Ezra 8:22-28 For I was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy in the way… Our text gives us a glimpse of high-toned faith, and a noble strain of feeling. Ezra knew that he had but to ask and have an escort from the king that would ensure their safety till they saw Jerusalem. It took some strength of principle to abstain from asking what it would have been so natural to ask, so easy to get, so comfortable to have. The symbolic phrase "the hand of our God," as expressive of the Divine protection, occurs with remarkable frequency in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and though not peculiar to them, is yet strikingly characteristic of them. It has a certain beauty and force of its own. The hand is, of course, the seat of active power. It is on or over a man like some great shield held aloft above him, below which there is safe hiding. So that great hand bends itself over us, and we are secure beneath its hollow. As a child sometimes carries a tender-winged butterfly in the globe of its two hands, that the bloom on its wings may not be ruffled by its fluttering, so He carries our feeble, enamoured souls enclosed in the covert of His almighty hand. As a father may lay his own large muscular hand on his child's tiny fingers to help him, or as "Elisha put his hands on the king's hands," that the contact might strengthen him to shoot the arrow of the Lord's deliverance, so the hand of our God is upon us to impart power as well as protection; and "our bow abides in strength" when "the arms of our hands are made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob." That was Ezra's faith, and that should be ours. Note Ezra's sensitive shrinking from anything like inconsistency between his creed and his practice, and we may well learn this lesson — to be true to our professed principles; to beware of making our religion a matter of words; to live, when the time for putting them into practice comes, by the maxims which we have been forward to proclaim when there was no risk of applying them; and to try sometimes to look at our lives with the eyes of people who do not share our faith, that we may bring our actions up to the mark of what they expect of us. Especially in regard to this matter of trust in an unseen hand, and reliance on visible helps, we all need to be very rigid in our self-inspection. Faith in the good hand of God upon us for good should often lead to the abandonment, and always to the subordination, of material aids. Each man must settle for himself when abandonment or subordination is his duty. We ought to work into our lives the principle that the absolute surrender and forsaking of external helps and goods is sometimes essential to the preservation and due expression of reliance on God. What shall we say of people who profess that God is their portion and are as eager in the scramble for money as anybody? What kind of commentary? Will sharp-sighted, sharp-tongued observers have a right to make on us, whose creed is so unlike theirs, while our lives are identical? Do you believe that "the hand of our God is upon all them for good that seek Him"? Then do you not think that racing after the prizes of this world, with flushed cheek and labouring breath, or longing, with a gnawing hunger of heart, for any earthly good, or lamenting over the removal of creaturely defences and joys, as if heaven were empty because some one's place here is, or as if God were dead because dear ones die, may well be a shame to us, and a taunt on the lips of our enemies? Note further that his faith not only impels him to the renunciation of the Babylonian guard, but to earnest supplication for the defence in which he is so confident. So for us the condition and preparation on and by which we are sheltered by that great hand is the faith that asks and the asking of faith. We make God responsible for our safety when we abandon other defence and commit ourselves to Him. He will accept the trust and set His guards about us. So our story ends with the triumphant vindication of this Quixotic faith: "The hand of our God was upon us, and He delivered us from the hand of the enemy, and of such as lay in wait by the way; and we came to Jerusalem." The ventures of faith are ever rewarded. When we come to tell the completed story of our lives, we shall have to record the fulfilment of all God's promises, and the accomplishment of all our prayers that were built on these. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For I was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy in the way: because we had spoken unto the king, saying, The hand of our God is upon all them for good that seek him; but his power and his wrath is against all them that forsake him. |
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