Bible Commentaries

COMMANDED BLESSINGS

‘The Lord shall command the blessing upon thee.’

Deuteronomy 28:8

What more encouraging thought could possibly occupy our hearts at the entrance of a New Year! All our well-being may be summed up under the head of Divinely commanded blessings. No mercies would be ours did not our Heavenly Father bid them come.

I. From the connection in which the words stand we see that they refer in the first place to Israel’s temporal prosperity. But we know how truly their earthly possessions in the land of Canaan set forth the spiritual privileges and resources of God’s children now. As the Lord commanded the blessing to descend upon them in the fruit of their labour, so that they were provided with plenty, in like manner the Lord is willing to command the blessing upon our souls in the path of His leading.

II. Christ has a right to command His blessings.—‘All power,’ He tells us, ‘is given unto Me.’ That is, not power simply but authority. The whole administration of the economy of grace has been committed into His hands. The Father has invested Him with legal right and authority over all creation; over every creature in heaven and in earth, over all angels, all persons, all passions, all principles, over all elements. On Him has been bestowed the gift of universal dominion.

—Rev. E. H. Hopkins.

Illustration

(1) ‘We may see the Lord’s doings with our eyes, and yet we may not be able to see them with an inner perception until the Lord gives us a heart to know, and eyes to see, and ears to hear. When God leads He finds shoe leather. We only get to know His watchful, loving care when we have travelled with Him; then we come to know Him, whom at first we only believed. It is the obedient soul which incorporates the Word of God into memory, and life that prospers in all to which it puts the hand.’

(2) ‘God gives, in what He has bestowed upon us already in Christ. And He gives again by revealing to our souls what He has thus given. “All spiritual blessings,” and therefore all blessings that belong to our sanctification have already been bestowed upon us in Christ. What now remains, in order that we might experimentally realise them, is that they should be revealed to us by His Spirit. It is concerning the gift of spiritual perception and appropriation that we have to pray. Let us ask for the receptive mind, for the teachable spirit, for the contrite heart, for the obedient will.’

‘ALL THESE CURSES’

‘All these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee.’

Deuteronomy 28:15

These blessings and curses have not been repealed. It must, of course, be granted that Israel was an earthly people, whereas we are sitting with Christ ‘in the heavenlies.’ But these enumerations have perpetual illustration and fulfilment in modern life. A very large portion of the suffering of the world arises from disobedience to God’s wise and benevolent laws.

Men first reject Him, then ignore His law. They suffer from ill-health, because they disregard fresh air, exercise, wholesome food, or drench themselves with alcohol and narcotics. They suffer in their affections, because they have not learnt the primary art of self-control. They suffer from poverty, overcrowding, etc., because they flock from the country to the cities, glory in militarism, and prefer present pleasure to the harvests of sober, steady toil. In trade, in agriculture, in social life, we cannot but suffer wherever there is disobedience to the Divine Law.

Illustration

(1) ‘If we are in Christ we are free. The Son has made us free, and “we are free indeed.” Free from the law as a means of salvation, of life, or of securing the favour of God. But if we refuse Christ, or if we fail to recognise and appropriate all that He has done and is, or if we are seeking to justify ourselves by doing our best in the energy of our resolutions, we are children of the bond-woman. “Wherefore, brethren, we are not children of a handmaid, but of the free woman. With freedom did Christ set us free; stand fast, therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage.”’

(2) ‘Here are the curses incurred by disobedience—many, grievous, terrible. They would pursue the sinner wherever he went, and in whatever he undertook. How marvellously is all the machinery of nature in arms against the man who is at enmity with God! “The stars in their courses” fight against him; though for a time he may seem to prosper in his evil way.’

JOYFUL SERVICE

‘Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things … He shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck.’

Deuteronomy 28:47-48

Many a man has been frightened by this text until he sought and found out that the joy is not dependent on natural characteristics or temperament, it is quite independent of them. We may have this joy, though the body is racked with pain; we may have fulness of joy. In fact the joy of the Holy Ghost is quite distinct from natural joy. Henry Martyn, in his diary, bids us distinguish between these two. In Psalms 124, we read that the tongue of God’s people was filled with singing—the Hebrew is ‘with shouting.’ ‘Then said they’—when they heard the shouting—‘then said they among the heathen, The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad.’ When we get this blessing, there is something to be joyful about. We must shout aloud and say, ‘What great things hath the Lord done for us.’ Some are determined to box up their joy like the pipes in an organ; it is only a muffled sound they send forth—not a full diapason, singing hallelujah with a gladness of heart. ‘I am not a bit afraid’, said one, ‘of shouting Hallelujah, glory, glory! for if the heathen heard this shouting they would believe that God has done great things for us.’ Captain Dawson, in the company of worldly officers, wondered what he could do. All he could do was to begin to whistle ‘Safe in the arms of Jesus,’ and that was the means of the conversion of one of these officers. We can do many things for the glory of God. And if we go forth and rejoice before God, letting it be seen that our religion makes us happy, we shall soon win others to God’s Truth.

Illustration

(1) ‘In this remarkable Lesson we have a description of the national captivities which, in consequence of their disobedience, were to befall the Hebrew people, first at the hands of Assyria and Babylon, but subsequently, and more especially, of Rome. Here are the Roman eagles, the horrors of the siege of Titus, the present dispersion of the Jews, which has lasted for nineteen centuries, the Jew-hate which has again and again broken out. All has come to pass; and here is a mighty proof of the truth of Scripture. But there is a ray of hope flung on the edge of this great thunder-cloud by the words of the Apostle (Romans 11:25-29). And for this the Jewish remnant is waiting, scattered in every land, at home in none; mingling with every people, but still distinct.’

(2) ‘This chapter, in its prophetic declarations, which have been so strikingly fulfilled, contains clear proof of the divine foreknowledge, and of the inspiration of Moses. This is all the more clear since the prophecies relate mainly, and in their extreme and awful particularity, to the curses, which should rest upon the unfaithful people. Moses does not spare his own people, but holds before them the glass of their future defection and sufferings, as he foresaw them. There might have been a motive for dwelling particularly upon their prosperity, but there is no assignable motive for the character of this discourse, unless it is found in the clear foresight given to him of what was to occur.’