Leviticus 14:34

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"When ye be come into the land of Canaan." Lev 14:34

The people were far enough from Canaan at this moment, yet a law of regulation was laid down for their conduct when they came into possession of the land. This is another revelation of the method of divine government. Laws are made in advance. The law is not always given merely from day to day; the details of that law may be, so to say, announced morning by morning; but the great law itself is laid down from eternity, and therefore it covers all times and occasions, never altering in its spirit though continually adapting itself to varying conditions and institutions without losing one spark of its righteousness. This is the great law of God. The moment a man comes into the world the whole law is prescribed for him. There is a law of childhood, full of forbearance, pity, and hopefulness; a sublime accommodation of the Infinite to the helplessness of earliest years; there is a law of youth, having in it a touch of discipline and even severity, passion being curbed, and impatience being restrained greatly to the trial of the restricted spirit; there is a law provided for times of prosperity, so that every man knows what to do with his gold, and how to deport himself in plentiful harvests; there is also a law for the time of poverty, affliction, pain, and sorrow of every kind and name. In this way a man is permitted to look a long period in advance. He may not anticipate providences, but he can study the whole law which involves and determines every aspect and issue of human life. It is beautiful, too, to notice how an instruction of this kind acts as a stimulus upon human thought and conduct. It was well again and again to mention the very name of the promised land. So now it is well for us amid the cloud and tumult of life to hear about heaven and rest, about the pure land of eternal noon and the tender music of supernal harmony. We need great words mixed up with our little terms; as we need a great sky over-arching and blessing our little earth. It is wonderful how near the words of comfort are laid up side by side with terms of law and discipline. The Bible is a book of solaces. It does not give comfort for the sake of enervating men but for the sake of stimulating and strengthening them; every time Canaan is mentioned it is to stir up the soul to nobler duty and harder service: so every time we hear of heaven and its ineffable rest we should spring at earth's duties and toils with a new energy and a deeper determination. The laws of heaven are fixed. Its law is a law of righteousness, and because of the perfectness of its purity is the absoluteness of its rest. God never allows us to suppose that entrance upon a higher state of life means exemption from law or rioting in the wantonness of licence. Heaven contains the fuller law, and because of our enlarging capacity and sanctified will, the amplitude and grandeur of that law will not deter us from heavenly service or cause us to become weary in all the solemn study of eternal thought. Let us cheer one another with these words. Again and again at the close of the weary day let us say to one another, "When we come into the land of Canaan." Hymns about the heavenly land may be so used as to rouse us to completer service in the field of battle or in the quieter field of unknown but needful suffering.