Substantial wealth.
In every part of the world there is hunger, more or less, to possess land. By long observation men have discovered that to possess land is to possess influence and honor among their fellow-men. Is not land essential as the foundation of the harvest-crops? And are not crops of corn and fruit essential to the life of men? Is not agriculture the mainstay of a nation's well-being? Yet without land agriculture is impossible; is it not therefore reasonable that men should eagerly long to call the land their own? On the other hand, this anxiety chains down men's thoughts to inferior occupations and to a provision for their inferior nature. Such anxiety tends to draw away their attention from God and to weaken their sense of pious trust. In order to counteract this disastrous tendency, God appointed a class of men whose business it should be to keep God prominently before the eyes of their fellow-men. These servants of God were precluded from acquiring wealth. They were to be wholly employed in fostering the religious life in men. For their maintenance God provided in a special manner. These priests were designed to be models of human life, patterns of later Christians. God's method for teaching the race is this—viz; to set down a good man in their midst, and to inspire others with the desire to imitate him. If one man can live and prosper by virtue of implicit and practical faith in God, other men can. By diligent culture of the land, God has ordained that human life shall be sustained. Yet God is not shut up to this one system. "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."
I. EARTHLY POSSESSION IS ONLY A MEANS TO AN END. It is not a blessing, but only a medium of blessing. It is part of God's system of means. The land exists with a view to harvest. The harvest is produced with a view to man's bodily life. Man's bodily life is sustained with a view to his spiritual character. On the whole, it is best that the land should be appropriated to personal possession. This secures that the land shall be cultivated in the highest degree, and that the crops shall be protected from premature use. If all land should remain as common property, there would be lack of inducement to cultivate it; there would be lack of inducement to personal exertion; there would be no check to extravagant waste. Personal possession is best for a community; yet it becomes a waste and an injury if a man possesses more than he can cultivate. God gives not land to a man in order that he may be tyrannical, selfish, puffed up with overweening conceit. This is a miserable perversion of a Divine gift. Land is created for cultivation. Cultivation of laud is designed for the support of human life. And all the laud in the world is worth nothing to me except as it ministers to the health and vigor of my life.
II. GOD CAN SECURE THIS END BY OTHER SYSTEMS OF MEANS. The best proof that, he can do so is the fact that he has done so on many occasions. It would be the height of folly to suppose that God has not made the wisest possible arrangement for the well-being of men. Yet if men abuse the arrangement and push God away from his rightful place, God can alter his system, and bring about his end by other agencies. He sustained the life of Abraham, gave him wealth and influence among men, while, at the same time, he refused to give him a rood of land. He was the Special Protector of the Hebrew nation; yet he led them about the desert for the lifetime of a whole generation, where harvests could not be gathered, and where land was not desired as a possession. Yet they wanted not for food or for clothing. God was to them better than all harvests. So Jesus Christ called away the twelve from their secular pursuits; yet he did not suffer them to want any good thing. Jesus himself preferred to have no encumbrance of land or wealth. He freely chose the state of poverty. To him, living in such intimate union with his Father, landed possession would have been a needless burden; yet, not only were his own wants supplied, but he royally spread a table for others. What the Son did on earth was the visible effect of his Father's working.
III. UNSELFISH SERVICE BRINGS TO A MAN THE LARGEST GAIN. He who forgets himself in his generous kindness is not forgotten by his fellows—is not forgotten by God. The family of Zadok were prohibited from being landholders. Nevertheless, they shall not want. "Every dedicated thing in Israel shall be theirs." "The first of all the firstfruits" shall be theirs. God out-distances all his creatures in generously rewarding faithful service. In his book every item of devoted toil and sacrifice is noted; for it ample reward is preparing. Just as one pain of corn will produce, in the harvest, a hundred grains, so consecrated service is living seed—it shall fructify into splendid results. Did Abraham ever regret his unswerving fidelity to God? Does St. Paul feel today that he made too great sacrifices of himself for others? Has any one been a loser for serving God? It almost savors of profanity to propose such a question. The true servants of God shall enjoy the tribute due to God himself. Statesmen, under a mighty king, are rewarded with a goodly share of the revenue of the empire; so the tribute paid into God's temple God distributes among his priests. For them who serve God well other men labor. Other men till the ground and prepare the produce. They who do the highest work shall have the best reward. Thus it was predicted, "Strangers shall stand and feed your flock, and the sons of the alien shall be your ploughmen and your vine-dressers; but ye shall be called the Priests of the Lord." Like many other good things, the name and the office of the priest have been made a curse. Yet a true priest—God's servant to mankind—is a very fount of blessing. He is like salt in the earth—a preserving and purifying power. Wherever he comes he is a spring-season of life and joy. He is to be well cared for, so "that he may cause the blessing to rest in thine house."
IV. THE DEVOTED SERVANT OF GOD OBTAINS A PROPRIETORSHIP IN GOD. "I am their Inheritance … I am their Possession." An estate is not really ours because we call it ours. We cannot call anything ours unless it becomes a part and parcel of ourselves. If it adds to our character and our strength, then, and only then, is it ours. The land estate is often the master of the man. He lives to improve it rather than to be improved by it. We possess property when we really get some advantage out of it. So is it also with respect to God. If we make God our Friend, we extract advantage from him. If we believe his promises and open our souls to his vitalizing grace, we are enriched from him. God's wisdom becomes our wisdom. His righteousness becomes our righteousness. His love becomes a fountain of love in us. We are "partakers of the Divine nature." In a very emphatic sense God gives himself to us. Every capacity in us may be filled with God. If we are fully God's property, God is our Portion—our Inheritance. This is transcendent condescension, the sublimity of love.
V. TO POSSESS GOD IS TO POSSESS ALL THINGS. On this account it would have been a superfluity if Jesus had been a Proprietor of wealth. Of what advantage would it have been for him to possess fields, if he could create a sufficient supply of bread by the magic of command? Although the poorest, he was yet the richest of men. It is understood that he who possesses the key of the bank possesses the contents of the hank. If the Creator be mine, if I can call him "my Father," then whatever his creation contains of good is mine also. It is clear that I must, as a creature, be dependent. Is it better to depend on law or on the Lawgiver? on the cistern or on the Fount? on blind circumstances or Omniscient Wisdom? on natural forces or on the all-creative God? My faith is founded in common sense. God undertakes to be my Friend—my Father. Then I am his child; and" if a son, then an heir—heir of God; "All things are yours, for ye are … God's."—D.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON
The shut gate: reverence.
What is the true significance of this closure? Much has been made of it by fanciful exposition; but surely the true lesson is that which lies upon the surface, viz. that the closed gate would be a continual reminder that the people must reverently abstain from using the entrance through which the Most High himself had once passed. It was another symbolic utterance of the truth that we must "put off our shoes" when we stand on "holy ground." The fact that there was a closed gate in this visionary, this ideal temple, may not unfittingly suggest to us (though it cannot be said to teach us)—
I. THE WAY THAT IS BARRED. If we try to enter the kingdom of God by the way or the gate of:
1. A false independence; if we attempt to reach the saving and redeeming truth of God by our unaided intelligence, unwilling to learn of him who came to teach us, to be to us "the Wisdom of God,"—then we shall find no entrance there (see Matthew 18:3; 1 Corinthians 3:18). The same may be said of:
2. Unholy indulgence; and of:
3. The favorable opportunity in the future. Whoever seeks to enter the kingdom of Christ by these doers will find no open gate, but a barred way; he must enter by the way of childlike faith, of purity, of immediate decision. The closed gate may also suggest to us, by contrast—
II. THE OPENNESS OF THE KINGDOM. There is a very valuable and most precious sense in which no gate is shut that was ever open into the kingdom of God. No man, let him be who or what he may, let him have been anything whatever in the past, coming to the gate of the kingdom of Christ in sincere penitence and simple faith, will find it closed against him. By whatever path he may have approached, by whatever influences constrained, if he be earnestly desirous of seeking God and serving him, he will find himself before an open door. Christ himself/s the Door, and he is ever saying, "Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out." But the true lesson of the passage is—
III. THE CONSTANT DUTY OF REVERENCE IN THE WORSHIP AND SERVICE OF GOD. The shut gate said (in effect), "Where God has come, you may not enter; there must be another way for the feeble and sinful creature than that taken by the almighty and holy Creator; realize the immeasurable difference between yourself and him." It is well that there should be raised, now and again, the reminder that the Lord whom we serve is the Most High and the Most Holy One; that it becomes us to worship him and to speak for him in the spirit of deepest reverence; that if a "holy boldness" may be cultivated, an unholy irreverence is to be most sedulously shunned; that our dearest Friend is our Divine Lord, worthy of the profoundest homage our hearts can pay him, claiming the fullest subjection we can bring to his feet, as we worship in his house or work in his vineyard.—C.