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Introduction Chapters 1 and 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapters 5 to 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapters 16 and 17 Chapter 18 Chapters 19 to 23 Chapters 24 and 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapters 30 and 31 Chapter 32 Chapters 33 and 34 Chapters 35 to 40 |
The power of evil; Satan's resistance permittedAt the news of the goodness of God, the people adore Him; but the struggle against the power of evil is another matter. Satan will not let the people go, and God permits this resistance, for the exercise of faith, and for the discipline of His people, and for the brilliant display of His power where Satan had reigned. We have to learn, and perhaps painfully, that we are in the flesh and under Satan's power; and that we have no power to effect our own deliverance, even with the help of God. It is the redemption of God in Christ's death and resurrection, realised in the power of the Spirit given when He had accomplished that redemption and had sat down on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens, that delivers; for forgiveness, and escape from judgment, is not deliverance. One refers to sins and God's righteously passing over them, the other to sin and its power. Oppression heavier; the hand of God shownBefore the deliverance, when the hopes of the people are now awakened, the oppression becomes heavier than ever, and the people would have preferred being left quiet in their slavery. But the rights and counsels of God are in question. The people must be thoroughly detached from these Gentiles, who, to this end, are now become their torment under God's hand. Moses works signs. The magicians imitate them by the power of Satan, in order to harden Pharaoh's heart. But when the question is of creating life, they are forced to recognise the hand of God. God as judge and deliverer
At last God executes His judgment, taking the firstborn as
representatives of all the people. We have thus two parts in the
deliverance of the people; in one, God appears as Judge, but satisfied
through the blood that is before Him; in the other, He manifests
Himself as Deliverer. Up to this last, the people are still in
Egypt. In the first, the expiatory blood of redemption bars the way to
Him as Judge, and it secures the people infallibly; but God does not
enter within — its value is to secure them from judgment.*
God's two judgments — of the firstborn and at the Red Sea — God's justice and truth satisfied
The people, their loins girded, having eaten in haste, with the bitter
herbs of repentance, begin their journey; but they do so in Egypt: yet
now God can be, and He is, with them. Here it is well to distinguish
these two judgments, that of the firstborn, and that of the Red
Sea. As matters of chastisement, the one was the firstfruits of the
other, and ought to have deterred Pharaoh from his rash pursuit. But
the blood, which kept the people from God's judgment, meant something
far deeper and far more serious than even the Red Sea, though judgment
was executed there too.* What happened at the Red
Sea was, it is true, the manifestation of the illustrious power of
God, who destroyed with the breath of His mouth the enemy who stood in
rebellion against Him — final and destructive judgment in its
character, no doubt, and which effected the deliverance of His people
by His power. But the blood signified the moral judgment of God, and
the full and entire satisfaction of all that was in His being. God,
such as He was, in His justice, His holiness, and His truth, could not
touch those who were sheltered by that blood.** Was there sin? His
love towards His people had found the means of satisfying the
requirements of His justice; and at the sight of that blood, which
answered everything that was perfect in His being, He passed over it
consistently with His justice and even His truth. Nevertheless God,
even in passing over, is seen as Judge; hence, so long as the soul is
on this ground, its peace is uncertain though the ground of it be
sure — its way in Egypt, being all the while truly
converted — because God has still the character of Judge to it, and
the power of the enemy is still there. |
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