Notes on the Book of Deuteronomy, Volume IIMackintosh, Charles Henry
Religion
Notes on the Book of Deuteronomy, Volume II
Mackintosh, Charles Henry
Bible. Deuteronomy -- Commentaries
There is a solemn voice in all this for the writer and the reader. We
are each of us in danger of treading the moral path indicated by the
words just quoted. Surrounded on all hands by the rich and varied
mercies of God, we are apt to make use of them to nourish a spirit of
self-complacency. We make use of the gifts to shut out the Giver. In a
word, we, too, like Israel, wax fat and kick--we forget God. We lose
the sweet and precious sense of His presence and of His perfect
sufficiency, and turn to other objects, as Israel did to false gods.
How often do we forget the Rock that begat us, the God that formed us,
the Lord that redeemed us! And all this is so much the more
inexcusable in us, inasmuch as our privileges are so much higher than
theirs. We are brought into a relationship and a position of which
Israel knew absolutely nothing; our privileges and blessings are of
the very highest order; it is our privilege to have fellowship with
the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ; we are the objects of that
perfect love which stopped not short of introducing us into a position
in which it can be said of us, "As He [Christ] is, so are we in this
world." Nothing could exceed the blessedness of this; even divine love
itself could go no further than this. It is not merely that the love
of God has been manifested to us in the gift and the death of His only
begotten and well-beloved Son, and in giving us His Spirit, but it has
been made perfect with us by placing us in the very same position as
that blessed One on the throne of God.
All this is perfectly marvelous. It passeth knowledge. And yet how
prone we are to forget the blessed One who has so loved us and wrought
for us and blessed us! How often we slip away from Him in the spirit
of our minds and the affections of our hearts! It is not merely a
question of what the professing church, as a whole, has done, but the
very much deeper, closer, more pointed question of what our own
wretched hearts are constantly prone to do. We are apt to forget God,
and to turn to other objects, to our serious loss and His dishonor.
Would we know how the heart of God feels as to all this? would we form
any thing like a correct idea of how He resents it? Let us hearken to
the burning words addressed to His erring people Israel, the
overwhelming strains of the song of Moses. May we have grace to hear
them aright, and deeply profit by them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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