Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 939
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, July 3, 1870
“And He humbled you, and suffered you to hunger, and fed you with manna, which you knew not, neither did your fathers know; that He might make you know that man does not live by bread only, but by every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord does man live. Your raiment waxed not old upon you, neither did your foot swell, these forty years. You shall also consider in your heart, that, as a man chastens his son, so the Lord your God chastens you. Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to fear Him.” Deuteronomy 8:3-6.
OUR aptness to forget God’s mercies, is, alas, too conspicuous. It has been said that the annals of a prosperous and peaceful country are singularly uninteresting. Does this arise from the fact that we do not make memoranda of our mercies, or at least if we do, they are far more readily blotted out than the record of our sorrows? We trace our joys in the sand, but we write our afflictions on marble. We forget the streams of mercy, never ceasing, which flow so continually parallel with our pathway.
If we thus, ungratefully forget, it should cause us serious reflections when we see that God does not forget. Here in this Book He brings to His people’s memories all the mercies they have received, because they were always present before His own mind. The child may forget the kindness of its mother, but the mother does not forget what she bore, and what she has sacrificed for her child. The friend may forget what he has received, but it is not likely that the benefactor will forget what he has bestowed. If God’s memory, therefore, records all that He has given me, let me be ashamed to let my memory suffer these things to slip. What God counts worthy of His Divine recollection let me record on the pages of my memory, and often let me peruse the record.
We are also far too slow to draw the inference of obligation from benefits received. We receive the blessing, but we do not always feel that a proportionate debt is due in return to God, the bounteous Giver of every good gift. Yet Divine Grace has its obligations as well as laws—obligations which honorable minds reckon to be among the first to be discharged. If I do not do what I ought because I fear the Law, at any rate let me prove that I am not so base as to be ungrateful to undeserved mercy and love.
It has been said by some, and there have been others whose lives have almost proved it, that the driving of the Law is more effectual to produce works than the sweet drawings of the Gospel. But it ought not to be so—and if it is so, the fault is in the man acted upon, and not in the principle of gratitude. For with right-minded men, with men educated by the Spirit of God, with men who are lifted up out of the common mass of mankind and endowed with the higher life, the highest motive that can be suggested even by infinite wisdom is the motive which is drawn from the transcendent love and Grace of God.
Now, Brethren, though we forget our obligations, it is clear from the text that God does not—for here, after giving a summary of His benefits—He concludes by drawing an inference with the word, “therefore,” and He tells Israel that having received so much, they were bound to walk in His ways and in His fear—and to keep His Commandments. If He thus considers, whose wisdom none dare dispute, let us voluntarily, cheerfully, and practically concede that such is the very Truth. And let us ask that He will help us to be obedient, and resolve that, receiving His help, we will say in our hearts and lives——
“Loved of my God, for Him again
With love intense I burn; Chosen of Him before time began, I choose Him in return.”
I shall now ask your attention to the list of favors given in the text, with the view of enforcing the Divine conclusions from them.
I. LET US PASS IN REVIEW THE FAVORS OF THE LORD, taking what He did for Israel as being typical of what He has done for us.
1. The first blessing mentioned in our text is that of humbling—“And He humbled them, and suffered them to hunger.” Not very highly esteemed among men will this favor be. And at first, perhaps, it may be regarded by ourselves as being more of a judgment—one of the terrible things in righteousness—than a great favor from the Most High. But rightly judged, this is one of the most admirable proofs of the Lord’s loving kindness, that He does not leave His people in their natural pride and obstinacy, but by acts of Grace brings them to their right mind.
Note in the text that the humbling was produced by hunger. What makes a man so humble as to be thoroughly in want? It was not hunger for luxury, merely—bread and water failed them. How could the soil beneath them of hot sand yield them a harvest? Where could they find a stream to slake their dreadful thirst which the broiling sun and the arid sand continually increased? To want bread and water is a short way of making a man feel that he is but a man, and that he is dependent, very dependent, upon the Providence of God.