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I. THE FIGURE UNDER WHICH MOSES INDICATES ISRAEL. He speaks of them as a flock of sheep, thus venturing on a meek reference to the quality of his own past services. He speaks like a man who had been long preparing, even before Meribah, for an emergency such as this. He knew he could not live always, and he saw no sufficiently hopeful change in Israel. He had to deal with the sheep-nature in them from the first, and that nature was in them still in undiminished vitality. They would, he implies, be as helpless in Canaan as in the wilderness. He had not yet got the view from Abarim, but that view would only deepen his thankfulness that God had given the people a shepherd. For the more impressive the view, and the more there was revealed of rich and abundant pasture, the more evident it would become that the sheep needed guidance in order to make full use of the pasture. Passing from the wilderness into Canaan, while it vastly enlarges the sheep-privileges, does not in itself change the sheep-nature. The need remains in equal force both for guidance and protection. Where the privileges are greater, there, consequently, the possessions will be greater; there also there will be more to attack, more danger of attack, and more need of defense. And in like manner how helpless we are of ourselves among the vast resources and promises which belong to God's grace in Christ Jesus. Unless we have some one to guide and strengthen, and show us the meaning and power of Divine truth, we are as helpless as an infant would be with a steam-engine. Weak and strong are relative terms. Sheep are strong enough in certain ways - strong to rebel against wholesome restraints and break through them, but not strong enough to repel the dangers which come when the restraints are broken through. Moses had only too often seen Israel hanging together like sheep. going in troops after some headstrong Korah, while men of the Caleb and Joshua order were almost to be counted on one's fingers.

II. THE PEOPLE BEING SUCH, A SHEPHERD WAS A MANIFEST NECESSITY. Given sheep, it does not take much reasoning to infer a shepherd. Moses had been a shepherd himself, both literally and figuratively, and his experience of the sheep in Midian doubtless sharpened his sense of the analogy as he gazed on the human sheep whom he had led for forty years. A man unfamiliar with pastoral life might indeed talk in a general way of the fallen children of men as sheep; but it needed a Moses to speak of the shepherd's work with such minuteness and sympathetic interest as he shows here. The shepherd is to go out before the sheep. With him rests the responsibility of choosing the place of pasture. And he must lead the sheep. He must go before them, and not too far before them, or he cannot truly lead. He leads them out to find pasture, and he leads them in to insure security. The Good Shepherd is in himself the guarantee both for nourishment and security, and the sheep follow him, as if to show that the real nourishments and securities of religion must come by a voluntary acceptance. There is much difference between being drawn and driven. The sheep following the shepherd is not like the ox dragging the plough and quickened by its master's goad. There are times indeed when, like the ox, we must be driven and chastised, but the greatest results can only be gained when we are drawn like the sheep. In the lives of God's people there is a very instructive mingling of freedom and constraint. Let us add, that in thinking of the responsibility of the shepherd for the providing of pasture it must not be forgotten how soon the manna ceased when Canaan was entered (Joshua 5:12). The people then needed guiding into a forethought and industry from which, in the presence of the daily manna, they had long been free.

III. IT IS MANIFEST THAT NOTHING BUT A DIVINE APPOINTMENT WAS ADEQUATE TO MEET THIS NECESSITY. Popular election was certainly not available. The sheep would make a poor business of it if they had to choose a shepherd. Popular government is less objectionable than the rule of despots, but it has its own delusions, its own narrow aims. The natural man is the natural man, circumscribed by the limits of time, and sense, and natural discernment, whether he be noble or peasant. The follies and cruelties of democracy have caused as sad, humiliating pages to be written in the history of the world as the follies and cruelties of any despot whatever. The man who says vex populi, vex Dei speaks error none the less because he speaks out of a generous, enthusiastic heart. Never till the voice of Christ becomes the willing and gladsome voice of the people can vex populi, vox Dei be the truth. Equally plain is it that the choice of Moses was not available. He feels that the thing can only be done in entire submission to God. Moses himself, in the day of his first call, had spoken very depreciatingly of his own qualifications. Yet not only had God chosen him, but also proved the choice was right. The event had shown that he was the leader after God's own heart. What a thing if he had turned out like Saul; but that he could not do, he was so completely the choice of God. It was not for Moses then, who had gone so tremblingly from Midian to Egypt, to say, "Who is fittest man for shepherd now?" Moses felt well able to estimate the qualifications of a leader; but who best supplied those qualifications was a question which none but the all-searching, all-knowing God could answer. God had not only seen fitness in Moses, but he had seen fitness in Moses only; for we must ever believe that in each generation, and for each emergency, he takes the very fittest man among the thousands of Israel. God had chosen at the departure from Egypt; God also shall choose at the entrance into Canaan.

IV. NOTICE THE SUGGESTIVE AND APPROPRIATE WAY IN WHICH GOD IS ADDRESSED. "The God of the spirits of all flesh." It is God who breathes in the breath of life, sustains and controls it, and can fix the time of its cessation. Speaking to God in this way, there is thus an expression of humble personal submission. Moses cannot choose the time of death, any more than he has been able to choose anything else. God had shielded the faint and delicate breath of the infant as it lay in the flags by the river's brink, and now he calls upon the old man of a hundred and twenty years, who has passed through such a difficult and oft-endangered course, to yield that breath up. There is also in this mode of address a clear recognition of how it is that God may be looked to for the choice of a leader. God has but lately proved his knowledge of individual men by his complete control over those dying in the wilderness (Numbers 26:64, 65). He who assuredly knows the hearts of all the 600,000 lately counted can say who of them is fittest to be leader. God knows who is nearest to him as a follower. There is no fear but the sheep will recognize those whom God appoints. In spite of all the difficulties of Moses, in spite of rebellions and curses, in spite of the crumbling away of a whole generation, the nation is still there. Moses can say, on the verge of Jordan and at the foot of Abarim, "Here am I and the flock that was given me." But all this achievement only glorified God the more, that God who had chosen Moses and hedged up his way. Any other leader than the one God had chosen could never have got out of Egypt. Any other leader than the one God will now choose cannot get across Jordan. - Y.

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KJV: And Moses spake unto the LORD, saying,

WEB: Moses spoke to Yahweh, saying,