Reading:
Deuteronomy 8.
"And thou shalt remember all the way which the
Lord thy God hath led thee..."
"Brethren, I count not myself yet to have
apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting the things
which are behind, and stretching forward to the things
that are before, I press on toward the goal, unto the
prize of the on-high calling of God in Christ Jesus"
(Philippians 3:13-14).
"Thou shalt remember..." "Forgetting the
things which are behind..." Remembering and
forgetting!
In these two passages, which look like a contradiction
(though we shall see that they are not), we have,
firstly, an exhortation to grateful recollection.
"Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy
God hath led thee." Then there is an exhortation to
profitable resume - gathering up the lessons for the
future. And, finally, an exhortation to purposeful
resolve: "Forgetting... I press on toward the
goal."
In both places, Deuteronomy and Philippians, we have one
particular point of likeness and similarity: they both
mark a point of transition, or, if you like, of crisis.
In the former case, a big change was about to take place,
and all that Moses said, as you have read in this long
chapter, was said in relation to that transition.
There was about to take place a change in leadership,
which involved a change from a period of deep and drastic
preparation, from a phase of pioneering the way and
laying the foundations for the future, to a time of
proving the value of all that had been and of taking up
responsibility by means of it. It was a transition from a
period of child-training, or what is called chastening,
discipline, to the possession of the inheritance and an
exercise of stewardship.
If you gather all those features together, you will see
quite clearly that they represent the stages and phases
of any normal Christian experience. A true Christian life
or pilgrimage should be marked by those characteristics;
it has its stages, which are Divinely-appointed economies
for these different phases of the Christian life. At one
time, certain things obtain, and are the governing,
outstanding and quite conspicuous ways of the Lord. The
time comes when these lose, or pass from, their
particular place of prominence, and other things take
their place. But within those changing economies there
are always these two things that I have mentioned -
preparation and fulfillment, or responsibility. There is
the laying down of a ground, the providing by God of
experience, of instruction, and then comes the point at
which all that is going to be put to the test as to its
real meaning to those concerned; and it will be put to
the test as they are forced into the way of new
responsibility.
It may be that this is the experience of an individual,
and it very often is, for most of us can see the stages
and phases of our Christian life as we have moved on
through various crises, going from one phase to another.
It may be true of a company of the Lord's people. It may
be true of the whole Church. And at such a time, when the
Lord brings us face to face with the issues of all that
has been in the light of a new day, with its new demands
and new responsibilities, there is a great value in
remembrance. At such a time the Lord says: "Thou
shalt remember."
There are two sides to the remembrance, or recollection.
There is the human side. That is here in this chapter:
"All the way which the Lord thy God hath led thee
these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble
thee, to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart,
whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no."
It was not, as we have often said, that the Lord did not
know what was in their heart, and had to put them into
situations to discover it, but more correctly: 'That He
might make thee know.' The later statement about the
basis of man's subsistence - "that he might make
thee know that man doth not live by bread only" -
can well govern this earlier statement: 'To make thee
know what was in thine heart.' That is an essential
uncovering and disclosure if there is going to be all
that the Lord intends, and it is certainly the most
painful experience, or part of life, when, under the hand
of God, by His dealings, by His ways, by His methods and
by His means with us we come more and more desperately to
recognise what kind of people we really are. There is
such disillusionment about ourselves if we were ever at
all proud or self-sufficient, if we had any opinion of
ourselves, or thought that we were anything. But this
devastating uncovering of our true selves as God sees and
knows them, while it is perhaps the most terrible aspect
of a life under His hand, is absolutely essential to the
purpose of God. There is no doubt about that; and there
is no doubt that that is one of the things that the Lord
does with a life when He gets it into His hands. Sooner
or later He lays that life bare to itself so that it has
no confidence in the flesh whatever. 'To make thee know
what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep His
commandments, or not.' And what was the verdict upon the
forty years in the wilderness? It was 'No!' They were not
capable of doing it in themselves, and they proved to
themselves and to everybody else that it was not in them
to do it. 'And thou shalt remember that!'
Too easily, in the day of blessing, as the chapter goes
on to show, we forget that work of humbling, of emptying,
of breaking, which the Lord did as a part of the very
foundation of everything. That is human nature, how we
are made, so the word comes with tremendous emphasis:
"Thou shalt remember." There are very
many of those phrases with God: 'Thou shalt... thou
shalt...!', and this is one of His imperatives:
"Thou shalt remember!" You must keep in
mind always that the foundation of everything is your own
unworthiness of anything at all. You will never, never
come to appreciate all the grace and mercy of God, all
His goodness and kindness, His patience, His
longsuffering and His forbearance (of which the forty
years are such a history) unless you have come to realise
what Paul said of himself, that 'in me, that is, in my
flesh, dwelleth no good thing. There is no merit for this
in me.' Thou shalt remember that side!
But then, over against the human side of self-discovery,
so much weakness, so much failure, so much shame and
breaking down, there is the Divine side. Oh, what a story
of faithfulness on God's part! The faithfulness of God is
magnified as the true nature of man is revealed under His
hand. 'Thou shalt remember...' that, while it was true
that you could not be relied upon, depended upon, at all,
that you failed at every point of testing and of trying,
and that you proved yourself to be utterly worthless
under every trial, God did not give you up; God did not
abandon you; God did not wash His hands of you. He
remained faithful. "The Lord, merciful and gracious,
slow to anger, and plenteous in loving-kindness" is
written large on the, so to speak, Divine banner over all
the tribes for forty years. 'Thou shalt remember... His
infinite patience, His infinite long-suffering!' This is
the foundation, and is, as I have said, necessary
whenever it is the Lord's purpose to lead into something
more of His glory and honour. It is a work of bringing
home two things: that we are not the people, and
better than any others; and that God is infinitely
merciful to the poorest stuff of humanity.
The Forward Look
Paul, in
the passage in Philippians, is also at a point of
transition. As we know, when he wrote that letter he was
in prison. He felt that the time of his departure was at
hand, and he did not know from day to day whether he
would be led out to his death. He had hopes that there
might be an extending, but he was writing as though the
end was very near. So it was a time of transition for him
and for the churches. The leadership was changing, and
all that had come in by way of the pioneering, the
foundation-laying, the teaching and the training, was now
to give place to the proof of its value by those to whom
it had been given.
Paul knew that his course was run: 'I have finished my
course; I have kept the faith', and yet for him it was
not the end by any means. I think it was very wonderful
that Paul did not close down at that point and say: 'This
is the end!' Instead, it was: 'Even if I have only got
another hour, another day, another week, I press on.
I am not closing down now; I am going on!' And why?
Because as Moses had done, he had seen far, far more
ahead than ever had been before, far more than that which
lay behind, and because that which lay ahead far
outweighed all that he had come into thus far, even after
all those years.
You see, these are the two great lessons of life. Where
does hope lie? Negatively, you have to say: 'Well,
looking at myself, as I now see myself in the light of
God's uncovering of everything, I have to say:
"There is no hope there! There is no hope in me! I
have proved that I am hopeless in this realm of
things."' And that is what Paul was referring to
when he said: 'Forgetting...' What was it about which he
said: 'Forget...'? Look at the chapter again and you will
see. It was all the things in which there was no hope. He
was recounting those things which he said, 'were
gain to me' in the old life, all the things that made up
this world for him in the past, and was saying: 'I have
come to see that these things were no ground of hope at
all. I have come to see that, though I may have had
everything to which people in this world aspire, things
that men are ambitious to get, there is no hope at all in
them.' That is the great lesson of life, on the one side
- to discover where there is no hope and to leave it.
Leave the hopeless ground! Forget it! Oh, for this grace
of forgetfulness, in this matter at any rate!
Forgetfulness is a great trouble to some of us as we get
older. But here is something which we are bidden to
forget.
And on the other side, of course, we have to learn where
hope lies. What is the ground of hope? And here Paul is
but the counterpart of Moses. Moses is bringing into view
the land - the wonderful land flowing with milk and
honey, with all its wealth, all its fruitfulness, all its
depth and fulness. All that was in view. And now today we
know that all that was but a prophetic pointer to the
spiritual. We have heard hundreds of times, perhaps, that
that land depicts, typically, Christ, the 'heavenly
country'; Christ, in whom all the fullness dwells. Hear
Moses talking about the riches and wealth in the land,
and then hear Paul crying: "O the depth of the
riches...!" Oh, the fullness he had seen in Christ!
The land and Christ are part and counterpart. Where is
the hope to deliver Moses and Israel from despair? It
lies in Christ: "Christ in you the hope of
glory." What is the hope with Paul? Well, his
outlook was not too inspiring, you know. He had many
things that made up a ground of very real depression:
'All they that be in Asia be turned from me', and then he
mentioned different ones who had left him. And then,
looking at himself in his situation, it was not too
inspiring from the natural point of view. He was shut up
in prison, tied to his chain, and reduced to pen and
paper, but he was not for a moment cast down or
depressed. Why? Because he had seen how much more there
is in the Lord Jesus than he had ever attained unto.
Christ is bigger than it all. His Christ is bigger than
everything, bigger than all the accumulated
discouragements, so he says: 'I have counted everything
as loss, as refuse, that I may gain Christ and be found
in Him...' - "Forgetting the things which are
behind, and stretching forward to the things that are
before, I press on towards the goal unto the prize of the
on-high calling of God in Christ Jesus." There is
the hope, and that saves from despair.
I wonder, dear friends, if this is all words to you? What
would be your salvation in a time of severe trial,
disappointment, discouragement, opposition, perhaps of
disillusionment? I suggest to you that it is that the
Christ whom you have seen and come to know is bigger than
all that. You just cannot give up everything because of
the difficulties, for what you have seen of Christ is so
real. It is not theory, nor mere teaching. It is not mere
verbiage. No, it is your own heavenly vision. You have
seen, and what you have seen you just cannot un-see. What
has come to you you cannot let go as some mere thing, for
it is your life. And when I say 'it', I mean Him. What
the land was to Moses, Christ was to Paul - very, very
real, very wonderful and very great. And that was hope in
a day when it might well have been despair and deep
depression.
So, what is it? It is the fullness of Christ that has got
a grip on the heart, is pulling at the heart strings and
drawing on, getting through the transition, and
disappointment, of sorrow, of anguish, and of all that
into which we have been brought in those training ways of
God when it would have been so easy to give it all up -
if it were not that we have seen the Land; that we
have been to Pisgah's mountain, and viewed the Land; that
we have had some revelation of Jesus Christ to our hearts
that just cannot be given up as something that does not
work, and does not matter.
"That I may know Him!" says Paul in this
chapter. That is not the quest of a beginner, but of a
man at the end of a long and full life of learning
Christ. Here, at the end, with that so full and rich
knowledge of his Lord, gained through all the years of
training, he says, in effect: 'My knowledge of the Lord
is such that I see far beyond my present attainment and
experience. I see that He is far, far greater than
anything to which I have yet come.' So it is that he
says: "That I may know him!"
There does come a time in the Christian life when the
Lord says: 'Now, look here, I have been dealing with you.
I have been making you know and understand very much, and
now the time has come when all that is going to be put to
the test as to its real value. Have you learnt the
lessons? What do they amount to now in your being able to
take responsibility in spiritual things?' Those crises
arise from time to time. They are very real, for a new
phase of things is breaking upon the people of God. I do
not think I am wrong if I say that the time has begun
when the people of God are going to be put to the test as
to their inheritance, as to what they have received from
the Lord.
Now, let us gather up all the values of our past
experience of the Lord and His past dealings with us and
bring them to this resolve:
'I press on... I press on... I press toward the goal of
the prize of the on-high calling of God in Christ Jesus.'
I wonder if we can come to that resolve! Individually,
you may have been in the fires and have been having a
pretty hard and painful time in your spiritual life, but
that only means that God has been preparing you for
something more. No, God is not a God who believes in
bringing everything to an end. He is always after
something more. He is made like that, if I can put it so.
Something more, and then something more - that is God!
And if He has to clear the way for something more by
devastating methods, well, that is all right, for it is
something more that He is after. There is so much more,
far, far transcending all our asking or thinking.
I said that individually you may have been in the fires,
but it may also be as a company. The Lord does deep, deep
ploughing, but it is always in order to do deep sowing.
He wants a harvest, a crop, and His past dealings, though
they may seem to have been devastating, are only in the
light of that 'so much more' that He would have. But there
must be this resolve to go on, and not give up: 'I am
going on, by the grace of God. I press toward the goal!'
May that spirit be found in us!