Numbers 10:29-32 And Moses said to Hobab, the son of Raguel the Midianite, Moses' father in law, We are journeying to the place of which the LORD said… I think it is fair to notice that there was a little in the circumstances of the time to help Hobab to say "No" For Moses had to say, "We are journeying." They did not look at their best; all was in confusion; God's people here below never do look at their best. You know how vexed you are if some particular friend comes and calls when you are in all the uproar and confusion of a removal. You would say, "Oh, dear me! I hope this won't have a damaging effect; I hope there won't be any inferences drawn from this higgledy-piggledy condition of things." And I think Moses felt it. I feel it as the spokesman for Israel to-day, pleading with any who have not yet come to join themselves to Israel, who have not come into the camp, into the household of faith. I anticipate your objection. You may well say as Hobab perhaps further thought. "Well," he might think, "I do know a little about these Israelites, and I know more than what is good about them. So far as I have been able to see during the past year, they are a mixed lot." And so they were. And I have to make much the same admission as regards Christians. I do not want to spoil my case with any "halter-between-two-opinions," by doing what recruiting-sergeants in the old days were given to, viz., telling lies — for that is the plain English of it. I shall not speak the language of exaggeration. You find fault with us from the outside, and I admit it. You say, "Why should I come?" There are, it may be, points of character on which worldlings, so far as you have met them, are superior to Christians whom you have met. More's the pity; but I admit it. We are ofttimes a sorry lot, a miserable crowd with our bickerings, and fightings, and jealousies. We please not God, and are contrary to all men; but — but — but take us at our worst, there is a side of us that never can be exaggerated. There is a side of us, and a thing in us, for the sake of which I would advise our keenest critic to rub his eyes and look again ere he gives us up. And remember, besides, that if I choose, I can turn your argument. It is easy for you to turn round to us; it is easy for Hobab to turn to me and say, "What Christians we are," and that he has found us a stupid lot, and so on. But may I not say, Are you a great deal better? Come along, and show us an example. It is not really fair to stand outside and criticise — take a turn along the road with us for a mile or two. Many a man has had great objections to being a Christian, and has discovered many faults in the Israelites so long as he was a Midianite. But when he crossed over from Midian into Israel, and tried to keep his own eyes on the pillar of cloud, and tried to rule his own conduct according to the law and the sacrifices, his head hung a bit lower, and he had less to say about his neighbours. He had glimpses within that he would never have had otherwise; of great ravines, and chasms of imperfection; tremendous face-blanching possibilities of evil revealed in himself that have made him sing to a more gracious tune, if they have not made him sing dumb altogether. So I come back: "Come thou with us." I feel as though I were like a dear mother I saw down, I think, at King's Cross, not long ago. She was standing with one foot on the carriage-board, and the other foot on the platform, and she was arguing evidently with her wayward boy. "Come back, come; you will be better at home; every one is waiting for you." But he hummed and hawed, turned this way and that way, looked every way but into his mother's face, and was most uncomfortable and uneasy. And sorry am I to add that the last I saw was the conductor coming hurrying along; there was a kiss and an embrace between mother and son, and then they parted, she to step into the train, and he to go away back, as he answered, "I will not go." Very like just where Moses was with Hobab, and where I am with some of you. I want you to come, I long for you to come. I know you can raise many difficulties and objections. Like that lad, you like the freedom; like Hobab, you like a desert life. But even although you should say, "No," still I shall look to see you changing your mind, like Hobab. For, later on in Scripture, we have evidences that he afterwards repented and went. Let me go on with my text. "We will do thee good: for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel." Will that do? We are only journeying, we have not arrived; but we have the promises of God. Yes; and we have something to show, we have our own tale to tell. We are redeemed, at any rate; we are a ransomed lot; and when you are piling together all the disparaging adjectives you can gather to describe us, don't forget the others. There is a ransomed look about us, unless we utterly belle the deepest and truest things in us. We are no longer slaves. True, we are not what we ought to be, but we are saved sinners. We have got that to begin with, and "we are journeying" for all the rest. We are taking God at His word, and hitherto the dullest of us, if you push him hard, is compelled to say the Lord has been, at least, as good as His word. Now, will you come? "And he said, I will not go; but I will depart to my own land, and to my own kindred." Poor Hobab I Many have been kept back in that way: " mine own land, mine own kindred." Now, how would you like it if to-night I brought the argument to a point by saying I dispute the word "mine" you have no land, you have no kindred? Hobab, you are using words that you have no right to use in any absolute sense of possession — "Mine own land, mine own kindred." That is a word that this world won't allow, not to speak of God's Word. But, Hobab, if you want true possessions, if you want true wealth, a real portion, that even death will not destroy (death will only usher you into a more abundant sense of the possession of it), then come with us. Don't look back to Midian; don't look back to Sodom; don't cast longing, lingering looks behind. Look forward. See what Christ offers you, and come. You lose nothing that would be for your good: "No good thing will God withhold from them that walk uprightly." And if you have to lose; if, from a worldly point of view, from the point of view of selfishness, and self-will, and your own unhallowed ambitions — if you have to lay things on the altar, then you are a blessed man — that is the path of life, and not of death. "He that loveth his life shall lose it; he that hateth his life (he that seems to fling it away) shall find it unto life eternal." And Moses pleaded with him further, and said, "Leave us not, I pray thee," &c. Pardon me if I am urgent with you; let me plead with you. You can be of use to us. Will that draw some of you? We want you, frankly and freely. Are you imaginative, musical, poetical, literary? Are you a good financier? Have you certain qualities that mark you off specially as a father, or as a mother, or as a wife, or as a friend? Come with us; we need you, you will be of use to us. It is one of the sweet things about Israel that God wants every kind of person. Then come. We are journeying, we are a going concern, we are moving on, onward and upward; no stop, no stay. Nothing can resist our progress; from night to morning, from morning till night, the one thing in God's universe that moves is His Israel; and every step is a step upward, and every fall is a fall forward. We are on the winning side, all that is enduring is with us. Come, oh, come! (John McNeill.) Parallel Verses KJV: And Moses said unto Hobab, the son of Raguel the Midianite, Moses' father in law, We are journeying unto the place of which the LORD said, I will give it you: come thou with us, and we will do thee good: for the LORD hath spoken good concerning Israel. |
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