “that day of wrath, that
dreadful day” — WHICH WILL COMPLETE
THE WORK!
God’s vengeance is:
Ø
Assured. “As I live,” etc. (v.
40).
Ø
Terrible. “My glittering sword;” “arrows
drunk with blood,” etc.
Ø
No escape from it (v. 39).
·
JUDGMENTS EMPLOYED TO CONVINCE BACKSLIDERS OF
THEIR SINS.
They tend:
Ø
To break up false
confidences (vs. 37-38).
Ø
To create a feeling of
the
need of God’s help (v. 39).
Ø
To convince of the folly of past conduct.
God is compassionate even while
He punishes (ver. 36). He would fain,
through judgment, break a way for mercy. Illustrate this use of
judgments
from
33:11-14). May we hope that the
day of God’s “repenting Himself” toward
·
THE RECOVERY OF
TIME OF BLESSING TO THE WORLD. The nations are to share in the
joy (v. 43). God is to be merciful to His land and people. The latter-day
glory includes the conversion of the Gentiles (Romans 11.).
The Final Revelation of God’s Supremacy (vs. 36-43)
In this inspired song — an epitome of the Bible — Moses
looks adown the
long vista of history, and discerns what
will be the outcome of the whole,
viz. to establish on a safe basis the acknowledged SUPREMACY OF
JEHOVAH! Truth
shall eventually conquer, whatever be her present
fortunes; and the supreme authority of Jehovah is a fundamental truth,
which must in due time
effectually SHINE
·
HUMAN EXPERIENCE WILL ULTIMATELY
CONFIRM THE
VANITY AND FUTILITY OF IDOLATRY. Men will accept, at the close
of a changeful and bitter experience, what they would not accept at the
beginning of their course, viz. that there is ONE GOD — invisible,
supreme, eternal. In the conscious
pride of self-will, men will sound all the
possible problems of life. They will not at first accept, with the
docility of
a childlike nature, the ipse dixit even of God Himself. But when all trust in
self and in created power has proved a failure; when
all power is gone, and
we lie on the battlefield, wounded and helpless; — then we begin to give heed
to the heavenly voice.
Then the gentle message of God comes, with the
charm of evening music, upon the ear — yea, as an anodyne and a
balm
upon the bleeding heart. In a mood of self-despair, we clutch
the hope of
the gospel, viz. GOD MANIFEST TO MAN! God invites us to earnest and
profound inquiry. He asks us to give a mature deliverance touching
the
power and helpfulness of the God whom we have long trusted; and
the
final experience of men, in all lands and ages, is uniform. “The gods WHO
HAVE NOT CREATED the
heavens and the earth SHALL PERISH!
·
HUMAN EXPERIENCE ATTESTS THE SUPREMACY AND
TRIUMPH OF JEHOVAH. “See now, that I, even I am He, and there is
no
god with me.” The eye
of man can clearly discern the fact — the
foundation-fact of all religion — so soon as the veil of prejudice and sin
is
removed. The revelation is clear enough, if only the organ of
mental vision
be in healthful vigor. Without question, God is the sole
Arbiter of life and
death. No other deity
has ever assumed an act of creation. The powers of
evil have flourished the wand of a necromancer, and have
pretended to
effect sudden changes in the conditions of nature; but not one has ever
pretended to create a star or to produce a single human life. God is still left
upon the throne, as sole and undisputed Monarch. Eternal existence is another
prerogative of Jehovah. Where are now the gods of the heathen? Who now
worships Jupiter, or Dagon, or Isis, or Moloch? Their names are
historic only.
They had a passing popularity,
but it has long since vanished. But with solemn
form of adjuration, the Most High lifts His hand and swears, “I
live forever!”
As in a court of justice men accept
the testimony of a fellow-man, when that
testimony is given under the sanction of a religious oath; so, in
self-consistency,
are we bound to accept the asseveration of the eternal God. In
pity for His
creatures, He also takes the form of oath, and since “He
can swear by none
greater, He swears by Himself.” (Hebrews
6:13)
·
THE ROYAL SUPREMACY OF JEHOVAH IS A GROUND FOR
HUMAN JOY. Every perfection of God is suitable material for grateful
praise. His power is a security for good men. All our interests
are safe,
being under the protection of such a Friend. His holiness also
affords
distinct ground for gladness. Because He is holy, we can cherish a
confident
hope that we shall be holy too. Hence we “give thanks at the remembrance
of His holiness.” (Psalm
97:12; 30:4) We rejoice to know that the
scepter of
the universe is in the hands of a GOD WHO IS ABSOLUTELY AND
INCORRUPTLY JUST! We
know that “the right” will not long be trodden
underfoot of the oppressor. We are assured that the malice and craft
of Satan
shall not triumph. We heartily rejoice that Jehovah is King of
all the earth;
for “all things must now work together for good
to them that love Him.”
(Romans 8:28)
“Truth,
crushed to earth, shall rise again;
The
eternal years of God are hers;
But Error,
wounded, writhes with pain,
And dies amid her worshippers.”
Most of all, we rejoice in His
mercy. “He will be merciful to
His land and to
His people.” We are the very persons
who need Divine mercy; for lack of
that mercy we die. Not
more urgently does the parched land need the liquid
shower, than do we, who have so grossly sinned, need Jehovah’s
mercy.
Yet not more sure is the need
than the supply. That mercy is made amply
secure to all who desire it. As certainly as light streams from the natural
sun, so freely and copiously does mercy stream forth from
Jehovah’s heart.
Therefore we do well to “rejoice and to be exceeding glad.” For saith
Jehovah, “I will pardon your
unrighteousness, and your sins and your
iniquities will I remember no more.” (Hebrews 10:17) God’s
revelation
closes with the theme of mercy.
44 “And Moses came
and spake all the words of this song in the ears of
the people, he,
and Hoshea the son of Nun.” Moses
invariably writes this name
Jehoshuah (Jehovah is help;
compare Numbers 13:8; ch. 31:3, 7, 14). The use
of Hoshea here is due to the fact
that this account is part of the supplement added
by another writer to the writing of Moses
45 “And Moses made an end of speaking all these words to all
46 And he said unto them, Set your hearts unto all the words
which I
testify among you
this day, which ye shall command your children
to observe to do,
all the words of this law.” Compare ch. 6:7; 11:19.)
47 “For it is not a vain thing for you; because it is your
life:” - these are
not mere empty words; they are of vital import (compare
ch.30:20) - “and through
this thing ye
shall prolong your days in the land, whither
ye go over
to possess it.”
On the day on which Moses rehearsed this song in the
hearing of the people, his
death was announced to him by God, and the command was
again given to him
to ascend
to his people. The same in substance, the command as given
here differs slightly in form
and in some minor particulars from that as recorded by
Moses himself (Numbers
27:12-14).
Life at Stake! (vs. 44-47)
We have seen in ch. 31:7-8, that
Moses gave Joshua a charge, and told him that he
must lead the people into the Promised Land. After that
came the utterance of this
song. When it was
uttered, Joshua stood side by
side with Moses. The joint
presence of both the old and new leaders this signifying, that, though the earthly
administration changed hands, THE SAME MESSAGE
WOULD BE PASSED,
AND NOT A WORD OF JEHOVAH’S WOULD BE LOST! There are six
feature’s about this closing public scene of the life of
Moses:
o
Here is an assembly,
met to hear Moses’ last song.
o
Though it is the last,
there is in it nothing new. It is the
one message: God’s goodness, faithfulness, and love,
calling for their
reciprocation andobedience.
o
This old message is reimpressed on their hearts.
o
The people were to
command their children to observe it.
The children were, in their
home life, to receive an
education for God.
o
This is urged upon
them by the consideration that all that
is precious to them
in life depends on their obedience to
God’s message.
o
Moses and Joshua
appear together before the people, as
if TO DECLARE UNTO THEM THE SAME TEACHINGS
which the aged leader had laid down, the
younger one would
accept, enforce, and
transmit. There was a change in
human leaders, but not in Divine laws or the Divine message.
And to all the solemn
sanctions with which Moses guarded the
Law, Joshua here pledges
himself before the people and before
his God. Hence we get this theme: AMID
ALL CHANGES
WE HAVE AN UNCHANGING MESSAGE FROM
ABOVE, ON THE OBSERVANCE OF
WHICH OUR
LIFE DEPENDS!
law and a revelation of grace,
which have come to us, not of man, but by
the inspiration of the Spirit of
God, by the manifestation of God in Christ,
and by the power of the Holy
Ghost on and since the day of Pentecost.
This message is, in sum and
substance, given in:
Ø
John 3:16;
Ø
I Timothy 1:15;
Ø
Revelation 22:17;
Ø
Titus 2:11-13.
This message is the development
of that which through Moses was given
but in germ (John 5:46-47;
Matthew 5:17).
We have now “the faith once
[for all] delivered unto the saints” (Jude 1:3).
Aged patriarchs in their
declining years do reiterate the same message they
gave when in the vigor of youth.
And young men, filled with the same spirit,
and having their hearts kindled
with the same fire, take it up with the
earnest hope and prayer that it
may suffer no loss in their hands! Often have
a Moses and a Joshua thus stood side by side.
three respects they are similar.
Ø
Both reveal the love
of God, and recount a great deliverance.
Ø
Both solicit, in
Heaven’s name, the response of the peoples’
hearts (see Romans 5:8;
12:1; II Corinthians 5:14-21).
Ø
Both require, on the
ground of Divine love to man, love to
the redeemed brotherhood,
and good will to all men
(I Corinthians 13.; John
4:10-19).
LORD JESUS CHRIST
than that sent through Moses. True,
there was
terror at Sinai; there is
tenderness in
Moses speaks in thunderings; Jesus with tears. Yet must we not mistake
tenderness for weakness, nor
gentleness for
lack of authority or of power.
(See the entire argument in the
Epistle to the Hebrews.)
how we treat this message from
God. “It is not a vain thing for you; it is
your life” (v. 47). We can but
hint.
Ø
The enjoyment of peace
with God (Romans 5:1).
Ø
The growth of
character in holiness.
Ø
The true enjoyment and
use of this earthly life, as families,
as nations, as individuals,
depend on loyalty to God.
“Godliness is
profitable unto all things; having promise
of the life that
now is and of that which is to come.”
(I Timothy 4:8).
close of the verse just quoted —
“and
of that which is to come.” Apart
from the acceptance of Jesus
Christ by faith, and a life of loyalty to God,
there is not a gleam of light or
hope for the next life (see Hebrews 2:3).
If God did not allow His message
through Moses to be slighted with
impunity, certainly He will not
suffer men to “trample under
foot the
Son of God, and
count the blood of the covenant….an unholy thing
…..and do despite
unto the Spirit of grace” (Hebrews 10:29), -
and then leave them unpunished!
are trembling in the balance,
while they refrain from “yielding themselves
unto God!” How earnestly and
frequently may we with reason reiterate the
words, “It is your life!”
All that ensures life here and hereafter being a
blessing, depends on the way men
treat Jesus Christ and His salvation.
message, yet, down to the end of
time, God will never send a greater.
Moses and Joshua. The old
generation passing away, the new coming on
the stage. They meet and greet.
The faithful and tried veteran passes on
the word. The younger messenger,
with solemn vow to God before his
brother man, receives it, and
swears before high heaven that he will
maintain the message unimpaired,
and in his turn “commit it to
faithful