The land of promise.
Moses now proceeds to indicate the characteristics of Canaan, and to contrast it with Egypt, which they had left. Egypt is not dependent upon the rains of heaven as Canaan is. The overflowing Nile has only to be guided along the water-courses in the proper season, and the fertility of the Nile valley is secured. The work of irrigation, the watering with the foot (Deuteronomy 11:10), is the one thing needful in Egypt. But Canaan depends upon the continual care of God, his eyes being on it from the beginning to the end of the year, dispensing "the first rain and the latter rain," in order to the harvest. In Egypt, the blessing is given "wholesale"—the Nile brings down from the interior the water the valley needs. In Canaan, the mountain ridge between the Nile valley and the valley of the Euphrates, there is constant dependence experienced upon the bounties of heaven. This suggests—
I. THAT CANAAN WAS A SPLENDID LAND IN WHICH TO TRAIN UP A SPIRITUAL PEOPLE. It was not naturally so fertile as either the valley of the Nile or the valley of the Euphrates. Hence famine touched it more quickly than either Egypt or Assyria. But it was fitted to foster dependence upon God and hope in him. If the inhabitants were obedient, then the land might flow with milk and honey; if disobedient, it might become brown and bare through the withholding of the rain.
Hence we find, in Egypt and in Assyria, a turning of the people to the worship of the inorganic and the organic forces of nature respectively. The valleys, being in some measure more independent of the changing seasons, seem to have nurtured independence of God; while the hills of Syria, like the Highlands of Scotland and of Switzerland, fostered more faith in the Supreme. "Those Syrian hills," says a living writer, "are the Spirit's throne, where, lifted above the deserts of earth, it sits nearest to heaven, while spread beneath it on either hand, resting on the desert's level as their home, are nature's twin provinces of matter and life, rich and green with the beauty and greenness of time, always imposing and often victorious in the region of sense; but doomed, like all things visible and temporal, to fall before the power which shall yet clothe itself with their glory, and which is itself unseen and eternal."
II. THE BLESSINGS WERE GUARANTEED ON CONDITION OF MAN LOYALLY CO-OPERATING WITH GOD. Canaan was no land for indolent lotus-eaters; it was not—
"A land where all things always seem'd the same!"
It was a land where man must co-operate with God in order to the blessing—s land where man realized the dignity of being a "fellow-worker with God." It would be a land of promise and of real blessing on no other condition.
If man were asked for no effort, if everything grew to please his taste and palate spontaneously, if daily bread came without even the trouble of asking, it would be a land of danger and of moral death. Better was it for Israel to have themselves bound by a wholesome destiny to dependence on God and co-operation with him, than if the land bore spontaneously all man's needs.
III. WE NEED LOOK FOR NO OTHER LAND OF PROMISE IN THIS WORLD OR THE NEXT. The idea of "independence" is the great danger of the human heart. We would be indebted to nobody, not even God, if we could. Alas, for our pride! Now, it so happens that we cannot become independent of God's bounty, no matter how hard we try. And it is best so. The land of promise is the land where we depend humbly upon God, and are thus most independent of persons and things around us) The land of promise is where we do our honest share of public work, and get our share of the fruits of industry.
And in the life beyond death we need not desire an inglorious idleness, which is some folk's notion of "everlasting rest," but we shall have there the privilege of serving God "day and night in his temple." A life of consecration is the true" land of promise." It is the only deep enjoyment, it is the only worthy inheritance.
Let us then resolve