Bible Commentaries

The Plan of Life

Deuteronomy 8:5-6). It might be thought that obedience would escape chastening, and no doubt it would if the obedience were perfect; but obedience itself being, under present conditions, partial or imperfect, chastening is needed for the purification of motive and the subjugation of will. The wise man says that a wise parent seeketh chastening for his son. "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth"—is a doctrine which the greatest teachers of Christianity have not shrunk from declaring. Chastening does not always mean what is generally understood as punishment. Chastening may mean a trial of patience, so that the will may be taught the habit of waiting, and expectation may become the beginning of prayer. God has always recognised the value of the element of time in the schooling of the human race. He did not give all his revelation at once, he did not send his Son into the world at the beginning: he does not immediately answer all prayers: the mystery of the operation of time has never yet been fully understood; day is to be added to day, and one event is to be linked on to another, periods of rest are to intervene between periods of activity, and the judgment which man may pronounce upon God is to be deferred until the divine way has been perfectly accomplished. The purpose of chastening is to reveal a man unto himself: "To humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart;" we do not know ourselves until after the test cf many days. We are surprises unto ourselves. By the utterance of language, the adoption of policies, the accumulation of companionships and responsibilities we amaze ourselves by the variety, the subtlety, and the persistency of life. We learn in hunger what we could never understand in fulness. To be kept standing throughout the night dews and knocking at inhospitable doors may give us definitions of home and security which the enjoyment of such blessings might never originate. The humble and obedient soul rejoices that life has not one burden too many to carry, or one tear too hot to shed, or one difficulty too severe to encounter; it says,—All these things are appointed as gracious necessities in the perfecting of my education; I know that my Redeemer liveth; I know that all things work together for good to them whose love is set upon the living God. This spirit drives away the demon of impatience and blesses and tranquillises the soul with the angel of heavenly confidence. If the children of God suffered nothing but punishment, those who look on from the outside might well wonder as to the rewards and issues of virtue even in this world: but chastening is not punishment, it is training, it is education, it is experience, it is part of an inscrutable but beneficent method. Blessed are they who wait until the end, and who speak not of the judgments of God until they have seen all the glory of heaven.

It would seem that in this direction the thought of Moses steadfastly moved. What was God's object in bringing out Israel from the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and leading the people through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents and scorpions and drought, where there was no water? Why did God bring forth water out of the rock of flint? Moses gives the tender and noble reply:—"That he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end." That is the sublime purpose! If we exclude the "latter end" from our view of divine methods we shall certainly be entangled in the thicket of details. The latter end is not in our keeping; but it is set before us in order to restrain our passion and attemper our imagination and cultivate our patience. It is something to know that at the end God means to do us good. That should be a steadfast fact in the mind, and may be used in many different relations, but all for the same purpose. What of the difficulties of the way if the end is to be bright and beautiful heaven? What of the battle and storm here and now if according to our steadfastness and loyalty to divine principles is to be the splendour of the divine recognition in the land of glory? Thus we draw ourselves on by the latter end. Again and again we tenderly exclaim: "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his." The latter end will explain everything. On the last day of life we may see more than we have ever beheld during the whole course of our pilgrimage. Sudden glory may drive away every cloud and shadow, and bring in eternal day. One whisper from the upper spheres spoken to the dying may dissolve every doubt, break down every bound and barrier separating the soul from God, and admit the spirit into celestial liberty. We will not be deterred by today's difficulties. We shall not be tempted by sneering opponent or bitter sceptic or godless life to regard the providence of heaven as bounded by any one day. Give God whatever time he requires, and when he has accomplished the hours claimed by his purpose and has declared the consummation of his design in our life, we may be permitted to give some opinion as to "the way" by which we have been led and the method by which our best life has been sustained.

But Moses will not stop at this point. He becomes eloquent in lofty religious warning. Towards the close of the chapter he says:—"And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the Lord thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish. As the nations which the Lord destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the Lord your God" ( Deuteronomy 8:19-20). Thus the way of the Lord is equal. Disobedience means penalty as certainly as obedience means reward. The two courses are openly set before us. It is undoubtedly within our liberty to oppose God, to set up an altar of our own, to invent commandments out of our own imagination, and to serve whom we will and as we will; in these matters we have no right, but according to our moral constitution we have the liberty: but God has not hidden from us the consequences of such perverseness and idolatry: nor are those consequences partial in their operation or alterable in their pressure; they are tremendous consequences, too awful to be expressed in words, too appalling to be encompassed by the imagination. This is where I rest in the matter of everlasting punishment. What that term may mean it is impossible for any human mind to conceive. It would seem as if God himself felt the inadequateness of language to express the infinite idea. The prayer of every man should be,—My soul, come not thou into this secret. Men should never trifle with the idea of the punishment of sin; it is everlasting punisnment; it is eternal penalty; it is an expression of the horror of God as his infinite holiness looks upon the abomination of sin. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." This is not a one-sided law; it is the impartial law which holds within its ample scope all that is terrible in the idea of perdition and all that is sublime in the promise of heaven.

Prayer

Almighty God, we seek the truth. Jesus Christ said: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." We would see Jesus; we would fix the attention of our love and expectation upon thy Deuteronomy 8:16

It can never be inappropriate to address men upon the subject of affliction. In that one solemn fact there is a whole philosophy. How conies it that in this green world, with its blue skies, it can never be inappropriate to address a large assembly of human creatures on the subject of human sorrow? Laughter would often be out of place, and merriment would be a sin; but tenderness, sympathy, recognition of tears and heartache and weariness—why, almost at the wedding feast such allusions would evoke an assenting sigh. There must be some reason under all this. There is not a man living but knows what is meant by grief and pain, trouble and fear, suffering and sorrow. These are the well-known words that need no explanation—their utterance is their exposition. The heart knoweth his own bitterness. Every man's sorrow has an accent of its own, as every man's joy has a smile that he could find nowhere else. It is a notable fact that everywhere the Bible recognises the existence of affliction. In no other book is affliction so minutely and pathetically delineated. It seems to have been written on purpose to talk about affliction, sorrow, pain, death. It would seem as if the Book could have had no existence but for darkness and trouble, sorrow and anxiety. No feature of affliction escapes the attention of the Bible. The black image throws its fretted shadow over the whole area of the Book. You find affliction in Genesis. The Bible cannot begin except in the night-time, in the hour of darkness and under the gloom of sin. You cannot find a single historical book without finding the black line of affliction running through all the moving narrative. And the Psalm—why, affliction is the mournful inspiration of the Psalter. The Psalter would not be a book were there no affliction in the world. All that is noblest in its pathos, sublimest in its solace, and grandest in its outlook, it owes to the fact that at the root of human life is the worm of human sorrow. Why is not the Bible all joyful? Why is it not a series of military marches? Why does it not sound the timbrel and beat the cymbal and cause the trumpet's blare of triumph and joy to be heard on every page and through every scene? Do let us get at the reason of the mournful tone which pervades the holy revelation. That reason we give in one word. It may admit of controversy in terms; but it admits of no dispute in facts. The brief, grim, tremendous answer is—SIN. But my immediate purpose does not lead me in that direction. The one inquiry which challenges my mind, and to which I would venture to call attention, is this: Granted that sin is the parent of sorrow, and of affliction and death, what are God's uses of affliction? What does God mean when he afflicts the children of men? Has he condescended to explain his intention? Does he thunder and lighten upon the world without cause? Do the arrows of his wrath fly without moral intent, or gracious control? What is the meaning of chastening, loss, grief, disappointment, affliction, in any, in all its dark and trying phases? Happily we are not left to conjecture. We go to the Book that speaks about affliction, to receive an answer to our urgent inquiry. What is God's design in troubling and chastening human life? Here is one reason which I will quote directly from the Book itself. Let us be silent, let us cause our nimble, but often faulty, fancy to sit down whilst we listen with the attention of the heart to the inspired explanation of human discipline: "Remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee, these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee and to prove thee to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments or no." There is a twofold design of chastening. The first is self- Deuteronomy 8:18

A deep conviction of this fact would turn human history into a sacrament. Receive into the mind the full impression of this doctrine, and you will find yourself working side by side with God, in the field, the warehouse, the bank, the shop, the office, the pulpit. What a blow this text strikes at one of the most popular and mischievous fallacies in common life—namely, that man is the maker of his own money! Men who can see God in the creation of worlds cannot see him suggesting an idea in business, smiling on the plough, guiding the merchant's pen, and bringing summer into a brain long winter-bound and barren. In the realm of commerce the Most High has been practically dethroned, and in his place have been set all manner of contemptible idols: we have put into the holy place trick and cunning, and to these we have sacrificed as if they had made our fortune and enriched our destiny with sunshine. We have locked up God in the church; or we have crushed him into the Bible like a faded rose-leaf; we have shut upon him the iron gate of the market-place; we have forced commerce into a kind of religious widowhood and compelled trade to adopt the creed of Atheism.

There is always danger in endeavouring to adjust the influence of second causes. The element of mediation enters very largely into God's government, one world being lighted by another, one man depending on another, and one influence diffusing itself in a thousand directions, and entering into the most subtle and complicated combinations; all this intercepts our vision of that which is original and absolute in energy. We have a difficulty in understanding anything but straight lines. If money fell from the sky like rain, or snow, or sunshine, we could perhaps more readily admit that it came from God; but because it comes through circuitous and sometimes obscure channels we do not feel upon it the warmth of the divine touch, and often we see upon it only the image of Caesar. We are guilty, like an ancient harlot, on whose wicked head God poured out his wrath: "She said, I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink." But God hedged up her way with thorns, he caused her to lose her paths, and said in a tone which combined complaint and anger, "For she did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal." He who gives the light of the sun gives also the oil which man enkindles into a flame, and supposes that result to be an invention of his own. Lebanon and Bashan are not more certainly divine creations than are the wool and flax which cover the nakedness of man. To the religious contemplation, the sanctified and adoring mind, the whole world is one sky-domed church, and there is nothing common or unclean.

God wishes this fact to be kept in mind by his people. In this instance, as in many others, God makes his appeal to recollection: "Thou shalt remember." The fact is to be ever present to the memory; it is to be as a star by which our course upon troubled waters is to be regulated; it is to be a mystic cloud in the daytime, a guiding fire in the night season. The rich memory should create a rich life. An empty memory is a continual temptation. Mark the happy consequences of this grateful recollection. First of all, God and wealth are ever to be thought of together. "The silver and the gold are mine." There is but one absolute Proprietor. We hold our treasures on loan; we occupy a stewardship. Consequent upon this if a natural and most beautiful humility. "What hast thou that thou hast not received?" When the trader sits down in the evening to count his day's gains, he is to remember that the Lord his God gave him power to get wealth. When the workman throws down the instrument of his labour that he may receive the reward of his toil, he is to remember that the Lord his God gave him power to get wealth. When the young man receives the first payment of his industry, he is to remember that the Lord his God gave him power to get wealth. Thus the getting of money becomes a sacred act. Money is a mighty power; wealth occupies a proud position in all the parliament of civilisation. Trade thus becomes a means of grace and commerce an ally of religion. In one word, the true appreciation of this doctrine would restore every act of life to its direct and vital relation to the living God. There are men who say that the voice of the pulpit should never be heard in the market-place. They forget that they could not move a muscle but for the grace of God: nor could they originate or apply an idea but for the mercy of Heaven. Let us hold, in opposition to this atheistic commerce, that every ledger should be a Bible, true as if written by the finger of God; that every place of business should be made sacred by the presence of righteousness, verity, honour, and justice. The man who can be atheistic in business could be atheistic in heaven itself. The man who never turns his warehouse into a church can hardly fail to turn the church into a warehouse. Even nominally Christian men are often unduly anxious that too much of what they call religion should not be introduced into places of trade. They speak about God with a regulated whisper, as if they were speaking about a ghost whose unfriendly eye was fixed upon them. When they refer to God it is with the motion of a trembling finger or an inflection of the voice which indicates anything but moral repose. Filial joy is wanting: the leaping heart is not known in the experience of such fear-ridden professors of Christianity. Men who make money with both hands, who run greedily after gain, and serve mammon with fervent zeal, are not likely to remember that the Lord their God gave them power to get wealth. Memory is occupied with other subjects. The heart is foreclosed. The whole nature acts as if it had entered into a bond to entertain no religious recollections. In enumerating the happy consequences arising from a grateful recognition of God's relation to wealth, the check upon all wastefulness and extravagance might be mentioned. Christianity enjoins frugality upon its disciples; its command Exodus 22:29). "The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the Lord thy God" ( Exodus 23:19). The very fact of Christians having been redeemed at an infinite cost is turned into an argument why all things, material and physical, to which they can lay claim, are to be sanctified and turned to religious uses: "Ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body." God has made the outpouring of spiritual blessing dependent upon man's faithfulness in observing the law of tithes, and firstfruits, and religious tributes of all kinds: "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." We may keep back part of the consecrated price, but the loss will be ours rather than God's. We may account ourselves even clever in making calculations as to how much we can save from the cost of piety and charity, but the great law of compensation will proceed disastrously in our case because of this calculated and irreligious penury: "He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly." This law of compensation operates also in the other direction with noble impartiality: "He which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully." We imagine that all God's benefactions are spiritual; we have shut him out from the field and the vineyard; but hear his word: "The Lord shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hand unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." But we must not attempt to make an investment of our charity: "Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven." God cannot be outwitted in this matter. Not only must we sow the right seed at the right time, we must sow it in the right soil; in other words, all the conditions must be right, or the harvest will end in disappointment and sorrow. What is the true motive of all such action?—"The love of Christ constraineth us;" "For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ;" "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." We must operate from an intensely spiritual and religious point of view: "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service."

The text has called us to an act of remembrance, and in doing so has suggested the inquiry whether there is any such act of remembrance on the part of God himself? The Scripture is abundant in its replies to this inquiry: "For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister." Jesus Christ himself has laid down the same encouragement with even minuter allusion: "Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward." The Apostle Peter preached to Cornelius the same doctrine: "Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God." Thus, on the divine side and on the human side there is an act of remembrance. God is always writing "a book of remembrance." We cannot work for God without reward, yet the reward must form no part of the motive under which we work. The sacred and awful ordinance of Heaven is: "Them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed." Let us not suppose that we can ever owe anything to the oversight or forgetfulness of God. Everything is written down in the books which fire cannot consume, and we shall one day be called upon to face the minute and indisputable account.

Prayer

Almighty God, we, too, are in trouble, and in our hearts there is pain. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? We have been looking in the wrong direction: we have been turning towards ourselves for health, forgetting that we are all weakness, without any answer to the accuser, without any justification of our conduct. God be merciful unto us sinners! We will not speak to thee of our righteousness, or of our claim, for we have none; we will speak of our unrighteousness and of our forfeiture of thy regard, and will not spare ourselves in the day of examination and account. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. The whole life has gone astray; the life has become a lie. But thy mercy still beams above the sun; thy tender love is more gracious than the showers of summer; thy tears outnumber the dew of the morning. We come not to thy judgment but to thy compassion; we are sure of thy love; we understand it in some degree. Towards thy righteousness we dare not look; it has no voice for us other than the voice of rebuke: but our eyes are towards the Cross—the living, dying, rising immortal mercy of the Cross; there we cannot die; there heaven's door stands wide open. We look unto the Bleeding Lamb; we feel the ministry of his blood; we cannot explain or understand, but in our soul there is a mystery of peace, a sense of newness of life, a beginning brighter than the dawning day; and this we accept as a seal and pledge of a covenant eternal as thine own duration and sure as the pillars of thine own throne. Amen.