Joshua 13:33

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"The Lord God of Israel was their inheritance, as he said unto them." Jos 13:33

This was spoken of the tribe of Levi in a peculiar sense the religious tribe of Israel. The kingdom of God has an outward and an inward aspect: it has a land to be conquered, and it has a doctrine to be received and obeyed. The idea of the text is that man may so live in God as to have no conscious need of outward things: and then the counterpart of the idea is that he who ascends to spiritual functions need have no fear with regard to the supply of physical necessities. God is not the portion of religious men in the sense of feeding themselves only with thought and consolation and promise; he is pledged so to act upon the impulses and consciences of other men as to see that every lawful necessity is abundantly supplied. Whilst the Levites were asking for God, God was asking for them, in the very sense of finding them bread and home and security. If we trusted God more we should receive more from God. If we will always persist in undertaking our own business, what wonder if God should leave us to ourselves and give us the reward of disappointment? "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Blessed is he who has God for a treasurer. It is more than folly to say that all this is impossible. We imagine that we must do so much ourselves, or God will do nothing for us; and that statement is so far true as to give the sophism which lies at the heart of it some hold upon the confidence of the least earnest thinkers. The text certainly suggests that God has appointed some men to be the spiritual teachers and guides of the world. We cannot get rid of the idea of spiritual ministry. It is right to disclaim all merely official dignity and importance, but infinitely beyond the merely official lies the grandly personal and real, which all men recognise with admiration, and many men honour with homage and generous support. When spiritual thinkers and workers give themselves wholly to the function assigned them of God, they will realise more perfectly God's meaning when he says he has undertaken to be their inheritance; the meaning is not that they are to live upon fine thoughts and splendid conceptions, but that in addition to such thoughts and conceptions God himself will undertake to see that their house is watched and their table is supplied. "He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think." "God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love." No man can work wholly and lovingly for God, and be neglected by him. "Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed."