Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3141
“And Moses brought their cause before the LORD.” Numbers 17:5.
BY the help of God the Holy Spirit, I want to use this incident which forms a kind of episode in the rehearsal of the history of Israel’s 40 years’ wanderings in the wilderness, for a twofold purpose. First, let me indicate its general teach-ingand, secondly, let me take it as a ground of appeal to certain special classes.
I. First, I will try to indicate ITS GENERAL TEACHING.
I would ask your attention and exhibit for your imitation, the faith which these five young women, the daughters of Zelophehad, possessed with regard to the promised inheritance. You must remember that the children of Israel were still in the wilderness. They had not seen the promised land, but God had made a Covenant with them that they should possess it. He had declared that He would bring them into a land which flowed with milk and honey and there plant them. And that that land should belong to them and to their descendants by a Covenant of salt forever. Now, these women believed in this heritage. They were not like Esau, who thought so little of the inheritance which was his birthright that he sold it to his brother Jacob for a mess of pottage—they believed it to be really worth having. They regarded it, though they had never beheld it, as being something exceedingly substantial and so, thinking about it, they were afraid lest they should be left out when the land was divided. And though they had never seen it, yet, being persuaded that it was somewhere and that the children of Israel would have it in due time, their anxiety was they, having no brothers, would be forgotten in the distribution and so would lose their rights. They were anxious about an inheritance which they had never seen with their eyes and, therein, I hold them up to the imitation of this present assembly.
There is an inheritance that is far better than the land of Canaan. Oh, that we all believed in it and longed for it! It is an inheritance, however, which mortal eyes have not seen and the sounds of which mortal ears have not heard. It is a city whose streets are gold, but none of us have ever walked them. Never has traveler to that country come back to tell us of its glories. There the music never ceases, no discord ever mingles in it, it is sublime, but no member of the heavenly choir has ever come to write out for us the celestial score, or to—
“Teach us some melodious sonnet Sung by flaming tongues above.”
It is not a matter of sight—it must be to each one of us a matter of faith. By faith we know that there is another and a better land. By faith we understand that our disembodied souls shall mount to be with Christ and that, after a while, our bodies shall also rise to join our spirits so that body and soul may together be glorified forever in the Presence of our gracious Redeemer. We have never seen this land, however—but there are some of us who as firmly believe in it as if we had seen it—and are as certain of it and as fully persuaded as though these ears of ours had listened to its songs ofjoy and these feet of ours had walked its streets of gold!
There was this feature, too, about the faith of these five women—they knew that the inheritance was only to be won by encountering great difficulties. The spies who came back from the land had said that the men who dwelt in it were giants. They said, “We were in our own sight as grasshoppers and so we were in their sight.” There was many a man, in the camp of Israel, I have no doubt, who said, “Well, I would sell my share cheaply enough, for though the land is there, we can never win it! They have cities walled up to Heaven and they have chariots of iron—we can never win the land.” But these women believed that although they could not fight, God could! And though they had never put their fingers to a more terrible instrument than a needle, yet did they believe that the same right arm which got itself the victory when
they went with Miriam, dancing to the timbrels’ jubilant sound, would get the victory, again, and bring God’s people in and drive the Canaanites out even though they had walled cities and chariots of iron!
So these women had strong faith. I would to God that you had the same, all of you, dear Friends, but I know that some of you who believe that there is a land which flows with milk and honey, are half afraid that you shall never reach it! You are vexed with many doubts because of your own weakness, which, indeed, should not merely make you doubt, but should make you utterly despair if the gaining of the goodly land depended upon your own fighting for it and winning it! But, inasmuch as “the gift of God is eternal life” and God, Himself, will give it to us, and inasmuch as Jesus has gone up on high to prepare a place for us and has promised that He will come again and receive us unto Himself that where He is, there we may also be, I would to God that our doubts and fears were banished and that we said within ourselves, “We are well able to go up and attack the land, for the Lord, even the Lord of Hosts, is with us! Jehovah-Nissi is our banner! The Lord Our Righteousness is our helper and we shall surely enter into the place of the beloved people of God and shall join the general assembly and Church of the first-born which are written in Heaven.”