This chapter requires little in the way of note or exposition. It
contains a most solemn and affecting record of the blessings of
obedience on the one hand, and the terrible consequences of
disobedience on the other. Had Israel walked in obedience, they would
have been invincible. "I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie
down, and none shall make you afraid; and I will rid evil beasts out
of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land. And ye
shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.
And five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put
ten thousand to flight; and your enemies shall fall before you by the
sword. For I will have respect unto you, and make you fruitful, and
multiply you, and establish My covenant with you. And ye shall eat old
store, and bring forth the old because of the new. And I will set My
tabernacle among you; and My soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk
among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be My people. I am the
Lord your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that
ye should not be their bondsmen; and I have broken the bands of your
yoke, and made you go upright." (Ver. 6-13.)
The presence of God should ever have been their shield and buckler. No
weapon formed against them could prosper. But then the divine
presence was only to be enjoyed by an obedient people. Jehovah could
not sanction by His presence disobedience or wickedness. The
uncircumcised nations around might depend upon their prowess and their
military resources: Israel had only the arm of Jehovah to depend upon,
and that arm could never be stretched forth to shield unholiness or
disobedience. Their strength was, to walk with God in a spirit of
dependence and obedience. So long as they walked thus, there was a
wall of fire round about them, to protect them from every enemy and
every evil.
But, alas! Israel failed altogether. Notwithstanding the solemn and
appalling picture placed before their eyes, in verses 14-33 of this
chapter, they forsook the Lord and served other gods, and thus brought
upon themselves the sore judgments threatened in this section, the
bare record of which is sufficient to make the ears tingle. Under the
heavy weight of these judgments they are suffering at this very hour.
Scattered and peeled, wasted and outcast, they are the monuments of
Jehovah's inflexible truth and justice. They read aloud, to all the
nations of the earth, a most impressive lesson on the subject of the
moral government of God--a lesson which it would be profitable for
these nations to study deeply--yea, and a lesson which it would be
salutary for our own hearts to ponder likewise.
We are very prone to confound two things which are clearly
distinguished in the Word, namely, God's _government_ and God's
_grace_. The evils which result from this confusion are various. It is
sure to lead to an enfeebled sense of the dignity and solemnity of
government, and of the purity, fullness, and elevation of grace. It is
quite true that God in government reserves to Himself the sovereign
right to act in patience, long-suffering, and mercy; but the exercise
of these attributes, in connection with His throne of government, must
never be confounded with the unconditional actings of pure and
absolute grace.
The chapter before us is a record of divine government, and yet, in it
we find such clauses as the following: "If they shall confess their
iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which
they trespassed against Me; and that also they have walked contrary
unto Me, and that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have
brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their
uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the
punishment of their iniquity: then will I remember My covenant with
Jacob, and also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with
Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land. The land also
shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her Sabbaths, while she lieth
desolate without them; and they shall accept of the punishment of
their iniquity: because, even because they despised My judgments, and
because their soul abhorred My statutes. And yet, for all that, when
they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away,
neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break My
covenant with them; for I am the Lord their God. But I will for their
sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth
out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the heathen, that I might be
their God: I am the Lord." (Ver. 40-45.)
Here we find God in government, meeting, in long-suffering mercy, the
very earliest and faintest breathings of a broken and penitent spirit.
The history of the judges and of the kings presents many instances of
the exercise of this blessed attribute of the divine government. Again
and again the soul of Jehovah was grieved for Israel (Judges x. 16.),
and He sent them one deliverer after another, until at length there
remained no hope, and the righteous claims of His throne demanded
their expulsion from that land which they were wholly incompetent to
keep.
All this is _government_. But by and by, Israel will be brought into
possession of the land of Canaan on the ground of unqualified and
unchangeable _grace_--grace exercised in divine righteousness, through
the blood of the cross. It will not be by works of law, nor yet by the
institutions of an evanescent economy, but by that grace which "reigns
through righteousness, by Jesus Christ our Lord." Wherefore, they
shall never again be driven forth from their possession. No enemy
shall ever molest them. They shall enjoy undisturbed repose behind the
shield of Jehovah's favor. Their tenure of the land will be according
to the eternal stability of divine grace and the efficacy of the blood
of the everlasting covenant. "They shall be saved in the Lord with an
everlasting salvation."
May the Spirit of God lead us into more enlarged apprehensions of
divine truth, and endow us with a greater capacity to try the things
that differ, and rightly to divide the word of truth.