Moses’ Dying Charge to Israel

Moses' Dying Charge to Israel

(No. 2345)

A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S DAY, JANUARY 28, 1894.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, JUNE
17, 1888.

"And you shall remember all the way which the LORD your God led you
these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you, and to prove you,
to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His
commandments, or no." Deuteronomy 8:2.

These are the words of Moses, the man of God, when he was near his
departure. They make up a part of what has been called his "swan song."
He did not often sing–he did give us at least one song, but when he
came near the time he was to die, like the fabled swan, he began to
sing–and most sweetly did he sing!

Notice the intense earnestness of this address. It is, every way, that
of a saint who has spent his life in loving anxiety for the people
committed to his charge. And the ruling passion is very strong upon him
to the last. He knows that he is about to depart from them, for he has
had his marching orders–"Get you up into the top of Pisgah and lift up
your eyes westward, and northward, and southward, and eastward, and
behold it with your eyes, for you shall not go over this Jordan."
Knowing that he is about to leave the people, he is very anxious about
their welfare and he addresses them with this deep earnestness.

Note, also, how practical his earnestness is–it is concerning their
lives that he speaks to the children of Israel. He knows how liable
they are to fall into the superstitions of their neighbors, how likely
they, who made a golden calf and angered the Lord and His servant, will
be to turn, again, unto graven images and strange gods. And so he
beseeches them, as with his dying breath, to observe all the
Commandments of the Lord and to cleave closely unto Jehovah, their God.

Then, like an old man, again, for this is a point that would be sure to
come out in a venerable, soon-departing saint, he talks about the past.
He has been preserved by his God for 120 years and, during the last 40
of those years, he has been king in Jeshurun and the Lord has made him
ride upon the high places of the earth in the wonders that he has
worked by His hand. And he cannot help reminding the people that the
marvels God has accomplished must not be dead things to them, not
things to be laid by like mummies wrapped up in sere clothes–and
hidden away in a sarcophagus–but they must be living mercies to them,
still, since they came from a living God and they must continue to
produce in them living gratitude and living service. I like this
thought–it seems to teach us how, as we mature in life, we shall
become more and more anxious about practical holiness and we shall,
more and more, draw the argument for it from our own experience of the
goodness of God. With the Psalmist, we shall cry, "Bind the sacrifice
with cords, even with cords to the horns of the altar," and what cords
can be stronger than the cords of love and the bands of a man, even
gratitude at the remembrance of all the loving kindness of the Lord? I
cannot imagine that the iron chains of necessity, or the steel bonds of
fear can ever hold men so firmly to duty and virtue as these silken
bands of thankfulness at the recollection of all the Lord's Grace and
mercy to us. May we feel these love-bands about us as we meditate upon
these words of Israel's great leader!

I invite you, then, first of all, to consider the leading of God which
is to be remembered. And, secondly, the objectives of that leading,
which also are well worthy of remembrance.

I. First, then, consider THE LEADING TO BE REMEMBERED–"You shall
remember all the way which the Lord your God led you these forty years
in the wilderness." Some of you can knock out that word, "forty," and
put in, "fifty," or, "sixty." I know some here who can say, "seventy!"
I can even see some who can put in, "eighty," years, not of life,
merely, but of Divine leading, for there are some, here, who have been
led of the Lord, in their own experience, no less a space than that
longest period I have named!

The first thing that we note, here, about the children of Israel is
that they had a God. And the first thing for us to remember, tonight,
is that God ever had anything at all to do with us, that we ever had a
God. "You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God led you."
We have not been led by a stranger, but by our own God! And we have not
been led by a human shepherd, but the Lord has been our Shepherd!
Though He counts the number of the stars and calls them all by their
names, and leads the hosts of Heaven in their marches through
illimitable space, yet has He not disdained to lead us! Unhappy men,
who have no God! Saints are poor, sometimes, but they do not know the
poverty of the man who has no God! No gold, no silver–this is an
inconvenience, but no God–this is death in the midst of life! Glory be
to God, there are some of His people who, though they have barely
sufficient food and raiment, and though scant is the portion of their
lot below, yet they have a God–and he who has a God is rich to all the
intents of bliss! There are infinite mines of unfailing wealth just
beneath his feet–he has but to dig a little to find all that he needs
in God. It is a blessed thing to have God when you have all things
beside, and to find God in all things, but it is an equally blessed
thing to have God when you have nothing else and to find all things in
God! There is but a slight change in the order of the words and I think
there is not much change in the real sense as to true happiness.

Oh, Brothers and Sisters, what a wonder it is that God should have
looked upon you and me with eyes of love! Well, I can leave off
wondering that He should have loved some of you, but I never shall
leave off being astonished that He should ever have regarded me with
complacency and love! Nobody in this place sings with greater emphasis
than I do, that verse of which many of you are also so fond–

"What was there in you that could merit esteem,

Or give the Creator delight?

'Twas even so, Father,'you always must sing,

'Because it seemed good in Your sight.'" The Sovereign Mercy of God,
born in His own bosom, nurtured from His own heart, could only have
induced Him to look with love upon us!

But what love it has been! No commonplace love, no ordinary affection.
Mothers have loved us, fathers have loved us. We know the love of a
fond spouse and the love of children and of friends, but these are only
like twinkling glowworm sparks, while the love of God seems, to us, to
be the very sun, blazing in full glory in the heavens! He loved us–to
what shall I compare His love? He loved us as He loved His
only-begotten Son. No, He seemed to love us even more than that, for He
spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all. He loved us
better than He loved Himself, for, in order that we might live, He put
Himself to that great loss of tearing His Only-Begotten from the place
of His everlasting abode in peace. Oh, wonder of wonders, that God
should ever have loved us so! "God so loved the world, that He gave His
only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but
have everlasting life." This glorious Truth of God is enough to make us
all spring to our feet, feeling that we are in the Presence of the
miraculous and the Divine, as, indeed, we are!

More than that, if more can be, we have to tell the wonderful story of
the love of God, the Son, and of the love of the Spirit, which made the
love of the Father and the love of the Son to be effectual, for the
Spirit came to us and turned our hearts into the way of faith and we
embraced the Son, whom, in our blindness we had despised. Oh, let us
tell, tonight, tell to our own hearts if we cannot speak it out, the
wondrous love which has given us a God at all, that Father, Son and
Holy Spirit should have such condescending dealings with us!

In the next place, Moses not only said that Israel had a God, but that
God had led them. I am not going to preach, tonight–I am only going to
try to get you to think of how God has led you–and you will do that
all the better if I keep gratefully thinking in my own mind of how He
has led me. Oh, how He led some of us–

"When Satan's blind slaves, We sported with death "!

We would have damned ourselves before conversion if we had been left to
ourselves, but God, every now and then, held back our rebellious hand
and checked our wayward will. "I girded you," said He to Cyrus, "though
you have not known Me." And so it was with us, full often, the Lord
girded us–what if I say that He put the bit in our mouth when we were
like leviathan and a hook in our jaws when we were like a crocodile and
wildly refused to know anything that could tame us? He held us back
from evil and led us in the right way and oh, the sweet way in which He
led us to the Cross! He drove us

and he drew us/ With the Law He sternly lashed us. With His love He
deftly drew us. And oh, the Glory of the Light when He brought us to
it! Yet we shut our eyes and rushed back into the darkness!

But He would have us see the Light of God, so we were sweetly forced to
come and the scales dropped off our eyes and we saw that sight, the
like of which we have often seen since then, but the like of which we
never imagined in our blind estate! Oh, to be led to Jesus! If there
were nothing else for us but just to be led to lie at His feet and weep
ourselves away in penitence, and get back, again, to joyous communion
with Him by a believing confidence–If there were no other leading than
that, we might well ask for a well-tuned harp and never wish to rest
our fingers, but continue forever to smite its strings in sweetest
minstrelsy of praise!

Many days have passed since then, Beloved, with some of us, since those
early days when we hoped for salvation, when we grasped the promises,
when we rested on the finished work of Christ, when we had our first
trembling joy in believ-ing–and all the way we have been led so
singularly. I could not tell you how I came to be where I now am except
by saying, "He leads me! He leads me!" Could you tell how you came to
be where you are? Was there not a time when, if anyone had said you
would be what you are, and where you are, you would have despised him,
for you hated the thought of it? And was there not another time when
you would have laughed outright and said, "It can never be. What? I
have a good hope of Heaven? I who now stand trembling on the brink of
the abyss? What? Be numbered with the children, when it will be a
marvel of mercy if I am ever allowed to eat a crumb with the dogs under
the table?" Yet it is so and the Lord has led you. He has led some of
us where the track was as narrow as a razor's edge. He has led us where
black darkness was on either side and with half a slip we would have
been in Hell! He has led us where we could not see our way and where,
if we could have seen it, we might have swooned for very fright, yet we
are safe. He has led us through the furnace and not so much as a smell
of fire has been upon us! He has led us when we have been, like Jonah,
in the depths of the sea in very despair! And yet we are safe on dry
land. Glory be to the Divine Leader who has led us by a right way,
bringing us by a way that we knew not, thus far en route for the City
that has foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God! We praise Him
tonight for having led us thus far.

But that is not all. Moses bade the Israelites remember that they had a
God and that He had led them. But he also wanted the people to remember
that their way had been through the wilderness–"You shall remember all
the way which the Lord your God led you these forty years in the
wilderness." So far as any ministry to our spiritual needs is
concerned, this world is a wilderness. There is every temporal comfort
provided for us and yet, with all those temporal comforts, there is
such a thing as having a starved soul. What is there in this world that
can minister to the requirements of a spiritual man? Nothing! As well
might Israel in the wilderness have devoured the stones of the desert
as any man live upon what this world can furnish him of spiritual meat.
It is a wilderness and there are scorpions in it, perhaps one of them
has bitten you today. And there are fiery serpents–you may meet a lot
of them tomorrow. And there are Amalekites that seek to destroy the
hindmost of us!

And there are all kinds of other evils and mischiefs in this
wilderness. Do not let us imagine that we have got to Heaven just yet!
I think I have known some Brothers and Sisters who have thought that
they were almost there. They have taken off their winterproofs and
overcoats, and laid them by, thinking they would never need them again.
Ah, my good mariner, you will need that oilskin suit yet! There may be
many a rough night for you, yet, before you cross the narrow sea! We
have not yet come unto the fair havens of eternal peace. You sing,
sometimes–

"My willing soul would stay In such a frame as this."

Well, perhaps you would like to stay there, but you are not to do so.
"Go forward," says the Lord, and in going forward, you may have to
endure many trials of which you have never dreamed–for it is still a
wilderness through which you are journeying.

Now, I want you to remember that all these years God has led you
through the wilderness and, still being in the wilderness, this fact
ought to comfort you. If you should be in the wilderness for another 20
years, the God who has led you 40 years can lead you another twenty.
The God who has led some of you dear Sisters here present 80 years–can
you not trust Him for the other four, five, 10, or whatever number it
may be? You do not expect to reach a thousand years old, I am sure, but
if you did, the God who kept Methuselah could also keep you! And if
Enoch could walk with God for 300

years at a stretch, so may we, with God leading us! If we live as many
years as there are days in the year, God has said, "As your days, so
shall your strength be," and He will bring us safely through. Let us
not forget that.

Then we have to remember something more about the children of Israel
and that I have already anticipated, namely, that God had led them
forty years in the wilderness. It is often the length of an experience
that is the trial of it. "In the wilderness"–that is bad enough, but,
"forty years in the wilderness"–that is the test of endurance! Plenty
of people seem to start rightly but they have no staying power. With
all the foes we have to face in the wilderness, who is able to endure?
Who? Why, the man who has God with him and God within him! He will
endure to the end and, "He that endures to the end shall be saved." But
here is that which makes a long life so trying–that all the while you
are in the wilderness. Yet here is, also, your consolation, for, long
as your life has been, yet the Lord has led you through that very
respectable period of 40 years. Surely you cannot, now, doubt as to His
ability to lead you and keep you even to the end! Remember those past
40 years–do not forget them, I pray you. If you have an old friend
whom you have tried and tested for a long period, if you are a wise
man, you will grapple him to your soul with hooks of steel and, as to
your God in Heaven, who has been with you all these years and kept you
from childhood, even until now, you will say, "I cannot doubt Him! I
cannot look elsewhere for a leader. I remember the God who has led me
through the wilderness these 40 years."

Again, according to the text, all the way that God had led His people
was worth remembering–"And you shall remember all the way which the
Lord your God led you." "All the way." It is always a pity to look at
things only in parts. If we would see them aright, we must examine them
as a whole. Sometimes it is our lack of dealing with things as a whole
that leads us to make mistakes. "All things work together for good to
them that love God." Not this thing, that thing and the other thing, by
themselves, but all things put together work together for good. Now,
remember, "all the way" whereby the Lord has led you. I know you
remember the day when God led you by that grave, where half your heart
and all your joy seemed buried–you went to see it, the other day, in
the cemetery. Now you remember that part of the way–but the
exhortation is to remember, "all the way," whereby the Lord has led
you. Put this and that together, and you will have something more to
remember than that one grave and that dark day when they said that
everything was lost–when your household goods were sold and you were
left penniless. Yes, and the Lord led you through even that trial! You
must remember all the way He led you–how He helped you and brought you
through that dark day into the light again– "Remember all the way
which the Lord your God led you."

I would desire, tonight, to think of all the loving kindness of God. I
think it is worth while to remember those rough bits of road, for we
are to remember all the way, but remember, also, those beautiful walks
by the river of the Water of Life and those happy climbs to the top of
Mount Clear. Yes, you may remember Giant Despair's Castle and By-Path
Meadow, to sorrow over them, but then God did not lead you there! You
had better remember the Interpreter's House and the Delectable
Mountains where He did lead you, for where He led you all was well! As
to where you went of your own accord, the only leadings that you can
remember with joy were those in which He led you back with weeping and
supplication, till you were almost glad to kiss every flint that cut
your feet, so long as you really felt that you were back in the old
road, again, for there you loved to be, and anywhere else you knew you
were in great danger! Let us sing of mercy and of judgement! Unto You,
O God, will we sing with mingled strains! We will run up the scale to
the highest notes of a joyous Hallelujah and every note shall be for
You! But we will go down to the deepest tones as well, and still, every
note shall be unto You, O God! "Remember all the way which the Lord
your God led you these forty years in the wilderness."

Observe this one thing more, dear Friends, that the children of Israel
were commanded to remember the Lord's leading, and I do not, this
evening, merely invite you to remember all the way that the Lord has
led you, but, as my text puts it as a command, so I give it to you as a
command from God! There is a, "you shall" to it and, therefore, I leave
my text in your hands, not to be accepted or rejected at your option,
but as a positive command binding upon every man, woman, or child who
has been led of God. If you are, indeed, the sheep of His pasture, this
command comes to you with all the force of Divine authority!

II. Now, in the second place, I ask you to think upon THE OBJECTIVES OF
THAT LEADING THROUGH THE

WILDERNESS–"To humble you, and to prove you, to know what was in your
heart, whether you would keep His Commandments, or no."

God has led you and the time–the 40 years. The place–the wilderness.
And the method of His leading have all cooperated to erect two
purposes.

First of all, to humble you. In the review of your life of mercy, do
you not feel humbled? I think that there is everything about it to make
us all feel humble.

The first thing to humble us is the remembrance that we have, all
along, been receiving gifts. That is always a humbling experience. We
like better to give than to receive. There is great pride about giving,
but all this while, as far as God is concerned, we have been what one
called, "gentlemen commoners upon the Lord's bounty." We have been
pensioners at His gate, we have been beggars at His door and the only
garments that we could put on and call our own are the garments of a
beggar. We have been allowed to beg and we have always had alms given
to us according to our faith. That ought to humble us. We have not
earned a penny, but have been always living on charity. We have been
supported on Divine alms all this while.

I will tell you what often humbles me. If I attempt any work for God
and I do not succeed at it, I am disappointed, but I make up my mind to
try again. But if I succeed, then do I not begin to boast? Certainly
not! Have you ever noticed what Peter did when he went fishing and got
his boat full? The boat began to go down as soon as it was loaded with
fish–and so did Peter till he went down so low that he cried out to
Jesus, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" He felt that he
was not worthy to have Christ in the same boat with him! The more God
blesses you, if you are a man of God, the humbler you will be. It is
His mercies, His favors, His loving kindnesses that will tend to humble
you, and make you say with Jacob, "I am not worthy of the least of all
the mercies, and of all the truth which You have shown unto Your
servant." God humbles some of His people with favor and love. Others,
who may not be humbled that way, have to be brought low in another
manner.

Now, in looking back, do not your prayers humble you? Is there one
prayer you have prayed of which you dare to be proud? Do not your
sweetest communings with God humble you? In hearing of Him by the
hearing of the ear, you may not be humbled, but when your eyes see Him,
you lie low, with Job, and abhor yourself and repent in dust and ashes.
Are you not humbled at the recollection of what you have not done, your
sins of omission? How many they have been! Are you not humbled at the
thought of the many other people's sins, as well as your own, that are
laid to your charge–sins that grew out of your example, or that were
not rebuked as they ought to have been–so that you became, by your
negligence, a partaker in them? Ah, dear Sirs, if we have anything of
which we think we could glory for a moment, it must be because we have
forgotten all those 40 years in the wilderness, for there is a crowd of
memories that will come before the mind of any thoughtful man to humble
him!

The point that humbles one most is to think that we should need all
this humbling, that God should have to put us in a wilderness for 40
years to humble us! What proud wretches we must be–pride must be
ingrained in us if we need all this discipline to get it out! The
children of Israel were proud and when I mention the ways in which they
manifested their pride, I think that I shall only be holding the mirror
up to ourselves. They were proud because they murmured. As soon as they
began to be a little thirsty or hungry, they complained–and what was
that murmuring but a proof of their pride? "I am such a very great
person that I ought not to suffer hunger! I am such an important
individual that I ought not to endure thirst!" That was part of the
Israelites' pride. And then they began to doubt God. They had scarcely
heard the last rattle of the chariots of the Egyptians when they said
to Moses, "Because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us
away to die in the wilderness?" They pretended that they knew better
than God! And unbelief is only a kind of veiled pride in which we begin
to set up our own judgment against the wisdom of God. They were also
very proud because they were so hot and fiery–and passionate and
eager. Moses had only been gone from them 40 days when they said to
Aaron, "Up, make us gods which shall go before us; for as for this
Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not
what is become of him." So they must have a god of their own making, a
molten calf, to take the place of Jehovah who had delivered them from
the hand of Pharaoh! If God waited, they could not wait–not they! All
this was the effect of pride.

Now, do you not find murmuring, unbelief and a wicked impetuosity still
clinging to you? Well then, that is what God is trying to get out of
you. All the experience of the 40 years in the wilderness has been
meant to humble us and if it does not humble us, what is to become of
us? If our experience of God's love and of our own frailty does not lay
us in the dust, what must we be? O God, by Your blessed Spirit, cause
all these experiences to be effectual that we may be really humble
before You! Yet I am afraid, that, if the Lord does not work another
miracle, we shall still get more proud, for we are very apt, as we grow
in years, to think, "Well now, I am an experienced person. I shall not
fall like those silly boys."

The man who talks like that is the very man who does fall! I have often
had to tell you that, in Scripture, you have scarcely an instance of a
young Believer falling into sin, but nearly all the cases of
backsliding recorded are those of old men and, "old fools are the worst
fools." We who are getting on in years and have had a long experience
are just the kind of stone that the devil likes to carve into monuments
of our own folly! Do not, therefore, think that because any of you know
more than you did, and are walking nearer to God than you used to,
there is anything for you to glory in! No, the distinct tendency of all
this should be, by Divine Grace, to make us more cautious, more
timorous, more trembling, more fearful of ourselves and, at the same
time, more confident in God, more humble and, therefore, more
believing, for I think that until self-confidence is emptied out of us,
there is no room for confidence in God. Pride is the enemy of faith and
humility is the brother of true assurance. God bless, then, all our
wilderness experience to our humbling!

The second objective of the Lord's leading appears to be, according to
our text, to prove us. Does not the Lord know us? Yes, He does, but He
still wants to know us, in another sense, by actual tests. God has
given us these 40 years in the wilderness on purpose to test us. Will
Richardson, a friend of mine, an old farm laborer in Essex, said to me,
once, "Do you know, Sir, all through the winter I am thinking that when
the hay-time comes, I will earn a good lump of money at haymaking. I am
thinking about how well I will use my scythe and make a long day's
work. And then I think I will reap many an acre when it gets to
harvest-time. But," he added, "I have not been in the field above
half-an-hour before my poor old back aches and I begin to find that
Will cannot do much, now that he is getting on to eighty-six." He said,
"It is wonderful what strength I have when there is not any grass to
cut and when there is no corn to get in." So is it with many of us–we
have a lot of faith till the trouble comes–and God, therefore, leads
us, again, into the wilderness, and leaves us there, just to prove us
and to show us that we are not the rich people, the great people and
the believing people that we fancied we were! Thus the Lord tests us
and, in the testing, 99 parts out of a hundred evaporate, perhaps 999
parts out of a thousand vanish away, and we have to bless God if there
is even a thousandth part left of what we thought we had!

Well, Brothers and Sisters, beside this testing of our faith, and our
love, and our graces, of which I have not time to speak, the Lord also
leads us through the wilderness in order to point out to us something
of the mischief that lurks within our nature. We have no idea what bad
folk we are. I do not think there are any men or women here who have
the slightest idea of what evil they may be capable of if they are only
put under certain conditions and the Grace of God is taken away from
them! Blasphemies, murders and foul lusts still lurk within that old
mind of the flesh that abides even in the nature of the regenerate! And
if those vile dogs once get loose, oh, Sirs, they will bite like the
dog of the most unrenewed man! Every now and then, even we who are
God's children find out what we can do, what we can say, and what we
can feel. Oh, I wish we would believe in the sanctifying power of the
Word of God and the Holy Spirit–and have no confidence in self at
all– but cry for its mortification, its death and its burial with
Christ, for that is the only thing to be done with it! While there is
any life in the old flesh, the flesh is still flesh and none of us can
tell what evil it will work if it once gets the opportunity! God leads
us through the wilderness that we may discover this.

And, once more, I'm sure that the Lord also leads us through the
wilderness as He led Israel, that He may see whether we really will
keep His Commandments, or not. Yes, you have behaved well as an
apprentice, so the Lord lets you become a journeyman. You have done
well as a journeyman, but yet you may fail when you come to be a
master. There was a young man who attended this House of Prayer
regularly. He was much persecuted by his father and mother, but all the
while he seemed wonderfully earnest. His parents are dead and he is his
own master and the possessor of a good deal of wealth but, alas, I do
not think he ever goes to the House of God, now, or has any care about
it. I have often noticed that persons, downtrodden and oppressed, will
hold on to Christ–but when they get their liberty, they will run away
from Him! It is an amazing thing, but it is true.

Some seem to change their religion with their coats. When their coat is
half-worn out, they do not mind mixing up with all classes of people
that worship God. But when they wear respectable broadcloth and
especially when Her Ladyship puts on satin, then they want to go
somewhere else. Now, the Lord leads people about, up high and down low,
to see whether they will keep His Commandments, for that religion that
will not stand the test of all weathers is worth nothing! If we do not
so love God that whether He puts a hedge about us, or whether He
permits Satan to break through the hedge and take away all that we
have–if we do not still cling to Him, fair or foul–we do not love Him
at all! And to separate between the precious and the vile is often the
reason of the working of the hand of the God of Providence towards
professors of religion. O God, help us to know ourselves and to know
You–and make us right towards You!

I have not spoken much directly to unconverted people, tonight, yet my
subject has all been for them as well as for the Lord's people. I
should like them to look back over the years in which they have lived
without God, yet God has not left them, altogether, and He has,
tonight, brought them into this Tabernacle where there sounds forth a
silver trumpet of which this is the note, "Turn unto Me and live!
Whoever believes in the Lord Jesus Christ has everlasting life! Believe
in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. Let the wicked forsake
his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto
the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will
abundantly pardon." May you, tonight, as you take a review of your past
life, be moved to feel, "Surely, God must mean to bless me, or He would
not have been so good to me!"

I was speaking with an officer who rode in the charge at Balaclava, one
of the very few who came out alive, and, though I had not seen him
before, I could not help putting my hand on his shoulder and saying to
him, "Surely, the rest of your life, so strangely spared, must be
dedicated to God." It may be that you have been in a shipwreck and that
you barely escaped. Or you were in a terrible collision on the railway.
Possibly you have had typhoid fever. It may be that you were laid low
the last time the cholera was raging here, or you have been kicked by a
horse, or you have escaped from all sorts of tragedies–yet here you
are. Should not the life which has been so specially spared be
dedicated to God? We read of John Bunyan, that in his godless days he
was foolhardy to the last degree, and once, when a serpent came in his
way, he took it up and plucked out the poison gland from it. It was a
wonder that he was not stung, but he was not–and the reason was that
God meant him to write The Pilgrim's Progress–and he could not die
till he had done that.

And I believe that the Lord has some design of love towards some of you
who are here, tonight. Go and seek His face and cry to Him for mercy
and He will grant it to you tonight! We prayed that all who came in
here might be saved. I trust they will be. I believe they will be. What
a joyous thing it would be for all of us to be bound for Glory! Let us
begin to praise the Lord's name that all of us are to go to Heaven in
answer to that prayer! Well, as you are going there, you had better
begin to learn something about it and get ready for it–and I invite
you to do so. Let us begin the music of Heaven by singing this one
verse–

"All hail the po wer of Jesus 'name, Let angels prostrate fall! Bring
forth the royal diadem, And crown Him Lord of all."

EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM139:1-18.

Verse 1. O LORD, You have searched me, and known me. "You have explored
me, as men dig in mines and make subterranean excavations. You have
searched into my secret parts and known me."

2. You knew my sitting down and my raising up. "My simplest acts, those
which I scarcely premeditated."

2. You understand my thoughts afar off. "Before I think it, when I
think it, and when I forget it, You understand my every thought."

3. You compass my path and my lying down. "Making a ring around me, so
that I am entirely under Your observation. My roving and my resting are
both known to You."

3. And are acquainted with all my ways. "My habits, and the exceptions
from my habits, are all known to You."

4. For there is not a word on my tongue, but, You, O LORD, You knew it
altogether. "When it is on my tongue, and not spoken, like a seed sown,
hidden away, not yet sprouted, You, O Jehovah, knew it altogether!"

5. You have beset me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. "I
am like a prisoner, with guards before me and behind me, and the
officer's hand upon my shoulder all the while. You have arrested me, O
Lord. I can never get away from

You."

6. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain
up to it. "I believe it, but I cannot understand it; even my
imagination cannot picture it to me."

7. Where shall I go from Your Spirit? "If I want to do so. If I desire
to avoid You, where can I go to escape from Your Omnipresent Spirit?"

7, 8. Or where shall I flee from Your Presence? I ascend up into
Heaven, You are there. The true glory of that bright world.

8, If I make my bed in Hell, behold, You are there. "The terror of that
place of woe, in the land of death-shadow and darkness, You are living,
whoever else is dead. If I make my abode in Hades, in Hell, You are
there."

9, 10. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost
parts of the sea; even there shall Your hand lead me. "If the breath of
the morning breeze should bear me far away across the pathless sea, You
are there before me. If I ride upon a flash of light, You are swifter
than the sunbeam–even there shall Your hand lead me." The lone
missionary in the furthest parts of the earth is led by God. When he
knows not his way, God leads him, and when he has no companion to cheer
him, God's hands upholds him. What a comfort to any of you who have to
journey far away from your kindred! You cannot be alone, for God is
there! Be of good comfort and go as bravely as if you walked the
crowded streets of this great city!

10-12. And Your right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the
darknesses cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yes, the
darkness hides not from You, but the night shines as the day: the
darkness and the light are both right to You. It is impossible to
conceive that God should need the light in order to see. He can see as
well in the midnight shades as in the blaze of noon. Let no man think
that he may sin in secret because he is not seen of the eyes of
man–God's eyes are on him in the dark as much as in the light.

13, 14. For You have possessed my reins: You have covered me in my
mother's womb. I will praise You for I am fearfully and wonderfully
made: marvelous are Your works; and that my soul knows right well. He
was no Agnostic, he never dreamed of being a know-nothing.

15-17. My substance was not hid from You, when I was made in secret,
and curiously worked in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes did
see my substance, yet being imperfect; and in Your book all my members
were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there
was none of them. How precious, also, are Your thoughts unto me, O God!
How great is the sum of them! How sweet to be thought of by God! How
charming and how cheering to be the perpetual object of the Lord's
thoughts! The Psalmist does not tell us how precious are God's
thoughts, but he sets a note of admiration to them–"How precious,
also, are Your thoughts unto me, O God!" He does not try to calculate
the total of their value, but he says, "How great is the sum of them!"

18. If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when
I awake, I am still with You. "You have thought of me when I was
asleep–and when I wake, I think of You." Happy living, happy dying, to
feel that, if we never wake again on earth, we shall wake up with God!
How precious it is to think that when good and useful men fall asleep,
when they awake, they are forever with the Lord! Our turn will come
soon, my Brothers and Sisters. May it be our portion to die in harness
and to be taken away while yet we have the Light of God's sustenance
resting upon our work!