Exodus 3:7-107And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; 8And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me: and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them. 10Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt. (Exodus 3:7‑10)
All the books of the OT that follow Genesis differ from it in a very distinct and marked way in this, that whereas it (Genesis) presents certain great principles of God, and ways of acting of Himself such as it was at the time, and dealings with individuals, that which marks the other books is the specific subject to which each is devoted. Genesis is almost general in what it presents, but each of the others, Exodus for instance, has specially and peculiarly one subject that appears, as it were, at the very beginning and end, and in Exodus that is the subject of redemption. The great theme of Exodus is redemption—the circumstances, the place, the surroundings, all shedding light on it; then God’s interest in that people and how He extricated them, and afterwards (which is a very solemn part of it) even when they were the subject of redemption, and in the freedom and blessedness of it, how they elected of their own free will to go back and place themselves under a position of legal restraint, rather than to enjoy freely the blessings God had given them. So that we not only have the results of redemption stated, but the consequences of the human mind, wishing to have the blessings secured to it on some legal basis of its own choice rather than to enjoy it under the free sovereign grace of God.
However, I am not now going into so wide a theme, but only desire to state what the subjects of the book are. This evening I want to bring before you the commencement of it, as we have it in this passage, and to apply it, if God enable us, to the circumstances in which grace has placed ourselves. Only this, of course, was but a temporal redemption, whereas the redemption the Lord Jesus Christ has effected for His people is an eternal redemption.
And first, what we find here is that everything that surrounded the nation at this time, all that connected itself with Israel, the people of Jehovah’s special election, was designedly to make what happened to them, types for us. As is said in 1 Cor. 10, the things that happened to them were written as types for us. It does not say the people were, but the things that happened to them. I suppose the nation could not be, in a certain sense, types for us, because they were an earthly people, with earthly hopes, earthly promises, earthly blessings, in fact, everything they had was down here in this world, whereas we belong to entirely another order of things; our blessings, our prospects, our hopes are heavenly, our home is in the heavens, our commonwealth is there, from whence we expect the Savior. We are the contrast rather of Israel. Whether individually or as members of a corporation, we are contrasted with Israel. Our blessings, our prospect, our hopes, our future, everything is contrast. And that is one secret of the right understanding of the epistle to the Hebrews. If you read that epistle with the thought of comparison, you will surely get astray; whereas, if you read it with the thought of contrast, you will be steered by grace through it. Everything is in the sharpest contrast in Hebrews; the lines of contrast are drawn in the most precise way by the Holy Ghost all through the epistle.
Now we are going to look at the things that happened, and the circumstances that pertained to this people as types for us; and first, with regard to the place. It is not without reason that this chosen people are found in Egypt. I need not refer to the history of how they got there; there were a number of circumstances, like chains, in God’s providential ways, that brought them there; but there they were. And this land, of all others in scripture, is the one that would depict, in consequence of its own condition, the moral Egypt, and the moral condition of darkness, out of which God, in His infinite grace, has given us, as recipients of redemption, to be emancipated. For remember, redemption always supposes change of place. The word “salvation,” in scripture, always means a change of position, though, perhaps, we limit it in our minds to the thought of some favor or blessing that would extenuate our circumstances spiritually. I do not mean in what concerns us in this world, but spiritually. And so the Passover, by itself, was not redemption, no doubt it goes along with the Red Sea in the history of redemption, and, in a certain sense, the Passover had a deeper aspect in it than the Red Sea. But still, the Passover was the shelter which God provided for that people whilst they were in Egypt, and God was only known in the character of an appeased judge in the Passover. He “passed over” the people when He judged Egypt, but they were not removed out of the place of bondage, their position was not changed; they were sheltered by the blood, but they were in bondage still. The Red Sea took them clean out of everything they were in as to bondage, the Passover met the deeper claims of God when He passed through the land as a judge, I say this to make it clear to you that when scripture speaks of redemption, it means not merely that God’s righteous, holy claims have been met, as they were by the blood of the Passover Lamb, but that the people themselves, who were sheltered by that blood, have been entirely extricated from the place where they were in bondage, and completely brought to God. That is redemption. They left Egypt behind for ever; they had done with it. And the place they were in, is typical of the position we are in, until we know redemption. Now it is a pertinent question to ask, Have you got in your souls the knowledge of redemption? I believe there are a great many people that have not. They know shelter, they are perfectly certain that they will never go to hell, or come into judgment, but that is not redemption. An Israelite was sheltered in Egypt, but he was in Egypt still. And shelter, wonderful and blessed as it is—do not think I want to make little of it—is short of what has been truly called “extrication”; redemption is extrication, by it we are clean out altogether by the mighty power of God, through blood and power. The blood has met His own righteous, holy claims; and the power has completely submerged every hostile foe that could raise up its head. Through blood and power we have been brought out of the house of bondage, and brought to God—that is redemption. Liberty, and freedom, and blessedness are all connected with it, but it is not a matter of experience. There is experience, but this is fact, and it is fact for faith to possess. Here is the wonderful thing that must underlie all experience, in order to have it upon its true and proper basis. I am speaking of a great reality that has been accomplished, whether I accept and enjoy it or not; and whether I possess it or not, at any rate it is there for me to take, possess, and know. And if I enjoyed it a thousand times more, it would not make it one single whit more true; and if I never enjoyed it at all, it would not take away from the truth of it. I am speaking of a thing that exists, and did in this day when God effected His own purpose—He did redeem the people. And that is what faith always delights to rest in. It cannot take pleasure in the use it has made of it, but it always goes back to what God did; and there is no failure, nor flaw, nor imperfection, nor drawback in what He has done. And that is the estimate on which God looks at His people. Take that wonderful verse in Numbers, which is the book of Israel’s wilderness journeys, walking with through the desert as a redeemed people. You remember how God confronted the adversary when he would move heaven and earth to have that people, the subject of God’s redemption, accursed. The adversary sought to profit by the practical breakdown of Israel, to call attention to them in their practical ways as a reason why they should not be blessed. And that is what the devil is always at. He knows, right well, that there is a point here that he can press. There is the failure, the feebleness, the darkness, the imperfection, the shortcoming, and all the use that is made even of the very greatest favor of God, and what does God say with regard to it? “According to this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought?” That is what silences every sound and meets every question that is raised; and in that very chapter God goes back to what we are beginning with tonight, “The Lord brought him out of Egypt.” He brought him out, and brought him in too; his place was changed, his position was changed; there was a complete extrication of the people out of the land of Egypt. And it was God who did it. They would have stayed there to this day if they had been left, but God brought them out. And that is what faith always goes back to, because it travels in company with God.
But let me return for a moment. Egypt is a wonderful place even now. The circumstances connected with it were eminently calculated to depict the condition in which all are who have not as yet tasted redemption. What marked it, beloved friends? If one thing more than another, this, it was the land of death. It is not that ancient Egypt is not celebrated, and indeed modern Egypt too, borrowing its greatness from ancient Egypt, but the mightiest and most eloquent record that Egypt presents, or ever presented, was the record of death, for the monuments are the great record of death. It was marked by bondage, death, darkness, barrenness in itself, sterility, except for the Nile, for no rain ever fell there. As some one has said, they looked down for everything, not looked up. The fertility of the country did not come from above; the river was everything to it, and they worshiped their river. And there was the constant conflict between life and death there too. Because Egypt is a little tract of territory, with the desert each side, blowing all the sterility and barrenness of its arid burning sands upon it on the one hand, and the Nile continually overflowing to fructify and fertilize it on other: life and death continually contending, and I might say death getting the upper hand. What a picture that is of the moral condition of things in which we were as sinners once. One would not dwell upon it, but still it is an immense thing in connection with God’s salvation, and to see what God’s salvation has saved us out of, that if we have, through grace, been participators of this salvation, we see death and barrenness behind, and we have left bondage and taskmasters for ever. Because these were their circumstances. Look at the first chapter of Exodus and see how they were oppressed and beaten by Pharaoh, and the severity with which they were handled; see how the taskmasters ground them down; nothing could exceed the cruelty to the and the devastating circumstances they were in, in the land of bondage, so that the place and the circumstances that surrounded them there were of the very bitterest conceivable kind. And that is what morally marked us. Have we left that behind? Do you remember how God Himself has described the contrast between Canaan and Egypt in Deut. 11:1010For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs: (Deuteronomy 11:10), “The land whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out”—you see they had come out, there was a change of place. And, beloved friends, I dwell upon that, and would reiterate it, over and over again, they were out of it. Are you out of it, in your soul, in your spirit, in your conscience before God, have you left it behind? “The land whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs; but the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven.” You see the contrast is very striking between the two countries. What is meant is simply this, that in Egypt everything was from the river, the river was everything to them, but it was endless toil; when the Nile overflowed its banks, which was the one source of fertility to the country, the people had, by hard work, to make channels for the overflow to reach the fields and the crops; and that is the meaning of watering it with thy foot; all the produce was secured by labor. That was the character of Egypt and is the character of this world. For this world, in a certain sense, is a desert through which we go with God—that is {the book of} Numbers. But in another sense, it is an Egypt out of which, by God’s infinite mercy, if we have tasted redemption, we have been delivered. This present world has two moral aspects to us. It is the place where we were dead in trespasses and sins, or alive in them, if you like, before God, both being true—in one sense, we were dead there, and in another, alive; as far as God is concerned, we were dead; as far as lusts, and vanities, and follies, and passions were concerned, we were alive. Now delivered out of it, having been extricated by God’s redemption from it, it becomes a desert world, and we walk with God through it. It was once the scene of our lusts, and vanities, and folly, where we found everything to gratify us as natural men. Now we find there is not a single thing in it, not a drop of water, not a single shower of rain, not a bit of fertility, and we go through it as a desert with God. And that is the contrast in these verses. One received water from the rain of heaven, Canaan; Egypt had its resources in itself, it was a place of independence. Just as man is independent of God in his natural condition, so with everything about it, place, circumstances, country, surroundings, all that was connected with it was purposely designed of God to make it a picture of the moral condition of darkness, and alienation, and death, and distance, and bondage in which we were all by nature before God.
That is the first thing you get in the opening chapters of Exodus, the oppression of Pharaoh and the bondage of the people. I only refer to one more point in it, and that is in Ex. 2: 23,
And it came to pass, in process of time, that the king of Egypt died; and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage.
Now if you notice, there is not a word about their crying to God. It was selfish moaning; they felt the smart of the bondage, but they never looked to God at all; they did not think of Him as their deliverer. They smarted under the taskmaster’s lash, sighed under the awful oppression that was laid upon them, they cried in the very bitterness of their hearts because of it, but it does not say to God. But look at the blessed contrast in the next verse, “God heard.” O how blessed! No cry from them to Him, no reference of their trials to Him, no looking to Him to interfere, no expectation from on high, smarting and groaning, and murmuring under the pressure of their circumstances; but there was a heart up there, there were ears and eyes up there that looked down, and saw, and felt, and heard—“God heard”—nothing is more blessed and beautiful to me than that, “God heard.” Would to God we had more of the sense of it, the interest of God in His people, even when He is not before their thoughts, when they do not refer things to Him, and look to Him to interfere for them.
And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob; and God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them, consideration, pity, was in Him. What a beautiful contrast that is! And you will find increasingly, beloved friends, that we have to get back to that, the motions, and movements, and motives, and principles of God’s grace towards His people always begin and end with Himself. The sovereignty of His grace, and the accomplishment of His own purposes, and the affections of His own heart, spring up, as it were, in His own blessed nature. That is the secret of God’s blessed actions towards all His people. As has been beautifully said, “When you come to Christianity, God works by what He brings, not by what He finds,” that is to say, He brings in that which effects the thoughts and purposes of His own heart. The legal principle is, that He is looking for something, and that I am the person to render it to Him. Whereas the very genius and principle of Christianity is, that God is a giver, and I am a receiver. The contrary principle is, that God is a claimer, and that I am ready to meet His claims. Instead of that, He gives everything that was in His own heart to me, effecting it by the thing He brings in. And that is the only principle that will produce a change in anybody, and that can set the wheels of practice in your soul going, and keep them going too. You must have a motive and object outside of yourself; if you have not, you will come to spiritual bankruptcy and ruin before long.
But mark well how blessed it is! God looked down, He heard, though there was no cry actively directed to Him. And I like that word “cry.” “I cried unto God with my voice,” says the Psalmist. Many a one cries that does not cry to God. They did not cry to God, but for all that He heard in the blessed goodness of His own heart, and had respect, had consideration for the circumstances in which the people were That is the first point in connection with redemption.
The second is that, corresponding with the purposes and mind of God to take this people out of Egypt, God finds a deliverer suitable to His hand, and raises him up. That is the word used afterwards, “A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you”—it does not mean resurrection from the dead—“from among your brethren, like unto me.” The expression, “raise up,” may be used in two senses. The Lord Jesus Christ was raised up from amongst the dead after He had undergone the sentence of death for God’s glory; but He was the One that was raised up to be the Deliverer of His people; as the little hymn celebrates it in the gospel of Luke, “hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David,” the Lord Jesus Christ. “God, having raised up his servant Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.” Christ was raised up in a double sense. He was God’s provided Savior, and He was the One whom God raised from the dead when He had accomplished the great work of redemption. That is what you find in the second chapter. Moses was the type in certain ways, as far as he could be, of our Lord Jesus Christ. I do not go into the details of it, but only put the leading points before you. Moses is found in the circumstances in which the people are. They are under pressure and difficulty in the land of Egypt. Moses, who was, by his genealogy, one of them, is found suffering exactly the circumstances that his people are suffering. The attempt was to exterminate them. What happens in the second chapter of Exodus is very like what happens when the Lord Jesus Christ was born into this world. The king seeks to exterminate all that could increase the seed of God’s people on the earth, and Moses is born at this time. And there is a very exquisite point in the NT with regard to it. Moses’ parents, in faith, hid him. I do not know what the revelation was that reached them, but I feel assured of this, that some communication or intimation from God reached them upon which their faith acted; because I cannot conceive it should be so apart from some communication or manifestation of God to the person. Faith is like the ivy vine that lays hold of something, but there must be something to lay hold of. God must have given some intimation—though I do not know what—to the parents, because it says, “By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents.” Faith triumphed over fear, and over all the natural feelings of their heart, and when they could not conceal him any longer, then they put him into an ark of bulrushes and let him float on the river. And mark what is said, “because they saw he was a proper child”—it was not nature flattering itself with the beauty of its child—“fair to God” is the word in Acts, and that is faith. God must have made some communication to them, just as He must have made some communication upon which Abel’s faith acted, when he put the blood and fat of a victim between himself and God. And that is always the principle faith acts upon—God’s revelation, or intimation, or communication, call it by what name you please; but something from God is the initiative, for God always takes the initiative, God always begins. Faith does not lead, it follows; it is a subject, dependent, obedient principle. So Moses’ parents acted in faith on God’s intimation of His mind, saw this child beautiful to God, “and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment.”
And then notice all the providential circumstances connected with his birth. For speaking now of him as the deliverer, by birth he was endowed with every single thing that would make nature and the mind of man say, That is the very man to effect God’s purpose in bringing His people out of Egypt. He was brought up as the reputed son of the daughter of the monarch, he was educated in all the learning of Egypt, he was mighty in words and deeds. There was not a single natural qualification that Moses did not possess—high in birth, and trained and educated in the very best that could be accorded to him in that day. But when the time came for him to be used as God’s own weapon to effect this deliverance, he gave it all up; he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, he renounced all the qualifications that nature surrounded him with, and that Providence had placed him in the midst of, in simple faith he turned his back on every one of them, “choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt.”
That is the Holy Ghost’s commentary in Heb. 11 upon Moses’ action.
And then it is exceedingly interesting to see in the second chapter of Exodus how God acts in fitting an instrument for His hands; and to effect His purposes. We find that before God makes known His mind to Moses, he suffers rejection from his own people, just as Christ did; they refused him. Now in the third chapter, when we come more directly to God’s making known His mind to the one who was to carry out the purposes of His heart for this people, and to accomplish His redemption, the first thing shown to Moses is a picture of the exact condition in which the people were before God. For that is the meaning of the burning bush—to present to Moses an exact picture of the state of the nation, suffering every conceivable kind of vicissitude and pressure, but sustained through it. The bush burned with fire—judgment, pressure, difficulty, devastation continually resting upon them, but not consumed, because supported and maintained by God. And God intended that to act upon Moses as the servant of God’s deliverance. When Moses sees this wonderful sight, he says to himself, I will draw near and look at this sight, why it is the bush is not consumed, and he drew near to behold.
Now the first dealing of God directly with him—and a very important thing it is—is that God now reveals Himself by name, mark that, and says to him, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” It is the revelation of the name of God to His servant in connection with the mission Moses was about to carry out. And that is a very important thing to bear in mind, that the revelation of the name of God, whatever it may be at any given time, gives its definiteness and its character to what God is about to do at that time. I need not say that the way God revealed Himself to Moses or to Israel was very different from the way God has revealed Himself to us. And the way God revealed Himself to the patriarchs was different from the way He revealed Himself to Israel. Jehovah was the revelation of God’s name to Israel. He says to them that He was known to the patriarchs as El-Shaddai, but by His name Jehovah He was not known. God Almighty is the revelation God was pleased to make of Himself to Abraham, and Abraham never went beyond that. “I am the Almighty God,” He said, “walk before me, and be thou perfect”—a wonderful revelation and beautiful for its time, but that was the extent and fulness of it. But to Israel, a people who were brought into covenant relationship with God, He makes known His covenant name, which is Jehovah.
But here, in the first instance, He goes back to this, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Now that is very interesting, because these are heads of families, it is not yet a nation; and therefore He does not yet say, “I am Jehovah,” but I am the God of these families. When Moses drew near to look upon the burning bush, God as it were says to him, You cannot come near me; I pity that people, and I may speak to you, I may use you as the instrument of my delivering grace, I may send you on a mission of redemption, but I cannot have you near me; “Draw not nigh hither; put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.”
Now, beloved friends, that is very important. God is making known His mind about redemption, but redemption has not been accomplished. They are not brought to God yet, and therefore Moses cannot come near to God. God keeps His distance, I may say with reverence; He keeps Moses at a distance; faithful servant though he is, and about to be the deliverer of that people, God cannot have him near Him, “Draw not nigh hither.”
Then God says, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows.” O, the blessedness of it! I think, beloved friends, the very fact of the distance that was inevitable, because of His own holy, moral nature, and which God maintained between even Moses and Himself, because redemption had not as yet been accomplished, throws into the most beautiful relief, and emphasizes in the most wonderful way the unfoldings of His heart. Though I cannot have you near me, I will tell you what is in my heart. The ground for having you near me is not accomplished yet, and you must not come nigh, but I will tell you I have surely seen the affliction of my people that are in Egypt.
The first revelation is the revelation of the name of God; the second is the revelation of the grace of God, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and I have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows”; and now you have the revelation of His purpose, “And I am come down to deliver them.” O beloved friends, how blessed it is! God was about to work through Moses, yet He had come down Himself, “I am come down”; I am going to do it. I may use you as the spade or the pitchfork, the hammer or the axe, or whatever else it may be, but l am the One who is going to do it. So we have first, the revelation of His name; and secondly, the revelation of His grace; thirdly, the revelation of His purpose; and now fourthly, the revelation of the mission, “Come now, therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh.” How wonderful, how blessed it is! How it brings our minds around God as the One who is about to accomplish this wonderful extrication of His people, how it all arose in His own divine mind! Who made a claim on Him? Who besought Him? Who put a motive there that He should do it? And so when you come to what has been accomplished for you and me through grace, it is exactly the same as it was with Israel, the sovereignty of His grace; and not only that, but it is God that has accomplished it. And of our redemption we may say, God planned it, Christ accomplished it, and the Holy Ghost bears witness to it. For that is what is said in the epistle to the Hebrews, “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all; whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness”—the will of God, the work of Christ, and the witness of the Holy Ghost. The whole thing is divine. It originated in the mind of God, was accomplished by the Second Person of the adorable Trinity, and is borne witness to by God the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Just as clearly, and distinctly, and positively as this redemption here was the work of God, so is the redemption effected for us by our Lord Jesus Christ. There is not anything that is more touching to the heart, or anything that brings God more before us in all the fulness and blessedness of His own nature than this, that even prior to the accomplishment of these purposes, prior to the fact that God had His own holy, righteous claims met, He had purposed in His heart to bring that people out from the land of bondage. So that He says afterwards, “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to myself.”
You have seen what I did to the power that oppressed you, and kept you in bondage, how I bare you in the mighty strength of my own love, and brought you to Myself. For in Ex. 15 you find that in the very earliest moments of their victory, these were the notes of their song, “Thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation,” that is to say, they were brought to God. That is the meaning of it. Though they had not trod an inch of desert land, had not as yet got into Canaan, yet that is celebrated too, “Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance.” No sooner do the opened waters of the Red Sea roll between the people and the hosts of Pharaoh, no sooner does God strike the keynote of that song on the resurrection shores of the Red Sea, than they celebrate the whole thing, not part of it, but the whole.
“Oh! but,” people say, “was it not Jordan that brought them into Canaan?” It was not, let me tell you. That is a very important subject, which I will treat in its place. They crossed the Jordan, it is true; but what brought them into Canaan in the accomplishment of God’s purposes was redemption, and it was accomplished at the Red Sea. How could they sing otherwise, “Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance,” if the consummation of the purpose of God had not taken place? It was because the whole thing was done that they could sing; there was no redemption in the Jordan. If you doubt it, I will make it very simple. Surely you do not mean to say you desire to mix up our experience with redemption? If you do, then it has not been done only and simply by God Himself. That is experience to say, “We have died with Christ,” and that is what Jordan means. I cherish it in my soul that I have died with Christ, and risen with Christ, but that is not redemption. Redemption is, that Christ has died for me, that the precious death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ have taken me out of Egypt, out of the land of bondage, and brought me into Canaan. And through God’s grace I can rejoice in it, and bear testimony to that, because I know it to be true. I perfectly admit the experience part of it, and that until what answers to the Jordan is known experimentally in our souls, the joys and the knowledge of the thing are not there. But then, that is experience, and we must not confound experience with redemption. It has its own important place in the ways of God, and we cannot be without it. If you take it away, you take away one most important thing, but I am jealous of keeping redemption in its place, of keeping to redemption only the glories that belong to it. There it was a question of God and Christ alone, and nothing connected with us except wretched, miserable self and sin, that gave the occasion for the display of that grace. Christ died and rose again, that is Ex. 14, 15, in figure; and the whole thing was there and then made good, the purpose of God was there and then accomplished, and it was on that basis and in virtue of it that they went into God’s own land.
The Lord, in His grace, give our hearts to appreciate the wonderful making known of His purposes here. Nothing more beautiful than this—He says, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” He is not the God of dead people, but of the living. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were poor failing men, but He is the God of them for all that. Is not that a great comfort? Moses trembled and was afraid to look upon God, and now God says, Here is the revelation of my grace, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters: for I know their sorrows”; my heart is touched with it, I am all eye, and all ear, and all heart, where the interests, and needs, and sorrows of my poor people are concerned. And next observe the revelation of His purposes, “I am come down to deliver them”; I am going to do it; do not think you are going to be the deliverer, the deliverance, the extrication to be mine; I will use you in this work but I am the active agent and power in the whole thing, not only to bring them out, but to bring them in. Now for the revelation of his mission. Now come, I will send you—what an honor to be made the bearer of the tidings of this!
May the Lord, in His grace, give our souls to lay hold of these points tonight, and give our hearts to enter into them, and get our minds concentrated through grace upon these unfoldings of God’s purposes in view of this wonderful redemption He was about to accomplish for this people.