The Ministry of Home

As for MK and my house, we will serve the Lord.**

The image of this impressive passage is taken from the highest form of human society — the family constitution. There exists not, among earthly institutions, a diviner, holier, or more beauteous one than the domestic. It was among the earliest, as among the wisest and most beneficent creations of God; and, when it has been preserved in its integrity — pure, honoured, and sanctified — it has proved a weU-spring of individual happiness, social progress, and national prosperity, of the loftiest character. The human race — sinful and divided as it is — has never entirely lost its family instincts and domestic yearnings. Separated from its Divine Creator, and, consequently, separated from itself, mankind still crave and strive after unity. To meet this want and to satisfy this desire, men have devised and employed various expedients. The sword has been drunk with blood; Commerce has spread its canvas upon every sea; Eccledasticism has employed its engine of power; but fdl attempts to accomplish a unity of the race into one great family, under one supreme human will and head, have proved signal and complete failures. Thus the experiment has been tried without effect upon a grand and costly scale. But what was impossible for man has proved possible with God. The Lord Jesus has done what no chivalry, or commerce, or ecclesiasticism could do. By His inoameUion He taught the doctrine of a common humanity; a humanity shared alike by the subject as by the Sovereign, by the unlearned as by the philosopher, by the slave as by the master — the human race “made of one blood to dwell on all the face of the earth:” and by His death upon the cross, He moulds all who believe in Him into one holy brotherhood, constituting the ONE family of God. Now, of this essentially one family of God, the domestic institution is a beautiful and perfect type. It is from this institution the passage which I have selected, as suggesting the thoughts of the present introduction, derives its expressive image.

Joshua was the head of a household. He was an eminent servant of Grod. As such, he was one of the most distinguished personal types of the Lord Jesus Christ found in the Old Testament. On the death of Moses he was appointed to lead the sacred tribes into the pro-THE CHBISTIAK FAMILY. 3

mised land Although the great legislator of Israel had brought them up out of Egypt, and had led them through the wilderness to the borders of Canaan, he was not permitted to complete the work he had undertaken, but was compelled to relinquish into the hands of Joshua the honour of settling the tribes of Israel in the promised land. It is, perhaps, in this part of his remarkable history that his typical relation to the Lord Jesus Christ first appears. Moses could only lead the children of Israel to the border of Canaan; but Joshua led them into Canaan, and settled them in the good land. Thus did the Lord Jesus Christ accomplish for us what the law, of which Moses was the type, could not do. The law convinces of sin, but is totally inadequate to justify or save; and, therefore, could never efifect our entrance into heaven, and make us possessors of the inheritance which we lost in the first Adam, but which we regain in Christ the Second Adam. Thus, “Christ is the end of the law for righteoicsness to every one that heiieveth” Thus, too, we are taught that, “by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh le justified :** that, as the sacred tribes looked to Joshua to conduct them into Canaan, and not to Moses, so we as sinners are to look in faith to Jesus, and not to the law, to bring us to heaven. The law is a mirror to reflect our sinfulness, and not a laver to cleanse our guilt. Looking into this holy and perfect law, we see our true image as sinners — but, washing in the atoning blood of Jesus, we are cleansed from all sin. Joshua, therefore, signifies Jesfus because he temporally mved the children of Israel by conducting them fully into Canaan; and so it was said of our blessed Saviour, “-Siw iMiTm shall ie called Jesus, far He shall save His people from their sins”

But, in addition to his civil relation to the Church of God, Joshua filled the sacred ofl&ce of a Christian minister; he was, as it were, a priest over his own house, and hence it was a piotis house. It was here, amidst its hallowed influences, doubtless, that his personal piety was nourished, his religious character was nurtured, and his spirit was trained and encouraged to imdertake and achieve great things for God and for His Church. He lived in degenerate times, — amidst much laxity of morals and religious declension, against which he was enabled, by the grace of God, to oppose a powerful and decided resistance. The children of Israel were proud, vacillating, and rebellious. To them he addressed the solemn, searching words, “Te cannot serve the Lord, for He is an holy Ood; He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins. Put away the strange gods which are among you, and incline your hearts unto the Lord God of Israel.” And then appealing to his own personal and solemn decision, he gave utterance to the noble sentiment of our text. Whatever religious declension might exist with the body politic, however the people of the land should pervert their ways, decline from the fear of the Most High, forsake His ordinances, and set up strange gods in their dwellings, and so corrupt and destroy their households, — there yet should be one home consecrated to God, — one sanctuary within which true piety should find a retreat, — one safe asylum for real religion, — one altar upon which should glow the fire of faith and virtue, of devotion and love to God. — “As for me and my HOUSE, WE WILL SERVE THE LoRD.” He had vowed to the Lord, that both he and his should be on the Lord’s side, and from that vow he would not go back. He could not rule the State nor command the Church to the extent that he wished; but he could be the minister of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ in his own home, — among his own kindred; and he was resolved that, personally and relatively, both he and his house should serve the Lord. If all the tribes of Israel had determined to leave God, — if all the families of these separate tribes had determined to forsake the sanctuary and abjure the worship of the Most High, yet this pious parent’s heart was fixed, his mind was determined; he would dare to be singular, and to stand alone, though the thousands who had cast off the fear of Jehovah should bend upon him their contemptuous frowa” As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord’’ Holy and magnanimous resolve!

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