Numbers 10:11-13 And it came to pass on the twentieth day of the second month, in the second year… While we are in this world we are passing through a wilderness, and our removes in it are only from one wilderness to another. The men of this world will dislike the comparison because the world is their portion, their all. But those whose chief business and governing desire is to get to heaven, and who have their conversation there, will acknowledge the emblem to be just, will dwell on it with pleasure, and derive instruction from it. This world is like a wilderness, as — 1. It is an uncomfortable state. 2. It is a dangerous state: dangerous to the Christian's virtue and peace, to the life and health of his soul, which are the main things that he regards and pursues. 3. It is an unsettled state, subject to continual changes and alterations. We enter on new relations in life, and promise ourselves much from them, but still it is a wilderness: if we have new pleasures we have new cares and sorrows, and if we double our joys we double our griefs too. In every stage of the wilderness we leave some of our friends behind us, the prey of the universal destroyer death, and we find the rest of the journey more tiresome and dangerous for want of their assistance and company. Some are confined long in the wilderness, beyond the usual period of human life. Sometimes they think themselves near the country for which they are bound, and then, like Israel, they are turned back again, and have many more years to wander. Their burdens grow heavier and their pleasures less, and nothing in the wilderness can support them; nothing but religion and the hope of getting to Canaan at last. Application: 1. Let us be thankful that we have so many comforts in the wilderness. 2. Let us be patient and contented under the evils of it. And for this plain reason, because it is sin that hath turned the world into a wilderness. 3. Lot us earnestly seek and hope for the presence of God with us in this wilderness, and that will be everything to us. 4. Let us rejoice in the views of the heavenly Canaan, and diligently prepare for it. (J. Orton.) Parallel Verses KJV: And it came to pass on the twentieth day of the second month, in the second year, that the cloud was taken up from off the tabernacle of the testimony. |
    |