by Rev. John Colquhoun, Glendale, Skye
(Preached in Vatten on Sabbath evening of the Communion, 26th August 1945. The forenoon service and the administration of the Lord’s Supper were held in the open air as the Church could not contain the congregation)
We see from the beginning of the Book of Numbers that the incident brought before us in our text took place at the beginning of the second year after the children of Israel came up out of Egypt. Moses realised that they needed a reliable man to “be to us instead of eyes,” in order to show them the best way to encamp in the wilderness. Moses here did not show any mistrust in God’s guidance, but as one taught of God he knew it was his duty to use all available means. Hobab the son of Raguel was unwilling to go with them but Moses solemnly assured him, “It shall be, if thou go with us, yea, it shall be, that what goodness the Lord shall do unto us, the same will we do unto thee.” Verse 32. The words of our text, spoken by an Israelite to a Midianite, may be understood as having a far wider signification than as the language of one man to another. It is the language of those who are already in the kingdom of grace, to those who are yet “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise,” and it is in that way that we would seek to draw your attention to them this evening. We may consider them in a special manner as the language of the Lord’s people who were sitting here at His Table today.
In considering the words in that light we would seek, as enabled, to draw your attention to four things in particular:—
- The Journeying;
- The Destination;
- The Invitation;
- The Encouragement
I The Journeying.
(1) Those who are brought before us in our text are a people who were beginning a long and wearisome journey through the wilderness, and who, when setting out on that journey, had left Egypt. This is true of the Lord’s people for they left the Egypt of a state of nature. It was a land where they had misery and danger, and as the Israelites in Egypt had to a great extent fallen into ignorance of God, and knew not His ways, so the Lord’s people, in their natural state, gave many clear evidences that they “were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” In their walk and conversation they could not be distinguished from others. They were walking “according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience,” and had nothing higher in view than, “What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, wherewithal shall we be clothed?” As for God, they knew Him not, neither desired they to learn His ways. The Word of God and their consciences were telling them that they would have to meet with God, but in this matter, they were resolved to take “a leap in the dark.” The pleasures of a natural state were the only pleasures which they knew, and these, being sweet to their carnal tastes, they were resolved not to part with them, but God in His infinite mercy opened their eyes to see their danger, and then they began to take another view of their situation.
As the children of Israel, after Moses and Aaron came to them with a commission from God, found that they were in a land of bondage, so the Lord’s people found that their state by nature was a state in which they were in bondage to sin and Satan. They were disillusioned as to the freedom they supposed themselves to have, and found that they were captives with no power to set themselves free. The lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, and the pride of life were as task-masters, demanding now more than they were in the habit of asking, or were like the two daughters of the houseleach saying, “Give, give.” Prov. 30: 15. There was no pleasure now in giving as there was a realisation of the fact that the end of these things was death, even eternal death. Oh sinner! when considered impartially, in the light of what the Scriptures reveal as to the deserts of sin, where is the pleasure of sinning against God, and where is the freedom of it? Is not sin a king that reigns despotically and tyrannically over its slaves, so that they cannot get a moment’s respite from sinning? They cannot “cease from sin.”
Egypt also was the land of idolatry. God was not known there with the exception of the little knowledge which the children of Israel retained of Him, and Oh! child of God, was this not the case with yourself? In the circles in which you moved God was not known, and, to come to yourself personally, how much did the Lord take up of your time and thoughts? In your works you did not acknowledge Him, and as to your thoughts, you may be classed with those of whom it is written, “God is not in all his thoughts.” Psalm 10: 4. At the same time they were not like a sheet of clean paper upon which nothing had been written, for the throne of their heart was occupied by the world, the devil and the flesh, and these three could put plenty of idols in front of them to which they bowed down. Their thoughts, their time, their strength and their means were set at the feet of these idols so that, day in and day out, they were living in idolatry, “having no hope, and without God in the world.” Ephes. 2: 12.
(2) We are just now, however, considering them as having left Egypt and all that pertained to it, and pursuing their journey through the wilderness. That journey was not without its great dangers, but to face these dangers was preferable to returning to the land of bondage and idolatry. “And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.” Heb. 11: 15, 16. They had considered their past life and their present condition, and in the light of the hope which they have as regards their future prospects they prefer the dangers and discomforts of their present condition to what they previously thought was the only thing worth living for. Each of the Lord’s true people, after weighing the past, the present and the future in the light of what is revealed in Scripture, with Moses of old chose “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 in Egypt.”
In their wilderness journey they have to contend with enemies without. These, like the Higher Critics, would rob them of that precious heritage, the Bible, which is the only rule which God has given “to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him.” They have to contend with men of unsound views and practices of whom the Apostle warns them as he warned others before them. “Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision.” Philip. 3: 2. They encounter the spirit of persecution sent forth by a hostile world sometimes under the cloak of a religious profession. Again, no less dangerous is the world, as an enemy, when it professes to favour religion, and with the subtleness of the old Serpent showing an outward regard for religion, but waiting for every opportunity to bring it into reproach. In connection with this it may be said that the greatest enemies of true religion are those who make the greatest profession of strictness, and in their life are so loose that even children can see that they are not what they profess to be.
Again, those who have truly left Egypt and are journeying through the wilderness of this world have to contend with the enemies that are within. It was the enemies who were within the camp of Israel that approached Aaron to make the golden calf in the wilderness, and again who hankered after the flesh-pots of Egypt and who murmured against God’s dealings with them in the wilderness, thus provoking Him to visit them with His fierce anger so that many of them were consumed. The Lord’s true people are in like manner troubled with such enemies within themselves. None of them are perfect, and will not be as long as they are in this world. They have a desperately wicked heart and a God-hating nature. This is the body of sin and death which they carry about with them and of which they would fain be rid, but of which they will not be rid as long as they are in this world, and thus they are often constrained to cry, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Every day of their life here they are to experience much of its depraved appetite, its Satanic rebellion, its whorish propensities and the foul savour of its corruption, so that they abhor themselves, and wonder that God has not also abhorred them and cast them off. Often, under these circumstances, they are constrained to say, “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.”
(3) In their journey they are privileged to see much of God’s goodness to them. It was He who called them out of Egypt and set them on this journey, and much of His goodness is seen there in choosing them from among their neighbours, and separating them from those things which were for their destruction. His goodness in calling them and bearing with them during the time that is past is used by Himself in order to strengthen their faith and confidence in Himself. Thus the Psalmist in viewing God’s character, and His dealings with himself in the past, could say, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” Ps. 23: 6.
His goodness is to be seen in protecting them. The enemies without and within, which have been alluded to already, are bent on their destruction. They have greater strength and power than that they can be combated by human powers and wisdom, and it is vain to think of taking refuge in flight. Man’s extremity in these matters is God’s opportunity for showing His Almighty power. He has decreed concerning them, “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn.” They have sweet experiences of His protecting power at times when they were convinced that no earthly power could save them, and that for anything they could do themselves, their enemies would have swallowed them up quick. In the light of these experiences to which they often look back, they are constrained to sing to His glory, “If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us: then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us. . . . Blessed be the Lord, who hath not given us as to prey to their teeth.” Psalm 124. Thus their faith is strengthened to say, “Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth.” “He shall send from heaven, and save me from the reproach of him that would swallow me up.” They are in themselves as weak as water, tossed about with every tempest, and, to all who leave God out of account, their survival is a mystery which cannot be comprehended, for they weather the storm, elude their would-be captors, they “quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.” Hebrews 11: 34. All this takes place as a direct fruit of faith in God, in whose ability and willingness to protect, they believe.
Again, in their journey through the wilderness the Lord manifests His goodness in guiding them, and, child of God, has it not been your experience that which the Psalmist records, “And he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation?” Psalm 107: 7, when perplexed and almost on the borders of despair, not knowing what to do, or where to turn, realising the importance of doing the right thing and feeling how unequal you were to the occasion, you have been led in a way that you knew not. Force of circumstances compelled you to take a certain line of procedure; it was not the line which you would, if left to yourself, make choice of, but you had no alternative. You were carried along by a force which you could neither resist nor control; each step was taken in complete ignorance of what the next step might be, and you had to resign to the inevitable. These steps were not taken in obedience to a blind force where there was no design, nor were they following each other at random without a guiding and controlling principle. No, they were all the fulfilment of God’s sure promise, “And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them.” Isaiah 42: 16. The whole life of the child of God is made up of such matters, and each time he looks back on what he has travelled of his journey he has to acknowledge to the praise and glory of God that “He hath done all things well.”
On this journey God’s goodness is manifested to them in the wonderful way in which He feeds them. Jacob’s seed, literally, were miraculously fed in the wilderness with manna. “And he rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them the corn of heaven. Man did eat angels food: He sent them meat to the full.” Ps. 78: 24-25. He also quenched their thirst by water from the rock. The Lord’s people, in every age of time, are fed in a manner suitable to their needs and circumstances. Like people who are on a journey they cannot expect to sit down in the same place always and partake of that which would satisfy their needs. Now, they may partake of a diet in secret duties, then they get something during the hearing of the gospel preached, and again at a communion season they are enabled to taste of the “feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.” After each diet they may have to go a long time in the strength of it on their wilderness journey as Elijah had to go forty days and forty nights to Horeb in the strength of that of which he partook under the juniper tree at Beersheba. 1 Kings 19. In spite of the long fasts which they may experience God makes their bread and their water sure to them, for they have it all by covenant right in the Rock that was smitten for them, for it may be said of all the children of God in every age of time, that they “did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.” 1 Cor. 10: 4.
(4) This journeying must continue to end. It will not do to begin the journey and then return. “But if any man drew back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.” Heb. 10: 38. They may meet with discouragements and opposition; carnal reason may suggest to them to take the line of least resistance against sin, and show them that they will have more ease and comfort if they do not face the dangers of the way; enemies may try to frighten them, and, well-meaning, but weak-kneed friends, may try to dissuade them from incurring the odium attached to an unwavering stand for the truth as it is in Jesus, but all these things do not move them, and to such weak friends they must be ready to say with Paul, “What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” Acts 21: 13. Thus, in the strength of God-given grace, they are enabled to pursue their journey to the end, for they know that it is “he that endureth to the end” that “shall be saved.”
II The Destination.
I now come to the second thing that has been proposed, that is, the destination to which these are travelling. It is referred to as “the place of which the Lord said, I will give it you.” You have been privileged in this congregation today to see a few people sitting down at the Lord’s Table to testify, before men, angels and devils, to what He has done for them. In their action they spoke loudly to those who were sitting on the hill-side round about them, and in language, louder and more eloquent than with an audible voice, they were proclaiming to their fellow creatures that they were going to heaven. They had turned their backs on the world and what it contains to fascinate and beguile poor unstable human beings, and they are facing Zionwards. They are found in the very posture of the Church in the Song of Solomon when the question was asked, “Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?” Song 8: 5.
(1) In their proclaiming to you today that they were going to heaven, they were not doing so in a vain, empty, boasting spirit. They were doing it in all humility, for they are a people who realised, and feel keenly, that there is no worthiness in themselves. At the Lord’s Table they would be remembering what they had been as slaves to Satan and their own lusts, and Satan himself would not be slow to remind them of how attached they were to his service. Incidents would come vividly before their minds, which they thought long ago buried out of sight, and oh! how the remembrance of these incidents would cause the blood to surge to their heads and the crimson blush of shame to mount up on their cheek, and give fresh life to their indignation against sin. Everything they do, or ever did, is polluted by sin so that they are constrained to say, “We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” Isaiah 64: 6.
(2) Though they had no confidence to say that they were going to heaven because of anything in themselves, yet because of God’s gracious covenant they have a right to say it. When there was no eye to pity them or arm to save them, God revealed that from all eternity He had made a Covenant on their behalf with His own eternally begotten Son, and in that covenant, of which the Son of God is the Surety and the Mediator, there is laid up for sinners a provision which, if they close in with it, will infallibly bring them to heaven. It is when they are enabled to hope that they have closed in with the terms of this Covenant that they have, in some measure, boldness to say that they are going to heaven, and their profession today at the Lord’s Table was that they had closed in with the terms of the Covenant. They look away from their own unworthiness to the Covenant, and to Him who is the Surety, and the Priest, and the Sacrifice of the Covenant, and say with David of old, “Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow.” II Sam. 23: 5.
(3) The people who have this destination in view are looking to God’s promise, and in doing this they are looking to a promise that never fails. The promises of a fellow creature may fail through the fickleness of human nature or inability to perform that which is promised, but the promises upon which the Lord’s people rely are given by Him who is the Almighty and of whom it is true that no obstacle can stand in His way. Satan and unbelief often try to rob these people of the consolations of the promises of God, and the fact that they are sometimes kept long in waiting for the fulfilment, adds force to the adversary’s suggestions, but the promise is given by the God who cannot lie, and, therefore, they must wait on Him and learn by experience that His time for performing the promise is the best time.
These promises on which they base their hope that they are going to heaven are said to be yea and Amen in Christ Jesus; they are true, faithful and certain, for Christ fills them all, and He Himself is the Truth. He has fulfilled all the terms of the Covenant of Grace, and thus procured for the Lord’s people the fulfilment of all the promises of God to them. The promises are said to be “Amen” in Him. The word “Amen” is used as an affirmation which seems to partake of the nature of an oath. Thus the Lord was pleased to confirm His promises by His oath. “For men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath.” Heb. 6: 16, 17.
The fulfilment of these promises is far above the expectations of the Lord’s people. They will be praying for the fulfilment of the promises, but oh! how dark are their conceptions of what is contained in these promises. While in this world, let them think of the greatest measure of happiness a human being is capable of experiencing; let them meditate on what the Word of God reveals of the happiness of heaven in connection with the wonderful fellowship that is there, the delightful service of worship unmixed with sin, the ravishing views of Christ when they behold Him as He is, the wonderful concord between the music of the angels that never sinned and that of the spirits of just men made perfect, and the fact that these celestial joys shall continue throughout eternity, and yet after the most profound thoughts that a human being is capable of in this world with reference to these things, it can be said, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” 1 Cor. 2: 9.
(4) Their destination is a place of wonderful rest. We are strangers to rest in this world of hurry and bustle, and, therefore, ill-fitted to conceive of the rest that waits for the people of God in heaven. The Lord has given as an earnest of it in the Sabbath-day, for that day is set apart in order that we may withdraw from our worldly employments and recreations, but alas! how imperfectly we are enabled to do that. In the measure, however, in which we are enabled to withdraw from the world, and are delivered from its distractions from within and without, and permitted to worship God from the heart, we have, in this, a faint picture of the rest which the Lord’s people enjoy in heaven. In this world we are like the children of Israel in the wilderness. They went from place to place without a sure abode, and the Lord’s people here cannot find rest, but when they get to their destination they have a place of eternal rest.
In the place to which they are going they shall have an eternal deliverance from sin. It is true that in the day of justification they were delivered eternally from the power and dominion of sin, for sin shall not have dominion over them any more. Nevertheless, their cry in this world is, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Rom. 7: 24. This shows that they are not delivered from the corruption of sin. When they get to their destination the body of sin will be forever separated from them, and it is in the light of this fact that the Apostle was saying, “But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”. I Cor. 15: 57. They are more than conquerors over sin, Satan and the world through Christ, who finished transgression, made an end of sins, made reconciliation for iniquity and brought in everlasting righteousness, who destroyed “him that had the power of death, that is, the devil,” and who says to those who are journeying to this destination, “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” John 16: 33.
There shall be no sickness there. This world may be compared to a great hospital where some are sent out of it cured, and others, because they rejected the remedy, are sent out of it to be buried. All the sickness to be found in this world is the direct fruit of sin, and because all have sinned, all are suffering in some way or another. When any become conscious of sickness all efforts are put forth to get a cure, but there is no permanent cure for sickness in this world. The Christian may be burdened with a very diseased body, and a diseased soul, going through this world, so much so that his incessant complaint is, “My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness. I am troubled; I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long. For my loins are filled with a loathsome disease: and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and sore broken: I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart.” Psalm 38: 5-8. He will, however, at the end of his pilgrimage be made perfectly whole in his soul, and in his plunge into the dismal waters of the Jordan of death, he will leave behind him his diseased body to be purified in the grave and raised up incorruptible on the Resurrection morning, to join his glorified soul, both to take up their abode eternally in heaven, freed from every form of sickness and sorrow.
Heaven is the place of eternal fellowship. They know what it is to have fellowship with the Lord’s people in this world and can testify that it is sweet fellowship, for their fellowship at times is a foretaste of heaven, constraining them to say, “What must the fountain of this fellowship be when the streams are so pleasant?” It is, however, their painful experience, at times, that these pleasures are derived from streams which often dry up. Many a thing will separate chief friends, even among the Lord’s people. They will have their misunderstandings and differences of opinion, and even sharp contentions like Paul and Barnabas, so that they separate, and the joy which they had together is a thing of the past. These things belong only to time, for in Heaven, all the Lord’s people will be gathered together and they shall have only one thing in view, that is, to praise and magnify the wonderful love which was the source of their election, redemption and sanctification. Moreover, they shall be in close fellowship with Him who sits on the Throne, and they shall be able to experience His fellowship and communion as only the “spirits of just men made perfect” are capable of. They shall never leave His presence world without end, and there “the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” Rev. 7: 17.
(To be continued)