THE BLESSING OF MOSES
[p. 503] THE BLESSING OF MOSES
Reading the greater part of this chapter, I have no intention of enlarging on all the blessings; each of them would furnish sufficient substance for an address. My thought is that in reading this chapter. God may come before us and bathe our souls in the richness of His thoughts of us and for us, through the varied blessings indicated; for it has to be borne in mind that these blessings are for us all. It is not that you are to be blessed with one blessing and I with another: God’s blessings are the outcome of His love, and He is not a respecter of persons in showering them upon us. We are all in His mind: indeed, as believers, we were in His mind before the world was, and the Spirit of God says that He has blessed us with “every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ”, (Ephesians 1:3). We have not only every spiritual blessing that any of the blest families shall have, but we have them, and more besides, where some of them will not have any, that is, “in the heavenlies”.
Now that is what I have in mind, dear brethren, so that my hope is, not only that we may have a word from the Lord, but that there should be a sense of the richness of divine blessings; that our souls may be, as it were, touched and bathed, in them. I am encouraged to go as far as using the word ‘bathed’ because in the gospel of Luke, heaven came down in volume and encircled the shepherds who were keeping their sheep by night; they were evidently the objects of heaven’s interest. It is said that “an angel of the Lord was there by them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them”; they were thus honoured by a heavenly visitant, and encircled with the glory of the Lord. But as if that were not enough the Holy Spirit goes on to tell us that “suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host” — heaven, as it were, brought down in volume to encircle [p. 504] these honoured ones, and the heavenly visitants were saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in men”. They were made to breathe the very atmosphere of heaven, and to hear what heaven was saying — what angelic companies were saying: they were speaking about divine glory, and that that was now brought within man’s range. It was there in One born unto them, not here born unto God, but unto them “a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord”. That was the great fact; and the heavenly companies came down and surrounded these shepherds, speaking of this great event, that it might saturate their souls. That is what God will do for us, deal-brethren, for He is lavish; His thought is pouring out. As the apostle says “which he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ”, (Titus 3:6). Heaven’s wealth comes down in a mediatorial way through our Lord Jesus Christ, so as to fill our souls, as it says in Acts 2, “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit”. It sat upon each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, for He fills every available vessel; and they “began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave to them to speak forth”.
Now this chapter is on that line. You will observe it opens with: “And this is the blessing, wherewith Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death. And he said ...”. He does not begin with the children of Israel, he begins with God; as you might expect, for he was “the man of God”. The more we know of God the more we love Him, and the more we love to hear about Him; not only of our own blessings but about Him, for our blessings are all bound up with the knowledge of God; all our blessings centre in the knowledge of God, and we would not have it otherwise. So Moses begins with God. “Jehovah came from Sinai, And rose up from their unto them; He shone forth from mount Paran, and he came from the myriads of the sanctuary”. That is to say, we have God in His own [p. 505] setting. We are all prone to bring Him into ours: our horizon is in all at best, but God’s horizon is infinite, and He presents Himself, as revealed, in His own setting. It is a foreshadowing of God coming out in Christ; He “came from Sinai”. It is not here a question of the demands or terrors of Sinai, but of God making selection of a group of positions from which He would shine out. “And rose up from Seir unto them”; Seir was His too. Whatever part Esau had in it, whatever the faithlessness of the brethren in it, it was God’s possession, it had been given to Esau. Then it says, “He shone forth from mount Paran”. I only refer to this, to call attention to the divine setting, how God would set Himself before stances in which He shines out. Let us not attempt to go beyond revelation; that is to say, God coming out according to His pleasure. He dwells “in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen, nor is able to see”, but He has come out in revelation; thus we are baptised “to the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”. That is the setting; and it is in that setting all our blessings lie both for time and for eternity. So here in Deuteronomy 33 you have the coming, and the rising, and the shining, and then the law of fire. There is Sinai, and Seir, and Paran and the sanctuary, with its ‘myriads’. Whatever there may be in this world of wickedness there are the “holy myriads”: God has got them. Enoch saw Him coming with them. Here He shines forth from them. Then there is “a Jaw of fire”, doubtless alluding to the pillar of fire that guided them.
The love comes next. “He loveth the peoples, all his saints are in thy hand, and they sit down at thy feet; each receiveth of thy words”. What a beautiful setting we have here both in regard of God and in regard of His people! He loves us — that is the wilderness position. “He loveth the peoples”, or the tribes, meaning, in type, the saints in assembly but in the wilderness, not yet in [p. 506] the heavenlies. How God, as we learn in the Psalms, shone out upon them! How He would look out with affection on those tribes as they were set around His habitation, according to the directions of His wisdom! He would look east, or north, or west, or south, there they were, as Balaam saw them, in their tents, in all their spiritual perfection which God alone could rightly value. He loved the people, and they sat at His feet and heard His word. You can understand, dear brethren, that God is not now speaking of our fleshly conditions; He is looking at us in this blessing entirely from the standpoint of His own work in us. You are characteristically one that is loved as in your own local setting; standing in relation to your tribe; and God regards you thus as sitting at His feet, and hearing His words; for as Moses went out and spake the words of Jehovah, He is regarding them here, as listening.
Then the passage goes on to speak of the law, “the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob”, verse 4. You see it is an inheritance; the law is not presented here as exacting, or as bringing the knowledge of sin, but with spiritual significance, as conveying the thoughts of God. It is “the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob”. God is in His place and we worship Him there; we are reverential towards Him as He is there. We are in our place and He loves us there: that is. God is God, and man is man. God loves man and man loves God. That is the eternal setting of things. It is from this setting we have the blessing; and I wish to speak of these blessings as bearing on us all, each of them referring to us all.
The first blessing is life. It is not exactly what we speak of eternal life, but life as the power of movement, that which shews itself in our movements, so that instead of dying, instead of being irresponsive to God, we are alive — “Let Reuben live, and not die”. God loves life; He loves it in its fruits in its movements. Our Lord Jesus was said to “grow up before him as a tender plant”: that was what delighted Him. “Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted”, says the Lord, “shall be rooted up”. (Matthew 15:13). We are identified with Jesus in the likeness of His death, as He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so that we should walk in newness of life. Then “Let not his men be few” should read, “Let his men be few”, which would appear to be inconsistent, but it is a question of Quality. In the creation there are “living things innumerable”; but “Let his men be few” alludes to quality and capability of being counted; that we are not to be a mass, an unordered crowd, but easily regulated, or as in assemblies that can be counted — assemblies in which we know one another by the marks of life in each other. So that spiritually developed persons can be counted. One of the features of the wilderness is counting, hence the book of ‘Numbers’.
The next blessing is for Judah, whose voice is to be heard. These meetings are very largely for young people, and the first thing, dear young people, is this movement of life, as seen in Reuben; not natural energy which goes in for sports and other pleasures of this world. Such evidences of natural life are not marks of the blessing of God; but belong to Esau’s world, for he was “a man of the field”. “Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents”; he was indeed spiritual, as his history shows. He did not develop sporting energy or skill, that was not his aim; he belonged to the spiritual family, the family of faith, and he dwelt in tents. There dwelt with him one of the most honoured men in the Old Testament, his grandfather Abraham who “dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob”. You get no such company as that in the field, or on the tennis court the man of faith did not go there; that was Esau’s place and he despised his birthright. “Let Reuben live, and not die”; the blessing here is life. The movements of the man of faith are delightful to God; he is in a place of obscurity in this world, not in a palace,
[p. 508] but dwelling in tents, in movable abodes. The men of faith were sojourners here, but they were heirs together of the same promise; the promise to Abraham was the promise to Isaac and to Jacob.
But I have got to Judah: “Hear, Lord, the voice of Judah, and bring him unto his people”, verse 7. This, no doubt, has a dispensational bearing, but I am not speaking of that, but that you, dear young people, should be brought to your people. The world does not afford your people. Ruth says: “Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God”. That is the idea here. Then “may his hands strive for them”, as it may read. Now, you see, you are brought amongst the saints. Is there anyone here who has confessed the Lord who has not put out his hands for fellowship with God’s people? There may be some of such here. You have the movements of life maybe, for the Spirit of God is given to those who believe on the Lord Jesus, and there are the consequent movements of life, but the next thing is to be brought to your people. They will be ready, no doubt, to put their Hands upon you, as Ananias did upon Saul, as you seek to identify yourself with Him. “Hear, Lord, the voice of Judah”; that is those prayers in your closet to God for guidance, for spiritual companionship — these are heard. You remember how Saul’s praying was his commendation: the Lord said “Behold, he prayeth”, and surely his voice was heard. He says, too, that Saul saw in a vision a man coming and laying his hands on him. The Lord knew all that was going on in Saul’s heart, as well as his voice, and he was brought to his people. He got strength, having taken food, and was with the disciples certain days. They were his companions; great man though he had been in Jerusalem, he is now a companion of the lowly followers of Jesus, in Damascus; and he soon moves his hand to help them, for he begins to preach that is the next thing. The next blessing is that of Levi. We are led on in [p. 509] this wonderful chapter from blessing to blessing, one blessing added to another, increasing as it goes; the next after Judah, is Levi. Levi is the spiritual side. You can understand that the blessings of Reuben and Judah, combined in one would make a man spiritual; he would think for God and help His people; of Judah it is said, “May his hands strive for them”. We have no past history in Reuben nor in Judah here, but in Levi you have past history: there can be no levitical service without past history. The typical Levite is Aaron; he was eighty-three years old before we hear of him by name, and that implies past history with God. “Let thy Thummim and thy Urim be with thy Holy one”, God knows that you are holy now that you are beginning to think for Him, and becoming a priest; in your prayers you are priestly, you are thinking of the saints, of the honour of God in His people, and God says as it were ‘I will trust him with my Thummim and my Urim’ — which is perfections and light. They were set in the breastplate of the high priest. Levi includes the priesthood. It is the priestly family. It says of him here “Whom thou didst prove at Massah, and with whom thou didst strive at the waters of Meribah”. He is proved, he has past history with God. As soon as you begin to make spiritual history. God loves to go over the ground you have covered. As soon as one repents he begins to make history in heaven, and surely history is begun in his own soul as well. The history of our souls is kept in heaven, and God loves to go over it; it reflects the operations of His grace in us.
Levi said to his father and his mother: “I have not seen him”. You say, should not we honour our father and mother? But when you come into the fellowship of God’s Son you stand in relation to God and His assembly; as in the assembly father and mother have to be left, outside — all family links have to be set aside. Many a sorrow has been brought in because this history cannot [p. 510] be recorded of us; we have sought to carry our family links and affections into the assembly of God. Judging these things you are as Levi, of whom it says, “They have observed thy word, and kept thy covenant. They shall teach Jacob thy judgments, and Israel thy law: they shall put incense before thee, and whole burnt sacrifice upon thine altar”. Now, you see, you are honoured. God is taking account of your spiritual history. He can trust you, and you have a place among the holy myriads; you put incense before God and whole burnt-offerings, that is to say, you are not half-hearted. You are like the widow in the gospels; she had two mites and she put them both into the treasury, she might have conveniently kept back one. “Whole burnt-offering” refers to wholehearted appreciation in the offerer. There is a complete thought of Christ.
The next is Benjamin. You can understand now the place you will have with God, you will be “the beloved of the Lord”. How precious to be the beloved of the Lord who dwells in safety by Him! It says: “The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by him; and the Lord shall cover him all the day long, and he shall dwell between his shoulders”. You come now into the enjoyment of the love of God. “The beloved of the Lord” you might say, was an expression that refers to Christ but the expressions that refer to Christ are very largely applicable to us as related to Him. We are blessed in Him; as He is the delight of God so we are the delight of God; as He is the beloved, so are we. “Accepted in the beloved” — think of that! What an incentive, to go on on these lines, and come into the things that are open to you! And then the next thing is “He shall dwell between his shoulders”. I have no doubt that this refers to the position of the temple in the territory of Benjamin, because the temple was literally built in his territory, Jerusalem being one of his cities at the outset. Much might be said about that, as to how it came into Judah’s [p. 511] hands but the point for us is that as we dwell in safety by Him, He dwells between our shoulders — meaning that we support the dwelling place of God. Is it not indeed that we should be strengthened with might by the Father’s Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith? (Ephesians 3:16). It is a question of strength; not only of life but strength, so that we can afford a dwelling place for Him. “That the Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height ... that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God”.
Then next is Joseph; and now we come to the supreme position After Joseph it is a question of service or activity. Joseph and Levi have most notice, and you can understand that, for as we come to Joseph we come typically to Christ, and to the saints in Christ — “the myriads of Ephraim” and the “thousands of Manasseh”. That refers to us, to the saints viewed as in Christ. Joseph here is thus Christ; but the division of the tribe into two, makes way for the saints as viewed in Christ. It is an Ephesian position. We are blessed with every spiritual blessing, in the heavenlies in Christ — that is the thousands of Ephraim and the thousands of Manasseh. Now you see, beloved, where you are brought to — look at the range of the blessing! It says: “For the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth beneath, and for the precious fruits brought forth by the sun, and for the precious things put forth by the moon, and for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting hills, and for the precious things of the earth and fulness thereof, and for the good will of him that dwelt in the bush: let the blessing come upon the head of Joseph, and upon the top of the head of him that was separated from his brethren”. You can see the position. The whole [p. 512] range of the divine realm is brought into view, and every blessing is centred in Joseph, all must shower upon Joseph. Think of the wealth that was poured upon him! and, not the least, “the good will of him that dwelt in the bush”. That is a touching reference. In commercial circles we hear of ‘good will’, sometimes it is sold at a high price; but there is nothing tangible, its tangibility is assumed to be realised later, and may not be. But think of the good will that fills this whole realm of blessing! It is wealth in itself — for what will not accrue to us, as having the good will of Him that dwelt in the bush? God coming in in such lowly circumstances has proved His love. His good will is indeed the outcome of His love. Think of being here for that good will! It is everlasting, eternity, beloved, will prove its full results. We are already heirs to it in Christ, as it says here, “the ten thousands of Ephraim, and the ... thousands of Manasseh”. We are all in that; it is the full height of the blessing for us; it typifies Ephesians, and all that it discloses, and the testimony that follows, in the remaining tribes, should be worthy of it. The testimony of a Roman Christian merely, is not the same as the testimony of an Ephesian Christian. Ephesians presents the full divine height, and so conveys the fulness of the blessing.
What follows corresponds with this: Zebulun is to rejoice in his going out, and Issachar in his tents. “They shall call the people unto the mountain; there they shall offer sacrifices of righteousness: for they shall suck of the abundance of the seas, and of treasures hid in the sand”: you have invitation, sacrifice and abundance. They draw on the wealth of the seas, the allusion, doubtless, is to their position in the land; for these blessings anticipate that position. They were by the sea-shore, and they sucked the abundance of the seas, and hence their hospitality. What is mentioned is something like what we enjoy now, and like that which some of us have shared [p. 513] elsewhere during the week: we have been invited to the mountain, and there it was that the wealth of God was poured out. All this comes in after Joseph, that is, after the Ephesian position.
The next after Zebulun and Issachar is Gad, which is the enlargement. You can understand, dear brethren, that enlargement on God’s part is not simply adding numbers. Numbers of unspiritual people being added is not enlargement according to God. Enlargement according to God, is the outcome of our apprehension and entrance into what He is in Christ, and the domain of blessing opened up in Him. Gad is enlargement, following upon Zebulun and Issachar: those who suck the abundance of the seas, who call the people unto the mountain, and offer sacrifices righteousness. In connection with that you may be sure of enlargement. Where there is hospitality and sacrifice, and where wealth is collected, as it were, from the seas, then there is enlargement, which is Gad. There is one thing about him, that he had reserved a portion for the lawgiver — that is that Moses was buried in his territory, meaning spiritually, that the lawgiver is valued. (Psalm 119). In the enlargement we do not disregard the commandments of God; we are more concerned for the commandments of God than for increase of numbers.
And then there is Dan, who leaps from Bashan — not, from his own territory but from territory that had been given to the two and a half tribes. It is like Romans. Romans implies the spring, that is, the Spirit in the believer; this is not only justification and peace with God, but the Spirit as the spring in the Christian. Dan is not here the historical apostate tribe as he is elsewhere; he is spiritual, and leaps from Bashan.
Naphtali comes next. “Naphtali, satisfied with favour, and full of the blessing of Jehovah”, verse 23. As I said. God would impress us and bathe our souls by the Spirit with these thoughts. Whatever was [p. 514] written beforetime was written for our learning, and in Hebrews the Holy Spirit speaks to us by quotations from the Old Testament. And so here, saints are to be satisfied with favour and full of the blessing of the Lord.
After Naphtali you have Asher. Naphtali possesses the west and the south, and Asher is said to be blessed with children. That is to say, you have a spiritual generation now contemplated. “Let Asher be blessed with children; let him be acceptable to his brethren, and let him dip his foot in oil”. He carries all the blessings, for the last, as it were, carries all the others. A spiritual generation is there contemplated, and his foot is to be dipped in oil.
Such, presented in a very brief way, are the rich thoughts contained in this wonderful chapter. May God help the young, and indeed all of us to get into these thoughts, and live in them, and bathe our souls in them, by the Spirit of God, so that we may come out here with our feet dipped in oil, walking in the grace of the Spirit, and acceptable to our brethren!