However, Israel must not only be sheltered in the place of judgment; but he must be redeemed out of the place of death. Without this last all was incomplete; until this was done they still stood in the old place of bondage, and there was no song of praise. All was silence on the Paschal night; “every mouth was stopped and all the world guilty before God.” There was no communion with the Judge. They were delivered from His claims on that solemn night. They must now be delivered from the claims of the Enemy; they must therefore be removed from the place of death where Satan’s power held sway. They must be delivered from the fear of death, through which they had been all their lifetime held in bondage (Heb. 2). The “midnight” of judgment had now passed, but another “night” of anguish must be endured; and the “morning watch” must come, when the Lord would look out unto the host of the Egyptians to trouble them; and the sea must return to his strength, as the “morning” itself appeared. Israel could then sing songs of deliverance because they were saved that day out of the hand of their enemies! (Cf. Ex. 14:20, 24, 27, 3020And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the one came not near the other all the night. (Exodus 14:20)
24And it came to pass, that in the morning watch the Lord looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians, (Exodus 14:24)
27And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to his strength when the morning appeared; and the Egyptians fled against it; and the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. (Exodus 14:27)
30Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea shore. (Exodus 14:30).)
How many souls (and thank God that there are so many), who know this shelter from judgment to come, but have never realized, nor even heard of, the full results of redemption. They have never in conscience left the old status in which they stood as sinners. How many there are who could say, “I am a poor sinner, and the blood of the cross is my only hope”; who could not say, “I am a poor saint, but the judgment seat of Christ is the resting place of my soul.”
Now here it is where souls are often feeble indeed. They have no soul deliverance at all. Israel has started with their kneading troughs on their shoulders, and their unleavened dough; but they have not left the land of slavery. They come to Pi-Hahiroth (“the gate of liberty”) only to find it a place of anguish and fear.
Oh, my beloved reader, hearken to one who knows it well, in my dwelling somewhat on that most common state of soul amongst the children of God. I refer to that want of liberty to avoid the evil and do the good; that want of freedom from self, which so mars the service, and worship, and joy of souls. How often have we come together to read Scripture, and we have drifted from some bright and blessed theme, to what we so well know as the sate of soul in Rom. 7. Why is this? Alas, because souls are not free! I remember once at a reading, one being asked, in a reply to a question on that chapter, “If he was ever dissatisfied with himself. “ How quickly was the reply given affirmatively to the question. “What (said the speaker) does that prove?” “Simply that you are not free—not yet done with self at all.” he had never fully exchanged self for Christ before God, both to break the bonds of evil under which they writhed; and to bring forth the fruits of good which they longed to perform.
God would have us find Him both the Deliverer from the thralldom of the one, as well as the Strength by which alone, as working in our weakness, we can do the other. God has accepted Christ, both as to what He has done, and what He is, for what flesh in us has done, and what self is. Here faith rests. But faith is not always simple; we hearken to the suggestions of our own hearts, and faith gets clouded and dim. The fact is we have not yet bowed to the great truth that we are dead unto sin in Christ! Here then, is the difficulty.
There are two great parts in learning the salvation of God. First: that “Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures,” and second: that we have died to sin in Him. We must learn both in order to be free. A soul exercised and convicted of its sins and guilt, on hearing the first of these great truths rejoices in the news and is sensible of forgiveness through His blood. Yet after a time when it begins to learn the evil of its nature, which is unchanged, it passes through far deeper exercises in another way, and the struggle begins—a struggle lasting often for years of bitter anguish; yet never at the same time losing what it had first learned of the work of Christ. Taught of God in this, He does not ignore what the soul has received, while leading on to further light. It was a question of faith in His precious blood which brought forgiveness for its sins. Now it comes to a question of experience, which always contradicts in us what God testifies. This is a striking and marked effect of the Spirit of God working in a soul. The testimony of the Spirit for us, as in Christ, contradicts that of His testimony in us, as of ourselves. How then are both testimonies to be reconciled? The soul must be passed through experiences of the most bitter kind, so as to have its confidence in self broken. It must be reduced experimentally to that sense of powerless inability to deal with what it finds within, or to do that which is well pleasing in the sight of God, and to learn to look to Christ alone and at self no more forever. All this is not learned in a moment, though Christ’s work is known in bearing our sins.
In short, beloved reader; it is the effort of the soul, which having begun with Christ for forgiveness of its sins; now seeks to carry on the work, of which it still finds the need, in its own supposed strength. It would now quell this evil working of flesh, curb that propensity, reduce into order an evil nature, which may not show itself outwardly in the form of sins, yet works inwardly to the deep anguish of the soul, and with all this, it desires and tries to do what pleases Him.
Have we never experienced this? Have we never found this “law of sin in our members, warring against the law of our mind,” and instead of giving us liberty, bringing us into captivity to its power? Take an evil temper for instance. One finds it part of our very being and so wound round our heart that although it may not show itself to others, it embitters the soul to its possessor—than which there is hardly any experience less easy to endure. We think we have power to deal with its workings; we strive, we pray about it, we cry to God; yet no answer comes. We see that it is not a Christian state that it should be unconquered there. We are at our wits’ end, and find no issue. What would not the soul give at such a moment, to break its bonds and be free? Trial after trial is put forth to snap the cords that bind us; they chafe our souls and remain unbroken. Effort after effort fails, as each is put forth to produce the good we long to do, yet we find it not. Service, if we are called upon to serve, is labor and sorrow. Perhaps we may have to conceal this bitterness in our own bosom rather than stumble others whom we would serve. Perhaps too our pride sustains us, and we bear our anguish alone. We put on a fair face to those around with this canker in our heart untold. The Enemy presses upon us; we find no escape. What more fitting cry can burst forth from the inmost experience of our soul than that furnished us by God’s Spirit—“O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” {Rom. 7:2424O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? (Romans 7:24)}.
Alas, having begun with Christ, we then thought to carry on the rest ourselves—we supposed we had strength—have we not? At last we have come to the point, when we cease to struggle. Surrender becomes victory, and we are free! We may not at the moment be able to define how the soul has emerged into this liberty, but there is holy calm. We have learned one salutary lesson: we never got out of our bitter anguish, until we found we could not; that Christ would not help us, but that He can deliver. We ceased to struggle, we dropped our efforts, we turned away hopelessly from self; our eye was turned to Him Who died and rose; we learned that we too had died in Him, and we are free! Simple faith could never have brought us to that condition. Self must be, in experience, broken in all its pretentiousness; whether as to freeing itself from the bondage of evil, or as to the strength to work that which is good. It is a saint who learns “that in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing.” Surely, one might suppose that although as sinners there was no good thing, or acceptable, performed by us—still that as saints there would now be some good found. Perhaps we unconsciously acted as if this were so. We supposed we now had power. But the lesson had been forced home by humiliating experience and failure on our souls, that even as saints no good thing can be found in us, nor ever can be; and that our efforts to bring forth good are but the denial that this is so.
“Ye are dead,” the Spirit says of us; but Experience says “impossible”; until forced to learn it thus; and faith bows in liberty to this great deliverance and reckons itself dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, in Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 6:1111Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:11), with Col. 3:33For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3)).
In our typical chapters in Exodus, we see all this in some measure (12-15), but there is one point which deserves special notice here. You will remark that before this night of anguish was pressed upon Israel’s soul in Ex. 14, “The Pillar of Cloud” came down to be with them and to lead and guide. This points in type to a most important element in the history of the soul. It is this—that in the state of soul which we have just commented upon—the Spirit of God, as a seal, may be there, all the time. Nay, I would press the fact that it is so. Some would seek to have it that the Spirit could not be there until deliverance was known; to such I would reply, you are making the slate of soul of the person—that which God seals with His Spirit, and not the value of the precious blood of Christ in which it stands. A person passes at times through much of the very experiences we have touched upon, and yet has never lost the sense of what he possessed, before he entered upon them. He knew his sins were forgiven through the precious blood shedding of Christ, and it was this—the value of the blood -which God sealed. The oil, or Spirit, was always put first on the blood, not on the man, when the leper was cleansed (Lev. 14:1717And of the rest of the oil that is in his hand shall the priest put upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot, upon the blood of the trespass offering: (Leviticus 14:17)). To this agrees all the teaching of the Word of God, whether of the types in the OT or the examples or doctrines in the New.
The Paschal blood having been shed in Egypt, and before the people stood on the sands of the wilderness—God had come down to be with them. This was in type the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the blood of Christ having prepared the way, a witness to and seal of its value in which they stood.
I do not further dwell on the experience of Israel in what followed. We have touched on that of souls in the antitype already. I would only add that Israel too must taste the bitter waters of death to every hope from themselves. They too must “stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord.” The Lord must fight—not they! The Lord must speak—they must hold their peace! They must cease to struggle, and the Lord must think for them.
How strikingly the contrast is seen between Ex. 14:1010And when Pharaoh drew nigh, the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and, behold, the Egyptians marched after them; and they were sore afraid: and the children of Israel cried out unto the Lord. (Exodus 14:10) and Psa. 78:5353And he led them on safely, so that they feared not: but the sea overwhelmed their enemies. (Psalm 78:53)! In the former we read, “the Egyptians marched after them, and they were sore afraid”! In the latter—“And he led them on safely, so that they feared not; but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.” In the former we see the weakness of man exposed, but in the latter the thoughts of God as to the new man revealed!
Does not this lead us to a happy conclusion so often taught us in the word; that God looks at the soul in whom He is working by His Spirit, as marked out for acceptance in Christ even at the very moment when He is forced to pass it through the deepest pressure, that the evil of the flesh may be known? And its powerlessness to cope with it experimentally learned? How dearly did Joseph love his brethren! How earnestly did he prepare their hearts to learn this, at the very moment when he was speaking roughly to them, and putting them in ward! Believe it, my brethren, there is no exercise of soul through which we pass, but which has its bright and glorious end, when we shall learn if we do not even now, what God’s end is.
The Red Sea does not in type go further than their death to all their foes. I look at these chapters, as before noticed, rather as the people learning experimentally and in detail the value of the work of Christ. Just as in the NT Christ’s work was done in the Gospels on the cross; while in the Epistles, the details of its value are taught us. Naught but death in them could deliver from him that had the power of death, nor lead them out of the place of judgment and this too by leading them into it! They pass down into death (in figure); and once there the enemy’s power is stayed. They are not said to “come up” out of the Red Sea; for this we must have the Jordan. “Going down” and “coming up” are terms in Scripture, which each apply only to Egypt and Canaan; not to the Wilderness, nor to the Red Sea..