Deuteronomy 11:3














Chastisement (ver. 2) in its wide sense of discipline. The educative process by which God converted, or aimed at converting, the hordes who left Egypt into a nation of brave, free, God-fearing, self-respecting, obedient men and women. This education blended deliverance with judgment on their enemies; loving-kindness in the bestowal of mercies, with severe chastisements in cases of rebellion; attention to their necessities, with frequent exposure to adversity, and consequent trial of their faith and patience. They had been put to school with the Almighty as their Teacher; their lesson-book was the whole extraordinary series of occurrences in Egypt and the desert; the end of the training was to form them to obedience.

I. THREE PHASES OF GOD'S INSTRUCTION OF HIS CHURCH.

1. The shattering of worldly power hostile to the Church (vers. 3, 4). Pharaoh, in his pride and obstinacy, is a type of world-power universally, in its opposition to God's kingdom (Romans 9:17). But though again and again the waves have thus roared, and the floods have lifted up their voice (Psalm 93:3, 4), the Lord on high has shown himself mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea (cf. Psalm 83.; Isaiah 37.; 1 Macc. 4.; Acts 4:23-34; Revelations 19:19; 20:8, 9).

2. The preservation and guidance of the Church itself (ver. 5). In securing the perpetuation of a godly remnant in times of greatest apostasy (1 Kings 19:18; Romans 11:5; Revelations 3:5; 11:3; 12:17); in providing her with a succession of godly teachers (Matthew 28:20; Ephesians 4:11-14); in supplying her necessities, spiritual (John 6:32, 33; 1 Corinthians 10:4; 1 Corinthians 12:13; Ephesians 3:16; Philippians 4:19) and temporal (Matthew 10:9, 10; Acts 4:34; 1 Corinthians 9:14; Philippians 4:15, 16); in opening up the path of duty (Acts 16:10; Romans 15:30, 31; 2 Corinthians 10:13-17), in conducting her from one stage of attainment to another (Ephesians 4:12, 13).

3. The overthrow of antichristian rebellion within the Church (ver. 6). The insurrection of Korah and his company may be taken as representative of antichristian movements generally. These are bound to arise, but will infallibly be crushed (2 Thessalonians 2:3-13; 1 John 2:18; Revelation 17.).

II. OBLIGATIONS ARISING FROM EXPERIENCE OF GOD'S WONDERFUL WORKS. The older portion of that generation had personally witnessed the wonderful works referred to. This gave them a certain advantage, and made disobedience doubly culpable. These works of God had been:

(1) in origin, supernatural;

(2) in kind, of stupendous magnitude; and

(3) had extended over a long period of time.

Those who have lived through any period signalized by remarkable workings of God on behalf of his Church, or whose individual experiences have been remarkable, may learn a lesson. Apply to reformation times, times of religious revival, of deliverance from persecutions, of the forth-putting of God's power in missions, etc. (2 Chronicles 31:25, 26; Ezra 3:10-13; Ezra 6:22; Esther 9:27; Psalm 40:10; Psalm 116:6-9; Acts 15:12). Such experiences:

1. Furnish peculiar evidences of God's grace and power, of the reality of his working in salvation and judgment. These evidences, while not losing their value to later generations, are necessarily of greatest force to those who witness the events.

2. Create impressions of God's character and attributes not so readily created by report. It is much to hear of the wonderful works of God from credible witnesses, but hearing with the ear cannot equal, in impressiveness and force, seeing with the eye (Job 42:5).

3. Imply a personal discipline which others have not had the benefit of. The lessons of our experiences may be conveyed to posterity, but the results of them in personal character remain with ourselves. All this lays on those who have had such experiences very special responsibilities. These relate

(1) to personal obedience (ver. 8); and

(2) to the education of children (vers. 18-21).

How are our children to know of God's mighty works in former days, or get the benefit of our own experiences; how are they to be convinced, moved, or instructed by these things, save as the result of diligent parental teaching? - J.O.

A blessing and a curse.
Mount Ebal, we are told, "is a barren, stony, and arid crag"; so would God "smite the apostates with barrenness, hunger, and misery." Gerizim was "covered with luxuriant verdure, streams of running water and cool and shady groves;" so would God "bless the faithful Israelites with abundance, beauty and peace." It is a grand prophecy in landscape of the judgments of God's eternal providence. Henceforth their future, in the country they conquer and colonise, is in their own hands. The two ways of national and individual life, to ruin or to glory, part plainly before their eyes. The things shown in that early age of symbols were only outward patterns of what goes on in facts and decisions within us. Gerizim and Ebal raise their significant and speaking summits before every life.

I. For, in other words, LIFE IS OVERSPREAD, PERMEATED, AND BOUND IN, BY GOD'S LAW. That law occupies every inch of its extent and every fibre of its organisation. Obey and be blessed, disobey and be accursed; here is the sharp alternative imprinted on every department of our being. Your body, your business, your appetites, your affections, your intellect, your memory, your judgment, your imagination, your household manners, your talk at the table and in the street, your practice of your profession or performance at your trade, your levity or sobriety, your temper and your tongue, your bargains and your salutations, your correspondence and your meditation, your action and your reveries, your hands, heart, and brain, all are penetrated and encircled by this law.

II. THIS LAW IS PERMANENT AND UNCHANGEABLE, AS ITS AUTHOR IS, BEING THE UNIFORM WILL OF AN UNCHANGEABLE MIND; not one thing for preachers and communicants, but for persons who never chose to confess themselves Christians another and easier thing; not strict for one seventh of your time and lax for six sevenths; not varying with situations and fluctuating with opportunities for concealment or degrees of temptation; not satisfied to be respected in the dwellings at one end of a city while it is despised in the warehouses and offices at the other end.

III. Again, THE CONSEQUENCES OF THIS LAW which we are born and live under, in its two-fold working, whether as visiting penalties upon its violators or peace and strength upon its servants — ARE NOT TO BE PREVENTED THOUGH THEY SHOULD BE APPARENTLY OBSCURED OR POSTPONED. This truth requires something more than a theoretic admission. How many of us realise it — that every offence against the Divine Will is certain to bring on, at last, its penal pain ant: sorrow — even its delay aggravating its torment; that every faithful or religious act or feeling must yield its infallible return of joy — the very hindrance enhancing its richness and depth; that Gerizim is sure of the fulfilment of its promise, and Ebal sure of the execution of its warning?

1. Helps enough are given to enable us to realise it. Can we pretend the law is not made plain?

2. We let our short-sightedness be deceived by the slowness of its operation; and, because sentence against our evil works is not executed speedily, suffer our hearts to get set in us to do evil. But the majestic order of nature is not really so stable as the moral results of moral choice, from greatest to least.

IV. With every right-minded Christian it must be a very earnest and very constant prayer, THAT HE MAY GAIN LARGER AND LARGER APPREHENSIONS OF THE EXTENT AND THE SANCTITY OF THIS LAW — the law that puts him on a perpetual choosing between holiness and worldliness, at between blessing and cursing.

V. Another step in the doctrine is TO TRACE UP THIS COMMANDMENT TO ITS CONSCIOUS AND PERSONAL INFINITE SOURCE. The law has its seat in the heart of God. No rigid, unfeeling abstraction is it, but the living Will of a living Father. Choose the right and scorn the wrong; and there will be growing within you a sense of His Almighty Presence, without whom no right could be, and all would be wrong. But remember that moral obedience can never be religious till it has God for its object, God's Will for its guide, and communion with God for its daily inspiration.

VI. And thus we are led up by this order of our subject to discover, finally, THE POSITIVE GRANDEUR OF ALLEGIANCE TO THE DIVINE LAW. That grandeur is witnessed both by its nature and its effects.

1. In its nature. For obedience to the commandment is of itself a noble and valiant element in character. It is no paradox to affirm that the obedient mind is a commanding mind. The law that carries blessings in its right hand and curses in its left appeals to a deeper principle than selfishness. The blessings are not earthly advantages, but those spiritual gifts and honours, like confidence and holiness, love and faith, power and peace, which exclude all thought of self, and are kindred with the glory and purity of heaven. The curses are those elements of spiritual ruin — fear, hatred, passion, jealousy, despair, which impoverish the whole moral creation. The law does not reveal its encouragements and threatenings from Gerizim and Ebal, to make a rich or famous people, but a holy people.

2. So the effect is holiness of life. The commandment is holy, just, and good; and so must its fruit be.

(Bp. F. D. Huntington.)

Moses does not divide the people into two classes: he sets before them alternative courses: — proceed upon the line of obedience, and you come to blessing; proceed along the line of disobedience, and a curse is the inevitable necessity — not a threatening, not an exhibition of fretful vengeance, but a spiritual necessity; a curse follows evil-doing, not as an arbitrary punishment, but as the effect, which can never be changed, of a certain, positive, operating cause. What if everything round about us be confirming the testimony of Moses? What if the Decalogue be written every day of the week? What if in the operation of moral influence it can be distinctly proved that the Bible is true, that the Word of the Lord abideth forever, and that, whatever changes may have occurred, obedience still leads to blessing, disobedience still leads to cursing, and it is not within the wit or the strength of man to change that outgoing of law and consequence? A very precious thing it is that we have only to obey. At first it looks as if we were humbled by this course of service, but further inquest into the spiritual meaning of the matter shows us that in the definition of right and wrong, law and righteousness, God has been most tenderly pitiful towards us, and law is but the practical and more visible and measurable aspect of love. One who knows the universe, because He made it, and all eternity, because He inhabits it, has condescended to tell us what is good, what is true, what is pure, what is right. If we were inspired by the right spirit we would instantly stand up in thankfulness and bless the Giver's name, and ask but one other favour — that we might have eyes to see the innermost meaning of the law, and hearts trained, disciplined, and sanctified to accept and obey it, and express it in noble behaviour. Is it true, within limits that we know, that obedience leads to blessing and disobedience to cursing? Sometimes we have to interrupt the Divine reasoning that we may assist ourselves in its comprehension by the study of analogy upon lower ground. Is it true that there is a seed time, which, if neglected, will be followed by desolation and death?...If all these little outside Bibles are true and can challenge facts to prove their truth, it is not difficult to rise to the higher level, and to say, There may be a Bible meant for the soul; there may be a revelation addressed to the reason, and to the higher reason called faith, and to the higher self called the spirit. This higher revelation has not the immediate advantage of the lower Bibles, because they deal with earth, body, space, time, measurable quantities; but the higher Bible deals with soul, spirit, thought, will, eternity. He who operates within a radius of a few inches can be, apparently, quicker in his movements, more precise and determined in his decisions, than the man who claims the globe as the theatre of his actions. So the Bible, having the disadvantage of dealing with spiritual quantities, must be judged, so far as we can approach it, by the spirit of the lower laws, or the laws applying to the lower economy The argument is this: seeing that in the field, in the body, in the social economy, there is a law of blessing and a law of cursing, who shall say that this same reasoning does not culminate in a great revelation of heaven, hell; "the right hand," "the left hand"; eternal life, everlasting penalty? If the analogies had been dead against that construction, we might by so much have stood in doubt and excused ourselves from completeness of service; but every analogy becomes a preacher: all nature take up her parable and speaks the revelations of her God: all life beats with a pulse below a pulse, the physical throb being but an indication of a growing immortality. We stand in a solemn sanctuary. We cannot get rid of law. The spiritual is a present blessing or a present curse. We cannot be happy with a bad conscience: it hardens the pillow when we need sleep most, it upsets all our arrangements, or makes our hand so tremble that we cannot clutch our own property; and we cannot be unhappy with a good conscience: without bread we are still in fulness, without employment we are still inspired by hope, without much earthly charity or largeness of construction of our motive and force we still retire within the sanctuary of an approved judgment and conscience. Blessing is not a question of posthumous realisation, nor is cursing. Heaven is here, and hell in germ, in outline, in hint, in quick, burning suggestion. Even now sometimes men know not whether they are in the body or out of the body by reason of religious entrancement and ecstasy; and there are men who, if they dare put their feeling into words, would say, "The pains of hell gat hold upon me." "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked"; "Though hand join in band, the wicked shall not be unpunished"; "Be sure your sin will find you out." Who can fight God and win the battle?

(J. Parker, D. D.)

1. What is the blessing set before us? The blessing of him whose sins are forgiven, who lives in God's favour and dies in peace.

2. What is the curse? Just this, "The soul that sins shall die." "Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things written," etc.

3. What is the way to escape the curse? By the death of Christ we are delivered from sin, redeemed from the curse, and by His obedience entitled to a blessing.

4. Which will you choose? Some people think they can make a compromise; that they need not be intensely Christian, as they are not, and will not be intensely worldly. If they do so, it is not really an alteration of their state, but a deception of themselves. You must take the sunshine or the shadow — the evil or the good — the "Come, ye blessed, inherit the kingdom"; or the withering sentence, "Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire."

(J. C. Cumming, D. D.)

People
Abiram, Canaanites, Dathan, Eliab, Moses, Pharaoh, Reuben
Places
Arabah, Beth-baal-peor, Egypt, Euphrates River, Gilgal, Jordan River, Lebanon, Moreh, Mount Ebal, Mount Gerizim, Red Sea
Topics
Acts, Deeds, Doings, Egypt, Heart, Midst, Miracles, Performed, Pharaoh, Signs, Wonders, Works
Outline
1. Another exhortation to obedience
2. by their own experience of God's great works
8. by promise of God's great blessings
16. and by threatenings
18. A careful study is required in God's words
26. The blessing and curse set before them

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Deuteronomy 11:3

     5014   heart, human

Deuteronomy 11:2-3

     1090   God, majesty of

Deuteronomy 11:2-7

     5854   experience, of God
     8231   discipline, divine

Library
Canaan on Earth
Many of you, my dear hearers, are really come out of Egypt; but you are still wandering about in the wilderness. "We that have believed do enter into rest;" but you, though you have eaten of Jesus, have not so believed on him as to have entered into the Canaan of rest. You are the Lord's people, but you have not come into the Canaan of assured faith, confidence, and hope, where we wrestle no longer with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus--when
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 2: 1856

The God of the Rain
(Fifth Sunday after Easter.) DEUT. xi. 11, 12. The land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven. A land which the Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year, even unto the end of the year. I told you, when I spoke of the earthquakes of the Holy Land, that it seems as if God had meant specially to train that strange people the Jews, by putting them into a country where they
Charles Kingsley—The Gospel of the Pentateuch

Gilgal, in Deuteronomy 11:30 what the Place Was.
That which is said by Moses, that "Gerizim and Ebal were over-against Gilgal," Deuteronomy 11:30, is so obscure, that it is rendered into contrary significations by interpreters. Some take it in that sense, as if it were near to Gilgal: some far off from Gilgal: the Targumists read, "before Gilgal": while, as I think, they do not touch the difficulty; which lies not so much in the signification of the word Mul, as in the ambiguity of the word Gilgal. These do all seem to understand that Gilgal which
John Lightfoot—From the Talmud and Hebraica

Josiah, a Pattern for the Ignorant.
"Because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the Lord, when thou heardest what I spake against this place, and against the inhabitants thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and hast rent thy clothes, and wept before Me; I also have heard thee, saith the Lord. Behold therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace; and thine eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place."--2 Kings
John Henry Newman—Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII

The Blessings of Noah Upon Shem and Japheth. (Gen. Ix. 18-27. )
Ver. 20. "And Noah began and became an husbandman, and planted vineyards."--This does not imply that Noah was the first who began to till the ground, and, more especially, to cultivate the vine; for Cain, too, was a tiller of the ground, Gen. iv. 2. The sense rather is, that Noah, after the flood, again took up this calling. Moreover, the remark has not an independent import; it serves only to prepare the way for the communication of the subsequent account of Noah's drunkenness. By this remark,
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

Subjects of Study. Home Education in Israel; Female Education. Elementary Schools, Schoolmasters, and School Arrangements.
If a faithful picture of society in ancient Greece or Rome were to be presented to view, it is not easy to believe that even they who now most oppose the Bible could wish their aims success. For this, at any rate, may be asserted, without fear of gainsaying, that no other religion than that of the Bible has proved competent to control an advanced, or even an advancing, state of civilisation. Every other bound has been successively passed and submerged by the rising tide; how deep only the student
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life

In the Fifteenth Year of Tiberius Cæsar and under the Pontificate of Annas and Caiaphas - a Voice in the Wilderness
THERE is something grand, even awful, in the almost absolute silence which lies upon the thirty years between the Birth and the first Messianic Manifestation of Jesus. In a narrative like that of the Gospels, this must have been designed; and, if so, affords presumptive evidence of the authenticity of what follows, and is intended to teach, that what had preceded concerned only the inner History of Jesus, and the preparation of the Christ. At last that solemn silence was broken by an appearance,
Alfred Edersheim—The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah

The Worship of the Synagogue
One of the most difficult questions in Jewish history is that connected with the existence of a synagogue within the Temple. That such a "synagogue" existed, and that its meeting-place was in "the hall of hewn stones," at the south-eastern angle of the court of the priest, cannot be called in question, in face of the clear testimony of contemporary witnesses. Considering that "the hall of hew stones" was also the meeting-place for the great Sanhedrim, and that not only legal decisions, but lectures
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life

Among the People, and with the Pharisees
It would have been difficult to proceed far either in Galilee or in Judaea without coming into contact with an altogether peculiar and striking individuality, differing from all around, and which would at once arrest attention. This was the Pharisee. Courted or feared, shunned or flattered, reverently looked up to or laughed at, he was equally a power everywhere, both ecclesiastically and politically, as belonging to the most influential, the most zealous, and the most closely-connected religions
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life

Covenanting Confers Obligation.
As it has been shown that all duty, and that alone, ought to be vowed to God in covenant, it is manifest that what is lawfully engaged to in swearing by the name of God is enjoined in the moral law, and, because of the authority of that law, ought to be performed as a duty. But it is now to be proved that what is promised to God by vow or oath, ought to be performed also because of the act of Covenanting. The performance of that exercise is commanded, and the same law which enjoins that the duties
John Cunningham—The Ordinance of Covenanting

The Old Testament Canon from Its Beginning to Its Close.
The first important part of the Old Testament put together as a whole was the Pentateuch, or rather, the five books of Moses and Joshua. This was preceded by smaller documents, which one or more redactors embodied in it. The earliest things committed to writing were probably the ten words proceeding from Moses himself, afterwards enlarged into the ten commandments which exist at present in two recensions (Exod. xx., Deut. v.) It is true that we have the oldest form of the decalogue from the Jehovist
Samuel Davidson—The Canon of the Bible

Deuteronomy
Owing to the comparatively loose nature of the connection between consecutive passages in the legislative section, it is difficult to present an adequate summary of the book of Deuteronomy. In the first section, i.-iv. 40, Moses, after reviewing the recent history of the people, and showing how it reveals Jehovah's love for Israel, earnestly urges upon them the duty of keeping His laws, reminding them of His spirituality and absoluteness. Then follows the appointment, iv. 41-43--here irrelevant (cf.
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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