Gold Nugget 314 - A Man's Dog

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Deuteronomy 244-245.doc (24 KB)
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      It is right that irrational creatures should be treated kindly.  And if the Law required that this delicate consideration should be shown towards dead animals, how much more does it require us kindly treatment of them while living!

      Or behaviour towards irrational creatures … reacts upon ourselves.  In certain cases, this is readily perceived.  Most people would shrink from the wanton mutilation of a dead animal, even in sport, and would admit the reactive effect of such an action in deadening humane instincts in him who did it.  But it is the same with all cruelty and unfeelingness.

Any action which, in human relationships, would be condemned as unsympathetic will be found, if performed to animals, to have a blunting effect on the sensibilities of the agent.

      A man’s dog is more to him than a brute.  He is a friend.  We carry into our behaviour towards the irrational creatures many of the feelings which actuate us in our personal relations, and the more we do it, the better for ourselves.. 

 

The Pulpit Commentary, Deuteronomy p. 244-245, Deuteronomy 14:21, (J. Orr)

 

Gold Nugget 314

A Man’s Dog

 

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Gold Nugget 313 - Soul-Murder

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Deuteronomy 233.doc (24 KB)
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      No language is strong enough to paint the crime of seeking to seduce a soul from its allegiance to its God.  The guilt of the man who deliberately sets himself to counter-work a child’s affection for its parent, and to produce alienation of heart between them, is trivial in comparison with it.  The crime is that of soul-murder.  For in fidelity to God lies the happiness of life here, and salvation in the world to come.  We are, therefore, to allow any private affection to blind us to the enormity of this crime.

 

The Pulpit Commentary, Deuteronomy p. 233, Deuteronomy 12:6-12, (J. Orr)

 

Gold Nugget 313

Soul-Murder

 

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Gold Nugget 312 - Voice of a King

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Deuteronomy 226-a.doc (23 KB)
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      The voice of taste is the voice of a charmer.  The voice of conscience is the voice of a king.

 

The Pulpit Commentary, Deuteronomy p. 226, Deuteronomy 12:1-4

 

Gold Nugget 312

Voice of a King

 

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Gold Nugget 311 - Nature's God

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Deuteronomy 226.doc (24 KB)
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      If men cannot find God in themselves, they cannot find him in material nature.  Some “look through nature up to nature’s God.”  Some look through nature to darkness, sensuality, and despair. …

      The growth of a plant involves the death of the seed.  The life of the body is sustained by manifold death.  Eternal life comes by the death of the Son of God.  The inner life of piety is quickened by the death of self.   

 

The Pulpit Commentary, Deuteronomy p. 226, Deuteronomy 12:1-4, (D. Davies)

 

Gold Nugget 311

Nature’s God

 

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Gold Nugget 310 - Choice Demanded

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Deuteronomy 209.doc (24 KB)
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      Our life is hourly a choice of alternatives.  We can go to the right or to the left.  Choice is incessantly demanded, and the issues of our choice are momentous. …

      Necessity requires that we should be either better or worse.  You cannot dwell for an hour in the society of a good man, and continue in the former state of feeling.  The fire that does not melt, hardens.  To know God’s will, and not to do it, inflicts unspeakable mischief upon the soul.  Resistance of inward convictions begets callosity of heart, and blast the budding life of conscience.  Wanton treason against God is incipient hell.  It is the darkening of the understanding, and the enslavement of the will.  No blacker curse can enwrap a man than this. …

      The visible universe is a projection of God’s thought, and all the forces of nature are the agents of God.  We find upon this globe elements that minister to our development and strength and joy.  We find also elements that are repulsive, menacing, and destructive.  The cloud-capped peaks may draw around us the lightenings of vengeance, or may melt the laden cloud and distil showers of blessing. … We may find “sermons in stones,” lessons in leaves, counsels in running brooks. 

 

The Pulpit Commentary, Deuteronomy p. 209, Deuteronomy 9:26-32, (D. Davies)

 

Gold Nugget 310

Choice Demanded

 

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Gold Nugget 309 - Days of Heaven on Earth

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Deuteronomy 208.doc (24 KB)
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      As the pulverized soil is the proper home of seed; as the housewife’s dough is the proper home of leaven; so the heart of man is the proper abode of truth.  On stony tablets, in books, or in speech, it is only in transit towards its proper destination.  Received and welcomed into the soul, it begins a process of blessed activity; it vitalizes, ennobles, beautifies every part of human nature.  It is the seed of all virtue and goodness – the root of Immortal blessedness. …

      What we are, in great measure our children will be. … Truth in the heart is translated into righteousness in the life, and righteousness makes heaven.  No enjoyment can be perfect in which our children do not share; and in sharing our joys with our children, we multiply our joys beyond all arithmetical measure.  Such days of consecrated service will be “days of heaven upon earth.”

 

The Pulpit Commentary, Deuteronomy p. 208, Deuteronomy 9:18-21, (D. Davies)

 

Gold Nugget 309

Days of Heaven on Earth

 

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Gold Nugget 308 - A Delicious Pleasure

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      With abundance in our possession, it is easier to indulge the appetites that to deny them.  Yet the higher life can only be developed at the expense of the lower. …

      When from our visible stores every felt need can be supplied, we are prone to forget the unseen Giver.  Most men may well thank God that the temptations of wealth dwell not under their roofs. …

      The millionaire soon forgets the days of poverty and struggle – forgets the Friend who succoured him in his extremity – kicks away the ladder by which he rose.  Riches naturally encumber and stifle the flame of religious feeling. … We find a delicious pleasure in hearing our own skill and sagacity praised.  The tide of natural feeling sets strongly towards self-trust. …

      In the days of poverty we did not object to be accounted singular; but in the time of wealth we aspire to do as others do.  It is arduous to have to think for one’s self, to rely upon one’s own judgments, to pursue a course which men will ridicule.  If others bow down to their on net, or rear a popular idol, we too must bow down and worship it.  Wealth has given us prominence, set us on high, and we must not risk our new reputation.  It is easier to drift with the stream than to stem it. …

      Every nation and every individual shall “go to his own place.”  From the summit of earthly magnificence to the lowest pit of misery, there is often a single step.  “I saw,” says Bunyan, “that there was a way to hell, even from the gate of the celestial city.”  “Be not highminded, but fear.”  Rishces make a slippery descent to ruin. 

 

The Pulpit Commentary, Deuteronomy p. 160, Deuteronomy 8:7-20, (D. Davies)

 

Gold Nugget 308

A Delicious Pleasure

 

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Gold Nugget 307 - Little by Little

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Deuteronomy 148.doc (25 KB)
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      The larger part of the globe is yet unoccupied by Christianity.  Heathen systems are in possession, supported by the combined influences of tradition, custom, prejudice, and superstition, and presenting an apparently impregnable front to the think ranks of their assailants.  At home, how much of the Christianity is merely nominal! And how much of it is corrupted!

      We live in days of intense worldliness.  The skeptical spirit, likewise, is pronounced and active.  Brain and pen power of the highest order is enlisted in its service.  Unbelieving science, infidel philosophy, rationalism in the Church.  The press is a tower of strength to anti-Christian views of life and duty.  While, at the other end of the social scale, the multitudes are sunk in indifference and vice. 

      How are all these enemies to be overcome?  May we not fear that, work as we will, we cannot succeed?  The fears are groundless; but they are not without their use, if they make us feel that the conquest of the world is not to be achieved without much hard fighting. …

      It is encouraging to recall the supernatural strength for conquest which the gospel has already displayed.  Think of our own land penetrated by a faith which sprang up 1800 years ago in a remote, despised Judea, with churches for Christ’s worship dotting almost every street of every city, town, village, hamlet, throughout its length and breadth!  How Utopian would such a work of conquest have seemed at the beginning – a dream of insanity!  And this Divine energy for conquest inheres in the gospel to-day as truly as it did of old. … The forces of providence are on the side of those who are working for the advancement of his kingdom. 

      Little by little God gives a man conquest over the evil in self, and his nature is sanctified.  Little by little the world is conquered for Christ.  The reason of the law is obvious.  There is no advantage in having more than be rightly used; … a man who has more money than he can turn to good account, who has a larger estate than he can manage, who reads more books than he can mentally digest.  The best method is “little by little” - mastering, consolidating, using what we have, before hasting to get more. 

 

The Pulpit Commentary, Deuteronomy 148, Deuteronomy 7:17-25, (J. Orr)

 


Gold Nugget 307

Little by Little

 

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Gold Nugget 306 - The Species of Living Death

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Deuteronomy 146.doc (24 KB)
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      Two individuals unite their lives, and enter into a fellowship the most intimate possible – to what end?  Surely that their natures may be raised to greater perfection, and that they may be better enabled to attain the ends of their existence.  This implies a certain harmony of disposition, an essential accordance in the views taken of life and its duties.  It is a union, as one has said, not merely between two creatures, but also between two spirits. …

      Where spiritual life is not destroyed, as we may hope that often it is not, yet nothing but harm can come from an association in every respect adverse to it.  How intolerable to a spiritual mind to endure “the blight of all sympathy, to be dragged down to earth, and forced to become frivolous and commonplace; to lose all zest and earnestness in life; to have heart and life degraded by mean and perpetually recurring sources of disagreement.” (F.W. Robertson)! 

      This is the species of living death to which unequal yoking not unfrequently leads.  The effects on offspring are also to be considered.  Yet such marriages are rushed into, and, in the prevalent anxiety to make marriage the stepping-stone to wealth and social position, seem likely to become increasingly numerous.  Would that men were wise, that they understood these things!

 

The Pulpit Commentary, Deuteronomy p. 146, Deuteronomy 7:3-4, (J. Orr)

 

Gold Nugget 306

The Species of Living Death

 

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Gold Nugget 305 - Marriage - A Union of Spirit

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      Marriage is God’s holy ordinance.  It is not a sacrament … Neither is it merely a civil contract, as is sometimes shockingly said.  It is a union of two in the closest ties of nature, based on an affinity of spirit which leads each to see in the other what each most admires.  It is a union is spirit in the Lord (if it be all that it should be); each one of the two ceases to live in and for himself or herself, and begins practically to unlearn selfishness by living for the other, and thus the reciprocal outgoing of affection is a formative action of spirit, and tends to the very noblest culture of life.  And where the Divine idea of marriage is carried out, the purely natural side of it will be by no means the only one or even the highest. …

      Thus rolling years do but deepen the fondness and sweetness of their love, and if it becomes calmer and less demonstrative, it is because it has become fuller, richer, and stronger.  When youthful audour dies down, the holy tie is holier than ever; their very souls become knit together in one.  The care of one is the care of both; the joy of one is the joy of both; and any unkindness that stings one wounds both.  As two trees side by side in a grove, their arms interlace and interlock, yet each has its separate root. 

      So husband and wife, as trees of the Lord’s own right hand planting, do through the whole of this earthly life become interlocked with growing firmness, while their one Saviour in whom they live is the common joy of their spirits, their one hope for eternity!

 

The Pulpit Commentary, Deuteronomy p. 99-100, Deuteronomy 5:18, (C. Clemance)

 

Gold Nugget 305

Marriage – A Union of Spirit