047. Moses--Egypt Smitten

Moses--Egypt Smitten

Exo 12:26-27. And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, What mean you by this service? That ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses. And the people bowed the head and worshipped. with

Psa 91:5-8. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold, and see the reward of the wicked. The great Jehovah, in all the works of his hands, and in all the ways of his providence, is ever preparing still grander displays of his divine perfection than those which have been already submitted to our view. This visible creation, fair, and vast, and magnificent as it is, being composed of perishing materials, and destined, in the eternal plan, to a temporary duration, is passing away, to give place to “new heavens, and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” He who made all things at first, saith, “Behold, I make all things new.” The whole Jewish economy, “The adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises:” The patriarchs and the prophets, with all they said, acted, and wrote, were but “the preparation of the gospel of peace;” and all issue in Christ the Lord, “in whom all the promises are yea, and amen, to the glory of God the Father.” And the kingdom of grace, under the great Redeemer, is only leading to the kingdom of glory.

It is both pleasant and useful, to observe the nature, the occasion, and the design, of sacred institutions. A closer inspection generally discovers much more than is apparent at first sight. The ordinance of the passover owes its institution to an event of considerable importance in the history of mankind; and its abrogation to a still greater. Its celebration commemorates the destruction of all the first-born in Egypt, and the redemption of Israel. Its abolition marks that most memorable era, the death of God’s own eternal Son, and the redemption of a lost world, by the shedding of his precious blood. It is not therefore to be wondered at, if, in an ordinance which was intended to expire in the sacrifice of the great “Lamb of Atonement,” slain “from the foundation of the world,” its divine Author should have thought proper to enjoin many particulars, which figuratively and symbolically pointed out “good things to come,” as well as literally expressed good things present.

Several of these significant circumstances, we took occasion to point out to you in the last Lecture. The commencement of the year was changed. The memory of nature’s birth was sunk as it were in the memory of the church’s deliverance; and a joyful expectation was excited of the gradual approach of “the fulness of time,” the day, the new year’s day of the world’s redemption. In that sacred festival was seen, God drawing nigh to his Israel, in loving kindness, tender mercy, and faithfulness; and Israel drawing nigh to their God, in gratitude, love, and obedience. The feast was prepared by the removal of all leaven, the emblem of “malice and wickedness;” and eaten with unleavened bread, the emblem of “sincerity and truth.” The victim was appointed to be a “lamb of the first year, without blemish.” chosen from among the flock, set apart and killed, to preserve the life of him who poured out, and sprinkled its blood; the figure of Him who was to come; “the Lamb of God, who beareth the sin of the world;” holy, harmless, gentle, patient; ,delivered according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God:” “suffering, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” We are now to continue the subject.

All Israel was engaged in the same service at the same instant of time, and for the self-same reason. All had descended from the same common stock, all were included within the bond of the same covenant, all were involved in the same general, distress, all were destined of Heaven to a participation in the same salvation. They appear, in the paschal solemnity, a beautiful and an instructive representation of the great, united, harmonious family of God; who are “one body, one spirit, and are called in one hope of their calling:” “who have one Lord, one faith, one baptism:--one God and Father of all, who is above all, through all, and in all.” And they are all coming, “in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”[*]Eph 4:4-6;Eph 4:13 As the Church in general had one and the same sacrifice, a lamb of the description which has been mentioned; so every particular family or neighborhood, according to their number, had their own particular sacrifice, and in that their particular protection and repast. The charity which comprehended the whole Israel of God, was thus invigorated and enlivened by being collected and concentrated; and the sacred fire of love, which was in danger of being extinguished by being dispersed too extensively, being thus confined within a narrower circle, lighting on fewer and nearer objects, and aided by reciprocal sympathy and ardor, was blown up into a purer flame. A happy pre-figuration of the blessed influence of the gospel, and of its sacred institutions, to rectify, to rivet, and to improve the charities of private life: to shed peace and joy upon every condition and relation; gradually to expand the heart, through the progressive, continually enlarging circles of natural affection, friendship, love of country, love of mankind, love to all the creation of God.

What must it have been to an Israelitish parent, standing with his children around him, to eat the Lord’s passover, to reflect, that while the arrows of the Almighty were falling thick upon the tents of Ham, his tabernacle was secured from the stroke: that while all the first-born in Egypt were bleeding by the hand of the destroying angel; of him, a holy and righteous God demanded no victim, but one from the flock; spared a darling son, and accepted the blood of a lamb! What must have been the emotions of the Israelitish first-born themselves, at that awful hour, to reflect on the state of their unhappy neighbors, of the same description with themselves, and on their own condition, had justice, untempered with mercy, struck the blow! Such as this, but superior, as the deliverance is greater, must be the joy of a truly Christian family, which has hope in God, through Christ Jesus the Lord, in reflecting on that grace which has made a difference between them and their sinful neighbors; which has seasonably warned them “to flee from the wrath that is to come;” which has “delivered their souls from death, their eyes from tears, their feet from falling.” What must be the inexpressible satisfaction of every believer in Christ Jesus, in the confidence of being sprinkled with the blood of atonement, of “being at peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ,” of being “passed from death unto life?” What a happy community is the redeemed of the Lord! Wherever scattered on the face of the whole earth; they are nevertheless gathered together in their glorious Head: separated by oceans and mountains but united in interest and affection: hated, despised, persecuted of the world; yet cherished, esteemed, protected of the Almighty! The sacrifices of the Mosaic dispensation were many because they were imperfect. The sacrifice of the gospel is one, because once offered, it “for ever perfects them that are sanctified by it.” The ancient institution prescribed a whole lamb for every several family; the gospel exhibits a whole and complete Savior for every several elect sinner: and that Savior at once a teacher, an atonement, a ruler: “Wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.” The application of the blood of the destined victim in this institution is a most remarkable circumstance. “They shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side-posts, and on the upper door-post of the houses wherein they shall eat it.” It must not be spilt upon the ground as a worthless thing, nor sprinkled in the entering in of the door, to be trampled upon as an unholy thing; but above and on either side; to be a covering to the head and a bulwark around. “When I see the blood I will pass over you.” Could the all-discerning eye of God stand in need of such a token, in order to judge between an Israelite and an Egyptian? No. But the distinctions of God’s love avail not them who wilfully and wickedly neglect the distinctions of faith and obedience. The blood in the basin is the same with the blood on the door-post, but it is no protection till it be believingly applied. The virtue is dormant till sprinkling call it forth. Surely, this part of the ceremony speaks to the Christian world for itself. Why is mention still made of blood, blood? “the shedding of blood,” “the sprinkling of blood,” “redemption through blood,” and the like? It denotes the life, which consists in the blood of the animal; and it instructs us in this momentous doctrine, that life being forfeited by sin, the blood must be shed, that is, the life must be yielded up, before atonement to justice can be made: that the substitution and acceptance of one life in the room of another, must depend upon the will and appointment of the offended lawgiver: that the blood of slain beasts, having no value nor virtue of its own to take away sin, must derive all its efficacy from the appointment of Heaven, and from its relation to a victim of a higher order: and, that the blood of life of this one victim, yielded up to divine justice, is, through its intrinsic worth and the decree of God, of virtue sufficient to take away the sins of the whole world.

But, as in the original institution, the blood of the lamb slain was no protection to the house, till it was sprinkled with a bunch of hyssop on the parts of the building, and in the manner directed, so the sovereign balm appointed of the Most High for the cure of the deadly plague of sin, the price of pardon to the guilty, the life of the dead, becomes effectual to the relief of the guilty, perishing sinner, by a particular application of it to his own “wounds, bruises, putrefying sores.” Faith, eyeing the commandment, the power of God, and the grace of Christ, is like the bunch of hyssop in the hand of the paschal worshipper, sprinkling the blood of atonement upon “the upper door-post, and the two side-posts,” the understanding, the heart, the life, the ruling and the governing powers of our nature, that the whole may be accepted through the Beloved.

I conclude this part of my subject with quoting a passage from the Targum of Jonathan, respecting the sprinkling of the blood of the paschal lamb, as it was performed by the children of Israel in Egypt, which has struck myself as uncommonly beautiful and sublime.

“When the glory of the Lord was revealed in Egypt in the night of the passover, and when he slew all the first-born of the Egyptians, He rode upon lightning. He surveyed the inmost recesses of our habitations; He stopped behind the walls of our houses: His eyes observed the posts of our doors: they pierced through the casements. He perceived the blood of circumcision, and the blood of the paschal lamb, sprinkled upon us. He viewed his people from the heights of heaven, and saw them eating the passover roasted with fire: He saw, and had compassion upon us; He spared, and suffered not the destroying angel to hurt us.” The inferior circumstances respecting the sacrifice are these. The flesh of the victim was to be eaten in the night season, not in a crude state, nor boiled in water, but roasted with fire; no bone of it was to be broken; no remnant of it left until the morning; or else the remains were to be consumed by fire. I am unwilling entirely to pass over these circumstances as if they were of no especial meaning or importance; for I am thoroughly convinced every iota and tittle relating to this ordinance, has a specific meaning and design. But l frankly acknowledge I cannot discern that design in every particular; and am far from being satisfied with the fanciful and unsupported illustrations of some commentators upon the passage. Should I myself seem to any to have given too much into imagination and conjecture in my ideas of it, or in what is farther to be offered; the nature of the subject, the silence of Scripture, the consciousness of honestly aiming at your rational entertainment and religious instruction, and the humble hope that these conjectures are and shall be conformed to the analogy of faith, and if erroneous, innocently so; these will, I am persuaded, secure me a patient hearing, and a candid interpretation. The time of the feast was the night season; the very juncture when the awful scene was acting, which marred the glory and blasted the strength of Egypt. Inconsiderate man must have his attention roused and fixed by strong and striking circumstances. The moment of execution, the hour of battle, and the like, are awfully interesting to a serious, humane, and public spirited person. Every son of Israel knew, that at the very moment he was eating his unleavened cake with gladness, and the flesh of lambs with a merry heart, “Thousands were falling at his side, and ten thousand at his right hand.” What an alarming demonstration of divine justice! What an encouraging display of goodness and mercy! Were the eye opened to see God as he is, were the powers of an invisible world habitually felt, every creature, every season, every event, would possess a quickening, an active, a constraining influence over us. But blind, stupid, sluggish as we are, the midnight bell must toll to rouse us to reflection; death must assume the complexion of sable night, and add artificial to natural horror, in order to force a way into our stony hearts. And God, who knows what is in man, vouchsafes to instruct his thoughtlessness and folly, by acting through the medium of powerful and awakening circumstances upon our imagination and senses. Hence possibly the injunction to eat the passover by night.

It was to be “roasted with fire,” not eaten raw, nor sodden with water. To eat flesh in, a crude state is unnatural and unwholesome. And we never find the religious institutions of the living and true God, doing violence to innocent natural propensities and aversions, or encroaching on the .health and life of his worshippers: for he saith, “I will have mercy and not sacrifice.” Why the one method of preparing it was commanded of God in preference to the other, we pretend not satisfyingly to account for. Was it to secure an uniformity of practice in the minutest circumstances relating to his worship? Was it to form his church and people to implicit obedience to his will, in points which they comprehend not, as in those which they well understand; in all cases whatever, whether he be pleased to render or to withhold a reason? Was it intended as a symbolical representation of their late condition; tried, and prepared, and refined in the fire of Egyptian oppression; purged, but not consumed by it? Was it a figurative view of the judgment of God then executing: Egypt scorched with the flame; Israel enlightened, seasoned, purified by it? Did it look forward unto, and signify some particular circumstance in the person, the doctrine, or sufferings of the great evangelical sacrifice? O Lord, thou knowest. “Secret things belong to thee, but things which are revealed belong unto us, and to our children.” We thank thee for what thou hast condescended to reveal to us, and would not presume to “be wise above what is written.”

“Not a bone” of the paschal lamb was to “be broken.” This, as well as some of the foregoing circumstances, is by sundry commentators supposed to be intended as a contradiction to various Pagan superstitions and particularly to the frantic behaviour of the votaries of Bacchus; who, in the fumes of intoxication or of religious frenzy, committed a thousand abominations and extravagancies; they fell into violent agitations, the pretended inspiration of their God; they devoured the yet palpitating flesh of the victims which they had just killed, and broke all their bones to pieces. But, the idolatrous rites of the heathen nations were so various and so contradictory one to another, that we can hardly imagine the great Jehovah would condescend to express any concern, whether the rites of his worship were, in every instance, either conformed or opposed to the usages of idolatry. A very famous critic[*]Bochart, Hieroz par. i. lib. ii. cap. 1. fol. 609. assigns a very silly reason for this branch of the commandment. He alleges it was another indication of the extreme haste with which the passover was to be eaten. “Men in a hurry,” says he, “do not stand to pick bones; much less do they take leisure to break them, for the sake of the juice or marrow.” As if it required more time to sever the joints, and break the bones by violence, than to dissect and disunite the parts without a fracture. The simple meaning of the precept seems to be, that what was once offered to God should not be unnecessarily disfigured and mangled. The blood must be shed, for that was the seal of God’s covenant; the flesh might be eaten, for it was given for the sustenance of man’s life; but the bones, forming no part either of food or sacrifice, were to be left in the state in which they were found, till consumed by fire with the remainder of the flesh, if any remained, the next morning. And is it not extremely probable that God might intend, by certain arbitrary tokens, to describe the Messiah; and that the prohibition to break the bones of the paschal lamb was designed to be a type of a remarkable circumstance attending the crucifixion of our Savior which Providence watched over with special attention, and brought about by a miracle? “But when the soldiers came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs.”[*]John 19:33 And it is clear from what follows, that the evangelist considered the precept of the law as a prophesy of Christ; “For these things were done,” says he, “that the scripture should be fulfilled. A bone of him shall not be broken.”[*]John 19:36 In many cases it happens, that the prediction was either not attended to, or had not been understood, till the event has explained it.

Nothing of it was to be “left until the morning.” This circumstance was not peculiar to the sacrifice of the paschal lamb, but common to almost every other kind of oblation. This will appear if we consult the general laws respecting sacrifice. Thus the prescription runs: “And the flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offerings for thanksgiving shall be eaten the same day that it is offered; he shall not leave any of it until the morning.”[*]Lev 7:15 And again, “When a bullock, or a sheep, or a gout is brought forth, then it shall be seven days under the dam, and from the eighth day and thenceforth it shall be accepted for an offering made by fire unto the Lord. And whether it be cow or ewe, ye shall kill it and her young both in one day. And when ye will offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving unto the Lord, offer it at your own will. On the same day it shall be eaten up; ye shall leave none of it until the morrow: I am the Lord.”[*]Lev 22:27-30 The solemn affix, “I am the Lord,” seems to insinuate, that the reason of the commandment was to be sought in the majesty and authority of the lawgiver.--And, independent of authority, decency seems to require, that what has once been devoted to a hallowed use should never afterwards appear in a mangled, impure, or putrid state. Perhaps superstition was, by this precept, obliquely or intentionally reproved and repressed; superstition, which loves to feed upon scraps, and to hoard up relics, as if they were sacred things; superstition, which gives to the fragments of the sacrifice the veneration due only to the sacrifice itself, and to the great Author of it.

We must notice the remaining particulars of this service in the manner in which it was originally performed; “in haste,” “standing,” “with loins girded,” “with staff in hand,” ready to depart. The lamb was to be eaten with “bitter herbs.” A representation, perhaps, of the mixed nature of every sublunary enjoyment; and of the wholesome uses of unpalatable adversity. The “standing posture, and the implements of travelling, speak a plain and distinct language.” “Arise ye, and depart, for this is not your rest.” “Here we have no abiding city, but look for one to come.” “Now we desire a better country, that is, an heavenly.” “Arise, let us go hence.” A provision was graciously made for such as might be ceremonially unclean at the future seasons of celebration, and the door of mercy and communion was opened to strangers. Blessed prefiguration of the remedy provided for the chief of sinners: of the refuge opened for the reception of “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel;” of the liberal, condescending, comprehensive spirit of the gospel! Christians, ye “are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.” “Those who were afar off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ.”

Men and brethren, the time is at hand, when a more fearful midnight cry shall be heard than even that which smitten, groaning Egypt raised in the hour of vengeance. “The day of the Lord shall come as a thief in the night.” “Behold he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, end they also which pierced him; and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him.” Behold, a careless, slumbering world, a world lying in wickedness, is threatened with a death infinitely more dreadful than that which destroyed the first-born; with “the second death,” a living death of everlasting banishment “from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.” From that last plague there is no security but one; that security, of which the “blood of sprinkling” under the law was but a type. “Run to your strong hold, ye prisoners of hope.” “Flee, flee for refuge; lay hold of the hope that is set before you.” “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” “If God be for us, who can be against us?” “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth: Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.”[*]Rom 8:32-34

How many things in the Scriptures; in Moses, in the prophets, in the law, in the gospel, are dark and hard to be understood? But the hour cometh when the veil shall be removed from our eyes; when the truth as it is in Jesus shall stand confessed without a mystery; and shall be seen and read of all men. “What” he doth, “ye know not now, but ye shall know hereafter.” “We know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.” “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know, even as also I am known.”[*]1Co 13:12