Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1179
“For the Lord your God has blessed you in all the works of your hands: He knows your walking through this great wilderness: these forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing.” Deuteronomy 2:7.
THE habit of numbering our days is a very admirable one. To do it rightly a man needs to be taught of God and if we have not been so taught, it is well to offer the prayer, “So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” Some men number their cattle, number their acres, number their pounds, but do not number their days, or, if they do, they fail to draw the inference from them which both reason and Divine Grace suggest—that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. It is not wisdom to try to seem younger than you are, though I have known many attempt it. I have marked between census and census that the ages of certain persons have hardly increased 10 years, as I thought they would have done by the lapse of time. The age of many whom we admire is an inscrutable mystery.
What there can be to be ashamed of in advancing years I am at a loss to know, for old age commands reverence—not ridicule. Why sorrow because another year of trial is over, another year of labor ended, another milestone on the road to Heaven left behind? Instead of regretting that we are so far on the voyage to the fair haven, we may rather rejoice and make our years, at least, as many as we can. If we pretend to be more juvenile than we are, uncharitable persons may possibly attribute it to vanity—it is a pity to give them such an opportunity.
Every year should increase our sense of the certainty, value and nearness of eternal things. “‘Tis time to live if I grow old.” Works for God among our fellow men will soon be impossible to us—let us be diligent in them while as yet our sun is above the horizon. Now, if ever, we should redeem the time, because the days are evil. In the very middle of life, when strength is in our bones and we have the most grand possibilities of vigorous service, it is well for us to be fully alive to the highest interests and purposes. We should not be spending a dreamy existence, as if we were mere lotus eaters, born into a garden of poppies to sleep all day. We have something better to do than to flit among the flowers like butterflies, with nothing particular to care about, and no eternal future within the range of our thoughts or hopes.
My purpose, this morning, is to speak as a man of 40 years to others of my own standing. But much which is spoken will be appropriate to my seniors and applicable, also, to the younger ones of my audience. Forty years of mercy suggest many thoughts concerning the past, teach much that will be of use to us for the present and, I think, should influence us aright as to the future.
I. First, then, let us look back upon THE PAST in the light of the text. “The Lord your God has blessed you in all the works of your hands: He knows your walking through this great wilderness: these forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing.” What strikes me in Moses’ review is this, the prominence which he gives to God in it. Here let me note that our own retrospect of the past, will, if we are genuine Christians, have in it many bright lights of the conspicuous Presence of God, making the pathway here and there like holy ground! The ungodly man, of course,
leads a godless life—as God is not in all his thoughts, so God does not appear to him in all his ways—but to the godly, God’s hand is plain.
Look back, Believer, and note that to you the existence of God has not been a theory, but a fact observed and verified by actual experience. Can you not recall many occasions in which the Lord has as certainly manifested Himself to you as ever He appeared to Moses in the burning bush, or to Joshua outside the walls of Jericho, or to Solomon by night, or to the three holy children in the fiery furnace? Do you not remember that marvelous revelation of Himself to you when you were converted? What hand was that which took the rein and curbed that stubborn will of yours? Could any power less than Omnipotent have so completely turned the course of your life? Do you remember the consecrated hour when Jesus met with you, absolved you from the past and accepted you as His disciple?
Ah, they may tell us there are no miracles nowadays, but to each Christian his own conversion is a conspicuous miracle and will ever so remain! He will never be able to forget that then he came into actual contact with the holy God and felt His hand, yes, knew it beyond feeling, for it was not a matter of the senses—his spirit came directly into actual contact with the Eternal Spirit and our soul was bound up in the bundle of life with the Soul of the Lord our God! With some of us, many days have passed since then, but they have brought with them fuller displays of the Divine power. In examples of communion, have we not spoken with the Lord as a man speaks with his friend, if not absolutely face to face, yet marvelously like it? Have we not had answers to prayer which we dare not tell because they are too marvelous for others to believe, though they are treasured memories to ourselves?