(Read Exodus 12)
IT is of the last importance to see that nothing could deliver us from Satan’s power, nothing could clear us of guilt, and bring us to God, but the atoning sufferings―the sacrifice―the death and blood-shedding―the propitiatory offering of the blessed Saviour, the Lamb of God. Christ was made sin for us when He sustained the judgment the sinner deserved. God forsook Him on the cross―when His soul was made an offering for sin―and therein is where and how propitiation was effected.
Atonement has two sides―propitiation, and substitution; one Godward, the other manward. Propitiation is Godward, glorifying Him about sin; substitution is manward, delivering him from his sins and their consequences. Propitiation is the meeting of the claims of God’s nature, His holiness, His majesty, His truth and righteousness, and all these claims have been perfectly and divinely met in the atonement which the Lord Jesus Christ rendered when He died on Calvary’s tree, having there borne the judgment of God, His forsaking, and the hiding of His face, the darkness and the smiting, and all the suffering that the bearing of sin must entail. Remember that sin and God can only meet for judgment, either at the cross, where the blessed Saviour bore the judgment of God in respect to sin, that the one, believing in Him might never bear it; or else at the great white throne, where the sinner will be judged himself. My sin must meet God’s judgment; my sin must have expended against it the holy righteous indignation of God’s nature, and there are but two places where the judgment of God is expressed and borne―the cross, where the Son of God suffered in the room and stead of the sinner, or the lake of fire, where the sinner suffers for himself. You will have to make your choice, you cannot escape it.
You may dream about God being merciful, and good, and loving, and kind, by which you mean you hope that God will make light of sin. People say, Of course I know I am a sinner, but God is good, and in the day of judgment will He not have mercy upon me? No, He will not; simply because it will then be a day of judgment, not of grace. When people talk about knowing they are sinners, but that God is good, and will be merciful, it simply means that they think very lightly of their sins, and they hope God does the same. They are mistaken. God thinks so much about your sins and mine that His own Son had to suffer death and judgment, in order that those sins, borne by Him, and suffered for on the cross, might not be suffered for by us. That is substitution.
When God was delivering Israel from Egypt the Paschal Lamb illustrated all this. “Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire; his head with his legs, and with the purtenance thereof,” was the significant order to Israel, and it speaks to us also. The soul is to take in the beauty and excellence and perfection of Christ in His life, and then to feed upon His death. It is quite true that the will and wickedness of man were expressed in putting the blessed Lord upon the cross, but, forget it not, that Christ “must needs suffer”; there was the necessity of love on His side, as well as the fact of sin on our side.
Now what have I to do in order to obtain salvation? Christ has died and risen again―is not that all that I have to believe, and is not that enough? No. There was something that every household in Israel had to do that night in Egypt, in order to escape the judgment of God. The Lord declares distinctly, “I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the first-born in the land of Egypt.” Why the first-born? Because the first-born expresses what man is in nature, The judgment of God is upon man as man. It matters not whether he be learned or ignorant, religions or irreligious; man is a sinner under sentence of death, and he must meet it. The firstborn is the one in whom all hopes are centered, in whom all expectations are wrapped up, and he must die. How can he be delivered? Only by the sweet and precious truth of substitution, another must die in his stead, if he is to be delivered.
“I will execute judgment,” saith the Lord; but He adds, “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” (vs. 13). Here they have God’s promise. Observe at this point they only hear what God wanted, and how they are to be saved. They are not yet saved, they are not yet under the shelter of the blood in this verse. It is like the preaching of the gospel, so to speak. The Lord is here preaching the gospel to Israel, and He tells them, You must kill the lamb, you must take its blood and sprinkle the lintel, and the two side posts of the doors of your houses. And why not on the threshold also? Ah, that is reserved for the unbelief of this learned, educated, cultured, highly scientific nineteenth century. It is reserved for the last decade of this century, above all years, to bring out cold, scathing, heartless criticism of the atonement, and to do worse―to trample the blood of Christ beneath the feet. God said, Put the blood upon the lintel, and the two side posts, and that is where faith puts it, above me, and around me; but where does scientific criticism put it today? I will tell you. Our latter-day critics put it on the threshold; they trample the blood of Christ beneath their feet.
This is a solemn indictment, but you know that what I say is true, and that men boldly set aside the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s Word declares, “Without shedding of blood there is no remission” (Heb. 9). And what, by-and-by, will be the song of the redeemed in glory, addressed to the Lamb? “Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof; for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by”―what? Is it by Thy life, by Thy example, by helping us to follow, and walk in Thy steps? No, it is by “thy blood.”
The instructions to Israel were plain and simple: they were to take a lamb, kill it, pour its blood into a basin, and put it on the lintel, and two side posts, and then God declared, “The blood shall be to you for a token... and when I see the blood (mark that), I will pass over you, and the plague (death) shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt” (vs. 13). Then I ask, What can shelter me from the plague, what can shelter me from God’s judgment? The blood, and nothing but the blood: the blood of Jesus, the blood of God’s own dear Son, the blood of the Lamb of God. Tell me, are you sheltered, have you that blood between you and God? Well, if never before, let it be there for the future.
It is when God sees the blood sprinkled that He passes over, and judgment is stayed. The shedding of the blood was the rendering to God of that which His holiness demanded, and which His word enjoined, but when the life of the lamb was taken, and the blood sprinkled on the lintel, and the two doorposts we get what Scripture speaks of as “the obedience of faith.” How is a man saved? By faith in Christ, bowing to the testimony of God to the work of His dear Son. True, it is Christ Himself in whom we trust, but the testimony of God is this, that while we trust in His Person―in what He is in Himself―the soul that believes in Him comes under the benefit of all the work He has wrought. No doubt the expression is used, “Through faith in his blood” (Rom. 3:2525Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; (Romans 3:25)), but, generally speaking, what we have in Scripture is this: My faith rests in a Person, the eternal Son of God, who came down here that as man He might die for me, and rise again; He wins the confidence of the heart, and then, when I trust in Him, I get the full benefit of the work He has accomplished.
The directions as to the sprinkling of the blood are very significant, and we should weigh them well, and see if we have acted similarly. “Ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the basin; and none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning. For the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when he seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, the Lord will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you” (vss. 23). It is when He sees the blood that God passes over, not when He sees your faith, or your repentance, or your prayers, or anything else but the blood.
But observe the importance of this last instruction. “Take a bunch of hyssop.” I am persuaded that there are many of my readers whose hands have never grasped the bunch of hyssop. I do not doubt that you believe in the fact of the death of Jesus, but, I ask you, Have you taken the bunch of hyssop, and sprinkled the blood on the lintel? If you had passed down a street in Egypt that night, you would have seen some houses where the blood was on the lintel―outside, not inside―but you might have come to a house where no blood was to be seen. And yet that man was an Israelite, and had heard God’s instructions. You ask the man, How is it there is no sprinkled blood, have you no lamb? “Yes, I have a lamb.” Is it killed? “Yes, and roasted too.” But I see no blood. “Oh no, the blood is in the basin.” But why is it not outside where God can see it? “Well, I do not see much importance in having the blood there, so long as the lamb has been killed, and the blood shed: I do not like to have the blood on my house, and to put myself up for observation in that way. Surely it cannot make much difference where the blood is when it has been shed,” is his reply. The person who believes merely that Jesus has died, is just like the man who has never sprinkled the blood. He has accepted the truth of the atonement, but it has never been applied to his own soul. What does the bunch of hyssop mean? I believe it signifies the sense, always wrought in the soul when the gospel reaches it, of what I am as a sinner: it is repentance, self-judgment: I am brought low in my own eyes, I am brought to the sense that I am a lost man, and I turn to the cross, and shelter myself beneath the blood of the Lamb.
The hyssop has a very distinct place in Scripture. Solomon “spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall” (1 Kings 4:3333And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. (1 Kings 4:33)), i.e., the greatest and the least of the products of the vegetable kingdom. The hyssop was a little shrub that did not even take root in the ground, but came out between two stones in the wall. Have I any part in my own redemption? Yes. What is it? My sins, that is all. And of course, if I have a real sense of what my sins are, I shall be bowed before God in repentance, and self-judgment, and the acknowledgment of those sins. And I believe the bunch of hyssop expresses what goes on in the soul of the convicted sinner, contrition before God, in the sense of my sins, and of what I am. My sins would have brought me into death and judgment before God, and nothing but the blood of the Substitute can meet the necessity of my case, so, in faith, and in the sense of my need, I put that blood between my soul and God, and I am safe.
When midnight came in the land of Egypt, and God came out to judge, what was the event? Where there was no sprinkled blood there was no salvation, no shelter. And so with us, where there is no blood sprinkled, there is no salvation. You say, Oh, but I believe the blood of Christ was shed.
True, but is it sprinkled? Have you in real, simple faith, fled to the Saviour, and put your guilty, godless soul under the shelter of His precious blood? If not, heed the Word of God, I beseech you: take hold of the bunch of hyssop just now, and get down before the Lord, in the acknowledgment of your sins, and say, Lord Jesus, Saviour, I trust in Thee, and in Thy precious blood. He would love to hear you say―
“Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bid’st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come.”
Where the blood was sprinkled, salvation was the result; and where no blood was seen, the plague fell. God passed through the land that night in judgment, and “there was not a house where there was not one dead” (vs. 30). In the houses of Israel there was one dead―the lamb, the victim, the substitute. In the houses of Egypt there was one dead―the first-born. In the houses of Israel the lamb had died in the room and stead of the first-born, and that brought peace to many a household that night. So now the poor sinner can say, Jesus has died in my room and stead, and I am free.
You might have gone up to a young man in one of the households of Israel, who was the first-born, and asked him, How is it with you tonight? Have you peace? “Perfect peace!” How do you feel? “I do not rest on my feelings, but on the word of Jehovah. The blood is upon the lintel. It was father’s work to put it there, but I assure you I took good care to see that it was done; I was too much interested in the matter not to see to it; my life would go this night if the blood were not there. But the blood is there, and Jehovah has said, ‘When I see the blood, I will pass over you.’” And are you at rest? “At perfect rest. The blood is the basis of my peace, not what I feel.”
Peace is not a feeling, it is not an emotion, it is not an experience, it is a settled fact, based on the knowledge that the claims of God have been all met by the Lamb of God, and God respects His precious blood. As one has said, The blood of Jesus has reached, and touched the very memory of God, for we read in Hebrews 10, “Your sins and your iniquities I will remember no more.” The blood of bulls and goats could not take away sins, but the blood of Jesus does. Its value God alone knows. You and I do not know the value of the blood of Christ. We do value it surely, but our value of it is very poor and inadequate. God knows its value perfectly, He esteems its worth fully, and He says to you and me, Trust that blood; get under its, shelter. If your soul and mine can each answer, “Lord, I trust it,” then God says, I shall treat you according to My estimate of the value of that blood, not according to yours. And that is wherein peace lies. It does not rest on your estimate, or mine, of the blood of Christ, but on God’s estimate of it. And what is God’s estimate of it? He estimates it so highly, that there is nothing too great for Him to do on the ground of it. He delivers you from judgment, and brings you to glory, on the ground of the shed blood of His own dear Son. That blood, and that blood only, can give you peace and confidence of heart towards God. W. T. P. W.