BY THE REV. R. MACKENZIE, M.A., GAIRLOCH.
(Continued from p. 240.)
“By faith Moses, when he had come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward.” (Hebs. xi. 24-26).
II. Moses’ self-denial.
The believer’s life in this world is, under one aspect, a life of self-denial through out. “Whosoever will come after me,” says Christ, “let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” Our forsaking all must precede the entrance upon our spiritual inheritance. We must be completely weaned from the enjoyment of the present corrupt order of things, or otherwise we shall never taste of the fruit of the heavenly Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey. This fact, just as though Christ had spoken to him the very words quoted above, must have been clearly before the mind of Moses when he reckoned and acted as he did. At any rate, he denied himself, took up his cross, not an inconsiderable one, too, and followed Christ, His cause, and people. My friends, if we are to be blessed with Moses, if we are not to perish with his Egyptian associates of former days, we must do likewise.
There are several particulars mentioned in the passage before us in which the self-denial of Moses is evidenced. Firstly, he “refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.” The way to the crown of Egypt had been laid open to him, but he declined to embrace it. Secondly, the “treasures of Egypt” were placed at his disposal, for had he consented to become Pharaoh’s heir, he would in time have succeeded to the wealth as well as to the throne of Egypt. Nor were these treasures inconsiderable. Egypt was at this time in a flourishing condition, the envy of the nations. But he spurned it all. Greater to him were the riches of Christian poverty, greater the honour of Christ’s reproach. It may not be, my friends, that a crown or coronet forms the particular bait with which the adversary seeks to captivate you. It may not be that he will offer you wealth corresponding to the “treasures of Egypt.” He knows full well that less than all these may suffice to serve his turn and your ruin. You may be tempted with only a modicum, comparatively speaking, of worldly honour, a mere pittance of worldly wealth, but, unless like Moses, you learn to weigh against these the spiritual odds involved, you will probably barter your soul for even that.
The particulars that correspond more nearly to those with which the majority of us are conversant are included in the words, “the pleasures of sin.” The devil knew that there was something fascinating in sin that would be sure to exert a powerful attractive influence on Moses in common with all others of the fallen race of Adam. And in his ranging before him the glories of the kingdoms of the world, he took care to give due prominence to this. I think this is a favourite method of Satan. Touching the tenderest part of the perverse natural constitution, he excites it with inordinate emotions, over against which he presents ample prospects of gratifying them. Searching out our special weaknesses, he provides occasions to bring them into play, knowing how lust is always ready to burn, he collects fuel for it, aware of how we incline to evil continually, he busies himself in catering to this inclination. Is it not the case that this is a preponderating influence in the course that your nature prefers and that the world offers you? Is not that the path of least resistance which leads you to forget God, and to take pleasure in sin? For one to forsake sin and to live opposite to the bias of his nature, is self-denial; self-denial, to say “No” to the tempter and to flee the lust. So says the Apostle—”Resist the devil,” and again, “Flee youthful lusts.” I know I am talking to some here to-day who, whether they appreciate the prominence I give to this point or the emphasis I lay upon it, are at least able to identify it. To such I would say, You must learn to deny yourself, to mortify every sinful tendency, and to avoid every sinful occasion, or you will surely fall into the snare of the devil, and there is nothing will help you in so doing but that grace of God, which, by faith wrought in his soul, enabled Moses to choose “rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasure of sin for a season.”
One more consideration and I pass on to the next general head. It is not said that Moses denied himself merely the indulgence of sin, but the pleasures of sin, which are for a season. For the most part, the pleasures that worldlings indulge in are the pleasures of sin. We do hear, of a truth, about innocent and desirable pleasures. All I shall say about these is that whatever they be, we as fallen creatures, apart from the sanctifying influence of grace, will find little in them to attract us. Blessed be God, there are such, and more such than the world dreams of, else it would not confine itself to those hollow, sensational pleasures which it so assiduously pursues. As for the latter, such, for example, as the pleasures of the ballroom, the theatre, the card-table, the drinking-cup, the gambling-board, the horse race, the football match, and those others too grossly impure to even mention by name, they are but the baits of the devil to seduce, to prostitute, and to ruin. Those who desire to indulge in them, and, if anything, lack only the occasion, the means, or the courage, are the dupes of Satan, led captive by him at his will. My dear young friends, be sure that Satan will tempt you sore with the pleasures of sin, if indeed he has not already done so. He will tickle your palate and represent to you the sweetness of the fruit which God has forbidden you to eat, and which, however sweet in the mouth, carries death within. Be warned, be on your guard. Be suspicious of every form of pleasure that affects you agreeably, while it helps you to forget that you have a soul, that there is a God, and that you are on your way to His Judgment-seat. Like Moses, deny yourself such pleasure, however your deceitful heart may yearn after it. Seek to stamp out the smouldering lust that only needs the oil of sinful indulgence to set it ablaze. After all, pleasure in the worldly sense is but a successful illusion. At the best it is short-lived, lasting only “for a season” and giving place to multiple sorrows. Take, for example, the case of the drunkard. He thinks nothing in the world is more pleasurable than the foaming cup while he looks upon it and again while its alcoholism is stultifying his brain. But after his bout, when he has cooled down and begins to recollect himself, his sense of pleasure has vanished, and in its place a feeling of guilt, of misery, and of physical degeneracy pains him all over. Nor is that all. He finds himself wedded to his vice, more closely after every successive indulgence, and, unless grace intervene, is doomed to fill a drunkard’s grave and to suffer a drunkard’s hell. “Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.” As with this, so with all forms of sinful pleasure. Below a gilding of sensational pleasantness, there is the crude material of unalloyed woe. Behind the moment of passionate enjoyment, there is an eternity of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Wise man Moses to have preferred to do without both. Oh, my friends, one and all, let me commend to you his example! Flee from the pleasures of sin, of godlessness, of the present evil world as you would from poison. Sell not your birthright for a mess of pottage, for, believe me, if you do, you shall rue it where you shall find no place of repentance though you seek it earnestly with the tears of ages.
III. Moses’ choice.
Under the preceding head, we have in effect stated what Moses did not choose. Here we are concerned with what he did choose. If we follow it closely, we shall find that the antithesis between the two is very strongly marked. The choice lay, not between things in themselves equal or similar—that is to say, not between the pleasures of sin and the pleasures of God’s people, or between the glory and wealth of Pharaoh’s kingdom and the glory and wealth of Christ’s kingdom. On the contrary, the words of our text represent the minimum in one direction as against the maximum in the other—that least calculated to attract from the point of view of the Christian life, as against that most powerful to attract from the point of view of a worldly estate. And the effect is to impress us directly with the finality of Moses’ choice. It was Christ and His people that Moses chose, and his preference for them was based upon such an estimate of them that, placed in the most disadvantageous circumstances, they outclassed in his mind everything and everybody besides. So dear to him was Christ, as the object of his faith and hope and love, that he accounted it greater gain to be reviled in association with Him than to be loaded with wealth and honour in association with the world—so dear, that he shrunk not from espousing His cause and from befriending His people at a time when his doing so was sure to bring himself anxiety and trouble.
The Church of Christ has its periods of sore adversity in this world. Nor is this out of keeping with the prestige of its glorious Head. His life in this world was one of tribulation, culminating in an ignominious death as the prevenient condition of a glorious resurrection, and in the course of it He foretold that in this world His people should have tribulation also, that they should drink of the cup of which He drank, and should be baptised with the baptism with which he was baptised. He bore a cross, so must they; He suffered for them, so must they suffer for Him; He braved their reproach, so must they brave His. Perhaps nothing within the compass of their outward relations is more truly characteristic of the followers of Christ in this world than their being thus conformed to the likeness of Him who “was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” Certainly it provides a surer criterion, a clearer mark of grace within, when such is the trend of circumstances from without. Any worldling might well follow a miracle-working Jesus, and the voice of nature might well shout “Hosanna” in the ears of a triumphing Christ, but it required grace to watch for an hour with the “Man of Sorrows” in the gloom of Gethsemane, to espouse the cause of the divine Saviour upon whom the Roman world had frowned, and to take charge of His body after wicked men had done with it—of the pierced hands and feet, of the bleeding, broken heart, and of the head which the “beloved people” had crowned with thorns, and marred with spittle. And no more then than when Moses made his choice and stood by the cross and the persecuted “little ones.” And no less now when irreligion is the fashion, and when, in the case of the vast majority, the world has eclipsed the glory of Christ and His cross.
“The reproach of Christ,” “the afflictions of His people”—these were in substance what Moses chose in preference to the power and pomp, to the treasures and pleasures of Egypt. Christ was then represented in the world by a mere handful of men and women within a maligned and persecuted community in the “house of bondage.” Their ancestry, their traditions had been forgotten by their cruel taskmasters, or at least passed over in the silence of contempt. The name of Joseph was now as little honoured as his bones, and as for the Lord God of Israel, who was He that He should be obeyed? The whole cause was but a mark for ridicule, and an occasion for brutal oppression. Yet, in very truth, it was the cause of Christ, that same cause which originally emerged by the Word of God from the darkness which shrouded humanity when our first parents fell, and afterwards from the darkness which clothed heaven and earth when the Saviour bowed His head in death, to raise it again before daybreak on the third day; and it was in very truth that same cause which in its ascendancy shall yet fill heaven and earth with glory. By faith Moses recognised it as such. By faith he saw that aspect and phase of it which were then unseen but hoped for, which Pharaoh and his Egyptians, nay, which many of his Hebrew kinsmen could not see—he saw dignity behind its poverty, the honour of its relation to a risen and exalted Christ behind the ignominy of its cross. He believed the promise of God concerning Israel, both in its literal and in its spiritual sense, and, although denied the realisation of the former in full, yet, while the promise was still at a distance and Israel still wandering in the track of the mysterious presence, he gave to the world an abiding testimony to his faith in these oft-quoted words, “Happy art thou, O Israel; who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy excellency!”
My friends, the cause which Moses espoused still abides. It is represented still in the world, in Scotland, it may be in obscurity, in affliction, in comparative disrepute, but, we believe, nonetheless faithfully. There is still a reproached remnant gathered around the cross, seeking, in the midst of gross spiritual darkness and in view of mighty signs of judgment, more ominous even than those that afflicted the land of Egypt, to proclaim the name and glory and salvation of the great I AM to a frenzied world. And this being so, we, too, as we trace out the future of Moses’ example at a distance of thousands of years, have a present duty of a similar kind, a choice to make between similar alternatives. To us now, as to Hobab then, by virtue of that inspiration which makes his words reverberate broadcast with more than human authority across the intervening ages, Moses says—”We are journeying unto the place of which the Lord said, I will give it you: come thou with us, and we will do thee good; for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel.” This leads me on to consider in the last place—
IV. “The recompense of the reward.”
And having dwelt so long on the several other heads, I must content myself at present with merely touching upon this part of the subject.
The service of Christ, dear friends, is no empty service, as the enemy would represent it. True, it is essentially a devotional service, a labour of love, the life-expression of hearts bound with the weightiest obligations and free only to pulsate gratitude into every circumstance and relation and act. True, again, the followers of Christ, to whatever extent they may deny themselves, or exert or expose themselves in loyalty to truth and in pursuit of holiness, will always know themselves to be unprofitable servants, deserving neither recognition nor reward, and therefore claiming none on the basis of their service. Nevertheless, it has pleased the Lord in infinite condescension to allocate a reward where it can never be merited, and to hold it aloft for the inducement and encouragement of His Church struggling in the world below, as though her winning through should qualify her for its attainment—a reward, which, as it is not conditioned, is consequently not proportioned, and not limited by the comparative value of her service—a “blood-bought, free reward”;—in a word, the reward of His service in whom the Church is complete, and on account of whom she is accepted of God. “Ye are they,” said Christ to His disciples, “which have continued with me in my temptations. And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me.”
When we come to discuss what this reward is, we are at a loss, unless we can resort to the method of that faith of which we have been speaking, which looks at the unseen and apprehends the incomprehensible. Otherwise, it is unspeakable. “For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, besides thee, what He hath prepared for him that waiteth for Him!” It pertains to heaven, that region of bliss which transcends the loftiest flight of human imagination. It is incorruptible, eternal, “a crown of glory that fadeth not away.” It is so considerable and weighty that the very greatest afflictions endured in prospect of it become light and momentary in comparison. It is withal such a happy consummation as will swallow up death in victory, will transmute shame to honour, sorrow to joy, will replace a cross by a crown, will exchange a humble, unnamed, unknown station in this sin-stricken, doomed world for an eminence second only to the throne of God and of the Lamb in the midst of the Paradise of God.
Such, then, in scant, feeble terms, is the destination of the life of faith, such “the prize of the high calling of God in Jesus Christ.” This Moses had in view when, by faith, he let fall all the glistening baubles of earth, and embraced the cross and its thorns. “He had respect unto the recompense of the reward.” Recompense! Why, he lost nothing but in respect of which he should be compensated a hundred-fold in this present age, and in the world to come have eternal life. It were more than sufficient compensation for all the discomfort and reproach involved to have fellowship with Christ in a consecrated sphere in the world, and the witness of a good conscience in the hour of extreme trial and weakness, but there was something infinitely more and surpassingly greater in Moses’ eye than even that. Heaven appeared to him as it did to Stephen when men stoned him and his eyes were uplifted in adoring resignation. The vision of the Right-Hand, the prospect of a place there—all, as it related itself to and centred upon the person and glory of the Redeemer, embracing likeness to Him, intimate association and communion with Him, participation in His life, a part and lot in His inheritance, in the joy of the Lord—all this weighed with him so that all else, of gain or of pain, fell short of significance. And when Satan ranged before him the glories of the kingdoms of the world, and when the world-whore displayed her blandishments and proffered her cup, it was all in vain. May it be our happy experience to be thus taught of God, thus enlightened, and thus enabled by faith to “choose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. . . having respect unto the recompense of the reward.”