WHAT ONE PARENTHESIS CONTAINS.
By John Nevins Andrews
The book of Deuteronomy is a rehearsal of the forty years’ wanderings of Israel in the wilderness. To the thoughtful reader of the Bible it is a record of remarkable interest. Indeed we can never exhaust its treasures of instruction, and its lessons of experience. The second verse of the book is worthy of much more attention than it usually receives. It is given in a parenthesis, as though breaking the connected story by an important explanatory clause. Thus we read, Deut. 1, 2: “There are eleven days’ journey from Horeb by the way of mount Seir unto Kadesh-barnea.” From Horeb, which is but another name for Sinai, or else another peak of the same mountain, to Kadesh-barnea which was close to the border of the promised land, there was a distance of eleven days’ journey for the host of Israel. They remained at Sinai nearly one year, receiving the law, constructing the tabernacle, and organizing the camp of Israel. Then in the second year (Num. x,) the pillar of cloud removing, they followed its guidance to Kadesh-barnea. There were some hindrances, and much that was evil in their conduct by the way, yet eleven marching days from Sinai brought them to the land which God had promised. That they were not fit for it, had been made painfully apparent. Rebellion flowed from their evil hearts of unbelief, as naturally as water from a fountain. So it was proper that they should be subjected to a trial that should show how far they had profited by the wonderful dealings of God with them; that should in a word show just what they were. The report of the spies at this point in their history, furnished just the trial that they needed. Num. xiii; xiv. So upon the very border of the land of promise, the people almost as one man, broke out in such rebellion against God, that with a solemn oath he swore that they should never set their feet upon the soil of that good land. The spies that had visited the land, had spent forty days in examining it, and God fixed the period of their wanderings in the wilderness, at forty years, each day of the spies’ examination of the land, being answered by a year of wandering in the wilderness. What a terrible sentence to be pronounced upon a people just ready as they supposed to enter the land! They must wander forty years. And that was not the worst of it. When that time should expire, it was not the purpose of God that they should enter the land. No by no means. On the contrary every one of that host of men and women, with almost the smallest possible exception, knew that they should die before that period expired. And so they did; the second numbering of Israel attesting the fact, that not one of the vast host of rebellious men and women remained alive. Num. xxvi, 63–65. And now at the end of their forty years’ sojourn, Moses rehearses their long and weary wandering in the wilderness. How much time had they spent, from Sinai to the promised land? About thirty-nine years. How far was it actually from the one point to the other? Only eleven days’ journey. No wonder Moses could not enter upon this forty years of needless wandering, without pausing to tell his hearers that it was a distance of eleven days’ march. What a significant statement that was. And how humiliating to those who heard him. Had every day been a day of overcoming, every night had witnessed their tents pitched a day’s march nearer the land of promise. A very brief period after the great work wrought at Sinai, was sufficient to have taken them to the land which they sought. But they did not profit by God’s dealings with them. They did not overcome. They went on, day after day, yielding to the power of Satan instead of resisting it, and so instead of a comparatively brief journey to the land of Canaan, they spent forty years of wandering in the wilderness, and every one of them, with two exceptions, failed of entering the land which God designed for them. How strikingly does this illustrate the religious experience of most professed Christians. In an experience of forty years, how many there are who have not traveled a greater distance than eleven days’ journey, of a faithful disciple of Christ. How many at the end of this long period, find themselves at the borders of Egypt and not of Canaan. How many whose heads are white for the grave, and who have been in name, the disciples of Christ almost their whole lives, have spent, like Israel in the wilderness, at least as much time in traveling from the promised land, as toward it! How awful this is to think of! Fitly do such persons say, “I have made many crooked paths.” They have indeed. And if they do not pay the penalty that Israel did, of coming short of the land of promise, it will be because godly sorrow works repentance unto life. Alas! what a miserable deception is much that is called Christian experience—what a dishonor to the cause of Christ, is such religion. Christian experience is nothing more nor less, than forming an acquaintance with Christ, which becomes every day more intimate and precious. It is following on to know the Lord. It is adding grace to grace. It is walking with God. It is resisting the Devil. It is humbling ourselves before God. It is overcoming temptation. It is keeping our face turned toward Canaan all the time. It is advancing always. It is retrograding never. It is bearing the cross of Christ. It is denying self. It is dying daily. It is not living ourselves, but having Christ live in us. Eleven days of such Christian experience is worth more than forty years of such as most persons are satisfied with. Why is it that men can never learn that the service of self and Satan, is not the service of Christ? That progress made with our back toward Canaan and our face toward Egypt, will never bring us to the land of promise. And even to journey in the right direction for a time, and to offset this with an equal or greater retrograde march, is to make no progress in the right direction. Can we find nothing in all this for solemn admonition? How much progress have we made in the five, or ten, or twenty, or forty years that we have been on the road? How far are we from the point where we set out to gain the kingdom of God? Are we even now gaining ground day by day? If not, it may be set down as a moral certainty that we shall never enter the land of promise. We cannot afford to lose one day. ’Tis time we all awake; the dreadful day draws near.