Deuteronomy 32:39

Deuteronomy 32:39

The text declares with a magnificent fulness the personality and the power of God.

I. God as healing is made visible to us in Jesus. The miracles of Jesus were mainly connected with the bodies of men. There were two great reasons for this. (1) One reason is to show the close connection of sickness with sin. One indication of this we have in a great fact of our Saviour's life. He was incarnate that He might have sympathy with us. Yet He was never sick. He had no particular sickness because He had no sin. (2) Christ's miracles of healing were not the luxury of a Divine good-nature. They were not random alms that cost Him nothing. A perceptible exhaustion of vital energy accompanied the exertion of His power. Here then is a second cause for our Lord's miracles of healing: to teach us self-denial and thought for the sick. He took to Himself God's motto, "I heal," for one of the highest of theological and for one of the tenderest of practical reasons.

II. We now consider God as wounding. As to the wounds of suffering humanity sickness two considerations practically diminish the perplexity which they bring to us when we consider them as existing under a rule of love, (1) One of these considerations is the intention of sickness as a part of the spiritual discipline of the Christian life. (2) Another moral object of sickness is to draw out the fulness of Christian sympathy, scientific and personal.

III. As we enlarge our view, the Divine pity predominates. There are, indeed, voices of anguish on every breeze; there are shadows in the foreground of the picture of the history of humanity. But these voices of anguish are only surface discords, underlying which is a wondrous harmony. All those shadows do but set off the picture that closes with the long golden distances of sunlit hills whose atmosphere is perfect wisdom, whose magic colouring drops from the tender pencil of perfect love.

Bishop Alexander, The Great Question,p. 30.

References: Deuteronomy 32:39. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxv., No. 1465.Deuteronomy 32:44. Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., p. 443.Deuteronomy 32:47. J. C. Jones, Penny Pulpit,No. 664; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. viii., No. 457; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons,p. 124.Deuteronomy 32:48. H. Wonnacott, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiv., p. 158; H. Batchelor, The Incarnation of God,p. 193.Deuteronomy 32 Parker, vol. iv., pp. 350, 365, 375.Deuteronomy 33:1. F. Whitfield, The Blessings of the Tribes,p. 23.Deuteronomy 33:1. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iv., p. 281.Deuteronomy 33 M. Dods, Israel's Iron Age,p. 173.