Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1359
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, June 10, 1877
“Happy are you, O Israel; who is like unto you? Opeople saved by the Lord, the shield of your help, and who is the sword of your excellency! And your enemies shall be found liars unto you; and you shall tread upon their high places.” Deuteronomy 33:29.
THESE are the last recorded words of Moses and they are significant, for they show us that he found comfort, in his dying moments, in considering the happiness of the people for whom he had labored all his life. From the day when, by God’s power, he led them up out of Egypt and brought them into the wilderness, they had never ceased to lie near his heart. They had been a very heavy burden to him at times, but with marvelous meekness and patience he had borne with their many rebellious provocations and only once spoken bitterly of them. Oftentimes had he stood in the gap and made intercession for them, when otherwise they would have been destroyed. He had, for their sakes, given up the most glorious prospect that was ever proposed to the mind of man, for the Lord had said to him in secret, “Let Me alone, that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a greater nation.”
But no, even such a proposal could not divert him from his patriotic zeal for his people! He loved Israel, erring Israel, ungrateful Israel, as a mother loves her child, and family aggrandizement was relinquished for love of the nation. Still he continued to instruct, lead and guide the stiff-necked race, having no thought but God’s Glory in the midst of Israel, and no ambition but to see the tribes brought, at length, into the promised land. When about to die, the ruling passion was strong upon him and from it he draws his consolation. He seems to say to himself, “I can no more go out and come in. The Lord has said unto me, You shall not go over this Jordan, but though I must leave the beloved nation, yet they are a happy people and are safe in Jehovah’s hands.”
He looks with sparkling eyes at the privileges with which God had enriched them and he feels that he may quietly go up to the mountain and fall asleep, for they would be blessed when he was gone, and saved of the Lord. Ah, my dear young Friends, you who are children of godly families, you cannot tell what joy you will give to your parents if you are converted to God! When they come to die, they will find it one of their sweetest consolations to see their children walking in the Truth of God. They have loved you dearly and they will feel a pang in leaving you, but if they can feel that God has blessed you and saved you, they will die in peace!
I have heard saints, when dying, say, “There is but one thing that I want and for which I could wish to be spared a little longer. I could wish to live to see all my family believing in the Lord. O that all my offspring were lovers of Jesus.” I have heard dying saints express themselves in language somewhat similar to that of David—“The Lord has made with me an Everlasting Covenant, ordered in all things and sure, although my house is not so with God as I could desire.” That, “although my house is not so with God,” has been a thorn in their pillow and they have felt it painful to quit their household while yet their children were so unhappy as to be out of Christ and unreconciled to God. Think of this, dear young people, I pray you, and, perhaps, natural affection may be blessed in the hand of God to lead you to seek after eternal salvation.
Thus you see how Moses consoled himself. But why was not this expression of the great Lawgiver left as a soliloquy unrecorded? Moses had cheered himself with this reflection, “Happy are you, O Israel,” what need to write it down, or to utter it before the people? It is frequently an unwise thing to tell a man of his propitious surroundings, for he may become vain of them. You may commend a man’s estate until he foolishly dreams that you are commending him. When you praise a man’s position, it is the next thing to flattering the man, for the most of men do not divide between
themselves and their condition, but read a commendation of their condition as a commendation of themselves though it is not so!
Therefore, one has sometimes to be very leery of calling men happy—and all the more so because we cannot generally be sure that they are happy—external circumstances being but a poor means of judgment. The fairest apple may be rotten at the core! The finest linen may be a cover for a corpse! Moreover, according to the truthful rule of the ancients, no man is to be counted happy till he is dead, seeing that you do not know the whole of his life and it may happen that the circumstances which now appear to be the foundation of a happy life may turn out to be a preparation for increased bitterness in the later part of existence.
Yet Moses speaks thus openly to Israel without a word of qualification or caution—“Happy are you, O Israel; who is like unto you?” Now, we are quite certain that Moses did not err in this. It would be great self-conceit to imagine such a thing! We may confide in the clearness of his judgment, in the maturity of his experience and in the fidelity of his spirit. We are sure that he did not speak with rashness, for he was of a meek and gentle disposition and somewhat slow in speech and, not likely, therefore, to warm into unreasonable enthusiasm and go beyond the sober truth. Above all, the Holy Spirit has adopted the Lawgiver’s words, for He had Himself inspired them—and we have them here in the Infallible Word of God, so that it is quite certain that Israel was happy, even as our text declares.