Exodus 23:20 Behold, I send an Angel before you, to keep you in the way, and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Laws without angels would turn life into weary drudgery. Life has never been left without some touch of the Divine presence and love. From the very first this has been characteristic of our history. The solemn — the grand, fact is, that in our life there is an angel, a spirit, a presence; a ministry without definite name and altogether without measurableness! a gracious ministry, a most tender and comforting service, always operating upon our life's necessity and our heart's pain. Let us rest in that conviction for a moment or two until we see how we can establish it by references to facts, experiences, consciousness against which there can be no witness. See how our life is redeemed from baseness by the assumption that an angel is leading it. Who can believe that an angel has been appointed to conduct a life which must end in the grave? The anticlimax is shocking; the suggestion is charged with the very spirit of profanity. If an angel is leading, us, is he leading us to the grave? What is it within us that detests the grave, that turns away from it with aversion, that will not be sent into so low and mean a prison? It is "the Divinity that stirs within us." Then again, who could ask an angel to be a guest in a heart given up to evil thoughts and purposes? Given the consciousness that an angel is leading us, and instantly a series of preparations must be set up corresponding with the quality and title of the leading angel of our pilgrimage. We prepare for some guests. According to the quality of the guest is the range and costliness of our preparation. Whom our love expects our love provides for. When we are longing for the coming one, saying, "The presence will make the house the sweeter and the brighter, and the speech will fill our life with new poetry and new hope. Oh, why tarry the chariot wheels?" then we make adequate — that is to say, proportionate — preparation. The touch of love is dainty, the invention of love is fertile, the expenditure of love is without a grudge or a murmur, — another touch must be given to the most delicate arrangement; some addition must be made to the most plentiful accommodation; love must run over the programme just once more to see that every line is worthily written. Then the front door must be opened widely, and the arms and the heart, and the whole being to receive the guest of love. And that is so in the higher regions. If an angel is going to lead me, the angel must have a chamber in my heart prepared worthy of myself. Chamber! — nay, the whole heart must be the guest-room; he must occupy every corner of it, and I must array it with robes of purity and brightness that he may feel himself at home, even though he may have come from heaven to do some service for my poor life. Any appeal that so works upon every kind of faculty, upon imagination, conscience, will, force, must be an appeal that will do the life good. It calls us to perfectness, to preparedness, to a nobility corresponding in some degree with the nobility of the guest whom we entertain. The Divine presence in life, by whatever name we may distinguish it, is pledged to two effects, supposing our spirit and our conduct to be right. God undertakes our cause as against our enemies. Would we could leave our enemies in His hands! I do not now speak altogether of merely human enemies — because where there is enmity between man and man, though it never can be justified, yet it admits of such modification in the system of words as to throw responsibility upon both sides — but I speak of other enemies, — the enmity expressed by evil desire, by the pressure of temptation, by all the array against the soul's health and weal of the principalities of the power of the air, the princes of darkness, the spirits of evil. Send the angel to fight the angel; let the angel of light fight the angel of darkness. The second effect to which the Divine presence in our life is pledged is that we shall be blessed with the contentment which is riches. Thus we have mysteries amongst us which the common or carnal mind cannot understand. Men asking God's blessing upon what appears to be unblest poverty — men saying it is enough when we can discover next to nothing in the hand uplifted in recognition of Divine goodness. Thus we hear voices coming from the bed of affliction that have in them the subdued tones of absolute triumph; thus the sick-chamber is turned into the church of the house, and if we would recover from dejection, and repining, and sorrow, we must go to the bedside of affliction and learn there how wondrous is the ministry of God's angel, how perfecting and ennobling the influence of God's grace. (J. Parker, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. |
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