Numbers 10:29

Numbers 10:29

This text expresses the essential spirit of the Jewish dispensation. It is the essential spirit of all God's dispensations. His chief word to man everywhen and everywhere is "Come."

I. This leads me to lay down this general principle God's privileges, the gifts which He bestows, and the advantages which He confers on some are never intended to be exclusive. They are never meant to dishearten men and drive them to despair, but always to be the means of drawing them to Himself. If God gives to one man advantages which He denies to another, it is that the first may be His minister to bring that other to share in His joy. Ministry, like mercy, is "twice blessed: it blesseth him that gives and him that takes."

II. The invitation is "Come with us, and we will do you good." (1) Come with us to the house of God. Man is a spirit, and a man's spirit rests only in communing with God and doing the Father's mission. The man who has lifted his soul up from the earth by holy contemplations on the first day of the week will find himself strong to resist the temptation to grovel during the rest. (2) Come with us to the word of truth. There is no condition, there are no circumstances, for which blessed words are not to be found in that book, words such as no mere man could speak to you. Come with us to the word of truth. Learn with us to make it the man of your counsel, the way-book of your pilgrimage. (3) Come with us to the living Saviour. Come and listen to His message of mercy; come and stand before the cross on Calvary; look on Him whom you too have pierced; mourn, and hear for yourself the blessed words, "Thy faith hath saved thee: go in peace." (4) Come with us to the Father's home on high. "Come with us, and we will do you good."

T. Baldwin Brown, Aids to the Development of the Divine Life,No. IV.

References: Numbers 10:29. A. Raleigh, From Dawn to Perfect Day,p. 123; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xvi., No. 916; R. M. McCheyne, Additional Remains,p. 95; Homiletic Magazine,vol. xi., p. 339, and xii., p. 13; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons,1887, p. 123; A. K. H. B., Towards the Sunset,p. 147. Numbers 10:29. A. Maclaren, The Secret of Power,p. 251; Old Testament Outlines,p. 36. Numbers 10:29. W. Hay Aitken, Mission Sermons,1st series, p. 154.Numbers 10:29. Parker, vol. iii., p. 183.Numbers 10:35. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. vii., No. 368.