Deuteronomy 32:9-12. For the LORD’S portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: So the LORD alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him.
This is the history of the tutoring of Israel in the wilderness. When they came out of Egypt they were a mere mob of slaves, degenerate by the debasing influence of long bondage. They had to be trained before they were lit to be a nation. Now in all this, let us try to see ourselves. What has God wrought for those of us who are his people in bringing us out from the bondage of sin? and how graciously does he this day preserve us as a man guards the apple of his eye! No sooner does anything come near the eye than up goes the hand instinctively to shield the eye. And let anything happen to the people of God, and the power of God is ready at once for their defense. An eagle has to teach her young eaglets to fly. She will take them on her wings, so they say; cast them off, and let them flutter, and then dash down and come reader them and bear them up again till she has taught them to use their wings. And the Lord has been doing this with many here - apparently casting them off, only that, when they fall, underneath them may be the everlasting arms. We have to be trained to faith. It is a difficult exercise for such poor creatures as we are. We are being trained for it at this day. After they had been thus tutored, they were brought into the promised land, which Moses never entered, but yet in his vision of prophecy he sees it all.
Deuteronomy 32:9-12. For the LORD’S portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: So the LORD alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him.
This is the history of the tutoring of Israel in the wilderness. When they came out of Egypt they were a mere mob of slaves, degenerate by the debasing influence of long bondage. They had to be trained before they were lit to be a nation. Now in all this, let us try to see ourselves. What has God wrought for those of us who are his people in bringing us out from the bondage of sin? and how graciously does he this day preserve us as a man guards the apple of his eye! No sooner does anything come near the eye than up goes the hand instinctively to shield the eye. And let anything happen to the people of God, and the power of God is ready at once for their defense. An eagle has to teach her young eaglets to fly. She will take them on her wings, so they say; cast them off, and let them flutter, and then dash down and come reader them and bear them up again till she has taught them to use their wings. And the Lord has been doing this with many here - apparently casting them off, only that, when they fall, underneath them may be the everlasting arms. We have to be trained to faith. It is a difficult exercise for such poor creatures as we are. We are being trained for it at this day. After they had been thus tutored, they were brought into the promised land, which Moses never entered, but yet in his vision of prophecy he sees it all.