Bible Commentaries

The Method of Providence

Exodus 31:1-11

We must never forget that all these instructions were given in a mountain and were to be carried out in a wilderness. These circumstances turn their execution into a Divine miracle. In the interpretation of the sacred record, bear in mind the circumstances. If you lose sight of the wilderness, you will not see the tabernacle; yea, though its glory—a tender glory of beauty—may gleam upon you and excite your imagination. If you detach the tabernacle from the sandy and dreary wilderness, you will fail to see all the mystery of light. The things belong to one another for instructive purposes. We do not let God have a fair place for building. We have turned the whole earth into wilderness, so that if he would build at all he must build under circumstances which act as a definite foil to every touch of beauty and every line of light Yet God will build in the wilderness as if it were a heaven. He will not be discouraged by the stones, the sands, the bleak surroundings. We could not work under such conditions; we should complain of the environment, asking with bitterness of tone, "Who can work in a place so dreary? and what is the reward for putting up in the wilderness a thing fit for the streets of the golden Jerusalem?" God builds everything with an eye to beauty. When he rounded off the earth and sent it flying in its appointed circuit, he blessed the little thing as a man might bless his child, and said with infinite pathos, "It is very good." Now that he comes to build upon it, we have spoiled it altogether, and if he were less than God he could not lay one stone upon another on a foundation so debased and spoiled as is now the earth under our devastating and unsparing hand. Behold, as otherwhere and everywhere, the tender goodness of God! He lets down his best things upon the earth as if it were a fit receiving-house,—"He spared not his own Son." Having sent down law and priesthood, tabernacle, and ark, and prophet, and a long line of angel-visitants with messages struck in every key of eloquence, last of all he sent his Son. So there must be something in this little night-world we have never seen; there must be in the substance of things verily a mystery which, whilst it is acknowledged by philosophy, is known and esteemed infinitely by its Creator. The philosophers are quite right when they cannot see in what they term "phenomena" any reason for the wondrous revelation of Christ as the heart and image of God. There is nothing in phenomena worthy of the Cross, or fully explanatory of it; but God sees the heart of things, the innermost enfoldment, the sanctum sanctorum,—that entity, that pulse, which is hidden from every created eye. Instead, therefore, of finding the revelation of the Gospel to be in excess of the phenomena, I will go further and say that God must find his own balance; he must put in the one scale what is equal to the other, and doing Exodus 31:3-5).

Who can read these words as they ought to be read? How it makes ministers of God by the thousand! We have thought that Aaron was a religious man because of his clothing and because of many peculiarities which separated him from other men; but the Lord distinctly claims the artificer as another kind of Aaron. He will undertake to show a man how to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in cutting stones, and in carving timber, and in all manner of workmanship. Who divides life into sacred and profane? Who introduces the element of meanness into human occupation and service? God claims all things for himself. When he hears man speak and woman sing, he says—perhaps with a father's pride (we use human terms to express human thoughts)—"Who hath made man's mouth? Have not I, the Lord?" When he sees the sculptor making a rock into an image of Moses, may he not say, "Who hath made man's hand, and given movement to his fingers and wrist? Have not I, the Lord"? Who will say that the preacher is a religious Exodus 31:18

Those two tables are two revelations; first, a revelation of man; and second, a revelation of God. In this light we may profitably read the commandments, gathering from them lessons and suggestions of the most far-reaching and useful kind. Given the Ten Commandments and all the other laws relating to them, and we can have no difficulty in finding out the quality of the life to which the commandments were addressed. The statute book of a people is, in one important sense, the history of a nation. He who reads our laws reads our lives. God has written upon these two tables the history, up to that time, of the human heart. Changing the figure, are not the two stones two mirrors, in which men may see what they have done? The commandments gather up the book of Genesis , and express it in terse lines. It would seem as if the book of Genesis ought to run straight up to the twentieth chapter of Exodus , that it might complete itself. Genesis may be described as covering an experimental period of time. Men were then without written law. Nature was, to a large extent, left to work out its own instinct and its own will. The Genesis which gives us physical beauty also gives us moral ruin. The book of Genesis cannot end in itself. God would not cut us off at the end of Genesis. He would by so doing seem to cut off his own sovereignty, his own purpose, his own fatherhood. After every one of the commandments—not only the Ten Commandments, but all the other laws—God could have given a living illustration of his meaning, quoted from the book of Genesis. The commandments are not abstractions, they are concrete instances; the commandments are not metaphysical moralities, they express the disasters and the catastrophes which have been accomplished in human life. For this reason, let it be repeated, the two tables of stone, written by the finger of God, constitute the Divine revelation of human nature. Let us familiarise ourselves with this idea, and feel its rational force.

"Thou shall have no other gods before me." What an extraordinary suggestion! How impossible from what the philosophers would call an a priori point of view! Such an idea would never enter the human mind! So we might imperfectly and vainly reason. We would not, indeed, credit the human imagination with audacity enough to attempt to create other gods. Human imagination would rather turn in some other direction—would endeavour to flee away from the whole conception and discipline of the Divine idea, and constitute powers and realms altogether distant from the Divine throne. It required the Divine mind itself to see the possibility of this tremendous apostacy. Strange to say, the very first temptation that assailed mankind, so far as we are enlightened by the book of Genesis , was a temptation in this very direction. In effect it was: "Be gods yourselves; you have the fanciful notion that there is one God who has right of control over you, who may call you nightly to his Baruch , and audit the day's moral accounts; nothing can be more preposterous; eat of this lovely tree, and the film will fall from your eyes, and a new stature and sense of dignity will be given to the soul, and ye shall be as gods." The temptation was worthy of the man. We sometimes have tributes paid to our dignity from unexpected sources. To have tempted the man back into some anterior point in his development (assuming the theory of development to be true) might have been resented, but to tempt him to fall upwards was a temptation worthy of the subtlest of tempters, and worthy to be addressed to a child of the Divine creation. See, therefore, in the very first instance, how God could have quoted a concrete case in illustration of the opening commandment.

"Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image"—for the purposes of worship. Again we say the idea is impossible. It does not fit into the structure of things with any sense of propriety. A man will never be so little of a man as to make an image and fall down before it. But in the book of Genesis you find images in plenty. This very thing which we now consider to be an impossibility has been a solemn and humiliating fact in the history of the first families of the race. Rachel knew where Laban's gods were, and she stole them. So wonderful a thing is human piety: when perverted it will even steal a god.

"Honour thy father and thy mother? Could a concrete instance be put after that commandment? We have seen that when Esau married into Canaanitish relations he did that which was "a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah." Parental feeling was ignored; parental rights were scorned; parental sympathies were violated and dishonoured.

"Thou shalt not kill"—a metaphysical impossibility, but an actual fact. From the opening of the book of Genesis to the end, Cain has been, in himself or in his progeny, a dominating figure.

"Thou shalt not commit adultery." The book of Genesis contains more terrible statements about that crime than about any other, having in it chapters which no man may read aloud.

"Thou shalt not steal" If Esau has violated one of the commandments, and is quoted as a historical instance: Jacob has violated another, and may be set up in the gallery evermore.

Thus the commandments are not metaphysical subtleties; are not fanciful suppositions in the Divine mind; are not merely ethical theories; they are one by one expressions of what man himself has done. The Ten Commandments are not ten mysteries. The Ten Commandments do not show that virtue is divisible into ten problems; but they show that vice has discovered ten ways of breaking through the golden circle of obedience. We know the commandments. Were no names mentioned; were the two tables of stone trumpeted by an angel from the radiant cloud, we should say at once, "These words are known down here, they need no exposition; we ourselves are living illustrations of every one of them." This being the case, what a tremendous hold the Bible gets upon every man! It speaks to something in the man; it secures the consent of the conscience of every man. The inward witness does not say, "Such commandments presuppose impossibilities on the part of those to whom they are addressed"; the answer is, "We have broken these laws one by one; we have wanted other gods; we have thought that a carved image might serve instead of a living Judge; fathers and mothers we have killed as soldiers kill one another on the battlefield; we have killed, committed adultery, stolen, broken holy days, violated sacred places; the angel is not speaking through his great trumpet of thunder to populations a whole universe distant from us, he has studied our history, and he is addressing himself to our iniquities."

The commandments are also on the other side quite as distinctly revelations of God. Let us consider an inquiry to this effect:—looking at the commandments, what should we infer as to the character of God? For the purposes of this study we are supposing that we have only the commandments as an indication of the moral quality of the Legislator. With the two tables of stone before us, written in a language we can understand, what should we say is the character of the Legislator? Do we not see a wonderful care for mankind? Is there not an undertone of affectionateness in all the majestic speech? Are there not some tears amid all this awful storm? Was not the tempest devised as an accompaniment to hide the grief? Now that we are more carefully learned in all the wisdom of the heavenly kingdom may we not. descry a broken heart where we once only thought of an indignant Jehovah? This is the true care for man—to care for his character, to care for his soul, to be vigilant respecting all the finer elements and qualities of his nature. To dress the body may be but to perpetrate an irony. To care for the child's physical constitution may be but a cruel sin, but to care for his moral quality, for his temper, his instincts, his soul-forces; to devote attention to his mind, to his motives, to the very springs and first motions of his life—that is care,—a care, indeed, not inconsistent with solicitude regarding matters physical and circumstances of an outward kind; but this is seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. To clothe the child, so far as it is possible, with the garment of a pure character; to make the young soul heroic in all purpose and endeavour; to lead the heart to the mystery of sacrifice, and to make the innermost tenant of the human being ashamed of sin, afraid of it, regarding it as hateful—that is to show true care, true appreciation of human nature. This is what God does here. He is building up an interior heart. He is moulding an innermost life; as for clothing, decoration, circumstance, outward importance—these are fading flowers. God cannot rest until he has made the heart right and purified the fountain of the life.

Can we fail to see a gracious condescension to the moral capacity of mankind? The Lord is pleased to speak of himself as a "jealous God." Does he mean that? Not as we mean it. This word has sometimes shocked us. It was not spoken to us. God has always spoken to the race in the language of its own day. This is the only speech that could have been understood at the time at which it was spoken. This explains many a difficulty in the earlier books of Scripture. Why persist in taking our modern education back to earlier barbarities? In this way we defraud ourselves of the richest teaching of history, and bring upon the mind a sense of confusion which interferes with the unity of worship and the completeness of sacrifice. You use to children words you will not use to them when they are fully grown men and women. You must avail yourselves of an emphasis which would be out of place in speech addressed to equals, or to those who have made considerable advance in intellectual culture. The Divine meaning could only have been expressed in the words which God used at the time. The word is not the meaning, the meaning is in the word; as the body is not the man, the man is in the body. History sheds off the body and reveals the spirit. This is the law of spiritual progress, and this is one of the innermost secrets of spiritual insight.

Can we once more fail to see how gradually men have been trained to moral pureness and dignity? The commandments are in a certain sense very rude words. They would be resented if addressed to us personally in some of their details. What man of this century, having passed through the process of Christian culture, could have addressed to him seriously the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill"? The man might be offended; he would suppose he was altogether unknown to the person who thus rudely addressed him, seeing that manslaughter or homicide never came within the imagination, which would have been debased or inflamed into delirium if it could have contemplated the shedding of human blood. We must begin the education of people where they themselves are. Education always goes down to the pupil, and thus lifts the pupil to its own level. It is one of the finest proofs of the gradual revelation of the Divine kingdom that from the first to the last the law pursues an ascending and widening line. How subtly the last commandment seems to link itself on to a higher kingdom. Is it not so in all development, that there is something of feature or nexus, something of subtle indication or fleshly possession, meaning that one kingdom has culminated, and another is just about to come down to earth? That nexus you do not find in "Thou shalt not kill" "Thou shalt not commit adultery" "Thou shalt not steal" These are what we should now term broad vulgarities; but the connecting link or tentacle, just hooking itself on to something almost invisible, is to be found in the last commandment, "Thou shalt not covet" That is the most spiritual word we have yet heard in all the commandments addressed to us in our social relations. The legislator is now giving us to understand that we have a spirit. He is about to prepare the way for some nobler kingdom, and truth, and thought, and relation. Thus by throwing new words into a language God prepares the way for new thoughts that are quickly to follow from heaven. God does not make great gaps which it is impossible either to leap or to bridge over; but by turning common language into uncommon uses, by striking points of departure, by the change of one hue of language, he prepares the way for the next higher kingdom, the next brighter revelation. Now that he has come so far as covetousness, he will, by-and-by, come right into the very centre of the heart and tell us that we are no longer in the infantile school, needing rude instruction about killing and stealing and other iniquities, but must have the heart cleansed, for out of the human heart proceed all those things which offend the heart of God.

Why go back to these old times? Because we want to be like those teachers who are worshipped for their comprehensiveness and their philosophical temper. The preacher can go back as well as the annalist. When a political historian spends days, and weeks, and months, in the Record Office and in the literary recesses of the British Museum, and then comes forth with his history, we call him a philosophical historian. When he enriches his pages with innumerable references to volumes we never heard of, giving page, chapter, section, and line, we call him a trust-worthy historian. When the social annalist would show his country what the course of his country has been, the farther he can go back into archaic times the more he is respected by modern critics. But when a preacher goes back to Genesis , he is supposed to have gone out of the times, and to have connected himself with forces, and ministries, and institutions which have fallen into desuetude. We protest against such partial criticism. There is a philosophy of religious inquiry as well as a philosophy of political investigation, and we insist upon having the Book of God read as a whole. That is our purpose for going back to its opening pages and to its earliest characters. The book is one. It never goes back or overlaps itself in a backward direction, but from first to last it maintains a line of progress and asserts a vertebral unity which constitutes an unassailable argument for its Divine origin. The books of Scripture must not be broken off one from the other as if they were separated and unrelated stones in a heap. If you take a book out of the Bible you take a stone out of a temple, a star out of a constellation,—a felony that cannot be permitted. So we must not be deterred from going into our records and our museums, and searching into roots, and origins, and beginnings. We, too, must be prayerfully philosophical and rationalistic, turning over page by page, and turning over every page, fearing nothing that comes up; taking it in chronological sequence, and persevering through all rocky places, and dangerous paths, and mountainous districts—on and on, until we come to the trumpets and vials, and thunders, and songs and hallelujahs of the Apocalypse; and having come into these completions we shall know the meaning of the last sweet word—for when all the thunders have died away, when the storm has spent itself on the affrighted hills, there comes this still small voice—"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen."