Deuteronomy 8:1-2 All the commandments which I command you this day shall you observe to do, that you may live, and multiply… I. THE DUTY OF REMEMBRANCE. "Thou shalt remember," etc. Here we have the same form as in the Ten Commandments: "Thou shalt have none other God but Me"; "thou shalt keep holy the Sabbath," etc. It is, therefore, a positive duty, an obligation insisted on, to remember God's dealings with us and those before us. But now what is the general course of the world about this important duty? Altogether opposed to it. Some persons we see and know never do remember. Go through what they will, suffer what they may, they never learn experience, or what is called common sense. They continue the same thoughtless, headstrong, violent people they ever were. They never remember. Some there be, however, whose habit of mind is so loose from long indolence, that they really find it difficult so to do; others because it is painful — the thoughts of past years have so much pain in them. There are the false steps that we wilfully made, the neglected opportunities of both doing and getting good, old instances of influence abused, courses of sin persevered in, misgivings of conscience disregarded. To look back on all these is contrary to that peace which we strive to say to ourselves when there is no peace. Instead of meditating and examining themselves, and praying for God's grace to become altered characters, these men shut out all such reasonings as far as they can, and go on with self-willed eagerness in their old plans: sometimes, if driven from them, they go on only in other courses of the same character, and these, too, with their old eagerness. But if this duty of remembrance is important in a worldly point of view, as it regards our mutual relations on earth, it is of far greater consequence in heavenly things. It is possible to get through our earthly career, though never happily, without remembering; but heaven, the city of our God, we never shall attain unless we do remember all the way the Lord our God hath led us. We must remember Him in our ways, bear in our minds our old sins, and what led us into them. Thence we shall think of what befell us in consequence; and, calmly weighing these over in our minds, we shall pray to God for grace in the future, and will avoid those occasions of sin which previously tried us. II. In remembering all the way which we have been led, WE SHALL FIND IT HIGHLY PROFITABLE; because each of our lives is so directed, sooner or later, for two ends — to humble us, and to prove us whether we will serve God or no. 1. Here we see, first, that all events are ordered for our humiliation. Is it not so? Have you had no remarkable turns in your lives, when, yourself or your friends intending one thing, another has come to pass? Have you had no answers to prayer, when, in your helplessness or agony, you besought God and He hearkened? Look back to your youth; how He controlled your self-wickedness, overruled your ignorance, directed your forwardness. It may be, He answered your prayers and punished your inventions; or that what you were so eager for and prayed to obtain so earnestly, as thinking it would without fail make you happy, He refused, and you now find greatly to your comfort. You must bear these in mind; they were so ordained to humble you. We hear men say of their troubles that they are humbling; how they will try in consequence to remove them, to fling themselves out of them. They are thwarted: this causes irritation; it shows them a glimpse of what they really are, poor and weak, blind and naked, and humbles them. God sends these troubles for this purpose — to humble you. Let no Christian therefore try, for it is a vain work, to shake them off; God sends them to humble him. Let the prayer of this man rather be, Let me be humbled. God exalteth the humble, but casteth away the proud. 2. But in discussing this branch of our subject we have another end also laid open to us; this is to prove us. Christ, by Malachi, says, that His coming will have the same effect on the world as the fire of the refiner on silver. And as all the multiplied complications of our chequered lives are ordered to fit us for Christ's kingdom, we may well suppose they are calculated to produce this same effect — that of refining or proving. We are told that God will do this in several passages: "I will refine them as silver is refined: the Lord your God proveth you." Now there is so much alloy, even in our best services, that all this is necessary. III. DO THESE THINGS SEEM HARD? Listen to the great comfort to be derived from our subject. It is all — if you turn to ver. 16 — to do thee good at the latter end. It is true, enemies mean mischief; false friends wish confusion of face: but, as Joseph said to his brethren who had sold him, and instrumentally had brought on him the miseries he suffered in Egypt, "Ye meant it for evil; but lo, God hath brought it to good," so with Christians; the different tribulations and unevenness on their road, are the spurs which should quicken their pace to Jerusalem above, the mother of us all. (J. D. Day, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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. |
    |