Numbers 15:41 I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the LORD your God. I. GOD RECALLED A GREAT DEED. I brought you out of the land of Egypt."' 1. It was deliverance from a bitter bondage. The Israelites had been making light of it of late, but in Egypt it was grievous indeed (Exodus 1:13, 14; Exodus 2:23; Exodus 3:7; Exodus 6:9). So God, by the work of his incarnate Son, delivered the world from a bitter bondage. "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the whole world." The act of Divine power by which Jesus rose from the grave did not sweep away all difficulties and make life henceforth a path of roses. But it is a great deal to stand on this side, historically, of the sepulcher from which the stone was rolled away. The generations before the resurrection of Jesus were, as we may say, in Egypt, waiting deliverance. The world since that event stands, as it were, delivered. He who brought life and immortality to light destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and delivered them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage (Hebrews 2:14, 15). 2. It was a deliverance worked out entirely by God. "I brought you out, &c." There was no struggle against Pharaoh on the part of the people. We do not see the prisoner within conspiring with the deliverer outside. The bondage was so bitter, the subjection so complete, that the people were not moved to conspiracy and insurrection. We read constantly in history of servile and subject races winning their way to freedom through the bloody struggles of many generations, but these Israelites before Pharaoh were like oxen broken to the plough. They groaned, but they submitted. And in this Egyptian sort of bondage the world was fast before Christ came to deliver. Men groaned under the burdens of life; they were filled with the fruits of sin; they yielded at last to tile grasp of death. All was accepted as a mysterious necessity; men did not protest and struggle against calamity and death. The deliverance is from Jesus, and in it we have no hand. "When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly" (Romans 5:6). A delivered world was even incredulous as to its deliverance. It could not believe that as by one man came sin and death, so by one also had come conquest over sin, death, and the devil. Thomas, the very disciple, doubts, and before long Paul has to write 1 Corinthians 15. Jesus may say to the world for which he died and rose again, "I brought you out of spiritual Egypt." 3. While the deliverance was being worked out, the Israelites were scarcely conscious of what was being done. They saw the plagues, but only as wonders, stupendous physical calamities. They felt the grasp of Pharaoh alternately tightening and relaxing, but little did they comprehend of that great, significant struggle going on between Jehovah and Pharaoh. They waited, as the prize of victory waits on the athletes while they contend; it knows nothing of the energy and endurance it has evoked. And so it was and is in Christ's redeeming work. It is wonderful to notice how unconscious the world was of that great work which was transacted between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, between the cradle of Jesus and his opened grave. The world looked upon him, and to a large extent it still looks, in any light but the right one. Let us know him first then, and fully in all that the work means, as Deliverer from spiritual Egypt. II. THE PURPOSE OF THIS GREAT DEED. "I brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God." It is one thing for Israel to be brought out of Egypt; quite another for it to understand why it has been brought out. And so we find the people complaining of the wilderness quite as much as they had done of Egypt. Their expectations pointed in a direction opposite to God's purpose, and never could the wilderness become a better place than Egypt until they did appreciate God's purpose and make it their own. God did not bring them out as one might bring a man out of prison, and then say, "Go where you like." They were brought out of a bitter bondage to enter upon a reasonable service, otherwise the wilderness would prove only an exchange of suffering, not a release from it. In like manner we need to ask how the world may be made better by the redeeming work of Christ. The difference between the state of the world before the death of Christ and since does not look as great from certain points of view as one might expect. A countless host of those for whom he died and rose again nevertheless goes about in a bewilderment and unbelief equal to that of the Israelites in the wilderness. Christ died for us and rose again, that we, rising with him, might live not to ourselves, but to him (Romans 6:4, 10-13, indeed the whole chapter; 12:1; 14:7-9; 1 Corinthians 3:22, 23; 1 Corinthians 10:31; 2 Corinthians 5:15-18; 2 Corinthians 10:5; Ephesians 2:10; Philippians 1:20, 21; Colossians 3:1-3). Deliverance from Egypt is not equivalent to entrance into the promised land. The wilderness is a critical place for us, and all depends on what heed we take to this purpose of God. We must receive the gospel in its integrity. If the full purpose of God becomes our full purpose, then all will be right. Christ died for us, not that we might just escape the penalty and power of sin, as something painful to ourselves, and know the luxury of a washed conscience; not that we might just pass into a perfect blessedness beyond the tomb; but that, becoming pure and blessed, we might engage in the service of God and set forth his glory. We must be pleased with what pleases him. The work of Christ brings us that highest of all joy, to serve God with a perfect heart and a willing mind. - Y. Parallel Verses KJV: I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the LORD your God. |
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