Faith counts upon the end from the beginning. As our hymn has it—
“The guilt of twice ten thousand sins
One moment takes away;
And grace, when once the war, begins,
Secures the crowning day.”
This calculation upon the end at the beginning is a fine exercise of the soul. Faith knows what the end must be, from what the beginning has been.
The journey of Israel from Egypt to Canaan is a grand moral, as it has been, and is still commonly felt to be. It is not taken till the settlement of the greatest of all questions is fully and perfectly reached; the question, I mean, of relationship to God. In Exodus 12 that is the subject. The time of that chapter was no time of conflict, as between Israel and Egypt, but between Israel and the judgment of God. It was like the question between God and us, as sinners. And the blood on the door-posts settled
“The guilt of twice ten thousand sins
One moment takes away.”
It is the sword of the destroying angel that is turned aside by the sprinkled blood, and not the sword of any Egyptian. That angel would most surely have entered, carrying death or the judgment of God with him, but for the sprinkled lintel. That blood was God’s provision for settling the question of life or death, of salvation or judgment, between Himself and Israel, in the doomed land of Egypt. It effectually blunted the power of death. It was a moment when nothing but that blood would have done anything, but that blood did all which that moment demanded. It decided this, that Israel was to live and not to die.
In such a character, Israel starts for the journey. The greatest of all questions was settled—their relationship to God. And well is it, where the soul owns that this is the first, the great, the chief, and the principal question of all questions, “How stands it between God and my soul?” Others are but second to that—and, accordingly, that very month, in which this was accomplished and done, was, by divine ordinance, the beginning of months with Israel.
Thus at peace with God, as a redeemed, and purchased, and saved people, Israel begins the journey. Their character is settled and taken ere their history or action begins.
Soon they find themselves at their wits’ end. The strength of Pharaoh is behind them, and the Red Sea in front; and it seems as though it were only a choice of deaths for them—the sword or the flood. But He who was in the place of judgment with them yesterday, is with them in the midst of enemies and hindrances today. The angel of God can do the business now, as effectually as the blood did it then. The pillar where the glory dwelt serves now, because the sprinkled lintel had already served. The angel defends, because the blood had redeemed. Simple and precious! The blood, I may say, pledges all which Israel’s need demands. For
“Grace, when once the war begins,
Secures the crowning day.”
Accordingly, the angel of God comes between Israel and their pursuers. The pillar is darkness to the camp of Egypt, and light to Israel. And the hosts of the Lord go on and through the sea, and the hosts of Pharaoh, in all their strength and flower, perish in it.
Thus is the journey commenced. It was a blood-bought people who were taking it, and it is at once seen that such a people shall be a defended people. The blood pledged the pillar. Redeemed from the judgment of God, they shall surely be more than conquerors over their enemies. “If God be for us, who can be against us?”
The song on the eastern shore of the sea declares this. There had been no song till now. The hour of redemption from the judgment of the Lord had been passed in silence this hour of deliverance from the sword of Pharaoh is celebrated in a song. Fitting and beautiful distinctions in the exercises of the soul Israel in Egypt had enjoyed the certainty of the blood protecting them from the destroying angel, by feeding on the lamb in silence: they now see their enemies vanquished, and sing the song of praise. The silence of the paschal hour may have been of a deeper character—but silence was a better expression of the joy of such an hour, than this fervent triumphant utterance would have been.
Redeemed from the righteous judgment of God, and defended from the attempts of the enemy who would have overwhelmed them, the Israel of the Lord proceeded on their way.
A checkered scene they pass through. Necessities call for supplies, infirmities and trespasses call for healings and forgiveness. But the Lord proves His resources and His grace. He feeds them. He rebukes and chastens, but He pardons them, and still accepts them. Let the demands on Him be what they may, or repeated as they may, He never leaves them. If Israel bring a pilgrimage of forty years upon themselves, the Lord will be in the wilderness with them for forty years. He may be grieved, and have to express His displeasure, but He never leaves them.
Is Israel then, I ask, still a happy people? Are they a less happy people than when at first in Egypt they fed together under the covert of the blood, or at the sea sang their song of victory? Circumstances are changed indeed; but is their God changed? They are, it is true, in the heart of the wilderness, but are they a less happy people? Can any reason be drawn from the cloudy pillar of the desert in proof of this? Are they more straitened in God now than they were at the outset? Is the pillar the witness of a different God from what the blood or the song had given them? No; they are not straitened in God—nor are we, be we on what stage of the journey we may. If we loved the Lord, the days of the pillar in the wilderness would be as welcome, in a great sense, as the earlier triumphant hour of the song on the sea. The wilderness, in all its circumstances, was given to Israel of old, and is given to us now, for this end, to prove what is in our hearts towards God. (Deut. 8.) Should such an occasion be ungrateful or unwelcome? Would it be so to us in our human place and feelings, if we indeed loved another? Would we resent some call to serve him, some occasion to prove that there was something in our hearts for him? We know we should not. We know that we should give place to such opportunities, entertain them, and greet them. And, as far as we have occasion of showing a heart for the Lord, those wilderness journeys will not be resented. In themselves, they are not joyous. Nothing can make them, in themselves, other than what they are grievous—these trials and sorrows, these journeys through necessities, through humblings, through shifts and changes, it may be in painfulness and weariness. But the pillar tells us of the presence of the Lord. And this tells us that it is a happy people we are to be all along the road. The blood, the song, the companion-cloud, are only divers tokens of the same Jesus.
Just at the end of the road, in the high places of Baal or of Peor, a confederacy was formed against Israel, as at the outset there had been another on the Egyptian shore of the Red Sea. It is a moment which gives the Lord occasion to prove Himself the very same to Israel as He had been forty years before, in spite of all their provocations. For however we may entertain these opportunities of proving our heart to Him, we may easily know how He entertains them when they would prove His heart to us.
Israel is spread out in their encampment, in the valley beneath, when, in the high places of Baal and of Peor, the Lord meets the confederated Balsam and Balak, their altars, their victims, and their enchantments. The rest of Israel is not allowed to be disturbed by even the most distant report of what was happening, though in a great sense it was a moment of imminent peril to them. The Lord meets the king and his prophet all alone—and the tokens of the liars are frustrated. There is no enchantment against Israel. Israel may sleep on and take their rest, when the question is raised, “Can anything erase them from the palms of the hands of the Lord?” When the occasion is set for the proving of this, that the Lord has His Israel in His heart, as freshly and as warmly and as faithfully as ever, Israel may remain at home, and neither plead nor act, for the Lord will let the powers of darkness know the secrets of His bosom.
Thus is it with Him, in valuing and using opportunities for proving what is in His heart toward His saints. And if we, beloved, did but value what we have in Him, if we but took account of our condition in relation to the Lord, and not in relation to circumstances, we should always be happy beyond expression. Our joy would be full. But it is in that point we fail. We love circumstances. We live in the power of them too much, in the light of the Lord’s favor too little. And we are dull, and low, and half-hearted. Were it not so with us, the journeys in company with the cloud, checkered as they are, would find us and leave us still a happy, happy people. For it is one Jesus throughout, whether it be the day of the blood, of the song, or of the cloud, one and the same Jesus who was here with us in the circumstances of hum an life, in the dying love of the cross, in the life of intercession in heaven, and who will give us His unchanged self in glory forever.
But, further still, for there is a stage beyond the high places of Baal, in the journey of Israel—there is the passage of the Jordan—the moment when the wilderness is to be put behind them forever, as there had been in Egypt the moment when it was all before them, and then (when they had crossed the sea) the times and the seasons when it was all around them.
And now, so fruitful is the Lord of Israel in His resources, it is not the blood or the song or the pillar, but the ark and the feet of the priests, that are put in service for them. New occasions bring out new agencies. Fresh necessities display fresh resources. But it is the same Jesus. There are different administrations, but it is the same Lord.
The arm is not shortened—and the help of Israel for the Jordan is as perfect as had been their help at the Red Sea. Not a wave of the swellings and overflowings of the river touched the foot of the feeblest or most distant Israelite. The waters were again a wall on their right hand and on their left. The ark stations itself in the midst of the bed of the river, till all the company had gone clean over. Its presence encourages them as well as secures them, just at a moment and under an exigency when nature would have sunk, and the heart would have had a thousand misgivings. “Would not those watery walls give way? Would not the river from above assert its right, and claim its possession of a thousand years? Would not the source of the river force its title against its trespassers?”—The calm and assured aspect of the priests, as they bore the ark, and stood with it there in the place of the river’s height of pride and strength, gave all such questionings their answer, and stilled every misgiving. The people were commanded to look at the ark, and then to pass on. And they did so. They passed over dry-shod, and the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth gave them its presence, till all was accomplished. The waters would have been first in overwhelming the ark and its bearers, had they been able to touch even the sole of the foot of the feeblest of the tribes. And this crowning mercy visits them without the Lord calling to their remembrance a single evil His Israel had committed all along the journey hitherto. Read Josh. 3:44Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure: come not near unto it, that ye may know the way by which ye must go: for ye have not passed this way heretofore. (Joshua 3:4), where the passage of the Jordan is accomplished, where God shuts out the wilderness forever, and leads His elect home, and you will find no remembrance of one single misdoing. He sees no iniquity in Jacob, nor perverseness in Israel. The Lord giveth liberally, and upbraideth not. Everything is done for them that is needed, and everything that is done, is done by an arm of conquering strength, and by a heart of perfect unupbraiding love—and Israd passed into their inheritance under the same God of all grace, by whom they had passed out from the place of death and judgment. The earliest pledge is redeemed at the latest moment—and the song, which at the first we sang in the spirit of faith, is sung again at the end, under a fresh breathing and impulse, in the power of the truth of it—
“And grace, when once the war begins,
Secures the crowning day.”
J. G. B.