Deuteronomy 4:9

LEST THOU FORGET!

‘Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life.’

Deuteronomy 4:9

In the business of life there are three parties concerned, three parties of whose existence it behoves us to be equally and intensely conscious. These three are God on the one hand, and our own individual souls on the other, and the one Mediator, Jesus Christ, who alone can join the two into one.

I. There is all the difference in the world between saying, Bear yourselves in mind, and saying, Bear in mind always the three, God and Christ and yourselves, whom Christ unites to God.—For then there is no risk of selfishness, nor of idolatry, whether of ourselves or of anything else; we do but desire to keep alive and vigorous, not any false or evil life in us, but our true and most precious life, the life of God in and through His Son. But what we see happen very often is just the opposite to this. The life in ourselves, of which we are keenly conscious, never for an instant forgetting it, is but the life of our appetites and passions, and this life is quite distinct from God and from Christ. But while this life is very vigorous, our better life slumbers; we have our own desires, and they are evil, but we take our neighbour’s knowledge and faith and call them our own, and we live and believe according to our neighbour’s notions; so our nobler life shrinks up to nothing, and our sense of truth perishes from want of exercise.

II. In combining a keen sense of our own soul’s life with the sense of God and of Christ there is no room for pride or presumption, but the very contrary. We hold our knowledge and our faith but as God’s gifts, and are sure of them only so far as His power and wisdom and goodness are our warrant. Our knowledge, in fact, is but faith; we have no grounds for knowing as of ourselves, but great grounds for believing that God’s appointed evidence is true, and that in believing it we are trusting Him.

Dr. Thos. Arnold.

Illustration

(1) ‘This is part of God’s counsel to Israel, through His servant Moses, just before he was parted from them on Mount Nebo. It is a counsel which, when spoken by worldly lips, has in it often a very selfish meaning: a maxim on which is built many an earthly policy; a philosophy of selfishness which is incarnated in many a wretched, earthly life. And the world’s “look out for number one” is a policy which, whatever semblance of succcess it may bring, has in it elements of recoil which inevitably lead to true impoverishment. For even a Divine precept, if it be taken and twisted by worldly hearts and degraded to a selfish purpose, may be made a minister of sin and death rather than of righteousness and life.

But whatever may be said of this counsel, as misinterpreted and misapplied by the worldly heart, it is, as God gave it through Moses, an important and salutary one.’

(2) ‘The writer is showing how much more favoured are God’s peculiar people than are any of the nations. As the Revised text gives it, “For what great nation is there, that hath a god so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is whensoever we call upon Him?” As if Moses would say, “Did God ever treat any set of heathen as he has treated his people Israel?” ’

(3) ‘How true is the description of ourselves in verse 20! An iron furnace is one for smelting iron. In such a position were we once, in an Egypt of misery. Now God looks for joy and comfort out of us, as a man from his property. God takes us out of the furnace of our foes; but He does not spare us the fire. He is Himself that. Those who will not yield are exposed to His judgments; whilst others are cleansed by contact with His holy nature, which is fire to their bonds, though it does not singe one hair of their heads. Let us beware of the “jealousy” of God’s love, which will not consent to a divided heart, nor permit His “glory” to be given to graven images.’