Ex. 14
We are all too apt to settle down with that which merely stays the craving of the conscience, and satisfies our own sense of what our sins deserve from God's hand; and this to the great impairing, not only of His glory, but also of our peace, instead of endeavoring to rise to the enjoyment of the full portion we have given us in the gospel.
This appears always in every part of the truth of God, and it will be made manifest here, I trust clearly, to the children of God, by that which certainly ought to be the known portion of all belonging to Christ. For I am not now going to speak of what might be safely unknown by any Christian. I am only going to treat of the common heritage of all that belong to Christ. I propose to speak, not of the whole even that by grace pertains to us from the very starting-place of our career, but of that part of our blessing which God has given us in redemption, by the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Christians are too apt to settle down with this—that they have been awakened and feel their sins, and that they have found a blessed refuge and resource in the blood of Christ.
They are quite right as far as they go. God forbid that one should enfeeble the sense of the preciousness of His blood. To enter into our full portion enhances the value of His blood, and brings out the grace of God in its own fullness, not in any way shadowing even that which souls are apt to make their goal, but giving them to enjoy it richly, which they are too apt to content themselves without.
In general you will find that what souls are content to rest in is the answer in the New Testament to the type of the Passover.
No soul that is awakened of the Holy Ghost could find the smallest possible hope for his guilty soul save in the blood of the Lord Jesus. To Him pointed, as we know, the Passover lamb that was killed, the blood of which was sprinkled on the doorposts of Israel in the land of Egypt. It is plain that all God's children must necessarily be sooner or later driven to find their shelter within the blood-sprinkled doors; there alone they are safely sheltered from judgment.
But they are apt to satisfy themselves with something short of what God has given. The paschal lamb's blood is not really all that God has given to us, even from the starting-place of the Christian.
The children of Israel, as you may see by the historical circumstances, were not yet redeemed out of Egypt, even after the blood was sprinkled. There was another need and a different action of God, following the first up, no doubt, but still another dealing of grace necessary to show the deliverance that Christ has really secured for the believer.
The truth of death and resurrection alone gives the believer the measure of the blessing which Christ has really procured; just as in the circumstances here, the Red Sea itself was necessary to give the Israelite his deliverance from the house of bondage.
The New Testament fully teaches this. Take for instance, the First Epistle of Peter. There we find that we “are redeemed, not with corruptible things, as silver and gold,.... but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot”; but that is not all. The Spirit of God shows that by Him we believe in God, who raised Him up from the dead, and gave Him glory, that our faith and hope might be in God.
There you have our Red Sea. The death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus—the putting the people through the Red Sea answering to it as the type in the Old Testament was necessary to complete the deliverance which God pledged the blood of the lamb to perform.
And so you find it also in the Epistle to the Romans. In chapter 3 we have the blood of Jesus; in chapter iv. we have the death and resurrection: the Red Sea being the type of the latter, as the Passover is of the former. We have Jesus shedding His blood in chapter 3.; Jesus raised again for our justification in chapter iv.; and then in the commencement of chapter v., we read— “Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The Holy Ghost does not say we have peace until we have the result of the death and resurrection of Christ, as well as of His blood, applied to our souls. I am not in the least denying that a soul may be filled with great joy without such knowledge. The attractive grace of Christ continually wins souls, leading them to rejoice before God; but joy and peace are very different things.
You never can have solid peace without knowing that all that is against you is judged of God. He would have me to look at what I have done and to feel what I am; nay, He would use means to bring a due sense of sin, and not only of my sins, before my soul to judge self both in what I have done, and in what I am.
In the face of all, then, have you perfect peace? What could give you this? Not merely the blood of Christ. Without that precious blood there could be no peace; but the blood of Christ, whilst of infinite price, does not give the full measure of the blessing into which your soul is brought, even as a groundwork before God. He has made peace through the blood of His cross, no doubt; but still the way He brings me into the enjoyment of it is by showing Himself raised from the dead for our justification; and more than this, by showing us ourselves, dead unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Accordingly, then, we have this fully discussed in the Epistle to the Romans, and upon this I must dwell for a little.
(To be continued).