PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Expositions of Holy Scripture
Alexander Maclaren, 1826-1910 · 268,095 words · 382 reading sections
The Book Of Joshua
Produced by Charles Franks, Anne Folland and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D. SECOND SAMUEL, FIRST KINGS, AND SECOND KINGS _CHAPTERS I to VII_ GOD'S FAITHFULNESS (Deut. vii. 9) THE LESSON OF MEMORY (Deut. viii. 2) THE EATING OF THE PEACE-…
255 wordsSECTION 2God'S Faithfulness
A SUMMARY OF ISRAEL'S FAITHLESSNESS AND GOD'S PATIENCE (Judges ii. 1-10) ISRAEL'S OBSTINACY AND GOD'S PATIENCE (Judges ii. 11-23) RECREANT REUBEN (Judges v. 16, R.V.) 'ALL THINGS ARE YOURS' (Judges v. 20; Job v. 23) LOVE MAKES SUNS (Judges v. 31) GIDEON'S ALTAR (Judges vi. 24) GIDEON'S FLEECE (Judges vi. 37) 'FI…
651 wordsSECTION 3God'S Faithfulness
That He will do so comes from His very nature. With Him there is no change of disposition, no emergence of unseen circumstances, no failure or exhaustion of power. That He does so is matter of fact. Moses in the preceding context had pointed to facts of history, on which he built the 'know therefore' of the text. On t…
587 wordsSECTION 4The Lesson Of Memory
'Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these lofty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments, or no.'--DEUT. viii.2. The strand of our lives usually slips away smoothly enough, but days such as this…
686 wordsSECTION 5The Lesson Of Memory
Now here are the two points, in this verse of my text, which would put all these blunders and all others right, telling us what we should chiefly think about when we look back, and from what point of view the retrospect of the past must be taken in order that it should be salutary. 'Thou shalt remember all the way by w…
678 wordsSECTION 6The Lesson Of Memory
Good does not mean pleasure. Bright-being may not always be well-being, and the highest good has a very much nobler meaning than comfort and satisfaction. And so, realising the fact that the best of things is that they shall make us like God, then we can turn to the past and judge it wisely, because then we shall see t…
793 wordsSECTION 7The Lesson Of Memory
But even if there are none of us to whom such remarks would specially apply, let us summon up to ourselves the memories of these bygone days. In all the three hundred and sixty-five of them, my friend, how many moments stand out distinct before you as moments of high communion with God? How many times can you remember …
789 wordsSECTION 8The Lesson Of Memory
Do not look back for sentimental melancholy; do not look back with unavailing regrets; do not look back to torment yourselves with useless self-accusation; but look back to see how good God has been, and look back to see where you are weak, and pile the wall, higher there, and so learn practical wisdom from retrospect.…
601 wordsSECTION 9The Eating Of The Peace-Offering
'But thou must eat them before the Lord thy God in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite that is within thy gates: and thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God in all that thou puttest thine hands unto.'--DEUT. xii. …
611 wordsSECTION 10Prophets And The Prophet
'When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. 10. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a …
778 wordsSECTION 11Prophets And The Prophet
Two names for magicians follow, of which the former seems to mean one who worked with charms such as African or American Indian 'medicine men' use, and the latter, one who binds by incantations, or one who ties magic knots, which are supposed to have the power of hindering the designs of the person against whom they ar…
918 wordsSECTION 12A Choice Of Masters
'Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; 48. Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies ... in want of all things: and He shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until He have destroyed thee.'--DEUT. xxviii. 47, 48 The history of Israel is …
733 wordsSECTION 13The Spirit Of The Law
'For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. 12. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? 13. Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over t…
797 wordsSECTION 14The Spirit Of The Law
Again, the possession of the law is a blessing, because its authoritative voice ends the weary quest after some reliable guide to conduct, and we need neither try to climb to heaven, nor to traverse the wide world and cross the ocean, to find certitude and enlightenment enough for our need. They err who think of God's …
787 wordsSECTION 15God'S True Treasure In Man
'The Lord's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.'--DEUT, xxxii.9. 'Jesus Christ (Who) gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people.'--TITUS ii. 14. I choose these two texts because they together present us with the other side of the t…
652 wordsSECTION 16God'S True Treasure In Man
But is that enough for God's heart? Is that worth calling ownership at all? An arbitrary tyrant in an unconstitutional kingdom, or a slave-owner, may have the most absolute right of property over his subject or his slave; may have the right of entire disposal of all his industry, of the profit of all his labour; may be…
707 wordsSECTION 17God'S True Treasure In Man
And so, dear brethren, it ever is; the one thing that knits men to God is that the silken cord of love let down from Heaven should by our own hand be wrapped round our own hearts, and then we are united to Him. We are His and He is ours by the double action of His love manifested by Him, and His love received by us. N…
650 wordsSECTION 18God'S True Treasure In Man
And so, my brother, all the insignificance of man, as compared with the magnitude and duration of the universe, need not stagger our faith that the divinest thing in the universe is a heart that has learnt to love God and aspires after Him, and should but increase our wonder and our gratitude that He has been mindful o…
723 wordsSECTION 19God'S True Treasure In Man
III. The last thought that I suggest is the issues to which this mutual possession points. God owns men, and is owned by them, in order that there may be a giving and receiving of mutual services of love. 'The Lord's portion is His people.' That in the Old Testament is always laid as the foundation of certain obligati…
757 wordsSECTION 20The Eagle And Its Brood
'He gave Himself for me!' Let us turn to Him and say: 'Lo! I give myself to Thee. Thou art mine. Make me Thine by the constraint of Thy love, so utterly, and so saturate my spirit with Thyself, that it shall not only be Thine, but in a very deep sense it shall be Thee, and that it may be "no more I that live, but Chris…
675 wordsSECTION 21The Eagle And Its Brood
But the action described in the text is not destructive, terrible, or fierce. The monarch of the sky busies itself with tender cares for its brood. Then, there is gentleness along with the terribleness. The strong beak and claw, the gaze that can see so far, and the mighty spread of wings that can lift it till it is an…
723 wordsSECTION 22The Eagle And Its Brood
If we could only carry that clear conviction with us day by day into the little things of life, what different things these, which we call the monotonous trifles of our daily duties, would become! The things may be small and unimportant, but the way in which we do them is not unimportant. The same fidelity may be exerc…
701 wordsSECTION 23The Eagle And Its Brood
That is not all. There is sustaining power. 'He spreadeth abroad his wings; he taketh them; beareth them on his wings.' On those broad pinions we are lifted, and by them we are guarded. It matters little whether the belief that the parent bird thus carries the young, when wearied with their short flights, is correct or…
320 wordsSECTION 24Their Rock And Our Rock
'Their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being Judges.' DEUT. xxxii. 31. Moses is about to leave the people whom he had led so long, and his last words are words of solemn warning. He exhorts them to cleave to God. The words of the text simply mean that the history of the nation had sufficiently pro…
751 wordsSECTION 25Their Rock And Our Rock
III. Every man's own nature tells him that God is his true Rock. Again I say that here I do not appeal to the surface of our consciousness, nor to men who have sophisticated themselves, nor to people who have sinned themselves, into hardness, but to the voice of the inner man which speaks in the depths of each man's b…
284 wordsSECTION 26God And His Saints
'He loved the people; all His saints are in Thy hand: and they sat down at Thy feet; every one shall receive of Thy words.'--DEUT. xxxiii. 3. The great ode of which these words are a part is called 'the blessing wherewith Moses blessed the children of Israel before his death.' It is mainly an invocation of blessing fr…
733 wordsSECTION 27God And His Saints
'God loved the people.' The bed-rock is the spontaneous, unalterable, inexhaustible, ever-active, fervent love of God, like that with which a mother clasps her child to her maternal breast. The fair flower of this great thought was a product of Judaism. Let no man say that the God of Love is unknown to the Old Testamen…
707 wordsSECTION 28God And His Saints
Now, there is a last thought here. I have spoken of the foundation of all as being divine love, of the security and guardian care of the saints, and there follows one thought more:-- III. The docile obedience of those that are thus guarded. As the words stand in our Bible, they are as follow:--'They sat down at Thy f…
687 wordsSECTION 29Israel The Beloved
'The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by Him; and the Lord shall cover him all the day long, and he shall dwell between His shoulders.'--DEUT. xxxiii. 12. Benjamin was his father's favourite child, and the imagery of this promise is throughout drawn from the relations between such a child and its father. So f…
681 wordsSECTION 30Israel The Beloved
2. They have a sure shelter. God is for His beloved not only the foundation on which they dwell in safety, but their perpetual covering. They dwell safely because He is so. There are many tender shapes in which this great promise is presented to our faith. Sometimes God is thought of as covering the weak fugitive, as …
406 wordsSECTION 31'At The Bush'
'.. The goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush.'-DEUT. xxxiii. 16. I Think this is the only reference in the Old Testament to that great vision which underlay Moses' call and Israel's deliverance. It occurs in what is called 'the blessing wherewith Moses, the man of God, blessed the children of Israel before his death…
811 wordsSECTION 32'At The Bush'
Now, if we turn to the remarkable designation of the divine nature which is here, consider what rivers of strength and of blessedness flow out of the thought that for each of us 'the goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush' may be our possession. What does that pregnant designation of God say? That was a strange shrine…
681 wordsSECTION 33'At The Bush'
Do not let us forget the place in this blessing on the head of Joseph which my text holds. It is preceded by an invoking of the precious things of Heaven, and 'the precious fruits brought forth by the sun... of the chief things of the ancient mountains, and the precious things of the lasting hills, and the precious thi…
680 wordsSECTION 34Shod For The Road
'Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be.' DEUT. xxxiii. 25. There is a general correspondence between those blessings wherewith Moses blessed the tribes of Israel before his death, and the circumstances and territory of each tribe in the promised land. The portion of Asher, in who…
686 wordsSECTION 35Shod For The Road
And so, dear brethren, if we think of all that is given to us in God's Gospel in the way of stimulus and encouragement, and exhortation, and actual communication of powers, we may calculate, from the abundance of the resources, how great will be the strain upon us before we come to the end, and our 'feet stand within t…
671 wordsSECTION 36Shod For The Road
So we may be bold in the march, and draw upon our stock of strength to the utmost. There is no fear that it will fail us. We may put all our force into our work, we shall not weaken the power which 'by reason of use is exercised,' not exhausted. For the grace which Christ gives us to serve Him, being divine, is subject…
826 wordsSECTION 37Shod For The Road
But, dear brethren, we may be emancipated from that dreary law in regard to the true life of our spirits, and instead of growing weaker as we grow older, we may and we should grow stronger. We may be and we should be moving on a course that has no limit to its advance. We may be travelling on a shining path through the…
836 wordsSECTION 38A Death In The Desert
'So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. 6. And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, ... but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.'--DEUT. xxxiv.5, 6. A fitting end to such a life! The great law-giver and leader had been all his days a lone…
665 wordsSECTION 39A Death In The Desert
People say, 'A heavy penalty for a small offence.' Yes; but an offence of Moses could not be a small offence.' _Noblesse oblige!_ The higher a man rises in communion with God, and the more glorious the message and office which are put into his hands, the more intolerable in him is the slightest deflection from the loft…
654 wordsSECTION 40A Death In The Desert
II. Another of the lessons of our incident is the withdrawal, by a hard fate, of the worker on the very eve of the completion of his work. For all these forty years there had gleamed before the fixed and steadfast spirit of the sorely tried leader one hope that he never abandoned, and that was that he might look upon …
747 wordsSECTION 41A Death In The Desert
Moses' lonely death leads to a society yonder. If you refer to the thirty-second chapter you will find that, when he was summoned to the mountain, God said to him, 'Die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered to thy people.' He was to be buried there, up amongst the rocks of Moab, and no man was ever to vis…
714 wordsSECTION 42A Death In The Desert
So we may learn from this how easily the gaps fill. 'Thirty days' mourning,' and says my text, with almost a bitter touch,' so the days of mourning for Moses were ended.' A month of it, that was all; and then everybody turned to the new man that was appointed for the new work. God has many tools in His tool-chest, and …
382 wordsSECTION 43The New Leaders Commission
'Now after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord it came to pass, that the Lord spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' minister, saying, 2. Moses My servant is dead: now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. 3. Ever…
852 wordsSECTION 44The New Leaders Commission
The promise to Moses (Deut. ii. 24) is repeated almost verbally in verse 4. The boundaries of the land are summarily given as from 'the wilderness' in the south to 'this Lebanon' in the north, and from the Euphrates in the east to the Mediterranean in the west. 'The land of the Hittites' is not found in the original pa…
669 wordsSECTION 45The Charge To The Soldier Of The Lord
Courage that does not rest on Christ's presence is audacity rather than courage, and is sure to collapse, like a pricked bladder, when the sharp point of a real peril comes in contact with it. If we sit down and reckon the forces that we have to oppose to the foes that we are sure to meet, we shall find ourselves unequ…
814 wordsSECTION 46The Charge To The Soldier Of The Lord
'Be strong.' Then strength is a duty; then weakness is a sin. Then the amount of strength that we possess and wield is regulated by ourselves. We have our hands on the sluice. We may open it to let the whole full tide run in, or we may close it till a mere dribble reaches us. For the strength which is strength, and not…
684 wordsSECTION 47The Charge To The Soldier Of The Lord
For the Christian soldier, then, God's law is his marching orders. The written word, and especially the Incarnate Word, are our law of conduct. The whole science of our warfare and plan of campaign are there. We have not to take our orders from men's lips, but we must often disregard them, that we may listen to the 'Ca…
720 wordsSECTION 48The Charge To The Soldier Of The Lord
And it is the secret of all blessed Christian life. For there is a lovely echo of these vigorous words of command to Joshua in a very much more peaceful form in the 1st Psalm: 'Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, ... but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he medita…
423 wordsSECTION 49The Untrodden Path And The Guiding Ark
'Come not near unto the ark, that ye may know the way by which ye must go; for ye have not passed this way heretofore.'--JOSHUA iii. 4. It was eminently true of Israel that they had 'not passed this way heretofore,' inasmuch as the path which was opening before them, through the oozy bed of the river, had never been s…
798 wordsSECTION 50The Untrodden Path And The Guiding Ark
Our march through time is like that of men in a mist, in which things loom in strangely distorted shapes, unlike their real selves, until we get close up to them, and only then do we discover them. So for us all the path is new and unknown by reason of the sudden surprises that may be sprung upon us, by reason of the …
665 wordsSECTION 51The Untrodden Path And The Guiding Ark
So He becomes the guiding Ark, the Shepherd of Israel. His presence and will are our directors. The law, which is contained and incorporated in Him, is that by which we are to walk. The covenant which He has established in His own blood between God and man contains in itself not only the direction for conduct, but also…
742 wordsSECTION 52The Untrodden Path And The Guiding Ark
Suppress your own wills, dwell near God, that you may hear His lightest whisper. 'I will guide thee with Mine eye.' What is the use of the glance of an eye if the man for whom it is meant is half a mile off, and staring about him at everything except the eye that would guide? And that is what some of us that call ourse…
293 wordsSECTION 53'The Waters Saw Thee; They Were Afraid'
'And Joshua said unto the people, Sanctify yourselves: for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you. 6. And Joshua spake unto the priests, saying, Take up the ark of the covenant, and pass over before the people. And they took up the ark of the covenant, and went before the people. 7. And the Lord said unto Joshua, …
675 wordsSECTION 54'The Waters Saw Thee; They Were Afraid'
Verses 5 and 6 of the chapter belong to the section which deals with the preparation. General instructions had been already issued that the host was to follow the ark, leaving two thousand cubits between them and it; but nothing had been said as to how Jordan was to be crossed. No doubt many a question and doubt had be…
771 wordsSECTION 55'The Waters Saw Thee; They Were Afraid'
The command to the priests in verse 8 is also obviously condensed; for Joshua's version of it, which follows, is much more detailed, and contains particular instructions, which must have been derived from the divine word to him on that morning. We may pass on, then, to the second division of the narrative; namely, Jos…
682 wordsSECTION 56'The Waters Saw Thee; They Were Afraid'
Verses 14-17 narrate the actual crossing. One long sentence, like the roll of an Atlantic wave, or a long-drawn shout of triumph, masses together the stages of the march; the breaking up of the encampment; the solemn advance of the ark, watched by the motionless crowd; its approach to the foaming stream, running bank-f…
668 wordsSECTION 57Stones Crying Out
'For the priests which bare the ark stood in the midst of Jordan, until every thing was finished that the Lord commanded Joshua to speak unto the people, according to all that Moses commanded Joshua: and the people hasted and passed over. 11. And it came to pass, when all the people were clean passed over, that the ark…
744 wordsSECTION 58Stones Crying Out
I. The first picture here brought before us is that of the motionless ark in the midst of what had been Jordan. There is an obvious intention to contrast the stillness of the priests, bearing it on their shoulders, and standing rooted in that strange place all these long hours, with the hurry around. 'The priests stood…
1,022 wordsSECTION 59Stones Crying Out
That parallelism of the two crossings is suggested by the notice of date in verse 19. 'The tenth day of the first month' was just forty years to a day since the first Paschal lamb had been chosen, and four days short of the Passover, which was solemnised at Gilgal (Joshua v. 10) where they encamped that night. It was a…
726 wordsSECTION 60Stones Crying Out
The memorial stones further proclaimed the duty of parental instruction in God's mercies. They speak of a time when tradition was the vehicle of history; when books were rare, and monuments were relied upon to awaken curiosity which a father's words would satisfy. Notwithstanding all differences in means of obtaining k…
298 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.