Deuteronomy 3
RileyDeuteronomy 3:1-29
THE OF HISTORYDeuteronomy 1-4.He reviews the forty years of wilderness wandering. At first sight, one is disposed to feel that this recapitulation is nothing more nor less than the tendency of an old man to reminiscence, but a careful study of chapters 1, 2 and 3 convinces to the contrary. It is, rather, the wisdom born of experience. The story was not told for the-telling, but to illustrate patent truths, prominent among which is the fact that God had gone with them through this long, needless and tedious journey, and His presence alone had been their national preservation.The individual who doesn’t learn from experience is dull indeed. John M. S.
Allison, writing for the North American Review (April, 1922), suggests with great sincerity, “The past really lives in us and moves about us in thousands of ways, under thousands of different guises.” Certainly with such a people, so situated, it should live in them by the clear tracings of memory. Wilderness experiences are the sort that are never forgotten.
The sunny days of life pass and our diaries omit them, but the days of battle and blood, the days when the eclipse of the sun is total, the days when the serpent bites and the manna is crawling with worms—these days cannot be forgotten. On that account they become our teachers, and you will find some such recorded in the very first chapter.Moses reminds them of how they retreated at the word of cowards, and with the exception of Caleb and Joshua, fixed upon themselves a judgment sure to be executed by time and travel, so that “not one of the generation should ever see the good land”, promised to their fathers. The Lord told Moses to give them the reason, “I am not among you.”It is a dark day when God hides His face. Even Christ, the Man of Nazareth, the One of infinite wisdom, infinite age and of infinite faith, felt its sting so deeply that momentary infidelity came, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me”?And yet, who doesn’t know that from the dark days the largest lessons are learned, and by them the most important truths are imprinted. Moses had a purpose in this review.He recounts the successes of their conflicts. It is interesting to run rapidly through these chapters and see Israel, a straggling crowd, including cattle and children, account for themselves in war.
When Sihon, king of Heshbon, refuses them a passage through his country, and comes out to fight against them, the Lord God delivers him into their hands and they smite him and his people, take all his cities, and utterly destroy the remnant, appropriating his cattle.When Og, king of Bashan, came out against them, he and all his people met a kindred fate, not a city escaping and Israel fattened on his forage.Even the giants, the Anakims, went down before them, God with them (chap. 3).When they forgot Him, however, they were in the sight of their enemies “as grasshoppers”. “With God all things are possible”. “Apart from Him we can do nothing”. Moses is teaching this truth by this rehearsal of history.He seeks to impress the secret of their failures.
One word would compass it, “Disobedience”. When they walked with the Lord and did according to His revelation, the days spelled triumph. When they refused His guidance and took their own course, they fell away and became an easy prey.Have principles changed in the least since those days, or is not human conduct a repetition, and the Divine practice immutable?A papist writer, Martin J. Scott, attempts in the “North American Review”, September, 1922, to answer the question, “What ails the world?” and he comes far more nearly telling us than any Protestant modernist. He says, “In proportion as God and His justice are acknowledged and respected by governments, will the world have peace. What government is to a people, that, and a great deal more, God is to the governments themselves.
If people do not respect government, anarchy results. And because governments do not respect God and His justice, wars result.
Governments will be selfish to the end of the world, and wars will continue to the end. One power alone is capable of restraining that selfishness. But it calls for good will on man’s part. That power is the World Ruler—God. If His rule, which is justice, is acknowledged by the nations, they will have peace, not otherwise. But expediency, not justice, is the policy of governments. Hence God is ruled out of the councils of nations. Therefore, the world after Versailles was upside down and remains so.
God was excluded from that gathering of governments. And peace was excluded too.”He is a wise man to whom experience can teach these truths. Plutarch, in his “Fabius Maximus”, tells how Municius, the Roman general, was envious of the success of Fabius, who held at that time the chief command in the Roman Army, operating against Hannibal. Municius finally obtained command of a part of the army and going forth to battle was overwhelmingly defeated by the Carthaginians. He straitly called his men together and said, “Friends and Fellow-soldiers: Not to err at all in the region of great affairs is above the wisdom of man; but it is the part of a prudent and good man to learn from his errors and miscarriages to correct himself for the future. I confess what I could not be brought to be sensible of in so long a time.
I have learned in the small compass of one day, namely, that I know not how to command, but have need to be under the direction of another, and from this moment I bid adieu to the ambition of getting the better of a man whom it is an honor to serve. In all other respects the Dictator should be your commander, but in the due expressions of gratitude to Him, I will be your leader still by being the first to show an example of obedience and submission”.
A noble speech indeed, and the revelation of a noble spirit.How strange that men in dealing with God should not more shortly and certainly learn their need of His leadership, and willingly acquiesce in His every command! Truly, “Obedience is better than sacrifice”