PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Notes on the Book of Deuteronomy, Volume II
Mackintosh, Charles Henry, 1820-1896 · 130,587 words · 175 reading sections
Part 1
NOTES _on the book of_ DEUTERONOMY _Volume II_…
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"_Forever, O Lord, Thy Word is settled in heaven._" "_Thy Word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against Thee._" LOIZEAUX BROTHERS New York FIRST EDITION 1880 TWENTY-FIFTH PRINTING 1954 LOIZEAUX BROTHERS, Inc., PUBLISHERS _A Nonprofit Organization, Devoted to the Lord's Work and to the Spread of His Trut…
55 wordsSECTION 3TO THE AMERICAN EDITION
As several persons in America have, without any authority whatever from me, undertaken to publish my four[1] volumes of "Notes," I deem it my duty to inform the reader that I have given full permission to Messrs. LOIZEAUX BROTHERS to publish an edition of those books in such form as they shall consider most suitable.…
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_6 West Park Terrace, Scarborough, May 1st, 1879._ [1] Now six.…
12 wordsSECTION 5CONTENTS
_Page._ Chapter VII, 1…
5 wordsSECTION 6CHAPTER VII.
"When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, ... seven nations greater and mightier than thou, and when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant wit…
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Here we see that the smiting of Egypt's first-born and the deliverance of Israel, the passage through the Red Sea and the utter destruction of Pharaoh's host, the slaughter of the Canaanites and giving their lands to Israel--all alike illustrated the everlasting mercy of Jehovah.[3] Thus it was, thus it is, and thus it…
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We know, alas! how soon and how completely Israel failed to carry out these instructions. Hardly had they planted their foot upon the land of Canaan ere they made a covenant with the Gibeonites. Even Joshua himself fell into the snare. The tattered garments and mouldy bread of those wily people beguiled the princes of …
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In verse six of our chapter, Moses sets before the people the moral ground of the line of action which they were to adopt in reference to the Canaanites--the rigid separation and the unsparing judgment. "_For_ thou art _a holy people unto the Lord thy God_; the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto …
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Is there aught of the legal element in this? Not a tinge. Love and legality have nothing in common; they are as far removed as the poles. "This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not grievous." The spirit and genius, the ground and character of our obedience all go to prove it t…
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To all this line of argument we have the one simple, conclusive answer, namely, God's plain command. He tells us to be separate, to come out, to touch not the unclean; and all this in order to His receiving us, and acknowledging us as His sons and daughters. This ought to be quite sufficient for us. Let people think or…
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But we shall not pursue this line of argument any further. We trust the reader is one who fully owns the direct application to himself of the passage which we have just quoted. It is as plain as it is pointed; it calls upon all God's people to come out and be separate, and touch not the unclean thing. This is what God …
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But how, we may ask, was all this done? Was it by passing over sin, as though it were nothing? was it by relaxing the claims of the divine government, lowering the standard of divine holiness, or touching, in the most remote way, the dignity, stringency, and majesty of the law? No; thanks and praise to redeeming love, …
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What egregious folly! What will not men believe, provided it be not the truth of God? The poor dark human mind will affect to believe the most monstrous absurdity in order to get a plea for rejecting the plain teaching of holy Scripture. The very thing which men would never think of attributing to a good human governme…
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It is truly edifying to mark the way in which Moses, that beloved and honored servant of God, led assuredly by the Spirit of God, pressed the grand and solemn realities of the divine government upon the conscience of the congregation. Hear how he pleads and exhorts: "Thou shalt _therefore_ keep the commandments, and th…
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"If thou shalt say _in thine heart_, These nations are more than I; how can I dispossess them? Thou shalt not be afraid of them; but shalt _well remember_ what the Lord thy God did unto Pharaoh, and unto all Egypt; the great temptations which thine eyes saw, and the signs, and the wonders, and the mighty hand, and the …
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Fatal delusion! "Thou shalt not desire the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it unto thee, _lest thou be snared therein_; for it is an abomination to the Lord thy God." All must be given up, all destroyed. To retain an atom of the accursed thing is to fall into the snare of the devil, and link ourselves with tha…
141 wordsSECTION 18CHAPTER VIII.
"All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers. And thou shalt remember _all the way_ which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee,…
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But let us not be misunderstood. We do not, by any means, wish to give countenance to the habit of dwelling merely upon our own experience. This is often very poor work, and resolves itself into self-occupation. We have to guard against this as one of the many things which tend to lower our spiritual tone and draw our …
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This passage derives special interest and importance from the fact that it is the first of our Lord's quotations from the book of Deuteronomy in His conflict with the adversary in the wilderness. Let us ponder this deeply; it demands our earnest attention. Why did our Lord quote from Deuteronomy? Because that was the b…
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This is of unspeakable moment for us, beloved reader. It is as though our Lord Christ had said to the adversary, Whether I am the Son of God or not is not now the question, but how _man_ is to live, and the answer to this question is only to be found in holy Scripture; and it is to be found there as clear as a sunbeam,…
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And we may also note, with very much interest and profit, that our blessed Lord does not quote Scripture for the purpose of silencing the adversary, but simply as authority for His position and conduct. Here is where we are so apt to fail; we do not sufficiently use the precious Word of God in this way; we quote it, at…
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But then, as we know, love clothes itself in various forms. It has something more to do than to provide food and raiment for its objects. It has not only to take account of their physical but also of their moral and spiritual wants. Of this the lawgiver does not fail to remind the people. "Thou shalt also consider," he…
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Christian reader, this is the way to answer Satan, and to hush the dark reasonings which may spring up in our hearts. We must always justify God. We must look at all His disciplinary dealings in the light of His love. "Thou shalt also consider in thine heart that, _as a man chasteneth his son_, so the Lord thy God chas…
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What a prospect! How the faithful Israelite would long to enter upon it!--long to exchange the sand of the desert for that bright inheritance! True, the desert had its deep and blessed experiences, its holy lessons, its precious memories; there they had known Jehovah in a way they could not know Him even in Canaan;--al…
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Let us remember this, beloved reader. It is as true for us, most surely, as it was for Israel, that praise is comely. Our grand primary business is to praise the Lord. Our every breath should be a halleluiah. It is to this blessed and most sacred exercise the Holy Ghost exhorts us, in manifold places. "By Him therefore…
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And then, as to those great facts of which Moses so continually reminds the people, could they ever lose their moral weight, power, or preciousness? Surely not. Israel might forget and fail to appreciate those facts, but the facts remained the same. The terrible plagues of Egypt, the night of the passover, their delive…
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And even were we, for a moment, to take a lower range, and look at the works of God in creation; do we ever tire of the sun? He is not new; he has been pouring his beams upon this world for well-nigh six thousand years, and yet those beams are as fresh and as welcome to-day as they were when first created. Do we ever t…
323 wordsSECTION 29CHAPTER IX.
"Hear, O Israel: Thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to possess nations greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and fenced up to heaven, a people great and tall, the children of the Anakims, whom thou knowest, and of whom thou hast heard say, 'Who can stand before the children of Anak!'" (Ver. 1, 2.…
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Here, then, is the divine answer to all difficulties, be they ever so formidable. What were mighty nations, great cities, fenced walls, in the presence of Jehovah? Simply as chaff before the whirlwind. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" The very things which scare and stumble the coward heart afford an occasion…
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As to the seven nations which were to be dispossessed, it was on the ground of their wickedness that God, in the exercise of His righteous government, was about to drive them out. Every landlord has a perfect right to eject bad tenants; and the nations of Canaan had not only failed to pay their rent, as we say, but the…
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How withering was all this to their natural vanity, pride, and self-righteousness! How should their hearts have been moved to their very deepest depths by those tremendous words, "Let Me alone, that I may destroy them"! How solemn to reflect upon the fact which these words revealed--their appalling nearness to national…
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And then how very touching and beautiful to mark the way in which Moses insists upon the fact that the people were Jehovah's inheritance, and that He had brought them up out of Egypt. The Lord had said, "_Thy_ people which _thou_ hast brought forth out of Egypt;" but Moses says, "They are _Thy_ people, and _Thine_ inhe…
75 wordsSECTION 34CHAPTER X
"At that time the Lord said unto me, 'Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first, and come up unto Me into the mount, and make thee an ark of wood; and I will write on the tables the words that were in the first tables which thou brakest, and thou shalt put them in the ark.' And I made an ark of shittim wood, and…
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We have been led into the foregoing line of thought in connection with the interesting fact of Moses' unwearied rehearsal of all the grand events in Israel's marvelous history from Egypt to the borders of the promised land. To him they furnished a perpetual feast; and he not only found his own deep, personal delight in…
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Bright and glorious prospect for the now desolate land of Israel, and this groaning earth of ours! The King of righteousness and peace will then have it all His own way. All evil will be put down with a powerful hand. There will be no weakness in that government; no rebel tongue will be permitted to prate, in accents o…
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We do not attempt to dwell upon the circumstances referred to in the above parenthesis; they have been gone into elsewhere, and therefore we only feel it needful, in this place, to point out to the reader what we may venture to call the Deuteronomic bearing of the facts--the use which the lawgiver makes of them to stre…
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Jehovah would accomplish His promise to the fathers spite of every hindrance. He would put Israel in full possession of the land concerning which He had sworn to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give it to their seed for an everlasting inheritance. "And now, Israel, what doth the Lord _thy_ God require of thee, but to fe…
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Assuredly, our privileges are higher, inasmuch as we know God in a higher, deeper, nearer, more intimate manner than the nation of Israel ever did. We know Him as the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, and as our God and Father. We have the Holy Ghost dwelling in us, shedding abroad the love of God in our hearts,…
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But then He must be known in order to be trusted. "They that know Thy name will put their trust in Thee; for Thou, Lord, hast not forsaken them that seek Thee." Those who do not know God would vastly prefer an insurance policy or a government annuity to His promise; but the true believer finds in that promise the unfai…
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It is at once interesting and edifying to notice the way in which Moses sets the divine example before the people as their model. Jehovah "loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. Love ye therefore the stranger; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." This is very touching. They were not only to keep b…
383 wordsSECTION 42CHAPTER XI.
"Therefore thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and keep His charge, and His statutes, and His judgments, and His commandments, _alway_. And know ye this day; for I speak not with your children which have not known, and which have not seen the chastisements of the Lord your God, His greatness, His mighty hand, and His str…
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In a word, then, whether the attention was called to the divine actings without or within, abroad or at home, it was all for the purpose of impressing their hearts and minds with a deep sense of the moral importance of obedience. This was the one grand aim of all the rehearsals, all the comments, all the exhortations, …
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Making allowance for the difference between the earthly and the heavenly--between Israel and the Church, there is a striking similarity between the words of the lawgiver and the words of the apostle. Both together are eminently fitted to set forth the beauty and preciousness of a willing-hearted, loving obedience. It i…
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Thus the matter stood between the God of Israel and the Israel of God. Nothing could be simpler, nothing more blessed. It was Israel's high and holy privilege to love and serve Jehovah; it was Jehovah's prerogative to bless and prosper Israel. Happiness and fruitfulness were to be the sure accompaniments of obedience. …
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Reader, may we apply our hearts diligently to this great subject of fruit-bearing. May we better understand what it is. We are apt to make great mistakes about it. It is to be feared that much--very much of what passes for fruit would not be accredited in the divine presence. God cannot own any thing as fruit which is …
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"Therefore shall ye lay up these _my words_ in _your heart_ and in _your soul_, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes. And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and …
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Yes, reader, and in the history of each individual member of the Church we see the same thing. Where is the Christian, beneath the canopy of heaven, that lives up to the height of his spiritual privileges? where is the child of God who has not to mourn over his humiliating failure in grasping and making good practicall…
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The remaining verses of our chapter close the first division of the book of Deuteronomy, which, as the reader will notice, consists of a series of discourses addressed by Moses to the congregation of Israel--memorable discourses, most surely, in whatever way we view them. The closing sentences are, we need hardly say, …
397 wordsSECTION 50CHAPTER XII.
We now enter upon a new section of our marvelous book. The discourses contained in the first eleven chapters having established the all-important principle of obedience, we now come to the practical application of the principle to the habits and ways of the people when settled in possession of the land. "These are the …
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In a word, then, we have to remember--yea, to cherish in the very deepest depths of our moral being, that the only safe ground for the soul is, divinely wrought faith in the paramount authority, divine majesty, and all-sufficiency of the Word of God. This was the ground which Moses occupied in dealing with the heart an…
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This might, in the judgment of the uncircumcised nations around, seem very intolerant, very narrow, very bigoted. They indeed might boast of their freedom, and glory in the broad platform of their worship which admitted "gods many and lords many." It might, according to their thinking, argue greater breadth of mind to …
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Here was _the_ one grand and all-important point. It was the dwelling-place of Jehovah which was dear to the heart of every true Israelite. Restless self-will might desire to run hither and thither, the poor vagrant heart might long for some change, but, for the heart that loved God, any change from the place of His pr…
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And oh, what an unspeakable privilege for all who loved God and loved one another to assemble themselves at the place where He recorded His name! and what touching grace shines in the fact of His desiring to gather His people around Himself from time to time! Did that fact infringe their personal rights and domestic pr…
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No doubt, if the heart were cold and careless toward God, it would matter little about the place of worship,--all places would be alike; but we may set it down as a fixed principle that every loyal, loving heart, from Dan to Beersheba, would rejoice to flock to the place where Jehovah had recorded His name, and where H…
560 wordsSECTION 56CHAPTER XIII.
This chapter abounds in most weighty principles. It consists of three distinct sections, each one of which claims our deep attention. We must not attempt to weaken the admonitory force of such a scripture, or turn aside its keen edge, by saying that it does not apply to Christians--that it is wholly Jewish in its scope…
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The human heart has no ability whatever to resist the influence of "great signs and wonders," put forth in favor of the most deadly error. There is but the one thing which can fortify the soul, and enable it to resist the devil and his deadly delusions, and that is, the Word of God. To have the precious truth of God tr…
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All this is full of comfort and consolation for the beloved lambs and sheep of the flock of Christ. They can hear the voice of their loving, faithful Shepherd; they can gather around Him, and find in His presence true rest and perfect safety. He makes them to lie down in green pastures, and leads them by the still wate…
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What then, we may ask, is the true moral force of Luke xiv. 26 and Deuteronomy xiii. 8-10? Most assuredly, they do not mean that we are to be "without natural affection," which is one of the special marks of the apostasy of the last days. This is perfectly clear. God Himself has established our natural relationships, a…
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Thus, as a sample of the teaching, take a passage or two from what is called The Sermon on the Mount--that marvelous and precious compendium of the principles of the kingdom of heaven.--"Ye have heard that it hath been said, 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth'; _but I say unto you_, that ye resist not evil; bu…
827 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.