"And the Lord said unto Moses, 'Yet will I bring one plague more upon Pharaoh, and upon Egypt; afterwards he will let you go hence: when he shall let you go, he shall surely thrust you out hence altogether.'" (Chap. xi. 1.) One more heavy blow must fall upon this hard-hearted monarch and his land ere he will be compelled to let go the favored objects of Jehovah's sovereign grace. How utterly vain it is for man to harden and exalt himself against God; for, truly, He can grind to powder the hardest heart, and bring down to the dust the haughtiest spirit. "Those that walk in pride He is able to abase." (Dan. iv. 37.) Man may fancy himself to be something; he may lift up his head, in pomp and vainglory, as though he were his own master. Vain man! how little he knows of his real condition and character! He is but the tool of Satan, taken up and used by him, in his malignant efforts to counteract the purposes of God. The most splendid intellect, the most commanding genius, the most indomitable energy, if not under the direct control of the Spirit of God, are but so many instruments in Satan's hand to carry forward his dark designs. No man is his own master; he is either governed by Christ or governed by Satan. The king of Egypt might fancy himself to be a free agent, yet he was but a tool in the hands of another. Satan This will explain to us an expression occurring very frequently throughout the earlier chapters of this book,—"The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart." There is no need whatever for any one to seek to avoid the full, plain sense of this most solemn statement. If man resists the light of divine testimony, he is shut up to judicial blindness and hardness of heart. God leaves him to himself, and then Satan comes in and carries him headlong to perdition. There was abundant light for Pharaoh, to show him the extravagant folly of his course in seeking to detain those whom God had commanded him to let go. But the real disposition of his heart was to act against God, and therefore God left him to himself, and made him a monument for the display of His glory "through all the earth." There is no difficulty in this to any, save those whose desire is to argue against God—"to rush upon the thick bosses of the shield of the Almighty"—to ruin their own immortal souls. God gives people, at times, according to the real bent of their hearts' desire. "... because of this, God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." (2 Thess. ii. 11, 12.) If men will not have the truth when it is put before them, they However, it is God's prerogative to answer all the proud reasonings, and bring down the lofty imaginations of the human mind. He can write the sentence of death upon nature, in its fairest forms. "It is appointed unto men once to die." This cannot be avoided. Man may seek to hide his humiliation in various ways,—to cover his retreat through the valley of death in the most heroic manner possible,—to call the last humiliating stage of his career by the most honorable titles he can devise,—to gild the bed of death with a false light,—to adorn the funeral procession and the grave with the appearance of pomp, pageantry, and glory,—to raise above the mouldering ashes a splendid monument, on which are engraven the records of human shame,—all these things he may do; but death is death after all, and he cannot keep it off for a moment, or make it aught else than what it is, namely, "the wages of sin." The foregoing thoughts are suggested by the opening verse of chapter xi—"One plague more!" Solemn word! It signed the death-warrant of Egypt's first-born—"the chief of all their strength." "And Moses said, 'Thus saith the Lord, About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt; and all the first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the first-born of the maid-servant that is behind the mill; and all the first-born of beasts. And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there was none like it, nor "And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, 'This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.'" (Chap. xii. 1, 2.) There is here a very interesting change in the order of time. The common or civil year was rolling on in its ordinary course, when Jehovah interrupted it in reference to His people, and thus, in principle, taught them that they were to begin a new era in company with Him; their previous history was henceforth to be regarded as a blank. Redemption was to constitute the first step in real life. This teaches a plain truth. A man's life is really of no account until he begins to walk with God, in the knowledge of full salvation and settled peace, through the precious blood of the Lamb. Previous to this, he is, in the judgment of God, and in the language of Scripture, "dead in trespasses and sins;" "alienated from the life of God." His whole history How little do men think of this! They imagine that "real life" is at an end when a man becomes a Christian, in truth and reality, not merely in name and outward profession; whereas God's Word teaches us that it is only then we can see life and taste true happiness.—"He that hath the Son, hath life." (1 John v. 12.) And, again, "Happy is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered." (Ps. xxxii. 1.) We can get life and happiness only in Christ. Apart from Him, all is death and misery, in Heaven's judgment, whatever the outward appearance may be. It is when the thick vail of unbelief is removed from the heart, and we are enabled to behold, with the eye of faith, the bleeding Lamb, bearing our heavy burden of guilt upon the cursed True, the enemy of souls spreads a gilding over this passing scene, in order that men may imagine it to be all gold. He sets up many a puppet-show to elicit the hollow laugh from a thoughtless multitude, who will not remember that it is Satan who is in the box, and that his object is to keep them from Christ, and drag them down into eternal perdition. There is nothing real, nothing solid, nothing satisfying, but in Christ. Outside of Him, "all is vanity and vexation of spirit." In Him alone true and eternal joys are to be found; and we only begin to live when we begin to live in, live on, live with, and live for Him. "This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you." The time spent in the brick-kilns and by the flesh-pots must be ignored. It is henceforth to be of no account, save that the remembrance thereof should ever and anon serve to quicken and deepen their sense of what divine grace had accomplished on their behalf. "Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall This beautiful truth is typically presented to us in the circumstance of the lamb's being "kept up" from the "tenth" to "the fourteenth day." That this lamb pointed to Christ is unquestionable. 1 Cor. v. 7 settles the application of this interesting type beyond all question,—"For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us." We have, in the first epistle of Peter, an allusion to the keeping up of the lamb,—"Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not All God's purposes from everlasting had reference to Christ, and no effort of the enemy could possibly interfere with those counsels; yea, his efforts only tended to the display of the unfathomable wisdom and immovable stability thereof. If the "Lamb without blemish and without spot" was "foreordained before the foundation of the world," then, assuredly, redemption must have been in the mind of God before the foundation of the world. The blessed One had not to pause in order to devise some plan to remedy the terrible evil which the enemy had introduced into His fair creation. No; He had only to bring forth, from the unexplored treasury of His precious counsels, the truth concerning the spotless Lamb, who was foreordained from everlasting, and to be "manifest in these last times for us." There was no need for the blood of the Lamb in creation as it came fresh from the hand of the Creator, exhibiting, in every stage and every department of it, the beauteous impress of His hand—"the infallible proofs" of "His eternal power and Godhead" (Rom. i.); but when, "by one man," sin was introduced into the world, then came out the Now, the lamb taken on the tenth day, and kept up until the fourteenth day, shows us Christ foreordained of God from eternity, but manifest for us in time. God's eternal purpose in Christ becomes the foundation of the believer's peace. Nothing short of this would do. We are carried back far beyond creation, beyond the bounds of time, beyond the entrance in of sin and everything that could possibly affect the ground-work of our peace. The expression, "foreordained before the foundation of the world," conducts us back into the unfathomed depths of eternity, and shows us God forming His own counsels of redeeming love, and basing them all upon the atoning blood of His own precious, spotless Lamb. Christ was ever the primary thought in the divine mind; and hence, the moment He began to speak or act, He took occasion to shadow forth that One who occupied the highest place in His In the interpretation of Exodus xii, we have to do with one assembly and one sacrifice.—"The whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening." (Ver. 6.) It is not so much a number of families with several lambs—a thing quite true in itself—as one assembly and one lamb. Each house was but the local expression of the whole assembly gathered round the lamb. The antitype of this we have in the whole Church of God, gathered by the Holy Ghost, in the name of Jesus, of which each separate assembly, wherever convened, should be the local expression. "And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side-posts and on the upper door-post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it. And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire; his head with his legs, and with the purtenance thereof." (Ver. 7-9.) We have to contemplate the paschal lamb in two aspects, namely, as the ground of peace, and the centre of unity. True it is that each one within the blood-sprinkled door would necessarily feel that were he to receive his due reward, the sword of the destroyer should most assuredly find its object in him; but then the lamb was treated in his stead. This was the solid foundation of his peace. The judgment that was due to him fell upon a divinely appointed victim; and believing this, he could feed in peace within. A single doubt would have made Jehovah a liar; for He had said, "When I see the blood, I will pass over you." This was enough. It was no question of personal worthiness. Self had nothing whatever to do in the matter. All under the cover of the blood It is most needful to be simple and clear as to what constitutes the ground of a sinner's peace in the presence of God. So many things are mixed up with the finished work of Christ, that souls are plunged into darkness and uncertainty as to their acceptance. They do not see the absolutely settled character of redemption through the blood of Christ, in its application to themselves. They seem not to be aware that full forgiveness of sin rests upon the simple fact that a full atonement has been offered,—a fact attested, in the view of all created intelligence, by the resurrection of the sinner's Surety from the dead. They know that there is no other way of being saved but by the blood of the cross (but the devils know this, yet it avails them naught). What is so much needed is to know that we are saved. The Israelite not merely knew that there was safety in the blood; he knew that he was safe. And why safe? Was it because of anything that he had done, or felt, And, observe, my reader, it was not by his own thoughts, feelings, or experiences, respecting the blood, that the Israelite rested. This would have been a poor, sandy foundation to rest upon. His thoughts and feelings might be deep or they might be shallow; but, deep or shallow, they had nothing to do with the ground of his peace. It was not said, When you see the blood, and value it as you ought, I will pass over you. This would have been sufficient to plunge him in dark despair about himself, inasmuch as it was quite impossible that the human mind could ever sufficiently appreciate the precious blood of the lamb. What gave peace was the fact that Jehovah's eye rested upon the blood, and that He knew its worth. This tranquilized the heart. The blood was outside, and the Israelite inside, so that he could not possibly see it; but God saw it, and that was quite enough. The application of this to the question of a sinner's peace is very plain. The Lord Jesus Christ having shed His precious blood, as a perfect atonement for sin, has taken it into the presence of God, and sprinkled it there; and God's testimony assures the believing sinner that everything is settled on his behalf—settled not by his estimate of the blood, but by the blood itself, which God estimates so highly But there are very many who would shrink from the idea of deliberately and avowedly calling in question the efficacy of the blood of Christ, who, nevertheless, have not settled peace. Such persons profess to be quite assured of the sufficiency of the blood, if only they were sure of an interest therein—if only they had the right kind of faith. There are We are ever prone to look at something in or connected with ourselves as necessary, in order to make up, with the blood of Christ, the ground-work of our peace. There is a sad lack of clearness and soundness on this vital point, as is evident from the doubts and fears with which so many of the people of God are afflicted. We are apt to regard the fruits of the Spirit in us, rather than the work of Christ for us, as the foundation of peace. We shall see, presently, the place which the work of the Holy Spirit occupies in Christianity; but it is never set forth in Scripture as being that on which our peace It will not, I fondly hope, be supposed that, in seeking to put "the precious blood of Christ" in its divinely appointed place, I would write a single line which might seem to detract from the value of the Spirit's operations. God forbid. The Holy Ghost reveals Christ; makes us to know, enjoy, and feed upon Christ; He bears witness to Christ; He takes of the things of Christ and shows them unto us. He is the power of communion, the seal, the witness, the earnest, the unction. In short, His blessed operations are absolutely essential. Without Him, we can neither see, hear, know, feel, experience, enjoy, nor exhibit aught of Christ. This is plain. The doctrine of the Spirit's operations is clearly laid down in the Word, and is understood and admitted by every true and rightly-instructed Christian. Not so the work of Christ for us. That is absolutely and eternally complete. He could say, "I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do." (John xvii. 4.) And, again, "It is finished." (John xix. 30.) The Holy Ghost cannot yet say He has finished His work. As the true Vicar of Christ upon earth, He still labors amid the varied hostile influences which surround the sphere of His operations. He works in the hearts of the people of God to bring them up, practically and experimentally, to the divinely appointed standard; but He never teaches a soul to lean on His work for peace in the Hence, therefore, the paschal lamb, as the ground of Israel's peace, is a marked and beautiful type of Christ as the ground of the believer's peace. There was nothing to be added to the blood on the lintel; neither is there anything to be added to the blood on the mercy-seat. The "unleavened bread" and "bitter herbs" were necessary, but not as forming, either in whole or in part, the ground of peace. They were for the inside of the house, and formed the characteristics of the communion there; but THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB WAS THE FOUNDATION OF EVERYTHING. It saved them from death, and introduced them into a scene of life, light, and peace. It formed the link between God and His redeemed people. As a people linked with God, on the ground of accomplished redemption, it was their high privilege to meet certain responsibilities; but these responsibilities did not form the link, but merely flowed out of it. My reader cannot too carefully ponder this subject. Moreover, we are not to regard the cross of Christ as a mere circumstance in a life of sin-bearing. It was the grand and only scene of sin-bearing. "His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree." (1 Peter ii. 24.) He did not bear them any where else. He did not bear them in the manger, nor in the wilderness, nor in the garden; but ONLY "ON THE TREE." He never had aught to say to sin, save on the cross; and there He bowed His head, and yielded up His precious life, under the accumulated weight of His people's sins. Neither did He ever suffer at the hand of God, save on the cross; and there Jehovah hid His face from Him because He was "made sin." (2 Cor. v.) The above train of thought, and the various passages of Scripture referred to, may perhaps enable my reader to enter more fully into the divine power of the words, "When I see the blood, I will pass over you." The lamb needed to be without blemish, no doubt, for what else could meet the holy eye of Jehovah? But had the blood not been shed, there could have been no passing over, for "without shedding of blood is no remission." (Heb. ix. 22.) This subject will, the Lord permitting, come more fully and appropriately before us in the types of Leviticus. It demands the prayerful attention of every one who loves our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. We shall now look in detail at the principles brought before us in the paschal feast. The assembly of Israel, as under the cover of the blood, was to be ordered by Jehovah in a manner worthy of Himself. In the matter of safety from judgment, as we have already seen, nothing was needed but the blood; but in the fellowship which flowed out of this safety, other things were needed which could not be neglected with impunity. And first, then, we read, "They shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire; his head with his legs, and with the purtenance thereof." (Ver. 8, 9.) The lamb round which the congregation was assembled, and on which it feasted, was a roasted lamb—a lamb which had undergone the action of fire. In this we see "Christ our passover" presenting Himself to the action of the fire of divine holiness and judgment which found in Him a perfect material. He could say, "Thou hast proved mine heart; thou hast visited me in the night; thou hast tried me and shalt find nothing: I am purposed that my mouth shall not transgress." "Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water." Had it been eaten thus, there would have been no expression of the great truth which it was the divine purpose to shadow forth; namely, that our paschal Lamb was to endure, on the cross, the fire of Jehovah's righteous wrath,—a truth of infinite preciousness to the soul. We are not merely under the shelter of the blood of the Lamb, but we feed, by faith, upon the Person of the Lamb. Many of us come short here. We are apt to rest satisfied with being saved by what Christ has done for us, without cultivating holy communion with Himself. His loving heart could never be satisfied with this. He has brought us nigh to Himself, that we might enjoy Him, that we might feed on Him, and delight in Him. He presents Himself to us as the One who has endured, to the uttermost, the intense fire of the wrath of God, that He may, in this wondrous character, be the food of our ransomed souls. But how was this lamb to be eaten? "With unleavened bread and bitter herbs." Leaven is invariably The Israelite did not put away leaven in order to Blessed be God, we know that nothing can ever snap asunder the link which binds the true believer to Him. We are "saved in the Lord," not with a temporary or conditional, but "with an everlasting salvation." But then salvation and communion are not the same thing. Many are saved who do not know it; and many, also, who do not enjoy it. It is quite impossible that I can enjoy a blood-stained This, I cannot doubt, is the secret of much of the spiritual barrenness and lack of settled peace which one finds amongst the children of God. They are not cultivating holiness; they are not keeping "the feast of unleavened bread." The blood is on the lintel, but the leaven within their borders keeps them from enjoying the security which the blood provides. The allowance of evil destroys our fellowship, though it does not break the link which binds our souls eternally to God. Those who belong to God's assembly must be holy. They have not only been delivered from the guilt and consequences of sin, but also from the practice of it, the power of it, and the love of it. The very fact of being delivered by the blood of the paschal lamb, rendered Israel responsible to put away leaven from all their quarters. They could not say, in the frightful language of the antinomian, Now that we are delivered, we may conduct ourselves as we please. By no means. If Grace not only saves the soul with an everlasting salvation, but also imparts a nature which delights in everything that belongs to God, because it is divine. We are made partakers of the divine nature, which cannot sin, because it is born of God. To walk in the energy of this nature is, in reality, to "keep" the feast of unleavened bread. There is no "old leaven" nor "leaven of malice and wickedness" in the new nature, because it is of God, and God is holy, and "God is love." Hence it is evident that we do not put away evil from us in order to better our old nature, which is irremediable; nor yet to obtain the new nature, but because we have it. We have life, and, in the power of that life, we put away evil. It is only when we are delivered from the guilt of sin that we can understand or exhibit the true power of holiness. To attempt it in any other way is hopeless labor. The feast of unleavened bread can only be kept beneath the perfect shelter of the blood. We may perceive equal significancy and moral propriety in that which was to accompany the unleavened bread, namely, the "bitter herbs." We cannot enjoy communion with the sufferings of Christ without remembering what it was which But, it may be asked, is there not a deep joy for the soul in the consciousness that Christ has borne our sins; that He has fully drained, on our behalf, the cup of God's righteous wrath? Unquestionably. This is the solid foundation of all our joy. But can we ever forget that it was for "our sins" He suffered? Can we ever lose sight of the soul-subduing truth that the blessed Lamb of God bowed His head beneath the weight of our transgressions? Surely not. We must eat our lamb with bitter herbs, which, be In contemplating the cross, we find in it that which cancels all our guilt. This imparts sweet peace and joy. But we find in it also the complete setting aside of nature—the crucifixion of "the flesh"—the death of "the old man." (See Rom. vi. 6; Gal. ii. 20; vi. 14; Col. ii. 11.) This, in its practical results, will involve much that is "bitter" to nature. It will call for self-denial—the mortification of our members which are on the earth (Col. iii. 5.)—the reckoning of self to be dead indeed unto sin (Rom. vi.). All these things may seem terrible to look at; but when one gets inside the blood-stained door-post, he thinks quite differently. The very herbs which to an Egyptian's taste would no doubt have seemed so bitter, formed an integral part of Israel's redemption feast. Those who are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, who know the joy of fellowship with Him, esteem it a "feast" to put away evil and to keep nature in the place of death. "And ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning; and that which remaineth of it until the morning ye shall burn with fire." (Ver. 10.) In this command, we are taught that the communion of the congregation was in no wise to be separated from the sacrifice on which that communion was founded. The heart must ever cherish the vivid remembrance What a beauteous picture, then, we have in the blood-sheltered assembly of Israel, feeding peacefully on the roasted lamb, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs! No fear of judgment, no fear of the wrath of Jehovah, no fear of the terrible hurricane of righteous vengeance which was sweeping vehemently over the land of Egypt, at the midnight hour. All was profound peace within the blood-stained lintel. They had no need to fear anything from without; and nothing within could trouble them, save leaven, which would have proved a death-blow to all their peace and blessedness. What a picture for the Church! What a picture for the Christian! May we gaze upon it with an enlightened eye and a teachable spirit! However, we are not yet done with this most instructive ordinance. We have been looking at Israel's position, and Israel's food, let us now look at Israel's habit. Beloved Christian reader, let us "meditate on these things." We have tasted, through grace, the cleansing efficacy of the blood of Jesus; as such, it is our privilege to feed upon His adorable Person and delight ourselves in His "unsearchable riches;" We shall close this section by glancing, for a moment, at verses 43-49. Here we are taught that while it was the place and privilege of every true Israelite to eat the passover, yet no uncircumcised stranger should participate therein.—"There shall no stranger eat thereof ... all the congregation of Israel shall keep it." Circumcision was necessary ere the passover could be eaten. In other words, the sentence of death must be written upon nature ere we can intelligently feed upon Christ, either as the ground of peace or the centre of unity. Circumcision has its antitype in the cross. The male alone was circumcised; the female was represented in the male. So, in the cross, Christ represented His Church, and hence the Church is crucified with Christ; nevertheless she lives by the life of Christ, known and exhibited on earth, through the power of the Holy Ghost. "And when a stranger shall sojourn The ordinance of circumcision formed the grand boundary line between the Israel of God and all the nations that were upon the face of the earth; and the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ forms the boundary between the Church and the world. It matters not, in the smallest degree, what advantages of person or position a man possessed, he could have no part with Israel until he submitted to that flesh-cutting operation. A circumcised beggar was nearer to God than an uncircumcised king. So, also, now, there can be no participation in the joys of God's redeemed, save by the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that cross sweeps away all pretensions, levels all distinctions, and unites all in one holy congregation of blood-washed worshipers. The cross forms a boundary so lofty, and a defense so impenetrable, that not a single atom of earth or of nature can cross over or pass through to mingle itself with "the new creation." "All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself." (2 Cor. v. 18.) But not only was Israel's separation from all strangers strictly maintained, in the institution of the passover; Israel's unity was also as clearly enforced. "In one house shall it be eaten: thou shalt not carry forth aught of the flesh abroad out of the house: The Lord deliver us from that spirit of unbelief which would lead us to judge by the sight of our eyes, instead of by the light of His changeless Word. |