Deuteronomy 16
RileyDeuteronomy 16:1-22
THE OF THE LAWDeu_5:1 to Deuteronomy 26:19 record for us a recapitulation of the Law. The study of this section sets out clearly certain fundamental truths.The Decalog is repeated with significant variations. Chapter 5, fundamental to all the laws of God is the Decalog. In Exodus, Moses delivered the same as he brought it from the tip of the fingers Divine. In Deuteronomy, the Law is given again. From the first to the tenth commandment, the very language of Exodus is employed, save in the instance of the fourth.
Here, the reason assigned to the Jew for keeping the Sabbath, is strangely and significantly changed, namely, from “because the Lord in six days made heaven and earth and rested on the seventh day”, to “Remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm; therefore, the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day” (Deuteronomy 5:15).This change is so strange and so unexpected that it arrests immediate attention and demands adequate explanation. Why did God shift the reason for keeping the Sabbath from the finished creation to a completed redemption?
The answer is not difficult. In the Divine plan, redemption is a far greater event than creation; the soul of man exceeds the weight of the world; for that matter, of all worlds. The Law was given by Moses, but “Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ”. The Law was given for Jews; the Gentiles were never in bondage to it, and above all, believing Gentiles are not bound by it. To them, the Law is not a great external or outside force created for practices of restraint. Its spirit is transcribed to their souls rather; they walk at liberty while seeking Divine precepts. This is not to inveigh against the Law. “The Law is just, and true and good”, but by Law no man has ever been redeemed. It is to exalt Grace, which God hath revealed through Jesus Christ, in whom men have redemption from sin.
If I only love my father and mother because the Law commands it, I do not love them at all; if I refrain from making images and bowing down before them because this is the demand of the Law, my heart may yet be as full of idolatry as a heathen temple. Redemption is not by the Law; it is by Grace in Jesus Christ!The early Church was shortly called upon to settle this question of salvation by Law or Grace, and in the Jerusalem Conference Peter rose up and said unto them,“Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the Word of the Gospel, and believe.“And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as He did unto us;“And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.“Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear”? (Acts 15:7-10).Later he said, “We believe that through the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ (not by Law) we shall be saved, even as they” (Acts 15:7-11). Mark you, in that very sentence, Peter, the Apostle, proves his realization of the fact that the Law had failed as a savior and the very Jew himself had hope alone in grace. How strange, then, for men of the Twentieth Century to turn back to Law and proclaim the Law as though it were a redeemer, and protest that men who ignore the Jewish Saturday as the Sabbath will plunge themselves into the pit thereby, when the Law never saved! The keeping of the Sabbath was the one Law that contained in itself no ethical demand. The Law to worship, the Law to honor father and mother, the Law against killing, stealing and covetousness—these are all questions of right and wrong; but to tithe time by the keeping of the Sabbath was a command solely in the interest of man’s physical life.
When, therefore, by the pen of inspiration the reason for it was shifted from a finished creation to a finished redemption, the act was lifted at once to a high spiritual level and became a symbol of the day when Christ, risen from the grave, should have completed redemption’s plan. That great fortune to mankind fell out on the first day of the week, creating not so much “a Christian Sabbath” as making forever a memorial day for redemption itself, for the eighth day, or the first day of the week, clearly indicated the new order of things, or “the new creation” through Christ.We have no sympathy whatever with secularizing each one of the seven days; but we would have the first day of the week kept in the spirit of rejoicing as redemption’s memorial.
On that day our Lord rose from the dead; on that day He met his disciples again and again; on that day the brethren at Troas assembled with the Apostles and broke bread; on that day the Christians laid aside their offerings; on that day they met for prayer and breaking of bread—the fellowship of the saints; on that day John was caught up in the spirit and witnessed the marvels recorded in his apocalyptic vision. Oh, what a day! No legal bondage, for what have we to do with “holy days, sabbaths and new moons”; but salvation’s memorial, a day of special service to the Son of God, our Saviour, a day for the soul’s rejoicing in Jesus. “Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to every one that believeth”.But as we pass on in the study of this section of Scripture, we find Moses defends the Decalog in character and consequence. He reminds them of the glory out of which the voice spake (Deuteronomy 5:24). He reminds them of the obligation in the words themselves (Deuteronomy 5:32). He reminds them of the relationship of the possession of the land to obedience of the precepts.
He pleads with them as a father, “Hear, therefore, O Israel” (Deuteronomy 6:4). He anticipates the day of prophecy and begs that these words have place in their hearts (Deuteronomy 6:6), to be diligently taught to their children (Deuteronomy 6:7); bound for a sign upon their hands and frontlets between their eyes, lest they be forgotten (Deuteronomy 6:8); written upon the posts of the house and on the gates, where they could not be unobserved (Deuteronomy 6:9).
Moses knew the relationship of law-keeping to national living. It is doubtful if modernists now have or will ever again entertain the same sacred reverence for Law that characterized the ancients, even the heathen of far-off days.We cannot forget how Socrates, when he was sentenced to death and, after an imprisonment of thirty days, was to drink the juice of the hemlock, spent his time preparing for the end; friends conceived and executed plans for his escape and earnestly endeavored to prevail upon him to avail himself of the opportunity, but he answered, “That would be a crime to violate the law even when the sentence is unjust. I would rather die than do evil”. If a heathen philosopher could treat unjust laws with such reverence, Moses was justified in pleading with his people to regard the laws that “were true and just and good”, and such were the mandates of Deuteronomy.It is easy enough for one to pick out some one of these precepts and, by detaching it from its context, create the impression that it was foolish or superficial or even utterly unjust; but when one reads the whole Book, he sees the effectual relationship of laws, general and particular, to the life Israel was leading, and for that matter, catches the supreme spiritual significance of the same as they interpret themselves in the light of New Testament teaching. There is not a warning that was not needed, nor an exhortation which, if heeded, would have failed to profit the people. It all came to one conclusion for Israel.“What doth the Lord thy God require of thee, 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” (Deuteronomy 10:12)?And as there was not a law in the Old Testament but was fitted for the profit of Israel, so there is not a command in the New Testament but looks to the conquest of the Christian soul.Among these enactments were personal and significant suggestions.
They gave dietary and sanitary suggestions (Deuteronomy 14); they established the Sabbatic year (Deuteronomy 13); they fixed the time of the Passover (Deuteronomy 16); they set forth the character of the offerings (Deuteronomy 17); they determined the duties of the Levites (Deuteronomy 18); they gave direction concerning the cities of refuge (Deuteronomy 19); they determined the way of righteous warfare (chap. 20); they established a court of inquest (Deuteronomy 21); they announced the law of brotherhood (Deuteronomy 22); they descended to the minute instances of social life and regulations of the same (Deuteronomy 23); they dealt with the great and difficult question of divorce (Deuteronomy 24); they ended (Deuteronomy 23) in an almost unlimited series of regulations concerning the social life of the people knowing a wilderness experience, including the law of the first fruits (Deuteronomy 26).It is interesting to study not alone the laws enacted here, but the penalties declared, including the blessings and curses from Ebal to Gerizim. There is about them all an innate righteousness that has been unknown to those purely human codes for which God never assumed responsibility.
From the curse against bribery to the curse against brutal murder to this day the sentences are justified in the judgment of the world’s most thoughtful men.In all they contrast the injustice and inordinately severe punishments often afflicted by godless governments. Plutarch, in writing about Solon, tells us that he repealed the laws of Draco except those concerning murder. Such was the severity of their punishments in proportion to the offense that we are amazed as we read them. If one was convicted of idleness, death was the penalty. If one stole a few apples or potherbs, he must surely die, and by as ignominious a method as did the murderer. And out of that grew the saying of Demades that “Draco wrote his laws, not with ink but with blood”. And when Draco was asked why such severe penalties, he answered, “Small ones deserve it, and I can find no greater for the most heinous.” Such were human laws in contrast to these laws Divine.But a further study of these laws involves a third lesson.
Deuteronomy 16:13-17
THE FEAST OF Deu_16:13-17.THERE is a theme near to my heart which links itself to the season of Autumn—“The Great Harvest Home Day” of the Old Testament, the Feast of Tabernacles. The very reading of the text has reminded us of its constitution, and also that it was intended to celebrate the harvest fully garnered.In studying it, we shall relate the discussion to five suggestions: It was a Recognition of Temporal Good; a Symbol of Temporary Residence; an Emphasis of National Unity; a Message of Millennial Glory; and, an Appeal for Present Usefulness.THE OF GOOD.“Thou shall observe the feast of tabernacles seven days, after that thou hast garnered in thy corn and thy wine” (Deuteronomy 16:13).It occurred at the close of the harvest. This ancient people were dwellers in a prosperous land. The first sight they ever had of it was the word picture of the spies sent from Kadesh-Barnea to investigate and bring back a report. While they returned to render a majority and minority report on the subject of the occupation of the land, they were agreed on this, “It is a good land which the Lord our God doth give us * *. Surely it floweth with milk and honey * *.
And”, presenting that gigantic cluster of grapes, they added, “this is the fruit of it” (Numbers 13:27).But, after all, their greatest harvest called for no such gratitude as ought to characterize the occupants of this, our beloved land—America.The little territory of Goshen, or even that greater stretch of Solomon’s time when he reigned over “all the kingdom from the river Euphrates even unto the land of the Philistines, and to the border of Egypt”, was but a small spot which would be lost in some of the great states of this Union. Their richest valleys were not more fruitful than the great sweeps of American soil, which as yet, have never felt the touch of ploughshare.
Since Josiah Strong wrote his book, “Our Country”, it is needless for another to expatiate on the extent of it, save to remind his auditors that we are now much larger than when he caused to be published that splendid volume. We know that when the Imperial City on its seven hills ruled as the mistress of the world, and the realm of the Caesars’ stretched from the Caucasian mountains on the East three thousand miles to the Atlantic Ocean on the West, and from the Orkney Islands on the North two thousand miles South to Thebes on the Nile, with one hundred and twenty millions of people subject to the imperial nod, their territory was only one-third of that which now makes up American possessions.But whether you are apprised of those statistics which a reliable speaker put forth some years since, declaring that the average consumption of grains to the person is more than forty bushels per annum, while in Europe it is only seventeen, and the average consumption of meat in the United States is one hundred and twenty pounds to the person, while in Europe, it is but fifty-seven and a half, one must be ready to say for the prosperity of his country what the Psalmist long since wrote, “He hath not dealt so with any nation”. Before such temporal good the spirit of thanksgiving ought to stir in every heart the sentiment of Kipling’s Recessional:“God of our fathers, known of old;Lord of our far-flung battle line;Beneath whose awful hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine.Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,Lest we forget—lest we forget!”This ancient feast celebrated the increase as from the Lord.“Seven days shalt thou keep a solemn feast unto the Lord thy God in the place which the Lord shall choose: because the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thine hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice” (Deuteronomy 16:15).That Old Testament truth, oft affirmed by prophet and poet, is stated more strongly still by a New Testament Apostle, “Every good gift, and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). It is a doctrine which needs emphasis in this self-assertive century. It is an assertion which reminds men afresh of the source of all good, and the very acceptance of which begets the spirit of gratitude.R. F.
Horton tells the story of a farmer whose fields lay on the undulating slopes of the Cheviot, but whose spirit was careless, earth-bound, and sordid. One spring morning when the ploughs were in the furrow, and he walked alone in the hollow of the hills, and looked at the hedge rows now being clothed in green, and listened to the song of birds, and watched the soft white clouds which moved across the sky like a procession of dancing children, suddenly he stopped and said, “Everything I see and hear is praising God.
Everything, everything, except me! I am not. I know not how.” The very thought was the seed of God’s truth which“Taught his heart to bear his part And join in the praise of spring.”But if the spring season calls for thanksgiving, how much more the autumn, when the fruits are garnered and the brown fields have sent their loads to the bin, and the pledge of the early summer has been made good in the fruitage of the early fall.And yet, after all, there is a better occasion of thanksgiving than that we are prospered in material wealth; and the sweetest song is not with him to whom the seasons have brought most of silver and gold, but rather with him to whom the year has brought most of God. Edgar S. Sellew has voiced my thought in his recent thanksgiving poem:“For what today am I most truly thankful?Is it for granaries that Thy harvests fill?Is it for lowing herd, or flock, so ample?Or any gift of Thine, through sovereign will?“Is it because my coffers are full ladenWith golden store, or gems of greatest worth?Is it because I stand so free from burdenAnd care, amid the stricken ones of earth?“Is it because the blessed free exemptionOf all my dear ones given me of GodFrom earthly sorrows, through the free redemption,So graciously poured o’er them by our Lord?“Oh, no! our joy springs from a fount still higher—From God Himself, the Spring of all joys,Because Jehovah is—That holy fireThrows deepest shade on earth and earthly joys.“Thou art the Source and Spring of all our gladness,Eternal pleasures by Thy hand are spread;Thou art the Balm for all our grief and sadness—We praise and worship Thee, our Living Head.”But to our feast again. We have said it wasA SYMBOL OF .A short season, spent in booths.“Seven days shalt thou keep a solemn feast unto the Lord thy God” (Deuteronomy 16:15).“And ye shall take you on the first day the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook; and ye shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days.“And ye shall keep it a feast unto the Lord seven days in the year. It shall be a statute for ever in your generations. * *“Ye shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are Israelites born, shall dwell in booths” (Leviticus 23:40-42).There is not a New Testament truth but the shadow of it is found in the Old Testament Scripture. It did not remain for the Apostle Paul to see the great fact that “here have we no continuing city”, and to speak of us as “pilgrims and strangers in the earth”, but only to reaffirm that which God had written into the constitution of the Feast of the Tabernacles.
But this assertion which might strike sorrow into the heart of the man who knows not God, nor trusts in the redemption of His Son, becomes to the Christian an inspiration and a song. It is the very thought which sustains him in sorrow’s hour, which soothes him when suffering is on, which paints for him the prospect of victory in the moment of darkest defeat. “For they who have confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth thereby declare plainly that they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly country. Wherefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He hath prepared for them a city”. The man who has entertained this view of life is one who can sing with Tennyson, “Sunset and evening star,And one clear call for me!And may there be no moaning of the bar,When I put out to sea.“But such a tide as, moving, seems asleep,Too full for sound or foam,When that which drew from out the boundless deepTurns again home!“Twilight and evening bell,And after that the dark!And may there be no sadness of farewell,When I embark!“For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place,The flood may bear me far,I hope to see my Pilot face to face,When I have crost the bar.”This short season was parenthesized by Sabbaths. In the original constitution of this feast, it is written, “In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work therein” (Leviticus 23:7). Surely the Sabbath was “made for man and not man for the Sabbath”. God who created us knew the necessity—physical, mental, and moral—of devoting this seventh section of time to rest of the body, and the recreation of the soul and spirit. One of the ill-omens of this hour is the somewhat dominant disposition to despise this Divine ordination of time. The atheist who proposes to rule God out of the world by refusing to recognize the Sabbath; the money-maddened who, in his greed of gain, objects to shutting up shop or shutting down the mill; the pleasure-seeking who convert the sacred hours into sprees—these with all other confederates are cooperating with Satan in his assault against one of the greatest essentials of moral manhood and Christian civilization.
I listened with interest one Sunday afternoon to what a notable priest said on the subject of mill-running on the Sabbath. And I had a right to be interested, for in my study on Saturday night, I had discussed with one of my young men the very question of whether, at this season of the year, with nothing before him, he should forfeit a good position, or continue to work seven days in the week.
Not because the question was in my mind at all debatable, did I listen with interest— God settled that before either of us were born—but because I knew the strength of his temptation, the need of my sympathy, the expression of counsel, which, upon mature reflection, would appear to him in as perfect accord with reason as it was with Revelation. I cannot believe those guiltless who, in love of money, tempt youth or even maturity to transgress at once the law of God, and the essential laws of their own being.At Ironton, Ohio, a godly man, an elder in the Presbyterian church, owned and operated a blast furnace, and in the face of the philosophy of iron manufacturers that a furnace would chill not at work every day in the week, Elder Means ordered his fires banked on Saturday night because he had read in the Book, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy”. On opening them Monday, he found the moulten metal running more freely than ever, and discovered that he could actually make more iron in six days than in seven, and at less cost. But if that had not been true, the Divine command and the human demand would have remained the same. “Ye shall do no servile work therein”. For the reason long since assigned by Talleyrand, some repose, some cessation from nervous excitement, some intermissions from labor for the purposes of meditation, to save one from crumbling under the shocks and pressures of public life, are our necessity; and for the additional reason, well known to Christian men, furnishing even occasion to God to call for this time, that the soul required it. To deny it is to throttle the higher nature. That which is noblest in us is atrophied, and our moral and spiritual evolution is arrested, and the true man is buried up in the beast.There is a gospel in the Ten Commandments, and one of its great doctrines is voiced in these words,“Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work:“But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates” (Exodus 20:9-10).The time has come when, for the sake of the generation of which we are a part, and the posterity on which we expend our prayers, we must fight back this foe to the Christian Sabbath, knowing that if it conquers, the future of the Christian civilization is doomed.Here again the prayer of Kipling’s “Recessional” is appropriate:“If, drunk with sight of power, we loose Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe—Such boasting as the Gentiles use,Or lesser breeds without the Law—Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,Lest we forget—lest we forget!”But for the third suggestion from our feast:AN OF UNITYReverting again to the constitution of this first feast in Leviticus, we find this said, “Ye shall dwell in booths seven days. All that are Israelites born, shall dwell in booths” (Leviticus 23:42).The presence of every Israelite was expected. It mattered not how far their residence from the feast, on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, the last man was to assemble. It was the one way, and the best way to keep alive the national spirit, and to confederate the forces of Israel. It was also “the shadow of things to come” when the Gospel feast should call together in the church the children of Abraham by faith. When Paul penned his Epistle to the Hebrews, among other wise and wholesome suggestions, he made this, “Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works, not forgetting the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is”.
What these great feasts were to the spirit of national unity with the Jews, confederating their forces, sealing their affections, solidifying their purposes, making possible at once warfare— defensive and aggressive—the calling together of the congregation, and the co-operation of churches and greater assemblies, they are to the work of God now in hand.This country has a peculiar folk who style themselves “Brethren”, who object to all Christian organization, and who, in spite of their otherwise excellent knowledge of the Word, insist upon walking every man apart. They are a perfect illustration of the necessity of the feast of tabernacles, or a regularly ordained time and place for the assembly for the service of God’s saints.
In Texas and Arkansas, the Baptist denomination was once torn asunder by those who represented the anti-organization spirit.What is the result of such a philosophy of religion? I speak only a patent truth when I say that in soul-winning service, in the upbuilding of those organizations which made for the betterment of the world, in sending missionaries to benighted lands, in filling up the office unto which Christ came, and into which He has called His own, namely, the office of seeking and “saving that which was lost”, they are the least valuable of all those who wear the Name of the Lord. The reason is not far to seek! With practically no assembly of their forces, and no temples of worship, scarce a tent or a booth, standing almost every man apart, they are a rope of sand.I make these remarks to add another for the benefit of those church-members who have a name upon the church roll, but whose faces are seldom seen in the house of God, and whose hands are not outstretched to help in the hour of need. Brethren, sisters, let this Old Testament feast of tabernacles tell you that when God’s Name is to be honored by the gathering together of His people, according to His direction, He expects you there, and your absence is worse than your condemnation; it is your spiritual decline and undoing.At that feast the person of no Israelite was despised. It mattered not who they were or from what station, they were alike welcome.
The word is, “Thou shalt rejoice in thy feast, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite, the stranger and the fatherless, and the widow that are within thy gates”. Their relationship to this feast was not determined by whether they were rich or poor, high or low; the only question was whether they were Israelites.Ah, what a suggestion here!
Henry Ward Beecher sagely said, “That institution is not worthy the name of church which fails or refuses to cut the social loaf from top to bottom.”Sometime ago, E. J. Hardy, writing about Boston’s social elite, recited an instance of a man who had leaped from comparative poverty to sudden wealth, and with the change in his fortune moved from the humble home into a palace, and celebrated the occasion by a brilliant reception. A friend of many years noticing the absence of his host’s brother, who had been less unfortunate in financial speculations, and was poor, inquired whether he was sick, and received the answer, “No, no; but in sending out invitations for such an occasion, the line must be drawn somewhere.” God save the mark, when that line falls where it disfellowships a brother! And yet, far better that it be so with worldlings than with those who claim to be the children of God! The only question the church has any right to ask in the constitution of its membership, or in the conduct of its fellowship, is this, “Are you a child of God?” So far back as the book from which we bring our text, we hear God saying, “Ye shall not respect persons”.
Peter learned by a vision from Heaven that “God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him”, while James excoriates the conduct of that church which has the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ with respect of persons, and gives the chief seat to the man with the gold ring, and goodly apparel, and pushes under the foot-stool His poor.Unquestionably, the rifest and ripest problems relate themselves to this very subject. If capital and labor ever find common ground, and the problem of the blackman in America is to see a happy solution, and poverty and riches come to terms of peace, the church of God, in all her assemblies and services, must stand for the principle of equality in Christ Jesus; and must understand that any institution, as Louis Banks said, “which is sufficiently aristocratic in spirit to quarantine against one little waif, whatever its ignorance, or rags, or color, establishes a quarantine against the presence and glory of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ!
Let them establish a quarantine against torn wool, and cotton and silk to keep out cholera, if they will; but let there be no quarantine at the church door against any torn and trampled remnant of humanity that bears the impress of God.”THE MESSAGE OF GLORYWhen one reads the record of this Old Testament feast, he may have wondered why, whenever it is referred to, that this is introduced:“Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before the Lord thy God in the place which he shall choose; in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles: and they shall not appear before the Lord empty” (Deuteronomy 16:16).But the Scripture study will render the reason evident. Paul, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, speaking of the Israelites’ experience, said,“Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples; and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come” (1 Corinthians 10:11).And to the Colossians, he adds, concerning the feasts of the Old Testament, “They are a shadow of the things to come” (Colossians 2:17). In that marvelous exposition of Old Testament symbols, the Epistle to the Hebrews, he says,“For the Law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices, which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect” (Hebrews 10:1).What is the suggestion then of these shadows? The feast of unleavened bread is better known to you as the “passover”, and represents always and everywhere, redemption. It was the redemption of Israel when the first-born of Egypt was slain; it was redemption for us when the Only Born of God was given to the cross. Paul distinctly says in 1 Corinthians 5:7 that the paschal lamb typified the death of Christ; while the feast of weeks is the famous Pentecost, prefiguring that blessed experience of the descent of the Spirit, on that great day when the Church of Christ was born in old Jerusalem.But the feast of tabernacles has not yet had its antitype, for it typifies “the times of the restitution of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy Prophets since the world began”, For the Jews, it speaks of the remnant yet to return; and of the re-establishment of those types which shall be interpreted in the very presence of the reigning Christ, for has Zechariah not reminded us concerning the glory of the latter day,“It shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles” (Zechariah 14:16).I never anticipate that blessed hour which Paul has described in the fifteenth of I Corinthians and the fourth of I Thessalonians, and John has so marvelously depicted in the apocalypse, but I put new meaning into that petition of my Lord’s Prayer, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven”.
For it is a time when “He shall reign from sea to sea”; it is a time when the roar of battle shall cease, and the sword and the spear shall have been “transformed into implements of peace and agriculture”, and God’s people shall repose beneath His shade; and as Macintosh puts it, “All the earth shall rejoice in the government of the Prince of Peace.” To anticipate is to sing with William Cullen Bryant:“O North, with all thy vales of green! O South with all thy palms!From peopled towns and fields between Uplift the voice of psalms.Raise, ancient East! the anthem high,And let the youthful West reply.“Lo! in the clouds of heaven appears God’s well-beloved Son.He brings a train of brighter years, His Kingdom is begun.He comes a guilty world to bless With mercy, truth, and righteousness.“O Father, haste the promised hour, When at His feet shall lie All rule, authority, and power, Beneath the ample sky;When He shall reign from pole to pole,The Lord of every human soul.“When all shall heed the words He said, Amid their daily cares,And by the loving life He led Shall strive to pattern theirs;And He who conquered Death shall win The mightier conquest over sin.”But between this hour and that, whether it be near or far, God makes provision for our employment. It is a strange thing how these Old Testament symbols speak whole, not partial truths, and combine a sound philosophy with an essential practice.Before we close this study, we must see another lesson from this feast of the tabernacles.THE APPEAL TO PRESENT “And they shall not appear before the Lord empty.Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord thy God which He hath given thee” (Deuteronomy 16:16-17).And God who gave to them all the increase of their land, the fruit of the wine-press, shall require it of them, that they rejoice the heart of the Levite, the stranger and the widow and the fatherless. The place where He meets His people is not only “a sphere of joy and praise”, but also a “center from which streams of blessing were to flow in all directions”.How evident the lesson in all this for us.Here is presented the Christian’s solemn responsibility. Whatever other grace you may have cultivated you never become Christ like until you have had this “grace of giving”. You remember the Apostle’s appeal to the people of his love, “Therefore, as ye abound in every thing, in faith, and utterance, and knowledge, and in all diligence, and in your love to us, see that ye abound in this grace also” (2 Corinthians 5:7). The miserly man may be a member of the church, but never a Christian.
It is not worth while to ask whether an interrogation point must be written after the profession of such an one, God has already determined the sign that shall characterize that man’s religion; He has preceded his profession by the minus sign. Covetousness is placed in the catalogue of sins which debar one forever from the Celestial City.
The giving Spirit of the Christ was such that He spared not even Himself; how then dare we claim to be His children and spare nothing for the “Levite, the stranger, the widow and the fatherless”, and even steal away from Him His tithe! “Will a man rob God”? and yet profess to be His faithful servant? Out with such hypocrisy! Only those will ever participate in that feast of which this is but a shadow and type, who, when they had opportunity, went not up to God empty, but gave as God had given unto them.Here is named a special privilege. The educated man counts it his deepest privilege to pass to another what he has stored up by earnest study; and the true Christian man regards his substance from the same standpoint. Giving is to his warm, beating heart what flowing is to the water-vein, a relief from pressure, coming down from the very heights, and joy in proportion to the people strengthened and refreshed. Not a few times I have looked into the face of Louise Shepherd, that young woman, who, at Old Orchard camp meeting some years since, stripped her jewels from fingers and clothing, gave the diamonds, and exchanged gold for iron; and there is a heavenly beauty about it which is not explained by arrangement or proportion of features, or combinations of color and figure; a beauty born of the blessed privilege of “working together with God”.Dr.
McArthur of New York City had in his church a scrub-woman who never gave less than $150 a year to foreign missions, and never earned more than $1.00 for her hard day’s service. And yet that woman walked the earth with the heart of a queen beating in her bosom, for she knew that in this blessed work she was wedded to the King of kings.Oh, what a privilege!
Who can tell the meaning of the language of Jesus when He said, “Give and it shall be given unto you”. The most righteous lives under God’s stars are those, wherever lived, by whomsoever, that only get from God to give; lives pressed down, heaped up, running over! A young woman in an after-meeting stated, “It is said that our lives are so shallow that we cannot hold much, but they can overflow a great deal. Thank God for the fact and may I be a vessel constantly filled to overflowing!”He here appointed a channel of power. After all, the greatness of man and his real occasion for gratitude, is not measured by what he has received; but, rather, by what he gives. That is why God spared not His own Son.
That is why Christ could save others, but Himself He could not save. And one, who would be a light in the world, must understand that light is born of self-consumption; and as it is impossible for a wick in the candle, the gas in the tube, or the wire in the bulb, to keep itself, and yet dissipate the darkness, no more can we!
Henry T. Chapman, of Leed, Eng., quotes the author of a book on India, saying, “One day I stood near one of the great temples of India. While my friend and I stood there, a native woman came carrying a little child in her arms. She took no notice of us, but when she got to the foot of the temple steps, she threw herself prone on the ground, holding up the babe in her arms. We looked and saw the babe was ill-shapen, and had none of the beauty which characterizes infanthood. Then she prayed this prayer, “O grant that my child may grow as fair as other children. Grant that it may grow comely; grant that it may grow strong. Oh, hear the cry of a mother’s breaking heart!” Her prayer was finished, and she arose and was passing away.
The speaker said, “Friend, to whom have you prayed?” She answered, “I do not know; but surely there must be somewhere one who would hear the cry of a mother’s heart, and keep a mother’s heart from breaking!”Beloved, it is within our power, as a favored people of God, by giving silver and gold, by giving sons and daughters, by giving self, to send “the Gospel of the Kingdom” for a witness to those who live in such ignorance, that they may know that there is a God, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. And if ever the time comes when the dark spots of the earth shall have been illuminated, the ill-shapened straightened, the sick healed, and the captive souls set at liberty, it will be when those of us who assemble in His Name express our gratitude to the God of all good, and prove the genuineness of our profession by a practice of this Old Testament precept, “and give every man as he is able, according to the blessing which Jehovah our God has given him” (Deuteronomy 16:17).