Israel's Happiness 2
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II. THE UNIVERSAL CHALLENGE– "who is like unto you?"
What a bold challenge the man of God gives! How he stands, as it were, upon Pisgah's top and looks around upon all the nations of the earth; and then, having taken a survey of that wide expanse from pole to pole, he cast his eye downward upon Israel's tents in all their lowly humility, and cries aloud in the triumphant language of faith, "Who is like unto you?" It is a challenge, and a noble one; and the answer must be--"No; there is none like unto you, Church of the living God."
But how is it that there is none like unto Israel? Is there not one among the nations of the earth worthy of comparison with the Israel of God? Do not the children of men in almost every point outshine the children of God? Is Israel as rich as they? Is Israel as learned as they? Is Israel as courted, admired, respected as they? Is Israel as favored with rank, power, and every source of earthly happiness as they? No. But that is not the meaning of the challenge. Moses' eyes were anointed with heavenly eye-salve. He looked through the mists and fogs of time into the serene regions of eternity. He was not comparing the multitudes of Israel that lay spread in the valley with the mighty nations around in all their plentitude of wealth and power. He spoke as the man of God, whose thoughts, views, faith, and feelings were divine, and was therefore lifted up by them beyond the vanities of time. He spoke as one who had been on the mount with God, and whose face had shone with the reflected glory of His presence. Viewing, then, Israel as the people of that God whose glory he had seen, he cried aloud in the language of faith--"Who is like unto you?" No one.
1. Who is like unto you in the distinguishing favor that God has from all eternity had in His bosom toward you? Could you by any of your own exertions, or by any of your own merits have drawn to yourself the special favor of a God so great, so glorious, and so holy? No! you could not have done it. But He loved you because He would love you, and He had favor unto you because He would have favor unto you. Is not this His own language--"I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion" Ro 9:15 and again, "The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you because you were more in number than any people; for you were the fewest of all people; but because the Lord loved you." De 7:7 Who, then, is like unto you? None but those whose names are written in the same book of life as being loved with the same love, and who are traveling the same path to the same happy home.
2. Who is like unto you in being redeemed with such a costly price as the precious blood of God's only begotten Son? Where is any redemption like your redemption? What is the blood of bullocks and of goats compared with the blood of the Son of God?
Where is there any righteousness like your righteousness? What is the righteousness of any human being, however godly or upright? I might add, of all the holy angels in heaven compared with the obedience, the meritorious obedience, of the spotless Lamb of God? Who then is washed in blood such as you are washed in? Who is clothed with a robe such as you are clothed in? Who is like unto you?
To bring this more vividly before your eyes, let me call up one of the Lord's striking parables.
Imagine yourself standing in the streets of Jerusalem, and looking into the banqueting-hall of the rich man of whom the Lord speaks in the parable. Might you not say--"Who is like unto you, you man of wealth and substance? Who wears garments so deeply dyed in royal purple? Who is clothed in linen so white and so fine? Who has his table spread with dainties so delicate? Who has rosy wine to flow in the cup in such abundance and of such flavor? Who is like unto you, you rich man, clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day?"
And then you might have turned and seen another sight--a beggar at his gate--and you might have said--"Who is like unto you, O Lazarus? You have not a friend to put a rag to your leprous back. You have not wife, child, or relative to bring plaster or poultice for your ulcerous sores, and have to thank the very dogs for licking the gory matter off your bleeding face. You have no one to feed you even with a piece of bread, and are glad to hold out your hand to catch the crumbs as they fall from the rich man's table. Who is like unto you, rich man, in all your wealth and luxury? who to you, Lazarus, in all your poverty and leprosy?"
Let a few years pass; now look into the abyss beneath--what do you see there? The rich man in misery, crying in torments for a drop of water to cool his tongue. Who is like unto you, rich man, now, in the depths of hell, your tongue parched with flame and thirst, and an impassable gulf between you and Abraham's bosom?
Turn away your eyes from this fearful sight, and look up into the courts of bliss. Who is like unto you now, poor beggar, whose sores the dogs once licked--who had not a friend on earth, and were thrust into your last resting-place by the cold hand of grudging charity? You are in Abraham's bosom, enjoying the smiles of God, basking in the beams of the Sun of righteousness throughout an endless day?
All this we see by the eye of faith. But how does the world look upon the rich man? It says, "O you great and noble rich man, who is like unto you? I kiss your feet; I admire your wealth and luxury; I worship your rank; I bow to your fashion. You are rich, respectable, noble. I cannot but envy you, for you have all my heart is longing after.
But what are you doing here, you poor leprous beggar--a nuisance under the very nose of the honorable rich man?
Take away your rags and your sores out of his noble sight! You spoil his appetite, and remind him of death and the grave." Is not this the language of the world; still admiring those whom God abhors, and hating those whom God loves?
Look beyond the ways and thoughts of men to the ways and thoughts of the Lord. Let a few years pass; now view the scene with a spiritual eye. Where are all the butterflies gone? They are all passed away; for "the world passes away and the lusts thereof;" darkness has covered them all, and down they have sunk into the chambers of death.
But where now are the lepers and beggars, the martyrs, the sufferers, the mourners in Zion, the poor afflicted ones, who loved Jesus, and whom Jesus loved? In the bosom of their God! Then may we not say of, and to every believer in Jesus, however poor or despised, "Who is like unto you?"
Which would you rather be--a poor, despised, persecuted, afflicted child of God, or enjoy all the pleasures and honors that the world could pour into your bosom? But what a mercy it is that the Lord did not make it a matter of your natural choice, but with His own hand put you among His people, and not only wrote your name in the book of life, but has given you even now a name and a place among His believing sons and daughters. "Who is like unto you?"
Well then may we say--"Lord, with all Israel's faults, failings, short-comings, back-slidings, infirmities, miseries and woes, we re-echo Your words and say 'No; there is none like unto Israel.' With them be my portion in life, in death; may I live while here below in sweet communion with Yourself and with them, and may I rise after death to be with You and them in Your presence forever."
III. Moses, gives THREE DISTINCTIVE REASONS why none is like unto Israel.
1. Israel is a "people SAVED by the Lord."
The first is a reason indeed. It clears up the whole mystery at once. It does indeed show that none can be like unto Israel--"O people saved by the Lord!" Can you fathom the depths of these words? I cannot. I may attempt to gather up a few crumbs from this feast of fat things--I may attempt to dip my cup into this ever-flowing, over-flowing crystal stream to bring out a few drops; but it is a pure river of mercy, love; and grace that has neither bottom, bank, nor shore. "O people saved by the Lord." To understand these words, even in a feeble measure, we must look at the three Persons in the glorious Godhead, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and see how they are all interested in the expression. Israel is a people saved by each of the three Persons of the glorious Godhead.
A. She is saved by God the Father--by His own eternal purpose, His fixed decree, His unalterable word and oath. He has decreed to save Israel. Can that decree be altered? God would cease to be God if He could waver or falter in His eternal purposes. If He could forfeit His work. He would not longer be Jehovah. Then who is like unto Israel, if she be a people saved by God the Father--not to be saved, but saved already, in His own eternal mind? so that the salvation of every member of the mystical body of Christ is as complete now as it will be in eternity to come. "Who has saved us and called us." 2Ti 1:9 How then can one member of Christ's mystical body be lost? How can the feeblest joint be cut off from the Head and die? if Israel is a people saved by the Lord; if God the Father has already saved her in His own eternal mind by fixed decree, who is to separate Israel from her God?
How sure then the salvation of all the elect race! Their being saved by the Lord determines the point without fear of contradiction. O how many have tried to save themselves! How many now, at this present moment, are fleeing, some to a broken law, that can only accuse and condemn; some to their own righteousness, which is as filthy rags; some to their own resolutions, which are but spiders webs; and some to hopes of amendment, which will all prove to be a lie. Look at Israel how distinct she stands from all these; she is saved by the Lord. Therefore she needs no other salvation. That is complete. And being saved by the Lord, her salvation is indefeasible and indestructible.
B. Look at her salvation as accomplished by God the Son. The Son of God became incarnate. The Son of God took our nature into union with His own divine Person, and in that nature suffered, bled, agonized, and died. By His obedience to the Law, He wrought out and brought in an everlasting righteousness, and by shedding His blood upon the cross offered an availing sacrifice. Look at Israel and ask the question again--"Who is like unto you, saved by the Lord?" What! Has God the Son justified you by His meritorious righteousness, and washed you in the fountain, which He opened for you in His own precious blood on Calvary's tree? Has God the Son groaned, and sweat, and bled, and suffered, and died for your personal redemption in that body which the Father prepared for Him, and which He took as an act of voluntary and acceptable obedience? Then "who is like unto you?" And if you, who have fled for refuge to the hope set before you, ever have had an evidence in your own conscience that God the Son suffered for you personally, individually, in the garden and upon the cross, who is like unto you? Whom need you envy? With whom would you wish to exchange? Would you, like Esau, sell your inheritance for a bowl of soup? Would you give up your hope of eternal life for any consideration, or part with it at any price?
C. Then there is being saved by God the Holy Spirit– by His personal work upon the heart, by His sanctifying influence upon the soul, by His manifestation of salvation to the conscience, and by the setting up of the kingdom of God with His own divine power in the inmost affections.
Look then once more at the words- "Who is like unto you?" If God the Father has saved you by fixed decree--God the Son by meritorious obedience--and God the Spirit by personal manifestation. "Who is like unto you, O people, saved by the Lord?" If in any measure blessed with faith to look unto and believe in a salvation like this, do we, can we, want to save ourselves? Do we need anything which the creature can perform to be added to this blessed salvation from the Triune God? Our mercy is to believe it, our blessedness to know it, our happiness to enjoy it. If your soul has ever tasted that precious salvation, you need no other--it is so complete, it brings such glory to God; it is so suitable to the wants and woes of man that all other is but misery and ruin.
2. God is the SHIELD of her help.
There is another reason why Israel stands alone and is not numbered with the nations--"the shield of your help." Is this needed also? Have we not had enough in the words "O people, saved by the Lord?" Have we not exhausted in that one sentence the whole of God's grace? No! we have something still to add. Israel, in passing through this world, is not without her FOES. She needs, therefore, a shield to guard her in the day of battle, and against the innumerable foes who thirst for her destruction. Look at some of them.
A. There are the curses of a fiery Law. The law is revealed against all sin and all unrighteousness, and speaks in words of thunder against every transgressor--"The soul that sins, it shall die; Cursed is every one that continues not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." Though saved in the purposes of God, yet, as guilty of actual transgression, the Church is exposed to that fiery law, and under its terrible threatenings her guilty conscience sinks. She needs then a shield. Who is this shield? An incarnate God! How did He become the shield? By receiving into His holy body and soul the curse of the law, and thus drinking up the wrath of God revealed in that fiery dispensation. Thus as a shield in ancient times protected the warrior's breast, so the incarnate God, by receiving the arrows of the law into His holy body and soul, became the Church's shield; and not a single dart can slay her, for He stands between.
B. Then there is conscience, for, strange to say, we need a shield against our very selves. Has conscience no arrows? Do you never need a shield against the spears of your own guilty conscience? Why that has been the sharpest conflict that your soul has ever been engaged in. What are accusations without to accusations within? it is what your conscience testifies against you that makes you doubt and fear. If you had but conscience on your side, you could fight to some purpose; but O, a guilty conscience! how it takes up arms against you, and, like the avenger of blood, pursues you up to the very throne of God. O, if you could have your conscience purged from guilt by the application of atoning blood, you would feel as happy as the day is long. Now Jesus must be your shield against the accusations of a guilty conscience; for His atoning blood alone can pacify it, and speak-peace and pardon to a troubled heart.
C. There is Satan. You need a shield against the fiery darts of the wicked. What shield shall that be? An incarnate God, to interpose Himself between those fiery darts and your trembling soul. As the Lord rebuked Satan when he stood at Joshua's right hand to resist him and gave charge to take away the filthy garments from him, so does the blessed Jesus still rebuke the evil one, nor will He allow him to accuse the saints of their filthy garments, for He clothes them with change of clothing. Thus Jesus becomes the shield of the soul against a fiery law, a guilty conscience, and an accusing devil, not to speak of a thousand minor foes over whom He makes it more than conqueror.
3. God is the SWORD of your excellency. What! a sword as well as a shield? Yes! What would the ancient warrior have done unless he had had a sword with which to fight as well as a shield with which to defend himself? The shield would not do without the sword, nor the sword without the shield--the shield to defend--the sword to attack; the shield to guard against the hostile thrust--the sword to cut the enemy down. What! have we enemies then? Yes, many. Shall we, then, take up the sword? Yes, if it be a right one--not the sword of the flesh. Peter had enough of that when he cut off the ear of Malchus. Take not Peter's sword--the sword of the Spirit be ours. And the Lord especially--who is "the sword of your excellency"--let Him fight your battles. All we have to do is to be still in the matter. Let the Lord fight. Yet we may in some sense fight too. As the Psalmist says--"Blessed be the Lord my strength, who teaches my hands to war and my fingers to fight."
I hope the Lord has made me a swordsman. I would not stand here to any purpose unless He had put a sword into my hand, and that not a sheathed one. The sword in the scabbard would never reach your conscience. I must draw the sword and thrust it into your conscience up to the very hilt, if you are to feel its keen point and edge. Your hard hearts would never feel a blow of the sword in the scabbard. It might bruise your flesh, but it would not "pierce even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow." But the Lord must be "the sword of my excellency." I must not stand here with carnal weapons--with logic or learning, with human arguments and passionate appeals. I must stand with the sword of the Spirit in my hand, with the fear of God in my heart, and with the strength of Christ in my arm. Then it does execution. O what power there is in the word of God when the Lord speaks in and by it--when the Word incarnate speaks by the word written. Then, and then alone is real execution done.
Upon what? Your lusts, those internal enemies--yourself, your greatest foe; your pride and self-righteousness; your unbelief and infidelity; your worldly-mindedness, and all those evils of our fallen nature that are ever fighting for the mastery. Against them, whether in myself or others, let me ever take the sword. I have had many enemies from without--from the world and from the church--from profane and professor. I expect to have them to my dying day. But I hope the Lord has kept me from using against them the sword of the tongue or pen, nor as a minister do I ever wish to use carnal weapons, though frequently called upon to fight the Lord's battles. Let my weapons be faith and prayer, and the word of God. O that the Lord may ever be the shield of my help and the sword of my excellency, and then I shall be a good soldier of Jesus Christ, and fight his battles to some purpose.
Be not, however, surprised if the sword of the Spirit sometimes pierces you to the very quick. The conscience sometimes needs to be pierced. You may have inward gatherings of pride and self-righteousness, of which the blood and matter need to be let out; you may have sluggish and indolent turnouts of long-standing that need to be opened; you may have a swelling, puffed up heart that requires lancing; you may have festering sores which will not kindly heal unless the point of the sword reach down to the very bottom of the wound. Therefore, if I do use the sword sometimes, and do not merely brandish it over your head but thrust it into your conscience, I do it not to kill you, but to cure you. Nothing is really slain thereby but the Lord's enemies and yours; and you know God's own words concerning Himself. "The Lord kills and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and brings up."
4. The gracious PROMISES which belong to Israel as being so highly favored. I pass on to our fourth and last point, which contains two sweet promises.
1. The first is– "Your ENEMIES shall be found liars unto you." I have been speaking of enemies. I have thought sometimes that the people of God dwell too much upon their outward, and too little upon their inward enemies. The less you think of your outward, and the more you think of your inward opponents, the better it will be for your soul. Turn your eyes away from outward foes. However numerous, however formidable they may appear, they will never do you any real harm.
A. Keep a watchful eye upon every inward foe; and if you fight, fight against the enemy that lurks and works in your own breast. I may almost say to you, in the language of the King of Syria--"Fight not with small or great, only with yourself." I have ever found myself to be my greatest enemy. I never had a foe that troubled me so much as my own heart; nor has any one ever wrought me half the mischief or given me half the plague that I have felt and known within; and it is a daily sense of this which makes me dread myself more than anybody that walks upon the face of the earth!
But God has promised that our enemies shall be found liars unto us. You may have had your external enemies, who may have prophesied your downfall. When I have been laid aside by illness, enemies have rejoiced in the hope that my mouth was stopped, and expressed their kind wishes that it might never be opened again. But I have been raised up again, nor is my mouth stopped yet. It is still my privilege here and elsewhere to preach His truth and proclaim His great and glorious name. I have no unkind feeling against a single foe, and I hope that they may be proved not to be the Lord's enemies, though they may be mine. You, also, may have had enemies, who may have said of you--"Ah, he is nothing but a hypocrite--you may depend upon it that he has not the root of the matter in him--he will sink and fall as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow." Have they yet seen you sink and fall? You may live to see them fall, when grace makes you to stand.
B. Satan, too, has been a cruel foe, and as such has doubtless presented many gloomy prospects before your eyes, and been to you a prophet of evil--not of good. He shall also be found a liar, if indeed you are one of God's Israel. You shall not die, as he has sometimes told you, in the dark, nor in despair, nor be sent to hell with all your sins upon your head. This enemy to your soul shall be found a liar.
C. Even the accusations of your own guilty conscience shall all eventually be found liars. God will prove Himself to be true, if every one else is proved to be false. What a mercy to have God upon our side! Whom, then, need we fear--what need we fear? "If God be for us, who can be against us?" But I may add, if God be against us, who can be for us? If God be for you, not all the powers of hell can keep you out of heaven. If God be against you, not all the angels, were it their will, could pull you in. Remember, I am assuming an impossibility, for devils could not, and angels would not defeat the purposes of the one great and glorious Sovereign of heaven and earth.
2. Now a few words upon the second promise. "And you shall tread upon their high places." Your enemies now may be very high and you very low; and it may seem at times to you that they will always be up, and you always down. Presumption may seem to carry the day for a time; your enemies may succeed for a moment. But the time will come when the humble child of God will "tread upon their high places." Remember the step that is to tread them down--not the step of pride, "but the feet of the poor, and the steps of the needy." Isa 26:6 The time will come, if you are one of God's Israel, when however high the enemies of your soul may have raised their fortifications, you shall tread them down, not with the foot of revenge, but of humility.
May the Lord be pleased to raise up in your souls who fear His great name, a sweet and blessed evidence that all these mercies and promises are yours, that you may have the comfort, and He may have the glory!
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