Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 803
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, March 29, 1868, by.
“There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rides upon the Hea ven in your help, and in His excellency on the sky. The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and He shall thrust out the enemy from before you; and shall say, Destroy them. Israel then shall dwell in safety alone: the fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine; also His heavens shall drop down dew.” Deuteronomy 33:26-28.
MOSES lived to be 120 years of age, and his life was divided into three periods of 40 years. The first 40 he spent as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter in the Courts of Egypt. The second in the wilderness, at the foot of Horeb, as a shepherd, and the third 40 he reigned as king in Jeshurun, leading the Lord’s people from Egypt to the borders of the promised land. Observe how each of these periods terminated. The time of his apprenticeship in Egypt concluded with his refusing to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, his avowal of brotherhood with the afflicted Israelites, his attempt to avenge their wrongs and his consequent flight from Egypt, because of the king.
Brethren, it is to be desired that thus our original connection with the world may once and for all be snapped—we are not of it though we are in it—and may Divine Grace so work in us that, like Moses, we may count the reproach of Christ to be greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt, and, therefore, may flee from all worldly conformity, resolving to come out from among the ungodly, not touching the unclean thing, but separating ourselves, cost what it may, from the world which lies in the Wicked One. It will be well for us, if that which divides us from the world shall be as clear, sharp, definite and impassable as that which cut off Moses from Egypt.
The second part of Moses’ life was spent in the solitudes of Horeb and was concluded by a manifestation of God and a commission for service. He saw Jehovah in the burning bush—the bush burned with fire, but was not consumed—and he was bid to deliver the Lord’s message to Pharaoh. Yes, and our times of quiet meditation are good for nothing if they do not end and culminate in bright discoveries of God and a call to heavenly labor. It is of little avail to be in the wilderness unless God is seen there. Meditation and retirement shall be but as barren fields unless they yield to us the harvest of communion with the Invisible and give us sheaves of blessing for our Brethren! You bookworms, you solitary students and men of meditation, think of this and pray that your meditations may so end likewise.
The third part of his life closed with the song which is now before us. The last 40 years were crowded with events and full of trials. He was greatly vexed with the unholy spirit of the people, yet, in meekness and patience he endured with them and was tender as a nurse with her child. He led the people like a flock out of Egypt with a high hand and an outstretched arm in the midst of miracles and wonders. And, then, afterwards, for 40 years he conducted them as they went winding about through the wild desert.
A great man, indeed, was Moses in what he saw, and did, and said and suffered. His life was spent in unmeasured toil. From the day when he first went in unto Pharaoh till he climbed the steeps of Nebo, he must have been, night and day, incessantly engaged, and yet he finished his life-work with a song! Even thus let it be our prayer, that we, bearing the burden and heat of the day, may hear in our souls the voice, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter you into the joy of your Lord.” And then may we, in our departing hours, pour out a stream of praise unto our God, blessing and magnifying the Most High who has worked our works in us, and made us, unworthy as we are, to be instruments fit for His use.
We shall now consider these words which compose the last stanzas of the song of Moses. May the Holy Spirit remarkably assist me because I am, this morning, so unusually unfit for ministering among you that the weakness of the creature will be painfully manifest. Both brain and voice are choked up, but the Holy One of Israel helps our infirmities!
I. Observe, in the first place, that Moses’ song MAGNIFIES ISRAEL’S GOD. He declares, “There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rides upon the Heaven in your help, and in His excellency on the sky.” The Lord is the great joy and the delightful portion of His people. In nothing were the tribes of Israel so favored as in having the true God to be their God. This was the great glory and the peculiar privilege of the chosen people—that the only living and Most High Jehovah had manifested Himself unto them and to their fathers—had taken them to be His people, and given Himself to be their God.
Truly, when Moses looked upon the gods of Egypt, a country so superstitious that the satirist wrote of them, “O happy nation, whose gods grow in their own gardens”—when he heard the wild mythology of their idolatry, he might well have said, “There is none among them all that is like unto the God of Jeshurun.” Perhaps Moses had seen those vast catacombs of idolized animals which Egyptian discoverers have lately opened—where the crocodiles, cats, and birds which had been worshipped in life—were afterwards carefully consigned. Wise as Egypt professed to be, she preserved her dead gods in myriads.