Deuteronomy 30:11-14

This commandment, is not hidden.

Three characteristics of salvation

I. Clearness. “With the heart man believeth unto righteousness.” “Ah,” you say, “there it comes in again. Whenever we go elsewhere the intellect is exalted.” And then you feel that the Church is to be condemned. But a man’s brains are not the wisest part of him; there is a great deal about a man that is wiser than his brains. Thank God for that! He has insights, intuitions, sympathies, that are as reliable as the testimony of the senses or the inferences of logic. We cannot know God intellectually. “God is great,” as Job says, “and we know Him not.” Are we then to be Agnostics? Oh, no! There is another way of interpretation. John Bunyan had a blind daughter. She lived much with him; he was very fond of her. They said he would not let the wind blow on her. She never saw Bunyan; it was impossible for her to comprehend his genius; she was pathetically incapable of reading his books. But will anybody in this place tell me that that blind girl did not know Bunyan? She did not know him visually, did not know him historically or technically, but she knew Bunyan; she knew the man, and looked into his heart. With the heart man knows God. And so Paul says it is by the heart that you are to understand the redemption that is in Christ. You are not to follow it out as a scholar, not to master it as a reasoner, but with the instinct of the soul you are to grasp the love of God in Christ Jesus. “Ah,” you say, “it is the old thing over again. Whenever we go to a school, to an institution, it is the old intellect, it is science; but as soon as ever we come here, it is sympathy.” What! you understand nature by science? You understand nature a long while before you are a scientist, and a great many people have a wonderful delight in nature who have never had a tincture of science. A little child gets at it, and the poet, the painter, without any technical knowledge or mastery whatever. I tell you, there are thousands of people in this country who enjoy the sunshine--when they get it--but they do not know anything about astronomy. Their heart leaps up when they behold a rainbow in the sky, but they do not know anything about optics. And just as it is with your apprehension of nature, so it is with your apprehension of God, of Christ, of the mercies that have been declared in Christ Jesus to perishing men. Why, there is no greater mistake than for a man to preach Christianity philosophically and theologically. When I look at the sky I can see it is the sky; there is the sun, the moon, and the stars, it is superb. But when I take an astronomical book down and look at the sky they have covered the page with strange figures. There is the Ship, and the Whale, and the Swan, and the Little Bear, and the Great Bear, and a good many other things, and I should not know it was the sky if they were not to write underneath, “This is the sky.”

II. Nearness. All the best things are near us, as your poet tells you,--a man’s best things are nearest to him, close about his feet. The things that you cannot get are the things you do not need. I do like that idea of the country people, to the effect that if there is any disease in a neighbourhood there is sure to be a remedy if you have only the wit to find it. They say that the bane and the antidote always go together. Whether it is a marshy district, a mountain side or a flowing river, they say that the plant always grows close by that cures the diseases peculiar to the district. Some of our scholars of late years have given a good deal of attention to the sacred books of the Orientals--the Hindu, the Greek, and the Persian--and I daresay have done it with great advantage, but mind you, there is no necessity for us to go to any Oriental oracle for God’s last words on the greatest questions. I noticed that a traveller who had been in Algiers said the other day that the natives of the Sahara have a curious idea that Europe is a waterless waste, and the reason why travellers go to the Sahara is that they may find a spring of water. Of course, if they had lived here a little lately they would have known better! What with our flowing rivers, our weeping skies, and our brimming reservoirs, we do not need to go to Algerian deserts for a spring of water. And I tell you that whatever purpose may be served by our great scholars going to Oriental countries, we need not go there for the vital truth that saves; for, blessed be God, here, close by us, is a Fountain of living water, of which, if a man shall drink, he shall never thirst again. You know that when the bad weather comes all our rich people leave us. They go for the good of their health, let us hope, and if you are rich you are pretty nearly sure to have bad health, and then leave us! They go to Algiers, they go to Egypt, they go to Malta, they go to the Nile, they go to the South of France, and they leave us to the fogs of London, and we have to get on as best we may. We have not the leisure nor the resources to go away. But what a lovely thing it is when we come to need a spiritual specific, when we need a remedy for the wrong of our spirits, that we need not cross the sea, for it is here. “Lo, God is here, and I knew it not.” He has been talking to you for years, persuading you to a nobler life. Your great difficulty has not been to find Christ, your great difficulty has been to keep Him out. Did you not notice when I read the lesson that the apostle speaks of men who go about seeking to establish their own righteousness, go about restless, dissatisfied, wandering? You never knew a flower go a-gypsying to find the sun. A flower never goes on a voyage of circumnavigation to look after a bee or a butterfly. It never strikes its tent and wanders about looking for the dew: Everything comes to it, and all that the flower has to do is to open its heart and take in the sweet influences of the sky, and everything that you want, the light to illuminate, the grace to save, the power to perfect, the peace that passeth all understanding, the hope that is full of glory--everything is near to you, and all that you have to do at this very moment is to open your heart and take it in.

III. Freeness. (W. L. Watkinson.)

The basis of belief

The writer of this book--the second giving of the law--declares, then, that the law is primarily in the heart of man. It is not outside of him--brought to him; it is within him. As the printer takes the white sheet of paper, on which nothing is written, and presses it against the bosom of the type and lifts it off, and there is written what was on the type, so the heart of man is pressed against the bosom of Almighty God, and on the heart of humanity itself is written the Divine law transferred thereto. And what is true of the law of God is true of the Gospel of God and of all religious truth. Not all the truth that is educed from religion, but all religious truth, is in the heart of humanity, and brought out from the heart of humanity by the providence, the influence, or the ministry of God. We know some things by reason of our external observation. They are not proved to us, they are brought to us by our senses. But all that science can do is to examine, to classify, to investigate, to arranged to study the phenomena that are thus brought to us by our observation. Our eyes bring to us the trees and the flowers: out of them science makes botany. Our observation brings to us the stars: out of them science educes astronomy. In an analogous method, the soul’s eyes bring to us knowledge of great, transcendent facts which lie in the inner world. Theology (which is the science of religion) cannot create them, any more than natural science can create natural phenomena. All that theology can do is to examine, to investigate. We know the facts of the inner life by the inner testimony, as we know the facts of the outer life by the outer testimony. If we do not know, it is because we are dead. If a man does not know there are trees and flowers, he is blind. What he wants is not argument, but an oculist. All that the logical faculty can do is to deal with the facts which the observation without or the observation within brings to our cognisance. It is thus that we know that there is a difference between right and wrong. We know that there is righteousness and unrighteousness, as we know that there is the beautiful and the ugly, the true and the false. This is a fundamental fact. It is not brought to us by any external revelation; it is not in the heaven above and brought down to us; it is not across the sea and brought over to us; it is within the soul and heart of man--he knows it. Knowing this, he may analyse, he may study, the nature of the difference. This is the anchor ground of religion--we know that there is righteousness. It is the foundation on which everything else is built. In precisely the same way, the great majority of men have some inward consciousness of God. They have some inward consciousness of a help on which they can lay hold and by which they can be aided. This consciousness does not define God to them. This consciousness of God within us we analyse, we examine, and the result of our investigations, we call theology. It is our creed. It may be right. It may be wrong. As a tree is something different from a definition of a tree, and a flower is something different from a definition of a flower, and a star is something different from the description of a star, so God is different from our theological definitions of God. And we have not to go back four thousand years to get the testimony of Moses that there was a God. Our belief in Christ is something more than a historical or theological belief. We believe in righteousness, and when we read this life of Christ we see there righteousness luminous and eloquent. We believe in God, and as we read this life we see the masked God withdrawing His mask, and letting His own face shine through. The world thought power was Divine, majesty was Divine, justice was Divine, greatness was Divine; and then there came One upon the earth, without power, and without external majesty, and without the signs and symbols of greatness; but He was patient, gentle, heroic, sympathetic--nay, more, rejoiced to bear not only the sorrows but the sins of others. And when that life was held up before humanity, humanity said, That is the Divinest yet; there is more majesty in love than in power, there is more strength in patience than in force. The heart of humanity answered to the portraiture of Christ, and responded to it. If, when that life is held up before a man, he says, “I do not see anything beautiful in that life; there is nothing in it that attracts me. I would have liked Him better if He had made a fortune; I would have thought more of Him if Be had organised an army; I should have some admiration for Him if He had lived the life of a statesman; I do not care for Christ; give me Napoleon Bonaparte,” you cannot argue with him. In him is lacking moral life, not understanding. There are not a few in our time who are asking for the evidence of immortality. They study nature, and evolution, and the Scriptures, and buttress, by these methods, a frail faith in immortality. The witness is in ourselves. Not a witness that we are going to live forever. That is not immortality. The witness is in ourselves that we are something more than the physical organisation which we inhabit. What is the fundamental evidence of immortality? To live a life that is worth being immortal. If we are living in the sphere of the immortal, we know where we are living. We know what we are if we are living in the realm of faith, and hope, and love. We know that this spiritual life does not depend on the physical organisation. So our faith in the Bible, in its foundation, is this: There is that in us which answers to that which is in the Bible. If there is nothing in us which answers to that which is in the Bible, we shall not get a faith in the Bible by argument. We need a new life. The moral life in us responds to the record of the moral life in this Old Testament and this New Testament; and if there is nothing in us which does respond, it is life that is lacking. We are not to go up into the heavens to bring down the message, nor to cross the sea to search for it. In our own hearts we are to find the witness of God. (Lyman Abbott, D. D.)

The Bible in itself

The Bible is more acknowledged than believed; and where it is believed, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, it seldom gives that decision to our purposes, that spring to our actions, which it ought to give.

I. First, then, as to the closeness with which it addresses the soul, and the paternal familiarity of its style. Why is it that sensible persons rejoice in having a pious, well-informed and accessible neighbour? It seems almost childish to ask. But the answer is, “Because his word is very nigh unto them” because they have the benefit of his counsel, his stock of knowledge, which is freely and benevolently open to them, and they are sure that at all times he will be influenced by upright and conscientious motives in advising them. But there is more than this in it. They look to his example--to his thoughts and sayings carried out in his actions. They are conscious of its influence on themselves and those around them; and they value it. And the nearer it is to them--the more available it also is to them and the more influential; yes, even when through perversity they struggle against its influence. Now, the Word of God is such a neighbour, only of infinite instead of finite, of Divine instead of human wisdom, goodness, and power of exhortation. It is, as the text says, “very nigh unto us.” I do not take the words figuratively. I moan that it is, by its very cast and structure, by its very form and style, nigh to us, at hand to our hearts and minds, to our understandings and feelings. It is nigh as a teacher: it is nigh as a counsellor: it is nigh as a setter forth of example. Consider how largely, too, God speaks in the Bible to man by man; I do not mean merely through the pen of man, for that, of course, is true of all Scripture, but by the speech of man as man, partaking of all our natural views, feelings, hopes, fears. What a familiar tone, without lowering any of its dignity, does the Word of God thus take with us! How “very nigh” it comes to us!

II. The second I would take occasion to illustrate from the words “in thy mouth”: “The Word is very nigh thee, in thy mouth.” It was said that this indicates that the Word of God was to be avowedly our counsellor. We were intended to cite it as commandment and promise to us, as our law and Gospel. This is clearly laid down and exemplified. It will be remembered how emphatically it was charged Joshua: “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth” (Joshua 1:8; Psalms 119:46). What was the conviction which sustained the martyrs of old in their freedom of speech, in bonds, and at the stake? Was it not this, that it was not their own word, but the Word of God, which they had in their mouths?

III. The next clause in our text descends to where that power centres and fixes itself. “And in thy heart,” Again the Psalmist is our expounder: “Thy Word have I hid in my heart” (Psalms 119:11); “Thy law is within my heart” (Psalms 40:8). The patriarch Job had counselled this: “Lay up God’s words in thy heart” (Job 22:22). And here seems to be the place in which we may aptly refer to the application of our text by the same apostle writing to the Romans (Romans 10:6). Yes, it is to be heart work--the Word “in the heart”--else it will be of no purpose that it be in the mouth. But is it so constituted as to speak to the heart, to go to the heart? That is the question to our present purpose. It is; after an inimitable manner, and with inimitable force. So then is the Word of inspiration framed to be embraced by affections though they may be debased, and to dwell in them though they be yet enslaved.

IV. Now, in the last place, the emphatical passage which is guiding our reflections asserts that “the Word is very nigh unto us that we may do it.” This pronounces obedience to it to be the necessary proof of a believing reception of it. Most amply is this test elsewhere recognised in it. “Ye have seen that I have talked with you from heaven” (Exodus 20:22), said the Lord to the children of Israel: “Ye shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments” (Leviticus 18:5). And they said, “All that the Lord hath spoken we will do (Exodus 19:8). “Be ye doers of the Word, and not hearers only” (James 1:22), is a precept as ancient as the Word itself. But our inquiry is, whether it be invested with any impressiveness, exclusively its own, of a practical tendency. For, if so, in this most important respect, too, the Bible will be its own witness. The answer is, Come and see! Who indeed is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:5.) Now “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Romans 10:17). I have thus endeavoured to show that the Bible in itself, being an inspired composition, is thereby endued with an influential bearing, close and direct, upon the affections and conduct, as well as on the profession, of all who really study it, or listen to it with any willingness, even a passive willingness, to profit by it. The Bible, as those who are most grateful for it will most readily own, is but the instrument of God’s Holy Spirit. And it is not an instrument that will act mechanically on the soul: there must be prayer, continual prayer, as the Bible itself teaches, for its progressive operation upon us. (W. Dalby, M. A.)

Plain Gospel for plain people

What is meant by these words is this--that the way of salvation is plain and clear; it is not concealed among the mysteries of heaven. But the way of salvation is brought home to us, given to us in a handy form, and laid within grasp of our understanding. It is a household treasure, not a foreign rarity. It is not so remote from us that only they can know it who travel far to make discoveries, neither is it so sublimely difficult that only they can grasp it who have soared to heaven and ransacked the secrets of the book sealed with seven seals. It is brought to our doors like the manna, and flows at our feet like the water from the rock.

I. The way of salvation is plain and simple. As saith Moses in the last verse of the previous chapter: “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God; but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever.”

1. I think we might have expected this if we consider the nature of God, who has made this wonderful revelation. When God speaks to a man with a view to his salvation, it is but natural that in His wisdom He should so speak as to be understood. God, who is infinitely wise, would not give to us a revelation upon the vital point of salvation, and then leave it so much in the dark that it was impossible for common minds to Comprehend it if they desired to do so. God adapts means to ends, and does not allow men to miss of heaven from lack of plainness on His part. We expect a plain and simple revelation, because God has made a revelation perfectly adapted for its end, upon which no improvement can be made. You might have expected this from God, because of His gracious condescension. When He deigns to speak with a trembling seeker, it is not after the manner of the incomprehensible doctor, but after the manner of a father with his child, desirous that his child should at once know his father’s mind. He breaks down His great thoughts to our narrow capacities: He has compassion on the ignorant, and He becomes the Teacher of babes.

2. We might also expect simplicity when we remember the design of the plan of salvation. God aims distinctly by the Gospel at the salvation of men. It had need be a simple Gospel if it is to be preached to every creature. Moreover, we might expect the Gospel to be very plain, because of the many feeble minds which else would be unable to receive it. What, think you, would become of the dying if the Gospel were intricate and complex? How would even the saints derive consolation in death from a labyrinth of mysteries? We should expect, therefore, from the design of the Gospel to save the many, and to save even the least intelligent of men, that it should be very simple; and so we find it.

3. Furthermore, we see that it is so, if we look at its results. God’s chosen are usually a people of honest and candid mind, who are willing rather to believe than to dispute. The Holy Spirit has opened their hearts; He has not made them subtle and quibbling.

4. But I need not argue from what we expect or see; I bid you look at the revelation itself, and see if it be not nigh unto us. Even in the days of Moses, how plain some things were! It must have been plain to every Israelite that man is a sinner, else why the sacrifice, why the purgations and the cleansings? Not a day passed without its morning and evening lambs. Equally clear it must have been to every Israelite that the faith which brings the benefit of the great sacrifice is a practical and operative faith which affects the life and character. Continually were they exhorted to serve the Lord with their whole heart. So that, dim as the dispensation may be considered to have been as compared with the Gospel day, yet actually and positively it was sufficiently clear. Even then “the word was nigh” to them, “in their mouth and in their heart.”

5. If I may say this much of the Mosaic dispensation, I may boldly assert that in the Gospel of Christ the truth is now made more abundantly manifest. Moses brought the moonlight, but in Jesus the sun has risen, and we rejoice in His meridian beams.

II. The Word has come very near to us. To us all the Gospel has come very near: to the inhabitants of these favoured isles it is emphatically so. If you perish it is not for want of plain speaking. The Word is on your tongue. Moses also added, “and in thy heart.” By the heart, with the Hebrews, is not meant the affections, but the inward parts, including the understanding. You can understand the Gospel. That whosoever believes in the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved, is not a dark saying.

III. The design of this simplicity and nearness of the Gospel is that we should receive it. Observe bow the text expressly words it--“The Word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.”

1. The Gospel is not sent to men to gratify their curiosity, by letting them see how other people get to heaven. Christ did not come to amuse us, but to redeem us. His Word is not written for our astonishment, but, “These are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the, Christ, the Son of God; and that believing, ye may have life through His name.” Ever has the Gospel a present, urgent, practical errand. It says to each man, “I have a message from God unto thee”. Observe again how the text puts its last address in the singular. You can hear it in the plural--“That we may hear it, and do it”; but the actual doing is always in the singular--“That thou mayest do it.”

2. As the Word of the Lord is not sent to gratify curiosity, so also it is not sent coolly to inform you of a fact which you may lay by on the shelf for future use. God does not send you an anchor to hang up in your boathouse; but, as you are already at sea, He puts the anchor on board for present use. The Gospel is sent us as manna for today, to be eaten at once. It is to be our spending money as well as our treasure.

3. It is not sent to thee merely to make thee orthodox in opinion as to religious matters, although many persons seem to think that this is the one thing needful. Remember that perdition for the orthodox will be quite as horrible as eternal ruin for the heterodox. It will be a dreadful thing to go to hell with a sound head and a rotten heart. Alas! I fear that some of you will only increase your own misery as you increase your knowledge of the truth, because you do not practise what you know. “That thou mayest do it!” What is to be done? There are two things to be done.

(1) First, that thou believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as thy Saviour.

(2) The second thing, is that thou confess thy Lord with thy mouth.

Avow thyself to be a believer in Jesus, and a follower of Him. But let thy confession be sincere; do not lie unto the Lord. Confess that thou art His follower, because thou art indeed so; and henceforth all thy life bear thou His Cross and follow Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Very nigh unto thee.

Personal religion

Much is said of the importance of personal religion, as what alone is pleasing to God, or can secure human salvation. We should know the precise meaning intended in this expression; and my object will be to define it. And, first, an idea is given in the text and the circumstances connected with it--the idea that religion consists in nothing external and formal, nor in any sudden impressions made from without upon the mind. Great revivals may bear away thousands on a torrent of sympathy; but it is all in vain, if men do not retire from the tumult to the silent culture of every right disposition and the quiet practice of every duty; unless they hear a still voice in the soul, and retain a steady warmth there when the noise has ceased and the flames have died away, as on the ancient mount of revelation. But there is yet a stricter meaning in the phrase, “personal religion.” Our duties may be divided into two great classes; those belonging to social connections, and those included in the mind itself. To the latter, personal religion has primary respect. But there is a third and still closer view of religion, as a personal thing, to which I invite your thoughts. I believe it is the Creator’s design, that religion should be in every soul a peculiar acquisition, and have a solitary, unborrowed character; so that Christians should not be, as we commonly suppose them, mere copies of each other, but possess each one an original character. As the principle of beauty in nature shows itself in no monotonous succession of similar objects, but is displayed in a thousand colours and through unnumbered forms, so should the principle of piety ever clothe itself in some fresh trait and aspect. I say this is the Creator’s design. The view I offer may be made more clear by considering some of the proofs of this design.

1. The first proof that each individual should reach a peculiar excellence is, that each has received a peculiar constitution. Use faithfully the materials put into year bands. Despise not nor faint before what in them may seem rugged and unpromising. You shall find nothing in them so rough and hard, that patient toil will not transform it into shapes of wondrous beauty. The house built of light materials, though soon erected, will not stand the blast like that of marble, hewn with long, exhausting labour. Obey the maxim on the ancient oracle, “ Know thyself,” and you will not fail of that personal religion for which you were made.

2. But again: God’s design, that every spirit should reach a peculiar excellence, is seen in the dispensations of Providence, as well as in the facts of creation. While the general fortunes of humanity are the same, every man receives his peculiar discipline from the hand of God. Whatever your state, sickness or health, prosperity or misfortune, view it with no atheistic eye, but accept and use it in the culture of that personal religion for which you were made.

3. Once more: God’s design, that every soul should reach a peculiar and unborrowed excellence, appears in the fact that all spiritual exercises, to be genuine, must have a peculiar character. No man can perform any exercise for another in religion. Who, then, in view of these considerations, has made religion a personal thing? He only who knows his own nature, and brings all its powers and dispositions to contribute to the building up of a good character. He only who makes all the dispensations of Providence, all events of joy and grief, conspire to guide him towards his perfection. He only whose spiritual exercises are genuine and sincere, consisting not in profession or appearance, but expressing real convictions springing from a strong consciousness of want, and moving the deep places of the soul. The man who has formed these habits will continually make progress in strong, unborrowed excellence; and when his time to depart shall come, while earth loses a precious possession, it is not too much to say that heaven itself shall gain a new treasure, inasmuch as it will receive a character of fresh, original strength and beauty. But what is the reliance of those multitudes that make their propagation for another world in no such strict and solemn way as I have described? Everyone must die by himself and go to the great bar alone; and there all the excellence of friends, all the fame of forefathers, will avail him nothing. The traveller in a foreign land often feels sorely the loss of that character given him by accidental relations at home. Everything adventitious being stripped off, he is thrown back upon his personal qualities, and must stand or fall, according to the judgment passed upon those. Now, how much more surely must such things forsake us, when we proceed, each one in his own time, attended by no companion, leaning on no arm of flesh, a solitary pilgrim, on our last journey to the skies! The heir of rich estates shall leave behind the splendour of wealth and the flattery of retainers. Thus for everyone the question at last will be, not of outward connections, but of personal character; not merely what religious institutions have you supported, but how far have you made religion itself a personal thing. (C. A. Bartol.)

Instruction nigh at hand

A blacksmith’s wife in Tennessee recently handed to a physician of the village where she lived a diamond ring, worth £300, which her husband had found in the hoof of the doctor’s horse. In paring down the hoof to prepare it for a new shoe his knife touched something hard, which, on being dislodged, proved to be a ring, and the honest man sent his wife with it to the owner of the horse. It appeared that the doctor’s daughter had dropped the ring while out riding, and it had lodged between the horse’s hoof and the shoe, and had remained there. She had ridden to and fro many times over the road searching for the lost gem, yet it had been near her all the time. The search reminds us of men who go hither and thither consulting priests, and who read theological treatises to find the way to heaven, when all the time instruction is nigh at hand.

Moral teaching nigh at hand

In the original constitution of things, it is wisely ordered that happiness should be found everywhere about us. We do not need to have a rock smitten to supply the thirst of the soul; it is not a distant good; it exists in everything above, around, and beneath our feet; and all we want is an eye to discern, and a heart to feel it. Let anyone fix his attention on a moral truth, and it spreads out and enlarges its dimensions beneath his view, till what seemed at first as barren a proposition as words could express, appears like an interesting and glorious truth, momentous in its bearings on the destinies of men. And so it is with every material thing; let the mind be intently fixed upon it, and hold it in the light of science, and it gradually unfolds new wonders. The flower grows even more beautiful than when it first opened its golden urn and breathed its incense on the morning air; the tree, which was before thought of only as a thing to be cut down and cast into the fire, becomes majestic, as it holds its broad shield before the summer sun, or when it stands like a ship, with its sails furled, and all made fast about it, in preparation for the winter storm. (North American Review.)