By the late Rev. D. MACFARLANE, DINGWALL.
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! and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee; and thou shalt tread upon their high places (Deut. xxxiii. 29).
IN this chapter we have an account of Moses blessing the children of Israel before his death. With the exception of the tribe of Simeon he pronounces a blessing on each of the other tribes separately. After he had pronounced a blessing on each tribe he now in our text pronounces all the tribes as a whole blessed or happy. Moses spoke often to the people of Israel but these were his last words to them before he parted with them and what a happy parting it was. He parted with them blessing them as Christ, when leaving the world and His people, lifted up His hands and blessed them. When it is said that Moses blessed the children of Israel before his death two things are to be noted (1) He, as a prophet, declared the mind of God towards them with respect to their future course in the world and (2) He acquiesced in the Lord’s goodwill to them and set his amen to it and having done so he parted with them to go to his eternal rest in heaven. In connection with his magnifying the people of Israel above all other people he magnifies their God above all other gods—”There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun who rideth upon the heaven in thy help and in His excellency on the sky” (verse 26).
In speaking on this great subject one feels at a loss how to begin and how to end, but we shall endeavour to point out the following particulars:—Israel according to the flesh was a type of the true people of God, and it is in this sense we are to speak of them here and as the people of Israel were different from all the other nations in the world so the Lord’s people are different from all other people—there is none like them for the following reasons: (1). Because of the object of their worship. They worship the only living and true God and Him only they serve. In this respect they are different from all people who worship other gods. Such as those in heathen lands who worship idols, and those in the land of the gospel who worship an imaginary god and not the God of the Bible. There are many and the world is their god and others their belly is their god as is stated in Scripture. Whatever object is supreme in the minds of people that is their god but whatever god others may have those who are of the true Israel have the only living and true God as their God and by faith they are enabled to call Him their God. “O Lord thou art my God. I will exalt Thee and praise Thy name” (Is. xxv. 1). “This is our God for ever and ever, He will be our guide even unto death” (Ps. xlviii. 14). (2). No people are like them because they are saved by the Lord. They found out that by nature they were lost and that they could not save themselves but the Lord saved them and they ascribe the glory of their salvation to Him as Moses does here: “A people saved by the Lord.” They are saved from sin by Him whose name is Jesus because He shall save His people from their sins—saved from the guilt of sin, its dominion over them, and they shall ultimately be saved from its depravity and all the evils to which sin made them liable. Their sins are forgiven and they are now justified and there is no condemnation for them and this was done by Him of whom it is said: “Who is a God like unto thee that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgressions of the remnant of His heritage, He retaineth not His anger forever because He delighteth in mercy?” (Micah, vii. 18). There is no God like their God and there is no people like them. (3). There is none like them in respect of their heavenly Father. He is their Father and they are His children. Christ taught them how to pray. He gave them to address God as their Father—”Our Father who art in heaven.” They are begotten of God and born again for without this they could not enter the kingdom of God. (4). There is none like them with regard to their rights. Christ is theirs and therefore all things are theirs—”whether Paul or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours” (I. Cor. iii. 22). The ministers of the gospel are theirs to teach them. The Bible is theirs and they do their utmost to protect it from those who try to rob them of that precious treasure as the Higher Critics try to do. It will grieve and wound them when they hear anyone running down the Bible and on account of their relation to one another it will grieve and wound them to hear anyone running down the Lord’s people as many do in our day. Life is theirs, that is, they have a covenant right to the temporal mercies which God bestows upon them in this world and they have God’s blessing with these mercies and although others may possess temporal mercies more abundantly than they, they have them with God’s curse. Death is theirs also, as a means of taking them out of a world of sin and misery to the rest that remains to God’s people in heaven. (5). There is none like them in regard to their mode of worship. They worship God according to the rule of His Word and not in any other way not appointed in His Word and we ought to attend to this in all parts of God’s service. The mode of worship practised in the time of the Apostles is our pattern to follow and not the garnished innovations of men introduced into the Church in backsliding ages to suit the cravings of graceless men. (6). There is none like them in regard to their faith whose object is the Lord Jesus Christ and they do not expect to be saved in any other way. Oh, what a Saviour the Lord’s people have in Christ the eternal Son of God, whose name is the only name given among men by whom we can be saved. Others may have a kind of faith but Christ is not its object and therefore it is not a saving faith. (7). There is none like them in respect of their knowledge for they are taught of God. Others may boast of their great attainments in learning but these know “the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent which is life eternal” (John xvii. 3). Although some of them have more of this knowledge than others, the knowledge of them all is of the same nature. (8). There is none like them in regard to their hope. It is a good hope through grace. This hope is never found in the natural heart but always found in the new nature created by the Holy Spirit in those that are regenerated and born again and the Word of God is its warrant. Many hope to go to heaven whose hope shall be disappointed because it has not the Word of God for its warrant, it is the hope of the hypocrite that shall perish but the hope of God’s people maketh not ashamed because the love of God is shed abroad in their heart by the Holy Spirit. (9). There is none like them in their obedience to the divine law. They do not obey the law with a view to merit eternal life by their obedience but from the principle of love to God and under a sense of the great obligations under which they are to Him for saving them. They do not obey God’s commandments for fear of punishment. Although there would be no eternal punishment they would be as careful as they are in keeping His commandments. Many are moved to a kind of obedience to God’s law for fear of punishment but it is not that fear that actuates the Lord’s people in their obedience but their love to God and to His law. (10). There is none like them as to how they are supported and kept from sinking in tribulations and trials in the world for underneath them are the everlasting arms of Jehovah. Were it not for that almighty power they would be crushed to death under their heavy burdens. Others rest upon their own strength but they rest upon the everlasting arms of the Lord. “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; but we will remember the name of the Lord our God” (Ps. xx. 7). However strong unbelief is and however mighty the temptations of Satan are they shall never be overcome by these enemies—as their days so shall their strength be. How is it that you believers have been kept for many years from sinking into utter despair by the manifold trials that met you since your conversion? Not by your own power or wisdom but by the power of your Lord and Saviour. The Church is built upon the rock Christ and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (11). There is none like them as to the certainty of their final victory over all their enemies for God is their shield to protect them and their sword to destroy their enemies. “For they got not the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them; but thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, because thou hadst a favour unto them” (Ps. xliv. 3). So long as the people of Israel adhered to the Lord and obeyed His Word they were told that “one of them would chase a thousand and two put ten thousand to flight” but when they forsook Him and turned to idolatry as few of their enemies would put them to flight however numerous they were. If we as a nation obeyed the Word of the Lord we would have Him as our shield and we would soon gain the victory over Germany and its Allies. The Lord is the shield of His people to protect them even when they do not see Him and are afraid of their numerous enemies. When the servant of Elisha saw the city compassed with an host of horses and chariots he was afraid and said: “Alas! my master how shall we do” for he did not see the host by which they were protected; but the prophet who saw it said to him: “Fear not for they that be with us, are more than they that be with them. At the prayer of his master the eyes of the servant were opened and he saw that the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha (II. Kings vi. 15-17). Then his fear was removed and he trusted in the Lord. With regard to their victory over their enemies it is said in our text “that their enemies would be found liars unto them, and that they should tread upon their high places”—that is, their enemies would be disappointed and that the Lord’s people would tread under their feet their high places—that is, their fortifications, however strongly they might be built. Satan their greatest enemy, except sin, shall be trodden under their feet at last the God of peace shall bruise Satan under their feet shortly (Rom. xvi. 20). (12). There is none like them in respect of the spiritual food and drink on which their souls feed in their sojourn in the wilderness of this world. The people of Israel during the time they were in the wilderness received manna from heaven as the bread on which they lived and they were supplied with water to drink that came out of a rock. The manna was a type of Christ, the true bread that came down from heaven, by which the Lord’s people are fed and the rock was a type of Him also, and out of His fulness they drink the water of life; but before the water flowed out of the rock the rock was smitten at God’s command. In like manner, before they could drink the water of life Christ was smitten by the rod of God’s law and having suffered the death of the cross—”His flesh is meat indeed and His blood is drink indeed”—and this is the food and drink on which they live in this world. The only people that live on Christ are the happy people spoken of in our text, others live on husks the food of swine, the food which the prodigal desired to fill his belly with till he repented and returned to his father’s house. (13). There is none like them in regard to the leader by whom they are led on their way to heaven. Their leader is the Lord Jesus Christ, the captain of their salvation. This is a glorious leader. Moses and Joshua led the people of Israel in the wilderness but Christ is an infinitely greater leader. He leads them by His Word and Spirit in the way in which they should go. He leads them in the narrow way that leads to life while all others who have not Christ as their leader walk in the broad way that leadeth unto destruction. He leads them in the right way and if they in any degree deviate from that way He will bring them back. They shall hear His voice saying: This is the way walk ye in it (Is. xxx. 21). (14). There is none like them as regards the source of their happiness. While others seek happiness in broken cisterns, they derive their happiness from God the fountain of living waters; so that they may say with the psalmist: “All my springs are in thee” (Ps. lxxxvii. 7). All who seek their happiness in God He will never fail them; whereas all other fountains shall run dry. So long as man stood in his state of innocence he was truly happy and God was the fountain of his happiness, but when he sinned he lost his happiness and he began to hew out broken cisterns expecting to get out of these cisterns the happiness he lost, but they were broken cisterns which could afford no happiness, but misery.
The Lord’s people are by grace brought back to God again and they begin to taste of the happiness man had in God before he sinned and they feel so happy that they call upon others in the words of the psalmist: “O taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps. xxxiv. 8). (15). There is none like them as to what is in store for them after they leave this world. Their happiness shall then be full. While on earth they received drops of happiness in the midst of sorrow but in heaven they drink out of the ocean from which these drops flowed and as a drop of the great ocean is the same in kind though not in degree as the ocean, they know on earth what heaven is, while others who are in the state of nature are ignorant of what it is.
In conclusion we have said at the outset that the subject of discourse was so great that one felt at a loss as to where to begin and where to end. In all the aspects in which we may view the Lord’s people they may be said to be a happy people and that there is no other people in the world like them. Examine yourselves as to whether you are of the happy people of whom we have been speaking. You may be with them now but not of them. If you ask how shall we be of them? we answer, that first of all you must be born again. This is the way that children are of the same family—they are born into the family. In the second place you must be united to Christ by faith. Christ is the head and the Church is His mystical body. There are many members in the body but it is only one body and the body is united to Christ as the head and if you are united to Christ by faith you are of the happy people spoken of in our text. If you are of them you are in sympathy with them so that you rejoice with those of them who rejoice and you mourn with such of them as mourn. If you are of them you renounced your own righteousness which is of the law—that you might be found in Christ by the righteousness which is through faith in Him, the righteousness which is of God by faith. If you are of them you make the Word of God the only rule of your faith and practice and you regulate your conduct by that rule going through the world. There are many who are of them in profession who belie that profession by walking according to the course of this world, but if you are not of them you are still in a state of nature which is a state of sin and misery and if you continue in that state to the end of your life in the world you shall be separate from them for ever in eternity, but so long as you are left in the land of the living there is hope set before you in the gospel and a call to seek the Lord while He may be found and to call on His name while He is near. But if you disobey that call there is nothing left for you “but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries” (Heb. x. 27). We shall finish by repeating our text: “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! and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee; and thou shalt tread upon their high places.”