You shall remember all the way which Yahweh your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, to test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. He humbled you, allowed you to be hungry, and fed you with manna, which you didn’t know, neither did your fathers know, that he might teach you that man does not live by bread only, but man lives by every word that proceeds out of Yahweh’s mouth.
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You shall observe to do all the commandments which I command you today, that you may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which Yahweh swore to your fathers. You shall remember all the way which Yahweh your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, to test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. He humbled you, allowed you to be hungry, and fed you with manna, which you didn’t know, neither did your fathers know, that he might teach you that man does not live by bread only, but man lives by every word that proceeds out of Yahweh’s mouth. Your clothing didn’t grow old on you, neither did your foot swell, these forty years. You shall consider in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so Yahweh your God disciplines you. You shall keep the commandments of Yahweh your God, to walk in his ways, and to fear him. For Yahweh your God brings you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of springs, and underground water flowing into valleys and hills; a land of wheat, barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive trees and honey; a land in which you shall eat bread without scarcity, you shall not lack anything in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you may dig copper. You shall eat and be full, and you shall bless Yahweh your God for the good land which he has given you.
Parallel Translations
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You shall remember all the way which Yahweh your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, to test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.
He humbled you, allowed you to be hungry, and fed you with manna, which you didn’t know, neither did your fathers know, that he might teach you that man does not live by bread only, but man lives by every word that proceeds out of Yahweh’s mouth.
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And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.
And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.
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And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God hath led thee these forty years in the wilderness, that He might afflict thee, to prove thee, to know what was in thy heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments, or no.
And He afflicted thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that He might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every thing that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.
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Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (47)
- Matthew 4:4 (v3) But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of God’s mouth.’ ”
- Luke 4:4 (v3) Jesus answered him, saying, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.’ ”
- James 1:3 (v2) knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
- Hebrews 13:5-6 (v3) Be free from the love of money, content with such things as you have, for he has said, “I will in no way leave you, neither will I in any…
- Deuteronomy 8:16 (v2) who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers didn’t know, that he might humble you, and that he might prove you, to do you…
Show all 47 cross-references
- 1 Peter 1:7 (v2) that the proof of your faith, which is more precious than gold that perishes even though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in…
- Exodus 16:4 (v2) Then Yahweh said to Moses, “Behold, I will rain bread from the sky for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every…
- Psalms 78:23-25 (v3) Yet he commanded the skies above, and opened the doors of heaven. He rained down manna on them to eat, and gave them food from the sky. Man…
- 1 Corinthians 10:3 (v3) and all ate the same spiritual food;
- Exodus 16:2-3 (v3) The whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron in the wilderness; and the children of Israel…
- Exodus 16:12-35 (v3) “I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel. Speak to them, saying, ‘At evening you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall…
- Deuteronomy 2:7 (v2) For Yahweh your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He has known your walking through this great wilderness. These forty…
- Luke 12:29-30 (v3) Don’t seek what you will eat or what you will drink; neither be anxious. For the nations of the world seek after all of these things, but…
- 1 Peter 5:5-6 (v2) Likewise, you younger ones, be subject to the elder. Yes, all of you clothe yourselves with humility, to subject yourselves to one another;…
- Exodus 15:25 (v2) Then he cried to Yahweh. Yahweh showed him a tree, and he threw it into the waters, and the waters were made sweet. There he made a statute…
- Psalms 37:3 (v3) Trust in Yahweh, and do good. Dwell in the land, and enjoy safe pasture.
- Psalms 105:40 (v3) They asked, and he brought quails, and satisfied them with the bread of the sky.
- Malachi 3:2-3 (v2) “But who can endure the day of his coming? And who will stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire, and like launderers’ soap;…
- James 4:6 (v2) But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
- 2 Chronicles 32:31 (v2) However concerning the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, who sent to him to inquire of the wonder that was done in the land, God left…
- John 2:25 (v2) and because he didn’t need for anyone to testify concerning man; for he himself knew what was in man.
- Deuteronomy 29:5 (v2) I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not grown old on you, and your sandals have not grown old on your feet.
- Psalms 104:27-29 (v3) These all wait for you, that you may give them their food in due season. You give to them; they gather. You open your hand; they are…
- James 4:10 (v2) Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will exalt you.
- Ephesians 2:11-12 (v2) Therefore remember that once you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called “uncircumcision” by that which is called “circumcision” (in the…
- Proverbs 17:3 (v2) The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold, but Yahweh tests the hearts.
- Luke 18:14 (v2) I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who…
- 2 Peter 3:1-2 (v2) This is now, beloved, the second letter that I have written to you; and in both of them I stir up your sincere mind by reminding you, that…
- Genesis 22:1 (v2) After these things, God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” He said, “Here I am.”
- Deuteronomy 1:3 (v2) In the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, Moses spoke to the children of Israel according to all that…
- Deuteronomy 1:33 (v2) who went before you on the way, to seek out a place for you to pitch your tents in: in fire by night, to show you by what way you should…
- Deuteronomy 7:18 (v2) you shall not be afraid of them. You shall remember well what Yahweh your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt:
- Deuteronomy 13:3 (v2) you shall not listen to the words of that prophet, or to that dreamer of dreams; for Yahweh your God is testing you, to know whether you…
- 2 Chronicles 32:25-26 (v2) But Hezekiah didn’t reciprocate appropriate to the benefit done for him, because his heart was lifted up. Therefore there was wrath on him,…
- 2 Chronicles 33:12 (v2) When he was in distress, he begged Yahweh his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers.
- 2 Chronicles 33:19 (v2) His prayer also, and how God was entreated of him, and all his sin and his trespass, and the places in which he built high places, and set…
- Job 33:17 (v2) that he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man.
- Job 42:5-6 (v2) I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
- Psalms 77:11 (v2) I will remember Yah’s deeds; for I will remember your wonders of old.
- Psalms 81:7 (v2) You called in trouble, and I delivered you. I answered you in the secret place of thunder. I tested you at the waters of Meribah.”
- Psalms 106:7 (v2) Our fathers didn’t understand your wonders in Egypt. They didn’t remember the multitude of your loving kindnesses, but were rebellious at…
- Psalms 136:16 (v2) to him who led his people through the wilderness; for his loving kindness endures forever:
- Isaiah 2:17 (v2) The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the arrogance of men shall be brought low; and Yahweh alone shall be exalted in that day.
- Jeremiah 17:9-10 (v2) The heart is deceitful above all things and it is exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it? “I, Yahweh, search the mind. I try the heart, even…
- Amos 2:10 (v2) Also I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and led you forty years in the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite.
- 2 Peter 1:12-13 (v2) Therefore I will not be negligent to remind you of these things, though you know them, and are established in the present truth. I think it…
- Revelation 2:23 (v2) I will kill her children with Death, and all the assemblies will know that I am he who searches the minds and hearts. I will give to each…
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (18 sources)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv2–3 Which is declared in afflictions, either by patience, or…
Which is declared in afflictions, either by patience, or by grudging against God’s visitation.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv2–3 Deu 8:2 And thou shalt remember all the way…
Deu 8:2 And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, [and] to prove thee, to know what [was] in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.
Ver. 2. To know what was,] i.e., To discover and make known to thyself and others. {a} When fire is put to green wood, there comes out abundance of watery stuff that before appeared not. When the pond is empty, the mud, filth, and toads come to light. The snow drift covers many a muckhill; so doth prosperity many a rotten heart. It is easy to wade in a warm bath; and every bird can sing in a sunshine day, &c. Hard weather tries what health, afflictions try what sap we have, what solidity. Withered leaves soon fall off in windy weather; rotten boughs quickly break with heavy weights, &c.
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{a} Tentat ut sciat, i.e., ut scire nos faciat. - Aug.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv2–3 All the way, i.e. all the events which befell…
All the way, i.e. all the events which befell thee in the way, the miraculous protections, deliverances, provisions, instructions which God gave thee; and withal the frequent and severe punishments of thy disobedience.
To know what was in thine heart, i.e. that thou mightest discover to thyself and others that infidelity, inconstancy, hypocrisy, apostacy, rebellion, and perverseness, which lay hid in thy heart; the discovery whereof was of singular use, both to them and to the church of God, in all succeeding ages.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv2–3 And thou shalt remember all the way which the…
And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness,.... For this was now the fortieth year of their coming out of Egypt into the wilderness, into which they quickly came after their departure from thence, and had been in one wilderness or another ever since, in which God went before them in a pillar of cloud and fire, and directed their way; and now they are called upon to remember all the occurrences in the way, what favours and mercies had been bestowed upon them, what provisions had been made for them, what enemies they had been delivered from or overcome, as well as what afflictions and chastisements had attended them: and so the people of God should call to mind how they were brought to see their wilderness state and condition by nature; how they were brought out of it, and stopped in their career of sin, and turned from their evil ways, and led to Christ; what gracious promises have been made to them; what light has been afforded them; what communion they have had with God; what pleasure in his ordinances; what food they have been fed with; what temptations have befallen them, and how delivered out of them; and what afflictions have been laid upon them, and how supported under them, and freed from them:
to humble thee; under the mighty hand of God, to bring down the pride of their hearts and hide it from them; to lay them low in their own eyes, and clothe them with humility, that the Lord alone might be exalted: and
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to prove thee; whether they would be obedient to his laws, or how they would behave towards him both in prosperity and adversity, and to try their graces, their faith and patience, fear and love:
to know what was in thine heart; that is, to make it known to themselves and others; for God knew all that was in it, the wickedness of it, the unbelief, rebellion, and frowardness of it, and needed not any ways and means to get into the knowledge of it; see Ch2 32:31,
whether thou wouldest keep his commandments or no; which they had in such a solemn manner promised to do; Deu 5:27.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv2–3 All the way - All the events which befell…
All the way - All the events which befell three in the way, the miraculous protections, deliverances, provisions, instructions which God gave thee; and withal the frequent and severe punishments of thy disobedience. To know - That thou mightest discover to thyself and others that infidelity, inconstancy, hypocrisy, and perverseness, which lay hid in thy heart; the discovery whereof was of singular use both to them, and to the church of God in all succeeding ages. It is good for us likewise to remember all the ways both of God's providence and grace, by which he has led us hitherto through the wilderness, that we may trust him, and cheerfully serve him.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv2–3 Verse 2. Thou shalt remember all the way] The…
Verse 2. Thou shalt remember all the way] The various dealings of God with you; the dangers and difficulties to which ye were exposed, and from which God delivered you; together with the various miracles which he wrought for you, and his longsuffering towards you.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv2–3 Deu 8:2. Thou shalt remember — Call to mind…
Deu 8:2. Thou shalt remember — Call to mind and meditate upon the wisdom and goodness of God toward thee, and the power exerted on thy behalf. All the way which the Lord led thee — All the events which befell thee in the way, the miraculous protections, deliverances, provisions, instructions, which God gave thee; and withal, the severe punishments of thy disobedience. To know what was in thy heart — That thou mightest discover thyself, and manifest to others, the infidelity, inconstancy, hypocrisy, and perverseness which lay hid in thy heart; the discovery and manifestation whereof God saw would be of peculiar use, both to them and to his church in all succeeding ages. It is well for us, likewise, to remember all the ways both of God’s providence and grace, by which he has hitherto led, and still leads us through the wilderness, that we may trust in him, and cheerfully serve him.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On v3 But by every word that proceedeth out of the…
But by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord - literally, “every outgoing of the mouth of the Lord.” Compare Deu 29:5-6. The term “word” is inserted by the King James Version after the Septuagint, which is followed by Matthew and Luke (see the marginal references). On the means of subsistence available to the people during the wandering, see Num 20:1 note. The lesson was taught, that it is not nature which nourishes man, but God the Creator by and through nature: and generally that God is not tied to the particular channels (“bread only,” i. e. the ordinary means of earthly sustenance) through which He is usually pleased to work.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv2–3 Prove, which is done frequently by posterity also, ver.…
Prove, which is done frequently by posterity also, ver. 3, 12, 14. After trying the fidelity of his people by various means, to make them sensible of their own weakness and inability to do good, God takes pity on them, ver. 16. (Calmet) --- Known. Hebrew, "to know (by experience) what was in thy heart, whether," &c. The original term signifies also to make known to others, Genesis xxii. 12. (Haydock)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On v2 thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord…
thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness--The recapitulation of all their checkered experience during that long period was designed to awaken lively impressions of the goodness of God. First, Moses showed them the object of their protracted wanderings and varied hardships. These were trials of their obedience as well as chastisements for sin. Indeed, the discovery of their infidelity, inconstancy, and their rebellions and perverseness which this varied discipline brought to light, was of eminently practical use to the Israelites themselves, as it has been to the church in all subsequent ages. Next, he enlarged on the goodness of God to them, while reduced to the last extremities of despair, in the miraculous provision which, without anxiety or labor, was made for their daily support (see on Exo 16:4). Possessing no nutritious properties inherent in it, this contributed to their sustenance, as indeed all food does (Mat 4:4) solely through the ordinance and blessing of God. This remark is applicable to the means of spiritual as well as natural life.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv2–3 2. Remember all the way — That forty years’…
2. Remember all the way — That forty years’ wandering through the great and terrible wilderness was to be the dark background against which the divine leadings could be seen: in deliverance from the pursuing Egyptians; in miraculous provision for their bodily wants, as when bread came down from heaven; also when the smitten rock sent forth refreshing draughts.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv2–3 2. thou shall remember all the way] Another of…
2. thou shall remember all the way] Another of the many calls in D to remember God’s Providence (Deu_5:15, Deu_7:18, etc.), but this time to fresh aspects of that Providence, cp. Deu_29:5.
forty years in the wilderness] See on Deu_2:7.
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humble thee, to prove thee] Cp. Deu_8:3; Deu_8:16, Deu_13:3. On prove (whether as here of man by God, or of God by man) see on Deu_4:34, and Driver’s note on Exo_17:2 (E). J also speaks of the manna as God’s proof of Israel. Exo_16:4.
to know what was in thine heart] Cp. Deu_13:3 (4), and note on Deu_7:9.
whether thou wouldest keep his commandments] Steuernagel’s argument, that because the law was not yet given at the time of the provings described, therefore this clause must be regarded as a later addition, is quite insufficient. For either we may take it as implying some previous charges by God to Israel, without which Israel could not have set out in the wilderness (so Bertholet); or better, we may take these trials as of the people’s personal confidence in Jehovah and anticipatory to His entrusting them with His laws. Cp. Exo_16:4, J.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv2–3 (2) And thou shalt remember.—The whole of the remainder…
THE REMEMBRANCE OF THE EXODUS.
(2) And thou shalt remember.—The whole of the remainder of this exhortation, to the end of Deuteronomy 10, is chiefly taken up with this topic. Israel must remember (1) the leading of Jehovah, and (2) their own rebellious perversity in the journey through the wilderness. The same recollection is made the occasion for a separate note of praise in Psa_136:16 : “To him which led his people through the wilderness; for his mercy endureth for ever.”
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The way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years.—Not so much the literal journey, but “the way:” i.e., the manner. The details of the actual journey are of course included, but only as incidents of “the way.” In the Acts of the Apostles the Christian life is in several passages called “the way.” In all these things the Israelites were types of us.
To humble thee, and to prove thee.—The way in itself is described as “three days’ journey into the wilderness,” so far as the leading to Sinai is concerned (Exo_3:18), and “eleven days’ journey from Horeb to Kadesh-barnea” (Deu_1:2). It was in the power of Jehovah to bring Israel from Egypt to Canaan, had He so willed it, without delay, in a very little time. And just so with “the way” of salvation. There is no intrinsic or necessary impossibility in the immediate turning of mankind, or of any individual, from darkness to light. And this change might be followed by immediate removal from “this present evil world” into the place which Christ has gone before to prepare for us. But manifestly the formation of human character by probation and training would vanish in such a process as this. There could be no well-tried and deliberate purpose to serve our Creator and Redeemer in any of us—or, at least, no proof of our deliberate preference for His service—under such circumstances. Nor, again, could there be that humility which arises only out of self-knowledge. The transitory nature of all mere human resolutions and impressions for good demonstrates to the man who knows himself, better than anything else could do, the power and patience of his Redeemer, and the moral cost of his redemption. This human transitoriness and feebleness is strikingly illustrated by the story of the Exodus.
To know what was in thine heart.—“To know” is not simply that He might know (“Hell and destruction are before the Lord; how much more then the hearts of the children of men! “), but that the knowledge may arise—to determine, disclose, discover. So in 2Ch_32:31 : “God left him (Hezekiah) to try him, to know all that was in his heart.” What God Himself knows by omniscience He sometimes brings to light by evidence for the sake of His creatures. (Comp. Eph_3:10 : “To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by (by means of) the church the manifold wisdom of God.”)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv2–3 HOMILIES BY J. ORR Vers. 2-6. The uses of…
HOMILIES BY J. ORR Vers. 2-6. The uses of adversity.
It is a great matter when in any experience of life we can read the Divine purpose in bringing us through it. The speaker in these verses unfolds the design and lessons of the wilderness discipline. Our Lord, in the temptation, found an application to himself. (Mat_4:4) Every believer will find the same in seasons of adversity.
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I ADVERSITY A DIVINE ORDINANCE. (Ver. 2.)
1. Divinely sent. "The Lord thy God led thee" (cf. Mat_4:1) Jesus led of the Spirit into the wilderness. Adversity may come through natural laws, as the necessary result of sin or folly; even so it is of God"s ordinance the punitive expression of his will. But adversity is not necessarilypunitive. The best man living may be led into straits of affliction, of which his own actions are not in the least the causes. (Job 1:, Job_1:2) It is God who has "led" him thither for some purpose of his own.
2. The duration of which is divinely determined: "these forty years." God marks for us the term of our probations. Jesus was "forty days" without. (Mat_4:2)
II THE GRACIOUS USES OF ADVERSITY. That of the Israelites was designed:
1. To humble them. It aimed at destroying the spirit of self-dependence, out of which comes pride and haughtiness (vers. 17, 18). It made them feel how absolutely they depended for everything upon God taught them how at every step they hung upon his will.
2. To teach them reliance. Faith is reliance on a Divine Power working for us and in us. "What shall we eat? What shall we drink? Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" Faith cannot tell, but it waits God"s time and God"s way of providing, confident that in his own way he will provide. This was Christ"s attitude in the wilderness. (Mat_4:4)
3. To test obedience. Adversity acts as a test of the disposition. The end of God"s discipline is to bring to light hidden lines of character, and to advance life to a crisis. It threes us to moral determination. Will we obey God or will we not? The younger generation of Israel, whatever their faults, showed by their conduct then and thereafter (Jos_24:31) that the discipline of the wilderness had not been without good results.
III GOD IS WITH US IN ADVERSITY. Though bread failed, God fed them with manna (ver. 3). Their every want was supplied. Jesus teaches us to trust the Father for the supply of all our needs. (Mat_3:2-5) His own trust, vindicated in the refusal to make stones into bread, was rewarded by angels ministering unto him. (Mat_4:11) He ate angels food". (Psa_78:25) Our wants are not supplied by miracle, but by providence, which is all-sufficient to provide for us in every ordinary case. J.O.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v3 He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and…
Deu_8:3-6
He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna.
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The pilgrims grateful recollections
I. Let us pass in review the favours of the lord, taking what He did for Israel as being typical of what He has done for us.
1. The first blessing mentioned is that of humbling: And He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger. Not very highly esteemed among men will this favour be; and at first, perhaps, it may be regarded by ourselves as being rather a judgment, one of the terrible things in righteousness, than a great favour from the Most High. But rightly judged, this is one of the most admirable proofs of the Lords loving kindness, that He does not leave His people in their natural pride and obstinacy, but by acts of grace brings them to their right minds. Note in the text, that the humbling was produce by hunger. What makes a man so humble as to be thoroughly in want? Oh, happy season when He stripped me of what I thought my glory, but which were filthy rags!
2. Notice, in the second place, the Divine feeding. We shall now see ourselves mirrored in the case of Israel as in a glass. He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee. How sweetly that follows: suffered thee to hunger and fed thee; the light close on the heels of the darkness. Blessed are ye that do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for ye shall be filled. That and in the text is like a diamond rivet, none can ever take it out or break it. He suffered thee to hunger and fed thee. He who suffers thee to hunger will be sure to feed thee yet upon the bountiful provisions of His grace. Be of good cheer, poor mourning soul.
3. The third favour mentioned is the remarkable raiment. Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee. Though subject to the ordinary wear and tear incidental to travelling, their garments still continued to be as good at the end of forty years as they were when first they left the land of Egypt. I believe that to be what the text means. Anyhow, spiritually, it is the case with us. You cannot point me to a stale promise in all Gods book, neither can you find me a worn-out doctrine. In the way of perseverance we have been maintained and preserved. Personally I admire the grace which has kept me in my course, though assailed by many fierce temptations and exposed to great perils in my position.
4. The next blessing for which we ought to be grateful is that sustained personal strength. Our spiritual vigour has still. Your foot has not swelled in the way of perseverance. Neither have you been lamed in the way of service. Perhaps you have been called to do much work for Christ, yet you have not grown tired of it, though sometimes tired in it; still, you have kept to your labour, and found help in it. So, too, your foot has not swollen in the way of faith. Such little faith you bad at first that you might well have thought it would all die out by now. But it has not been so. God has not quenched the smoking flax, nor broken the bruised reed. In addition to all this, your foot has not swollen in the way of fellowship. You have walked with God, and you have not grown weary of the holy intercourse. Moreover, your foot has not swollen in the way of joy. You were happy young men in Christ Jesus, and you are happy fathers now. The novelty has not worn off, or rather one novelty has been succeeded by another, fresh discoveries have broken out upon you, and Jesus is still to you the dew of youth. He who walks with God shall never weary, though through all eternity he continues the hallowed march. For all this we give to God our thanks yet again.
5. Notice the memorable blessing of chastisement. Thou shalt also consider in thine heart. That unswollen foot, and that unworn garment, you need not so much value as this, for this you are specially bidden to consider, your deepest thoughts are to be given to it, and, consequently, your highest praises. Consider in thine heart, that as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee. I am sure I have derived more real benefit and permanent strength and growth in grace, and every precious thing, from the furnace of affliction, than I have ever derived from prosperity.
II. The inference from all this. All this humbling, feeding, clothing, strengthening, chastening, what of it all? Why this--therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, to walk in His ways, and to fear Him. Take the model of the text.
1. Let your obedience be universal. Keep the commandments of the Lord, walk in His ways.
2. Let your obedience be entire. In nothing be rebellious.
3. Let that obedience be careful. Doth not the text say, Keep the commandments, and doth not the first verse say, Ye shall observe to do? Keep it as though you kept a treasure, carefully putting your heart as a garrison round it. Observe it as they do who have some difficult art, and who watch each order of the teacher, and trace each different part of the process with observant eye, lest they fail in their art by missing any one little thing. Keep and observe. Be careful in your life. Be scrupulous. You serve a jealous God, be jealous of yourself.
4. Let your obedience be practical. The text says, Walk in His ways. Carry your service of God into your daily life, into all the minutiae and details of it. Whereas others walk up and down in the name of their God, and boast themselves in the idols wherein they trust, walk you in the name of Jehovah, and glory always to avow that you are a disciple of Jesus.
5. Let your obedience spring from principle, for the text says, Walk in His ways, and fear Him. Seek to have a sense of His presence, such as holy spirits have in heaven who view Him face to face. Remember He is everywhere; you are never absent from that eye. Tremble, therefore, before Him with that sacred trembling which is consistent with holy faith. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Man doth not live by bread only.
True life
What is the life for which we seek and hope? Mere existence? No. But conscious happiness--a large preponderance of success over disappointment, and joy over sorrow. This is what all desire; but they seek it in different ways. Our text suggests two theories of life;--the one, the living by bread alone; the other, by obedience, duty, and love, by angels food, by the manna that comes down from heaven.
I. Man doth not live by bread only. Yet multitudes think thus to live--by things outward and earthly, by the accumulation of material, perishable objects of enjoyment, or of wealth, which can represent and command them all. Can wealth sustain or comfort the bereaved husband or father? When the strong ties of natural affection are sundered, is it a solace to know that they had been gilded and jewelled? If they were not strengthened and sanctified by Christian communion, by the fellowship of heaven-seeking souls--if the only common interests have been sordid, then has the prosperity enjoyed together left the survivor only the heavier burden of remembrances not again to be realised, and of joys forever fled.
II. What, then, are the elements of this higher life? Since man, spiritually speaking, cannot live by bread only, by what is he to live?
1. First by faith--faith in an all-seeing Father, whose sceptre ruleth over all, and who, if our hearts are His, will cause all things outward to work together for our good--faith in a Redeemer, who has loved us and given Himself for us as our Saviour from sin, and our Guide to duty and heaven.
2. Again, man, by the appointment of God, is to live by hope--by the hope of heaven, which alone can anchor the soul amidst the fitful fortunes of our earthly pilgrimage.
3. By Gods appointment, we are also to nourish our souls by charity, by sympathy with our brethren, by bearing their burdens and helping their joys. There can be no life worth living without brotherly love--without a ready heart and hand for the needy, the suffering, and the erring.
4. Finally our true life must he connected with, and flow from, the testimony of a good conscience, which, if merited, no outward condition can suppress or pervert.
III. Such are the heaven-appointed means of life and growth within the reach of all of us. It is these that our Saviour proffers to us. They were His peace and joy. They are the fountain still flowing at the foot of His Cross. Other streams there are, sparkling, attractive, rolling over golden sands and beneath a brilliant sky; yet there is a voice in their murmur, ever saying,--He that drinks of us shall thirst again, and thirst as often as he comes to draw. But from the mountain of the beatitudes, and again from the olive shade of Gethsemane, and from the darkness and agony of Calvary, I hear the voice,--If any man thirst let him come unto Me and drink, and the water that I will give him shall be in him a well of water springing up unto everlasting life. (A. P. Peabody.)
The food of man
If this be true, what a strange comment on it is the world around us at this hour! Turn to what class of our countrymen you like, and in every variety of expression upon their countenance you will see written deep their conviction, in every changeful accent of their voices you will hear uttered their practical belief, that they can live by bread alone. It is for bread--using bread in the largest sense as meaning all material things--that men toil, and exhaust their finest energies. And as statesmen, and philosophers, and priests behold these things, each comes forward with his gospel for mankind.
I. First, we have the gospel of education. Let us take care that each child learns the elementary principles of knowledge, and we may hope that the coming generation shall have a higher idea of national and of social life. Well, certainly the very last persons in England to depreciate the blessings of secular instruction are the clergy. But let not educational enthusiasts think because they have provided partially against material deterioration that they have discovered a moral cure. It may change the form of crime; it will not touch the root from which it springs.
II. We have then from others the message of the philosophers. Let us eat of this tree, and live forever. Now, while we gladly acknowledge all the past successes of science and of philosophy, and while we thankfully receive every new discovery as a further revelation of the wisdom and the love of the Creator, we say this is not the bread of life for sorrowing, sinning humanity. This is no gospel for all mankind. Clad in the purple of her pride, and the white linen of her fine-spun theories, philosophys few cultured friends may fare sumptuously every day in her high hall of state; but humanity, like Lazarus, with hunger in its soul, and its body covered with festering sores of sin, lies helpless at her gate.
III. The more experience I have, the more deeply I am persuaded that the power to accomplish it is the preaching of a personal crucified christ. That--the incarnate Word of God--is still and ever the bread by which nations and men must live. It was not a new science, it was not an advanced thought, it was not an improved philosophy, it was not a merely exalted morality, it was not the idyllic life of a Galilean peasant, that men preached in the early days, in the purple dawn of Christianity, and by the preaching of it shook the Empire and revolutionised the world. And it is not by any such means, or by anything which appeals exclusively to the intellect; nay, not even by a vague accommodating theology with no doctrinal articulation--which, polype-like, floats on the tides of human thought, rising as they rise, falling as they fall--that men and nations can be saved now. It is as of old--by the preaching of the Word, Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I am the Bread of Life, said Christ. (T. T. Shore, M. A.)
The staff of life
I. We are to consider what our peril is. In one word, it is the peril of an over-mastering materialism. Look on England today, the England that speaks to us through Liverpool and Manchester, through Cabinet and Parliament, her stout hand not upon her heart but upon her pocket, cold towards us, sneeringly indifferent to the triumph of law, order, and right, anxious only about the cargoes of cotton, which are to feed her whirling spindles. Tell us, ye British statesmen, tell us, ye sordid sons of heroic sires, are Constitutions only parchment? Are nations only herds of farmers, artisans, and traders? Is chartered freedom only sounding rhetoric? Is duty only a name? Is honour dead? And is there nothing for us, in this nineteenth century, but to delve and spin and trade, to clutch and hoard, to eat and drink, and bloat and rot and die, and make no sign?
II. What our deliverance must be. Deliverance is what we want; not mere respite, lifting the agony from our spirits to lay it over upon our children; deliverance, complete and final. What avails it in a raging fever, rapidly nearing its crisis, that we comfort ourselves with cooling drinks, while the disease is striking boldly at our vitals? It is written in Gods Word, and written in all the history of the race: Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Such is the Divine regimen for the nations. They live, if they live at all, by no felicity of position, soil, or climate, by no abundance of material good, but by the living word of the living God. Work we must, and shall, and should. And work will bring us wealth. And wealth will bring us power. What then? Need wealth be idolised, or spent upon our lusts? Need power he vaunted and abused? If so, we perish, as Tyre and Sidon perished; perish, as Carthage perished; perish, as, according to the Indian legend, the last of our gigantic mastodons perished, smitten down by the thunderbolt of the Great Spirit. Thank God, it need not be so. Nor is it our task to lay our feeble, ineffectual finger upon this vast revolving wheel, which carries the whole machinery of our earthly life, and bid it pause. It is not our task to slay this giant of our material prosperity, and stretch his huge corpse out across the continent. Ours is the far grander task of teaching the giant wisdom, and subduing his earth-born energies to Him who has told us that Man shall not live by bread alone. How, then, shall men and nations live? By every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God; so reads our text. The Hebrews in the desert had no need of bread; they were fed with manna from the skies. But our Lord proved that there was no need even of manna. It was enough for Him, as the Son of Man, that He had faith in God. On this He feasted, while He fasted, the forty days. It was Gods commandment, which He obeyed in fasting, and this commandment, thus obeyed in faith, was the bread He ate. The commandments of God, then, are the bread of life for the nations. If a Christian people, then we must be loyal to our calling, baptising our unexampled material prosperity into the name of Christ, and dedicating our wealth, with a wise and eager generosity, to Christian uses. (R. D. Hitchcock, D. D.)
Bread for the hungry
I. Let us, that we may get the meaning of this text with regard to providence, reflect upon the children of Israel in the wilderness. God has proved by miracle, that although He chooses to act usually according to certain rules, and nourish the body with bread and with meat, yet He is not tied to rules, but is absolute King and Master, and can do as He wills; and even in the subtle processes by which food is digested and assimilated to the flesh and blood, and bone and sinew, He can work without the means of ordinary chemistries. He can dissolve without alembics, and fuse without crucibles. But you say, Ah! but that cannot concern us, for He never works miracles now. Ay, but I reply, it is most marvellous for God to be able to do a miraculous thing without a miracle. I have seen many miracles, which were not miracles, but yet all the more miraculous. The poor have lacked bread; stones were not turned into bread for them, but they had their bread as much by miracle as if rocks had crumbled into food. We have seen the poor merchant reduced to distress, and he said, Now I cannot see any hope for me. God must rend His heavens, and put His hand through the very windows to deliver me. No heavens were rent, but the deliverance came. Now, the Lord can this day without a miracle work such a miracle that we shall have all our wants supplied, for man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. You have heard the story of the martyr who was condemned to die. The judge said railingly: You will be in prison. I shall make you no allowance for food, and what can your God do for you? How can He feed you? Why, said the poor prisoner, if He wills it, He can feed me from your table: and it was so, though unknown to his cruel judge; for until his day of burning came, the wife of the judge, touched with sympathy, always secreted food and fed him abundantly even from the persecutors board.
II. The spiritual bearing of the text. Man shall not live by bread alone; that does but nourish the mere coarse fabric of clay; he lives by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God--that nourishes the immortal spirit; that sustains the heavenly flame which God has put there by the work of regeneration and conversion.
1. The text speaks of a hunger and of its consequences. Very many of you understand what this hunger means. There was a time when the world suited us well enough. But suddenly God put a new life into us; we knew not how. The first evidence we had of that life was that we began to hunger; we were not satisfied; we were unhappy. The soul was conscious of sin, and hungered for pardon; conscious of guilt, and hungered for purity; conscious of absence from God, and hungered and thirsted after His presence.
(1) Now, speaking of that hunger, you know that it was a most painful thing when first we knew it. It was so painful to some of us that we could not rest. We wanted Christ.
(2) Then that hunger, moreover, was utterly insatiable--nothing could stop it. Friends said, You must take worldly amusement. The legalist said, You must perform such and such duties; it was like attempting to fill a soul with bubbles. Still our hunger cried, Give, give, give us something more substantial, more Divine than this.
(3) Next, this hunger is impetuous. Sometimes it will come at inconvenient seasons. Henry Smith--an old preacher at St. Pauls Cross, preaching upon the text: As newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the Word that ye may grow thereby--observes, When hunger assails infants, they neither regard leisure, nor necessity, nor willingness of their mothers, but all excuses and business set apart, so soon as they cry for food they must be fed. So it is with a man who has begun to feel the need of Christ.
2. Notice, the heavenly bread and its surprising excellency. This bread, you see, is the Word of God. Now, the Word is given to us first here in the Bible, as it is written; it is given to us, secondly, from the lips of Gods own chosen and appointed ambassadors. He that despises either of these two, will soon find himself growing lean in spirit. But now, why is it that we need this food at all? I answer first, we need it to sustain the life which we have received. As life spiritual depends upon God to give it, so upon God to sustain it. Only He who makes us Christians can keep us so. We need this Divine food not only to keep us barely alive, but to make us grow. Besides, this food is necessary to strengthen us when we have grown up. How can we wonder that a man is weak if he does not eat? It is no wonder if Christians find themselves weak in prayer, weak in suffering, weak in action, weak in faith, and weak in love, if they neglect to feed upon the Word of God. Moreover, we need to have spiritual food also for our joy as well as for our strength. How often do you see a man sad and troubled, who, if he had sufficient sustenance, would soon have sparkling eyes and a shining face! Many Christians, I do not doubt, are very low and miserable because they do not feed upon the Word. Are you starving your souls? If so, there is no wonder that your joys are dead, and hang their heads like withered things. I trust many of us know what it is to feed to the full upon the Word of God. And do you not bear me witness that it is rich food?
3. A great privilege involving a consequent duty. We have been made to eat manna, as angels food which we did not know. It was far above our carnal judgments, yet they who feared the Lord said it was like wafers made with honey. Israel found it to be very sweet, and indeed it is said by the Rabbis that the manna had such a peculiarity about it, that it was always the flavour that a man wished it to be, and I think it is very much so with Gospel preaching; if a man chooses it to be disagreeable to him, it will be; but if he desires it to be sweet to him, it will be; he will be sure to be fed if he wants to be fed. For so is it with the precious Book; very much of its flavour is in our own mouths, and when our mouths are out of taste, we think the Bible has lost its savour. It is often your ears that are to blame, not the preacher; do not be so quick to blame him, but be a little more rapid in examining yourself. Neither did our fathers know. By nature, however much we may respect them, they are no better than ourselves, and they knew nothing about this subtle, mysterious, munificent way by which God supplies the needs of the souls of His people. Well now, if God has given us such food as this, I think the least thing we can do is to go and gather it. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The true life of man
This passage is composed of two propositions, a negative and an affirmative. The verb is the same in both, and therefore can only have one and the same meaning in both propositions. The first taken literally is an obvious truism. The second, taken literally, is unintelligible. That man cannot live by bread alone is patent to all. At least two more substances are needful for existence, namely, air and water. Nor can air, water, and bread alone suffice for human life. Man must undergo some exertion in order to derive nourishment from the air, water, and bread, and he needs likewise to sleep and to have shelter or else he will die. As man rises in the scale of being, many more things become necessary to life which a primitive savage never thought of. The second proposition, Man doth live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth o the Lord, taken literally, is manifestly unintelligible. We can understand that bread eaten and assimilated is one of the many things required to support human life, but in no sense can we understand the process of eating and assimilating to be applied to any words human or Divine. The second proposition is therefore so manifestly figurative that the literal interpretation must be abandoned. And if the second proposition be figurative, so likewise must be the first; for the verb which gives meaning to the second is the same in both. The key to the meaning of the passage lies in the sense given to the verb live and to the phrase every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord. The author used this term live in a very exalted sense. It was much more than mere existence. We all know what kind of torpid, stupid life we mean to describe by the term to vegetate; a life of motionless, passionless inactivity--mere existence without exertion, without animation. A higher life than this belongs in common to all animals; but a mere animal life was not, I think, what the author intended when he said man cannot live by bread alone. Just as we use the term vegetate to express inactivity, so we use the term animalism to express a brutish kind of life of which selfish indulgence is the alpha and omega. The life of man is something higher than the life of the beast, and cannot be sustained by the mere supply of animal wants. Taking the word bread to embrace typically every possible object needful for animal sustenance, vigour, and enjoyment, man wants for his life much more than bread. Man cannot live by bread alone. If he lives by bread alone, he has either never been a man at all or has ceased to be a man, he is only an animal. And , I venture to say, is one lesson that has to be re-learnt in our own times. Whether things were worse or better in times that are gone, one thing is most obvious now. Many men and women are steeped in the notion that it is only by bread that man can live and by nothing else--that is to say that their whole lives depend upon the constant and adequate supply of those things which go to furnish animal health, animal strength, animal spirits, and general animal enjoyment; that this earthly bread is all they ever want, or all that they need ever seek; that when these things are provided, the rest of everything can go to the wall, and the kingdom of God along with it. Too often parents by precept or example instill this animalism into the minds of their children, impressing it upon them by word and deed that their first and last duty in life is to get all they can; or else they tacitly acquiesce in their childrens downward tendency and take no pains to eradicate their selfishness or to cultivate within them higher pursuits. It takes little from the sadness of this outlook to know that in a very large measure the state of society in which we live is very much to blame for much of this concentration on earthly good. On the one hand competition and the struggle for existence has made it very hard for some people to live at all, and on the other hand luxurious habits have not only grown in number but have gradually taken their place in the category of the necessaries of life. The wisdom of the Stoic which commended the restraint of desire as a means of conferring happiness is now all but forgotten; and parents and children together seem to act as if the attainment of desired objects was the whole secret of happiness, and the multiplication of gratified wishes led only to satisfaction. It is a wonder they do not see that the more we have the more we want; it is feeding the disease of longing to gratify wish after wish; and I must add it is cruelty to the young to let them grow up with the idea that the true happiness of mails life consists in getting all we want and having our own way. If the course of Divine Providence with Israel be any guide to parents in the training of their children--and I think it is entitled to that place by those words, Thou shalt remember in thine heart that as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee--we may well lay to heart that to deny our children some longed for pleasure, to submit them to mild privations and to disappoint them in the execution of their will is to be following a Divine example which seeks the truer, higher, and more enduring happiness of His children by the temporary infliction of some needful chastisement. But no parent can do this with judgment or moderation, or can conduct the process of disappointing his childrens wishes properly unless he has learnt for himself the lesson, Man cannot live by bread alone, unless he knows by experience that his life in its truest sense does not consist in the abundance of things which he possesseth, but that his troubles and cares have been part of his most valuable treasure, and that his life has been enriched more often by what he has lost than by what he has gained. And this brings us to consider what is meant by the assertion of the text that man doth live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord. This phrase becomes intelligible to us the moment we understand what is meant by the term live. The truest and highest life of man is not mere existence, nor the fullest enjoyment of his physical nature, but the highest exercise of his noblest functions as a moral and spiritual being, as a member of the great brotherhood of mankind, as a child of God. From such an elevation, the wants and cares of this lower life lose much of their overwhelming importance. Gains and losses are less felt as changes in the atmospheric pressure upon the soul. Daily bread is no longer regarded as the sum total of aspiration, as the sustenance of a heaven-born spirit. In the devout language of Job, I have esteemed the words of His mouth more than my necessary food. Now to live such a life we must not be content with bread, or with the most ample supply of all our physical wants, but we can only live it by the word of God, i.e. by following the higher law of our being, by seeking for and finding all possible truth, by acting in harmony with the known laws of Nature and with the known laws of human nature which are moral and spiritual as well as physical. If we but endeavour to have God in all our thoughts, to set God always before us, then our life will be a human life, and not the life of the vegetable or the life of the beast that perisheth. Why, even for the perfection of our lower life--the purely physical--we must attain to the knowledge of Gods good laws, and follow them faithfully, or else the bread of life will fail to nourish us; all its thousand embellishments will destroy and not promote our happiness. How much more, then, must we seek, in active obedience to His good laws, that perfection of moral and spiritual health in which alone the highest life of man consists! It still holds good that he that seeketh his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life the same shall find it. Paradoxical as it may sound, the law of self-denial for the well-being and comfort of others is the only condition in which our own well-being and comfort are attainable, or when attained can be made enduring. (C. Voysey, M. A.)
Spiritual food
A few years ago died, at one of the missionary stations of India, a native called Brindelbund. He had spent sixty or seventy years in the service of Satan. Talking to his Hindoo brethren, he would say, And whom do you need but Him whom I have found? He would take his wallet of books, and travel two or three hundred miles to distribute them; and this he did for fourteen or fifteen years. Mrs. Chamberlain, in his last days, would go to his, bedside, and say, Brindelbund, shall I get you some tea? Can you eat bread? He would lay his hand on the New Testament: Sister, this is my tea--this is my bread; man was not made to live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. How valuable the Gospel, which can thus give happiness to a man who had spent the greater part of his life in the slavery of idolatry!
Feeding on the Word
In her autobiography the late Frances Ridley Havergal says that after giving up her soul to the Saviour, For the first time my Bible was sweet to me, and the first passage which I distinctly remember reading in a new and glad light was the fourteenth and following chapters of St. Johns Gospel. I read them feeling how wondrously loving and tender they were, and that now I too might share in their beauty and comfort. In this statement we have the secret of that ladys symmetrical piety and eminent usefulness. As she began her spiritual life by feeding it on the Divine Word, so she continued. She made it her daily bread. By reading it constantly, by meditating upon it, by implicitly believing it, by praying for light upon it, and by claiming its promises as her own, she learned to see and to know God, and to possess in very large measure that eternal life which consists in knowing Him. Hers was, therefore, a Scriptural piety. Her faith pushed its roots deep into Gods Word. And whoever wishes to be truly and actively pious, must, like her, nourish his heart with Scripture truth, since no Christian ever did, or ever can, attain deep piety who does not learn to sip sweetness from Gods words as bees suck honey from the flowers of the field.
Spiritual assimilation
In a town in Japan I once wanted to hold a meeting in the hotel, but only two fishermen came. I entered into conversation about Christ and His salvation with them instead of preaching. I told them that all men were descended from one pair, the present difference in the appearance of the people in separate countries being caused by the climate, food, and water. One of the men replied, I understand it is just the same with fish; if they feed on green seaweed they become green themselves. It is the same with Christians, if they read and meditate upon the Word of God, they will become like God. If they follow the world and feed upon its pleasures, then they will become like the world, and no one will see the difference between them and those who, without disguise, are on the way to perdition. (R. Davison.)
Living by bread alone
What is it, therefore, to live by bread alone? Let us contemplate the present age. Behold a workman of the fields always looking down upon his plough, and who never gives himself time to look up towards the heaven whence fertility descends; behold a workman of the town for whom all days are alike, and who quits his trade only for pleasure, or what he believes to be such; behold a man who has dividends, and who lulls himself to sleep in a selfish indolence, whence he awakes only twice a year to receive them; behold an employe, that is to say a man who during his life gives six days to writings of which he is weary and the seventh to amusements of which he will become weary also; behold a wealthy man, and when one asks what is his occupation, he has only one, that of administering his fortune, and, if possible, augmenting it; and those savants who deal only in science, searching unceasingly into the truth of facts, and forgetting the voice which said: I am the truth; and those artists who pursue the beautiful whilst forgetting the supreme beauty; and those literary men, who seek the sublime, whilst forgetting that religion is the chief sublime; and those magistrates, who only judge or administer; and those potentates of the earth, who only skim and rule . . . All those men are, perhaps, good and honourable, incapable of staining their reputation, of dishonouring themselves . . . But they live by bread only; the earthly life rules them, carries them away, preoccupies them, to the point of leading them to egotism and indifference; they are so mindful of themselves that they forget God; of the world, that they forget heaven; of life, that they forget death and immortality; they take so much care of themselves that they take none of their neighbour; and as to their family, they dream of its advancement. They live in a manner most honourable, doubtless; but they live by bread only . . . only, and this is their folly and transgression. (Athanase Coquerel.)
As a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee.--
The afflictions of gods people
I. The afflictions of Gods people--however complicated, however prolonged, of whatever materials they may be made--proceed from the purest benignity of our Heavenly Father. Suffering does not come from God at all. I know that He overrules it, and that He makes up, if I may so speak, of the briars and thorns which so plentifully grow in this wilderness a hedge by which His children are kept in and restrained. But He did not cause your sufferings. If man had continued in his primeval state of innocence, there would have been no aching heart. But suffering is to be considered as destructive or as corrective. Now, where it is destructive, it is an expression of displeasure. We know that punishment ultimately inflicted will be destructive; but, remember, afflictions may be considered also as corrective. Then they issue from love. Following up the beautiful idea of the text--that of parental discipline--I say they proceed from a solicitude to improve the child, to correct many vices, to form the character of the child as perfectly as it can be formed. Now, remember, that the love of your Heavenly Father regulates all this.
II. Your afflictions are brought about by Divine wisdom--no chance, no accident. God cannot explain Himself to you, but before Him everything is arranged in the most exquisite order, in the most luminous combination. Not an atom floats without His permission; the hairs of your head are all numbered.
III. All afflictions will issue in your highest good. Yon must take Gods word; All things work together for good to them that love God. This is the secret--to them that love God. God loves you--you love God; what is the consequence? God is employing His attributes for you; God is taking care that there shall be nothing hostile, however inexplicable may be the circumstances of your life. They shall work for your good--perhaps not for your gratification. The physicians prescriptions do not work for the pleasure of the party; the probing instrument of the surgeon gives the patient pain, but it is all for good. God is not absent from you; He is present. This is a consolatory thought: your Father never leaves you for a moment; He is educating you for Himself. (T. Lessey.)
On the purposes of God in chastening man
I. The way in which God tried the Israelites in the wilderness was this: he was perpetually exposing them to difficulties and dangers, which were calculated to try the strength of their faith and trust in Him.
II. What, then, were the designs which God had in view in thus bringing the Israelites into these difficulties, and in thus correcting them?
1. The first was that they might know themselves, to know their hearts, whether they would keep His commandments or no.
2. But the second point, in which it was the intention of God to instruct the Israelites, and in them all mankind, was their absolute dependence upon Himself. He fed them with manna, which neither they nor their fathers had known, in order that He might make them know that men do not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord do men live. More important knowledge than this of the providence of God cannot be learned by men. While we thus practically know the power and presence of God, we shall feel the dispositions which that knowledge ought to inspire; we shall watch over our conduct with a filial dread of offending Him; we shall place an unbounded confidence in His wisdom to direct, His power to strengthen, His providence to defend, His goodness to bless us.
III. Having thus taken a view of the purposes of God toward the Israelites in the desert, it remains that we consider for whose instruction these designs were accomplished.
1. In the first place, He makes use of afflictions and trials to prove you, as He did the Israelites of old. These trials you have doubtless felt, but have you seen the hand of God in them?
2. What, then, is His aim? It is to teach thee to know thyself and Him. To know thyself. You will tell me, perhaps, you do not know yourself sufficiently; you will acknowledge you are a weak, sinful Creature. To say this from theory only is a very different thing from saying it from experience. Self-knowledge is not soon taught. You cannot acquire it merely by reading books, or by meditating on it in your study; it must be the result of long and painful observation of your own heart.
3. But God designs also to teach you to know Him. You are amazed at the stupidity of the Israelites; they had so many proofs of the presence of God! And have not you as many? (J. Venn, M. A.)
Divine correction
Divine correction may be considered--
I. As the means of religious improvement.
1. Affliction is a restraint from evil, without which we should frequently fall the victim of our folly and impetuosity.
2. Affliction is an excitement to duty.
3. Affliction is a needful ordeal.
4. Affliction is a seasonable monitor.
II. As the discipline of paternal regard. A father corrects his children--
1. With reluctance. Tries everything else first.
2. With wisdom.
3. With tenderness.
4. With design. For our good.
III. As the subject of filial attention. How awful is it when affliction is useless, when correction hardens, when medicine poisons! Beware of this--Consider in thine heart, etc.
1. Acknowledge His hand. Trace your afflictions to their proper cause.
2. Submit to His authority. Submission is the perfection of Christianity--the submission not of apathy, but sensibility. Shall a scholar murmur against the discipline of wisdom and goodness?
3. Improve His design. This must be known to be improved. You cannot know each particular design, but you may the grand and ultimate one. (Sketches of Four Hundred Sermons.)
Design of Gods chastisements
This is the manner of Gods proceedings--to send good after evil, as He made light after darkness; to turn justice into mercy, as tie turned water into wine; for as the beasts must be killed before they could be sacrificed, so men must be killed before they can be sacrificed--that is, the knife of correction must prune and dress them, and lop off their rotten twigs before they can bring forth fruit; these are the cords which bind the ram unto the altar, lest when he is brought thither he should run from thence again; this is the chariot which carrieth our thoughts to heaven, as it did Nebuchadnezzars. This is the hammer which squareth the rough stones till they be plain and smooth and fit for the temple. (H. Smith.)
Gods chastening
A bystander in the market place of a country town saw a group of boys quarrelling and fighting. In a few moments he observed a man from a side street cross the place, enter the group, bring out one boy, and severely rebuke him. The bystander pondered, his thoughts shaping themselves thus: That is a father, selecting his own boy, plucking him from the evil out of fatherly love, and dealing with him in such a manner as to make him fear a repetition of the conduct. We are chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world. This is the paternal motive. (Mrs. Umpleby.)
Chastisement a proof of love
I had a teacher, when I was a boy, who used to love me and let me off easy in my lessons, and I thought he was splendid. I had another teacher who, out of school and out of doors, was almost like a brother and a father to me, but who was very rigid with me in the mathematical room--and with me especially; and when I once complained to him that he did not treat any other boy as he did me, he said, No, I do not, for I do not love any other boy as much as I do you. He brought the screw down on me tremendously, but it was the only thing that carried me through mathematics. At last he developed in me an energy and an enterprise in that direction that led to results that I never should have achieved under any other culture than that. Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth . . . But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons, saith the Word of the Lord. (H. W. Beecher.)
God the best Ruler
Man would have God go according to his mind in chastening and afflicting him. He would have God correct him only in such a kind, in such a manner and measure as he would choose. He saith in his heart: If God would correct me in this or that, I could bear it, but I do not like to be corrected in the present way. One saith: If God would smite me in my estate, I could bear it, but not in my body; another saith: If God would smite me with sickness, I could bear it, but not my children; or, If God would afflict me only in such a degree, I could submit, but my heart can hardly submit to so great a measure of affliction. Thus we would have it according to our minds as to the measure of the continuance of our afflictions. We would be corrected for so many days, but months and years of trouble are not according to our mind. Man would have God govern not only himself, but the whole world, according to his mind; man hath much of this in him. Luther wrote to Melanchthon when he was so exceedingly troubled at the providence of God in this world: Our brother Philip is to be admonished that he would forbear governing the world. We can hardly let God alone to rule that world which Himself alone hath made. (J. Caryl.)
Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God.--
Incitements to the Divine service
Time and again Israel was called to remember that Gods goodness to them was designed to lead to more faithful service. They were to beware lest forgetfulness of this and a life of self-indulgence should lead to their undoing. In chap. 28, the terrible results of ingratitude and disobedience were set before them. See, especially in verses 63, 64 of that chapter, a graphic picture in general outline of the state of the Jewish race for the past eighteen hundred years. For those who have no time or inclination to study the history of the race, the graphic description of their position in Scotts Ivanhoe and the historical notes appended to that work, will give a clear conception of their miserable condition. The passage teaches us that when men have received blessing from God it is fitting for them to render Him a willing service, and that ingratitude here means destruction.
I. The reasonableness of rendering a grateful service to God.
1. This was clearly evident in the case of Israel. God rightly demands as the Creator obedience and service from all men. Surely, then, from a people so highly favoured as Israel! Delivered from slavery; given a noble system of laws; brought under the direct rule of Jehovah in the theocracy; and given in promise a land flowing with milk and honey. They were highly favoured, and in gratitude should have consecrated themselves to the Divine service.
2. If they had reasons for thankfulness, etc., we have greater reasons. Contrast the state of our native land since the time when Columba, Cuthbert, Austin of Canterbury, etc., began their apostolic labours among its tribes with our present preeminence among the nations.
3. As individual subjects of this empire we have great reason to offer to God a grateful service. How blessed our lot compared with that of many peoples whose manner of life and customs have been portrayed by a Livingstone, Stanley, J.G. Paten, and others! Contrast the state of less highly favoured peoples with our own individual lives, under righteous government, religious liberty, even-handed justice, etc. There are many reasons why we should render to God gratitude, praise, and willing, joyful service.
II. The folly of the sin of ingratitude toward God.
1. What we are to beware of is the danger that whilst we enjoy the gifts, the gracious Giver should be forgotten--of spending all our time and energy on the acquisition of Gods gifts to be used for our own pleasure rather than in seeking the Divine glory.
2. Into this sin the Israelites fell once and again in the course of their history. Even after the stern lesson of the Babylonian exile they fell into this sin (Hag_1:1-15, etc.). In our Lords time this sin was aggravated by hypocrisy. The formal religionists drew near to God with outward devotion, but their hearts were far from Him. The self-pleasing, worldly agriculturist of the parable was, it may be surmised, a typical figure (Luk_12:15-21).
3. There is too much of this spirit in our own time. Among all classes there is a feverish grasping after riches and pleasure; there is a striving after wealth, not that those who strive may become better men and women, and be better enabled to serve God, but that they may have more of ease, of passing pleasures. Possessions gained and received without thankful gratitude to God and more earnest effort in His service turn to dust and ashes in the using.
4. This results from the failure of men to desire first and receive Gods best gifts in Jesus Christ.
III. The effect of either spirit on national and individual life.
1. When a nation rests on God in its government and institutions, and shows grateful loyalty to Him, that nation will grow in righteousness and strengths, and become a power for good in the world.
2. To the individual who serves Him in grateful love He will give His richest blessings. Material gifts may sometimes be withheld as not for their good; but joyful assurance of His presence will be given to them, and of the certainty of His promises.
3. Far otherwise will it be with those who forget God. Israels history tells how the curse has fallen (Isa_1:8). God-forgetfulness led to hardness of heart, spiritual pride, and the invocation on themselves of the awful sentence, His blood be on us and on our children.
4. Are there not many among us who fall into the same error--who reap luxuriant fields, who amass enormous gains without any thought of gratitude to God, or any effort in His service? Such love of money--of the possessions of this life--is a root of all evil, leading to the hardening of the heart and the materialising of the life.
5. The Divine rule is the only safe one: Seek ye first the kingdom of God, etc. Through Israels failure to render God a grateful service they failed to carry out the Divine commission confided to them as a nation, i.e. to make Gods name, etc., known (Psa_67:1-7.). Does our thankful gratitude to God lead us to do so? (Wm. Frank Scott.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v2
Deuteronomy
THE LESSON OF MEMORY
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Deu 8:2.
The strand of our lives usually slips away smoothly enough, but days such as this, the last Sunday in a year, are like the knots on a sailor’s log, which, as they pass through his fingers, tell him how fast it is being paid out from the reel, and how far it has run off.
They suggest a momentary consciousness of the swift passage of life, and naturally lead us to a glance backwards and forwards, both of which occupations ought to be very good for us. The dead flat upon which some of us live may be taken as an emblem of the low present in which most of us are content to pass our lives, affording nowhere a distant view, and never enabling us to see more than a street’s length ahead of us. It is a good thing to get up upon some little elevation and take a wider view, backwards and forwards.
And so now I venture to let the season preach to us, and to confine myself simply to suggesting for you one or two very plain and obvious thoughts which may help to make our retrospect wise and useful. And there are two main considerations which I wish to submit. The first is -what we ought to be chiefly occupied with as we look back; and secondly, what the issue of such a retrospect ought to be.
I. With what we should be mainly occupied as we look back. Memory, like all other faculties, may either help us or hinder us. As is the man, so will be his remembrance. The tastes which rule his present will determine the things that he likes best to think about in the past. There are many ways of going wrong in our retrospects. Some of us, for instance, prefer to think with pleasure about things that ought never to have been done, and to give a wicked immortality to thoughts that ought never to have had a being. Some men’s tastes and inclinations are so vitiated and corrupted that they find a joy in living their badnesses over again. Some of us, looking back on the days that are gone, select by instinctive preference for remembrance, the vanities and frivolities and trifles which were the main things in them whilst they lasted. Such a use of the great faculty of memory is like the folly of the Egyptians who embalmed cats and vermin. Do not let us be of those, who have in their memories nothing but rubbish, or something worse, who let down the drag-net into the depths of the past and bring it up full only of mud and foulnesses, and of ugly monsters that never ought to have been dragged into the daylight.
Then there are some of us who abuse memory just as much by picking out, with perverse ingenuity, every black bit that lies in the distance behind us, all the disappointments, all the losses, all the pains, all the sorrows. Some men look back and say, with Jacob in one of his moods, ‘Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life!’ Yes! and the same man, when he was in a better spirit, said, and a great deal more truly, ‘The God that fed me all my life long, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil.’ Do not paint like Rembrandt, even if you do not paint like Turner. Do not dip your brush only in the blackness, even if you cannot always dip it in molten sunshine.
And there are some of us who, in like manner, spoil all the good that we could get out of a wise retrospect, by only looking back in such a fashion as to feed a sentimental melancholy, which is, perhaps, the most profitless of all the ways of looking backwards.
Now here are the two points, in this verse of my text, which would put all these blunders and all others right, telling us what we should chiefly think about when we look back, and from what point of view the retrospect of the past must be taken in order that it should be salutary. ‘Thou shalt remember all the way by which the Lord thy God hath led thee.’ Let memory work under the distinct recognition of divine guidance in every part of the past. That is the first condition of making the retrospect blessed. ‘To humble thee and to prove thee, and to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments, or no’; let us look back with a clear recognition of the fact that the use of life is to test, and reveal, and to make, character. This world, and all its outward engagements, duties, and occupations, is but a scaffolding, on which the builders may stand to rear the true temple, and when the building is reared you may do what you like with the scaffolding. So we have to look back on life from this point of view, that its joys and sorrows, its ups and downs, its work and repose, the vicissitudes and sometimes contrariety of its circumstances and conditions, are all for the purpose of making us, and of making plain to ourselves, what we are. ‘To humble thee,’ that is, to knock the self-confidence out of us, and to bring us to say: ‘I am nothing and Thou art everything; I myself am a poor weak rag of a creature that needs Thy hand to stiffen me, or I shall not be able to resist or to do.’ That is one main lesson that life is meant to teach us. Whoever has learnt to say by reason of the battering and shocks of time, by reason of sorrows and failures, by reason of joys, too, and fruition,-’Lord, I come to Thee as depending upon Thee for everything,’ has wrung its supreme good out of life, and has fulfilled the purpose of the Father, who has led us all these years, to humble us into the wholesome diffidence that says: ‘Not in myself, but in Thee are all my strength and my hope.’
I need not do more than remind you of the other cognate purposes which are suggested here. Life is meant, not only to bring us to humble self-distrust, as a step towards devout dependence on God, but also to reveal us to ourselves; for we only know what we are by reflecting on what we have done, and the only path by which self-knowledge can be attained is the path of observant recollection of our conduct in daily life.
Another purpose for which the whole panorama of life is made to pass before us, and for which all the gymnastic of life exercises us, is that we may be made submissive to the great Will, and may keep His commandments.
These thoughts should be with us in our retrospect, and then our retrospect will be blessed: First, we are to look back and see God’s guidance everywhere, and second, we are to judge of the things that we remember by their tendency to make character, to make us humble, to reveal us to ourselves, and to knit us in glad obedience to our Father God.
II. And now turn to the other consideration which may help to make remembrance a good, viz., the issues to which our retrospect must tend, if it is to be anything more than sentimental recollection.
First, let me say: Remember and be thankful. If what I have been saying as to the standard by which events are to be tried be true; if it be the case that the main fact about things is their power to mould persons and to make character, then there follows, very plainly and clearly, that all things that come within the sweep of our memory may equally contribute to our highest good.
Good does not mean pleasure. Bright-being may not always be well-being, and the highest good has a very much nobler meaning than comfort and satisfaction. And so, realising the fact that the best of things is that they shall make us like God, then we can turn to the past and judge it wisely, because then we shall see that all the diversity, and even the opposition, of circumstances and events, may co-operate towards the same end. Suppose two wheels in a great machine, one turns from right to left and the other from left to right, but they fit into one another, and they both produce one final result of motion. So the moments in my life which I call blessings and gladness, and the moments in my life which I call sorrows and tortures, may work into each other, and they will do so if I take hold of them rightly, and use them as they ought to be used. They will tend to the highest good whether they be light or dark; even as night with its darkness and its dews has its ministration and mission of mercy for the wearied eye no less than day with its brilliancy and sunshine; even as the summer and the winter are equally needful, and equally good for the crop. So in our lives it is good for us, sometimes, that we be brought into the dark places; it is good for us sometimes that the leaves be stripped from the trees, and the ground be bound with frost.
And so for both kinds of weather, dear brethren, we have to remember and be thankful. It is a hard lesson, I know, for some of us. There may be some listening to me whose memory goes back to this dying year as the year that has held the sorest sorrow of their lives; to whom it has brought some loss that has made earth dark. And it seems hard to tell quivering lips to be thankful, and to bid a man be grateful though his eyes fill with tears as he looks back on such a past. But yet it is true that it is good for us to be drawn, or to be driven, to Him; it is good for us to have to tread even a lonely path if it makes us lean more on the arm of our Beloved. It is good for us to have places made empty if, as in the year when Israel’s King died, we shall thereby have our eyes purged to behold the Lord sitting on the Royal Seat.
‘Take it on trust a little while,
Thou soon shalt read the mystery right,
In the full sunshine of His smile.’
And for the present let us try to remember that He dwelleth in the darkness as in the light, and that we are to be thankful for the things that help us to be near Him, and not only for the things that make us outwardly glad. So I venture to say even to those of you who may be struggling with sad remembrances, remember and be thankful.
I have no doubt there are many of us who have to look back, if not upon a year desolated by some blow that never can be repaired, yet upon a year in which failing resources and declining business, or diminished health, or broken spirits, or a multitude of minute but most disturbing cares and sorrows, do make it hard to recognise the loving Hand in all that comes. Yet to such, too, I would say: ‘All things work together for good,’ therefore all things are to be embraced in the thankfulness of our retrospect.
The second and simple practical suggestion that I make is this: Remember, and let the memory lead to contrition. Perhaps I am speaking to some men or women for whom this dying year holds the memory of some great lapse from goodness; some young man who for the first time has been tempted to sensuous sin; some man who may have been led into slippery places in regard to business integrity. I draw a ‘bow at a venture’ when I speak of such things-perhaps some one is listening to me who would give a great deal if he or she could forget a certain past moment of this dying year, which makes their cheeks hot yet whilst they think of it. To such I say: Remember, go close into the presence of the black thing, and get the consciousness of it driven into your heart; for such remembrance is the first step to deliverance from the load, and to your passing, emancipated from the bitterness, into the year that lies before you.
But even if there are none of us to whom such remarks would specially apply, let us summon up to ourselves the memories of these bygone days. In all the three hundred and sixty-five of them, my friend, how many moments stand out distinct before you as moments of high communion with God? How many times can you remember of devout consecration to Him? How many, when-as visitors to the Riviera reckon the number of days in the season in which, far across the water, they have seen Corsica-you can remember this year to have beheld, faint and far away, ‘the mountains that are round about’ the ‘Jerusalem that is above’? How many moments do you remember of consecration and service, of devotion to your God and your fellows? Oh! what a miserable, low-lying stretch of God-forgetting monotony our lives look when we are looking back at them in the mass. One film of mist is scarcely perceptible, but when you get a mile of it you can tell what it is-oppressive darkness. One drop of muddy water does not show its pollution, but when you have a pitcherful of it you can see how thick it is. And so a day or an hour looked back upon may not reveal the true godlessness of the average life, but if you will take the twelvemonth and think about it, and ask yourself a question or two about it, I think you will feel that the only attitude for any of us in looking back across a stretch of such brown barren moorland is that of penitent prayer for forgiveness and for cleansing.
But I dare say that some of you say: ‘Oh! I look back and I do not feel anything of that kind of regret that you describe; I have done my duty, and nobody can blame me. I am quite comfortable in my retrospect. Of course there have been imperfections; we are all human, and these need not trouble a man.’ Let me ask you, dear brother, one question: Do you believe that the law of a man’s life is, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself’? Do you believe that that is what you ought to do? Have you done it? If you have not, let me beseech you not to go out of this year, across the artificial and imaginary boundary that separates you from the next, with the old guilt upon your back, but go to Jesus Christ, and ask Him to forgive you, and then you may pass into the coming twelvemonth without the intolerable burden of unremembered, unconfessed, and therefore unforgiven, sin.
The next point that I would suggest is this: Let us remember in order that from the retrospect we may gain practical wisdom. It is astonishing what unteachable, untamable creatures men are. They learn wisdom about all the little matters of daily life by experience, but they do not seem to do so about the higher. Even a sparrow comes to understand a scarecrow after a time or two, and any rat in a hole will learn the trick of a trap. But you can trick men over and over again with the same inducement, and, even whilst the hook is sticking in their jaws, the same bait will tempt them once more. That is very largely the case because they do not observe and remember what has happened to them in bygone days.
There are two things that any man, who will bring his reason and common-sense to bear upon the honest estimate and retrospect of the facts of his life, may be fully convinced of. These are, first, his own weakness. One main use of a wise retrospect is to teach us where we are weakest. What an absurd thing it would be if the inhabitants of a Dutch village were to let the sea come in at the same gap in the same dyke a dozen times! What an absurd thing it would be if a city were captured over and over again by assaults at the same point, and did not strengthen its defences there! But that is exactly what you do; and all the while, if you would only think about your own past lives wisely and reasonably, and like men with brains in your heads, you might find out where it was that you were most open to attack; what it was in your character that most needed strengthening, what it was wherein the devil caught you most quickly, and might so build yourselves up in the most defenceless points.
Do not look back for sentimental melancholy; do not look back with unavailing regrets; do not look back to torment yourselves with useless self-accusation; but look back to see how good God has been, and look back to see where you are weak, and pile the wall, higher there, and so learn practical wisdom from retrospect.
Another phase of the practical wisdom which memory should give is deliverance from the illusions of sense and time. Remember how little the world has ever done for you in bygone days. Why should you let it befool you once again? If it has proved itself a liar when it has tempted you with gilded offers that came to nothing, and with beauty that was no more solid than the ‘Easter-eggs’ that you buy in the shops-painted sugar with nothing inside-why should you believe it when it comes to you once more? Why not say: ‘Ah! once burnt, twice shy! You have tried that trick on me before, and I have found it out!’ Let the retrospect teach us how hollow life is without God, and so let it draw us near to Him.
The last thing that I would say is: ‘Let us remember that we may hope. It is the prerogative of Christian remembrance, that it merges into Christian hope. The forward look and the backward look are really but the exercise of the same faculty in two different directions. Memory does not always imply hope, we remember sometimes because we do not hope, and try to gather round ourselves the vanished past because we know it never again can be a present or a future. But when we are occupied with an unchanging Friend, whose love is inexhaustible, and whose arm is unwearied, it is good logic to say: ‘It has been, therefore it shall be.’
With regard to this fleeting life, it is a delusion to say ‘to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant’; but with regard to the life of the soul that lives in God, that is true, and true for ever. The past is a specimen of the future. The future for the man who lives in Christ is but the prolongation, and the heightening into superlative excellence and beauty, of all that is good in the past and in the present. As the radiance of some rising sun may cast its bright beams into the opposite sky, even so the glowing past behind us flings its purples and its golds and its scarlets on to the else dim curtain of the future.
Remember that you may hope. A paradox, but a paradox that is a truth in the case of Christians whose memory is of a God that has loved and blessed them whose hope is in a God that changes never; whose memory is charged with ‘every good and perfect gift that came down from the Father of Lights,’ whose hope is in that same Father, ‘with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.’ So on every stone of remembrance, every Ebenezer on which is graved: ‘Hitherto hath the Lord helped us,’ we can mount a telescope-if I may so say-that will look into the furthest glories of the heavens, and be sure that the past will be magnified and perpetuated in the future. Our prayer may legitimately be; ‘Thou hast been my help, leave me not, neither forsake me!’ And His answer will be: ‘I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.’ Remember that you may hope, and hope because you remember.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v3 General Information:
General Information:
Moses continues to speak to the Israelites as if they are one person. He continues to remind them of what they should "call to mind" (Deuteronomy 8:2). (See: Forms of You)
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He humbled you
"Yahweh showed you how weak and sinful you are." See how "he might humble you" is translated in Deuteronomy 8:2.
fed you with manna
"gave you manna to eat"
it is not by bread alone that people live
Here "bread" represents all food. AT: "food is not the only thing people need so they can live" (See: Synecdoche)
it is by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of Yahweh that people live
Here "the mouth of Yahweh" is a metonym for the words that Yahweh says. AT: "people must obey the commands of Yahweh so they can live" or "people must do what Yahweh tells them to do so they can live" (See: Metonymy)
translationWords
humble
manna
ancestor
life
bread
Yahweh
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv2–3 8:2 to prove your character (literally to know what…
8:2 to prove your character (literally to know what is in your heart): God already knew the Israelites’ innermost thoughts (Pss 51:6; 139:1, 4, 23); he wanted their character to come out in their actions. • to find out whether: The Old Testament often describes God in human terms, even in ways that appear to limit God. Anthropomorphism (assigning human characteristics to God) and anthropopathism (assigning human feelings or emotions to God) are ways of representing God on a human level so the human mind can better grasp his ways, but God is not limited in his knowledge, power, or transcendence. Here, God is figuratively described as having only a human knowledge of the future, but other passages make it clear that God knows everything—past, present, and future (Ps 139:1-18; Heb 4:13).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.