[According to the Scripture read, the people of Israel had reached a significant stage in their history: the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness had ended and they had arrived at the border of the Promised Land. At such an important turning point in life, it is good to pause for a moment and look back, before moving on, to see the journey that has brought you here! That is why Moses says: "Remember all the way on which the Lord your God has carried you." (Deuteronomy 8:2) There is much to remember! 40 years is a long time even for a nation! And 40 years in the wilderness! From the crossing of the Red Sea to the border of the Promised Land, the whole arduous and yet merciful journey, and all that happened on that journey, became a divine revelation for all the world for ever! So there is something to remember!We remember now. Not 40 years, but one. Not a long time even for a man, but there is something to remember! How short a year is, how fast the days go by, and yet how much happens! For instance, one has fallen ill or been cured; has got a job or changed it; has married or accompanied someone to the grave; has been comforted or despondent; has found or lost the purpose of his life; has been refreshed or wearied; has become more hopeful or more hopeless! Who can list all that has happened? One thing is certain: life is a curious web, and even a single year of it, woven together by the most diverse threads. Some of them are black, some are white, and here and there a golden thread glints among the others! So there is something to remember!
So, "Remember all the way that the Lord your God has carried you." Now let me reverse the order of the words in this sentence, thus: "Remember the way that the Lord has carried you. So it was not by chance that events took the course they did, but by the will of the Lord! All events, great and small, are but a thread in a certain tapestry, woven by the living God Himself according to a great and eternal plan, and which often seems meaningless because the pattern on which the heavenly Master is working is not yet finished. So He, the mighty and merciful God, has carried you and me all the way through the year 1951! Do you feel how much tenderness, how much love, how much care there is in the word "carried"?! It also says that it has tolerated much! Forgiven! Many times He has restarted me, rebuked me, comforted me, lifted me up, guided me: in other words, according to His preordained plan, He has continued to shape the pattern, with great care and love, He has continued to weave the fabric of my life! Looking back on the journey, the believer can see the earthly aspect of eternal predestination in all that has happened! How good it is for one who can remember a journey, whatever that journey may have been, as having been carried by the Lord! Can you accept that you too have been cared for by the Lord? What happened to you is what He wanted! You too have come this far by the way He has ordained. Can you accept from God's hand all that has happened?
The problem for the people of Israel there, on the border of the Promised Land, was not so much whether the Lord was leading them or not - for they saw much tangible evidence of the Lord's leading - but rather why He was leading them into the wilderness, why they had to wander so much, suffer so much, go without, why there was no simpler, easier way to make this journey from Egypt to Canaan?
Isn't that your question too: why? Why did I have to go this way, why did everything that happened have to happen to me? Why? Well, it's very good when the "why" is so sharply outlined above the events. Just remember that there are two kinds of why: divine and human. We look backwards and look for the reasons. So many people sigh: what have I done that God should treat me this way? Is this what I deserve? Was what happened to me fair? This is the human why. And God looks ahead because he has a purpose for us. The ultimate meaning of His actions is not behind, in the reasons, but in front, in the purpose! He always acts for something! That is the divine why! And to this forward-looking why, this question of purpose, God's Word gives a very definite answer, an answer in which the meaning not only of the past year but of all human life is illuminated.
One of the purposes is stated in this way: all the tribulations of the 40 years were so that 'it may be made clear what is in your heart'. Obviously, it was not God who needed this, since He knew all the troubles, emotions, wills, hearts and souls of His people, but the people needed to know themselves! It is very difficult to know the mysterious depths of the heart! Not the other man's, one knows him almost before one knows oneself! Do you know your own heart? I would not dare to say that I do, because I do not yet know what will come out of it! Surprises come when life takes a turn for the worse, when it goes off course, when something unexpected happens and shakes you up! Many people know the old story of a man who once started to raise a tiger cub. He gave it no meat, no blood. He hoped it would be a gentle animal. And for a long time it did. Once, as he licked his master's hand, he licked a recently healed wound with his rough tongue. His owner didn't even notice that his blood was leaking and the tiger cub was licking it greedily. Suddenly, the taste of blood awakened the wild animal in the tamed cub, and it wanted to pounce on its master. The animal had to be shot.
So are we. Our nature, tamed into the confines of civilisation and upbringing, functions magnificently until the real thing is brought out by some strange event: great joy or loss, danger or suffering. Recently I was standing at the bedside of a brother who had been through a great ordeal. I tried to comfort him, to direct his thoughts to the Blessed Physician, and suddenly he burst out in bitterness: "I hope he will help me, for I don't know what I have done to deserve all this! Do you feel how obvious it is what is in that heart? In short: unbelief! Unbelief, tamed by religious feelings and habits, a primeval rebellion against God, a state of un-reconciliation!
A true believer, a man under grace, never considers God unjust for his fate, for his trials, because he knows that if it were a question of punishment, he would deserve a more severe punishment, like Jesus: the death of damnation, which the Lord Jesus has already suffered in his place. So even the greatest punishment or sentence is a merciful and gracious sentence! A believer cannot have a judgment of God so severe here on earth that he cannot say, "I deserved much more! How merciful God is! But even in the believer, trials bring out what is still in his heart. It is at such times that the envy, selfishness, vanity, unconcern, distrust, wounded self-esteem, and many other rubbish is revealed, exposed, even in a born-again heart! And you know what it takes to make it so obvious what's in your heart? It is to be disillusioned with yourself, with your conceit, with your self-worship, and to learn to truly cry out to the Lord God for mercy! So that He may anoint you to the cross of Christ, where the blood of Christ cleanses your heart from all sin! Yes: that is why you must remember the road on which the Lord has carried you, so that now, here, at the end of the journey, you may fall down before Christ in total humility with all the afflictions that have become manifest in your heart, and ask for renewing, cleansing forgiveness! God's purpose for the past year has been that you may be more deeply and truly humbled under the cross. Has He achieved His purpose with you?
The other purpose of the journey through the wilderness is expressed in verse 3: "And he afflicted thee, and made thee hungry, and afterward gave thee to eat manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know, to make thee know that man doth not live by bread alone, but by all that cometh out of the mouth of the Lord." Israel was to learn that God could sustain man by the word of His power alone, even when natural means, such as bread, were totally lacking. Yes: it is in the wilderness that everyone learns that man does not live by bread alone! God wants us to know that human existence cannot be lived by human strength alone! On the contrary: human life can only be lived in a truly human way, in a way worthy of man, by relying on God, by counting on God, in communion with God and with divine help. Whoever, tired, exhausted, disappointed in his own human strength, cries out for this heavenly help, seeks this hand from above, will certainly find it! A simple believing woman was once very much scolded by her neighbour, as he said, for her primitiveness. But when this woman was going through a great shock in her own family, she went secretly to this "primitive" woman, this believing woman, and asked her to pray for her, otherwise she would not be able to stand it! Yes, God sometimes takes away the "bread", the material grip of life, so that a man who has hitherto trusted only in bread is forced to learn to live by the hand of God, in other words, to live by faith. The most precious, the hottest moments of our life's wanderings in the wilderness are those when man realises that it is possible to live not only on bread, but also on something else, something that replaces bread, something that always comes down from heaven at the right time, never too late, like manna in the desert, like a miraculous providence! Then, in his great pious amazement, one forgets to complain and learns to give thanks! Another of God's purposes with the past year was to teach you to trust in Him, the Father, even more, to rely on Him more, to live in a life of thanksgiving fellowship with Him! How far has He achieved this purpose with you?
The third purpose of the journey of the wilderness is expressed in Deuteronomy 8:5-7: "Consider therefore in thine heart, that as a man chasteneth his child, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee: and thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, that thou mayest walk in his ways, and fear him. For the Lord thy God shall bring thee into a good land, a land of brooks and fountains and deep waters, which flow in valleys and on the mountains." It was a long and painful 40 years for the Jewish people, but at the end of it they arrived at the threshold of the Promised Land. God was preparing His people for something.
In our life on earth there are also many sufferings, struggles, tensions, torments, but all this is not for its own sake, God does not want to torture us, but to educate us. We too have to arrive somewhere: close to God, to a life under His rule as exclusively as possible. The people had to wander so long because they could not enter the promised land in the state in which they had set out. We also, as we are born, cannot enter the kingdom of heaven: we must be born again. And even in our new-born state we must continue to be educated, polished, polished. We must therefore not arrive somewhere outwardly, but in our inward state: to the new birth and beyond to a state of obedience to the Lord, to inward holiness. Our Lord has thus indicated the direction of His redeemed life: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." (Mt 5,48) and be holy, because your heavenly Father is holy (cf. 1Pt 1,16). This is the way it has carried me through the past year. Did you let him? Have you made progress? Did it reach this goal with you?
"Remember the whole way in which the Lord your God has carried you." Yes, here at the turn remember, remember! Even if it was heavy at times, He carried you and carried you in such a way that all things work together for good to those who love the Lord (cf. Romans 8:28)
In this grateful assurance, let us sing the first verse of hymn 511!
Stay with me, for it is almost evening,
The darkness grows, O Lord, do not forsake me;
I have no one, and I have no comfort,
With helplessness, O abide with me.
(Canto 511, verse 1)
Amen
Date: 31 December 1951.
Lesson
5Móz 8,2-7