Exodus 12

Exodus 12:1-15

Subdivision 3. (Exodus 12:1-51; Exodus 13:1-22; Exodus 14:1-31; Exodus 15:1-21.)God with them manifest in full and realized salvation. The third subdivision is the history of God’s final interference in behalf of His people, in which not alone is Pharaoh’s power subdued, but much more -God is manifested, and they are brought into His presence. God with them and for them, which means also that they are to be for Him, -essence, as it is, of all sanctification -this is most evidently its central meaning. It is a perfect blessing, as realized in its seven sections, which it is well to glance at in their connection with each other before we take them up in detail. The passover and the passage of the sea are the two stages in this deliverance, which answer, I believe, essentially, to the first two parts of the epistle to the Romans (Romans 1:1-32; Romans 2:1-29; Romans 3:1-31; Romans 4:1-25; Romans 5:1-11, and Romans 5:12-21; Romans 6:1-23; Romans 7:1-25; Romans 8:1-39); the first, justification by the blood of Christ; the second, death to sin in the death of Christ. Both parts must be known for full deliverance. The type before us will best illustrate their meaning. In the first section (Exodus 12:1-20), peace with God in righteousness through the blood of Christ is the plain significance of the passover. All begins with this (Exodus 12:1-6), which is the basis both of communion (Exodus 12:7-14) and holiness (Exodus 12:15-20). In the second (Exodus 12:21-51), we find, therefore, deliverance from captivity: faith sets its seal to the word of God (Exodus 12:21-28), sees the judgment of man in all that comes of him (in the death of the first-born, Exodus 12:29-30), and is thus separated from the world and to the Lord (Exodus 12:31-36), the walk with God now beginning (Exodus 12:37-42); finally, the obligations of the passover are made known (Exodus 12:43-51). Thirdly (Exodus 13:1-16), the sanctification of the first-born, corresponding to the judgment upon the first-born before, shows how redemption is to God, in the devotion of all the powers of the redeemed. Next (vv. Exodus 13:17-22), the features of the walk with God are made known to us in the consciousness of weakness (Exodus 13:17-18), the bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus (Exodus 13:19-20), and the Lord’s presence with us (Exodus 13:21-22). These four sections, it is evident, are in close connection and complete, the septenary series here being, as with most other sevens, a 4 and 3. The four are the passover series, the three following give us the second stage of deliverance -the passage through the sea. Thus the fifth section shows us (Exodus 14:1-14) once more the weak with the Strong, -the enemy showing himself once more, but Jehovah revealing Himself as the shelter and salvation of His people. The sixth (vv.Ex. 14:15-31) brings the actual victory, decisive and final. Israel is outside of Egypt, the enemy perished. In the seventh (Exodus 15:1-21), we close with the song of the delivered people. The spiritual meaning of these latter sections we shall best understand as we enter into the details.

1. The first section, then, relates the institution of the passover; clearly a new beginning, for the year is changed to make it so. The last of the plagues of Egypt is in this way clearly separated from all that has preceded it, as, on the other hand, we have seen the former ones as constituting a complete series, the last three giving us completely the attitude of God toward the unbelieving world. The death of the first-born in its aspect toward Israel themselves differs entirely from that of the former plagues. As to these, they had been sheltered by the hand of God, not a question raised as to their own relation to Him; but now, though sheltered, their shelter must be realized as a refuge -a refuge to which they must flee as those in danger; themselves justly liable to that which falls on the Egyptians. Here, then, is a total change in God’s ways with them, and a change of the deepest significance.

Till they own what they are and what they deserve, there can be, spite of all that has been done for them, no deliverance. They must meet death -that which is the wages of sin, pass through it, as it were, leave it behind them, the question settled, and (as all questions settled with God,) never again to be unsettled -never to come up again, before they can be freed from Egyptian bondage, or their feet leave Egyptian soil; -nay, before they can begin to go out, -before they can take a single step in this direction. Their true passover -all following being but the commemoration of it -they must keep in Egypt, and this is particularly noticed in the first place: “And Jehovah spake unto Moses and unto Aaron in the land of Egypt.” All this for us is deeply instructive. There is no progress with us possible until we have come to this. There may be, no doubt, plenty of exercise and experience of a certain sort before it, and plenty of effort at self-help; but that only makes more solemn the fact, as here, that withal no step is made in the path with God, nor the path reached, until the shelter of the cross is known. The peace which Christ has made for us we can realize, and we must have peace with God in order to walk with Him. Here, then, is the true beginning for our souls. (1) First, the year is changed; the preceding months are blotted out, as it were, and God begins time afresh for them with the paschal month. Grace it is that gives this new beginning, and grace can do nothing kinder than blot out the past. And so with our history, until that is known which is the antitype of the passover here. It will have its use, no doubt, as a lesson; all is not, in that sense, lost: will any thing in the world’s history even be really so? All will have its moral in the fast-hastening day of revelation, and instead of being forgotten, will abide in profit for us forever. But when God says, “I will remember no more,” it has a very different meaning.

He can no more forget than He can repent; yet, relatively, both terms can be used of Him. He does not remember our sins when He treats us, and is to us, as if these had never happened -when we can find nothing whatever in His conduct toward us which indicates His remembrance of them; when they are not merely not a cloud in our heaven any longer, but not even a mote in the sunshine of His perfect love. Yet the vail that love can draw over the past may be, as in this case, so surpassingly glorious that the glow of it may enable us as well to look back as to look forward. And if God set aside the past with a new beginning, He does, in fact, all the more direct our eyes to the vail with which He has covered the past. It is the work of Christ which has covered our past which has begun for us all things anew; and the vail of the past is here the glory of the present and the future. But the year does not begin exactly with the passover itself: that is the fourteenth day of the year, and not the first: and not till the tenth day is the lamb taken. How full of meaning is this fourteenth day, -a number compounded of 2, the number of testimony, and that which speaks of divine and perfect workmanship -7! For is not here the perfect work which is the great subject of God’s testimony? The ten days which pass before the lamb is taken are, as we know, significant as the measure of human responsibility: they answer to that time in our Lord’s life before He takes up openly His work among men, as to which the Gospels are as silent as the type here. Yet the type is not silent as to the character of that time, but explains it as that in which He was fulfilling, as man, His own responsibility; coming forth then, at the end of it, to receive the Father’s attestation to His perfection, and the seal of the Spirit, when He takes up His work for men. He is then shown the unblemished Lamb, and the “four days” of the type begin to be fulfilled with Him, to which the four gospels answer, the time of His testing; for us, the glorious exhibition of what He was and is, as Messiah, Minister, Son of Man, and Son of God. At the end of the four days, the lamb is slain. The different sides of the sacrificial work we shall not find here; for that, we must go on to Leviticus. Here, what is dwelt on is what we must first of all realize, -the effect for us. (2) We go on, then, to see that effect, -perfect shelter from the judgment which is even now pronounced -not executed -upon the world. The blood before the eye of God shows that judgment anticipated, and put away as thus anticipated, by sacrificial substitution. As so often noticed, God’s eye is upon the blood, and so cannot be upon the people. Whether they are good or bad, whether feelings or experiences are right or wrong in any of them, is not the point: God sees but the blood. Had judgment entered a house so sheltered, not only would the blood have been dishonored, but the truth and righteousness of God would have been wrecked forever. These stood on the side of the worst and guiltiest of these who had fled for refuge to the hope set before them. And so with us. The glory of the gospel it is that the righteousness of God itself is put upon the side of every one who welcomes it in faith. While outside the house the blood of atonement spoke to God, to whom it was addressed, inside He provided that which was to satisfy them, and enable them for that path with Him upon which they were now so shortly to go forth. The lamb is theirs to feed upon, and God is bent upon their enjoying this provision of His love. The lamb too must all of it be eaten. If the household were too little for the lamb, (we read nothing of the lamb being too little for the house,) then, says the Lord, let him and his neighbor next unto his house take it. God would have Christ apprehended by us. He would have our souls sustained, and He would have Christ honored.

We are to eat -to appropriate to ourselves what Christ is; and what we appropriate becomes, in fact, part and parcel of ourselves. This laying hold of Christ by faith makes Christ to be sustenance indeed to us, and Himself to be reproduced in us. Death God ordains as the food of life; and it is as sheltered and saved from death that we can feed upon death. It is not merely vanquished and set aside: it is in the cross the sweet and wonderful display of divine power and love in our behalf, accomplished in the mystery of human weakness. Death is become the food of life, and the life is life eternal. As to the mode of eating the lamb, notice three things which destroy the dangerous dreams that are about with regard to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. First of all, it was not to be “raw,” or “underdone.” Fire must do its work, and thoroughly too, upon that which was to be the representative of Christ as in redemption we know Him. Not death alone would do: the Lord in atonement not merely laid down life, but was “made sin,” -yea, “made a curse for us.” The chastisement of our peace was thus upon Him in that awful place; death without this would be no food for us: not the lamb raw. But again also, “not done at all in water, but roast with fire.” The water would hinder the direct action of the fire; and this is the type of the Word, or as “living water,” of the Holy Ghost, who acts by it. The Lord’s life was always in the power of the Spirit, -always pure absolutely, according to the measure of the Word itself. But would not the water, then, hinder the action of the fire? Could He be made sin who knew none? That is just what Scripture affirms to have been the truth. The holiness of His life, the perfection of His obedience, did not prevent or soften the agony of the cross.

It was the just due of sin which He took, glorifying God in thus affirming His righteousness who ordained the penalty. An “equivalent penalty” would not avail, much less a commuted one: these would but set aside the sentence, to His dishonor. No: the lamb must not be done in water, but roast with fire. Thirdly, “its head, with its legs, and with its inwards.” The head, no doubt, expresses the thoughts and counsels with which His walk (the legs) keeps perfect company. The inwards are those affections of His heart which were the motive-power impelling Him upon the path He trod. In all, the fire brought forth nothing but sweet savor; for man, it prepared the food of his true life: all is absolutely perfect; and all is ours to appropriate. Occupation with the person of Christ is thus impressed upon us: we need this. Not the knowledge of salvation alone will suffice us: it is the One who saves whom we need. Indeed, without occupation with Christ, the very knowledge of peace and salvation may only too easily be found associated with a worldliness most intense. Christ for our hearts alone keeps and sanctifies them. The pilgrim dress is therefore to be the garb of those who partake of the passover. It is to be eaten in haste, as by men escaping from that the pressure of which they have too well known, and longing to be away. And the dress is the traveling-dress: it is not the “best robe,” which gives us quite another thought; but the traveling-dress, which God grant we may ever wear. And here we begin, just as for the conflict in Ephesians 6:1-24, with the “loins girded.” The long robes of the east, as all are aware, required the girdle, that they might be no hindrance in the way of such a march as Israel had now before them. If loose, they would get entangled with the feet, and overthrow the wearer; and the dust of the road would get upon them and defile them. The truth it is that is to be our girdle, keeping us from loose and negligent contact with ever-ready defilement from the world, and the entanglement to our feet which lax habits prove. We must arise and depart, for this is not our rest. Then we have, “your sandals on your feet:” and these shoes never wore out through all their journeyings in the iron desert in which for forty years they wandered. They anticipated in this, as we must, the roughness of the road, and the peace of Christ must be our defense, a faith that recognizes God in every thing, and that delights in and makes His will our will. The staff in our hand is that of His promises upon which we may lean without possibility of disappointment. Thus we are provided. (3) We come now to the feast of unleavened bread. Here, of course, is pressed upon us the holiness which all this implies. Literally, it is “compressed bread,” -bread of which the particles have not been separated by the action of ferment or leaven. For “leaven” itself there are two words, the one meaning properly “a leaving,” or remainder, because it was, in fact, a lump of dough left from a former time while the other means simply “leaven,” or ferment." The “old leaven” of which the apostle speaks to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 5:1-13) is connected with the first thought. The introduction of the “old” into that which is new is what the enemy would ever use to transform and corrupt this. It may be the spirit of Judaism, the old covenant, introduced into the new; it may be, what is of the flesh into the new life which is of God.

It may come in as superstition and formalism (the leaven of the Pharisees), or as more open Sadducean rationalism and unbelief, or as simple pandering to the world, -“the leaven of Herod” (see Matthew 16:1-28). In any case it is corruption -leaven; in any case it implies real departure from God. If we leave Him and His thoughts, what can we do but take up with our own? And this is a thing not merely negative and passive: it is by the law of its nature what all evil is -a ferment, a revolt, an antagonism to all that is of God. The unleavened bread the apostle interprets as “sincerity and truth” -of course, Godward. It is the spirit of integrity with Him -whole-hearted surrender to His blessed will. It is the spirit which says, “Search me, O God, and know my thoughts.” The deliberate keeping back from Him of that which is His due is rebellion against Him. The association of the unleavened bread (where first mentioned) with “bitter herbs” is easy therefore, but solemn. The discovery of self is bitter, -the ruin of the old creation, -that the Lamb should have had to die for my sins. How utterly inconsistent this with the allowance of evil! A chastened spirit becomes us in presence of the cross. Not yet -not here -can we let our hearts out, in a world where the cross has stood. Yet it is a “feast of unleavened bread” that we are called to -truly a feast. The rest for the soul is never obtained without taking Christ’s yoke (Matthew 11:29). In the perfect surrender to God which repentance implies and faith necessitates, the joy of the Lord that enters into the soul is the assurance of an infinite joy to come. And this feast is to fill the “seven days” of our life after; -six here, and then the eternal Sabbath to which no night comes. All these things, as the contents of this section show us are implied in redemption known, -the new beginning of a life eternal. 2. In the second section, we have the history of the deliverance from Egypt, not completed however at once, as we shall find, although at first it might be thought so. Yet their fetters are once for all broken, and He who has begun will complete His work. We have here — (1) First, on the part of Israel, their obedience to the prescribed conditions. In sprinkling the blood, they own the sentence of death upon themselves, and the hyssop used in doing so, as the type of what is lowly, in contrast with the cedar (1 Kings 4:33), speaks very plainly of the condition of heart which must naturally go with this. The knowledge of this grace of God toward them the people are to communicate to their children. (2) Then the judgment falls. The death of the first-born is the judgment upon all that comes of the natural man, the first-born, like the first-fruits being a sample of all the rest, and indeed, as Jacob says, “the excellency of dignity and the excellency of power.” “That which is born of the flesh is flesh” is our Lord’s account of it. Man must be born again. The judgment of the world brings necessary separation from it. The witness of its condemnation before God, if maintained, will soon make the world itself enforce a separation. The people of God go forth, however, enriched, for “all things are yours,” says the apostle, “whether the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours” (1 Corinthians 3:21-22); and in the time of their visitation the world itself will own this. (4) And now the journey begins. Strikingly the first stage, -all that is mentioned yet, -is from Rameses to Succoth, -from the king’s city, built for the glory of his name, to the place of the “booths,” or tents, characteristic of the wilderness. But at the very start a hint of the future is already given in the “mixed multitude” which go up with them. Wherever a movement of God takes place, men are wrought upon by other motives than those by which the Spirit of God stirs the renewed heart, and a mass attach themselves to those who are led forth. The Pharisees and Sadducees come to John’s baptism; the flesh and the world will go on pilgrimage: and here is the seed of much after-trouble (see Numbers 11:4). Even in the individual believer also how soon may other motives mix themselves with what is of the work of God, at first all seeming to unite to carry us forward in the path of faith, and only by and by showing their true character. Another circumstance emphasizes the warning. It may be true, as Keil suggests, that the command to eat unleavened bread for seven days had not yet been given to the people, but it is none the less typically full of solemn meaning that historically the way in which they came actually to fulfill the ordinance as to it for the first time was that “they were thrust out of Egypt, and could not tarry.” Had the Egyptians pressed less urgently upon them, they would undoubtedly have put the leaven into the bread! How easy to realize the application of this! Have not the times when the world has pressed most heavily upon the Church been commonly the times when the feast of unleavened bread has been most truly kept? When the world has forced believers out of it, then indeed brightness and devotedness have been more seen. Alas! when the storm relaxed, how soon the leaven again was introduced! (5) Now follow the regulations as to the passover, the main point in which is manifestly this, that the circumcised alone are to partake of it. A stranger was no longer this if he were circumcised: and this is clear enough in meaning when we remember what circumcision implied (see Genesis 17:1-27), as it enables also to understand the distinct specification of the “hired servant” among those rejected. The covenant of grace refuses to be mixed with the thought of wage-work. The feast of redemption is for those who, as those impotent for good, shelter beneath the shadow of the Almighty: “when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” 3. In the third section, the sanctification of the first-born to God is insisted on, again illustrating the connection between redemption and holiness. For it was the first-born that had been redeemed from the judgment that fell upon the Egyptians, and here the Lord claims for Himself what had been redeemed. This is simply what holiness is: it is setting apart to God; practical sanctification the consecration, in the power of the Holy Ghost, of the heart and life to Him. As in the judgment of Egypt -of the world, -the first-born represent all that comes of man naturally, so here it is all that comes of man -his whole practical life -and in the cattle all that belongs to him. The institution of the feast of unleavened bread is repeated here, and brought into the midst of the ordinance of the first-born, to link the sanctification of heart with the sanctification of life. Thus the lesson is complete, and it is evident as every where that the spiritual meaning governs all. (1) First, in this section, then, Jehovah’s claim is asserted. Certainly all that He has created must belong to Him; but it is only redemption that really gives Him what is His. Here, then, all that He has redeemed must be entirely His: disastrous it would be to keep any thing back from Him. Only what is thus rendered to Him becomes indeed our own, for “in Him we live and move and have our being.” Independence of the source of life is death, and thus life cannot be enjoyed apart from this sweet and profitable devotedness. (2) If this is to be carried out, however, the feast of unleavened bread must be our introduction to it. The heart must be taken captive if the life is to be surrendered. Service must be the fruit of love, for love is the constraining spirit of service. But our love is, again, the fruit of His love: “We love Him because He first loved us.” And thus the connection with the opening sentence: “Remember this day in which ye came out of Egypt . . . by strength of hand hath Jehovah brought you out from this, -and nothing leavened shall be eaten.” Let us remark here, that certainly a known salvation, not a doubtful one, was the basis of this feast for Israel. What reinforcement of the obligation when they should have reached the good land promised -type of that heavenly land which we are called upon now to enter and to make our own! The feast was, too, for them a sign upon the hand, which it consecrated to God, a memorial between the eyes -manifest to all as unblushing confession of separation, and thus the mouth too would be called upon to give its testimony of obedience. (3) Now the sanctification of the first-born follows, who through all their generations afterward (if males) are to be redeemed. In the epistle to the Romans, in which so many types of the first part of Exodus find their fulfillment, immediately after the full liberty of the redeemed man is reached, we hear of sanctification in the sixth chapter. In the epistle to the Hebrews, we find how by the blood of atonement itself we are sanctified to God: “By the which will we are sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once.” (Hebrews 10:10.) Thus we are devoted to God by the very fact of salvation, we and all that we have. And here another instructive lesson is given us. “And every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb and if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break its neck.” How vain to read these typical institutions merely as ordinances in the letter and no more! Why, of all beasts, the special introduction of the ass here, and of the ass only, to be redeemed with the self-same lamb wherewith man himself must be redeemed? Does it not show clearly, when our eye is upon that to which all these ordinances point, that man is himself identified with this “ass,” that must be redeemed or slain? And so God characterizes Ishmael, a first-born too, sign and fruit of nature’s strength in Abraham, not merely, as in the common version, “a wild,” but “a wild-ass man.” We must not think here, however, of the ungainly drudge, as we see him generally, but of the eastern animal, -fleet, beautiful, uncontrollable in spirit and energy, -of whose tame congener even it is said, in a way so opposite to all our notions, “a whip for the horse, and a bridle for the ass.” Thus nature shows itself in Ishmael, the father of the Bedouin Arab of our day, and, for our instruction, the child of Hagar also, or the law, -that law which, after so many centuries of patient training under it, developed but the race which, like the wild ass, refused the “easy yoke” of Him who came to teach man, in Himself, the lesson of obedience -“meek and lowly of heart.” As the seed of Abraham, Ishmael has further instruction for us. For the man of faith, if he take up law to produce fruit, will find assuredly that even faith can make nothing of it: the law is “the strength of sin,” and not of holiness. Thus the firstling of an ass speaks to us. Blessed be God, for us the lamb has yielded up its life; and the sanctification which the law could not produce is found for us in the blood of atonement. Let us remember, as we are charged here, with mouth as well as life, -with life as well as mouth, -to give God the glory of our redemption. 4. In the next section, a brief account of the life to which this introduces us is added. We have as yet only seen it (1. 2; 2. 4.) in its pilgrim character and its connection with redemption. Now we have more distinctly, though yet in brief, its features. (1) And first, we find, very strangely as it may seem, the Lord being with them, as we are just now so fully assured, the confession of weakness, implied in their not taking what would seem the nearest road -in one sense was -to Canaan, expressly because in it they might “see war”! By and by, in that land to which they are journeying, they are to be led in a career of conquest over nations mightier than themselves. As yet, it is weakness which God recognizes in them, not strength; and He chooses their way accordingly. Three points are to be marked here. First, that the way is of God’s choice, not theirs. This is surely an absolutely needful lesson at the start. Do not all our breaks-down by the way result from this, that we have chosen for ourselves, not let God choose for us? To be in His way is to be where He is with us; and if He be for us, who can be against us? Then, His way for us is always one in which we are made to realize weakness. Our prayer can never be, “Lead us into temptation,” and therefore we are never to act as if this were our prayer. In all cases where escape is possible without disloyalty, we are to flee rather than face it. “Flee also youthful lusts.” “Abstain (hold off) from fleshly lusts.” Flee, as Joseph fled; and there was, perhaps, no bolder man. Again, at the stage of progress we have reached as yet, the power we need is not yet realized. The Philistines may have a way into Canaan by the short natural road; Israel must reach it by a different one, as we shall presently see. The way of the sea is the only one for all God’s people: we shall have to look at this fully in a little while. (2) They carry with them Joseph’s bones, -at the meaning of which we have glanced at the end of Genesis. “Bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus” is the practical testimony linked with and making manifest the “life of Jesus.” (2 Corinthians 4:10.) (3) Thus far, the human side of this walk; the divine side we see in the pillar of cloud and of fire which goes with them, the symbol and pledge of the divine presence. Always in contrast with mere natural surroundings, by day a cloud, by night its glory flashing into fire, it renders them independent of circumstances -able to go by day or by night. The Keeper of Israel is with them in unslumbering vigilance and unslackening care. He leads; they follow. In the wilderness, where there is no way, He marks the way. How wonderful a resource, how inexhaustible the riches, that these poor desert-wanderers possess in Him who if they be pilgrims will be a pilgrim too. Yet this too is but the type of that more wondrous glory which, though hidden, goes with us now! 5. The fifth section, true to its character, puts now the weakness of the people before us in contrast with the strength of the Almighty, tested by the presence of the enemy, who again shows himself as the prelude to his final overthrow. The spiritual meaning for us of this last attempt of the king of Egypt upon Israel we shall better consider, as we need fully to consider, in the next section. The features of the present one are clear enough. (1) First, we are shown, beyond doubt, that all that comes comes from God’s hand, and in the design of His goodness toward them. Egypt is not yet humbled as it needs to be. God leads the people in such a way that to Pharaoh it looks, and would naturally look, like human blundering, rather than divine wisdom. He is thus hardened to his destruction. (2) The whole force of Egypt is, in consequence, put in requisition; their whole strength is put forth for one decisive blow. Pharaoh comes upon the people in a position from which there is no escape, hedged in between the mountains and the sea. Every thing seems to combine for their destruction. (3) Israel are as heartless as they seem defenseless: there is not even the courage of despair. The slaves would rather go back to the slavery than face the conflict that impends. In this extremity, Jehovah is seen to be the sole resource. The question becomes no longer between Israel and Pharaoh, but between Pharaoh and the Almighty, who has indeed taken upon Himself the responsibility of His people’s salvation. But “all these things happened unto them for types,” says the apostle, and the importance of what is contained in this one demands for it a fuller consideration than can generally be given. 6. At the sea, the question is no more (as in the passover), between the people and God: it is entirely between them and their enemies. The question with God, once settled, was fully and forever settled. That raised again now was the old first question, (but which they had learned could not be answered first,) of servitude to Pharaoh, or of liberty. This question God Himself now takes up on their behalf, and they find God with them in a more manifest way than ever yet. Already, from the time of the passover, God was with them; but how truly for them the Red Sea first makes known. If we look at the doctrinal part of the epistle to the Romans, as found in the first eight chapters, we shall see that the first part of it -to the middle of the fifth -occupies us with the blood of Christ, and its effect for us. This is seen as that through which the righteousness of God itself, which that blood-shedding declares, provides a place of safe and assured shelter for us. We are “justified by His blood;” and this reaches on in its effects to the final judgment of the world, and assures us that “much more shall we be saved from wrath through Him.” Judgment is rolled away forever; and with our standing in present grace, and glory as our confident expectation, we are enabled to glory even in tribulation also, conscious that it, with all else, is working, under God’s hand, in necessary blessing for us. This is therefore essentially the passover truth: sheltered from judgment, eating the lamb, and equipped for the journey. But now, in the next part of the epistle, from Romans 5:12 onward, the question of practice at once comes in “What then? shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” “Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace?” And then, when the discovery of the hopeless evil of the flesh is made, one question more: “Oh wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” All through this part, the question is as to the dominion of sin, and we are delivered by death, and by being brought into a new place beyond it: “that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin;” “but now, being made free from sin, and become servants to God,” “the law of the Spirit, of life in Christ Jesus, hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” Who can but think of Israel’s bondage in Egypt here, and of the divine method of deliverance? Bondage to Pharaoh! but does not that cease on the night of the passover? In a most important sense it surely does. There is a breaking of chains, and a real start. God is now with them, and can never allow His claim to them to be canceled, and the enemy to retain possession of His people. But when we pass from God’s point of view to that of the people themselves, with whatever “high hand” they start, we soon find them dropping out of all their confidence, and trembling again before their old tyrant in fear and distress that the actual presence of God with them cannot remove.

Shut up between the desert and the sea, with Pharaoh’s chariots and horsemen in full pursuit, their cry is the cry of unbelieving despair. The controversy between them and their old enemy had to be taken up afresh by God in their behalf, now to be ended indeed. God interferes -God fights for them. And they do naught but “stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord.” And so with a soul who has found the safe shelter of the blood of Christ, and seen the judgment of God roll over, smiting but the chains from off his hands, the question of deliverance from sin’s law is really settled. But it does not follow that he will at once come into the realization of this. Alas! the first teaching of holiness has to be this, that in me, (even as a believer,) -that is, in my flesh, good does not dwell; and in order to strength, we have to learn the lesson of thorough and continual weakness. At first, indeed, when salvation is new, and one has seen the shadow of death turned into morning through faith in a risen Saviour, whose death has made atonement for his sins, it may seem as if sin could no more put shackles on the enfranchised soul. Knowledge of the flesh and self as yet there is not, and with some it is but slowly attained. But full deliverance is not known until this has been realized nevertheless, -the Red Sea is not reached, Egypt is not left behind, they have not crossed its border. For the sea is its border, and through it only is God’s way for His people, though it may seem there as if God had deserted them. For who could penetrate the wisdom that refused a path near, and not apparently difficult, to lead them by one bristling with most formidable difficulties? And how many misjudge in like manner His purpose, who, having begun to lead them in the way of holiness, in fulfillment of the desires which He has awakened in them, leads them, in fact, there where they have to cry and cry again, that they cannot do the things that they would? -progress beyond which seems quite impossible.

How many, indeed, stop here, and strangely imagine they must after all serve Pharaoh with the best grace they can: to get out of Egypt, -to escape from under sin’s law, they deem impossible! At peace with God through the blood of Christ, they yet think that as to the sin within them there is, and can be, no effectual deliverance! The mind is indeed changed, -with the mind they serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. They do not see that God is leading them beyond, -that after all, this is but the border of Egypt that they have reached -and that there where all progress seems to have stopped forever, God is at hand to give them so mighty a deliverance from the hand of their enemy that their hearts shall sing aloud of it forever. The Red Sea is the border of Egypt; and if Egypt be in type the world, and we ask men how they pass out of the world, they will answer with one voice, “By death, and by death alone.” Now that is not true in the sense in which they say it. Scripture does not lead us to say, “We must all die,” but rather, with the apostle, “We shall not all sleep.” Those who are Christ’s, and “remain unto the coming of the Lord,” will be changed without seeing death. And yet it is true that for this we must have passed out of the world before, so as not to have part in it, and that this passing out is by death also, but a death which Another has taken for us. Still we must look at the Red Sea as the type of death. Jordan, the limit of the wilderness, and which the people pass through dry-shod, as they pass through the sea, is similarly understood by all, and helps to confirm this meaning by its evident parallelism. This “way of the sea” is God’s ordained way for His people, -a way we pass by faith, to enter upon our pilgrim-path with God. By faith they passed through the sea as by dry land," says the apostle (Hebrews 11:29). This dry-shod path which the rod of Moses clears for their passage, but which is no less cleared by “a strong east wind all the night” -we ought to be able without difficulty to interpret. The rod of Moses is the rod of power in the shepherd’s hand: and has not our Shepherd cleft for us a path through death? And the strong east wind of adversity, -notice in Pharaoh’s dream (Genesis 41:6) how the ears of corn are blasted with the east wind, -blowing through all the awful night of his distress, was it not that which did in fact clear the way for us through those waters of death through which by faith we pass out of Egypt, -out of the whole sphere of Pharaoh’s rule, or the condition to which the “law of sin” applies? But we must trace this experimentally, for it is with experience we have now to do. We are following the track of a people whose history is the type of an actual and real deliverance from a bondage infinitely worse than theirs; and as the bondage is a fact of experience, so the deliverance is also this. Let us get before us, then, this soul just started in the path with God, full of the precious reality of escaped judgment. His bonds are fallen off, -he is free. The joy of salvation is too much in his heart for the world and the things of the world to have power there. But how short a time may pass before all begins to change!

The entrancement of His joy is less absolute than it was; the world through which he is passing begins to have more reality and power. Child of God as he is, he finds he has still a nature which is not all new nature. The flesh is there, and sin is in the flesh; its “mind” is still “enmity against God,” its lusts go out after the things presented to it by the world; and here begins a struggle of which those who know it know the painfulness. The old enemy is reviving and gathering strength; the old chains are being again riveted. Israel’s despairing cry by the sea finds its answer in the groan over a body of death which lies upon the soul, a burdensome, loathsome weight, which it is past its power to deal with, whether to improve or cast aside. “Oh wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? It is “between Migdol and the sea” that Pharaoh comes upon them. Migdol should have an important place in the type, then: can we interpret it? The word signifies a “tower,” such as might be a military post, the natural enough accompaniment of a border region. Jealous eyes no doubt watched the escaping hosts from thence. Egypt was not now friendly, and from a place of strength the people of the land would not fear to show hostility. Any way it was a tower in an enemy’s country, not a place of help or refuge, but the stronghold of a power now armed against them to the teeth. Surely the New Testament gives this significance. If we turn to the seventh of Romans, which is the key to the situation here, we shall find, if I mistake not, Migdol looming large upon the scene, and threatening enough to the soul seeking escape from sin’s law. We need not, must not, hesitate to follow Scripture, however strangely it must sound to some to be told that “the strength of sin is the law” (1 Corinthians 15:56), and that we must be “delivered from the law,” not merely to be justified, but to “serve in newness of spirit” (Romans 7:6). Men will have it, because the law is spiritual, that it must be power for spirituality -power against sin. Scripture is decisive that “sin, taking occasion by the commandment,” works in one under the law “all manner of concupiscence.” (v. Romans 7:8.) Nay, says he who testifies of it, “without the law sin was dead; for I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.” (v. Romans 7:9.) Surely this is just the position between Migdol and the sea, where Pharaoh overtook the camp of Israel. That the law cannot justify is comparatively simple; that it hinders fruit-bearing is hard to realize. And yet it is as sure as that Migdol was in the enemy’s country, and that Israel must leave it in order to escape the pursuit of Pharaoh and his hosts. Under the shadow of Migdol the tyrant of Egypt overtook his former slaves; under the law, the self-occupation which it produces and necessitates ends simply with the discovery of an impracticable body of sin and death from which I, wretched man, see no deliverance. Legality is inconsistent with holiness: self-occupation is not that by which I can produce fruit for God. I cannot bring about the spiritual state I long for, which would satisfy me; and God will give me no help at achieving self-complacency! I desire the consciousness of holiness: His own law gives me the consciousness of sin. Whence, then, can deliverance come? Now let us look at the type again. First of all, let us mark, God does not lead Israel up against Pharaoh. Their own arm is not strengthened by His to bring salvation to them, they have instead to “stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord.” God does not call us to fight against the flesh and subdue it. He neither points nor leads in that direction at all. “What other way?” many a heart in Israel might ask. Ah, God’s thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor His ways as our ways. See now how the sea divides, and a channel is made through it, while its uplifted waters become a wall on the right hand and on the left! Christ’s precious death is for us -is ours, so that we are dead by it, dead with Him, and as dead men are no longer “in the flesh.” Not merely our sins are gone; WE are gone; we have died: Christ’s death has ended our history before God; in Him who has passed through death we have passed through it, untouched, dry-shod; our standing is in Him beyond death. This is of course true of every child of God: it is not a matter of attainment, and we cannot too earnestly insist upon this, and yet there is an attainment of it too. What is ours already we are called to apprehend as ours, and thus it is that we find the passage of the sea not on the passover night, but several stages beyond this. To enjoy the blessedness of the place, we must in fact reach it experimentally. We have not to die to sin: we are dead, and to reckon ourselves dead. Dead with Christ, we are in Christ beyond death. The self I was taking up to cultivate and improve, God has set aside forever in the cross. Thus the waters are a wall to me, but the death of my enemies. “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin may be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” Self-occupation is ended for those who have learned thus the meaning of the cross, and that in Christ is their true self: that it is as “we all with open face behold the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18.) Faith is thus the principle of sanctification, as it is that of the new nature. “The law is not of faith:” it implies strength in us; faith finds it in Another. God honors it, and works by it, because it honors Christ. I am not dead to sin in experience; I do not feel myself so: I reckon it (Romans 6:11). I cannot feel the cross of Christ; by faith I know its effect for me. Faith is, turning from myself to Another: it is the giving up of self-occupation and complacency. Thus by faith I pass the sea to take my new position outside flesh and nature; and when I look back, find that my enemies are buried in the waters. Privileged to turn away from self, the conflict and the distress are over. In Christ is my place, in Him I find a satisfying and a heavenly object, lifting me out of the whole sphere of things in which the lust of the flesh finds what it seeks. Faith, love, hope, twine around Him their tendrils, and flourish there. Here the new nature expands and develops and bears fruit -fruit which is for her Master, not for her own taste and enjoyment. The fruits of the Spirit need to be ripened in the Sun. The least degree of occupation with Christ is GLORY. 7. Now, then, we come to the “song;” and how important it is that the soul should have a song! “Abounding therein with thanksgiving,” says the apostle. If our hearts are not in the enjoyment of the deliverance, the deliverance can scarcely be in realization. There is power in joy: “the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Happiness in Christ is an absolute necessity for holiness. The joy is worship -heaven begun. (1) Jehovah is really God -their God. This is the first strain of the song, and so it must be. What a joy to have known God -to have found God! What a horrible solitude is a world without God! what a glorious God does salvation discover to us! Henceforth God is to be supreme: to be God, He must be that; and joy in Him is necessarily the spirit of obedience. (2) Then the deliverance: it was all His own! we only looked and saw. Think of the old man destroyed! Think of death’s piled-up waters! We are under the hand of Him whom all things serve. (3) Nor is this merely power; nor is it the caprice of love, or of vengeance. Holiness is as manifest as power; nay, it is His peculiar glory, -the atmosphere of His presence, -the sanctuary in which He dwells, the satisfaction for our hearts who are called to behold Him there: for His redeemed He is guiding to His holy habitation. For us, this is heaven; but the tabernacle of God shall be with men also in the new earth. (4) Now they look on to the prostration of all their enemies; nay, the blow already fallen has prostrated them: in the past and the present the future is involved, and God’s people cannot be too confident in their anticipations. The glorious challenge of the apostle (Romans 8:31-39) is the Christian’s counterpart to what is here. (5) The land is seen as the end of the way. God’s hands have established the place of His sanctuary, and there the same hands will plant the people. The apostle Peter gives us the corresponding truth when he tells us that “God hath begotten us again . . . to an inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away; reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.” (1 Peter 1:3-5.) A reserved inheritance for a preserved people: God’s way leading to God’s end; the Almighty revealing Himself such to those whom He carries through to their predestined place; -thus the song closes here. (6) Then the victory itself is again recounted, stripped of poetical embellishment, grandest in its naked simplicity, type of a greater victory in which for eternity our hearts shall rejoice: evil is under the hand of God absolutely as all else is; goodness alone has might, as in the cross. He who is supreme is worthy to be supreme. This is a grand lesson which we learn in the world, but learn for heaven and eternity. (7) The women’s voices, with their musical accompaniment, take up the refrain. It is the seal of completeness. Sin had come in through the woman; now her heart is lifted up in praise, which testifies in itself of victory over it. The mute inanimate things also become responsive in these timbrels in her hand. The joy is full and universal in the redeemed creation.