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Numbers Chapter
Twenty
Numbers 20
Chapter Contents
The people come to Zin, They murmur for water, Moses
directed to smite the rock, The infirmity of Moses and Aaron. (1-13) The
Israelites are refused a passage through Edom. (14-21) Aaron reigns the
priest's office to Eleazar, and dies in mount Hor. (22-29)
Commentary on Numbers 20:1-13
After thirty-eight years' tedious abode in the
wilderness, the armies of Israel advanced towards Canaan again. There was no
water for the congregation. We live in a wanting world, and wherever we are,
must expect to meet with something to put us out. It is a great mercy to have
plenty of water, a mercy which, if we found the want of, we should more own the
worth of. Hereupon they murmured against Moses and Aaron. They spake the same
absurd and brutish language their fathers had done. It made their crime the
worse, that they had smarted so long for the discontent and distrusts of their
fathers, yet they venture in the same steps. Moses must again, in God's name,
command water out of a rock for them; God is as able as ever to supply his
people with what is needful for them. But Moses and Aaron acted wrong. They
took much of the glory of this work of wonder to themselves; "Must we
fetch water?" As if it were done by some power or worthiness of their own.
They were to speak to the rock, but they smote it. Therefore it is charged upon
them, that they did not sanctify God, that is, they did not give to him alone
that glory of this miracle which was due unto his name. And being provoked by
the people, Moses spake unadvisedly with his lips. The same pride of man would
still usurp the office of the appointed Mediator; and become to ourselves
wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. Such a state of
sinful independence, such a rebellion of the soul against its Saviour, the
voice of God condemns in every page of the gospel.
Commentary on Numbers 20:14-21
The nearest way to Canaan from the place where Israel
encamped, was through the country of Edom. The ambassadors who were sent
returned with a denial. The Edomites feared to receive damage by the
Israelites. And had this numerous army been under any other discipline than
that of the righteous God himself, there might have been cause for this
jealousy. But Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing; and now the hatred
revived, when the blessing was about to be inherited. We must not think it strange,
if reasonable requests be denied by unreasonable men, and if those whom God
favours be affronted by men.
Commentary on Numbers 20:22-29
God bids Aaron prepare to die. There is something of
displeasure in these orders. Aaron must not enter Canaan, because he had failed
in his duty at the waters of strife. There is much of mercy in them. Aaron,
though he dies for his transgression, dies with ease, and in honour. He is
gathered to his people, as one who dies in the arms of Divine grace. There is
much significancy in these orders. Aaron must not enter Canaan, to show that
the Levitical priesthood could make nothing perfect; that must be done by
bringing in a better hope. Aaron submits, and dies in the method and manner
appointed; and, for aught that appears, with as much cheerfulness as if he had
been going to bed. It was a great satisfaction to Aaron to see his son, who was
dear to him, preferred; and his office preserved and secured: especially, to
see in this a figure of Christ's everlasting priesthood. A good man would
desire, if it were the will of God, not to outlive his usefulness. Why should
we covet to continue any longer in this world, than while we may do some
service in it for God and our generation?
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on
Numbers》
Numbers 20
Verse 1
[1] Then
came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, into the desert of
Zin in the first month: and the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there,
and was buried there.
Then — To
wit, after many stations and long journeys here omitted, but particularly
described, Numbers 33:1-49.
Zin — A
place near the land of Edom, distinct and distant from that Sin, Exodus 16:1.
The first month — Of
the fortieth year, as is evident, because the next station to this was in mount
Hor, where Aaron died, who died in the fifth month of the fortieth year, Numbers 33:38. Moses doth not give us an exact
journal of all occurrences in the wilderness, but only of those which were most
remarkable, and especially of those which happened in the first and second, and
in the fortieth year.
Miriam died —
Four months before Aaron, and but a few more before Moses.
Verse 2
[2] And there was no water for the congregation: and they gathered themselves
together against Moses and against Aaron.
No water —
Which having followed them through all their former journeys, began to fail
them here, because they were now come near countries, where waters might be had
by ordinary means, and therefore God would not use extraordinary, lest he
should seem to prostitute the honour of miracles. This story, though like that,
Exodus 17:1-7, is different from it, as appears
by divers circumstances. It is a great mercy, to have plenty of water; a mercy
which if we found the want of, we should own the worth of.
Verse 3
[3] And
the people chode with Moses, and spake, saying, Would God that we had died when
our brethren died before the LORD!
Before the Lord —
Suddenly, rather than to die such a lingering death. Their sin was much greater
than that of their parents, because they should have taken warning by their
miscarriages, and by the terrible effects of them, which their eyes had seen.
Verse 8
[8] Take
the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, thou, and Aaron thy brother,
and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his
water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock: so thou shalt
give the congregation and their beasts drink.
The rod —
That which was laid up before the Lord in the tabernacle; whether it was
Aaron's rod, which was laid up there, Numbers 17:10, or Moses's rod by which he
wrought so many miracles. For it is likely, that wonder-working rod, was laid
up in some part of the tabernacle, though not in or near the ark, where Aaron's
blossoming rod was put.
Verse 9
[9] And Moses took the rod from before the LORD, as he commanded him.
From before the Lord — Out of the tabernacle.
Verse 12
[12] And
the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me
in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this
congregation into the land which I have given them.
Ye believed me not —
But shewed your infidelity: which they did, either by smiting the rock, and
that twice, which is emphatically noted, as if he doubted whether once smiting
would have done it, whereas he was not commanded to smite so much as once, but
only to speak to it: or by the doubtfulness of these words, Numbers 20:10. Must we fetch water out of the
rock? which implies a suspicion of it, whereas they should have spoken
positively and confidently to the rock to give forth water. And yet they did
not doubt of the power of God, but of his will, whether he would gratify these
rebels with this farther miracle, after so many of the like kind.
To sanctify me — To
give me the glory of my power in doing this miracle, and of my truth in
punctually fulfilling my promise, and of my goodness in doing it
notwithstanding the peoples perverseness.
In the eyes of Israel — This made their sin scandalous to the Israelites, who of themselves were
too prone to infidelity; to prevent the contagion, God leaves a monument of his
displeasure upon them, and inflicts a punishment as publick as their sin.
Verse 13
[13] This
is the water of Meribah; because the children of Israel strove with the LORD,
and he was sanctified in them.
Meribah —
That is, strife.
In them —
Or, among them, the children of Israel, by the demonstration of his
omnipotency, veracity, and clemency towards the Israelites, and of his
impartial holiness and severity against sin even in his greatest friends and
favourites.
Verse 14
[14] And
Moses sent messengers from Kadesh unto the king of Edom, Thus saith thy brother
Israel, Thou knowest all the travail that hath befallen us:
All the travel —
All the wanderings and afflictions of our parents and of us their children,
which doubtless have come to thine ears.
Verse 16
[16] And
when we cried unto the LORD, he heard our voice, and sent an angel, and hath
brought us forth out of Egypt: and, behold, we are in Kadesh, a city in the
uttermost of thy border:
An Angel —
The Angel of the Covenant, who first appeared to Moses in the bush, and
afterward in the cloudy pillar, who conducted Moses and the people out of
Egypt, and through the wilderness. For though Moses may be called an angel or
messenger yet it is not probable that he is meant, partly because Moses was the
person that sent this message; and partly because another angel above Moses
conducted them, and the mention hereof to the Edomites, was likely to give more
authority to their present message.
In Kadesh —
Near, the particle in being so often used.
Verse 17
[17] Let
us pass, I pray thee, through thy country: we will not pass through the fields,
or through the vineyards, neither will we drink of the water of the wells: we
will go by the king's high way, we will not turn to the right hand nor to the
left, until we have passed thy borders.
The wells —
Or, pits, which any of you have digged for your private use, not without paying
for it, Numbers 20:19, but only of the waters of common
rivers, which are free to all passengers. No man's property ought to be
invaded, under colour of religion. Dominion is founded in providence, not in
Grace.
Verse 18
[18] And
Edom said unto him, Thou shalt not pass by me, lest I come out against thee
with the sword.
By me —
Through my country: I will not suffer thee to do so: which was an act of
policy, to secure themselves from so numerous an host.
Verse 19
[19] And
the children of Israel said unto him, We will go by the high way: and if I and
my cattle drink of thy water, then I will pay for it: I will only, without
doing any thing else, go through on my feet.
Said —
That is, their messengers replied what here follows.
Verse 23
[23] And
the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron in mount Hor, by the coast of the land of
Edom, saying,
And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron — So these two dear brothers must part! Aaron must die first: but Moses is
not likely to be long after him. So that it is only for a while, a little
while, that they are separated.
Verse 24
[24]
Aaron shall be gathered unto his people: for he shall not enter into the land
which I have given unto the children of Israel, because ye rebelled against my
word at the water of Meribah.
Because they rebelled — This was one but not the only reason. God would not have Moses and Aaron
to carry the people into Canaan, for this reason also, to signify the
insufficiency of the Mosaical law and Aaronical priesthood to make them
perfectly happy, and the necessity of a better, and to keep the Israelites from
resting in them, so as to be taken off from their expectation of Christ.
Verse 26
[26] And
strip Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar his son: and Aaron shall
be gathered unto his people, and shall die there.
His garments —
His priestly garments, in token of his resignation of his office.
Put them on Eleazar — By
way of admission and inauguration to his office.
Verse 27
[27] And
Moses did as the LORD commanded: and they went up into mount Hor in the sight
of all the congregation.
In the sight of all the congregation — That their hearts might be more affected with their loss of so great a
pillar, and that they all might be witnesses of the translation of the
priesthood from Aaron to Eleazar.
Verse 28
[28] And
Moses stripped Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar his son; and
Aaron died there in the top of the mount: and Moses and Eleazar came down from
the mount.
And Moses stript Aaron — And Death will strip us. Naked we came into the world: naked we must go
out. We shall see little reason to be proud of our cloaths, our ornaments, or
marks of honour, if we consider how soon death will strip us of all our glory,
and take the crown off from our head! Aaron died there - He died in Mosera, Deuteronomy 10:6. Mosera was the general name of
the place where that station was, and mount Hor a particular place in it.
Presently after he was stript of his priestly garments, he laid him down and
died. A good man would desire, if it were the will of God, not to outlive his
usefulness. Why should we covet to continue any longer in this world, than
while we may do God and our generation some service?
Verse 29
[29] And
when all the congregation saw that Aaron was dead, they mourned for Aaron
thirty days, even all the house of Israel.
Saw —
Understood by the relation of Moses and Eleazar, and by other signs.
Thirty days —
The time of publick and solemn mourning for great persons.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Numbers》
20 Chapter 20
Verse 1
The people abode in Kadesh.
The new departure
The fortieth year is now running its course. The time of the curse
has nearly expired. And now preparations may be begun for entering a second
time on the march to Canaan, where a new generation must vindicate the claim of
Israel to be indeed “the hosts of the Lord,” by taking possession of the land
of promise. It was at Kadesh that the sentence had been pronounced which doomed
their fathers to these dreary years of wandering. It is at Kadesh again that
the camp is reorganised. It seems likely that during the interval there was no
definite aim or object before the people, so that they moved about as suited
their convenience or necessities, very much as the wandering tribes of the
desert do still. This would lead to a relaxation of discipline and order in the
camp, and more or less scattering of the people. Their unity was indeed to a
certain extent kept up, and their marching orders given as of old, probably at
long intervals. So at least we would infer from the itinerary in chap. 33.; but
there must have been no little disorganisation and dispersion, rendering it
necessary that there should be a reassembling of the forces. For this purpose
no place could be better or more
appropriate than Kadesh, not only because it must have been so familiar to all,
but also because, by making it their point of departure, they resumed the
thread that had been broken by the unbelief of their fathers. The total loss of
the long interval of time, moreover, is more distinctly marked by the gathering
of the people together at the old halting-place. There is a striking contrast
between the new
departure and the old. The first began with the numbering and mustering of the
armed men, and all the bustle, activity, and energy of a youthful host setting
out to victory. The second seems to have a much less hopeful beginning. The
twentieth of Numbers is one of the saddest chapters in the book. It begins with
the death of her who had been the leader in the song of victory on the shores
of the Red Sea. It ends with the death of him who had so long been the honoured
representative of Israel in the Holy and the Most Holy Place. And, between the
two, we have the old story of murmuring on the part of the people, and mercy on
the part of God, but with this sad addition, that Moses himself has a fall--a
fall so serious that it leads to his own, as well as Aaron’s, exclusion from
the land of promise. It seems a hopeless beginning indeed. But was there not
something hopeful in its very hopelessness? Recall that scene of wrestling at
Peniel, when the patriarch Jacob gained the new name of Israel. How did he gain
it? By his own strength? Nay. It was through weakness that he was made strong. It
was when his power was utterly broken that his hope of victory began. This will
illustrate what we mean when we say that there is something hopeful in the very
hopelessness of this chapter. And this prepares the way for the great lesson of
the next chapter, which may be expressed in the very words which follow the
passage just quoted from the 146th Psalm, “Happy is he that hath the God of
Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God.” (J. M. Gibson, D. D.)
Miriam died there.
The death of Miriam
I. Death
terminates the most protracted life. Miriam must have been about 130 years old
when she died.
II. Death
terminates the most eventful life.
1. The girl watching over the life of her infant brother (Exodus 3:4-8).
2. The experienced woman sharing in the interest and action of the
stirring events which led to the great emancipation from Egypt.
3. The prophetess leading the exultant songs and dances of a
triumphant people (Exodus 15:20-21).
4. The envious woman aspiring after equality with, and speaking
against her greater brother (Numbers 12:1-2).
5. The guilty woman smitten with leprosy because of the sin (Numbers 12:9-10).
6. The leprous woman healed in answer to the prayer of the brother
whom she had spoken against (Numbers 12:13-15). The most stirring and
eventful life is closed by death, as well as the quiet and monotonous one.
III. Death
terminates the most distinguished life.
1. Miriam was distinguished by her gifts. Prophetic gifts arc
ascribed to her. “Miriam, the prophetess,” is her acknowledged title (Exodus 15:20).
2. Miriam was distinguished by her position.
IV. Death, by
reason of sin, sometimes terminates life earlier than it otherwise would have
done.
V. death sometimes
terminates life with suggestions of a life beyond. It was so in the case of
Miriam. Can we think that the gifts with which she was so richly endowed, and
the treasures of experience which in her long and eventful life she had
gathered, were all lost at death? This would be in utter opposition to the
analogy of the Divine arrangements in the universe. (W. Jones.)
Neither is there any water to drink.
The privations of man and the resources of God
I. There are
privations in the pilgrimage of human life. One man thinks that without health his
life would be worthless; yet he has to submit to its loss for a time. To
another man prosperity seems essential; to another, friendship, or some one
friend or relative; yet of these they are sometimes deprived. Life, in our
view, has many privations. This characteristic of our pilgrimage is for wise
and gracious ends. Privation should remind us that we are pilgrims--incite us
to confide in God--and discipline our spirits into patience and power.
II. The privations
in the pilgrimage of life sometimes develop the evil tendencies of human
nature. This murmuring of the Israelites was--
1. Unreasonable.
2. Cruel.
3. Ungrateful.
4. Degraded.
5. Audaciously wicked.
III. The privations
in the pilgrimage of life, and the evils which are sometimes occasioned by them,
impel the good to seek help of God.
1. Consciousness of need.
2. Faith in the sufficiency of the Divine help.
3. Faith in the efficacy of prayer to obtain the Divine help.
4. Faith in the efficacy of unspoken prayer.
IV. The privations
in the pilgrimage of life are sometimes removed in answer to the prayer of the
good. (W. Jones.)
No water
I. The place here
spoken of. The wilderness. The people were led thither--
1. For discipline.
2. For solitude.
3. For proving. How sadly they failed.
II. The want. Water--
1. A necessity for sustenance.
2. A necessity for purity.
3. A want which they were unable to provide for themselves.
III. The people’s
action. “They murmured.” An act natural to the human heart; but very sinful and
foolish--
1. Because it distrusted God.
2. Because it did no good.
3. Because it made themselves more wretched and miserable still.
IV. The provision
made.
1. Unexpected in its source.
2. Unexpected in the manner of its attainment.
3. Unexpected in quantity.
V. The instruction
afforded. That rock was a type of Christ. He was appointed of God, stricken of
man, means of salvation to those appointed to die, &c. (Preacher’s
Analyst.)
The muddy bottom
The heart of man is like a peeler standing water. Look at it on a
summer’s day, when not a breeze ruffles the surface, not a bird flies over to
cast its light shadow on its face. It is so clear, so bright, you may see your
own image reflected there. Now cast a stone to the bottom, and watch the
effect. The dark mud is rising all around, rank weeds are floating up which you
never saw before; the whole pool is in a state of motion, and hardly a drop of
water has escaped the foul pollution. Look at your heart when all outward
things go well. No vexing, crossing care mars its tranquil calm, and you think
you see the image of Jesus reflected there. It is so long since sin has
molested you that you think it has left you quite, and that all is sure within.
Now let a sudden offence come, an unkind, undeserved rebuke; let pride be
touched, or self-will roused, and presently all is lost. Like the waves of an
angry sea, the poor mind is tossed from thought to thought, and finds no rest.
The mud is raised from the bottom, and not one comer of that wretched heart is
free from its polluting influence. All gentle, soothing thoughts are gone, and
one by one the dark weeds are floating on the surface. (Quiet Thoughts for
Quiet Hours.)
Speak ye unto the rock.--
God’s use of insufficient means
He told Moses to speak to the rock, and it should give forth
water. On a former occasion he was to smite the rock; now he was only to speak
to it. If there were any unbelievers in the camp they might mock at this
command, and say, How is it possible to get water out of a rock? let us rather
dig wells, if haply we may find water. And truly to the eye and ear of sense
these observations might appear plausible. Now God’s way of bringing sinners to
glory is just the same. The life of the Christian is a life of faith
throughout. The appointed means have no inherent efficacy. God tries the faith
of His people; disappoint it He never will. He has provided strength equal to
their day, yet will He send it in such a way as to make them feel their utter
helplessness. They see most of God’s love and gracious designs, and have most
peace and comfort in their afflictions, who live most by faith. (George
Breay, B. A.)
With his rod he smote the
rock twice.--
The smitten rock
I. The sinful
attitude of the people. They were discontented, enraged, and faithless. And so
men grow discontented and cry out against God, as if trouble were the only
experience they knew anything about--the most unhappy and morbid state of mind
into which any Christian believer can come. It is strange also how, when one
thing goes wrong with us, everything seems to be awry. The children of Israel
were thirsty, and therefore they complained that the desert of Zin was not the
garden of the Lord, full of all manner of fruits. Put a red lamp into a mass of
shrubbery, and leaf and blossom are forthwith dyed an angry crimson. Thwart some
cherished purpose of a man, and immediately everything takes on the colour of
his disappointment. Society is disintegrating, the Church is going to
destruction, life is a vale of tears. Nothing but immovable faith in God can
save us from this wretched partialism.
II. The merciful
attitude of God. What might He be expected to do under the circumstances? What
wonder if He should say, “It is of no use to be patient any longer. This people
will not have Me for their Ruler. Let them perish.” But that is not God’s way.
He recognises the weakness of men, pities their sufferings, relieves their
wants, and so gives the people another chance to understand Him. And how often
that ancient wonder is wrought anew in human experience! Some critical event
occurs in our history, which for a time at least shatters our faith in the
Divine goodness and justice, well established as that faith ought to be when we
remember the general tenor of our life, and God, instead of flaming out against
our inconstancy and leaving us to our own devices, makes that very event the
occasion of a new and gracious revelation of His love. With time and pains we
arrange some well-compacted plan, on whose success it seems to us all our good
fortune depends, and it thrives for a while; but suddenly all things are
against us, and our hopes are wrecked, and we grow bitter and rebellious, and
then God uses that very disaster to teach us juster views of life and to create
in us a nobler frame of mind, and develop a broader manhood, and we have a
nobler ambition and are better equipped than ever before. And then from the
barren rock of bereavement God brings streams of refreshing. The remaining
members of the household are more
closely welded together, a more tender sympathy with each other springs up, the
unseen life becomes a grander reality, and, as in the flush of the sunset that
follows the storm, we forget the fury of the blast in the glory of the
transfigured heavens, so men and women, in the chastened spirit that results
from trials, and in the light of new and larger hopes which have been kindled,
bear glad testimony: “It is good for us that we have been afflicted.”
III. The
unwarrantable attitude of Moses and Aaron. They were angry with the people and
called them hard names, addressing them as “rebels.” They spoke as if they were
the chief agents of the miracle which God wrought. “Hear now, ye rebels,” they
said to the people, “must we fetch you water out of this rock?” So far as their
words went, they were taking upon themselves the glory which belonged to God
alone. Then, too, they were not satisfied with the Divine directions. For these
assumptions Moses and Aaron were rebuked on the spot, and a sentence of
punishment pronounced upon them. There is important practical instruction here
for those who teach or preach God’s Word to sinful men. It is not to be done in
a self-satisfied way, with the assumption of superior sanctity. Neither are we
to take credit to ourselves for good results which may follow our
administration of Divine truth. It is not our wisdom or eloquence, but the Word
of God which is “quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword.”
Humility and self-distrust are eminently becoming in those who undertake to do
God’s work of influencing men for good. (E. S. Atwood.)
Moses at the rock
1. Did you ever hear people cry out, “I wish I were dead”? That is
what the Israelites said--“Would God we had died!” These wishes were hasty, and
as insincere as hasty. No doubt those people would flee from death with terror
at the first sign of his approach. It has been well said that “a discontented
heart makes a reckless tongue.”
2. Now we come to Moses’ sin. He did not attend carefully to God’s
Word, nor obey it, because he was angry. Notice his bitter words. Let us beware
of the sin of anger. Look at the fifth of Galatians, and it tells you that
“wrath” is one of the “lusts of the flesh.” In Proverbs we are told that “he
that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit
than he that taketh a city.” Why is a person who conquers himself better than a
great general who takes a city? There are three reasons.
Do you know heaven is full of conquerors? And Revelation 12:11 tells us how they
conquered: “They overcame by the blood of the Lamb.” (British Weekly Pulpit.)
The scene at Meribah
This is a memorable incident in the Jews’ history, rich in warning
to us at this day. Moses had failed in his duty towards God in three
particulars.
1. He had failed in strict obedience.
2. He had shown temper, used hard language.
3. He had taken to himself the credit of supplying the Israelites
with water.
I. The danger of
departing, in the least jot or tittle, from any law of God.
II. The immense
importance attached to temperate speech, the necessity of keeping a check on
temper and not letting ourselves be moved to hot and angry words.
III. This scene is
further useful as carrying our thoughts upwards to Him who is the source of all
our hopes, the nourishment of our soul, the very life of our religion, the Lord
Jesus Christ. (R. D. B. Rawnsley, M. A.)
Moses striking the rock
The Biblical writers are charmingly candid. Do they speak of other
men’s faults? They take care also to record their own. Reputation is sacrificed
on the altar of truth; the unselfish lawgiver informs us of his own
transgression and its terrible penalty. What may we learn from his sin?
I. We must not
seek right ends by wrong means. Here Moses erred. How often has his sin been
repeated! Look at Caiaphas. He says in reference to the Saviour, “It is
expedient that one man die, and not that the whole nation should perish.” The
latter part of the sentence is admirable, the former is atrocious . . . Error
should be opposed; we ought to stop its progress as quickly as possible--but by
persuasion, not persecution.
II. We must beware
of doing more than God commands. There are two opposite ways of sinning--by
defect, and by excess. A child who, in adding up a sum, makes it “come to too
much,” blunders as completely as if he made it “come to too little.” And such a
form of wrong-doing is possible
spiritually. We as much violate our duty as “followers of God,” if we get ahead
of our Guide, as though we lagged so far behind that we could no longer see Him
or tread in His steps. Are we not all, for instance, harder in our judgments,
more exacting, more stringent and rigorous in our demands, than He is whom we
profess to follow; and is not this to go before God, and to go before Him not
to prepare His way, but to scare men from His presence?
III. Precedent is a
perilous guide. Moses had struck the rock before by God’s command, and probably
he argued that what was right then could not be wrong now. But let us remember,
that “circumstances alter cases.” A thing which is wise for one time may be
folly for another. (T. R. Stevenson.)
The sin of Moses
I. What there was
sinful in Moses.
1. Disobedience to the Divine command.
2. Immoderate heat and passion.
3. Unbelief.
4. It was all publicly done, and so the more dishonouring to God.
II. What we may
learn from this tragical story.
1. What a holy and jealous God He is with whom we have to do.
2. The Lord’s children need not think it strange if they get
abundance to exercise that grace in which they most excel.
3. Let us not be surprised to see or hear the saints failing even in
the exercise of that grace wherein they most excel.
4. Never think yourselves secure from failing till ye be at the end
of your race.
5. What need we have to guard constantly our unruly passions, and put
a bridle on our lips.
6. Though God pardons the iniquity of His servants, yet He will take
vengeance on their inventions (Psalms 99:8).
7. If God punishes His children thus for falling into the snare, how
shall they escape who lay the snare for them?
8. Observe the ingenuousness of the penmen of the Holy
Scripture--Moses records his own fault. (T. Boston, D. D.)
Sin in the child of God
I. Very painful to
God.
II. Most
inexcusable.
III. Most disastrous
in its results,
IV. Very certain of
punishment.
Let this incident--
1. Make God’s people more watchful.
2. Lead others to ponder their ways ; for if God visits His own
children for sin, a fortiori, He will not let the wicked escape.
3. Let none forget that God can forgive sin--all sin--through Jesus
Christ. (David Lloyd.)
The sins of holy men, and their punishment
The sin of Moses and Aaron seems to have included--
1. Want of faith.
2. Irritation of spirit.
3. Departure from Divine directions.
4. Assumption of power.
5. The publicity of the whole.
I. The liability
of the good to sin.
II. The danger of
good men failing in those excellences which most distinguish them.
III. The
impartiality of the administration of the Divine government.
IV. The great guilt
of those who by their wickedness occasion sin in the good.
V. The means which
God uses to deter men from sin. Divine judgments, expostulations with the
sinner, encouragements and aids to obedience, are all so employed. By the voice
of history, by the law from Sinai, by the gospel of His Son, by the Cross of
Jesus Christ, by the influences of His Spirit, God is ever crying to the
sinner, “Oh! do not this abominable thing that I hate.” Let Christians guard
against temptation; let them cultivate a watchful and prayerful spirit. (W.
Jones.)
How it went ill with Moses
It was but one act, one little act, but it blighted the fair
flower of a noble life, and shut the one soul, whose faith had sustained the
responsibilities of the Exodus with unflinching fortitude, from the reward
which seemed so nearly within its grasp.
I. How it befell.
The demand of the people on the water supply at Kadesh was so great that the
streams were drained, whereupon there broke out again that spirit of murmuring
and complaint which had cursed the former generation, and was now reproduced in
their children. They professed to wish that they had died in the plague that
Aaron’s censer had stayed. They accused the brothers of malicious designs to
effect the destruction of the whole assembly by thirst. It could hardly have
been otherwise than that he should feel strongly provoked. However, he resumed
his old position, prostrating himself at the door of the tent of meeting until
the growing light that welled forth from the Secret Place indicated that the
Divine answer was near. Moses was bidden, though betook the rod, not to use it,
but to speak to the rock with a certainty that the accents of his voice,
smiting on its flinty face, would have as much effect as ever the rod had had
previously, and would be followed by s rush of crystal water. Yes, when God is
with you, words are equivalent to rods. Rods are well enough to use at the
commencement of faith’s nurture, and when its strength is small, but they may
be laid aside without hesitance in the later stages of the education of the
soul. For as faith grows, the mere machinery and apparatus it employs becomes
ever less, and its miracles are wrought with the slightest possible
introduction of the material. Moses might have entered into these thoughts of
God in quieter moments, but just now he was irritated, indignant, and hot with
disappointment and anger. The people did not suffer through their leader’s sin.
The waters gushed from out the rock
as plentifully as they would have done if the Divine injunctions had been
precisely complied with. Man’s unbelief does not make the faith of God of none
effect; though we believe not, yet He remaineth faithful, He cannot deny
Himself, or desert the people of His choice.
II. The principle
that underlay the divine decision.
1. There was distinct disobedience. No doubt was possible about the
Divine command, and it had been distinctly infringed. This could not be
tolerated in one who was set to lead and teach the people. God is sanctified
whenever we put an inviolable fence around Himself and His words; treating them
as unquestionable and decisive; obeying them with instant and utter loyalty. It
is a solemn question for us all whether we are sufficiently accurate in our
obedience.
2. There was unbelief. It was as if he had felt that a word was not
enough. As if there must be something more of human might and instrumentality.
He did not realise how small an act on his part was sufficient to open the
sluice-gates of Omnipotence. It reminds us of the shattering of the Hell-Gate
Rock at the entrance of New York Harbour. The touching of a tiny button by a
little child set in action the train of gunpowder by which that vast
obstruction was blasted to atoms, and heaved for all time out of the path of
the ships. A touch is enough to set Omnipotence in action. It is very wonderful
to hear God say to Moses, “Ye believed not in Me.” Was not this the man by
whose faith the plagues of Egypt had fallen on that unhappy land, and the Red
Sea had cleft its waters? Had the wanderings impaired that mighty soul, and
robbed it of its olden strength, and left it like any other? Surely something
of this sort must have happened. One act could only have wrought such havoc by
being the symptom of some unsuspected wrong beneath. Oaks do not fall beneath a
single storm, unless they have become rotten at their heart. Let us watch and
pray, lest there be in any of us an evil heart of unbelief, lest we depart in
our most secret thought from simple faith in the living God. Let us especially set
a watch at our strongest point. But how much there is of this reliance on the
rod in all Christian endeavour! Some special method has been owned of God in
times past, in the conversion of the unsaved or in the edification of God’s
people, and we instantly regard it as a kind of fetish. We try to meet new
conditions by bringing out the rod and using it as of yore. It is a profound
mistake. God never repeats Himself. He suits novel instrumentalities to new
emergencies. Where a rod was needful once He sees that a word is better now.
What does it matter if the means He ordains appear to our judgment inferior to
those which He commanded once? This is no business of ours.
3. There was the spoiling of the type. That Rock was Christ, from
whose heart, smitten in death on Calvary, the river of water of life has flowed
to make glad the city of God, and to transform deserts into Edens. But death
came to Him and can come to Him but once. “Christ was once offered to bear the
sins of many.” It is clear that for the completeness of the likeness between
substance and shadow, the rock should have been stricken but once. Instead of
that it was smitten at the beginning and at the close of the desert march. But
this was a misrepresentation of an eternal fact, and the perpetrator of the
heedless act of iconoclasm must suffer the extreme penalty, even as Uzzah died
for trying to steady the swaying ark.
III. The
irrevocableness of the Divine decisions. Moses drank very deeply of the bitter
cup of disappointment. And no patriot ever yearned for fatherland as Moses to
tread that blessed soil. With all
the earnestness that he had used to plead for the people, he now
pleaded for himself. But it was not to be. The Lord said unto him, Let it
suffice thee; speak no more unto Me of this matter. The sin was forgiven, but
its consequences were allowed to work out to their sorrowful issue. There are
experiences with us all in which God forgives our sin, but takes vengeance on
our inventions. We reap as we have sown. We suffer where we have sinned. At
such times our prayer is not literally answered. By the voice of His Spirit, by
a spiritual instinct, we become conscious that it is useless to pray further.
But, oh! that God would undertake the keeping of our souls, else, when we least
expect it, we may be overtaken by some sudden temptation, which befalling us in
the middle, or towards the close of our career, may blight our hopes, tarnish
our fair name, bring dishonour to Him, and rob our life of the worthy capstone
of its edifice. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
Edom refused to give
Israel passage through his border.
A reasonable request, and
an ungenerous refusal:--
I. A reasonable
request.
1. Reasonable in itself.
2. Urged by forcible reasons.
(a) As an indication that it was His will that others should aid them.
(b) As an example to encourage others to aid them.
(c) As an indication of His favour towards them, which suggested that
it was to the interest of others to aid them. It is perilous to resist those
whom God defends; it is prudent to further their designs, &c.
II. An ungenerous
refusal. This refusal of the Edomites probably arose from--
1. Fear that if they complied with the request of the Israelites the
result might be injurious to them.
2. Envy at the growing power of Israel.
3. Remembrance of the ancient injury inflicted by Jacob upon Esau.
Retribution consummated
Who pleads? Israel. To
whom is the plea addressed? To a brother. How did the word “brother “ come into
the narrative? It came historically. We have here Jacob and Esau. Edom is the
name by which Esau was known. Wherever we find the term Edom, our minds may
instantly associate with it the history of Esau, and an action of Divine sovereignty in
relation to that history. Jacob supplanted Esau, ran away in the night-time,
met his brother at some distance of time afterwards, the brothers fell upon one
another’s necks, kissed each other, and seemed to sink the infinite outrage in
grateful and perpetual oblivion. Nothing of the kind. Life cannot be managed
thus; things do not lie between man and man only. Herein is the difference
between crime and sin. So Jacob and Esau come face to face throughout the ages.
The supplanter cannot sponge out his miserable cunning and selfish deceit and
unpardonable fraud. Jacob the individual dies, Esau the individual dies: but Jacob and Esau, as
representing a great controversy, can never die: to the end of the chapter Edom will
encounter Israel with deep and lasting animosity. So Esau had his turn. We
pitied the hairy man as he was driven away portionless, without a blessing, his
great heart full of sin no doubt, quivering with agony, for which there was no
adequate expression in words; but in so far as he has been wronged he will see
satisfaction and himself be satisfied. The supplanted family had a land when
the supplanter’s descendants had only a wilderness. This is the law of
Providence. Events are not measured within the compasses of the little day. The
cunning man or the strong man, the oppressor or the wrong-doer, may have his
victory to-day, and may smile upon it, and regard it with complacency, and
receive the incense of adulation from persons who only see between sunrise and sundown. But the
heavens are against him; he has to encounter the eternities, long time after
his victory shall wither, and in his descendants his humiliation shall be
consummated. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Verse 17
We will go by the king’s highway.
The king’s highway
They meant that, however tempting was the fruit of the fields,
however fascinating the byways, however inviting the sparkling water in the
wells might seem, they would keep to the bard-beaten thoroughfares that ran
north and south of the country, by which travellers had passed in ages now gone
by. Now, without doubt, such words have a spiritual and typical meaning.
I. Of the nation
at large. Israel pronounced them unanimously as a nation, and we, as the
English nation, may well re-echo them after all these hundreds of years. And it
is well for us to bear in mind that “whole nations” must stand up for God as
well as individuals. Numbers can never make a sin less grievous.
II. They are words,
too, that may be hoped for from the mouth of the church. God is essentially a
God of :law and order. The Church must go by the King’s highway.
III. But as with the
nation and with the Church, so with the individual, they are words that are
appropriate in the mouth--
1. Of the young Christian, starting off on life’s journey, just going
into the world. Happy, aye thrice happy, he who, with dogged determination,
says, “We will go by the King’s highway.”
2. So, too, they are suited especially to the penitent. He, too, must
look into the future and resolve “to go by the King’s highway.” And here we
must pause to notice that the individual highway consists--
IV. Lastly, we are
not alone in our efforts to go by the King’s highway; we are cheered by the
examples of all the saints whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
In conclusion, I would add that the King’s highway leads to the city of the
Great King. (W. O. Parish.)
Aaron died there in the top of the mount.
The death of Aaron
The first and most superficial aspect of death is that it is the
close of an earthly career. What kind of career was it that was brought to a
close when Aaron died? First of all, there could be no question as to its
prominence. Aaron shares with Moses, though as a subordinate, the glory of
having ruled and shaped the course and conduct of his countrymen at a time of
unexampled difficulty, at a time pregnant with the highest consequences to the
religious future of the world. But Aaron’s place in religious history is more
distinctly measured if we consider the great office to which he was called. He
was the first of a long line of men who were at the head of what was for ages
the only true religion in the world. He was the first high priest of the chosen
people. Office, however, and position is one thing; character is another; and,
if it is here that we find a great difference between the brothers, we must
first of all remind ourselves that Aaron is called in Scripture “the saint of
the Lord.” He must have had a great background of those high qualities which go
to make up the saintly character, if he also had defects which are recorded for
our instruction. Aaron was morally a weak man. He had no such grasp of
principle as would enable him to hold out against strong pressure. Nor is it
inconsistent with this that Aaron could display obstinate self-assertion on
inopportune occasions, as when he joined his sister Miriam in murmuring against
Moses. This is exactly what weak people do; they give way when true loyalty to
duty would teach them to resist, and then, haunted by the notion that they are
weak, or at least that the world will think them so, they indulge in some form
of spasmodic self-assertion which may remind us of the ungainly efforts that
invalids will sometimes make to show that they are not quite so ill as their
friends may think them. And now the end had come. Moses and Aaron both knew that Aaron would
die. It may have been that some
hitherto unsuspected disease had shown itself in the constitution
of the old man; it may have been, as has been suggested, that a sand-storm in
the Arabah had withered up his decaying vitality. That Aaron would die might
have been known from observation, as God often speaks to us through the wonted
changes of the world of nature. But Aaron and Moses also knew why Aaron
was to die, and why on Mount Hor. If we knew enough, we should all of us know
that there is a reason in the Divine mind for the hour at which, as for the
means by which, every man and woman departs this life. We all are interested in
ascertaining as exactly as we
can the physical reason of the death of those relations whom God in His
providence removes from our sight; but behind the physical reason there is a
moral reason, if we could only know it; and we may say, with confidence, that,
in the eyes of God, who is the perfect moral Being, the moral reason accounts
for much more than the physical. Sometimes a life is prolonged to do one single
piece of work which no other would do as well, and as soon as that work is
done, that life is withdrawn. Sometimes a life is cut short because it has
forfeited the particular privilege which an extension of some months or even
weeks would bring to it, and this was the case of Aaron--“And the Lord spake
unto Moses and Aaron in Mount Hor, by the coast of the land of Edom, saying
Aaron shall be gathered to his people, for he shall not enter into the land
which I have given to the children of Israel because he rebelled against My
word at the waters of Meribah.” Aaron’s share in the sin of Meribah was due to the
same want of firmness which, as we have seen, was a feature in his character.
The sin of Meribah was, in the first instance, the sin of Moses, when the
people murmured at the want of water, and Moses, worried no doubt by their
perverseness, in the very act of relieving them betrayed, both by what he said
and by what he did, a temper unworthy of his high office, so that he did not
sanctify the Lord God in the eyes of the people. As a later Psalmist
reflects--“The people angered God at the waters of strife, so that He punished
Moses for their sakes, because that they provoked his spirit so that he spake
unadvisedly with his lips.” As for Aaron, he not only did not check Moses, he
acquiesced in what he must have known to be dishonourable to God; and this in a
man with his spiritual responsibilities was a grave failure of duty. Much more,
Moses bad forfeited that high privilege, but then the work which Moses had to
do in the world was not yet done. But Aaron’s appointed work was done, and
there was no reason for delaying his summons. And here we are led to reflect on
a subject which too often escapes notice. Many men, probably the majority of
those who do not incur eternal loss, yet do from some flaw in the character,
from some warp or weakness in the will, fall, more or less, greatly short of
what they might have been, of what natural powers and spiritual endowments and
religious and other opportunities might have made them even in this world; and
if here, then also hereafter, even if by God’s mercy in Christ we reach it, it
may be to fill a lower rather than what might have been a higher place, but for
some compliance with what conscience condemned, but for some act or some
omission which has left upon the soul and the character that lasting impress
which survives death. There is much to be noticed in the account of the close
of Aaron’s life, but nothing is more worthy of our notice than his deliberate
preparation for it. He did not let death come on him, he went to meet it. The
last scene was as much a matter of duty, a matter of business, as his
consecration to the high priesthood Ah I death, surely, is like a mountain-top
for the survey which it gives to life, and the deserts through which we have
wandered, and the barriers which have checked our progress, and the hopes,
bright or dim, which have cheered us on, and the feebleness and the fear of
man, and the self-seeking, and the petty vanity (if nothing worse) which have
spoiled so much that God meant for Himself, standout in clear outlines above
the haze of the distant past. Doubtless it was with Aaron as with any man who
retains, along with a conscience that has not been seared, the free exercise of
the mind’s powers in those last solemn moments which precede the greatest of
all changes--doubtless, it was with him as with others upon whom their position
and work in life have entailed great responsibility for the real and lasting
happiness or misery of their fellow men. At such times the simply conventional
no longer satisfies. At such times standards of conduct that are natural to
human sanction are seen to be no longer applicable, the mental eye sees through
and beyond the phrases which inclination or passion have hitherto interposed
between it and the past. It sees the past more nearly, not as self-love has
wished it to be, but as it was. At such times the higher a man’s place in the
government, or the social fabric of the state, or in the hierarchy of the
Church, the more sincerely must he breathe the prayer, “If Thou, Lord,
shouldest be extreme to mark what is done amiss, O Lord, who may abide it?” But
time was passing. The last moments were now at hand; so Moses, acting, as we
know, under Divine instructions, stripped Aaron of his garments, and put them
upon Eleazar his son. There was, no doubt, a two-fold motive in this act of
Moses. It showed, first of all, that the office of the high priesthood did not
depend on the life of any single man, that God was watching over the religious
interests of His people, that His gifts and calling were, as the apostle says,
“without repentance, without recall,” and that He provides for the due
transmission of those spiritual faculties which have been given that they may
sustain the higher life of man from age to age. But it also reminded Aaron
personally of the solemn truth of the utter solitariness of the soul in death.
Not more than any other man can a high priest retain the outward position, the
valued symbols, of his great office. He, too, shall carry nothing away with him
when he dieth, neither shall his pomp follow him. Death strips us of everything
save that which, so far as we know, is by God’s appointment strictly
indestructible. Our undying personality and that type of character which acts
and habits and the use or misuse of the supernatural grace of God have, for
good or for evil, wrought into its very texture--this is indeed for ever ours.
All else is, like the sacerdotal robes of Aaron, to be abandoned, at the place
where, at the moment when, we lie down to die. It was all over. Aaron had
closed his eyes, and Moses buried him where at this day a Moslem shrine,
constructed out of the ruins of some earlier and finer edifice, still bears his
name. It was all over, and like a procession returning from a funeral without
the one object which had formed its chiefest interest, Moses and Eleazar, so we
are told, came down from the mount. What were their thoughts about Aaron? Where
was he now? “Aaron,” so runs the phrase of Moses, “was gathered to his people.”
What does the phrase mean? It is used alike of Moses and Aaron. Does it
describe only the interment of their bodies? But in either case their bodies
rested at a distance from their people, in a foreign soil. Surely, it points to
a world in which the bygone generations of men still live, a world of the
existence of which God’s ancient people were well assured, though they knew
much less of it than we. That world beyond the grave is no doubt presented with
different degrees of clearness in the successive ages of Old Testament history.
The age of the patriarchs is marked by strong and distinct faith in it. In the
days and teaching of Moses it is more kept in the background, probably because
the imagination of Israel was still haunted by the imagery of the underworld of
the dead, as the Egyptians had conceived of it. In Job and some of the Psalms
it is the subject sometimes of anxious discussion, sometimes of strong and
undoubting faith. In the prophets it comes prominently forward as the promised
Messiah, heralded not merely as an earthly ruler, but as a deliverer from the
consequences of sin. In Ezekiel and Daniel we already meet with the
resurrection of the body; in the writers after the captivity this doctrine goes
hand in hand with a distinct faith in the immortality of the soul. We cannot
doubt that, as Moses and Eleazar made their way down the western side of the
mount on which Aaron was left, their thoughts were not only or chiefly centred
on the tomb which enclosed his body; they followed him into the assembly of the
spirits of the dead, they followed him with their sympathies, with their hopes,
their prayers, even though around that world on which he had entered there
still hung a veil for them which has been, through Christ’s mercy, removed for
us. The Old Testament is sometimes a foreshadowing of the new, sometimes its
foil. If Aaron was stripped of his sacerdotal robes on the eve of his death, Jesus
our Lord was never more a priest than when He hung upon His Cross, and offered
Himself as a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction
for the sins of the whole world. If Aaron’s dust still lies somewhere among the
rocks of Hor, awaiting the summons to judgment, Jesus is indeed risen from the
dead, “and become the first fruits of them that slept,” nay, He has already, He
has here, “brought life and immortality to light” through His gospel, He has
taught us that there is a life which through His grace we may live, and the
beauty of which our hearts cannot but own, while yet that life does but mock us
if it ends at death, if it does not last, if it does not expand, hereafter. Be
has shown us how this life may be, if at present it is not ours, and in
possessing it we are already and most assuredly “more than conquerors” of death
“through Him that loved us.” (Canon Liddon.)
The death of Aaron
I. The death of
Aaron.
1. As a consequence of sin.
2. By the appointment of God.
3. The death of Aaron was his introduction to life and to congenial
society.
II. The appointment
of Aaron’s successor.
1. Kindness to Aaron. It assured him--
2. A guarantee of the continuance of the Church of God.
III. The mourning
because of Aaron’s death.
1. The worth of faithful ministers.
2. The appreciation of blessings when they are withdrawn from us,
which were not valued when they were ours.
Lessons:
1. The universality of death.
2. The imperfection of the Aaronic priesthood.
3. The perfection of the priesthood of Christ (Hebrews 7:22-28; Hebrews 8:6; Hebrews 9:23-28; Hebrews 10:10-14). (W. Jones.)
Death of Aaron
I. The time. In
the fortieth year of the wanderings.
1. A very important year in the history of Israel. Year of death also
of Miriam and of Moses. Dates that mark formation of new or severance of old
friendships, always important.
2. In about the 123-4 year of Aaron’s life. A long and eventful life.
And yet, though his life was long--
II. The warning.
Many pass away without any warning. Duty of being always ready. In this case, a
solemn intimation that the time appointed had come. It was kindly framed.
“Gathered unto his people.” An old man’s best friends--his people--are mostly
in the better world. Aaron invited to join his people; the great ones amongst
whom he ranked.
III. The place. A
mountain. Reminds us that the good man in death is in death lifted up above the
world ; and that, as Aaron at that time, he dies in view of the Church below
and the Church above. Israel around, and the promised land before him.
IV. The circumstances.
Toilsomely and calmly ascends the hill to be gathered to his fathers. The old
man climbing the last of life’s hills. The last stage a rugged one.
V. The
characteristics. A death--
1. Hastened by sin.
2. Closing all earthly offices and distinctions.
3. Heralded by solemn intimations.
4. Sweetened by presence of friends.
Learn--
1. A good man in dying is gathered to his people.
2. Seek to live on the borders of heaven that we may die in view of
the promised land.
3. Endeavour to do what we have to do while it is called to-day. (J.
C. Gray.)
The death of Aaron
I. We may learn a
salutary lesson from the death of Aaron in its merely literal bearing. Aaron,
the high priest, had to ascend Mount Hor clad in his priestly robes of office;
but he must be stripped of them there, because he must die there. He could not
carry his dignity or the emblems of it into the next world. He must lay them
down at the grave’s brink. There is nothing which the world gives that men can
carry with them when death lays hold of them. Even all which outwardly pertains
to spiritual dignity, and which brings men into relation with things that are
imperishable and eternal, must be left behind, and the individual man, as God’s
accountable creature, must appear before his Maker in judgment. There is one
thing imperishable and one dignity which even death cannot tarnish. The
imperishable thing is the life which the Spirit of God imparts to the soul, and
which connects the soul with God. The deathless dignity is that of being
children of God.
II. Aaron must be
stripped of his robes, and his son clad with them in his stead. This reminds us
that while the priests under the law were not suffered to continue by reason of
death, yet the office of the priesthood did not lapse. Aaron’s robes were not
buried with him. His successor was provided. Yet the very thought that he
needed a successor, that the office must be transmitted from one to another,
leads us to think of the contrast which the apostle draws between the priests
under the law and Him who abideth always. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday,
to-day, and for ever. (A. B. Davidson.)
The good and faithful servant
I. The common
destiny of man. “Aaron,” says God, “shall be gathered to his people.” Death is
spoken of here, not as a strange event, not as something peculiar to Aaron, but
as something that had happened to Aaron’s people, and would happen to all
generations. Oh, the teeming myriads that preceded us, that carried on the
works, the commerce, and the reforms of our world; all these, so far as the
body is concerned--all dust!
II. The
rigorousness of moral law. Here is a man who had struggled hard for many years
in the wilderness, a man filled with high hopes, with glowing enthusiasm, a man
who was approaching the goal, approaching the Canaan; and yet mark how, because
of one sin, he dies, and never reaches that blessed spot. However distinguished
a man may be for his excellences, however high he may be in the Church of God,
his sin shall not go unpunished.
III. The termination
of life in the midst of labour. We nearly all die with our work unfinished. The
farmer dies when he has only half ploughed his field ; the merchant dies in the
midst of some commercial enterprise to which he has committed himself; the
statesman dies with some great political measure, perhaps, heavy on his hands;
the minister dies with some schemes of thought in his brain unwrought out, some
plans of usefulness undeveloped. That to me is a profound mystery. I should
have thought that a man who had in his brain a great purpose to serve his race,
to promote the truth, and to extend the kingdom of Christ, would have his life
preserved, that he might realise his purpose. But it is not so. O God! we are
not surprised when an old tree, though prolific in its day, dies, for it dies
by the law of decay; nor are we astonished that an unfruitful tree should be
cut down, for it is a cumberer of the ground; but we are astonished that a
tree, with its branches full of sap, with its boughs laden with fruit, with
thousands reposing under its shadow, should be struck with a thunderbolt from
heaven. Thy path, O God, is “in the great waters, and Thy footsteps are not
known.”
IV. God’s agency in
man’s dissolution. Why did Aaron die? He was not worn out with age. He was as
vigorous, perhaps, at that moment, as anybody here. Not because there was
disease rankling in his system, not because there was any external violence
applied to him. Why, then, did he die? The Great One determines that he shall
die, and he dies. And this, I take it, is always the philosophy of a man’s
death. We may ascribe it to that disease, to this accident, to this chance, to
this occurrence ; but philosophy, the Bible, and reason all say, “man dies
because the Great One has determined that he should die.” If you will ascertain
the term of a creature s existence, you can only do it accurately by
ascertaining the will of the great God concerning his existence. The
constitution has nothing whatever to do with the question. If God determines
it, the most robust dies in a moment,
V. The promptitude
with which providence supplies the places of the dead. Aaron must die, but
there is Eleazar standing by his side ready to step into his place. This is the
order of Providence. A merchant dies, and another man stands by his side ready
to carry on his business. A lawyer dies, and there is a man standing by his
side ready in a moment to step into the place he occupied. A statesman dies,
and Providence has a man exactly fitted for his position. Oh, how this
encourages my faith in the progress of Divine truth in this world! I see
missionaries die in the field, and ministers die in the Church; I see authors
die who are moving the minds of men, and influencing them for their highest
good; and sometimes I feel, now, surely there must be a pause. But no, there is
another minister ready to take the departed minister’s place. You labour, and
other men enter into your labours; and when the mystery of godliness shall be
finished, I believe the great series of workers will meet and mingle and rejoice
together in the presence of the great common Father of us all. But whilst this
encourages our faith, it is certainly humbling to our pride. The world can do
without thee. Thou art but a blade in the field ; the landscape will bloom
without thee. Thou art but a drop in the ocean; the mighty billows will not
miss thee. Thou art not at all important.
VI. The trial of
human friendships. Moses and Eleazar were very closely related to Aaron. Moses
was more than a brother to Aaron. There was a spiritual kindredship between
them. There were mental affinities and spiritual affections. Their hearts were
welded together by tender feelings and associations, and yet part they must.
Oh! I ask the question, leaving you to answer it. Can it be that the great God
of love, who has made us to love, and who has disposed us to give our
affections to certain men and persons, can it be that He intended that our love
should lash within us such storms, and produce so many tears that we have to
shed almost daily? The philosophy is here--these friendships are to be renewed.
These losses and tears are only a passing storm, clearing the heavens. There is
to be a renewal of real spiritual friendship. Eleazar, Moses, thou shalt meet
that man whom thou art burying on Mount Hor again! The time is hastening on
when a re-union shall take place, and separation never. After all, the
separation which takes place in the death of true Christian friends is more in
form than in reality--more an appearance than a fact. I have the idea that in
truth we become more really friends by the death separation. Death cannot
destroy our loving memories of them. Death does not kill--nay, it seems but to
intensify our affections. Death seems to bring those who are gone more closely
and more vitally into contact with our hearts. Death, I say, does not effect a
real separation. Love photographs them in the soul.
VII. The painful
recognition by society of its greatest losses. The people mourned for Aaron
thirty days. Well might they mourn. If we cannot weep over great and true
hearts, over what can we weep? Good men are as fountains welling up in the
desert through which you are passing; they are lights in abounding darkness;
they are salt that counteracts our tendency to corruption. Thank God for good
men! But the Christian minister is the best of all men, and his loss is the
greatest of all losses.
I know of no man who is rendering such a service to society and to humanity as
he! Such was Aaron. He was a minister of God. He had to go in between the
corrupt Jews and the Infinite, and to entreat upon their behalf; and more than
once did his prayers avert the threatened judgment. Aaron was more than that;
he was a speaker, an orator. His words sometimes fell as a thunder-peal upon
the proud heart of Egypt’s monarch; but they came down with rays of light, and
as the gentle dew, upon the people of Israel. I can fancy Aaron talking to the
people about God, about the coming Christianity, about the new dispensation,
about the world to come. But he dies; and they mourn. I do not wonder at that.
I should have been surprised if they had not wept when they know and felt, We
shall see Aaron no more; he has ministered to us for many years, he has given
consolation to our old men, a word of advice to the young men, and has talked
to the children--and we shall see Aaron no more. (D. Thomas.)
The comforts of Aaron’s death
The comforts of Aaron’s death here are these: The Lord appoints it
so, and His will, as it is ever good, so should it ever be our content.
Secondly, his son succeedeth him in his place, a great comfort. Thirdly, he
shall be freed from all his toil, from all his grief, from an unkind people.
Now shall he rest and have peace, and all grief from his heart, all tears from
his eyes wiped quite away. “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, for they
rest from their labours, and their works follow them.” Let it be a comfort to
all, and by name to God’s ministers, that faithfully and zealously have watched
over their flock, and have reaped but wrong and oppression. God hath His sweet
time to release us, and to gather us to our people as He here did Aaron. He
will care for our children as here for Aaron’s, and put them in some place or
other after us for their good in His great mercy, if we commend them to Him.
Our labours shall not be lost with Him that rewardeth a cup of cold water. If
we have “sowed in tears we shall reap in joy.” Earth’s woe shall be changed to
heaven’s bliss, and happy shall we be. Go on in comfort, be faithful unto the
end, the Lord shall give us a crown of life. (Bp. Babington.)
Divestiture and investiture--ministerial succession
1. In these calm, almost cold, words, is told all that man is to know
of an event full of interest, mystery, and awe. In that year 1452 (as
chronologers say) before the Christian era, a life is brought to its close,
which, but for one other life beside it, would have been unique in wonder. That
old man who has gone up into Mount Hor, under Divine direction, to die, is
God’s high priest; the first of a long line, the only line that God ever
consecrated to stand between Himself and His chosen people, in the things of
religion and the soul, until He should at last come, who is the End of all
Revelation and the Antitype of all Priesthood.
2. Aaron is shut out from Canaan for a fault, for a sin. Judged as
man judges, it was a little sin. It was not the greatest of the sins even of
this one life. But with God “great” and “little” have no place in the estimate
of transgression.
3. The lesson of severity lies on the surface of the record.
4. There is here also the lesson of love. See how God chastens
without disowning.
5. There is also the lesson of death. It is the fashion to say that
the language of the Old Testament is cheerless about death. I cannot see it.
These deaths for small sins seem to be eloquent as to the insignificance of
death. They seem to say, “The life that is seen is but a fragment of the whole
life.”
6. Nothing is more pathetic in Holy Scripture than that selflessness
which God requires in His servants; that absorption of natural feeling in the
One higher, which is the perfection of self-control and the self-forgetfulness.
Aaron himself had been enabled to rise to it, when he saw his two sons cut off
before him, forbidden to mourn, forbidden to bury them. And now it is his brother’s
turn to take his part in bearing the burden which God’s ministry lays upon them
that are privileged to exercise it. Now he must strip his dying brother of the
beautiful and costly vestments of his priesthood. He must array in them a new
priest, who is to carry on God’s work before a younger generation. And when the
sad and solemn office is ended, he must turn back, with that other, to the
thoughts and acts of the living, till he also shall have finished his course,
and be ready to rejoin his brother in the Paradise of the just made perfect.
7. There are some forms of ministration which suggest succession.
Those garments which are emblematical of office--the judge’s ermine, worn only
on the judgment-seat; the bishop’s lawn, put on with prayer and benediction, in
the midst of the ceremony of his consecration--speak for themselves as to the
disrobing. The wearer had a predecessor, shall have a successor in that
ministry. He is but the life-holder: less than the life-holder, for decay of
strength may further abridge the tenure of that charge, towards God and man,
which the vestment of office typifies. There must be that stripping of which
the text speaks; that putting off that another may put on. Let him live in the
foreview of that day.
8. Behold in one view the littleness and the greatness of man. The
littleness in space and time. One generation goeth, and another cometh. Earth
is a speck, and time a moment. But, view life as a trust--view office, view
work, view character, view being, as a priesthood--and all is ennobled, all
consecrated. Say to yourself, I am God’s priest--I wear His ephod and His
crown, and the inscription on that crown is, “Holiness unto the Lord”--then you
are great; great above kings, who know not a hereafter; great above hierarchies
which would shine in God’s stead; your light is God’s light, and the world
shall be the brighter for it. (Dean Vaughan.)
The sin of Moses, and the death of Aaron
I. Faith in God is
the regulating grace of the Christian character. So long as that is preserved,
it will keep all other principles of our nature in restraint; but when that is
lost, the brake is removed from the wheel, and everything goes wrong. The loss
of faith leads to panic, and panic is utterly inconsistent with self-control.
If we wish to overcome ourselves, then the victory is to be won through faith
in God. Mere watchfulness will not suffice; but we must cultivate that
confidence in God which believes that all things work together for good to them
who love Him; which realises the universality of His providential
administration as including the minutest as well as the vastest concerns of
life ; and which has the unwavering assurance that we shall enter at last upon
our heavenly inheritance.
II. How important
it is to be always ready for death. The death of Aaron was not altogether
without warning, but in some sense it may be regarded as sudden. There were no
premonitions of it in his bodily frame, else he could not have ascended Mount
Hor; and when God’s command came, it might take him, and probably did take him,
by surprise. Yet he was not appalled, for he believed God, and that kept him in
perfect peace. “What, sir,” said a domestic servant, who was sweeping her
doorstep, to young Spencer, of Liverpool, as he was hastening by, “is your opinion
of sudden death?” He paused a moment; then saying, “Sudden death to the
Christian is sudden glory,” he hurried on; and in less than an hour afterward
he was drowned while bathing in the Mersey.
III. The place and
power of the individual in the onward progress of human society.
1. Ministers and people die, but the Church abides, and carries still
forward its beneficent work.
2. We are the heirs of all the preceding generations; and if we act
well our part, we shall leave something additional of our own behind us, which
shall enrich those who shall come after us. The tabernacle service went on
without Aaron, it is true; but if Aaron had not gone before him, Eleazar would
not have entered upon such a sphere of usefulness as that which now opened
before him. If there bad been no Bacon, there might have been no Newton; and if
there had been no Newton, our modern philosophers would not have been what they
are.
3. What, then, is the lesson of all this? It is that each of us shall
strive to do his utmost in the work to which God has called him, so that we may
leave a higher platform for those who shall come after us. (W. M. Taylor, D.
D.)
Aaron’s death
Aaron went up to die. Some die in seclusion and unknown; yet it
matters not where the saints depart, whether on a mount or in a vale, though,
as a typical character, this circumstance seemed to indicate the way of the
“spirit, which riseth upwards,” and the destiny of our whole humanity. To him
dying was but ascending; and it will be so to all the Lord’s people. The great
Representative and Forerunner of the Church died on one mount, and ascended
from another. Had not some great truth thereby been to be expressed, Aaron had
not attired himself for death as though to enter the holy of holies. It can
signify but little what he puts on who is about to lie down in the shroud of
dissolution. Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return,
said Job. Oh! how do some long for evening, to undress! “ not that they would
be unclothed, but clothed upon with their house which is from above.” Yet the
priest did not die, but the man. The transfer was made in life: the robes were
taken from him while living, and not when dead. The Church was no moment
without a priest and an offering. (W. Seaton.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》