There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun.
The God of Jeshurun
Are we to understand this passage as revoking all the threatened judgments previously denounced against Israel? No. But Moses saw, amidst all the rebellion with which Israel as a nation was to be chargeable, and amidst all the reverses which they were consequently to experience, that the true Israel would be preserved, defended, and cared for. That in these words Moses addresses the true Israel, the spiritual seed of Abraham, is evident from the name he gives them Jeshurun, “upright,” or “righteous.” He begins by exalting the God of Jeshurun above all other gods; and he does so in language fitted to impress them with a conviction of the utter impotency of the gods of the nations.
1. The description conveys the idea of glorious majesty, absolute sovereignty, power infinitely beyond comprehension or resistance. But while thus reminding them of this view of the Divine character, he introduces it in a connection fitted to awaken confidence. He does not merely tell them that the God of Jeshurun rideth on the heaven, but that He does so as Jeshurun’s help; and that if He revealed His own excellence and glory, it was in working out their deliverance, and making bare His holy arm for their protection. There as none like, etc. What peace should this truth inspire! What patience should it inspire! What confidence should it awaken and keep alive, even in circumstances the most gloomy and perplexing! If it does not produce this effect, must it not be because they are remaining contentedly in doubt whether they have really been justified and accepted with God, or are culpably insensible to the value of their privileges in having all their best interests bound up with the manifestation of His own glory?
2. The security of God’s justified people is still further set forth. God is declared to be their refuge, or rather dwelling place--not a temporary, but a perpetual refuge; and they are reminded that He is the eternal God, unchangeable in His being, and equally unchangeable in His purpose. They might feel at times as if they were altogether unequal to any new conquest over the adversaries which still remained to be subdued; but God Himself was to thrust out the enemy from before them, and to say, “Destroy them.” So it is, and has always been, in regard to the spiritual conflict of believers. The Scripture saints, in relating their experience--their fears and hopes, dangers and deliverances, seasons of depression and times of triumph, painful struggles with temptation and the strength by which they successfully resisted it--employ the very language which might have been appropriately used to describe the conflicts and conquests of Israel in Canaan (Psalms 27:3; Psalms 72:5; Psalms 91:1-4). To all who know anything experimentally of the spiritual warfare of the believer, such language will be not only intelligible, but faithfully descriptive of what they have experienced, and in so far as they have been enabled to contend successfully with the risings of a corrupt nature within, the temptations of a sinful world without, the suggestions of Satan--with everything that would have brought their spiritual interests into jeopardy, everything that would have marred their peace and robbed them of their comfort--and in so far as they can now cherish the good hope of ultimately gaining the victory over all these, their spiritual enemies, it is because they have experienced the faithfulness of this declaration.
3. From this description of the conflict of God’s people, Moses proceeds to foretell their final and glorious triumph. “Israel then shall dwell,” etc. Viewing this prediction merely as referring to the settlement of Israel in Canaan, it was, in the first instance at least, only partially fulfilled. Israel did not so conquer the land as to dwell either in safety or alone. Through their unbelief, the command, “Destroy,” which otherwise would have been accompanied by a Divine power, was not fully carried into effect. But even had Israel literally dwelt alone and in safety, yet it would have been but a type of the still more glorious state of things to which Moses was instructed to direct the faith and hope of the Church. Nothing short of the glory of the latter day can exhaust the meaning of this passage. Many generations, indeed, have passed away, and we, too, may follow them, and still the prediction remain unfulfilled. But we have in Moses an example of the satisfaction and delight with which the saints of old contemplated the future prosperity of the Church, even when they should be gathered to their fathers; for though he was not to enter on the promised land, or participate in the rich blessings which awaited Israel there, yet could any one of them, even the man who had the prospect of sharing the longest and the most largely in these blessings, have expressed himself more joyously and with warmer gratitude in that prospect than Moses did in his last words to Israel? (R. Gordon, D. D.)
Israel’s God and God’s Israel
I. Israel’s God. Truly, when Moses looked upon the gods of Egypt--a country so superstitious that the satirist wrote of them, “O happy nation, whose gods grow in their own gardens”--when he heard the wild mythology of their idolatry, he might well say, “There is none among them that is like unto the God of Jeshurun,” Perhaps Moses had seen those vast catacombs of idolised animals which Egyptian discoverers have lately opened, where the crocodiles, cats, and birds, which had been worshipped in life, were afterwards carefully consigned. Wise as Egypt professed to be, she preserved her dead gods in myriads. Truly, the fancies of the most civilised nations have invented no deity comparable for a moment to the living God who made the heavens and the earth. Moses, in the particular words here used, seems to intimate that there is none like the God of Jeshurun as the ground of our confidence, Now, ye who have trusted in God, remember there is room for you to trust Him still more; and the more you shall confide in Him, the more emphatically will you declare, “There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun.” If we rely upon men, we put trust in fickleness itself. Fall back upon yourselves, lean upon your fellow creatures, trust upon earth-born confidences, and ye fall Upon a rotten foundation that shall give way beneath you; but rest upon your God alone, and the stars in heaven shall fight for you, and things present and things to come, and heights, and depths, and all the creatures subservient to the will of the omnipotent Creator, shall work together for good to you seeing that you love God and are depending upon His power.
II. Israel’s safety.” “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” Two sentences, with a little variation of expression, containing essentially the same sense. God is first said to be the refuge of His people, that is, when they have strength enough to fly to Him He protects them; but it is delightfully added, “underneath are the everlasting arms,” that is, when they have not strength enough to flee to Him, but faint where they stand, there are His arms ready to bear them up in their utmost extremity. I will mention some times when a Christian needs these arms peculiarly. These are when he is in a state of great elevation of mind. Sometimes God takes His servants and puts them on the pinnacle of the temple. Satan does it sometimes; God does it too--puts His servants up on the very pinnacle, where they are so full of joy that they scarce know how to contain themselves, “whether in the body or out of the body they cannot tell.” Well, now, suppose they should fall! for it is so easy for a man, when full of ecstasy and ravishment, to make a false step and slip. Ah! but, in such moments, “underneath are the everlasting arms.” They are safe enough, as safe as though they were in the valley of humiliation, for underneath are the arms of God. Sometimes He puts a man in such a position in service--there must be leaders in the Lord’s Church, captains and mighty men of war--and the Lord sometimes calls a man and says to him, “Now, be Moses to this people.” Such positions are fraught with temptation; but is God’s servant in greater danger than an ordinary Christian? Yes, he is, if left to himself; but he will not be left to himself, for God does not treat His captains as David treated Uriah, and put them in the forefront of the battle, to leave them, that they may be slain by the enemy. No, if our God calls a man to tread the high places of the field, that man shall say with Habakkuk, “He will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and He will make me to walk upon mine high places.” “Underneath are the everlasting arms.” Another period of great need is after extraordinary exaltations and enjoyments, when it often happens that God’s servants are greatly depressed. In the wilderness, all alone, you hear Elijah cry, “Let me die, I am no better than my fathers.” Yes, the man who never was to die at all, prayed that he might die. Just so, high exaltations involve deep depressions. But what was under Elijah when he fell down in that fainting fit under the juniper tree? Why, underneath were the everlasting arms. So shall it be with you who are called thus to fall into the depths of depression; the eternal arms shall be lower than you are.
III. Israel’s future. You have seen a man in our streets with a telescope, through which you may see Venus, or Saturn, or Jupiter. Now, if that gentleman, instead of revealing the stars, could fix up a telescope, and undertake that everybody who looked through it could see his future life, I will be bound to say he would make his fortune very speedily, for there is a great desire amongst us all to know something of the future. Yet we need not be so anxious, for the great outlines of the future are very well known already. We have it on the best authority, that in the future as in the past, we shall meet with difficulties, and contend with enemies. My text, like the telescope, reveals to those who trust in God what will become of their difficulties, and we see that they are to be overcome. God will work, and you will work. He shall thrust out your enemies, and He shall say to you, “Destroy them.” It is a grand thing to go straight on in the path of duty, believing that God will clear the road. Like the priests, when they came to the edge of Jordan, and saw the billows rolling up, yet on they went, and not so much as one of them was touched by the waves, for as they put down their feet the waters receded. Oh, it must have been grand to be the first man in that march--to see the waters flow away before your feet! So shall it be with you: the water shall come up to where you are, yet it shall not touch you; you shall find it disappear as you by faith advance.
IV. Israel’s blessedness.
1. “Israel then shall dwell alone.” Dwelling with God in communion, having with Him one object, one affection, one desire, we dwell apart from the rest of mankind, coming out daily more and more from them, and desiring to be nearer and nearer to Christ, and farther and farther from men. Here we dwell safely; nowhere safe except when alone with God, but always safe then.
2. Abundant provision. “The fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine.” God’s people are to be supplied from a fountain, and around that fountain there shall always be a superabundance of corn for their necessities, and of wine for their comfort and their luxury. Those who come to God receive no stinted allowance, they are gentlemen commoners upon the bounty of God. There is a daily portion allotted to them, and it is measured on a princely scale, equal to the dignity of the new birth. We drink from an ever overflowing fountain.
3. Celestial unction. “Also His heavens shall drop down dew.” How we want this! How dry we get, how dull, how dead, unless the Lord visit us! The Oriental knew the value of dew. When he saw the green pastures turn brown and at last dry up, till they were nothing but dust and powder, how he sought for the shower, and the dew; and when it came, how thankful was he! When that dew of the Holy Spirit is gone from us, what dead prayers, what miserable songs, what wearisome preaching, what wretched hearing! Oh, there is death everywhere when the Holy Spirit is denied us; but we need not be without Him, for He is in the promise--”His heaven shall drop down dew.” The words read as if there were much dew, superabundance of moisture. So, indeed, we may have the Holy Spirit most copiously if we have but faith enough. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The God of Jeshurun
I. The appellation given to Jehovah. The term Jeshurun is a collective term used, just as Israel, Jacob, etc., to designate the covenant people--the people who, like Israel of old, have received a Divine call to come out from the world and be separate; who, in obedience to this Divine call, have separated themselves unto the Lord, and have entered into a solemn and public covenant with Him in which they have engaged to be His, and in which He has been graciously pleased to receive them, so that they now constitute His peculium. Jeshurun is, in other words, a symbolical designation of the Church. The text, therefore, represents God as sustaining to those who are members of the Church a relation that He does not and cannot sustain to one who is outside its fold. But there must be special reason for using this particular term to designate the Church. Viewed etymologically we find Jeshurun seems to be the plural diminutive of the word upright. It may, therefore, probably be best translated the children of uprightness. This is God’s designation of the Church, indicative of its true character and mission in the world. Its mission is through the power of Divine grace to set upright that which has fallen. Its first work is to lift truth out of the dust; to free it from the incubus of error and superstition under which it has been borne down; to vindicate it, to defend it against all assaults of error, and to preserve it pure from all the inventions and sophistries of men. Broader, even yet, is the mission of the Church in establishing and maintaining uprightness in the earth. It is designed of God to be the great conservator of virtue, the great bulwark of morality, the efficient safeguard of the rights and liberties, of the intelligence and virtue, of the beneficence and charity that now beautify and gladden the world.
II. The action ascribed to Jehovah. “Who rideth upon the heaven.” It is the same bold figure, so often used by the inspired Psalmist, as when he represents Jehovah as “making the clouds His chariot,” or as “riding upon the wings of the wind.” It is the glory of natural law that it is the power which God wields, the chariot upon which God rides. The more majestic modern science shows it to be, the more do our hearts rejoice in it as a fitting vehicle for the triumphant progress of our King. Let the agnostic blindly worship the material chariot if he will, his eye dazzled with the effulgence of its glittering wheels, and his ear fascinated with its music as it glides over the celestial pavement; be it ours to pay our homage to Him who rides upon it, whose eye of intelligence looks down into ours, whose heart of love beats in sympathy with ours, and whose firm hand upon the rein assures us that all things are working together for our eternal good.
III. The object of Jehovah in thus doing. This riding of the God of Jesburun upon the heaven is “in His people’s help.” The chariot was the most formidable of all the implements of ancient warfare. The celerity with which it swept across the field of action; the momentum with which it crushed its way over the prostrate forms of opposing hosts; the vantage it afforded to the warrior by its elevated platform and protecting rail, and the carnage wrought by the sharp blades upon its axles as they hewed their way through the masses like scythes through the ripened grain: these made it of all engines of war the most effective and the most terrible. The children of Israel fled in dismay as they heard the rumble of Pharaoh’s chariot wheels. When intercepted by the waters of the Red Sea they stood cowering with affright as they saw the gleam of the chariots in the sunlight. Moses, therefore, introduces an element of encouragement peculiarly appropriate to the circumstances and experiences of the people when he represents Jehovah as an infinite charioteer riding majestically forth upon the heaven, keeping ever near His people in their wilderness journey, and ready in the hour of their conflict and peril to appear for their relief and for the discomfiture of their foes. It was just the assurance needed by a host who felt the inferiority of their equipment and resources to those of the enemies with whom they would have to contend. But without discarding from our view the special symbolism of the text, what can be more inspiring to the Church in this age, and in the midst of her present conflicts, than this thought of her Jehovah-Jesus, sitting upon the circle of the heavens, holding in His hands the reins of God’s providential government; keeping pace in the march of His providence with the progress of the Church; then always nearest when she is in her times of greatest peril; holding all the powers of heaven, earth, and hell in subjection to Himself, and plucking His grandest victories over the powers of darkness out of the very jaws of apparent defeat? (T. D. Witherspoon, D. D.)
God and the true
1. The last words of a truly great man.
2. Referring to subjects of the highest moment.
I. The incomparable God of the good.
1. His activity. Never slumbers or sleeps. The universe moves because He moves.
2. His grandeur.
3. His eternity.
II. The incomparable blessedness of the good.
1. None are so well protected from the perils of life.
2. None are so well supported under the trials of life.
3. None are so certain of conquering the enemies of life.
4. None are so enriched with the enjoyments of life,
These they shall possess--
(1) in safety;
(2) in rich variety;
(3) under the guardianship of God. (Homilist.)
The last words of Moses
Moses the man of God (who had as much reason as ever any mere man had to know both) with his last breath magnifies both the God of Israel and the Israel of God, They are both incomparable in his eye; and we are sure, in this his judgment of both, his eye did not wax dim.
I. No God like the God of israel.
1. This was the honour of Israel. Every nation boasted of its God, but none had such a God to boast of as Israel had.
2. It was their happiness that they were taken into covenant with such a God. Two things he notes as proofs of the incontestable preeminence of the God of Jeshurun--
(1) His sovereign power and authority (verse 26).
(2) His boundless eternity (verse 27).
II. No people like the Israel of God.
1. Never was people so well seated and sheltered (verse 27).
2. Never was people so well supported and borne up. The “everlasting arms” shall support--
(1) The interests of the Church in general, that they should not sink or be run down.
(2) The spirits of particular believers; so that, though they may be oppressed, they shall not be overwhelmed by any trouble.
3. Never was people so well commanded and led on to battle.
4. Never was people so well secured and protected (verse 28). “Israel then shall dwell in safety alone.”
(1) Though alone; though they contract no alliances with their neighbours, nor have any reason to expect help or succour from any of them, yet they shall dwell in safety, they shall really be safe, and they shall think themselves so.
(2) Because alone; they shall dwell in safety as long as they continue pure and unmixed with the heathen, a singular, and peculiar people. Their distinction from other nations, though it made them like a speckled bird (Jeremiah 12:9), and exposed them to the ill-will of those about them, yet it was really their preservation from the mischief their neighbours wished them, as it kept them under the Divine protection. All that keep close to God shall be kept safe by Him. It is promised that in the kingdom of Christ Israel shall dwell safely (Jeremiah 23:6).
5. Never was people so well provided for. The fountain of Jacob, i.e. the present generation of that people, which is as the fountain to all the streams that shall hereafter descend and be derived from it, shall now presently be fixed upon a good land. The eye of Jacob (so it might be read, for the same word signifies a fountain and an eye) is upon the land of corn and wine, i.e. where they now lay encamped they had Canaan in their eye; it was just before their faces, on the other side the river; and they would have it in their hands and under their feet quickly.
6. Never was people so well helped (verse 26). They that are added to the Gospel Israel are such as shall be saved (Acts 2:47).
7. Never was people so well armed. God Himself was the shield of their help, by whom they were armed defensively, and sufficiently guarded against all assailants; and He was the sword of their excellency, by whom they were armed offensively, and made both formidable and successful in all their wars. God is called the sword of their excellency, because, in fighting for them, He made them to excel other people; or, because in all He did for them He had an eye to His sanctuary among them, which is called the excellency of Jacob (Psalms 47:4; Ezekiel 24:21; Amos 6:8). Those in whose hearts is the excellency of holiness, have God Himself for their shield and sword, are defended by the whole armour of God; His word is their sword, and faith in it is their shield (Ephesians 6:16-17).
8. Never was people so well assured of victory over their enemies. They shall be found liars unto thee, i.e. shall be forced to submit to thee sore against their will, so that it will be but a counterfeit submission. Yet the point shall be gained, for thou shalt tread upon their necks (so the Seventy), which we find done (Joshua 10:24). (Matthew Henry, D. D.)