Know this day that it is not your children who have known and seen the discipline of the LORD your God: His greatness, His mighty hand, and His outstretched arm; Sermons
I. THREE PHASES OF GOD'S INSTRUCTION OF HIS CHURCH. 1. The shattering of worldly power hostile to the Church (vers. 3, 4). Pharaoh, in his pride and obstinacy, is a type of world-power universally, in its opposition to God's kingdom (Romans 9:17). But though again and again the waves have thus roared, and the floods have lifted up their voice (Psalm 93:3, 4), the Lord on high has shown himself mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea (cf. Psalm 83.; Isaiah 37.; 1 Macc. 4.; Acts 4:23-34; Revelations 19:19; 20:8, 9). 2. The preservation and guidance of the Church itself (ver. 5). In securing the perpetuation of a godly remnant in times of greatest apostasy (1 Kings 19:18; Romans 11:5; Revelations 3:5; 11:3; 12:17); in providing her with a succession of godly teachers (Matthew 28:20; Ephesians 4:11-14); in supplying her necessities, spiritual (John 6:32, 33; 1 Corinthians 10:4; 1 Corinthians 12:13; Ephesians 3:16; Philippians 4:19) and temporal (Matthew 10:9, 10; Acts 4:34; 1 Corinthians 9:14; Philippians 4:15, 16); in opening up the path of duty (Acts 16:10; Romans 15:30, 31; 2 Corinthians 10:13-17), in conducting her from one stage of attainment to another (Ephesians 4:12, 13). 3. The overthrow of antichristian rebellion within the Church (ver. 6). The insurrection of Korah and his company may be taken as representative of antichristian movements generally. These are bound to arise, but will infallibly be crushed (2 Thessalonians 2:3-13; 1 John 2:18; Revelation 17.). II. OBLIGATIONS ARISING FROM EXPERIENCE OF GOD'S WONDERFUL WORKS. The older portion of that generation had personally witnessed the wonderful works referred to. This gave them a certain advantage, and made disobedience doubly culpable. These works of God had been: (1) in origin, supernatural; (2) in kind, of stupendous magnitude; and (3) had extended over a long period of time. Those who have lived through any period signalized by remarkable workings of God on behalf of his Church, or whose individual experiences have been remarkable, may learn a lesson. Apply to reformation times, times of religious revival, of deliverance from persecutions, of the forth-putting of God's power in missions, etc. (2 Chronicles 31:25, 26; Ezra 3:10-13; Ezra 6:22; Esther 9:27; Psalm 40:10; Psalm 116:6-9; Acts 15:12). Such experiences: 1. Furnish peculiar evidences of God's grace and power, of the reality of his working in salvation and judgment. These evidences, while not losing their value to later generations, are necessarily of greatest force to those who witness the events. 2. Create impressions of God's character and attributes not so readily created by report. It is much to hear of the wonderful works of God from credible witnesses, but hearing with the ear cannot equal, in impressiveness and force, seeing with the eye (Job 42:5). 3. Imply a personal discipline which others have not had the benefit of. The lessons of our experiences may be conveyed to posterity, but the results of them in personal character remain with ourselves. All this lays on those who have had such experiences very special responsibilities. These relate (1) to personal obedience (ver. 8); and (2) to the education of children (vers. 18-21). How are our children to know of God's mighty works in former days, or get the benefit of our own experiences; how are they to be convinced, moved, or instructed by these things, save as the result of diligent parental teaching? - J.O.
Teach them your children. I. THIS IS THE SIMPLEST NOTION OF EDUCATION, for undoubtedly he is perfectly educated who is taught all the will of God concerning him, and enabled through life to execute it. And he is not well educated who does not know the will of God, or, knowing it, has received no help in his education towards being inclined and enabled to do it:II. The special thing meant to be taught to the Israelites was A KNOWLEDGE OF GOD'S STATUTES AND ORDINANCES, not the Ten Commandments only, nor all the early history of their forefathers contained in the Book of Genesis, but God's law given to them His people, His will respecting them morally and politically, His will with regard to all the relations of private and public life; all this was laid down in their law; all this was carefully to be taught them in their youth, that so, in whatsoever line of life they might be thrown, or whatever questions might be agitated, they might know what was God's will, and therefore might know and do their own duty. III. For the Israelites the Bible contained both the rule and its application; FOR US IT CONTAINS ONLY THE RULE. In order, therefore, to instruct our children fully in God's will and enable them to execute it, we must bring in some other knowledge and other studies, not to be found in the Bible, in order to make up for that part of the Bible which gave this instruction to the Israelites, but which gives it us no longer. And hence it is clear that neither is the Bible alone sufficient to give a complete religious education, nor is it possible to teach history and moral and political philosophy with no reference to the Bible without giving an education that should be anti-religious. For in the one case the rule is given without the application; in the other the application is derived from a wrong rule. (T. Arnold, D. D.) II. THE TEACHERS AND THEIR QUALIFICATIONS. Parents are constituted the teachers of their children by the express appointment of God, and any arrangement that sets aside this appointment can neither be wise nor safe. As God has thus clearly defined who are to be the teachers, so He has, in the text, no less clearly pointed out what are to be their qualifications. III. THE MATTER AND THE MANNER OF THE TEACHING WHICH GOD HAS ENJOINED. Surely nothing is so worthy of engaging the first recollections of the mind as "the words of God," nor anything so important as to have the heart — before it is immersed in the cares of life — fully brought under the guidance of God, the grace and love of Christ, and the attractions of heaven. And to attain this should elicit the daily efforts and the daily prayers of the Christian parent, as he sits in his house, or walks by the way, or lies down, or rises up. IV. THE HAPPINESS WHICH MAY BE EXPECTED TO RESULT FROM THIS. There are those who would make us believe that these, and all similar promises of a temporal nature, which we meet with under the Old Testament dispensation, have no place under the new. But so long as it is true that "in the keeping of God's commands there is a great reward," and that "godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come," and that there is a natural adaptedness in a life of piety to promote the universal well-being of man, I cannot see how such interpretations of Scripture can be according to truth. It is quite true, however, that the chief and most glorious part of "the recompense of reward" is spiritual, and such as can be fully enjoyed only in the heavenly state. (M. T. Adams.) 1. In rearing children, the first step should be in securing health; and for this sake the requirement is healthy parents. Children that bear the sins of their fathers are not few, and miserable are they; but taking it for granted that children are born with fair chances of life, sound in every part, and well-tempered together, the very first parental duty is to secure for them, from year to year, air, exercise, and wholesome food, that they may grow up healthily. Under this general head of health parents need instruction against the early forcing of their children. See that your children are kept down to animal conditions, so that the brain shall not destroy them. 2. Next to health in importance in the family, as well as in order, is obedience. The child is born into a world of infinite subordinations, where the business of life itself is to suppress one's self, and to give way here and there to strength, to social arrangements, to law. There can, therefore, be nothing less wise in the parent, and nothing less beneficial to the child, than that questioning, hesitating obedience which finally dragged into an unwilling submission, the child at last yields; but that is family government, as it is seen in many households; and wherever you see this — especially if you see it in your own house — understand that you are bringing up your children to disobey God, and the magistrate, and their fellow men, by teaching them to disobey you, or to give only a grudging instead of a cheerful and prompt obedience. It may be said that this is to break the will of the child, and that he needs all the will he is possessed of with which to fight his way through life. Now it is no more breaking the will of the child to teach him to obey his father and mother, than it is the breaking of the bones of my arms to teach me exactly how to use them, or exactly how to hold my hand to the keyboard of a piano. It is merely teaching the child how to use his will; and without teaching of that kind we are all brutes and barbarians. 3. We are next to consider that our children are not given to us for our accommodation and our pleasure. They are not, in one sense, our own children; they are lent to us; and no trust was ever reposed by king, by noble, by any human being upon another, so august, and of which the responsibilities are so tremendous, as the trust of a child placed in the hands of fallible, feeble, erring men, to be brought up for his destiny in this life, and in the life which is to come. These considerations reach backward. The laws of taking care of our children ought to go back further than the birth of the child, to antecedent conditions. I do not think that civilisation will ever take its last flight, or that religion will ever universally prevail, until physiological laws are observed to the letter. 4. Let me say that I regard a happy Christian family, consisting of wise parents and dutiful children, dwelling together in love as Eden restored. I regard the development of love in the family, its impartiality, its pitifulness to the weak, its watch and care, its patience, its suffering, its power to suffer, its stern requisition, its discrimination between right and wrong, its endurance of pain for the objects of its discipline, as the grandest, and as the only perfect revelation of Divine moral government. (H. W. Beecher.) It is a Word directive, explanative, consolatory, inspirational, redemptive. It is God's spoken wisdom for man's active guidance. And the wise man will ponder well these Divine revelations before he sets out, will get a good grip of heaven's instructions and promises before passing on to the stress and strain of conflict. The heart has need to store such things as these in readiness. They are not easily or readily found if left at one side till immediately wanted. It is an easier and wiser course for your railway official to light up his carriages amid broad daylight and before the train starts than it would be to send a man with flaming torch along the roof of a speeding train after it had dashed into the darkness of a tunnel. The ship that sails forth well equipped does not put her lifeboats in the hold because the day is fine — she carries them taut, furnished, ready fitted for immediate use, prepared beforehand even down to details for any moment's service. So must we equip ourselves with Divine wisdom for life's voyage. "Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly." Let it be a perpetual remembrance. Its interpretation of life's meaning and issue, its solution of the ways of Providence, its new and chivalrous setting of old moral obligations, its bright-hued promises, above all its message of grace to the needy soul — let us take a lively realisation of these truths with us.(C. A. Berry, D. D.) The Hebrew prophet anticipated the difficulty of attaining this Divine consciousness. Our natural tendency in respect of spiritual verities is not towards remembrance but forgetfulness. Great emotions, bright visions, hours of keen insight, pass, leaving behind only a vague, occasional reminiscence. We are alive at so many sensuous points, and there is so much to be alive to in the intensity of our worldly life, that we easily become absorbed in what is passing, our thought of the Divine becomes meagre, spasmodic, feebly influential — an occasional jerk, not a constant, steady, regnant force. Moses foresaw this: foresaw, too, that the only way to check this and to reverse it was to turn the outward into a ministering reminder of spiritual things. In the first place he asked them to associate everything in life with the gracious words of God, to turn their surroundings into memory helps, recalling to the mind the great lessons of heaven. In the next place, observing that men best learn what they oftenest teach, he directed them, in relation to God's Word, to follow a course of pupil-teachership, to fix in themselves by imparting to others the truths and promises of grace. Our first step towards the perpetual remembrance of Christ is to surround ourselves with memorials of Him, to put up tokens, symbols, writings, which shall recall past lessons and experiences. We must use our common sense in this matter. We must give to the soul at least as many helps as we give to the mind in our efforts to produce and to fix great impressions. When I go into a schoolhouse I find the wise teacher calling into the service of his pupils' memory every sense with which they are gifted. He is not content to repeat a thing, nor even to make it clear: he seeks thereafter to set up a sensuous memorial of the thing taught. Now by a rhyme which captivates the ear, now by a picture or demonstration which masters the eye, he endeavours to render permanent the instruction of the hour. Every surrounding of life is thus turned into the service of the memory. Things are made vocal of ideas. The eye and the ear are made daily ministers to the intellect and the heart. Memory is built up of memorials. Every Christian home should be well furnished with memorial writings and suggestive memory helps. Some vivid experience has lit up for you the full meaning and graciousness of an old Scripture promise. Put up that promise where it shall often meet the eye, and through the eye you shall be able to re-awaken the soul to that old and blessed experience. A blessed answer to family prayer has saved your home from disaster, has brought back to you a wanderer, has delivered you from the loss of members or fortune. Set up in the midst of your household a monument of that great answer. So ought it to be with all the cardinal truths and promises of the Gospel. But there is suggested another help to the realisation of Christ's Word. It is that which springs from teaching to others what we ourselves have learned. "Teach them your children."(C. A. Berry, D. D.) Value the young. How precious these germs are! These spring buds are lovely to look upon, but their worth is greater than their beauty. An immortal life is opening there; heed it well. Proprietors rear strong fences round young trees, while they leave the aged forests to take their chance. Permit not the immortal to be twisted at the very starting of its growth for the want of such protection as it is in your power to afford.(W. Arnot.) The mind of a child is not like that of a grown person, too full and too noisy to observe everything: it is a vessel always ready to receive, and always receiving.(Mrs. Child.) Charles Dickens once addressed a letter to his son Henry while he was at college, advising him to keep out of debt and confide all his perplexities to his father. The letter concluded as follows: "I most strongly and affectionately impress upon you the priceless value of the New Testament, and the study of that book as the one unfailing guide in life. Deeply respecting it, and bowing down before the character of our Saviour, you cannot go very wrong, and will always preserve at heart a true spirit of veneration and humility. Similarly, I impress upon you the habit of saying a Christian prayer every night and morning. These things have stood by me all through my life, and remember that I tried to render the New Testament intelligible to you and lovable by you when a mere baby. And so God bless you."That your days may be multiplied Homilist. I. That experimental godliness has a tendency TO ADD LENGTH OF DAYS TO MAN'S LIFE.1. Genuine religion engenders and fosters states of mind highly conducive to physical health. 2. Genuine religion stimulates a practical regard to the laws of human health. II. That experimental godliness has a tendency TO ADD HEAVEN TO A MAN'S LIFE. 1. It gives him the spirit of heaven. 2. It engages in the service of heaven. 3. It introduces into the fellowship of heaven. (Homilist.) As the days of heaven upon the earth. The text implies a very elevated principle, that we should spend our days on earth as the days are spent by angels and the spirits of the just in heaven. And, without doubt, men might be incomparably happier than they are, if they would. There is no hindrance in God; there is no obstacle in the Divine arrangements; but man destroys his own well-being, and is ofttimes miserable, amid all the opportunities of the sweetest peace and the deepest joy, and when he might have days of heaven upon the earth.I. WHAT ARE THE DAYS OF HEAVEN? "No night there." 1. In heaven they see the face of God. Manifestations of the excellence and glory of the Divine perfections: satisfying, felicitous, transforming. 2. In heaven they glorify Christ and celebrate His praise. 3. In heaven they are full of knowledge. 4. Full of love. 5. Prompt and perfect in obedience.Their delight is in doing God's will; they dwell together in perfect unity. And from this state of mind and nature unmingled satisfaction flows, like waters from a fountain. Deep and ineffable happiness is realised. The pulsations of their joy produce no exhaustion, but forever increase in pleasantness and power. II. THE POSSIBILITY OF THIS, AND THE DUTY OF ATTEMPTING TO MAKE OUR DAYS LIKE THE DAYS OF HEAVEN, WHILST WE ARE UPON EARTH. 1. And, first, I would refer to the elements of happiness which have been already specified. Respecting the spiritual sight of the Deity, our Lord affirms, "Blessed are the pure in heart," etc. "The world seeth Me no more, but ye see Me." "I will manifest Myself to you, as I do not unto the world." If you delight in the complacency of God, be sure that His favour will be opened upon you as the sun shining in his strength. Then, as to glorifying and praising Christ; do we not now say, "Unto Him that loved us," etc.? And have we not love in exercise? Are we not ready to do the will of God? Do we not dwell in peace? When the light and fire of the Holy Ghost is given; when our best passions are kindled, when we are filled with the celestial communications and communion, there is a near resemblance of heaven upon the earth. 2. Let me appeal to some passages of Scripture which convey the same truth. The Gospel dispensation is the reign of heaven. It is the ascendency of holiness in the heart and mind. The kingdom of God is within you, and it consists of righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. 3. Let us advert to some of the recorded experiences of good men on the subject. It has been said, "Grace is glory in the bud, and religion in the soul is the glory of the soul." "A timorous faith will bring a man safely to heaven, but a strong and vigorous faith will bring heaven to us now." And I was startled by this sentiment: "It is better to be here than in heaven." Yes, so long as it shall please God it is so, and to think the contrary shows insubmissiveness to His will and discontent with His providential arrangements. III. HOW MAY THEY BE SECURED TO US? 1. Receive the Gospel. Christ is our life; if He and the Father come and abide in our souls, heaven is begun. 2. Settle the possibility of it in your own mind. 3. Observe the ordinances of Christ. 4. Avoid all known causes of disquietude. 5. Maintain your self-possession. Cultivate tranquility of spirit. 6. Take care of your thoughts. 7. Take care of your tongue. 8. Take care of your conscience. 9. Do not harass yourself concerning the future. 10. Study to be quiet, and to attend to your own business. 11. Do good every day to someone, either by example, instruction, or generosity. (James Stratten.) In this clause extremes meet. Things that are distant are brought together — "heaven" and "earth."1. We know something of the "days...upon the earth." If we told our story, each would be different from the other; yet there would be a wonderful sameness. It would be a story of light and shade, beauty and barrenness, laughter and tears, success and failure. 2. We have dreamed, most of us, of "the days of heaven"; when the sun, no longer battling with the mists, should shine in the glory of his brightness; when fleecy clouds, like angel chariots, should fleck the blue expanse; when all the bustle and riot should be exchanged for unbroken peace and perpetual quiet; when vision should be no longer blurred by the uprising vapours of evil. 3. The text speaks to us of realisation, enjoyment, benediction, contentment. It contains the ideas of continuity and felicity, duration and fulness, or a blending of these ideas. I. THE TEXT FINDS A PLEASING ILLUSTRATION IN HAPPY CHILDHOOD UNDER KINDLY PARENTAL CONTROL. 1. Given all the healthful influences of a home where judicious training is linked with affectionate yearning; where example is set like a jewel in a circlet of gold, and the parents are recognised as priest and priestess of the home sphere: I know no words more fittingly appropriate to describe that period of life than these, "As the days of heaven upon the earth." 2. The child's best interests are secured by obedience and subjection, and his heaven is found in harmony with the parental will. Then shall his course be crowded with sunny memories, for his way shall be illumined by the father's smile; voices shall cheer him in the darkness; while from day to day shall be added mercies new and many, the true value of which shall only be discovered upon review. II. THE TEXT IS SUGGESTIVE OF THE NEW EPOCH INAUGURATED AT CONVERSION. One summer morning a lady I knew well went into her garden. She looked up at the blue sky, she gazed at the trees, she bent over the flowers, she examined everything as though she had not seen anything of the kind before. Her sister inquired, "Why are you looking at everything thus?" She replied with a smile, "Well, it is all so very lovely, and seems so new." She had been converted the previous evening, and that was the explanation of her awakened interest and evident admiration. III. VIEW THE TEXT AS THE EPITOME OF THE GRATEFUL SOUL'S ESTIMATE OF A LIFE THAT OFTEN SEEMS ANYTHING BUT HEAVENLY. The point of view makes all the difference in the estimate of the life of faith on the earth. I read somewhere of one who had moved into a new flat, which could hardly be described as cheerful in its surroundings. The outlook was not very pleasant, and the building had not what the Frenchman called "a sunny exposition." The ordinary woman would have regarded it but as a dismal shelter from the frosts of winter or the rains of summer. A friend called one day, and was asked by the cheerful housewife to notice the pleasant view from the window. "Yes," said the friend, "I see a remarkably fine lot of chimney pots." "Chimney pots," said her hostess in astonishment, — "why, I never saw any chimney pots before. I looked over the chimneys, and saw only those trees which form the line on the horizon. I thought only of the trees and the sunsets." Happy are they who look beyond all which tends to depress and distress! IV. THE TEXT SINGLES OUT THE RED-LETTER DAYS IN THE SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE OF THOSE WHOSE FACES ARE HEAVENWARD SET. Cannot we recall seasons of elevation, times of transport, periods of exceptional delight? When thoughtfully reading, when quietly meditating, when kneeling in prayer, when gathered for worship, when observing the ordinances with our fellow believers, have we not often been lifted out of and above ourselves? Such experiences are not to be forgotten. The record of them must be deeply engraven. (Isaac O. Stalberg.) The text shows us a Divine method in providence; a law for individual and national life, and for the larger life of the race; a law borne witness to by the history of the people whose history is a light for all time, and by which we have gleams through experience of bitter times, earnests of the inheritance of light, periods filled with special mercy and truth, times of quickening and spiritual growth, days of heaven upon earth.I. THE FIRST DAYS OF THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION were, in the highest and most absolute sense, days of heaven upon earth. A light began to shine amid the dark shadows of that time, and a Divine life to give forth sparks and gleams of a better world. God was manifest. He dwelt with men. He trod the common paths of life. Brief though the days were, all the great days of human history which preceded them had led up to them; and they were themselves, while they lasted, a vision of heaven for all time, an actual dawn of the possibilities to which Christ is conducting His Church, a demonstration of the power of that life of Christ in His people which, today as then, may be an opener of blind eyes, and a raiser of the dead, and may still go forth, as in the first apostles, to conquer the world. Those days were sent to us to create new days in our daily lives, and enable us, even amid the shadows and imperfections of our earthly life, to live lives of heaven upon earth. And these days still return to us. Times of revival are simply repetitions on a smaller scale of the first days of the Church. The light that shines upon human life at such times is light from heaven. Christ once more walks among men, and His presence seems to encompass them wherever they go. II. THE TIMES WHEN THE SOUL IS OPEN TO THE REVELATIONS AND OFFERS OF DIVINE LIFE are days of heaven upon earth. The dawns and sunsets of these days are in the soul itself. These are the blessed times when the heart is still impressible, when the eyes of the soul are undimmed, when the conscience is still tender. The soul is face to face with the claims of God. It has new views of its responsibilities, of its aims, and of its destiny. Christ's word and the Spirit of God and our own conscience work together to range us on the side of God. New visions of the Divine mercy and goodness are opened up to us, and we are placed under the argument of the love that died for us, to admit that love into our hearts. III. THE COMING OF CHRIST INTO A LIFE is the beginning of days of heaven for that life. We are not our true selves until the blood of the Divine life has been mingled with ours. In the midst of natural occasions for joy we are not glad. Christ enters and joy begins. The long absent Friend has come — the life is heightened. The thoughts flow forth, the nature expands, the eyes kindle, and the whole wide world of circumstance and relationship takes on our joy. IV. TIMES OF SERVICE UNDER CHRIST are days of heaven upon earth. The soul has now entered into loving relations with the Lord. It is no longer its own, but His. Its joy is to live in Him. Its life is a daily consecration to His service. Sacrifice, gifts, labours, worship: Christ is the object of them all. V. THE BEAUTIFUL DAYS OF EARTH are types and sometimes actual realisations of such days. On such days every river becomes an emblem of the river of life; every tree, of the tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations; and the glory of the sky when the dawn burns into the perfect day, of the glory which is to lighten the streets of the New Jerusalem, and clothe the nations of the saved who shall walk in its light. I recall at this moment such a day of heaven upon earth. Here and there, all up the sides of a Highland mountain, patches of corn were yellowing for the sickle. These literally peeped out, so small they were, from amid great breadths of purple heather. Little hollows of meadow grass shot up over their edges the richest green; and, at irregular intervals, the bare rock displayed itself like protruding bones. The sun was setting. His rays came level and struck all that breast of colour at once, and seemed to touch it into active life. It expanded, it swelled, it rose upwards until clouds of colour floated about all the mountainside. The whole scene glowed with coloured light — yellow and green and purple. It flamed upwards, outwards, downwards, casting back upon the naked granite an ethereal brightness, and down upon the spectator a glory as if the gates of heaven had been opened to his view. It was one among ten thousand glimpses of the glory of God in the face of harvest. To them who were present it was a day of heaven upon earth. VI. CHRIST IS THE LIGHT WHICH MAKES DAYS OF HEAVEN POSSIBLE. And such days fail of their purpose if they fail to increase our joy in Him. Man in his ordinary state can neither see nor enjoy such days. He is blinded and oppressed by his burdens — the well known, the universally felt burdens, which only Christ can remove — of guilt and care and sorrow. (A. Macleod, D. D.) I. WHEN MAY OUR DAYS BE SAID TO BE "AS THE DAYS OF HEAVEN UPON THE EARTH"? When —1. We enjoy much of a sense of the Divine presence, and live in the contemplation of the glorious perfections of God. 2. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. 3. We enjoy a spirit of gratitude and praise. 4. We possess brotherly love and enjoy the happiness of fellowship with the saints. 5. We obtain great victories over sin and have intense rove of purity. 6. We cheerfully obey God's commands. 7. We frequently meditate on the heavenly state. II. WHAT COURSE SHOULD WE TAKE IN ORDER THAT OUR DAYS MAY BE AS SUCH? We must — 1. Be partakers of vital faith in Christ, and be renewed in the spirit of our minds. 2. Make the glory of God our highest aim. 3. Wean our hearts from earthly things. 4. Watch against grieving the Holy Spirit. 5. Be perpetually employed for God, and resign our wills to His. (J. Ryland.) He whose mind is here absorbed in the desire for the distant heaven is like a man walking through scenes of exquisite loveliness, and fields of delicious fruit, with his eye so fixed on a mirage scene in the distance, that he sees no beauty on his way, starves amid the exuberant provisions which lie about his path, and reaches what he sees, an exhausted pilgrim, to find the object of his search vanish into air. Infuse, then, the spirit of heaven into thy present life. Moral goodness of soul, springing from faith in Christ, is your way into the present and all the future heavens of your being.(D. Thomas, D. D.) It was said of an old Puritan, that heaven was in him before he was in heaven. That is necessary for all of us — we must have heaven in us before we get into heaven. If we do not get to heaven before we die, we shall never get there afterwards. An old Scotchman was asked whether he ever expected to get to heaven. "Why, man, I live there," was his quaint reply. Let us all live in those spiritual things which are the essential features of heaven. Often go there before yon go to stay there. If you come down tomorrow morning, knowing and realising that heaven is yours, and that you will soon be there, those children will not worry you half so much. When you go out to your business or to your work, you will not be half so discontented when you know that this is not your rest, but that you have a rest on the hills eternal, whither your heart has already gone, and that there your portion is in the everlasting dwellings. "Lay hold on eternal life." Get a hold of it now. It is a thing of the future, and it is a thing of the present; and even your part of it that is future can be, by faith, so realised and grasped as to be actually enjoyed while you are yet here.( C. H. Spurgeon.) A minister one day preached on heaven. Next morning he was going down town, and he met one of his old wealthy members. The brother stopped the preacher and said: "Pastor, you preached a good sermon about heaven. You told me all about heaven, but you never told me where heaven is." "Ah! "said the pastor, "I am glad of an opportunity this morning. I have just come from the hill top yonder. In that cottage there is a member of your church. She is sick in bed with fever; her two little children are sick in the other bed, and she has not got a bit of coal nor a stick of wood, nor flour, nor sugar, nor any bread. If you will go down town and buy five shillings' worth of things — race provisions — and send them up to her, and then go up there and say, 'My sister, I have brought you these nice provisions in the name of our Lord and Saviour,' then ask for a Bible and read the twenty-third Psalm, and get down on your knees and pray — if you don't see heaven before you get all through, I'll pay the bill. The next morning he said: "Pastor, I saw heaven, and I spent fifteen minutes in heaven as certainly as you are listening."People Abiram, Canaanites, Dathan, Eliab, Moses, Pharaoh, ReubenPlaces Arabah, Beth-baal-peor, Egypt, Euphrates River, Gilgal, Jordan River, Lebanon, Moreh, Mount Ebal, Mount Gerizim, Red SeaTopics Arm, Chastisement, Consider, Discipline, Experience, Experienced, God-his, Greatness, Majesty, Mighty, Minds, Ones, Outstretched, Out-stretched, Power, Powerful, Sons, Speak, Speaking, Stretched, Stretched-out, Strong, To-day, TrainingOutline 1. Another exhortation to obedience2. by their own experience of God's great works 8. by promise of God's great blessings 16. and by threatenings 18. A careful study is required in God's words 26. The blessing and curse set before them Dictionary of Bible Themes Deuteronomy 11:2 5854 experience, of God Library Canaan on EarthMany of you, my dear hearers, are really come out of Egypt; but you are still wandering about in the wilderness. "We that have believed do enter into rest;" but you, though you have eaten of Jesus, have not so believed on him as to have entered into the Canaan of rest. You are the Lord's people, but you have not come into the Canaan of assured faith, confidence, and hope, where we wrestle no longer with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus--when … Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 2: 1856 The God of the Rain Gilgal, in Deuteronomy 11:30 what the Place Was. Josiah, a Pattern for the Ignorant. The Blessings of Noah Upon Shem and Japheth. (Gen. Ix. 18-27. ) Subjects of Study. Home Education in Israel; Female Education. Elementary Schools, Schoolmasters, and School Arrangements. In the Fifteenth Year of Tiberius Cæsar and under the Pontificate of Annas and Caiaphas - a Voice in the Wilderness The Worship of the Synagogue Among the People, and with the Pharisees Covenanting Confers Obligation. The Old Testament Canon from Its Beginning to Its Close. Deuteronomy Links Deuteronomy 11:2 NIVDeuteronomy 11:2 NLT Deuteronomy 11:2 ESV Deuteronomy 11:2 NASB Deuteronomy 11:2 KJV Deuteronomy 11:2 Bible Apps Deuteronomy 11:2 Parallel Deuteronomy 11:2 Biblia Paralela Deuteronomy 11:2 Chinese Bible Deuteronomy 11:2 French Bible Deuteronomy 11:2 German Bible Deuteronomy 11:2 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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