Exodus 15

Exodus 15:22-18

Subdivision 4. (Exodus 15:22-27; Exodus 16:1-36; Exodus 17:1-16; Exodus 18:1-27.)Wilderness-grace. Israel is, however, as yet but brought into the wilderness. We have now, therefore, -not the proper history of the wilderness (that we find in Numbers), but -the grace which meets the need of the wilderness, -how their bread is given them and their water is made sure. The meaning of their being brought here is evidently to wean them from all other dependencies, and to cast them upon God; to manifest His truth and trustworthiness in all the minutiae of daily care. His was the responsibility of bringing this multitude through to the land He had promised them, and He charges Himself with it, that we, no less than they, may learn to find Him in the smallest details, and most familiar and homely matters of common life. In the deliverance from Egypt He had shown Himself for them on a great occasion; and there are many who seem only to look for His interference upon great occasions. But our life is not made up of such, and from how much of it must He be banished if we are only to find Him there! Thank God, it is not so: He is about our path and about our bed, serving us ever in the perpetual need we have of Him. But again, as types, what happened to them reveals to us deeper than physical needs, and a much more marvelous provision. As types, they must have anti-types greater than themselves; and with these, therefore, must be our main occupation, as continually through these books.

1. To be in the wilderness is not failure, but the consequence of redemption. The world is not for sense a wilderness: it is Egypt, -fruitful and fair enough, though storms may sweep through it. But for faith, yearning after the inheritance beyond, all is changed. He who learns to glory in the cross of Christ has to say, “By which the world is crucified to me, and I unto the world.” The place of Christ’s cross can be but barren ground -a wilderness. But this truth of the wilderness is not in itself a pleasant, but a bitter, thing. The good of it is in the necessity which brings God in. A place of the most wonderful display of divine power and love, it is the necessity of the people which occasions this display. Had the desert brought forth bread for them, there would have been no bread from heaven. Had it produced water, there would have been no need for the water from the rock. God’s supplies are, we must not say, proportioned to the necessity (they are over-abundant), but they are occasioned by it. Marah, as the introduction to the desert, is just the symbol of what the desert is. It was its proximity to the sea that made the waters bitter. Lying low by the shore, the saltness of the sea made (and still makes) the waters brackish. If the sea speak of death, then Marah shows the wilderness as the place of death, where not merely is nothing given for our thirst, but what is there is the very provocative of thirst. Naturally, we shrink from this. Marah, in itself, is never pleasant. The Christian spirit with regard to all the sorrow and sin that are in the world is never apathy, -never indifference. It is as redeemed we come to Marah; redemption places in the very position in which to feel the bitterness of the world. Brought dry-shod through the sea, we are then made to drink of it. But if the flesh shrinks from Marah, God has a remedy, and though we do not know the tree which God showed Moses, we know its antitype. It is the cross of Christ, -the fellowship of His sufferings, and the knowledge of its being that, what suffering can it not sweeten? We are sharing His experiences who gives us therein to realize the wonderful place which He has taken for us, -the path in which divine love led Him for our sakes. We have communion with Himself in such a way as we could not else enjoy; and nothing brings hearts together like sharing a common lot of toil and sorrow. Atonement was Christ’s work alone: here none could be with Him. But in other aspects even of the cross itself we may find that which, linking itself with the glory at the end, characterizes our path. We follow a rejected Master, and are made partakers of His sufferings. This bitterness of death in the wilderness is not the experience which falls to the common lot of men. It is not simply, as in the body, enduring the ills which they say flesh is heir to. It is what results from being linked with Christ in His path of suffering, and in spirit with Him to whom the spirit of the world was only that. “If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him.” But if with Him we suffer, Marah is no longer Marah; “the valley of Baca (of tears) becomes a well;” the tree is in the waters. And here is God’s standing ordinance for us, and by which He proves us. God. is our Healer; He maketh whole and from the diseases of Egypt He will exempt us, if only we endure the test. If we will accept of the path of sorrow and trial which the Lord gives us here, we shall escape the afflictions which are His judgments on the world, and which come on those also who take their place with the world. Those who do not suffer for Christ, or with Christ, do not by their unfaithfulness escape suffering. They only suffer with the Egyptians. This is what divine love -what He who has redeemed us to Himself says to us as His redeemed. Love itself cannot give us escape from the necessity of conforming to these conditions. It would not be love to do so. We shall find at last how in fact we have entered in this way, -as only by it we could enter, -into some of the deepest secrets of the heart of God. It is here in this scene of sin and sorrow that we are learning Christ -the Christ we are to enjoy forever. Even in the glory we could not learn what we learn here on earth. But to learn the Man of Sorrows, we must learn sorrow which yet is lost in the infinite joy of being made like Him, and linked with Him, and in Him learning that which is to be our possession forever. From Marah now, too, we reach Elim, and here is divine and abundant refreshment for a thirsty people. When we are conformed to God’s conditions we find that the water is not always and merely water that must be sweetened for us. There is water which is in itself sweet, -pure, unalloyed satisfaction and joy, which has no sorrow in it. The twelve springs answering to the twelve tribes, seem to point to a provision for those under the manifest government of God -an obedient people. We must have been at Marah to find Elim. The sweet water must be tasted after the bitter. When we have stooped to drink the bitter water we shall have the sweet. Elim means “trees,” implying strong trees, clearly referring to the growth nourished by its flowing springs. The living water of the Spirit nourishes the “trees of the Lord,” which “are full of sap” and the palm-tree is the figure of the righteous, -upright, and every way profitable, -bringing forth fruit still in old age (Psalms 92:12; Psalms 92:14) perennial as the streams that nourish them.
2. And now we come to the manna, -the bread with which God sustains His people in the wilderness. Here we cannot be at a loss for the interpretation. Christ is the true bread from heaven, given of the Father, the food of His people, -the meat which, though we find it in the wilderness of this world, nevertheless endures unto eternal life. It is Christ in His humiliation “coming down from heaven,” but which will be the sustenance of the soul in heaven itself. The story is told in eight subsections, which carry us on, therefore, to the land of promise. (1) It is in the wilderness of Sin where the manna falls for the first time, and the numerical stamp seems to emphasize its meaning. “Sin” is connected with seneh, a “thorn-bush,” the word used for that in which God revealed Himself to Moses. We are familiar already with the thorn as the sign of the ground cursed for man’s sake, and we must not surely forget it here. Yet here both the numerical place and the lesson of the whole chapter seem to insist upon another character of a “wilderness of thorn.” Of Palestine in its present state Tristram says, “The combined heat and dryness of the climate seem to develop a tendency to form thorns, even in groups like the astragalus, where we should least expect them. All plants become more spiny in rocky and parched situations, the expansive effort which under moister conditions would develop a bough with leaf or blossom being arrested, and forming merely a barren thorn or spine. “No picture could be more striking than this: the sun smiting, the genial heavenly influence become a scorching heat, water -the type of the Spirit -withheld, the barren soil with its vegetation running into weapons of offense: such is the world as the place of need into which the Son of God came as Son of man. (2) The people again break out into murmuring: an unhumbled spirit can take God’s grace as a thing of course, but resents whatever reminds it that God is not its debtor. How beautiful the grace that can meet this return for so mighty a deliverance with the assurance of new and continual mercy! Heaven will bestow what no labor of their own can get; giving, indeed, in such a way (“the day’s portion in its day”) that dependence shall be maintained; for thus the blessing is more than doubled; and providing also that human activity shall be required in its place, for what is given them they must gather. On the sixth day the amount is twice as much as usual; for the sixth day is the day of discipline which is also the day of spiritual harvest. (3) In the manna, Jehovah manifests Himself afresh as the Deliverer out of Egypt, and His glory appears in the cloud as they look toward the wilderness. There is little need to interpret this: it is by Christ we believe in God (1 Peter 1:21); and it would be loss indeed to stop short of this. “I and my Father are one” leads into the innermost sanctuary of wonder and worship. There is no hidden God any more, save as in the light, -not darkness, -in which He dwells, there are, indeed, inaccessible depths of glory (1 Timothy 6:16). This is only to say that the God who is perfectly revealed is of course God. (4) Now we are made to see what the manna is like. A flight of quails precedes it in the evening, which furnish the people with the flesh that had been promised them. And as we know abundantly what this death as the food of life means, we can have no difficulty as to it here. The Lord Himself, in His sermon on this text of manna (John 6:1-71), assures us that we must not only eat His flesh, but drink His blood, or we have no life in us. His person and His work are both necessary to us; and in fact His sacrifice must precede, as in the blood-sprinkled house alone they could feed on the lamb. So the quails come first, and in the evening. In the morning, the dew exhales and leaves the manna, as the Spirit of God ministers Christ. It is upon the ground, so that they must stoop to gather it, -on the face of the wilderness, -something fine, as if pounded to pieces, -fine as the hoar-frost on the ground. This is as the people see it, who have not yet tasted it, and know not what it is. It evidently does not look much, -has upon it marks as if of rough usage; it reminds us of the prophet’s words, “No beauty in Him that we should desire Him.” “What is it?” they say; for they wist not what it was. “The world knew Him not.” There is a natural manna which on account of its likeness to this has been used to discredit the miracle. But it is not properly a food, but a drug, -an exudation from a tree that an insect has pierced, wholly impossible to confound, one would say, with the divine gift: yet men do often confound it. And there are multitudes who confound Christ with common men: but who else could say and prove it, “He that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me”? (5) As to the gathering of the manna, we have a striking and solemn thing. Every man, it was found, gathered according to his eating. There was no lack for any: each got what he wanted, and not more than he wanted. Does not Christ meet the need we really have of Him? He does: but how much, then, is that need with each of us? (6) The manna was not to be hoarded, but gathered (with one exception) morning by morning, and eaten on the day it fell. Hoarded, it bred worms, and stank. So must a living faith draw continually for continual need. We cannot live to-day upon yesterday’s enjoyment! Our past experiences will in this case only turn into corruption: they will feed pride; they will be knowledge that puffs up. (7) And now, along with the manna, the Sabbath appears. In the double measure of the sixth day, it is provided for before it is enjoined: they rest not as mere duty, but as privilege; and in the gospels we find this rest connected in the most striking way with the reception of the Lord Himself. He is Lord of the Sabbath. They could not reject Him and have a Sabbath. With Christ known and fed upon, rest follows necessarily; found as we realize a love which has stooped so low as to give us the joy of companionship with Himself, and to bring us near, in Himself, to God. Away from God, Cainlike, we are but fugitives and vagabonds upon the earth. Nor can circumstances make peace for us; nay, while He says, “In the world ye shall have tribulation,” He adds directly, “but in Me ye shall have peace.” In connection with this, we find for the first time what the manna is really like, for those who had tasted it. “It was like coriander-seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafer-cakes with honey.” It was white -absolute purity, and more: of the color which speaks of the reflection of the full ray of light, and God is light. Its taste was like honey. Honey is the type of natural sweetness, able to yield refreshment if tasted by the way, as with Jonathan in the wood, but needing the wise man’s caution in its use (Proverbs 25:16), and unfit for the fire which tries the offering of the Lord. But the manna only resembles honey in its sweetness: it can abide the fire; and the fire prepares it for the people’s food. In Christ is all the sweetness of human affection, -of a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother; but a nature pure, unfallen, incorruptible: the reality of manhood which invites us to intimacy, yet upon which God can put the seal of His Spirit in perfect approbation of it all. (7) Thus of necessity this food “endureth to eternal life,” as Christ Himself has told us. The enjoyment of it is not for the present only. And so the manna, though it could not be kept for one day’s need in the wilderness, could be kept for the land. The golden pot speaks of how God is glorified in what is here made ours, and perhaps of that glorified One Himself who retains forever the memory of the past, and the gracious heart of the Son of Man also. And we shall not only “see,” as Israel might, but “eat” of the “hidden manna” (Revelation 2:17), in the heavenly land to which He is bringing us. It is then in fact, when we come to be there, that we shall have the full enjoyment, -knowing as we are known, -of all the experiences which though they be of the wilderness, yet wait for the land to which we are hastening to find their full interpretation and blessing.

The meat endures to everlasting life. We are now enjoying that which we shall enjoy for eternity. We feed on that which shall he eternally our food. 3. We have now a familiar type of the Spirit -the living water from the smitten rock; and, as an appendix to it, a necessary one, but still only that, in Amalek, the picture of the fleshly lusts which, in opposition to the Spirit, war against the soul. The numerical structure is here peculiarly significant: for the number of the section, while it is plainly that of the Spirit, says nothing of the strife that follows; nor could it come in very well as a fourth section, which the first part of the eighteenth chapter, moreover, plainly is. On the other hand, the number characterizes it exactly, if coming in as an appendix merely to the third section, unnoticed in the designation of the section itself, and yet finding its prepared place in connection with it. How clearly the spiritual meaning reigns in all this! and how it is brought out by the very arrangement! What connection has the conflict with Amalek with the water from the rock, other than a spiritual one?

It comes in the historical order, no doubt. Yes, because “all these things happened unto them for types.” The connection is spiritual, it is grounded on this, that if we have the Spirit, “the flesh lusteth against the Spirit.” And yet this is but incidental, not to be put upon a level with the glorious reality of the gift of the Holy Ghost itself, which is permanent and eternal blessing. Moreover, as the meaning of all this subdivision is to show the divine furnishing in grace for the wilderness, the struggle with Amalek necessarily could only have a subordinate place. (1) “Bread shall be given him, his waters shall be sure,” says the prophet of salvation. We have seen how the first part of this was fulfilled to delivered Israel; we are now to see the fulfillment of the rest. Again, as sent in answer to the murmuring of the people, the stamp of divine grace is upon the gift. Grace is a mightier triumph over sin than judgment. If the sixth chapter of John’s gospel interprets the manna for us, the seventh chapter interprets here. “In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, ‘If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.’ But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” Thus, if the manna shows forth the Lord upon earth in humiliation and rejection, the living water as a gift depends upon His exaltation and glory. If men are to be the recipients of the Holy Ghost, the work must be accomplished for them which alone can enable them to receive or God to give this unspeakable gift. In view of this, the scene in Exodus becomes easy enough to interpret. Horeb is “the dry place,” but it now yields water. Against nature, “contrary to nature,” is the Lord’s working; and the Lord -it is specially noted -is Himself there. He stands upon the rock which is to display at once His power and His grace.

The rod which had smitten the river smites it, -the rod of power in behalf of the people; and the streams gush out, an abundant supply for all the thirsty multitude. The smiting of the Rock for us has created a spring of refreshment and satisfaction as inexhaustible as the eternal source from which it comes; and its source is in God Himself -in the love of Him whose name is Love. The type of water is pregnant with instruction, as it is that which supplies one of man’s deepest cravings and strongest necessities. Thirst unsatisfied kills sooner far than hunger, nor can hunger itself be really satisfied where thirst is not, at least in measure, really met. A glance at the need to which water ministers will enable us to understand this. The soil otherwise most fruitful, without water, is unable to yield nourishment to the rootlets of the plant, which will die of drought in the midst of abundance. Water alone dissolves the nutriment, and supplies it in a shape suited to be taken up and assimilated into sap and juice. In the plant, and in the animal body, every constituent part is saturated with water, which alone enables it to fulfill its function and take its place in living relation to the whole. How perfect and beautiful an expression of that constant ministry of the Spirit with which for due and healthy life we must be “filled,” and by which alone we are enabled to absorb and digest all spiritual food! Every one who has preceded us upon the path of faith has been sustained of the Spirit, as born of the Spirit at first. This is not, of course, peculiar to Christian times. But the streams from the smitten Rock have in them that which is peculiar. All streams carry with them the witness of the soil through which they flow, -of the fountain-head in which they originate. The Spirit of God, come down to us as the fruit of accomplished redemption and of Christ’s accepted work, is to our hearts the witness of our acceptance and the Spirit of adoption, by which we cry, Abba, Father. A new and settled relationship to God, in and through His Beloved, such as before could not have been known or dreamt of is now made consciously our own. At that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in Me, and I in you.” Thus the Spirit ministers Christ, and with Him the knowledge of the Father; communion with the Father and the Son becomes our portion, and herein fullness of joy. (2) The appendix to this has how different a tale to tell! Amalek is the grandson of profane Esau, whose name Edom, earned by his actions, is almost identical with Adam. Amalek’s own name has no determined significance. It has been thought to be composed of am and laq, and thus to mean “a people that licks up,” or “exhausts.” This would be appropriate enough, but Scripture points rather to a derivation from Amal and laq, which would give us the thought of “labor that exhausts.” The first of these words is found in Balaam’s blessing of the people the second time, as Amalek appears in the third and fourth. “He hath not seen perverseness in Israel is literally, “He hath not seen amal,” -the wearisome labor which one’s own will involves; that “labor” from which the Lord calls men off to the “rest” of His easy yoke. Amal is thus connected with the will or lust of the flesh, and Amalek may well be the offspring of the old man, Edom. Amalek appears plainly in the third blessing: “His king shall be higher than Agag” -king of the Amalekites. And in the fourth, where the star rises out of Jacob -where Christ’s coming is seen, -then it is that Amalek perishes forever. Put these together, and they read consistently enough as typical of the old nature and its fruits. The first thing for blessing is, “God hath not seen it”-it is not imputed. Next, Christ, Israel’s king, is strong above Agag: we are delivered from its actual supremacy. Thirdly, when Christ comes, Amalek perishes forever. Again, if we compare the present chapter with the twentieth of Numbers, we shall find a strikingly similar scene in the first part of each: -the murmuring of the people in their thirst, the name “Meribah” given in each case to the place, the water brought from the rock to supply their thirst; and while here the conflict with Amalek follows, in Numbers follows correspondingly a scene with Edom. Amalek thus seems to represent the flesh’s will or lust, and the apostle Peter may well refer to this very place when he speaks of “fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.” “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary, the one to the other, so that ye should not do the things that ye would.” (Galatians 5:17.) It is not “cannot” do, as in the common version: the tendency of the constant opposition between “flesh” and “Spirit,” essential in their very natures, is, to hinder the man who has the Spirit from doing what he would. If it said “cannot,” this would deny the power of the Spirit to control the flesh. On the contrary, the apostle says, “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.” But the flesh is there as this implies, and ready ever to assert itself. How solemn to find, in this way, after the water from the rock, the conflict with Amalek! Yet though it is all right, and needful to assert in this connection, we must mark just how Scripture connects this attack of the foe. “He called the name of the place ‘Massah’ and ‘Meribah, ’ on account of the striving of the children of Israel, and on account of their tempting Jehovah, saying, ‘Is Jehovah in the midst of us, or not?’ Then came Amalek.” That is, the moral link, as given thus, seems to be, not between the gift of the water and Amalek’s onset, but between the unbelief of the people and this attack. Another thing which is very evident, let us at the same time particularly note: that Amalek assaults Israel, not Israel Amalek. God did not call to this conflict. He did not say, Seek out and destroy Amalek; it is Amalek seeks out Israel; and Israel’s unbelief exposes them to the attack. And so the apostle: he does not say, “Fight against fleshly lusts,” but “abstain,” “hold off from,” them, -which if it were done, no war were possible. This sort of conflict is not a necessity of God’s imposing, but the result of faith not having been in due exercise. Did we “hold off from” the lusts of the flesh by the whole length of being dead with Christ to sin, -were we always reckoning ourselves dead, as we are entitled and bound to do, conflict of this kind would be impossible: dead men no more fight than they are allured. And this is no undue insisting upon the Scripture term; for the apostle similarly presses the force of it, where he urges “for he that is dead is freed (or rather, justified) from sin.” (Romans 6:7.) That is, you cannot charge lusts, for instance, on a dead man: he has none. This, of course, is only faith’s reckoning; but it is true, or it could not be faith’s, and just as simple for the argument here as in the very similar one that the apostle urges. He who, because Christ died to sin for him once, reckons himself dead, cannot be seduced, nor even fight with seduction.

But are we always practically in the faith of this? Would that we were! But when we are not, we are shorn Samsons, most accessible, and without strength. Conflict of this kind, then, comes from faith’s failure; and when entangled -if our eyes have been upon the world, and have affected our hearts, then we must indeed fight in order to be free. Note, then, that in the field Joshua is the leader. Joshua is Jesus: the names are the same, and Christ acting by the Spirit is distinctly what he represents to us, -the Captain of our salvation, who leads us into practical apprehension of the heavenly places into which He is gone. We want, as this means, the positive enjoyment of what is ours in the heavenlies, in order to be free from entanglement, and really pilgrims and strangers on the earth. But even Joshua’s success is dependent, as we see directly, upon Moses being on the hill-top before God, and the holding up of the rod of power before Him. If Moses’ hands are up, Israel prevails; but if Moses’ hands are down, Amalek prevails. Moses is here another type of Christ, but as gone in to God, presenting before Him the value of that work in which, on the part of His people, divine power has acted. And the supporters of Moses’ hands figure, surely, that in Him (not, of course, external to Him,) which keeps Him, so to speak, in the place He has taken for us. On the one hand, Aaron seems to represent His priestly character, as touched with the feeling of our infirmities, gracious and compassionate; on the other, Hur, “white,” speaks as the manna did, of One who fully reflects the light which God is. Here, then, is mercy toward man, righteousness toward God, -an “Advocate with the Father;” and also “Jesus Christ the righteous.” Real dependence on the one hand, thorough subjection to the word of God on the other -for it is by the edge of the sword that Joshua discomfits their enemies, -these things, with one who knows redemption and acceptance in the Beloved, are what will carry him safe and victorious through all opposition and hindrances. But though Amalek is beaten off, Amalek is not destroyed. Israel has gained nothing by the conflict; and by the victory, only a free and unobstructed road. The battle with Amalek was but an episode in their history, not, as so many find the inward struggle, a daily experience. In the epistle to the Philippians, -the rehearsal of Christian experience, -the flesh is only mentioned to say we have no confidence in it: and these are “the true circumcision, who worship God in the spirit, and boast in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.” May we be more fully such! 4. The deliverance is complete: the grace which begins perfects the work. Nothing more is needed as to this. But the effect of the work is yet to be seen, for God’s way is ever to make the blessing of one the means of blessing to others also. Thus it will be when the final salvation of Israel is accomplished, it will be to the world, says the apostle, “as life from the dead.” (Romans 11:15.) In the present time, God is making the recipients of His salvation a testimony by which He works on others, -a thing that needs no insisting on, and which we find illustrated in the case of Jethro in a way so clear that it may be left to speak for itself. 5. The fifth and last section has more difficulty, and yet there need not be much doubt as to the general meaning. According to the number we have before us, as it would seem, those governmental ways of God, by which the “way” leads to the “end,” an end which is its righteous (while it may be gracious) recompense. In the history, we find Moses acting under the counsel of his father-in-law, sharing with chosen men of ability in Israel the service of rule over the people. It can scarcely fail to connect itself in our thoughts with that of which it may well be typical, -the day on which Christ (of whom all through Moses speaks to us) shall give according to the will of His Father (Matthew 20:23) His people to share His throne as Son of Man (Revelation 3:21). This is surely a fitting and beautiful close of this series of types, which has given us thus in wonderful completeness and reality the history of redemption.

Grace ends not with us till the reward of grace is given, and it shines at last in glory. Beyond this these types could not go, and a new series must begin with that which follows.