Hebrews 11:21

Hebrews 11:21

The Story of a Pilgrim's Staff.

I. The pilgrim's staff represented something. He leaned on it, not because it was needed, but because it helped him to realise. It was the type of those principles which sustain and make strong on which the spirit leans. The spirit flees over many fields, but it rests and finds its home on one, like the lark that sweeps up through the blue, and sings in the heavens. Its home is on the earth. You may go up into heaven as much as you like, but you must have a realising place where you may put your head. Man may think in religion about many things, but he is strengthened by one or two things only. Whatever our faiths are, we need to realise; we need to see the thing embodied so that we may apprehend it.

II. And then it will follow from this, secondly, that as it was a staff through which he realised, and therefore was dear to him because it realised and represented to him, so it was a memory. It was a memory of many things, a memory of many events and seasons. I take it, that the staff was very specially a memorial to him of the covenant in the night when God spoke to him in that marvellous dream. He adored God in the memory of it, for it kept him from falling. He did not adore the staff, but in the memory of it he adored God.

III. He worshipped, leaning on his staff, thirdly, because it was experience to him. The staff was not merely itself a memorial; it was inscribed all over with memory. Did not he think of a wrestling hour with the angel, and of days and years which, if few and evil, were surely not unblessed?

IV. It was a staff of promise. To lean on it was an assurance of what God would be and do; to lean on it was to feel the promises rushing through his soul. They pointed the finger to the future in hope and in faith. Faith rises higher and sinks deeper than our mere relative consciousness. Just as the sky is over the earth, so it is with those promises that arch us over, that surround, that illuminate our heaven. All texts are not the same to us; they vary in their lustre; they vary in the nutriment they give. But every text in the word of God says, "Trust me; rest on me; I will be equal to thee."

V. Lastly, he worshipped, leaning on his staff, for it was the staff of redemption the uninscribed, but still the apprehended redemption. That staff of his that piece of stick was to Jacob a representation of a succession of promises, of times when his soul and God's soul had had lonely walks and consultations and communings together. The age of stones has gone, and the age of staffs, perhaps, in the way of which either David or Jacob might speak of their being used; but the age of words is not gone, and we lean on the staff in the counting-house, in the school, in the study, in the street, in the solitude, in the wilderness. As we gaze upon it we are able to say of God's word, "Thou hast not failed me, O thou staff."

E. Paxton Hood, Penny Pulpit,new series, No. 766.

Reference: Hebrews 11:21. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxiv., No. 1401.