Deut No.8 The Providential Dealings of our God

Now, you might care to have your Bibles open at the Scripture reading which we had earlier, and I want to direct your attention particularly to the eleventh and twelfth verses of Deuteronomy 32. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings, so the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange God with him. You may remember, though it seems a long time since we were last together looking at this book and taking its principles and applying them to our own hearts, that we have discovered within this Old Testament volume tremendous illustrations of the providential dealings of God with his children.

And you might recall that the reason why this book is so replete with testimony as to God's care for his own is because the man who is the author is none other than Moses, and he's an old man. There are some who feel that advancing years makes one decrease in one's usefulness, and even within the Christian church perhaps that attitude is sometimes suggested. You know, you can put the old people out to graze because, well, they've retired and there's no more that they can contribute towards the advance of the kingdom.

And yet one would take issue, and the majority of you here this evening would take issue with that particular sentiment, and we would do so on these grounds, that the older a person is, the longer their experience has been with God. So the greater their testimony can be to the blessings of God and to the way they can testify to the purposes of God unraveled during the course of their lifetime. I think that nothing is more wonderful, at least few things are more wonderful, than going to an old person, an older person who's filled with a spirit and asking him or her to tell one of God's dealings with them in their lives.

You can learn a lot from a senior citizen. A young man can only speak that which he has read and share his academic knowledge, but an older person can speak from experience as well as clearly teach the principles of Scripture. Well, here's Moses, an old man, a Hebrew old age pensioner, and he's at the end of his life's work.

One of his greatest ambitions, alas, is not going to be allowed. He's not going to enter into the promised land. But his people are, and he's concerned that as they make that journey of just a few miles from the plain of Moab where they are now settled and enter into that land which has so much potential, he's concerned that they may go there knowing what the law of God is and learning from their past mistakes.

And more than that, encouraged by his testimony as to God's dealings with them during the last decades when Moses has been their human leader. So he looks back upon his life. He looks back upon their lives, and he speaks of the providential dealings of the Lord.

And you will recall that last time we were meeting together, we looked at the tenth verse of this chapter and discovered that here is a verse that suggests the nation of Israel to be compared to the prodigal son. God's dealings with ordinary people in the Old Testament are the same as his dealings with individuals in the New. So we looked into that tenth verse.

He found him in a desert land and in the waste-howling wilderness. He led him about. He instructed him.

He kept him as the apple of his eye. And now in the eleventh and twelfth verses, Moses is shifting the metaphor, but the principle is just the same. He's reflecting upon the way that God has been consistent in his dealings with the Hebrews during the years that he has led them from Egypt into the wilderness and onto the borders of the promised land itself.

I remember when I was a youngster at church, always being intrigued and sometimes thinking it was rather humorous, when the pastor would suggest that we would sing that hymn which makes reference to our Ebenezer. I never really understood who this guy Ebenezer was, and nobody had taken the trouble of telling me. But you folks who are more sophisticated than I was in years gone by and still alas today am, you will know that the concept of raising one's Ebenezer, of raising a memorial to the Lord, is deeply implanted in the Old Testament.

Samuel commemorates the goodness of God to Israel in ridding them of their enemies on one particular occasion. So he erects a pillar and he renders it as a memorial to the way that God has blessed. He raises his Ebenezer.

And this I suggest is how you to understand Moses at this particular point in his life. He's raising an Ebenezer to what God has done for the Israelites. Like a prodigal wandering, he found us as the father and received us back to himself.

Like an eagle, he's looked after his young. So Moses is praising the Lord, praising the Lord for his goodness to him as a person and to the Hebrew community. And it's a good thing to praise the Lord, a good thing to give thanks unto God for all his goodness to us.

Have you noticed how often in hymns of faith we are bound to praise God? This is why I don't think that you can sing these hymns without enthusiasm. All people that on earth do dwell sing to the Lord with cheerful voice, the first hymn that happens to fall open as I look at this particular page. And then the hymns that I cited in the notes that I handed out, amazing grace, how sweet the sound, and can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior's blood.

What are the hymn writers doing? They're encouraging us to raise our Ebenezer, to praise the God who has done all things well. So Moses is praising God for his dealings with the Israelites in the years that have gone by. And he does so by employing the imagery of a bird.

I told you that Moses was towards the end or is towards the end of his life. And you know that he spent some long period in the mountainous region of Sinai. Sinai itself obviously was a place where there was quite a lot of animal life, quite a lot of bird life.

And maybe one day when he was on one of the high mountain peaks, he studied the activities of one of the birds, of an eagle, and that suggested to himself the dealings of God with his children. It's interesting how on several occasions in Scripture, references made to a bird and the habits of a bird in illustrating the love and the kindness of the Lord. You remember how when Ruth comes back to Bethlehem, having shown such loyalty and love towards her mother-in-law Naomi, Boaz comes to her as she's gleaning in the field and he congratulates her and he says, Ruth, may you be really blessed by the Lord God of Israel under whose wings you have come to lodge.

And the Lord Jesus, you hardly need me to remind you of this, do you? On one occasion he was lamenting the fact that he hadn't got a very good response from the inhabitants of Jerusalem. You would imagine that they would have flocked to him and listened with enthusiasm to what he had to say. But Jesus laments, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that stonest the prophets, you who reject all whom the Father has sent to you, how often would I have gathered you under my wings as a hen gathereth her chicks.

Two illustrations from the Old and from the New Testament of the imagery of a metaphor being taken from the bird life and used to illustrate the love and the kindness of God. So here Moses does the same. He's seen this majestic eagle, he's watched it as it deals with its young and he says in the 11th and the 12th verses, as an eagle so the Lord.

The eagle is a powerful bird, tremendous wingspan, swiftly it flies, so often references made to its power in the Old Testament. Remember that lovely verse about being able to soar up with wings as eagles, running and not being weary, walking and not fainting. Well in Proverbs 2 references, I've noted them in the handout, is made to the eagle, to its power, to its strength.

But here in particular, in this verse, reference is made to the eagle's great care of her own. What the lion is in the jungle amongst the animals, so the eagle is amongst the birds of the air. And Moses says, as an eagle stirs up her nest, so does God.

If you've got the imagery, here is this majestic bird, it's flying around the high crags of Sinai and it comes to its nest. No longer just eggs there, they've been hatched and you've got a brood of little eaglets that are all snuggled together, warm, waiting for mum to come and drop a worm or something down in their ever open mouths. But on this occasion, as Moses watches, the bird doesn't feed her young, rather she swoops down and she pulls away a bit of the nest.

And she swoops down again and she pulls away a bit more, until there's so little of the nest left that one by one the eaglets fall out. And you can hardly understand that a bird that's got concern for her young will engage in such strange activity, toppling the little bird. Out of the warmth and the security of its nest, sending it spiralling downwards to what seems to be a certain death.

As the eagle, so the Lord. Time was, reflects this old man Moses, when God stirred the Hebrew brood up. He took them out of their nest.

That seems to be a very exaggerated way of describing life in Egypt, because earlier on in Deuteronomy, the terminology of a furnace is used. Deuteronomy 1 and I think it's verse 27. No, it's not.

It's chapter 4 and verse 20. The Lord hath taken you and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, even out of Egypt, to be unto him a people of inheritance as he are this day. But you know, there was many or there were many occasions when the Hebrews in the wilderness looked back to Egypt as though it had been an Old Testament version of Butlin's holiday camp and wished that they were back there.

That God should have ever taken us out of Egypt where at least there were garlics, where at least there was food for us and brought us into this waste howling wilderness, that God should have toppled us out of the nest of Egypt. That's what they were complaining about. You find it time and time again in Deuteronomy and particularly in Exodus.

Why has God brought these people, these refugees, into the wilderness with no sure destiny that they can see ahead of them? Why has God dealt in such a way? And it did seem mysterious at times that God should have brought a vast company of people out of Egypt and placed them in a wilderness where there was little to support their lives. And so they moan to their Lord. And the story of yesteryear is still the story of today.

God is often misunderstood by his people. God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform. And sometimes the very mystery compels us to question and to suggest that God is dealing with us badly, treating us in an incredible fashion.

But why did that eagle stir up the nest of her young? Well, because the time had come for her offspring to realize just what strength and potential there was innate within each of the little birds. The bird will never fly unless it tests its wings. And so the mother believes that the bird has an ability to fly.

So she stirs up the nest and she, with her love, disciplines her brood and pushes it out into the air so that it has to try to flap its wings. And one of the reasons why God brought the Israelites, the Hebrews, out of Egypt and took them through the wilderness was to try to show them that by his providential dealings, innate within them, there was strength of character, a depository of faith which could be filled up to the top so that eventually they would be ready to go into the promised land and occupy it for the Lord so that they could be a special people with God's own law worked out in their lifestyle and their whole country could be offered to the Lord. And as I say, they would be unique.

That was the reason why God dealt with the Hebrews in such a fashion as he did. And that's the reason why God deals with us sometimes in inexplicable ways. Time comes when he has to take the proper way.

Time comes when he has to place you in contradictory, illogical circumstances. Otherwise, however, would you test that you've got faith? However, would you be able to discern that God has placed within you a wisdom which comes from above? If it can't be tried out in the ordinary affairs of life, then you can never discover what potentially God has placed within your personality. And yet, we tend to be afraid of the swoop of the divine ego, as the Israelites, so ourselves.

But God does swoop down and he disturbs and breaks up the nest. He swooped down on Abraham and sent him into a country that he didn't even know existed. He swooped down on Joseph time and time again and took away from him every prop that that youngster had until he was on his own, not quite knowing just what was to happen to him in life, or indeed whether life would be prolonged at all.

The eagle swooping down in extraordinary ways. Jonah. Jonah did his best to fight the eagle when it swooped.

He didn't want the security of his life to be taken from him. Not for him the role of an evangelist. Not for him to risk everything and to go to Nineveh and to proclaim the Word of the Lord.

No, the eagle is dealing with him badly. He wants the nest just where it is. He wants to stay where he is.

Like Job, he wants to die in his nest and not move out. And so often these Old Testament characters, as you look into their story, are an illustration of what happens in our own lives. Abraham went willingly, but Jonah was unwilling.

Joseph didn't fight very much with the divine eagle, but Jonah did. And how often do you fit into the Joseph category or the Jonah category? Well, listen to the old man Moses, the Hebrew old age pensioner, as I say, and in trying to unravel the purposes of God towards the Hebrews as he's experienced them, he says, as the eagle, so the Lord. He stirred up the nest.

But not only that, the Lord kept his eye upon the fledgling. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings. The world of nature is said by the poets to be red in tooth and claw.

Sometimes that's true, isn't it? Some horrific things that happen. I get very upset about my cat. You know, we've acquired another one.

When I was away on Operation Mobilization last year, some little boy or girl at my wife's school brought a little cat that was homeless into the classroom. It was fatal because that got adopted, was brought to our house. So now we're coping with two.

And he's a terror with birds. He really is. He's awful.

And we try to dissuade him, but it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference. It's sort of inbuilt in his nature. And whenever I get very concerned about the way that he goes for the birds, then I think about the way the birds go for the worms.

They're not very nice in their dealings either, are they? Nature red in tooth and claw. But that's only one side. It's like human nature.

It's the Adamic, and there's also the new nature that you can see in the Christian. And there is still within this sin-cursed world, in the realm of nature, that which reminds us of the Lord. When I consider the heavens, says David, the sun, the moon, which your hand hath made, what is man that you're mindful of him? Jesus says, consider the lily of the field.

It doesn't toil. It doesn't spin. Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.

There still is an evidence of God in nature, and even in the activity of the animal world. So watch Mother Eagle again, as Moses obviously had. This little fellow, several of them, toppling down, looking as though they will be smashed on the rocks, the bottom of the precipice.

But Mother Eagle's got them under surveillance all the time. She sees what's happening. She never loses sight of her young.

And that's what Moses had to say to Joshua when he was to take over command of the Hebrew community. Deuteronomy 31 and verse 8. Moses speaking to his successor, and the Lord he it is that doth go before thee. He will be with thee.

He will not fail thee, neither forsake thee. Fear not, neither be dismayed. You can only speak in that language if you've actually experienced what you're promising another.

And the reassurance of Moses to Joshua comes from the lifelong experience of the man who is described in Scripture as being the meekest in all the world. Joshua, you've no need to be afraid of taking over command, because you're not on your own. I won't be with you, but God will.

He'll keep his eyes on you. He's always led us, as Moses reminds the people in an earlier address in the book of Deuteronomy. He led us by the pillar of fire at night and by the cloud during the day.

We're not on our own as a people. He says in the sixth chapter of the 20 and the 23rd verse, he brought us out of Egypt that he might bring us in to the land of promise, to give us the land which he swear unto our fathers. Now, Moses had told the Israelites that when they got to the land of Palestine, one of the things that would characterize it is this, the land which the Lord thy God careth for.

The eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it from the beginning of the year, even until the end of the year. And God would hardly keep his eyes upon the land if his eyes weren't going to be upon the inhabitants of that land. And so Moses can tell the Israelites that God will be looking at them, looking towards them, eyes of God always upon his own children.

I find that to be a very precious teaching, the idea of the divine ego keeping me under surveillance. One of the things that I pray God for every Lord's day, morning and evening, very often have misfares incorporate into the notes, is that all of us may have a sense of the presence of God when we come into the tabernacle. Whether we come in 400 or this evening in 60 or 70, that doesn't really matter.

What does matter is that God is with us. Sometimes I am a little concerned about some of the modern choruses that come out, because now and again they strike me as being somewhat sentimental, more sentiment than theology. But you know, that one that we were singing the other week, I've come to love very much.

It's number 97. We're not going to sing it, neither am I going to sing you a solo, so don't get worried. 97 in the supplement.

Open our eyes, Lord. We want to see Jesus, to reach out and touch him, to say that we love him. Open our ears, Lord, and teach us to listen.

Open our eyes, Lord. We want to see Jesus. When first I heard that, I thought, no, we can't introduce that to the tabernacle.

It's too intimate and it's rather sentimental. And I think the Lord dealt with me in my prejudice, for I remember that occasion on the Mount of Transfiguration, when you remember Peter's there with James and John, and the two Old Testament characters are blotted out, and they saw no man saved, Jesus only. And they were enriched because of that.

And what we want to see, my dear friends, when we come together in worship, when we come around God's Word, is the divine ego, with his eye upon us, being convinced of his presence, of his concern, of his sympathetic vigilance. And God has promised, has he not, not just to the Hebrews yesteryear, but to modern Israelites, who've named the name of Jesus, those who are in the Israel of God in the 20th century, that he'll not leave us, he'll not forsake us, says Jesus to his disciples, ere he takes leave of them, I will never really leave you. I'll be with you even until the end of the age.

And he unraveled what he meant when he put down his glorious teaching on the gift of the Holy Spirit. And you read the book of Acts, and you're confronted with a community that reached out, so to speak, and touched Jesus, knew his power in their lives. As the eagle, so the Lord.

The eagle who stirs up the nest, as he stirred the Israelites up, brought them out of Egypt. The eagle who also surveys the offspring as they move towards maturity. Once I remember reading, I think it was in the book of Stanley Jones, of an experience of his in India, where I believe he was describing again the habits of that great bird, the eagle.

And of the way that an eagle pushed one of its young off the cliff, and then as a little chap couldn't fly, although he did his best, Mother Eagle lured herself, and got underneath the eaglet, and caught it, so that it didn't damage itself on the rocks. Not only does God stir up the nest, not only does he survey the scene, but he secures his own. I've been reading today for a long time, the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, studying some of the rather difficult scriptures that on superficial reading seem to contradict that doctrine in the New Testament.

And praise God for the fact that when the soul has lent on Jesus for repose, he does not, he will not, desert to its foes. The eagle comes along, and he does what none other can do. He secures his own.

So the 32nd chapter in the 12th verse, So the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange God with him. The credit for getting Israel back into the Palestine went to no one else but the Lord. Verse 13, he made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields, and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock.

And as you've been going through with me, some of these chapters, these marvelous chapters in the book of Deuteronomy, you've been face to face with the way that God secured his people time and time again. When they needed bread, he sent manna. When they needed water, he caused it to come out of the rock.

On occasions he turned sour water into sweet water, so that it could be consumed by the Hebrews. You remember so many ways in which God demonstrated in this book, as it is recorded, his love and his ability to preserve his own. Do you remember the occasion in the book of Psalms, 73rd Psalm, when the poor chap there, who records his experience, decides that he's an exception to the rule.

He's engaging in spiritual mountaineering, and he says in the first verse, and how often we've identified ourselves, I'm sure, with this experience, truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart, but as for me, well, you see, I'm an exception to the rule. I believe in the doctrine of election, and I believe in the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, and there's only one exception, and that's me. As for me, poor, poor little me, my feet were almost gone.

My steps had well nigh slipped. I'm about to be dashed on the rocks below. There's no hope for me at all.

Ever felt like that? Well, the Word of God says that the Lord neither slumbers nor sleeps. He has his eyes upon spiritual mountaineers who are about to have a terrible accident. He's also got his eyes on the young eagles, concerned to come to our rescue, to give us the aid that we require.

Isn't the whole of the teaching of the the Good Samaritan really underpinning that point? There's one who travels the Jericho road of life, who's concerned for the person who's been exploited, and feels that life is going to be taken from them, but no, they're not out of the control of God. They're not out of the vigilance of God. He'll come along, and he'll bring first aid, and not only first aid, but long-term assistance he guarantees for those who trust him as the eagle.

So the Lord. And there we have it really, for this evening at any rate, the providential dealings of God, very well encapsuled in the tenth verse of this chapter, and also in the eleventh and the twelfth verses. As the eagle stirs up the nest, as the eagle flutters over her young and spreads abroad her wings and takes them and bears them on her wings, so the Lord leads his children from Egypt to Palestine, from earth to heaven.

And praise God, that's the experience of those of us here who found the salvation, caring work of God through our Lord Jesus Christ and his death on the cross. Father God, we do praise you for your goodness to us. We thank you that through all the changing scenes of life, there is one constant, one friend, and whom we can absolutely rely, one who never misunderstands us, one who places his hand in ours and leads us through.

We ask, Father God, that we might know his guidance and his leading more and more. We thank you for every illustration of your providential dealings in this book that we've been looking at. We pray that some of its principles we may experience ourselves, for Jesus' sake.

Amen.