Depart ye
A peremptory, yet encouraging call
1.
Thus peremptorily were the Jewish exiles called home. Nearly three generations had fled since their fathers had been forcibly settled on the plains of Shinar; but during that period the temporal lot of the Jews had been gradually bettering. Time had healed many wounds, a milder administration had weakened the memory of many sorrows. In “the strange land,” strange no longer, homes had been gathered, wealth accumulated, honours won. The land of their fathers was far away, was personally known to few, and lay on the other side of a pathless wilderness. To men so circumstanced, the call to depart was far from welcome. Many ties must be severed if that call were obeyed; many sacrifices made, much travail endured. The present good seemed far better than the future. Besides, who did not know, at least by report, something of the perils of that barren waste over which their march must be made? Who could ensure them, during the progress of that march, against serious harm and loss? Who could demonstrate the certain gain to the majority of exchanging Babylon for Jerusalem, the level land of Shinar for the hill country of Judah? Thus, excuses for remaining sprung readily to their lips; difficulties in obeying the summons grew palpably before their eyes. It was an unwelcome demand, and therefore seemed impossible.
2. But if the prophet s call were peremptory, it was not unsupported by arguments of the weightiest kind. However difficult, the separation must be made, the departure undertaken; but there need be no hurry in their flight, as when Israel went forth from Egypt. The preparation might be deliberate and careful, but one end must be kept steadily in view--return to Palestine. Make all just allowances, meet all just claims, settle all needful matters of business; but still, Prepare to depart. Be ready to leave behind all taint of idolatry. And yet, Take heart, ye fearful ones, and be of good courage. The desert may be trackless, but God shall lead you. The perils of the journey may be numerous, but God shall defend you. The nomadic tribes may harass your hindmost companies, but God shall be your rearward. Such is the interpretation of the original purpose of the prophet s stirring words. (J. J. Goadby.)
Spiritual progress
Let us take these words as helping to illustrate some of the broader features of spiritual progress.
I. SPIRITUAL PROGRESS DEMANDS SEPARATION AND SACRIFICE. What are some of these things from which we must separate ourselves, even at the cost of sacrifice, if spiritual progress is to be made?
1. It is no uncommon thing to find an easy contentment with the truth already attained. The conceit begotten of little knowledge is a fatal bar to progress. The voice of truth may call loudly at our door, “Depart ye; go ye out from thence;” but to heed that voice sacrifice is inevitable. There is no other method of attaining large spiritual advantage than the destruction of our ignorant self-complacency.
2. Spiritual progress largely depends upon the renunciation of the idea of the present perfection of our character. Many would start back at the notion of laying to claim “being already perfect” who virtually live as though it were the first article of their belief. They merely dream over the possibility of improvement. In some cases the error is traceable to the mistakes committed at the very beginning of their spiritual life. Conversion is made “the be-all and the end-all” of their religion. Life seems to travel upward until it reaches that point, and to travel downward ever afterward.
3. But them is another form in which error crops out in older men. For example, when all the inspiration of life is drawn from the past, not with a view of further advancement, but rather as an apology for present repose. “Our best inspiration is not gained from what is behind, but from what is before, and what is above.”
4. Still further, no spiritual progress is possible unless we are willing to give up our personal indolence.
II. SPIRITUAL PROGRESS TOLERATES NO DELAY BUT THAT WHICH IS SPENT IN PREPARATION. It would have been a strange perversion of the prophet’s words if the Jews had regarded the assurance that “they should not go out with haste, neither by flight,” as teaching that they were to protract their preparations indefinitely, protract them so as ultimately to relinquish their journey. They rather encourage them, while not neglecting the judicious settlement of their affairs, to make suitable provision for their march across the wilderness. There need be neither bustle nor confusion, since their exodus will not be either sudden or stealthy. It is Cyrus who reigns, not Pharaoh. But still, it is a journey for which they are to prepare, not a lengthened residence in Babylon. The bearing of all this, as an illustration of spiritual progress, it is not very difficult to see. The delay which is spent in preparation is progress. This may spring, for example, from a careful acquisition of Divine truth. The same thing holds good in regard to character. We cannot force maturity, but we can prepare for it; and all such preparation hastens the desired consummation. Before the Jew reached the land of promise, every stage between Babylon and Jerusalem had to be faithfully traversed. There are stages, also, in the development of character, no one of which can be omitted without subsequent loss. Seasons of suffering of enforced idleness, of dark and apparently irreparable bereavement, are some of the necessary elements out of which real character is born. The time consumed by such discipline is not delay, but progress. All systems, therefore, which attempt to force maturity are as delusive as they are mischievous. Christian work furnishes another illustration of the same general truth. Bracing ourselves up for present duty, and mastering it, is the best qualification for future success.
III. SPIRITUAL PROGRESS IS UNDER DIVINE DIRECTION. “The Lord will go before you.” Here was encouragement for the timid Jew. As a general leads his army, and a shepherd his flock, so will Jehovah “go before” the returning exile. Nay more: He shall lead them as a conqueror and a king. But observe more particularly--
1. God has a perfect knowledge of our journey.
2. God is ever near. Whatever the stage, and whatever the necessities of the march, He was nigh at hand, even to the ancient Jew. Much closer has He now come to us, He is Immanuel. Here, then, is most powerful stimulus to the flagging Christian.
3. He never leads us where He has not Himself already been. Are we severely tested? “He was tempted in all points like as we are.” Are we finding that maturity can only come through travail of soul? “He was made perfect through sufferings.” He asks us to undertake no difficult service without first showing us His own obedience. When, therefore, murmurs arise within us, and rebellious feelings agitate and disturb, let this be the sufficient check of them all--“It is enough for the disciple to be as his Master.”
4. He is ever before us. We have One in advance of us who knows the possibilities of our nature; and while never overtaxing us, He expects no relaxation of our effort. Let us, therefore, forget the things that are behind, and reach forth unto those that are before, “looking unto Jesus, the Leader and Perfecter of our faith.”
IV. SPIRITUAL PROGRESS IS ASSURED OF DIVINE PROTECTION. “The God of Israel shall be your rereward.” The “rereward” is the hindmost part of the army, where the reserves are stationed. By this arrangement various important ends are served. For one thing, the stragglers who drop out of the line during a long and toilsome march are effectually gathered up and saved. For another, the army is better prepared to meet unexpected attack by being able rapidly to change its front. “The God of Israel shall be your rereward.” Here was the pledge of security for their march across that desert which swarmed, as it swarms now, with scores of robber tribes who have this in common, that they are all equally agile, all equally thirsty for plunder, and all equally unscrupulous. Here, also, lies our truest security in spiritual progress. “The God of Israel is our rereward.”
1. There will, therefore, be no surprises which we are not able to meet, no sudden attack from which He will not prove a sufficient Defender. Our sharpest vigilance will not always serve us; and while sweeping the horizon in one direction, our present danger may approach from another.
2. Then protection is afforded against permanent relapse. If we look forward, our Defender is there. If we look backward, behold, He is there.
3. Then there is a reserve of power and of available help which no saint has ever fully tested. (J. J. Goadby.)
The march through, the desert-world to the city of God
We may learn some of those qualities which should characterize us in this march.
I. THERE SHOULD BE PERPETUAL EXODUS. In all lives there are Babylons, which have no claim on the redeemed of Jehovah. We may have entered them, not without qualms of conscience; but, as time has passed, our reluctance has been overcome. A comradeship has grown up between us and one from whose language and ways we once shrank in horror. An amusement now fascinates us, which we regarded with suspicion and conscientious scruple. A habit of life dominates us from which we once shrank as from infection. A method of winning money now engrosses us; but we can well remember how difficult it was to coax conscience to engage in it. These are Babylons, which cast their fatal spell aver the soul, and against which the voice of God urgently proteste: “Depart ye, depart ye! go ye out from thence.” When stepping out from Babylon to an unwonted freedom, we naturally shrink back before the desert march, the sandy wastes, the ruined remnants of happier days. But we shall receive more than we renounce.
II. IT SHOULD BE WITHOUT HASTE. “Ye shall not go out in haste.” There are many English proverbs which sum up the observation of former days and tell how foolish it is to be in a hurry. But, outside of God, there is small chance of obeying these wise maxims. The age is so feverish. No great picture was ever painted in a hurry. No great book was ever written against time. No great discovery was ever granted to the student who could not watch in Nature’s antechamber for the gentle opening of her door. The greatest naturalist of our time devoted eight whole years almost entirely to barnacles. Well might John Foster long for the power of touching mankind with the spell of “Be quiet, be quiet.” In this our Lord is our best exemplar. This hastelessness was possible to Israel so long as the people believed that God was ordering, preceding, and following their march.
III. WE MUST BE AT PEACE ABOUT THE WAY. In early life our path seems clearly defined. We must follow the steps of others, depend on their maxims, act on their advice. It is only when the years grow upon us that this sense of “waylessness,” as it has been termed, oppresses us. So the exiles must have felt when they left Ahava and started on the desert march. At such times the lips of Christ answer, “I am the Way.” His temper, His way of looking at things, His will, resolves all perplexities. All this was set forth in the figure before us. “The Lord will go before yon.” When the people came out of Egypt, Jehovah preceded the march in the Shechinah cloud that moved softly above the ark. There was nothing of this sort when Ezra led the first detachment of exiles to Zion; but, though unseen, the Divine Leader was equally in the forefront of the march. Thus it is also in daily experience. Jesus is ever going before us in every call to duty, every prompting to self-sacrifice, every summons to comfort, help and save.
IV. WE MUST BE PURE. “Touch no unclean thing. Be ye clean,” etc. Those vessels were very precious. The enumeration is made with minute accuracy Ezra 8:26). But they were above all things holy unto the Lord. Thus they passed across the desert, holy men bearing the holy vessels. Through this world, unseen by mortal eye, a procession is passing, treading its way across continents of time. It bears holy vessels. Testimony to God’s truth, the affirmation of things unseen and eternal, the announcement of the facts of redemption--such are our sacred charge. What manner of persons ought we not to be, to whom so high a ministry is entrusted! Before that procession we are told that waste places would break forth into song. It is a fair conception, as though their feet changed the aspect of the territories through which they passed. What was desert when they came to it, was paradise as they left it! What were ruins, became walls! Where there had been hostility, suspicion and misunderstanding, there came concord and peace, the watchmen seeing eye to eye. This is a true portraiture of the influence of the religion of Jesus over the hearts and lives of men. But let us never forget the importance of prayer, as a necessary link in the achieving of these marvels. (F. B. Meyer, B.A.)
Marching orders
We have here, under highly metaphorical forms, the grand ideal of the Christian life.
I. We have it set forth as A MARCH OF WARRIOR PRIESTS. Note that phrase, “Ye that bear the vessels of the Lord.” The returning exiles as a whole are so addressed, but the significance of the expression, and the precise metaphor which it is meant to convey, may be questionable. The word rendered “vessels” is a wide expression, meaning any kind of equipment, and in other places of the Old Testament the phrase rendered is translated “armour-bearers.” Such an image would be quite congruous with the context here, in which warlike figures abound. And if so, the picture would be that of an army on the march, each man carrying some of the weapons of the great Captain and Leader. But perhaps the other explanation is more likely, which regards “the vessels of the Lord”as being an allusion to the sacrificial and other implements of worship, which, in the first Exodus, the Levites carried on the march. And if that be the meaning, then the figure here is that of a company of priests. I venture to throw the two ideas together, and to say that we may here find an ideal of the Christian community as being a great company of warrior priests on the march, guarding a sacred deposit which has been committed to their charge.
1. Look, then, at that combination in the true Christian character of the two apparently opposite ideas of warrior and priest. It suggests that all the life is to be conflict, and that all the conflict is to be worship. It suggests, too, that the warfare is worship, that the office of the priest and of the warrior are one and the same thing, and both consist in their mediating between man and God, bringing God in His Gospel to men, and bringing men through their faith to God. The combination suggests, likewise, how, in the true Christian character, there ought ever to be blended, in strange harmony, the virtues of the soldier and the qualities of the priest; compassion for the ignorant and them that are out of the way with courage; meekness with strength; a quiet placable heart, hating strife, joined to a spirit that cheerily fronts every danger and is eager for the conflict, in which evil is the foe and God the helper.
2. Note, further, that in this phrase we have the old, old metaphor of life as a march, but so modified as to lose all its melancholy and weariness and to turn into an elevating hope.
3. Again, this metaphor suggests that this company of marching, priests have in charge a sacred, deposit. Paul speaks of the “glorious Gospel which was committed to my trust.” And, in like manner, to us Christians is given the charge of God’s great weapons of warfare, with which He contends with the wickedness of the world--viz, that great message of salvation through, and in, the Cross of Jesus Christ. And there are committed to us, further, to guard sedulously, and to keep bright and untarnished and undiminished in weight and worth, the precious treasures of the Christian life of communion with Him. And we may give another application to the figure and think of the solemn trust which is put into our hands, in the gift of our own selves, which we ourselves can either waste, and stain, and lose, or can guard and polish into vessels meet for the Master’s use. Gathering, then, these ideas together, we take this as the ideal of the Christian community--a company of priests on the march, with a sacred deposit committed to their trust.
II. THE SEPARATION THAT BEFITS THE MARCHING COMPANY. “Depart ye, depart ye! go ye out from thence,” etc. In the historical fulfilment of my text, separation from Babylon was the preliminary of the march. Our task is not so simple; our separation from Babylon must be the constant accompaniment of our march. The order in the midst of which we live is not organized-on the fundamental laws of Christ’s kingdom. And wheresoever there are men that seek to order their lives as Christ would have them to be ordered, the first necessity for them is, “Come out from amongst them, and be ye separate.” This separation will not only be the result of union with Jesus Christ, but it is the condition of all progress in our union with Him. They that are to travel far and fast have to travel light. Many a caravan has broken down in African exploration for no other reason than because it was too well provided with equipments, and so collapsed of its own,, weight. Therefore, our prophet, in the context, says, “Touch no unclean thing.” There is one of the differences between the new Exodus and the old. When Israel came out of Egypt they spoiled the Egyptians, and came away laden with gold and jewels; but it is dangerous work bringing anything away from Babylon with us. Its treasure has to be left if we would march close behind our Lord and Master. We must touch “no unclean thing,” because our hands are to be filled with the “vessels of the Lord.” It is man’s world that we have to leave, but the loftiest sanctity requires no abstention from anything that God has ordained.
III. THE PURITY WHICH BECOMES THE BEARERS OF THE VESSELS OF THE LORD. “Be ye clean.” The priest’s hands must be pure, which figure, being translated, is, transparent purity of conduct and character is demanded from all Christian men who profess to carry God’s sacred deposit. You cannot carry it unless your hands are clean, for all the gifts that God gives us glide from our grasp if our hands be stained. Monkish legends tell of sacred pictures and vessels which, when an impure touch was laid upon them, refused to be lifted from the place, and grew there, as rooted, in spite of all efforts to move them. Whosoever seeks to hold the gifts of God in His Gospel in dirty hands will fail miserably, in the attempt; and all the joy and peace of communion, the assurance of God’s love, and the calm hope of immortal life, will vanish as a soap bubble, grasped by a child, turns into a drop of foul water on its palm, if we try to hold them in foul hands. And, further, remember no priestly service and no successful warfare for Jesus Christ is possible, except on the same condition. One sin, as well as one sinner, destroys much good, and a little inconsistency on the part of us professing Christians neutralizes all the efforts that we may ever try to put forth for Him.
IV. THE LEISURELY CONFIDENCE WHICH SHOULD MARK THE MARCH THAT IS GUARDED BY GOD. “Ye shall not go out with haste, nor go by flight,” etc. This is partly an analogy and partly a contrast with the story of the first Exodus. The unusual word translated “with haste” is employed in the Pentateuch to describe the hurry and bustle, not altogether due to the urgency of the Egyptians, but partly also due to the terror of Israel with which that first flight was conducted. And, says my text, in this new coming out of bondage there shall be no need for tremor or perturbation, lending wings to any man’s feet; but, with quiet deliberation, like that with which Peter was brought out of his dungeon, because God knew that He could bring him out safely, the new Exodus shall be carried on. “He that believeth shall not make haste.” There is a very good reason why we need not be in any haste due to alarm. For, as in the first Exodus, the guiding pillar led the march, and sometimes, when there were foes behind, as at the Red Sea, shifted its place to the rear, so “the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rereward.” (A Maclaren, D.D.)
All the life for God
I have seen in a shop window, “The bulk of our goods are of English manufacture.” Not the bulk only, but all our life must be given over to God. (E. E. Marsh.)