Exodus 2

Chapter 2. RedemptionThe deliverance of Israel from the bondage of Egypt is the type of man’s redemption from the power of sin and Satan.

Section I: The Redeemer

Section I—The RedeemerExo_2:1-15; Exodus 3:1-18; Exodus 4:1-17; Deuteronomy 18:15-18Our great Redeemer is typified by Moses, who himself declared that one greater than he was to arise from among his brethren and lead them into their spiritual inheritance. “But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son… to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full rights of sons” (Galatians 4:4-5). Moses a Type of Christ The points in which Moses was the figure of Christ are numerous and striking. Among them we may briefly notice:

1. Like Christ he was born of an oppressed race (Exodus 2:1-2). So our great Redeemer was born of a woman, made under the law, our kinsman and brother and the sharer of all our human infirmities and sufferings. “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity” (Hebrews 2:14).
2. Moses was not only a slave-born child, but also a prince of royal dignity, an heir to Egypt’s very throne. So the Lord Jesus is the Heir of all power, and the Prince of glory by eternal right (Exodus 2:10; Philippians 2:6; Hebrews 1:2).
3. Moses gave up all his honors and dignities to share the sufferings of his brethren and save them from their cruel bondage. And so our great Redeemer became partaker of our human nature, and its lot of suffering, shame and death. “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7-8; see also Hebrews 11:25-26).
4. The rescue of Moses in his infancy, from the cruel decree of Pharaoh, reminds us of the bloody attempt of the cruel Herod to destroy the life of the infant Jesus, and His deliverance through the marvelous providence of God, by His night into this very land of Egypt, where His infancy was sheltered, even as Moses’ was (Exodus 2:3; Matthew 2:14-16). Moses’ retirement for 40 years into the wilderness of Midian, and his quiet preparation there for his future work, resemble the early preparation of Jesus for His future ministry, and even more distinctly foreshadows His 40 days of conflict with the devil in the wilderness before He entered upon His public ministry (Exodus 2:11-25; Matthew 4:1-11).
5. Moses’ work began with a terrific conflict with the devil-gods of Egypt. And so the ministry of Jesus was preceded with the conflict of Satan, and involved at that stage a direct conflict with the powers of darkness whom He came to destroy (1 John 3:8).
6. The character of Moses was typical of the spirit and character of Jesus (Exodus 3:11; Matthew 11:29). Moses was the meekest of men, and his gentleness of spirit was continually tested and exemplified through all the provocations of his trying position (Numbers 12:3). So of our Lord Jesus it was said: “He will not quarrel or cry out; no one will hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out” (Matthew 12:19-20).
7. The work of Moses is typical of the great work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was the founder of Judaism; so Christ was the Founder of Christianity. He gave Israel the law; so Jesus has given us the gospel (John 1:17). He was the great prophet of the old dispensation; so Christ is of the new (Deuteronomy 8:15-18; Acts 7:37). He was the deliverer of his people from Egypt; so Christ is our Redeemer (Revelation 5:9). He was the founder of the system of sacrificial offerings; so Christ is the great sacrifice (Hebrews 9:12). He was the builder of the Tabernacle; so Christ Himself is the true sanctuary (Hebrews 8:1-2; Hebrews 9:10-12). He was the mediator between God and Israel; so Jesus Christ is our one way of access to the Father (Exodus 20:22; Galatians 3:19; 1 Timothy 2:5). Yet Moses was but the figure of Him who was to come. When Jesus appeared on earth, Moses came to the Mount of Transfiguration and laid his testimony at the feet of Jesus, acknowledging Him as the true substance and end of all His glorious dispensation, while the voice from heaven proclaimed, “This is my Son, whom I love;… Listen to him” (Matthew 17:5). No voice so loudly as Moses’ witnessed to the preeminence and glory of Jesus Christ. And in all the preaching of Christ and His apostles, they always began with Moses as they unfolded the things concerning Him in the ancient Scriptures. And the song of redemption on the shores of the sea of glass, at last, shall have as its deepest note, the song of Moses blending with the song of the Lamb.

Section II: The Redeemed

Section II—The RedeemedExo_1:13-14; Exodus 2:23-25; Exodus 3:7-8; Exodus 4:19-31; Exodus 5:4-211. Their condition was helpless and hopeless (Exodus 3:7, Exodus 3:9). “The Lord said, ‘I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering’” (Exodus 3:7). 2. They at first refused their deliverer and seemed incapable even of understanding the divine purpose in their deliverance (Exodus 2:14). So “he came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him” (John 1:11). And the story of every redeemed soul surely begins in the same record of unbelief, indifference and neglect. 3. As their deliverance drew near, the rigors of their bondage increased, until at last it was unsupportable (Exodus 5:9). So when God is about to awaken His people to a sense of their need, and prepare them for their deliverance, their burdens become heavier, and their case more desperate. The Hebrews expressed this fact by a proverb which is full of significance for all our lives: “When the tale of brick is doubled, then cometh Moses.” “The darkest hour is just before the dawn,” is our modern translation. It is when men are lost that they become saved. It is when the prodigal is ruined that he is nearest home. It is when we have no help or hope that the Lord is at hand. 4. At length they lifted to heaven their cry of distress: “The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them” (Exodus 2:23-24). It is the story of prayer and its answer. It was but a groan and a cry, but God hears the sighing of the prisoner; and the Spirit’s mightiest prayer is oft a groaning that cannot be uttered. It is still as true, God “said [not] to Jacob’s descendants, ‘Seek me in vain’” (Isaiah 45:19). 5. At length they not only pray, but believe. So their redemption begins like ours, with faith. “Aaron told them everything the Lord had said to Moses. He also performed the signs before the people, and they believed. And when they heard that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped” (Exodus 4:30-31).

Section III: The Redemption

Section III—The Redemption1. Began in Judgment (Exodus 7:1-6, Exodus 7:19-25; Exodus 8:5-7, Exodus 8:16-24; Exodus 9:22-26; Exodus 10:12-17, Exodus 10:21-23, Exodus 10:28-29; Exodus 11:1; Exodus 12:29-36). Israel’s redemption began in judgment as man’s redemption at Eden had begun in the sentence upon the serpent. Moses’ first work was to break the power and pride of Pharaoh and prove the supremacy of the God of Israel over the idols of Egypt. So Christ’s redeeming work began in judgment on sin and Satan. So in the prophetic vision of His coming it is said, “For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and the year of my redemption has come” (Isaiah 63:4). We see here again the great principle of salvation by destruction, which we saw in Eden and in the Flood, of which the cross of Calvary was the solemn symbol, and the closing scene of the Christian dispensation will be the sublime culmination. The Plagues The plagues of Egypt were especially significant as types of divine judgment on Satanic power as well as human wickedness. They were 10 in number, denoting by the symbolical significance of this number the completeness of the divine judgment on the evil of which this was the expression. The immediate subjects of these visitations were especially fitted to humble the idolatry of Egypt, and prove the impotence of their gods, in contrast with Jehovah. All things that to them were most sacred and, indeed, symbolical of their deities, were involved in the common humiliation and judgment, and proved their utter helplessness to defend or avenge themselves. The Nile The waters of the Nile were the first to be smitten, and they were not only of vital necessity to the health and comfort of the people, but were especially sacred as symbolical of the life-sustaining power of nature embodied in their majestic river, which was the source of physical life and fertility to the soil, but now became a stream of death. It was the more significant because it was into this very river that Pharaoh had ordered the Hebrew children to be cast. Frogs The second plague, known as the plague of the frogs, was similarly aimed at Egyptian idolatry. The frog was the symbol of human life in embryo. The creative or formative principle among the Egyptians was a frog-headed god. This creature was made to die at the word of Moses, as an expression to its blind worshipers that its very life was at the command of Israel’s God. Gnats The plague of gnats, which followed, was not only still more trying and painful, inasmuch as it touched the very persons of the Egyptians, which had not hitherto been the case in the other visitations, but it also humiliated the most sacred objects of their false worship. It appeared in both man and beast, infesting all classes without distinction, covering even the persons of the priests, so that they were made unclean and could not enter their temples, and swarming upon the very animals that were most sacred, and degrading them as the helpless victims of this defiling and disgusting nuisance. Flies The fourth plague, of flies, was an awful visitation not only upon the persons of men, but upon all the produce of the land, consuming and destroying every green thing, and reducing the inhabitants to the horrors of famine. It had also the same religious significance as the previous plagues. The beetle, one of the flies of Egypt, was a sacred emblem, representing the sun, and its being turned into a scourge and a curse, which they were glad to have removed as a horrible nuisance, was a most vital blow at their favorite form of devil worship. On Livestock The plague on livestock swept with one destructive blow over all the cattle of Egypt, destroying both the sacred animals held in such reverence, and also the beasts of burden and the animals for the food of the people without discrimination. A distinction now begins between the Israelites and the Egyptians, which continues through all the remaining judgments. Boils The plague of boils which follows leaves the inoffensive cattle free, and now attacks only the human form, covering the person with a filthy, eruptive disease, and driving at length the very magicians from the presence of Moses with humiliation and horror. They not only acknowledged the finger of God, but fled in dismay from the stroke which they themselves had at length felt. Hail and Lightning The plagues that follow grow more terrible. The seventh is a terrific storm of hail, with thunder and lightning, in wild and awful commotion, devastating the land, terrifying the people, and even the proud king. For a moment he is awestricken, and asks a reprieve, but speedily repents of his weakness and returns to his obduracy. Locusts And then follows the eighth plague, one of the most awful forms of calamity known in the Scriptures—the swarming of locusts, which suddenly cover all the land and devour whatever has remained from the former judgments, leaving the whole land a waste of desolation. Darkness The ninth plague is a vivid culmination of the third series of three, and has a special religious significance about it. In fact it carried to the Egyptian mind a significance even greater than we can understand. It was the visitation of preternatural darkness continuing for three days, so dense that it could be felt. Something like this may have been familiar to the Egyptians in the awful simoom of this land, which often darkens the air for days; but this was a gloom unknown before, coming suddenly at the divine command, so intense that it seemed almost palpable to the touch, and covering only the land of Egypt, Goshen being exempt. The religious import of the plague is heightened by what we know of Egyptian worship. The sun was, perhaps, the chief object of worship, under the name of Amun Ra. The very name of Pharaoh signifies the sun, and represents the king as in some sense connected with it, and entitled to divine honors. The darkness, therefore, adds to all the previous judgments this final humiliation to the very highest of the objects of their nature worship, and proclaims the true God as supreme above everything in both earth and heaven. Pharaoh is, at length, alarmed and dismayed; he sends in haste for Moses and grants permission to the people to depart, making only one restriction—that their cattle shall remain behind. This Moses peremptorily refuses, and then, in a fit of infatuation, Pharaoh dismisses him from his presence, forbidding him to see his face again, and hardening his heart for the last fatal resistance. The Death Stroke The last blow in the series of divine judgments was a death-blow at the very life of the nation. The death of the firstborn son, while not the extinction of the entire race, is significant of the sentence of destruction upon the entire race, thus cut off in its hope and flower. From this judgment Pharaoh’s own home is not exempted. The peculiar meaning of this judgment is found in the fact that it would have fallen upon the Hebrews, too, had they not been protected by the redeeming blood of the Paschal Lamb. It seems, therefore, to stand as the very type of God’s eternal judgment on the whole fallen race represented by Egypt as the type of the world, and from which the children of faith were saved, not even by their national immunities and privileges, but only by appropriating faith in the blood of redemption. Falling upon Pharaoh and his people with unmitigated and irremediable severity, it tells of the wrath of God which is revealed from on high against all unrighteousness of men, and which for those outside the covenant of grace and the blood of Jesus, hangs as a dark and fiery cloud of eternal death. Classified The 10 plagues of Egypt have been ingeniously arranged by interpreters, as old as the Jewish Rabbis, in several series; the first nine forming three clusters of three each, and the last one standing in awful isolation as the climax. At the end of the first three, the magicians of Pharaoh acknowledge the finger of God. At the end of the second three, they fly in terror from His presence. And at the end of the third three, Pharaoh refuses to see the face of Moses again, and is given up with hardened heart to the inexorable judgment of God. In the first three there is no distinction between the Hebrews and the Egyptians. In the last seven the Egyptians only suffer, and the Hebrews are divinely exempted. These last seven are the peculiar types of the judgments which are to fall in the last day upon the godless and anti-Christian world. They point forward to the last seven plagues which the angels of judgment are to pour out upon the earth, and from which the saints of God shall be probably exempt. In the vision of these judgments in the book of Revelation, the song of Moses is strangely introduced, intimating a close relation between the incidents we are now relating and the apocalyptic vision. The entire 10 plagues suggest the judgments of God upon Satan, upon the world, and upon the antichrist in the last days, and present the shadow side of God’s great redeeming work, which follows as truly as the shadow follows the light. 2. Redemption by Blood (Exodus 12:1-28, Exodus 12:43-51; Exodus 13:1-4). The redemption of Israel was accomplished through the blood of the Paschal Lamb. And so our redemption is effected through the blood of Christ. On the night when Egypt’s firstborn were slain and Israel’s homes were spared the touch of the destroying angel, there was another death in Goshen’s tents. It was the Paschal Lamb, whose sprinkled blood became the substitute for Israel’s firstborn, and the type of the vicarious and sin-atoning Savior. All the details of this solemn ordinance are arranged with special fullness and spiritual significance, and for 3,000 years the children of Israel have preserved this ancient memorial with but little change, as one of the most remarkable monuments of the truth of their wondrous history. The Beginning of Months It is really the first of the typical ordinances of the great Mosaic system of ceremonial rites. It was to mark a new era in Israel’s history, and therefore to be to them the beginning of months, the first month in the ecclesiastical year (Exodus 12:2), even as the sacrifice of Christ is the beginning of the Church’s history and the hour when the soul accepts His atonement, the beginning of its spiritual record. The Lamb The circumstances connected with the selection of the lamb, and its death, are strikingly typical. The lamb was to be without blemish, even as Christ was holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners. It was selected the 10th day of the month, and kept until the 14th, that all might observe its perfect blamelessness and have their attention fixed upon its significance and prepare for its sacrifice. The period that elapsed from its separation until its death was exactly typical of the duration of Christ’s public ministry, counting a day for a year. In His 30th year He was publicly set apart, and in His 34th year He was crucified, after an interval of between three and four years, during which He walked in the light of all men and demonstrated to all men His fitness for the work of man’s redemption. The Household The lamb was taken, not for the individual, but for the household, to show that Christ is the Redeemer, not of any individual or race exclusively, but of the whole family of God. Provision was made for the entire household, adding another if its own circle was too small, suggesting thus to exclusive Israel that they were to share their lamb with their Gentile neighbors (Exodus 12:3-5). Slain At the appointed time the lamb was to be slain by the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel, in the evening. And so the Lord Jesus Christ was delivered by the Jewish Sanhedrin, and publicly crucified about the time of the evening sacrifice (Exodus 12:6). The Sprinkled Blood The sprinkling of the blood vividly expresses the application to our hearts of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our acceptance of and dependence upon His offering for our salvation. It is not enough that Christ has died for us; we must appropriate the efficacy of His death to ourselves. The place where the blood was sprinkled may suggest that Christ’s blood bears witness not only to us, but to the world around and to the heavens above, of our redemption. The Flesh The next thing was the eating of the flesh of the lamb. This expresses our participation in the life and strength of Christ, and our taking Him as the very substance and subsistence of our new life, both for soul and body. He Himself has expounded this spiritual mystery in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John, with deeper fullness, and taught us that His own very life must be imparted to all who would fully live in Him. They were to eat the flesh on the same night that the blood was shed and sprinkled; so our participation in the life of Christ must begin the moment that we accept Him. We cannot live on mere justifying faith, but must have His abiding communion from the moment of our conversion. We cannot take Christ merely for our forgiveness, but the same night we must also take Him for our spiritual life. The Fire The flesh of the lamb must be roasted with fire. So Christ must be prepared for and presented to our spiritual apprehension by the Holy Spirit, not as a raw, naked conception, but as a warm, living personality. It must not be sodded with water. Perhaps this means the vain and empty words with which man often soaks the precious truth of God, until it becomes of none effect through the dilutions of human wisdom. The Whole Christ The whole of the lamb was to be eaten, with his legs and the purtenances thereof (Exodus 12:9-10), and nothing of it was to remain until the morning. Thus we are to partake of the complete Christ, accepting not only His blood for our redemption and His flesh for our life, but His head for our thought and wisdom, His legs for our walk and guidance and all the purtenances thereof for all that pertains to our entire existence, even to the most commonplace need of our daily life. No part of Christ or His fullness must be lost or left unclaimed. Unleavened Bread It was to be eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. The former tells of our separation from sin. The latter of the deep and painful experience through which the Holy Spirit leads to the renunciation of self and sin, and the full acceptance of Jesus, the tears of penitence and the death of self, in all its pains and wholesome self-renunciations (Exodus 12:8). Pilgrims They were to eat with their loins girded, their shoes on their feet, their staves in their hands and in haste. The girded loins, the sandalled feet and pilgrim’s staff, proclaim their pilgrim life, and mark the beginning of their journey and their readiness to obey and follow (Exodus 12:11). And so the blood of Jesus separates us from the past, and sends us forth on our heavenly pilgrimage, strangers henceforth to the world, followers of Jesus and ready for His service and will, wherever He may call. We, too, must eat this holy feast in haste. There is no time for lingering and hesitating. Ere midnight the destroying angel will have passed, and he that loiters may be lost forever. Over the gateway of mercy the inscription burns in letters of fire: “Flee from the coming wrath” (Matthew 3:7). “I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). The Firstborn The next chapter more fully unfolds the deeper meaning of the ordinance in regard to the firstborn of Israel, who were to be holy unto the Lord in token of their redemption (Exodus 13:2). The application to us is connected with the use of this expression, firstborn, as descriptive of our place in the family of God. We are all recognized as His firstborn, in the sense of heir-ship with Jesus Christ. He is the Firstborn of the Father, and therefore the Heir of all things. By His death He redeemed His brethren, and by our union with Him we enter into His place of full inheritance and thus are all God’s firstborn sons. This ancient ordinance of the redeeming blood has passed like a crimson line through all the later teachings of the Scriptures, and given name, shape and color to almost every sentence of apostolic teaching and every song of the heavenly worship. “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed… but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:18-19). “Because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God” (Revelation 5:9-10). 3. Redemption by Faith.Israel had to enter upon their redemption by a step of bold, decisive faith. And so we are redeemed not only by blood, but saved by faith. Their first step of faith was their departure from Rameses. For a time their path was circuitous and perplexing. God did not lead them by the direct way of the land of the Philistines, which was much nearer, but around by the Red Sea, and afterwards through the wilderness of Arabia (Exodus 13:17). So, in leading the soul to its inheritance, God frequently takes the most perplexing way in order to bring it into a deeper knowledge of Himself, and a more thorough death to itself and the world, and teach it by such discipline the lesson of faith. It was not long before the faith of Israel was sorely tested. They soon found themselves shut in between the surrounding mountains, the sea in front and the pursuing armies of Egypt behind. They seemed shut up to destruction; but they were really shut up to faith and to God. Yet out of their desperate straits came the most glorious chapter of their national history. And so many of us have come to the place of perplexity and even despair, and then found it the very gate of heaven. First, they must show, however, their own miserable unbelief and worthlessness. In the hour of peril they completely break down, and begin to reproach Moses and Aaron with their cruel misfortunes (Exodus 14:10-12). Stand Still Next they must get quiet, and cease from all their unbelieving fears and restless activities and efforts at self-deliverance. “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance [of] the Lord…. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still” (Exodus 14:13-14). God cannot save a soul until it stops trying to save itself, and ceases from its own works and also from its fears. Go Forward Next comes the advance step of faith: “Tell the Israelites to move on” (Exodus 14:15). The troubled heart must now act—not in its own strength, nor for its own deliverance, but in dependence on God’s promise and salvation. It must accept His word and step out upon it, even in the dark—even into the very waters of the flood. Perhaps their feet are suffered even to touch the waves for a moment, as they advance, as we know was the case when afterward they crossed the Jordan. But the next moment the hand of God has interposed, the waters roll asunder and the path stretches across the angry sea, and leads them on to victory and redemption. So must we believe and follow, stepping out in faith into the uncertain future, and expecting God to clear and lead the way. The Way of Faith This initial act of faith is subsequently repeated again and again in the experiences of life in other things. And therefore the deliverance of Israel has come to mark the various deliverances of God’s people in the trying places of their experience. But in every case the steps of faith are the same. The first is our failure. The next, the cessation of our struggles, fears and activities. And the third, the simple obedient steps of faith, taking God at His word, stepping out in the dark and finding His faithfulness and providence opening our pathway. This is the aspect of faith which the apostle emphasizes in the great picture gallery of Hebrews 11:29 : “By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land.” This is the kind of faith which the natural heart in vain assays to imitate. The Egyptians, assaying to do what the Hebrews did, were drowned. To the eye of sense they did the same thing, but they failed in it. Two persons may perform the very same act, apparently, and in the one case it may prove a miserable attempt at faith which can only bring disaster. The Church is full of these miserable assays at faith, mere make-believes, which involve no real risk of ourselves, or committal to God. Man can believe a good deal when he sees the evidence and has somebody walking before him on dry ground, as Pharaoh’s hosts had. But to step out in the dark like one who walks on the sea, with no evidence but God’s naked word and the risk of ruin if He fails us, in the faith of God, which flesh and blood hath not revealed to the natural man—this is the faith which brings any great deliverance, whether it be the forgiveness of sins, the sanctifying presence of God, the healing power of Christ or answered prayer in any great emergency. The apostle has expressed it in the simple words: “We live by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). And Christ has pronounced upon it this benediction: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). 4. Redemption through the Holy Spirit (Exodus 13:20-22; Exodus 14:19-20). Israel’s redemption was accompanied by the presence and protection of the pillar of cloud and fire, to us the symbol of the Holy Spirit and His part in leading the soul from bondage to redemption. The moment they set forth from Egypt, the Divine Presence preceded their march, and henceforth led them all the way. It was the old symbol of fire, accompanied by the cloud of glory which also appears in almost all the manifestations of God, both in the Old and New Testaments. It is the sublime emblem of that blessed Spirit who becomes the guide and guardian of every child of God, from the beginning of his pilgrimage to the consummation of his complete redemption. The Twofold Manifestation We observe two stages of this manifestation, even in the first chapter of Israel’s new experience. First, God went before them until they reached the edge of the divided sea, but then He instantly passes through the camp, baptizing them as He passed, no doubt, with the enveloping cloud, and went behind them, marching like a wall of fire between them and their foes. It is not fanciful to apply this to the twofold experience by which the Holy Spirit leads the soul that follows Christ. First, He leads it to faith in Christ as one who goes before, as a presence with us, and yet not fully in us. And then, when we make a full committal and pass through the crisis of absolute surrender and death and resurrection with Christ, He comes nearer to our hearts, passes through and into our entire being, baptizes us and possesses us with His personal presence, henceforth becoming the very element of our being, before us, behind us, within us, above us, beneath us forever more. The first of these experiences might be expressed as the teachings and leading of the Spirit. The second is the baptism and indwelling of the Spirit. His glorious personality must also become real, as well as the Savior, in the experience of every redeemed soul. We must know the Paschal Lamb and the Pillar of Cloud and Fire as a personal presence, the beginning of our entire spiritual life. The third chapter of the Gospel of John describes the first stage of this spiritual experience. The second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles describes the second and deeper baptism of the Holy Spirit. Often it is in the hour of some crisis like the very floods of the Red Sea that the soul enters into this more intimate fellowship with the Holy Ghost. Let us not fear to follow His guiding presence even into the darkest and most trying place; and when we reach the depths, then we shall find our Guide encompassing us with His loving arms, covering us with His overshadowing wing and standing not only before us but behind us as our glorious reward and our wall of fire around about. 5. The Principle of Death and Resurrection.The passage of the Red Sea is the great symbol of the principle which runs through the whole plan of redemption, namely, death and resurrection. The Red Sea was to them a seeming grave; as much so as Isaac’s sacrifice on Mount Moriah was his yielding up to death. Their coming forth on the shores of Paran was a vivid type of our stepping into the resurrection life, through our union with the Lord Jesus Christ, in His death and resurrection. It is true that death was not as thorough as it had afterwards to become. And so 40 years later we meet with a new figure of the same principle, namely, the passage of the Jordan, setting forth our more thorough and complete deliverance from the old life and quickening into the life of the Spirit. The Twofold Death Corresponding to this in the redeemed soul, there is often the double experience of death and resurrection: the first, when we turn our backs upon the world in our conversion and die to our former life; the second, when we turn our back upon ourselves and die to the inner life and the entire natural self. Even the first experience, however, is supremely important, and the soul should be taught to recognize all its blessed reality and to count itself so identified with Christ in His crucifixion that it is as one already executed for its own crimes, and thus completely justified in the sight of God through the death of our Substitute. There is no reason why the deeper death should not also be experienced at the same time, unless it be that the soul has not yet fully realized what it has to die to. Perhaps it needed the experience of the wilderness to show Israel the worthlessness of themselves and the necessity of their crucifixion. Sometimes God has to reveal to us in our subsequent experiences after conversion the fact that in us “nothing good lives” (Romans 7:18), that we may be driven to put off the old man with his deeds, and accept the Lord Jesus in His fullness as our perfect life. This principle of death and resurrection is the real philosophy of the plan of salvation. God does not pass over our former sin, but He judges it and punishes it in the person of Christ, with whom we are recognized and so identified that His death is practically our execution. This is the ground of our justification. God does not pass by our sin, but fully deals with it and slays us for it, and the soul that enters into life is counted a newborn soul that never participated in the sins of the past. So also with regard to the question of righteousness. God does not accept our imperfect obedience, but repudiates it, and takes instead Christ’s perfect obedience as if it were ours, and thus regards us and treats us as if we had perfectly obeyed His entire law. So again with respect to sanctification. It is not the improvement of our old nature, it is not the gradual perfection of self, but it is the repudiation and death of our old nature, and the imparting of a new and resurrection life, which is wholly supernatural and divine, and literally Christ “has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). On the other side of the Red Sea, God recognizes His people as a new race; and so, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). A Figure of Baptism Hence this transaction is connected in the language of the New Testament with the ordinance of baptism, in a remarkable way. The Apostle Paul, speaking of this event in 1 Corinthians 10:2, says, “They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” We know that the word baptism is preeminently figurative of death and resurrection, and so used again and again with respect to our union with Christ. “All of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death” (Romans 6:3). The Cloud and the Sea Their being baptized, therefore, in the cloud and in the sea, expresses the idea of their being delivered to death, and brought forth to a new life: the sea expressing the idea of death and judgment; the cloud, the descending life of heaven. How beautifully the same two ideas are combined in the baptism of our Lord Himself, as He stepped into the waters of the Jordan and was baptized with water; and then even as the cloud, which of old passed through the hosts of Israel as they went through the sea, came the descending Holy Spirit from the open heavens, and rested upon Him, and He was baptized henceforth both in the cloud and in the sea. So we see the two same thoughts in Peter’s language on the day of Pentecost: “Repent and be baptized… in the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 2:38). That is the baptism in water—the sea. “And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). That is the baptism in the cloud. This is the ever true and full significance of Christian baptism. It is not merely the baptism of water, which is only the sea, but it ought ever to be accompanied with the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which is the baptism of the cloud. And when the soul truly yields itself to this ordinance, as an act of self-crucifixion with Christ and entire consecration to the union with Him, then, indeed, that blessed Presence itself passes like the ancient cloud through its entire being, and becomes henceforth the divine element in which it lives and moves and has its being. 6. The Redemption Song (Exodus 15:1-21). Israel’s redemption was celebrated by the song of Moses and Miriam. And so our redemption must also be confessed and commemorated by the spirit of praise. The song of Moses is the keynote of all the songs of redemption that fill the Bible, and reaches its full chorus in the song of the Lamb, by the sea of glass, and the choirs of glory. We shall never know the full joy of salvation until we begin to praise. This is the first evidence of faith, real faith, and is ever the support and inspiration of faith. “He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God” (Psalms 40:3). “I will praise you, O Lord. Although you were angry with me, your anger has turned away and you have comforted me” (Isaiah 12:1). This is the language of the forgiven soul, and the more we praise, the more we shall ever have to praise for. 7. The Memorial of Redemption (Exodus 13:5-16). The redemption of Israel was commemorated by a memorial ordinance, the Hebrew Passover. So our redemption is celebrated by the Lord’s Supper, designed to show forth Christ’s death till He comes, and therefore dear to every heart that loves the Redeemer and values His precious blood. The deeper fullness of our redemption is unfolded in many succeeding types of the book of Exodus, but these we reserve for our last theme in the division of the book; even as God deferred them until the people were prepared for their fuller revelation, by the experience which immediately followed their crossing of the Red Sea.