DEUTERONOMY 26
This is the only chapter in the book which speaks of the people as worshipping Jehovah, and it is the only chapter in which there is any priestly service Godward.
[p. 318] In verse 4 of this chapter the priest serves Godward in presenting the basket of first-fruits before the altar. It is not placed on the altar; the service here is not sacrificial, as so often in Leviticus; it has not to do with sin or acceptance, but it is the presentation of that which bears witness that the brethren are in the possession and enjoyment of the inheritance which God has given them. It thus throws light on the character of assembly worship which is proper to saints as in “the land”.
Man after the flesh — the man that Satan can work by — is known typically as the subject of divine judgment in the destruction pronounced on Amalek at the end of the previous chapter, for Amalek represents the flesh as the vessel and tool of Satan’s inveterate antagonism to what is of God. But those begotten of God come into the land as their divinely given inheritance, and as they come into possession and cultivate their lots the fruits begin to be gathered (verses 1, 2). When this comes to pass we are not to settle down as if they were given entirely for individual enjoyment, or to be shared with friends of our own selection. They are given to put us in motion towards God in the place of His selection, that common centre of service and worship for all His people where He causes His Name to dwell.
It is God’s thought that all the fruit of the land should minister in the first place to assembly service. He claims priority in this matter. How can we be content, in the light of this chapter, to enjoy spiritual good in an individual or sectarian way? “The first of all the fruit” must be carried to “the place” that God has chosen to cause His Name to dwell there. This character of service is to mark the assembly in addition to the features we have considered in looking at chapters 12, 14, 15, 16. In this way continued freshness in the service and worship of the assembly is maintained,
[p. 319] so that it truly ministers to the pleasure of God. According to the mind of God, full provision was made for the worship of the assembly to be maintained in living freshness right through its history from Pentecost to the rapture. This would be secured by the first of the fruits of the land being continually presented as fresh crops matured through God’s blessing and the spiritual diligence of His saints in the land. It suggests that fresh elements will be continually forthcoming to impart their peculiar grace and value to the worship of the assembly.
How different is this from the formal order of the religious world, or from the routine into which we are all apt to fall! When the headship of Christ and the presence of the Spirit were lost sight of, men cast the public service of God into fixed liturgical moulds to preserve order, but there is no spiritual freshness in that. However many first-fruits may have been given there is no room for them; the service still retains the form into which men cast it centuries ago! The truth of God’s assembly and its service, as set forth typically in this scripture, sets free from all such human restrictions upon spiritual liberty in the service of God. They are indeed a trespass upon His rights, as well as a restraint upon the affections of His people.
“The first of the fruits” would suggest a new spiritual acquisition that has not been known in the soul in quite the same way before. It has not only been in the purpose of God to give it to us, but we have now got it, by His favour, in our hearts. It is in our affections and intelligence in such a way that we can bring it to His assembly for His pleasure, and we can speak to Him about it in the fresh joy of it, and not as something we have had in store a long time. We can speak, too, of the sovereign love that has wrought so wondrously to secure it to us, and to secure us for it. The instruction here is for each individual, but it is to be carried out by all, so that a [p. 320] coming to one centre the service and worship has united assembly character. The spiritual accessions of the individual lead him in the first place, according to this scripture, to the assembly as a contributor to its worship and joy.
“I profess this day unto Jehovah thy God, that I am come unto the land that Jehovah swore unto our fathers to give us”. The Yea and Amen of every promise is in the Son of God, Jesus Christ, and nothing can be more acceptable to God than that we should be able to profess to Him that we have come into this “good land”. It is all His gift, and He gets the glory of it “by us” (2 Corinthians 1: 20); He claims the “first” of its fruit for His own delight, so that we may know how pleased He is that we have come into what was in His heart for us. Our first acquisition of its fruit qualifies us to approach Him with joy as those who can say, “For all is of thee, and of that which is from thy hand have we given thee” (1 Chronicles 29: 14). What a blessed thought this gives of the service of God in His assembly! No false humility that thinks to please God by asserting its own unworthiness and emptiness. No efforts to bring what we have not got. But the simplicity of hearts that have come, by divine grace and power, into that which God has given in Christ, and can “profess” this to Him in the consciousness of its reality. We can bring “fruits” of spiritual exercise in deep joy, as owning that it is God’s due to have the first since He has given all. It is a wondrous thought that the blessed God should find His happiness in seeing us happy before Him in conscious possession of what His love has given. And the divine thought is that all should be intensified by being brought and presented before His altar in that common centre of which His assembly is the antitype.
Then what is to be said before Jehovah is such as He will delight to hear. “A perishing Aramaean was my father”. This does not go back to Abraham or Isaac, but to Jacob. Abraham would remind us of the sovereignty of divine purpose and calling. Isaac would, in figure, express the resurrection power by which God will give effect to His purpose. But in Jacob and his sons we see men in danger of perishing, taken up in grace by God, protected, cared for, disciplined, exercised under oppression, but delivered from the world, and brought into a rich land of purposed and promised blessing. There is nothing said here of the exercises of the wilderness. In chapter 8: 2 - 6 wilderness leadings and experiences are the great subject, but the exercises dwelt upon here are such as bring us into the knowledge of the greatness of God’s saving power, His complete deliverance in bringing us out and bringing us in.
There is a wondrous history behind the fact that saints are found together in God’s assembly, and it is not to be out of mind. But it is viewed from the standpoint of present blessedness in “a land flowing with milk and honey”. It is what God has done in grace and faithfulness for “sons of Jacob”. In Ephesians 1 our history is traced back to eternal purpose in Christ, and God’s resurrection power in Christ is seen as towards us for the effectuation of His purpose. But in Ephesians 2 our history goes back to how we once walked, and what we were by nature, and we see what the work and grace of God has effected for such. This latter is in correspondence with the worshipper’s utterance in Deuteronomy 26. From the low depth of “perishing” to the height of blessing in the land all has been of God. “Ye are saved by grace”. We often delight to sing together:
“Father, Thy sovereign love has sought
Captives to sin, gone far from Thee;
The work that Thine own Son hath wrought
Has brought us back in peace and free”,
[p. 322] This gives its own peculiar note to Deuteronomic worship; and there cannot be joy in all the good that God has given to us apart from the recognition and consciousness of how all has been brought about by grace and sovereign love. It is good to retrace before God His spiritual dealings; He has completely delivered us, and brought us to “a land flowing with milk and honey”. Nothing is more nourishing than milk; it speaks of that which ministers to growth, and of the love in which Christ nourishes the assembly. While honey would suggest the activity of divine love in the saints promoting mutual and collective labour to secure what is sweet and refreshing so that it may be available for all. And all contributes, as is typically set before us here, to the worship and joy of the assembly. Christ as our blessed Instructor would impress our hearts with all this as proper to “the land”.
Then “the year of tithing”, like the bringing of the basket of first-fruits, is an occasion of speaking before Jehovah, the only two instances of this in the book. The one is saying before God what He has done for us, and the other is saying what we have done according to His commandment. It is as much His will that we should say the one as the other, and the one is as essential to our true happiness and blessing as the other. The former is said when the first-fruits of the land are gathered, and the latter is said at the end of the third year. So that the one represents an early, and the other a more mature, experience in the land. After three years’ occupation of the land, and acquisition of its wealth, a special “year of tithing”, peculiarly imbued with a spirit of grace, can be observed. The first of the fruits are for God in His assembly, but His complete thought according to this chapter is not realised until His people become expressive of Himself in activities of grace “to the Levite, and to the stranger, to the fatherless,
and to the widow”. He designs that our “gates” shall be so filled with plenty that there is an abundant supply to be administered unselfishly according to His good pleasure. We think from the very first of what He has given, and bring the fruit of it to Him in a spirit of worship. Then after three years’ experience of His bounty we become qualified to give in a way and spirit that is the fruit of His giving, and that corresponds with it.
This is the climax of the instruction as to “the land”. Not only is God known and responded to as the Giver, but His sons, enriched by matured experience of His bounty, become givers also. They are formed in His blessed nature, and express it in gracious ways which are the reflex of His own. This requires a certain spiritual development; it is hardly what Paul would look to find in those whom he calls babes; it is a privilege for which we are fitted by being established and enriched in the land. There is no higher point of experience contemplated in this book; it is the crown and climax of the work of grace — the character of the blessed God reproduced in His children according to Ephesians 5: 1; 1 John 4:7,8; 1 John 4:11,12.
As walking in love, in deed and in truth, we can say before God that we are doing so; He loves that we should be able to say it. It is, in a typical form, what John says; “Children, let us not love with word, nor with tongue, but in deed and in truth. And hereby we shall know that we are of the truth, and shall persuade our hearts before him — that if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, we have boldness towards God, and whatsoever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments, and practise the things which are pleasing in his sight” (1 John 3: 18 - 22). We not only walk in love, according to God’s [p. 324] commandments, but we can say before Him that we are doing so, and count upon Him for blessing. “I have brought ... and also have given ... . I have done according to all that thou hast commanded me. Look down from thy holy habitation, from the heavens, and bless thy people Israel, and the land that thou hast given us as thou didst sware unto our fathers, a land flowing with milk and honey”. This is blessing conditional upon the obedience of love.
Nothing is to be allowed to interfere with this gracious activity; neither sorrow, nor uncleanness, nor any claim of the dead (verse 14). The mention of such things shews that this has its application at the present time, while there is the possibility of forgetfulness, sorrow, or uncleanness interfering with the unselfish activities of grace. It is the same kind of administration as will mark the holy city when she comes down out of the heaven to bring the glory of God into the world where every kind of need has been. Those who are seen worshipping within the heavenly courts in Revelation 4, Revelation 5 come out in divine administration in Revelation 21. This is in keeping with what we see in type in Deuteronomy 26, but the latter scripture typifies it as carried out, in the spirit of it, before the day of manifested glory. It is while the effects of sorrow, uncleanness, or death are yet present, and may have an effect in diminishing the activities of grace, that the saints, as answering to this beautiful scripture, are privileged to say before God that they have not done so.
The Lord had deep sorrows, but His ministry of grace went on in undiminished fulness; no circumstance of sorrow ever checked its outflow. He felt His rejection by the cities where His mighty works had been done, but His heart still found expression in the words, “Come to me, all ye who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11). Passing on as One whom [p. 325] the people would have stoned He saw a man blind from his birth, and wrought the works of God by giving him sight (John 8: 59; John 9: 1). Amid the unfathomable sorrows of the cross He answered the petition of the penitent thief by saying, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise”. He allowed nothing to diminish the activities of grace.
“A holy priesthood” ministers to God, and “a kingly priesthood” sets forth to men His excellencies as known in grace. He secures worshippers for Himself, and then He constitutes them administrators of His gracious bounty. In the sphere where God’s will operates He would not have any need unsatisfied. “That they may eat in thy gates, and be filled”. But He does this mediately through His people; they reflect His glory as known in grace.
Nothing could be more beautiful than the closing section of this chapter, “Thou hast this day accepted Jehovah to be thy God, and to walk in his ways, and keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his ordinances, and to hearken unto his voice; and Jehovah hath accepted thee this day to be a people of possession to him, as he hath told thee, and that thou shouldest keep all his commandments, so that he should make thee high above all the nations which he hath made, in praise and in name and in honour; and that thou shouldest be a holy people to Jehovah thy God, as he hath said” (verses 17 - 19).
If when they went after Him in the wilderness it was the time of espousals (Jeremiah 2: 2), surely the scripture before us would indicate the consummation of the marriage bond between Jehovah and His people which is so often referred to by the prophets. “Thou hast this day accepted Jehovah to be thy God ... and Jehovah hath accepted thee this day to be a people of possession to him”. It is the blessed place of Israel as married [p. 326] to Jehovah, to be fully realised in that coming day when the words of Isaiah 62 shall be fulfilled: “Thou shalt no more be termed, Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed, Desolate; but thou shalt be called, My delight is in her, and thy land, Married, for Jehovah delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married. For as a young man marrieth a virgin, shall thy sons marry thee; and with the joy of the bridegroom over the bride shall thy God rejoice over thee”. This is for Israel the consummation of what love has purposed. A people marked by such features as we have been considering in this book are “a people of possession” to God. Saints of the assembly can take it all up spiritually as the instruction of Christ to us, and thus in a higher and more blessed way than Israel ever will. Deuteronomy is, for us, a book of heavenly instruction.