Deuteronomy 26:1-11
THIS chapter, the last of another section of Deuteronomy, suitably comes at the close of fourteen chapters, mostly warning against sin of various kinds. If the believer has examined himself in the light of the Word of God, and judged and put away everything that the Bible condemns, he is ready to take his offering to the place where God sets His name, to be a worshiper in His presence, and to that place he is directed to come. (Verses 1-11).
We learn from, these verses, and of course others that tell of the mind of God, that He wishes those who are His people to make themselves acquainted with all that He has done for them; to live in heart and ways near to Him. All that they have they owe to Him, not only in earthly things, but particularly in heavenly hopes and joys.
If their hearts are right toward God, their minds will be engaged in all their spare moments with “the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee”, —that it, with. the things of God, rather than the objects of this world. Then if the believer’s thoughts are on the things of God, there will be “fruit” to God.
There are many New Testament passages in which this word “fruit” is found, and the reader will be well repaid in searching them out; I mention only Luke 6:43,44; Galatians. 5:22; Hebrews 13:15. Yet, after all, Christ is the first fruits, and it is of Him that the Christian thinks first and best, and of His worthiness he should always be ready to speak, both to God the Father and to his fellow men.
It is sad when Christians are found very ready to talk about their pleasures and their business, yet are almost silent when there is occasion to speak about the Lord. It is the fruit of the condemned world, and not of the “land which the Lord thy God giveth thee” that they have been gathering, is it not?
The chosen place (verse 2) for many years of Israel’s history was Jerusalem, but today there is no earthly city where the Lord has set His name. The place which He honors with His presence now is named in Matthew 18:20: “Where two or three are gathered together unto My Name, there am I in the midst of them.” It may be in some humble home, or on a back street in a great city, for this is the day of small things.
The priest (verse 3) now is the blessed Lord Himself, for since the cross of Christ, a human priesthood has no more place. (See Hebrews chapters 9 and 10. and in particular chapter 10:11-25).
Verse 5. Jacob, the beginning of the nation, was the “Syrian ready to perish” —from famine, who went down to Egypt with his family to be cared for by his great son Joseph, —type of the Lord Jesus. There is little to be said of man at best, but his needs, his sad case upon which God looked with pity, and then brought salvation by power greater than anything this world knew. But this God-fearing Israelite has much to say of the One Who has done everything for him (verses 7-9). Before (verse 7) there was prayer; now (verse 10) there is praise.
Verse 11. There is room for all—even the “stranger”, who longs to be one with the worshipers.
ML 02/15/1925