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. Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither
did thy foot swell, these forty years. Thou shalt also consider in
thine heart, that, as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God
chasteneth thee.
THIS is the lesson of our lives. This is training, not only for the old
Jews, but for us. What was true of them, is more or less true of us.
And we read these verses to teach us that God’s ways with man do not
change; that his fatherly hand is over us, as well as over the people of
Israel; that we are in God’s schoolhouse, as they were; that their
blessings are our blessings, their dangers are our dangers; that, as St.
Paul says, all these things are written for our example.
‘And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger.’ How true to life
that is! How often there comes to a man, at his setting out in life, a
time which humbles him; a time of disappointment, when he finds that he
is not so clever as he thought, as able to help himself as he thought;
when his fine plans fail him; when he does not know how to settle in
life, how to marry, how to provide for a family. Perhaps the man
actually does hunger, and go through a time of want and struggle. Then,
it may be, he cries in his heart—How hard it is for me! How hard that
the golden days of youth should be all dark and clouded over! How hard
to have to suffer anxiety and weary hard work, just when I am able to
enjoy myself most!
It is hard: but worse things than hard things may happen to a man. Far
worse is it to grow up, as some men do, in wealth, and ease, and luxury,
with all the pleasures of this life found ready to their hands. Some
men, says the proverb, are ‘born with a golden spoon in their mouth.’
God help them if they are! Idleness, profligacy, luxury, self-conceit,
no care for their duty, no care for God, no feeling that they are in
God’s school-house—these are too often the fruits of that breeding up.
How hardly will they learn that man doth not live by bread alone, or by
money alone, or by comfort alone, but by every word that proceedeth out
of the mouth of God. Truly, said our Lord, ‘how hardly shall they that
have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ Not those who earn riches
by manful and honest labour; not those who come to wealth after long
training to make them fit to use wealth: but those who have wealth; who
are born amid luxury and pomp; who have never known want, and the golden
lessons which want brings.—God help them, for they need his help even
more than the poor young man who is at his wit’s end how to live. For
him God is helping. His very want, and struggles, and anxiety may be
God’s help to him. They help him to control himself, and do with a
little; they help him to strengthen his character, and to bring out all
the powers of mind that God has given him. God is humbling him, that he
may know that man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word which
proceedeth out of the mouth of God. God, too, if he trusts in God, will
feed him with manna—spiritual manna, not bodily. He fed the Jews in the
wilderness with manna, to show them that his power was indeed
almighty—that if he did not see fit to help his people in one way, he
could help them just as easily in another. And so with every man who
trusts in God. In unforeseen ways, he is helped. In unforeseen ways, he
prospers; his life, as he goes on, becomes very different from what he
expected, from what he would have liked; his fine dreams fade away, as he
finds the world quite another place from what he fancied it: but still he
prospers. If he be earnest and honest, patient and God-fearing, he
prospers; God brings him through. His raiment doth not wax old, neither
doth his foot swell, through all his forty years’ wandering in the
wilderness. He is not tired out, he does not break down, though he may
have to work long and hard. As his day is, so his strength shall be.
God holds him up, strengthens and refreshes him, and brings him through
years of labour from the thought of which he shrank when he was young.
And so the man learns that man doth not live by bread alone, but by every
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God; that not in the abundance
of things which he possesses, not in money; not in pleasure, not even in
comforts, does the life of man consist: but in this—to learn his duty,
and to have strength from God to do it. Truly said the prophet—‘It is
good for a man to learn to bear the yoke in his youth.’
After that sharp training a man will prosper; because he is fit to
prosper. He has learnt the golden lesson. He can be trusted with
comforts, wealth, honour. Let him have them, if God so will, and use
them well.
Only, only, when a time of ease and peace comes to him in his middle age,
let him not forget the warning of the latter part of the chapter.
For there is another danger awaiting him, as it awaited those old Jews;
the danger of prosperity in old age. Ah my friends, that is a sore
temptation—the sorest, perhaps, which can meet a man in the long struggle
of life, the temptation which success brings. In middle age, when he has
learnt his business, and succeeded in it; when he has fought his battle
with the world, and conquered more or less; when he has made his way up,
and seems to himself safe, and comfortable, and thriving; when he feels
that he is a shrewd, thrifty, experienced man, who knows the world and
how to prosper in it—Then how easy it is for him to say in his heart—as
Moses feared that those old Jews would say—‘My might and the power of my
wit has gotten me this wealth,’ and to forget the Lord his God, who
guided him and trained him through all the struggles and storms of early
life; and so to become vainly confident, worldly and hard-hearted:
undevout and ungodly, even though he may keep himself respectable enough,
and fall into no open sin.
Therefore it is, I think, that while we see so many lives which have been
sad lives of poverty, and labour, and struggle, end peacefully and
cheerfully, in a sunshiny old age, like a still bright evening after a
day of storm and rain; so on the other hand we see lives which have been
prosperous and happy ones for many years, end sadly in bereavement,
poverty, or disappointment, as did the life of David, the man after God’s
own heart. God guided him through all the dangers and temptations of
youth, and through them all he trusted God. God brought him safely to
success, honour, a royal crown; and he thanked God, and acknowledged his
goodness. And yet after a while his heart was puffed up, and he forgot
God, and all he owed to God, and became a tyrant, an adulterer, a
murderer. He repented of his sin: but he could not escape the punishment
of it. His children were a curse to him; the sword never departed from
his house; and his last years were sad enough, and too sad.
Perhaps that was God’s mercy to him; God’s way of remembering him again,
and bringing him back to him. Perhaps too that same is God’s way of
bringing back many a man in our own days who has wandered from him in
success and prosperity.
God grant that we may never need that terrible chastisement. God grant
that we, if success and comfort come to us, may never wander so far from
God, but that we may be brought back to him by the mere humbling of old
age itself, without needing affliction over and above.
Yes, by old age alone. Old age, it seems to me, is a most wholesome and
blessed medicine for the soul of man. Good it is to find that we can
work no longer, and rejoice no more in our own strength and cunning.
Good it is to feel our mortal bodies decay, and to learn that we are but
dust, and that when we turn again to our dust, all our thoughts will
perish. Good it is to see the world changing round us, going ahead of
us, leaving us and our opinions behind. Good perhaps for us—though not
for them—to see the young who are growing up around us looking down on
our old-fashioned notions. Good for us: because anything is good which
humbles us, makes us feel our own ignorance, weakness, nothingness, and
cast ourselves utterly on that God in whom we live, and move, and have
our being; and on the mercy of that Saviour who died for us on the Cross;
and on that Spirit of God from whose holy inspiration alone all good
desires and good actions come.
God grant that that may be our end. That old age, when it comes, may
chasten us, humble us, soften us; and that our second childhood may be a
second childhood indeed, purged from the conceit, the scheming, the
fierceness, the covetousness which so easily beset us in our youth and
manhood; and tempered down to gentleness, patience, humility, and faith.
God grant that instead of clinging greedily to life, and money, and
power, and fame, we may cling only to God, and have one only wish as we
draw near our end.—‘From my youth up hast thou taught me, Oh God, and
hitherto I have declared thy wondrous works. Now also that I am old and
grey-headed, Oh Lord, forsake me not, till I have showed thy goodness to
this generation, and thy power to those who are yet to come.
SERMON V.
GOOD FRIDAY.