The Eagle and Her Young 2
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2. But it adds. "He INSTRUCTED him." All the while that the Lord is leading Israel about, he is instructing him. "Everywhere and in all things." says the apostle, "I am instructed." So God instructs his Israel by everything that he does for him and in him. A person learning religion is something like a person learning a trade or business. He often learns most by making mistakes. If you have an apprentice to some mechanical trade or business, and you set him to work, how many mistakes he makes at first. He takes the chisel into his hand, and holds it wrong--then he takes the mallet, and strikes it too hard or in a wrong direction. And O how much work he spoils! yet by all this he is learning manual dexterity. If he held the chisel in a wrong direction this time, he will hold it right the next--and if he has struck the mallet too hard, or hit his own fingers, he will learn to use it with more skill the next time. So we learn much by mistakes. Many a man in business has learned more by his losses than he ever learned by his gains. And many a general has fought his way to victory through defeat.
So the Lord's people learn much by their very mistakes; they learn wisdom and caution for the future. You cannot take a young apprentice, and say, 'Do this just as I do;' he must learn it for himself--and he learns it for the most part little by little, "line upon line, line upon line," just as the children of God learn their religion. So a minister cannot say to the people, 'This is my experience; copy it, and learn it from my lips.' Each must learn his experience for himself.
It is the Lord who instructs his Israel. "All your children shall be taught of the Lord;" and he instructs us in such a way that we have often to see our folly, and yet admire his wisdom--to take to ourselves all the shame, and ascribe to him all the glory. He instructs us into a knowledge of himself in his greatness, majesty, holiness, and purity--of his righteous law as condemning sin and the sinner; and, as only in his light do we see light, we thence learn something of the wickedness, barrenness, hypocrisy, unbelief, deceitfulness, and pride of our heart. By these divine lectures, he instructs us into true humility, self-abhorrence, and self-loathing before him--and when he has instructed the soul into the mystery of its base original, and stripped it of self-righteousness, he instructs it into a knowledge of his own surprising and most suitable grace as revealed in the Person of his own dear Son, "Immanuel, God with us."
He instructs the soul into a knowledge of electing love, of atoning blood, of justifying righteousness, of unfailing faithfulness, of infinite compassion and everlasting mercy. And all these lessons are "to profit," they "sink down," as the Lord speaks, "into the ears," they drop into the heart, and become "spirit and life" to the soul. We must learn religion by experience. It is not by reading books, nor even the scriptures themselves; it is not by hearing ministers, nor by conversing with God's people that we can obtain any right experience of the teachings of God. Hundreds have had all these advantages and most profitable advantages they are, when owned and blessed of God who have no teaching from above.
Religion can no more be learned by theory than swimming. A man may stand on the brink, and see a person swim, and move his hands in imitation. Put him into the water, and he will soon sink to the bottom. So in religion. Put a man into the waves and billows of temptation, and he will soon sink, if he, who teaches the hands to war and the fingers to fight, has not taught his arms to swim. We must have our personal trials and personal mercies; our own temptations, and our own deliverances; our own afflictions, and our own consolations--and learn each and every branch of the divine life for ourselves. God so teaches his people as though each was the only scholar in his school, and takes as much pains with each pupil as though there were no other in the world for him to take pains with.
3. And not only so, but "He kept him as the apple of his eye." This expression is used in more than one place of scripture to signify the special tenderness of God in keeping his people. The apple of the eye is the tenderest spot of the whole body so far as it is accessible to external violence. As a man, therefore, would above all things guard that important and sensitive organ, so God is said to guard and keep his people as the apple of his own eye.
But some may say, Are the Lord's people always kept? Do they never slip? Are they never guilty of backsliding? Do they never err in any one point? Are they always kept from sin and folly? Are they always preserved from the least taint of evil?' Who can say this, when scripture stares him in the face with such declarations as, "In many things we offend;" "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves," "The good that I would do, I do not; and the evil that I would not do, that I do?" Who can say this in spite of, in defiance of all the slips and falls of the saints recorded in the word of God, such as Abraham, Lot, Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Peter--against all of whose names a mark stands? And yet withal, the Lord keeps them as the apple of his eye.
There are certain rocks and shoals from which the heavenly Pilot ever keeps the ship of the soul. For instance, he keeps them from "making shipwreck of faith," from drinking down poisonous draughts of error--from the sin unto death--from presumption and apostasy; from sitting in the scorner's chair--from despair, prayerlessness, and impenitency; from enmity to his truth, cause, and people--from making a covenant with death and an agreement with hell; from despising true experience--and from murdering the reputation of the approved saints and servants of God.
From these and similar soul-destroying evils he preserves them, by keeping alive his fear in their heart, the spirit of prayer in their bosom, and the life that he himself gave them out of Christ's fullness. "Because I live, you shall live also." "I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish." He does not keep them in every instance from all evil, but he so keeps them as the apple of his eye, that nothing can really and finally harm them. Sin indeed will ever grieve and distress them; Satan will ever tempt or harass them; and a body of sin and death will ever burden them; but they will eventually come off more than conquerors through him who loved them. But to say, that the Lord so keeps his saints that they never in any degree slip, that they never in any way backslide--is to speak in defiance of what is recorded of the saints in the scriptures of truth, and in diametrical contradiction of what the best and wisest of God's people have in all ages confessed of themselves.
4. But by way of further illustration of the dealings of God, Moses, speaking by divine inspiration, brings forward a sweet and blessed figure, that of an eagle and her young. "As an eagle stirs up her nest, flutters over her young, spreads abroad her wings--so the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him."
The various movements of the eagle here are vividly and beautifully described, and demand, each of them, a special notice.
A. She is said, first, to "stir up her nest." Her "nest," doubtless, signifies her young ones, which, like human babes, doze away much of their time in sleep. But feeding time comes--and they need to be aroused. The bill and claw of the mother bird quickly break their slumber. Though of eagle birth, and vivified by eagle blood; though cradled upon "the crag of a rock," and alone of all birds born to gaze upon the sun, yet often the eaglet's eyes and wings droop. So the Lord's people often nod and slumber. Now, as the eagle stirs up her nest, so does the Lord stir up his people. They fall asleep, get into a drowsy state of soul; their affections dreamily wander from the Lord; and though still upon the Rock, their eyes look not upon the Sun of righteousness, but droop and sink into slumber.
But does the Lord leave them so? No--he stirs them up. And two ways does he chiefly employ to do this.
Sometimes he uses afflictions. They are perhaps as nodding and drowsy in their souls as some of my hearers may now be in their bodies. But the Lord sends some rousing affliction. His hand falls heavily upon their bodies, or upon their families, or upon their circumstances, or upon their consciences; for usually in one of these four ways does the Lord stir up his drowsy people when he lays on the afflicting rod. The affliction has now a voice, and this is its cry, "Awake, you that sleep." "What are you doing here, O sleeper? Arise, call upon your God." The cry reaches their heart, and shakes off slumber from their eyes and limbs.
The other chief instrument in the Lord's hands to stir up the slumbering nest is the bill and claw of a heart-searching, experimental ministry--not to tear, but arouse; to pass between the feathers, but not to rend the flesh. How the Lord's people need stirring up! How they need a minister to search them to the very core! How they require not the baby's lullaby, but the trumpet of alarm in the holy mountain; and for Zion's watchmen to sound aloud, "Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem," to rouse them out of that torpidity into which they so often sink. One main use of a gospel ministry is to stir up the people of God. Peter thought it fit, as long as he was in the tabernacle of the body, to "stir up" the brethren, and says, that "in both his epistles he stirred up their pure minds by way of remembrance."
A fire soon goes out unless stirred--and so the fire of God in the soul would die away unless continually stirred up. All through the week haply you are occupied with business--you live perhaps in a whirl of customers where money, money, money--chink, chink, chink, swallows up the whole time of employer and employed--or, if not so, the cares and anxieties of a family, and the carnality of your own nature, combine together to bury you as it were alive. These things should not be so--but so, it is to be feared, they much are. Now, on a Lord's Day, to be able to hear the gospel, to attend an experimental ministry, is often a blessed means of stirring up the soul, and reviving it out of this six days' slumber. It is a bad mark to despise or neglect a gospel ministry. It is God's own ordinance, and therefore cannot be despised or neglected with impunity.
Nearly four years ago I was laid aside from preaching, through illness, for eight months, and in that affliction I learned one important lesson, if no other--the benefit of a gospel ministry. Being a minister myself, and much feeling my own deficiencies in the ministry, I did not, I confess attach sufficient value to that ordinance. I was much kept from doing so by this feeling, that to attach importance to the ministry was to attach importance to myself. But though too unwell from weakness of the chest to preach myself, I was able to attend chapel during a good portion of that time as a hearer of such gracious men as stand in this pulpit.
It is a singular circumstance, that during that period my gift for the ministry, if I have any, was as completely taken away as if I had never preached in my life. This stopped all criticism, for I felt, in hearing, that were I in the pulpit, I would not have a word to say. This singular feeling, combined with much depression of mind and body, made me a hearer, I think, less disposed to criticize than any one in the whole place. Being, I hope, in this childlike frame, and so prepared to hear, I found there was a benefit in the preached gospel, such as I did not before apprehend; that it stirred me up--brought feeling to my heart, kindled prayer, and seemed to do my soul real positive good. Since then, being restored to the pulpit, and the door of utterance once more opened, I have attached more value, not indeed to my own, but to the ministry of the gospel generally as an ordinance of God. Under, then, a sound, experimental ministry, if there be any life and fear of God in the heart, it draws it forth--if there be any experience, it is brought to light--new life is kindled in the soul--faith, hope, and love are revived--and the work of God upon the heart is made clear and plain.
Thus, as the eagle stirs up her nest, so does the Lord stir up the work of grace upon the heart of his people. And, if I may judge from my feelings in this pulpit, I must think that you in London much want stirring up; I sadly fear that your souls are in a very sleepy, dead, torpid, state, and that you want some rousing afflictions, and pointed dealings of God, to stir you up, and make you alive and lively in the things of eternity.
B. "As an eagle stirs up her nest, flutters over her young." The word "flutters" is the same word as is translated "moved" Ge 1:2. "The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." There is something exceedingly expressive in the word. The Spirit of God hovered with a fluttering motion over the waters, and impregnated chaos with life. So the eagle when she returns from pursuing her prey, first "stirs up" her sleeping eaglets, and then, gently fluttering over her nest, broods with tremulous motion of bosom and wing over her young, infusing warmth and life into their torpid frames, chilled through her long absence.
What a beautiful figure is this to set forth the return of the Lord to the soul that has fallen asleep, and become chilled with cold when he has been away! Christ, we read, "cherishes," or, as the word means, "warms with his body," "the church" Eph 5:29. Fluttering by the blessed Spirit with gentle movements over the soul, he communicates to it animation and warmth. To stir up and to cherish the life of God in the soul are the two chief uses of a gospel ministry. See whether you can trace these two effects of the preached gospel in your soul. Are you not sometimes stirred up? And sometimes does not your heart beat responsively to the joyful sound, and palpitate and flutter under the sweet words of gospel grace as they drop with divine unction into your breast? Do not the eaglets flutter too? Does the bridegroom flutter, and not the bride when their hands are tied together never more to part? So the believer's soul flutters and palpitates in responsive movement to the blessed Spirit. Seek these two things under a preached gospel. How different is life and feeling under the preached word from sitting like so many blocks of ice!
C. "Spreads abroad her wings." That she may take in the whole brood. Some of the eaglets are in the center of the nest, and others at the end; but the eagle neglects none. There are those that lie nearer to her breast, as there are those of God's family who are indulged with closer communion with him. These, like holy John, lean upon his bosom. But the eagle spreads her wings over the whole of her nest, so as to encircle the extremity as well as the center, thus communicating warmth to every eaglet. Christ does this by the ministry of the gospel--for that reaches, or should reach all; it should come down to every case, and enter into every experience. Or, if here the ministry of man be defective, so is not the word of truth. The gospel of the grace of God spreads its benignant wings over all the election of grace. From center to extremity, from the bosom of God to the ends of the earth, the wings of eternal love embrace all, from Paul in the third heaven to Jonah in the whale's belly. If you have not the whole warmth of the bosom, you have, as an eaglet, the protection of the wing.
D. "Takes them, bears them on her wings." The eagle is said here to "take" her young, that is, we may gather, to the edge of the nest. The eaglets that now lie in the nest, will one day spread their pinions, and fly abroad in the sky; but at present, when they peep over their couch, and look down the steep precipice on which the eyry is built, their hearts recoil with terror. But the eagle teaches them to look down the precipice, that they may learn to measure its depth, and fear it not.
So the Lord leads his people sometimes to look down the precipice of eternity. They are as yet safe in the nest beneath his wings; but sometimes in solemn moments, as in sickness, they shrink from death and eternity. They recoil from the unfathomed precipice, and shrink back into the nest. But the eagle holds them firm to the sight until they are encouraged by her presence and fluttering warmth to look down without fear.
She then makes them test their strength, and, to uphold them in their flight, "bears them upon her wings." carries them on her back, where they are safe under the arch of her outspread pinions. So the Lord in his gracious dealings with his Israel, when he has caused them to look into eternity, and they shrink from the sight, takes them upon his pinions, gives them some sweet and heart-cheering views of their saving interest in his blood, removes the fear of death, until he teaches them to soar away, and fly aloft to heaven's battlements.
E. And then to show how this is wholly of the Lord, he adds, "So the Lord ALONE did lead him." He would not share the honor with any. "And there was no strange god with him." He would not allow any ash-heap god to interfere; for he is a jealous god. "The Lord alone" he would have no intruder--Jesus bears no rival, "did lead him." Israel did not lead himself, nor was he led by man; but the Lord alone, in his providence and grace, led him about, instructed him, kept him as the apple of his eye, and was to him all that the eagle is to her young. Free-will had no hand in this matter; human strength did not interfere; creature righteousness was never allowed to interpose. They were all still as a stone, when Israel passed over. God did all the work, that God might have all the glory. He began, he carried on, he completed; for "the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him."
O how blessedly does the Lord take the whole matter in hand! And how safely does he lead his people! How secure they are! If he keeps them as the apple of his eye, can anything really hurt them? If he leads them, can they go wrong? If he instructs them, can they remain in ignorance? If he stirs them up, can they lie torpid? If he flutters over them, will they not feel the soft movement of his breast? If he takes them, must not they be carried? If he supports them, must not they be upheld by his pinions? 'Yes,' you say, all true; I believe it every word--but O, this is what I want--to feel in my soul that I am one of the characters toward whom the Lord shows such mercy! But cannot you trace out in your experience something corresponding to the experience described in the text--"The desert," "the waste howling wilderness," "led about"? Can you not see how, in the providence of God you have been led, and how, in the grace of God, you have been brought on from step to step? Can you not see also how you have been instructed?
Though you may know but little, yet have you not been taught this and that lesson, in a gradual and sometimes painful way? Do you not find how the Lord has kept you as the apple of his eye, and preserved you even to this day? has sometimes stirred you up under the ministry of the gospel, and sometimes by painful affliction--how he bears you up, and lifts your affections upward, and sometimes gives you a sweet sip of his love, a foretaste of eternal joy?
Now, if you find something of this going on in your heart, is not this the very way to read your name engraved on this monument of eternal love? But this feeling perhaps creates doubts and fears in your soul, that you are not all, or indeed in many points, what you believe a Christian should be. There are things in you that grieve and distress you; you cannot think as you would, nor speak as you would, nor act as you would. There is always something or other wrong which seems to wound and disturb your mind. It will be so to the end. The heart is at best a Sahara– a desert, a waste howling wilderness. Will any good thing grow there? If anything could by nature grow there, it would cease to be a desert. If the pestilential wind never howled over it, if the jackal never cried out after its prey, it would cease to be a waste howling wilderness. Nature undergoes no change.
But what a mercy it is, even to find in this desert, this waste howling wilderness, some leading, some keeping, some instructing, some stirring, some fluttering, some taking, some bearing up on eagle's wings. Do not look at the desert; you will always see in that nothing but desolation; but see if there be not some of God's gracious dealings and teachings with your soul in the desert; and if you find your character in the text, your name is in the book of life.
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