Bible Commentaries

Educated Towards Spirituality

Deuteronomy 10:9 — "The Lord is his inheritance, according as the Lord thy God promised him." That was the lot of Levi. Is not that an anticipation of the words which make all other instruction mean—"Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you"? It was well to have some men who had no land, no golden harvest, no storehouses rich with grain. They were the schoolmasters of the time—the great spiritual philosophers and teachers, not knowing themselves what they typified, still being there, the mystery of life, a symbol of the sublime doctrine that men shall not live by bread alone. Out of these incidental lines of history gathers a great apocalypse of progress. The one tribe will presently absorb the other tribe, and at the last we shall all be kings and priests unto God; and if globes were offered to us, constellations and whole firmaments of glory, instead of nearness to the divine presence, we should scorn the mean donation. To that height we have to grow; to that issue all things will come that yield themselves to the movement of the divine purpose.

We have read all the arrangements made for the ceremonial worship of Israel: what was the meaning of it? Here we come again upon the same thought of ultimate spirituality. Moses now, in the latter time, begins to reveal secrets. He gave Israel long space in which to kill animals and offer them by fire: he utterly wearied out the people by such impotent ritual, and when they themselves began to turn their very weariness into a kind of religious hope that surely something brighter would presently be revealed, Moses spake these words:—"And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee?" That is the question. What does it all mean? Thou hast slain thousands of bullocks and rams and sheep and goats, "what doth the Lord thy God require of thee"—what has he been meaning all this time,—"but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, to keep the commandments of the Lord, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good?" ( Deuteronomy 10:12-13). That was the divine intention from the very beginning. God does not disclose his purpose all at once, but out of consideration for our capacities and our opportunities and our necessities he leads us one step at a time, as the wise teacher leads the young scholar. What wise teacher thrusts a whole library upon the dawning mind of childhood? A picture, a toy, a tempting prize, a handful to be going on with, and all the rest covered by a genial smile: so the young scholar passes from page to page until the genius of the revelation seizes him, and life becomes a sacred Pentecost. Such words spoken to Israel at first would have been lost. There is a time for revelation; as certainly as for Deuteronomy 10:22). Israel cared nothing for thoughts: Israel cared for children: Israel knew not the poetry and the divinity of things: Israel understood acres, land upon land far-stretching, and harvests larger than any garners ever built. This being the mental condition of Israel, give Israel troops of children, thousands upon thousands outnumbering the stars,—a tumultuous throng, too vast for the space of the wilderness; as for harvests, let them grow upon the rocks, let the very stones burst into golden grain, for Israel is a great child and can understand only things that can be handled: let him have such things, more and more; God means them to be altar-steps leading upward, onward, into the place where there is no need of the sun or of the moon, no death, no night; Israel has a long journey to go, and he must be well housed and harvested on the road, or he will give way and fail before the time set for the fulness of the divine revelation. The same thought is expressed in many ways. It is given in chapter Deuteronomy 11:11-12 — "But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven: a land which the Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year." What a child was Israel; what an infant of days; keep speaking to him much about prosperity and wealth and harvests and the rain of heaven, and you can lead Israel as you please, like a hungry beast following an offered bait which is withdrawn that he may be led and be caused to submit to a higher will. This also supplies a standard of progress. Do we care for the sanctuary because of its God or because of its conventional respectability? To what end besiege we the altar of Heaven, to pray or to profit?

Still preserving the marvellous consistency of the whole economy, we cannot fail to notice how beautifully the sacrifices were adapted to the religious condition of the people. This explains the sacrifices indeed. What was the religious condition of the people? Hardly religious at all. It was an infantile condition; it was a condition in which appeal could only lie with effect along the line of vision. So God will institute a worship accordingly: he will say to Israel, Bring beasts in great Deuteronomy 10:12, the word occurs; in chapter Deuteronomy 11:1, it is repeated. What is that culminating word? How long it has been kept back! Now that it is set down we see it and acknowledge it; it comes at the right time, and is put in the right place:—"To love him." Then again in chapter Deuteronomy 11:1 — "Therefore thou shalt love the Lord thy God." Moses is almost a Christian, even in the historical sense of the term, and it is well that his name should be linked for ever with the name of the Lamb. Jesus uses no higher word than "love." Paul thought he would pronounce it aright by repeating it often,—and repetition is sometimes the only proper pronunciation: the word must be spoken so frequently as to fall into a refrain and attach itself to all the noblest speech of life. "Master, which is the great commandment?" And Jesus answered,—"Thou shalt love." Here we have Moses and the Lamb. It ought to be easy to love God: we are akin to him; damn ourselves as we may, we are still his workmanship, his lost ones. We wrong our own souls in turning away from God: we commit suicide in renouncing worship; we are not surrendering something outside of us, we are putting the knife of destruction into our own soul. We have once more a standard of progress. We are in relation to this word love! Love means passion, fire, sacrifice, self-oblivion, daily, eternal worship. Who then can be saved? The word love does not destroy other elements which enter into the mystery of true worship. Moses says,—"What doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways... and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, to keep the commandments of the Lord?" The word love is found in this company. Recite the names that you may the more clearly understand the society of love. "Fear," "walk," "serve," "keep,"—it is in that society that love shines like the queenliest of the stars. Love is not a mere sentiment, a quality that evaporates in sighing or that fades into invisibleness by mystic contemplation; love calls fear, walking, serving, keeping, to its side, and they all together, in happy harmonic co-operation, constitute the divine life and the divine sonship of the soul. We, too, have mystery; we have miracles; we have ceremonies; we have tabernacles and temples;—what is the meaning of them all? They cannot end in themselves; read the riddle; tell us in some short word which may be kept in a child's memory—the meaning of all the cumbrous machinery—the gorgeous ritual of the olden time, and even the simpler worship of the passing day. What is the meaning of prayer, and faith, and gift, and service, and outward profession? Would we learn the word? We find it in the Old Testament and in the New Moses speaks it, Christ speaks it, Paul speaks it, John speaks it,—they are all trying to say it—"Love." Love keeps nothing back; love is cruel as fire in the testing of qualities; love is genial as Heaven in the blessing of goodness. Though we have all knowledge, all prophecy, and are marvels in gifts of eloquence, and though we give our goods to feed the poor and our body to be burned, and outrun ancient Israel in costly and continuous ceremony, if we have not love—pure, simple, childlike, beautiful love—our music is noise, and our sacrifice is vanity.

Prayer

Thou wilt not show us thy glory now. Thou hast promised to show us thy goodness, and to make it pass before us: this thou art doing day by day; all things show the mercy of God. As for ourselves, goodness and mercy have followed us all the days of our life. We know this: our life speaks to this truth strongly and lovingly; therefore, we fear no evil: we smile upon the threatened darkness: the valley of the shadow of death is part of the way home. We have no real fear, no intense terror of heart; we are subject to passing dreads and alarms and foolish excitements, but all these do not touch the soul seated in the solemnity of an eternal covenant. Thou wilt accomplish all things; thou wilt not fail to bring on the topstone; having spent the ages in building the temple, the pinnacle shall not be wanting. Thou didst see the end from the beginning, and almightiness cannot fail. We stand in this security as within the munition of rocks; the wind cannot overturn our retreat; the tempest wastes its fury upon that stone; we are shut in by the hand of God. Help us to see the great beyond,—not to be too curious about it, but to use it as an allurement, a silent persuasion, a mighty compulsion towards stronger work, nobler purpose, larger prayer; thus the heavens shall help the earth; the sun shall be our light all day, and above it shall there be a brightness which the soul can understand. We bless thee for a sense of sin forgiven. Continue thy daily pardon. We feel as if we must be pardoned every moment, for since we have been pardoned and our eyes have been enlightened, we see more clearly, and we discern more critically: the things which once wore no face of offence now burn before us as if filled with all horribleness and as if carrying all shame. We would be pure as God is pure, perfect with the perfectness of God; but this end who can attain except through long ages, by the way of the Cross, by the ministry of blood, by the mighty power of the Holy Ghost? But our hope is in God: we shall yet be perfected; we shall stand before him without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, without a tear of shame in the eyes, without a flutter of misgiving or fear in the uplifted hands. The Lord have us in his holy keeping; the Lord build for us a pavilion in which our souls may daily trust; and when the end comes may we find it but a beginning; when the shadow falls may it be the background of many an unsuspected star; and when we stand before thee may we have on the robe of Christ—be clothed with him, not having on our own righteousness, which is of the law, but the righteousness of Christ, the purity of the Cross.

If this prayer may be answered now we shall not know but that we are already in heaven. Amen.

Practical Alternatives

Deuteronomy 11:26-32

This is the closing portion of a very long discourse delivered by Moses. The discourse begins in the twenty-second verse of the fifth chapter and extends to the end of the eleventh chapter. Within these points Moses rehearses the Decalogue and its leading principles; beyond the range of principles he has hardly yet gone. The next chapter opens with details, and insists upon special and clear applications of the morals which Moses had heretofore inculcated. The preacher winds up this portion of his discourse with a solemn appeal; he brings the great question to a point. He has not conducted himself merely as a lecturer upon moral philosophy, stating various theories with great learning and skill, and leaving his listeners to come to their own conclusions. There are no such lectures in an inspired book; they are in their right place in strictly human literature—an ample field within which men may indulge their genius and exhibit the results of their investigations. Moses comes with a law. Rightly or wrongly, that is the position which he assumes. He is not an intellectual reasoner merely—an inventor of systems, a critic of extinct ages; he says he has brought two tables written with the finger of God, measurable and intelligible as to letters and applications, but underneath them, and above them, and round about them is the mystery of Eternity. How does this noble preacher conclude his expositions and rehearsals? He does not divide the people into two classes: he sets before them alternative courses:—proceed upon the line of obedience, and you come to blessing; proceed along the line of disobedience, and a curse is the inevitable necessity,—not a threatening, not an exhibition of fretful vengeance, but a spiritual necessity: a curse follows evil-doing, not as an arbitrary punishment, but as the effect, which can never be changed, of a certain, positive, operating cause. This, therefore, takes out the personal element. We are not divided as on the right hand and on the left. Instead of classifying the hearers, Moses classifies the alternatives; and thus grace follows law,—a species of mercy asserts itself in the midst of the severest and most critical of all moral legislation. The dart is not aimed at any particular Deuteronomy 11:31-32 : "For ye shall pass over Jordan to go in to possess the land which the Lord your God giveth you, and ye shall possess it, and dwell therein. And ye shall observe to do all the statutes and judgments which I set before you this day." Morals do not change. Methods change, systems vary, theology readjusts its statements and retranslates itself into the growing language of a growing civilisation,—all that is true; but the abiding quantity is the law, the revelation of God in Christ, the living Son of the eternal God—Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever. We have no right that changes its claims according to the side of the river which it is upon: right is right on this side Jordan and on that side Jordan: there is no cis-Jordan righteousness and trans-Jordan morality. Right is right the universe through, because God is one; evil is evil everywhere, because divine holiness is unchangeable. Look not to time, place, change of circumstance or situation, for the acceptance of a vicious morality: the universe is against it; eternity condemns it. Right is possible here, and only in one way: the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin; there is a fountain opened in the house of David for sin and uncleanness. Availing ourselves of that one way we lose nothing; taking the very lowest view of the whole mystery, we gain much because of an expansion of our own view of human nature and human possibility, and, at the last, when the great leap must be taken, if we leap into nothingness, we have had a wonderful joy all the way we have taken—wonderful communion, marvellous blessing in good-doing, intellectual and spiritual enlargement, in growing power cf prayer; but, if the leap be into life, judgment, an eternal state of consciousness and apprehension, who wins: the fool who has no God, or the Christian who has been trusting in the living God and his Saviour Jesus Christ? To that inquiry who will reply In words? To attempt an answer in syllables would be to lower the occasion. That is an inquiry which brings its own ineffable reply.

Prayer

Almighty God, thy Son Jesus Christ is our Saviour. He is mighty to save. The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. We were lost: we were as sheep going astray, turning every one to his own way; but we have returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. We have been brought by a way we knew not and by paths we could not understand. This is the miracle of grace; this is the surprise of Heaven. Once we were blind: now we see; once we had no future: now life and immortality are brought to light. We long for the future; we live in heaven; we are the sons of God. We bless thee for a word of love and hope and joy: it fills the heart; it makes the spirit glad; it is the inspiration of heavenly grace. Meet with us when we gather together around thy Book, and help us to understand its best meaning, to feel its holy influence, and to respond to its gracious appeals. Thou knowest who are carrying heavy burdens, whose eyes are full of tears, whose hands are feeble and can no longer do life's pressing work; thou knowest also the prodigal children, thankless offspring, difficult to manage in business, in the home, and on the highway; our whole life is spread out before thee in clearest vision, and there is an answer in heaven to all the necessity of earth. Lord, answer thy servants; be gracious unto them who are clothed with the white linen of the saints. Thou wilt not see them put to shame; thou wilt try them with many a chastening sorrow, but in the deliverance of thy people thou wilt magnify thy grace. Wash us in the sacrificial blood; cleanse us from the condemnation of sin; make us pure with thine own purity; and in thine own due time gather us to the hills of heaven. Amen.