Ex. 12
IT is to the 2nd verse of this chapter that I desire specially to call your attention, “This month shall be unto you the beginning of months.” Why, my reader, do you think the Lord says this? Why does God say to Moses and the children of Israel that they should begin a thoroughly new year? Do you think this was the commencement of the year? Not at all, but God said, “From this moment you must commence to reckon your year,” and why?
Because God was going to do a wonderful thing for Israel on that 14th day of the month, and what was that? He was going to show them what redemption meant!
I ask you, my reader, Do you know what redemption means yet? You need it as much as Israel did, for as the children of Israel were in bondage in Egypt, and served Pharaoh and his taskmasters, so you and I were in bondage to a greater than Pharaoh, even to Satan himself.
I ask you again then, Have you been redeemed from under his power? If you have not, you have not begun to live yet! You have not begun a year that has God for its commencement.
That is the point here. Israel began a day with God, there was a link formed with God that day, and they were always to have in remembrance how God brought them out from the land of Egypt, now they were redeemed by the hand of Jehovah!
Israel’s redemption was from under Pharaoh’s cruel power; and yours and mine, my reader, is from under the still more cruel power of Satan, for you are the positive vassal of Satan, if you are not redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ. If you are not on the Lord’s side, you are positively against Him, if you are not sheltered by the blood of God’s slain Lamb, you are still exposed to the righteous judgment of God, and who knows when that judgment shall fall.
“But,” you may say, “why do you speak thus strongly? my sins never trouble me very much.”
Very likely, but sin troubled Christ a great deal, you may never have spent a sleepless hour on account of sin, but sin cost the Lord Jesus Christ His life’s blood. We think very lightly of sin, not so God. The only measure God has for sin, His estimate of what sin is, is the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Christ is God’s measure for everything, for man’s sin, and man’s distance from God, as a sinner, and likewise the measure of the believer’s righteousness, and the believer’s nearness to God, I look up and see where the blessed Lord is now, and I say, That is the measure of my nearness to God, because I am accepted in the Beloved.
In the 7th verse of chap. 11. God says “the Lord doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel.” What was the difference? Were not the Israelites sinners as much as the Egyptians? Surely they were, yet the Lord put a difference. “What was the difference?” you ask. “Is there this difference between people now?” There is! “Have all sinned?” All.
“Have not some sinned more than others?”
Yes, that is true, but that does not take away from the fact that all have sinned. “Oh” perhaps you say “some are educated and others not.” No that is not the difference, for that distinction ends in the grave, and though some are rich and others poor, some young and others old, yet these are only differences in the eyes of man, not in God’s sight.
The difference in God’s sight is this, that some in this world have begun a new year with God, have begun to live. I ask you my reader, Have you begun to live yet? If you have not, you have been dying all this time. You may say “I have life.” Yes, natural life, I grant you, but what is it? A constant battle with death. Have you a life that can enjoy God?
Eternal life? Have you a life that is it for God, that can stand in His presence, and enjoy that presence? “Ah” you say “I am afraid of Him.” Then it is perfectly clear that you do not enjoy Him, nor can you enjoy Him till you know what the 12th of Exodus brings out.
Ex. 12 teaches that man must die because he is a sinner, and the consequence is, I read, there was not a house in which there was not one dead, there was death in every house the night God redeemed. Have you written the sentence of death upon yourself? Do you recognize that it needs as much the power of God to deliver a soul now from the grip of Satan, as it did then to deliver Israel from the power of Pharaoh? God. came down to deliver Israel that night, but He maintains His right to judge.
You may make light of sin, but God never does!
Sin He must, NO will judge, but after man’s sin, and before the Day of Judgment, at the great white throne, He comes down as a Saviour, and provides a way by which man may escape the judgment and be forever in His own bright presence in glory.
Man has only a nature fit to die and be judged. “How do you know?” do you ask.
Because the One who was spotless, who had no need to die, I see dying in the room of the guilty sinner, and “if one died for all, then were all dead.”
The Lamb of Ex. 12 is a lovely type of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was to be kept up, from the 10th to the 14th day, that if there were any blemish to appear, it might appear, which points to the three and a half years, during which that blessed. One walked this earth, the spotless Lamb of God “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.”
You and I needed a spotless Lamb, we needed that One without blemish outwardly and inwardly; needed Him to give Himself for us, to die instead of us, and He has done it!
God says to Israel, I am going to pass through the land as a judge, to vindicate my character, as the One who is holy, and righteous, and if you are going to escape my judgment you must take the way I have marked out for you.
“I will smite the firstborn” God says—that is—the very pride and flower of nature. “And the blood shall be to you for a token.” Directions most simple, and most plain were given.
The blood must be put where the eye of Jehovah could see it, outside, not inside. What were Israel to do? Simply to avail themselves of the blessed provision the Lord had given them.
And will not you do that too, my reader?
God has provided a Lamb, even His own Son.
It needed the shedding of the blood of the Son of God to redeem one sinner. So great was your need, and so rich His grace, so priceless your value in the sight of God, that you may say, He gave His Son for me, for me!
Oh! what depths of love for Christ to give Himself for me! Did you ever believe that yet? Has your heart ever bowed down and owned it, and believed it? If it has not, bow down and believe it today.
You may say “I do believe it.” Then of course you know you are saved. “Oh” you say “I could not say that.” Then you do not believe the gospel, for it is the gospel of our salvation. You may say “I believe the Lord Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” Has He saved you? I ask. “No.” Why? Has He refused to? I know He has not. How is it you are not saved then? Ah there is one little link wanting. The Saviour has died and lives again.
“Yes,” you say, “I believe that” and perhaps you may add, “I would fain hope He died for me.”
You must get farther than that, He did die on that very day of the Passover, while thousands, and thousands of lambs were being slain on every hand, to keep up the Passover memorial. There outside the walls of Jerusalem, Christ the fulfiller of the Passover, was hanging on a cross of wood, between two thieves. Christ was the great reality to whom the Passover pointed, the divine antitype. But to know Jesus has died suffices not. What follows the killing of the Passover? “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.” Supposing I had gone to a house and beheld no mark of blood on the door, and I go inside and say, I do not see any mark of blood outside your door. “No,” the owner answers, “but I have slain the lamb, and the blood is in the basin.”
“Well,” I say, “do you not know God passes through the land tonight?”
“Yes, and the blood is in the basin, that is sufficient.”
“But God says you are to put it outside.”
“Oh, I thought as long as the blood was shed, the lamb slain, that was sufficient, I did not want to be a marked person.” Would it have been sufficient? Assuredly not! Judgment entered every house that had not the blood sprinkled outside it!
What has that to do with us, you ask? Ah! there lies all the difference between salvation and damnation, between the blood sprinkled, and the blood shed. The soul that knows the blood sprinkled is secure, having a present salvation, the soul that only knows the blood shed, is waiting for a certain damnation.
You must have that blood sprinkled where the eye of God can see it. It is the application to my own soul of the Saviour’s death—that I not only know the Saviour died, but that He died for me! Your knowing the truths of the gospel is of no avail, you must have the personal application of them to your own soul.
Where the soul has not had to do personally with Jesus, as his or her Saviour, there is nothing waiting for that soul but judgment, for God says, “When I see the blood I will pass over.” Not when I see your tears or prayers, or your reformation.
There is but one thing commands the eye of God. It is the blood! There is one thing gives divine assurance to the soul. It is the blood!
Can you say—I take the bunch of hyssop (hyssop is the meanest thing in nature) I judge myself, I condemn myself, I see I am a poor ruined sinner, and with a trembling hand I sprinkle that blood. I believe the Saviour died for me; gave Himself for me. Ah, you may well believe it, it is the one damning sin to disbelieve it! It is the crushing crowning sin to doubt it—which the lost in hell will ever remember and regret.
You will be judged for your sins in that day, but the one crowning sin will be that you have slighted that precious blood.
Faith puts it on the lintel and the two side posts, where the eye of God can see it. Where does the unbeliever put that blood? On the threshold, where in scorn and contempt he tramples it underfoot! Awful deed of unbelieving folly!
I charge you solemnly with trampling that blood underfoot, if you neglect or refuse to accept this great salvation. If you do not honor and trust, you make light of and trample on this precious blood. And what remains for you? “A certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation.” Oh! mark it ye triflers, ye souls that make light of a Saviour, who go on with the world, the foam upon the waters not lighter than you in your pathway down here, till you find yourself floated into hell fire forever!
Oh soul, soul, how you will repent your folly when you get there! Christ-less soul, how bitterly you will repent your folly!
There was not a house in Egypt in which there was not one dead. It was the firstborn of man bearing the result of his own sin, in the houses of the Egyptians, in the houses of the Israelites, it was the substitute, of God’s own providing, for the guilty man.
The Lord give you to apply the bunch of hyssop now, to credit that the blood of Christ settles every question for the soul that simply trusts it.
Oh turn, turn now to that precious Saviour and trust your soul to Him this very day.
W. T. P. W.