Lecture VIII. THE PASSAGE OF THE SEA

(Exodus 13:17-14:31.)

We have before us now the completion of Israel's deliverance out of Egypt. Not till they crossed the sea were they fully delivered. Indeed, salvation is not spoken of until they come to it. It is manifest that salvation, as typified in the things we are considering, implies much more than deliverance from wrath and condemnation; and yet this is the sense in which we habitually use it. Here, at the sea, the question is no more between the people and God, but between them and their enemies. The question with God was settled on the night of the passover-fully and entirely settled. The question here was the old, the first question, that of servitude to Pharaoh or of liberty, but which they had learned could not be answered first. This question God Himself now takes up on their behalf, and they find God for them in a more manifest way than ever yet. Already, from the time of the passover, God was with them; but how vividly the Red Sea makes this manifest to them.

If we look at the doctrinal part of the epistle to the Romans, the first eight chapters, we shall see that the first part of it (to the middle of chap. 5) is occupied with the blood of Christ and its effects. There we see that the righteousness of God itself, which that blood-shedding declares, provides a place of assured shelter. We are "justified by His blood," which in its effects reaches on to the final judgment of the world, and assures us that "much more shall we be saved from wrath through Him." The certainty of final salvation is argued (triumphantly settled, let us say) from the simple and blessed fact of present justification. All possible charges are then repelled; judgment is rolled away for ever; and with our standing in present grace, and glory as our confident expectation, we are enabled to glory even in tribulation also, conscious that it, as all else, is working together under God's hand in blessing to us.

This is essentially passover truth:sheltered from judgment, eating the lamb, and equipped for the journey. But now in the next part of the epistle, from chapter 5:12 onwards, the question of practice at once comes in:"What then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?" "Shall we sin, because we are not under the law but under grace?" and when the discovery of the hopeless evil of the flesh is made, one question more:"0 wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

All through this part the question is as to the dominion of sin, from which we are delivered by death, and brought into a new place beyond it:"That the body of sin might be annulled, that henceforth we should not serve sin." It is by death we are "made free from sin;" we have died with Christ, and "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." Thus the divine method of deliverance is given us.

But we must look more closely at this, and in detail. By God's grace, may those who listen to me now, trace, if they have never done so before, the steps of this deliverance, and make it their own. It is a wonderful and real thing, and we cannot take for granted that those who have peace with God have this deliverance.

Peace with God we have found already in the 5th of Romans; yet, in the 7th chapter, we find the cry of, "I am carnal, sold under sin!" It is no longer peace with God that is in question; but sin in my nature as a law of sin; this is the subject debated upon. And though souls yet ignorant of peace may pass through this experience, and thus naturally mix it up with the question of peace, the two things are in Romans kept quite apart. Let us not be afraid then to entertain this question:Have we passed through this experience?-for experience it is, and we must pass through it as such. O friends, have we learned that song of salvation as having passed through the sea, untouched by it? Is Egypt finally and for ever behind you? Happy indeed if it be so!

Bondage to Pharaoh!-Does it not cease on the night of the passover? In a most important sense it does. Chains are broken, and a real start is made. God is with them; never can His claim to them be cancelled, nor the enemy retain possession of His people. In a true sense, therefore, their slavery ceased that night; the stroke of judgment upon Egypt became the means of their own escape. But passing from God's point of view to that of the people, with whatever "high hand" they may start, we soon find them trembling again before their old tyrant, and in such fear that the actual presence of God with them does not remove it! Shut in between the desert and the sea, with Pharaoh's chariots and horsemen in full pursuit, their cry is a cry of despair. The question between them and their old enemy has to be taken up afresh by God in their behalf, and to be ended finally. God fights for them; and they do nought but "stand still and see the salvation of the Lord."

And so with a soul who has learned the safe shelter of the blood of Christ-seen the judgment of God rolling past; the chains broken off his hands; the question of deliverance from sin's law really settled. God, who has definitely called him from sinnership to saintship, will not fail to make him what that word imports. As in the type of the leper (Levit. 14:14-18), if the blood first sanctifies, or sets one apart to God, the oil cannot fail to be put upon the blood:the power of the Holy Spirit is there to make real and actual that to which the precious blood has redeemed him. But it does not follow that he comes into the proper realization of this at once. Alas, the first teaching of holiness has to be, "That in me (even as a believer), in my flesh, good does not dwell;" and for deliverance from sin in ourselves we have to learn the painful and humbling lesson of thorough and continual weakness.

When one has just learned the blessed fact of justification by the blood of Christ, and seen the shadow of death turned for him into morning by faith in a risen Saviour, whose death has made atonement for his sins, it seems indeed to him as if sin could no more put shackles upon his enfranchised soul. The joy of this deliverance seems as if it would be power from henceforth. Joyfully he starts with God; for God is indeed with him.

"And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, to go by day and night; He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night from before the people."

Thus the path is begun with full provision for mastery over the difficulties of the way. By day, by night, they are to make continued progress. So led, so cared for, His presence with them, what progress should theirs be! Alas, in a few days all seemed to have failed. Instead of a short path out of Egypt, by the way of the Philistines, with no sea to obstruct their way, they are turned round by "the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea." In a new way they must learn deliverance from Egypt's
dominion, and out of its territory. They find themselves on the border of Egypt with the sea in front, the desert around, and all Egypt is poured out after them! Do we not hear the cry, "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me?"

Did it not look as if God had deserted them? And we, in whom God has created holy desires after holiness, have to learn that these desires can only be truly attained in God's own way-to turn away in utter helplessness from ourselves to Christ-and Christ not in power, but in death, where "our old man" was put away, buried out of sight.

At peace with God through the precious blood of Christ, yet how many think that as to inbred sin (the sin that dwells in us) there is no effectual deliverance! Their "mind" is indeed changed. With the mind they serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. They do not see that they have reached the border of Egypt, and that though further progress seems impossible, God is at hand to give such a deliverance as to make their hearts sing of it forever.

The Red Sea is the border of Egypt which represents the world away from God. If we ask how men pass out of the world, the universal answer is, "By death." And our Shepherd has made by His death a dry path for us through death, as the rod of Moses made a dry path for Israel through the sea. The "strong east wind" of adversity blowing through all the awful "night" of His distress, cleaved the way for us through the waters of death, through which, by faith, we pass out of sin's and the law's dominion, as Israel out of Pharaoh's rule.

Let us trace this experimentally, for it is experience we have now to do with. Let us follow the actual track of a person whom God delivered from bondage to sin, and whose history is the type of an actual and realized deliverance.

Let us get before us then this soul just started on the path with God. Full of the precious reality of escaped judgment, his bonds fallen off, the joy of his salvation is too much in his heart for the world to have place there. He almost thinks, in his earnestness and self-ignorance, that he never can fall into sin again. But as time passes, it begins to change:his joy becomes less absolute; the world begins to have more reality and power; he realizes the fact that he has still within him, child of God as he is, a nature which is not all "new." He realizes that sin is in him still. Things presented by the world awaken lusts within, and there begins a struggle of which those who know it realize its painfulness. The old enemy is reviving, gathering strength, and putting on the old chains again; and the soul sinks in dismay at the return of what it thought almost gone for ever. Israel's despairing cry finds its answer in the groan over a body of death which passes its power to deal with, whether to improve or cast aside:"O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

It is "between Migdol and the Sea" that Pharaoh comes upon them. We have seen what the Sea is; what is Migdol? It means "watch-tower;" often a military post, as the natural accompaniment of a border region. Did jealous eyes watch the escaping hosts of Israel? Egypt was not friendly now, and a watch-tower in an enemy's country is not a place of help or refuge, but a stronghold armed against them to the teeth.

And the New Testament gives this view. In the 7th of Romans, which is the key to the situation here, we find Migdol (the law) looming threateningly enough to (be soul seeking to escape from sin's law. However strange it may sound to us, Scripture it is that says, "The strength of sin is the law." Yea, even because "the law is spiritual." But, says the one whose experience it is, "I am carnal, sold under sin."

Men will have it that because the law is spiritual it must be power for spirituality, power against sin. But Scripture decisively says, "Without the law sin was dead; for I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died; and the commandment which was ordained unto life, I found to be unto death; for sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me!" Is not this just the position between Migdol and the Sea, where Pharaoh overtook Israel? Do you know this position? If you have but reached thus far, it will explain itself much better than my words can do? Indeed, if you have not reached it, it will be impossible to explain it. The questions, objections, reasonings, which fill this part of Romans, show the difficulty with which souls apprehend the true power of the law of God. Think of one seeking to obey the divine commandment, finding that the sin he is seeking to subdue, is slaying him by the law he is seeking to keep! That the law instead of being the strength of holiness is actually the strength of sin (1 Cor. 15:56).

Let me remark here that it is not now a question of justification or of wrath; that was all settled before. No; the point now is entirely how "we should bring forth fruit unto God;" a question of being "delivered from the law …. that we should serve God in newness of spirit, not in the oldness of the letter." This is what so many find hard to understand. That the law cannot justify is comparatively simple; but that it hinders fruit-bearing is hard to realize. As sure as Migdol was in the enemy's country, and that Israel must be out of it to escape attack, so must we be out of reach from the law to escape its condemning power. Under the law, self-occupation ends with the discovery of an impracticable body of sin and death, from which I, "wretched man," see no deliverance. I cannot improve this flesh in which sin dwells. I cannot bring about the spiritual state I long for, which would satisfy me. God gives me no help at achieving self-complacency. I desire the consciousness of holiness; but His law gives me the consciousness of sin! Whence then can deliverance come?

This important subject "The Passage of the Sea" could not be all included ii this No. It will be completed in the next, D. V.