(Exodus 4.-12.)
IN the fourth chapter of Exodus Moses gets his commission: “Thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my first-born: and I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me” (vers. 22, 23). Now mark, there is relationship. If a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are no longer looked at by God as a poor sinner. You are no longer a slave. What is the message that Moses has to carry? “Israel is my son.” It is a wonderful thing to wake up, in the very day of your conversion, to the truth of sonship. “Let my son go, that he may serve me.” That is the point. God comes in, and He says, I must have My people all to Myself. If you have just been brought to know the Lord, what a wonderful thing to find that God’s heart beats toward you as a son, and He looks for you to enjoy son-ship. Do you?
Chapter five gives us an added privilege, as we hear the Lord say, “Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.” What does the Lord want with you? A feast. You are called to a feast now, but you must get clean out of Egypt for that. And just as Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go” (ver. 2), so will Satan hinder the young convert from making a clean break with the world if he can do so. The first thing you find out is that you are a sinner, and the next that you are to be a worshipper. You can never worship in the world, nor can the song of deliverance ever be sung truly in. Egypt. Sinners can go through a form of worship. But spiritual worship is a question of the truth and enjoyment of the Father, and there must be disassociation from what is of the world and of the flesh, for that to be known. Hence we can understand Moses and Aaron’s words, “The God of the Hebrews hath met with us: let us go, we pray thee, three days’ journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto the Lard our God” (ver. 3). Three days’ journey in the wilderness, That is a good long distance; it leaves the world fairly behind. You will find three days abundantly in Scripture. But Pharaoh will not have this, and immediately increases their burdens and their work. It is very instructive. As long as we were going on easily doing the devil’s work he left us alone, but the moment the chains were felt as it were, oh, how he put the pressure on (vers. 4-19).
This action of Pharaoh is just a figure of the way in which the devil, when he sees a soul seeking to get free, immediately binds the chains more tightly round him lest he should escape to Christ. Oh, thank God, if you have passed through this misery, and are free. Perhaps you are saying, I thought I believed the gospel, and yet now I am no better than I was, and I am far from happy. Do not faint, nor let Satan drive you back. It is a good thing for us to learn, at the start, our utter good for nothingness, and powerlessness. That is what the soul must pass through. You have no power, and Satan has a great deal.
But God’s purpose must be carried out, and “He that is for us is stronger than he that is against us,” hence in the next chapter the Lord speaks again (chap. 6:1-8). Pharaoh still keeps them in bondage, but to the children of Israel God sends a lovely message. Mark the seven “I wills.” Seven in Scripture is always the number of spiritual completeness. (1) “I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.” That is good. They were feeling those burdens. (2) “And I will rid you out of their bondage, and (3) I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments; and (4) I will take you to me for a people, and (5) I will be to you a God.... And (6) I will bring you in unto the land... and (7) I will give it you for an heritage: I am the Lord” (vers. 6-8). It begins with, “I am the Lord,” and it closes with, “I am the Lord.” His “I will” never fails, and faith always reposes on God’s word. I recommend you to take God’s seven “I wills” to your heart. I think I hear you saying, “I have had a good many doubts.” You will never have any more if you hug those “I wills.” God will not fail of His word, and His purpose He always carries out. Your redemption and mine does not depend upon what we are, it depends upon God. We could not help ourselves, and we cannot do aught for ourselves. Leave all with God, and peace is the result.
How blessedly God spoke here to encourage His people. But did they hear Him? We read, “And Moses spake so unto the children of Israel: but they hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage” (ver. 9). The pressure of the enemy was so great that they became hopeless. If you have never yet learned what deliverance is, then let me encourage you to wait on God, and listen to Him. Do not struggle. Satan is too great a foe. Let God deliver you. In these chapters you will get the way in which you are delivered from the righteous judgment of God on the one hand, and the power of the enemy on the other hand. Are they to go or not? is the question. Of course Pharaoh says he will not let them go, and then God brings in His power to effect His purpose. The various plagues I do not touch on, but in the eighth chapter I want to show you the wiles of the devil. Pharaoh, conscious of weakness, begins to make compromises, hoping still to keep his slaves. The first compromise he proposes is very interesting. “Go ye, sacrifice to your God in the land” (ver. 25). Where? “In the land.” Do it in the land, says Pharaoh. Could they sacrifice to God in Egypt? Impossible.
What is their answer? “And Moses said, It is not meet so to do... for we shall sacrifice the abomination (the idol) of the Egyptians to the Lord our God; lo, shall we sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before their eyes, and will they not stone us?” (ver. 26). No, we cannot worship, or be really for God in the midst of Egypt, i.e., the world. “We will go three days’ journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice to the Lord our God, as he shall command us” (ver. 27), is the answer of faith. Now that is a very fine statement on Moses’ part. It is a principle of immense value for your soul and mine, that if I am going to have God, and be for Him, I must do without the world. You cannot have the enjoyment of His love, if you want to go on with the world.
This firm reply of Moses leads to compromise number two on Pharaoh’s part, “I will let you go that ye may sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness; only ye shall not go very far away” (ver. 28). Ah, how wily Satan is. Don’t you be too out and out, he says to a young convert: “Ye shall not go very far away.” Ah, how many a young saint has the devil tripped up with this kind of word. Do not go very far. Do not be an enthusiast. Listen! The further you go from the world the better, and Satan will never put his hand upon you again if you once get fairly out of Egypt. If you once get fairly into the wilderness, thank God, he will never place his foul hand upon you again. Never, no, never!
But Pharaoh does not yet let them go. God again steps in with deeper judgments, and at length Pharaoh says, “Go, serve the Lord your God; but who are they that shall go?” (chap. 10:8). Moses is very clear about who shall go. “We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds will we go: for we must hold a feast to the Lord” (ver. 9). All they loved and all they possessed were to go. All for God―was Moses’ motto. Christian mothers, converted fathers, do you see this? It is here as elsewhere in all Scripture, the divine principle of “thou and thy house.” We are not going to be a divided family, says Moses, and, more than that, we shall take every sheep and every bullock we possess, for all belongs to God. Why? Because redemption puts you upon the ground of belonging to God altogether. I do not think anything could be more plain. This plain reply suggests a third compromise to Pharaoh. First he says, “Let the Lord be with you, as I will let you go, and your little ones: look to it; for evil is before you” (ver. 9). And then, as if he loved the children, and would save them from evil, he adds, “Not so: go now, ye that are men, and serve the Lord; for that ye did desire” (ver. 10). He says, Leave the children. The devil says, Parents, you can be devoted to Christ, but let your children be in the world; and many a parent heeds that suggestion, and sows seed that bears fruit in the shape of worldly-minded and worldly-wayed sons and daughters, who break their parents’ hearts in later days.
Irritated by the refusal to leave the children, Pharaoh refuses to liberate his slaves till further judgment wrings from him a fourth compromise, to wit, I will let you have the children, but you must leave the goods with me. “And Pharaoh called unto Moses, and said, Go ye, serve the Lord; only let your flocks and your herds be stayed (i.e., let your business be in the world, conducted on worldly principles); let your little ones also go with you” (ver. 24). But faith never wavers, and Moses’ reply is splendid: “Our cattle also shall go with us: there shall not a hoof be left behind; for thereof must we take to serve the Lord our God; and we know not with what we must serve the Lord until we come thither” (ver. 26) Ah, how firm is this man, that God’s people belong to God, spirit, soul, and body. It is very refreshing to see the way this man says, We must be entirely for God. Not a hoof can be left behind. We could not leave an ox behind. Everything must be the Lord’s. It is a principle of faith. What the Christian is, and what he has, is all the Lord’s. “Ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19, 2019What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? 20For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's. (1 Corinthians 6:19‑20)).
When you come to the twelfth chapter you find Pharaoh admitting this principle, as he says, “Go, serve the Lord, as ye have said, also take your flocks and your herds, as ye have said, and be gone; and bless me also” (vers. 31, 32). The very devil himself has the sense that the Christian should serve the Lord devotedly. The enemy of Christ has the sense that the Christian belongs to Christ, and that all he has, and is, should be devoted to the Lord absolutely.
“Saviour, we long to follow Thee,
Daily Thy cross to bear
And count all else, whate’er it be,
Unworthy of our care.”
W. T. P. W.