WE always find in the deliverances of God's people that God is also going to punish the world. He bears testimony against it—a universal testimony without excepting anybody. The law distinguishes men according to their acts, but the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sins, because they have not believed on Him whom God has sent. Hence the gospel begins with treating the world as already condemned. God has made trial, in every way, of the human heart. The gospel supposes that this probation is closed, and declares all the world lost, Souls often desire, and therefore need, to prove what their own strength is, and find they have none; even converted souls sometimes try to commend themselves thus to God. But it is to dishonor Jesus and to deny their own condition as judged of God.
In Egypt God was content with the first-born of each house as a manifestation of His judgment. Pharaoh would not let the people of God go. When God demanded, as a right, that they should serve Him, the world—Pharaoh its prince—would not yield. Signs and plagues were then wrought to arrest their attention and enforce the rights of God, but Egypt would not listen. Pharaoh was hard, then hardened, and at last become a monument of judgment for the instruction of all men. So it was in the days of Noah, and so it is now that the world once more is warned of the approaching judgments of God. The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and on them that obey not the gospel.
Meanwhile God demands a complete submission to His revealed will. He demands that the world should submit to Jesus: all those who will not shall be forced to do so when judgment comes, and then to their own confusion and endless sorrow. God presents His Son in humiliation in order to save the world; but without submission to Jesus all is useless, because this is what God requires and values. To believe in the Son is eternal life, is salvation; to reject the Son of God is judgment. God will have a surrender of the heart to Jesus, as Savior and Lord, a surrender to His own grace in Him. Thus is the heart and everything else changed, and all question as to good works is set aside.
All here turns on receiving or rejecting Jesus. God passes over anything. Zacchaeus may speak of what he has been in the habit of doing, but that is not the point now: “This day is salvation come to this house.” If Jesus is welcomed, there is life; if Jesus is refused, there must be vengeance by and by, for those who do not submit. How happy for the poor convicted sinner that he has not to search in himself for something to present to God. If the heart is open, Christ is the grace and glory and perfection that is needed, and the moral effects soon and surely follow.
Still the word of God presents the certainty of judgment. Satan has possession practically of the world, but God retains His rights. The unconverted are deceived by the enemy and are in his power. Satan does all he can to make the world believe that they are free and happy—that they are, or may be righteous and good enough. But God has His rights. The world will not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and hopes to escape judgment. Satan, too, takes advantage of all that God would employ to awaken and bless the soul. Thus, with the unconverted in Christendom, natural conscience is ashamed of that which the heathen do even in their religion. But this is used of Satan to persuade men that they can present themselves before God, and worship Him in private or public, because there is nothing in these lands so gross as among Pagans. But God holds to His rights, and nothing is well if Jesus be not received in faith.
In Jesus all that is perfect in God and man is presented to the conscience. The holiness of God is there, not condemning, but in perfect grace; but God will have an entire submission to Jesus. Nobody that comes is cast out. He is God in all His goodness to attract hearts, He is man in all His lowliness to exercise no will, no choice, but to receive every one that comes to Him, for such is the will of Him that sent Him; but God desires submission to Jesus. If Jesus is rejected, that is the conclusive proof that the heart will not have God in any way that He takes in presenting Himself to man. It is the evidence of man's heart, of his pride, his hardness and his levity. Nothing like these can stand in the presence of God, and Jesus manifested His presence in love. Pride is ashamed of the cross. Vanity cannot go on before Jesus, despised and rejected of man. God searches the heart in this way and man does not like it. He is bound to own himself a sinner, to submit his conscience, and give up his will, but he will not. It is the joy of Jesus to seek the wanderer; but to return in his rags, to show his wretchedness, is most distasteful to man's nature: grace alone can make him do so. His pride therefore hates grace more even than law. The heart cannot endure to be laid completely bare; but if man is to be blessed, God must search the heart and save the soul forever. God acts according to what He is, not according to our thoughts. If man will not believe in Jesus, God will manifest what He is by judgment.
Egypt must be smitten. But first we have the security of such as submit to God, confiding in the sprinkled blood of the Lamb. Israel was well aware of the judgment about to be executed upon the land of Egypt. It should always be thus with saved souls. They ought to consider the ways of God when He will judge the world in righteousness.
When God reveals the judgment, He reveals also the means of escaping it. The soul which has the fear of God keeps close to His word, and the question is raised between God and Israel. Could Israel stand if God came in judgment? The Egyptians were sinners and would surely be judged, but if God came down to judge, what were the children of Israel? Where were their sins? God directs Moses that they should take of the blood of the slain lamb and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door-post of their houses. “And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.” To the mind of man it was folly, but the simplicity of faith honors the word of God and acts upon it. The destroying angel of Jehovah passed through the land, and if there had been Israelites ever so honest, but without the blood on their door-posts, he must enter and slay. For God was, under this sign, judging sin, and sin levels all distinctions; and where the blood was not, there sin was in all its hatefulness to a holy God, sin unatoned for and unjudged.
So now it is Christ and salvation, or no Christ and no salvation. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not on the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him There is the utmost certainty for those within the blood-sprinkled doors. It is the Lord who executes the judgment by His angel. It is impossible for Him to be deceived and impossible for man to escape; but He says, “when I see the blood, I will pass over you.” There need not be a doubt, whatever the judgment.
God, then, sees the blood: on that we rest to escape judgment, not upon our own view either of sin or of the blood of the Lamb. God Himself estimates the blood of His own Son, as He it is who fully hates our sin: we feel both most when we enter into this and rest on it in faith. Faith lays hold of His judgment of sin and feels the need of His value for the blood of Christ.
The more we know Christ and enjoy His purity, the more gravely shall we feel our sins. It was then that the Israelites eat the lamb, but they eat it in security. It would have been sin to have thought that God could fail in His word or His deliverance; and it is sin now to doubt that the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses from all sin.
Israel may be in Egypt, but they are no longer slaves there. Their loins are girded that night, their shoes on their feet, and their staff in hand. Such, too, is our position in the world. Israel begin their journey with the question of sin settled. They had been secured, and they knew it, even in the midst of God's judgment of sin. When the revelation of God enters the heart, one cannot find peace till the revelation of His grace is as clear to us as that of His dealing with sin. The Christian finds his judgment fallen on Christ Himself; he begins with submitting to the righteousness of God who condemns our nature and acts, root and branch, but who shows us the condemnation borne by the Lord Jesus.
Have you submitted to Jesus? God demands it. He asks for no offering or sacrifice; He presents Jesus and shows you what you are. The worst sinners in the world may be received in grace by Jesus. “Behold now is the accepted time: behold, now is the day of salvation.”