March 20

That thou mayest go in unto the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. - Deuteronomy 27:3.

THE history given in the Scriptures of the Jews is very interesting and profitable. It is worthy of our regard, for its veracity and antiquity, for the wonders it records, and for the instructions it supplies. As they were fair specimens of human nature, it teaches us much concerning ourselves, and it teaches us also how to regard God. The Jews, as a people, were typical of the Christian church. A type, as Dr. Doddridge says, is always inferior to the reality. Canaan was in many respects a type of heaven; and in the Scriptures we find the Jews were typical of Christians. Moses was a type of Messiah. He says himself, “A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up like unto me. Him shall ye hear.” Their condition in Egypt may serve to represent our natural state; their deliverance from it, our conversion; their passage through the wilderness, our residence in this world; Jordan, death; Canaan, heaven.

Regarding Canaan as an emblem of heaven, we may observe-First, That Canaan was given to the Jews entirely irrespective of all worthiness and works in them. How often does Moses labour to convince them of this. God had not chosen them for their righteousness sake, for they were a stiff-necked people. And the Apostle does not labour the less to convince us that “we are saved by grace through faith, and not of ourselves; it is the gift of God;” and that “the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Secondly, Canaan was given by promise and covenant. So is heaven. “In hope of eternal life,” says the Apostle, “which God, who cannot lie, promised before the world began.” To whom, then, could he have addressed the promise? Not to us, but to our covenant head and representative. The covenant which secured to the Jews the land of Canaan was made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; in them the children of Israel were blessed, and for their sakes they received all these things. But the better covenant, of which all the Spiritual Israel shall glory, was made with a far greater character than Abraham, who was given, as Isaiah says, for “a covenant to the people;” and in him we are blessed, and for his sake we receive all these things.

Third, Canaan was given for the settlement and rest of the Jews after their bondage in Egypt, and their travels and toils, and privations and hardships in the wilderness; and like it “there remaineth a rest for the people of God.” “They rest from their labours.”

Fourthly, Canaan was remarkable for its fertility. It is seldom ever mentioned in the Scriptures without the addition of “flowing with milk and honey.” Moses describes it as “a good land; a land of brooks of water; of fountains and depths, that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig-trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil, olives and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness: thou shalt not lack anything in it.” Let us look through this literal description to the Spiritual glory discerned, and let us remember the language of the Apostle with regard to the patriarchs: “They confessed that they were pilgrims and strangers on the earth. Now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly. Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city.” After all, what were the clusters of grapes and pomegranates to the whole vintage of Canaan? and what was Canaan to heaven and what are all the present indulgences which are here vouchsafed to Christians, compared with what is reserved for them? “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.”

It is a good report we have heard, but the half has not been told us; for “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things that God hath prepared for them that love him.”

“If such the sweetness of the streams,

What must the fountain be,

Where saints and angels draw the bliss

Immediately from thee.”