EXODUS 19
It is obvious that this chapter begins a new section of the book. The first eighteen chapters show what God is for man; it is all instruction in grace; even the murmurings of the people only became occasions for fresh manifestations of grace; and all leads up to the final issue of grace in the glory of the kingdom. But the second half of the book, commencing at chapter 19, takes up, generally speaking, the side of what man is for God as the fruit of His grace. It brings out the conditions which are suitable to God on man’s part, the fulfilment of which is requisite if man is to keep God’s covenant. This forms the moral basis for the making by the people of a sanctuary for Jehovah that He might dwell among them.
Jehovah appeals to them in a touching way (verse 4) as to what He had done, and as to what He proposed to cause them to be for Him. He had destroyed their enemies; He had brought them out of the house of bondage; and had borne them on eagles’ wings and [p. 108] brought them to Himself. Believers think of having this blessing and that, but the great thing is that we are brought to God. “I have borne you on eagles’ wings” is a beautiful figure. The prophet says, “In his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bore them and carried them all the days of old” (Isaiah 63: 9). Jehovah speaks of it as “the day of my taking them by the hand” (Jeremiah 31: 32). What gentle and kindly interest is conveyed in this! What a touch of parental affection! Another scripture says, “When Israel was a child, then I loved him ... I it was that taught Ephraim to walk — he took them upon his arms” (Hosea 11: 1, 3). He carried them as an infant is carried, and then He held them up by His arms as they were learning to walk. On their side stumbling at every step — at Marah, in the wilderness of Sin, at Rephidim — but all the time sustained by the everlasting arms of Him who was patiently and graciously teaching them to take every step in dependence on Himself alone, and in confidence in Him. This is how God has dealt, and is dealing, with every one of us. He has set His love upon us, and His hands are under our arms to sustain us as He teaches us to take one step after another in confidence in Him. He would assure our hearts of His tender parental interest. Paul says beautifully, “He nursed them in the desert” (Acts 13: 18). What a tenderness there is about it!
But if God shows that He is everything for His people in grace and tender care, it is all necessarily in view of His people being for Him. Many believers do not get beyond the consideration of what there is in grace for man. This side must be known first; but if grace is known, and rightly affects the heart,
[p. 109] it produces a desire to be here for God. Keeping His covenant raises the question of what there is to be for God.
God is first of all a Saviour God and a Deliverer — One who has spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, and will with Him freely give us all things. God is for His people through redemption for time and eternity. When your soul is fully settled in that, you can take up the consideration of what it is to be for God as the fruit of His grace, and you will delight to take it up. If we were all in the good of the first eighteen chapters of this book we should be ready to move on to the other side. If the true grace of God as unfolded typically in the first part of Exodus is not known, any attempt to take up the second part can only result in legal bondage. But this could not possibly be God’s thought, for this book reveals Him as acting wondrously to set His people free from all bondage that they might serve Him in liberty. Typically what we get in chapter 19: 3 - 6 is a proposal to a redeemed and delivered people — a people not in the flesh but in the Spirit — a people brought to God. If the children of Israel had been in the good of what had been given to them typically, they would have been quite equal to the responsibility they accepted.
It is important that we should see the difference between these two parts of the book. It is a joy to know and prove what God is in grace for us, but it is also most blessed to take up under grace that place of intelligent and affectionate obedience in which alone we are for Him. It would be very sad to think that man was to have everything and God nothing. God blesses His people in the fullest possible way [p. 110] through redemption, and brings them to Himself as known in supreme grace so that it may become their delight to yield themselves to Him, that He may have a people keeping His covenant; that is, true to the bond which divine grace has proposed and established. Thus He secures a people for His pleasure.
It is important for us also to recognize the place of the law in the ways of God with men. The law came to a people in the flesh, and it exposed all the perverseness and contrariety of the flesh, and demonstrated that those who were in the flesh could not please God. It also gave man the knowledge of sin, and discovered to him, even when born again, his own carnality, his utter weakness and inability of himself to answer to any claim of God. The law was holy, just, good, and spiritual, and therefore it condemned man and brought him — when born again so as to be divinely exercised under it — to utter self-condemnation and death. It gave no power to obey, but it pronounced its solemn curse upon all disobedience.
The solemn declaration of God’s rights over men, and His claim of what was due to Him from men, could only be condemnation to a people who were really sinful and in the flesh. They took, as we all know, the ground of obedience in the flesh. They accepted the responsibility of keeping the law without really knowing what it was to be brought to God. God knew well the ground they were actually on, and He took His attitude towards them at Sinai in accord with it. Hence the cloud’s thick darkness, and bounds set round about the people, and a commandment that every living creature that touched the mount should be put to death. The thunderings and [p. 111] lightnings, and trumpet sound, and the mountain shaking, the people trembling, and the divine warning against perishing, were all suitable to the occasion. God’s holy claim upon His creature addressed to a sinful being who could not render it, must needs be accompanied with terror, for it brought to such a creature condemnation and death. It was a solemn testimony; it was God proving man, and bringing His fear before the people (20: 20).
We must not mix up the place of the law in the public ways of God with men with the typical bearing of the covenant as following upon redemption, and in view of the sanctuary and God’s dwelling among a redeemed people in the happiness of covenant relations. While fully recognizing the former, one would desire not to lose sight of the latter. Man being what he was, the law was a ministry of death and condemnation, but it had an end in view. It was God’s thought that His people should hearken to His voice and keep His covenant, “then shall ye be my own possession out of all the peoples — for all the earth is mine — and ye shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”. If this failed in regard of a people in the flesh it was in view of a day when it would be realized in regard of a people in the Spirit. God has not given up His thought to have a people for His own possession, and Peter shows how He secured it. 1 Peter 2: 9, 10.
The first requisite in a people for God’s own possession is obedience. “If ye will hearken to my voice indeed and keep my covenant”. We could not think of a disobedient people being for God — “a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation”. Peter speaks of the saints “as children of obedience”; they are [p. 112] begotten of that principle, and characterized by it. He speaks of “being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the living and abiding word of God” (1 Peter 1: 14, 23). Man after the flesh is born of corruptible seed, but there is another generation born of incorruptible seed, who desire earnestly the pure milk of the word, and who grow up to salvation by it. They become “a chosen race, a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a people for a possession”; just what Jehovah proposed in Exodus 19. God’s thought had an answer in the remnant to whom Peter wrote, and it has an answer in His saints today, and it will yet have an answer in Israel under the new covenant.
“And all the people answered together, and said, All that Jehovah has spoken will we do”. They pledged themselves in self-confidence, as assuming to be competent to answer to God’s requirements. It was like Peter saying, “Lord, with thee I am ready to go both to prison and to death”. No finer sentiment ever came from the lips of man, and Peter meant it, but the Lord said, “I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow today before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me”. He did not know himself, nor did the children of Israel at Sinai. If they had truly profited by the teaching of grace under which they had been they would have been utterly distrustful of themselves, and there would have been some indication that their confidence was in God alone. If this had been the case they would have found in God that which would have sustained them, and made them equal to carrying out His pleasure. Paul could say, “I have strength for all things in him that gives me power” (Philippians 4: 13). They did not avail themselves [p. 113] of what was in God for them, and hence they broke down. In referring to it long afterwards, Jehovah said, “Which my covenant they broke, although I was a husband unto them” (Jeremiah 31: 32). It is as much as to say, I would have been their strength and support if they had counted on Me.
If they had really had the consciousness of being brought to God as known in infinite grace, and had engaged their hearts to draw near unto Him (Jeremiah 30: 21, 22), it would have been all right. They would have been His people, and He would have been their God. He had acted towards them in love, and had manifested His grace, so as to win their affections; He had, typically, made every provision for them — the manna to sustain them in the path of His will, and the water from the Rock to keep them inwardly refreshed and invigorated in their affections. The water was typically the Spirit of Christ — the Spirit of Him who said, “To do thy good pleasure, my God, is my delight, and thy law is within my heart” (Psalm 40: 8). And who said again, “Oh how I love thy law ... . Therefore I love thy commandments above gold, yea above fine gold” (Psalm 119: 97, 127).
When the children of Israel get the reality of what the manna and the water from the Rock typified — that is, the grace of Christ and the supply of His Spirit — their affections will be quickened God-ward, and they will have power to do His will. In the meantime it is true of every saint that he is under grace, and under the sway of grace he delights in the law of God after the inward man, and he has the Spirit as power. Every true Christian has the Spirit of Christ. God has given His people a Spirit that delights in His will, so that it is no yoke of bondage to them. His [p. 114] commandments are not grievous, for He never asks them to do anything that is not a delight to the inward man. And believers are appealed to by the compassion of God to present their bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is their intelligent service (Romans 12: 1).
Romans 7 experience is to teach us the incorrigible evil of the flesh, and our own utter weakness. The flesh will never be other than what it is; it will never come into subjection, nor have any element of good in it.
God took an attitude in this chapter that was proper and necessary seeing the conditions that were present. The people had to learn, and we have to learn, that what God looks for in man can never be answered to in the flesh. Man after the flesh can only have his place in the distance of condemnation and death. But even while God took this terror-striking attitude He had other and precious thoughts in His heart — thoughts of infinite grace — and He brought them forward, we might say, at the earliest possible moment. Nor did He fail to indicate in type the ground on which all could be carried out, as we shall see in the next chapter. His thought was to be near to His people and to bless them, so that they might love Him, and devote themselves in free affection to His service. We see this result reached typically when they brought their offerings and made the tabernacle. His thought was to dwell in their midst, but this necessitated holy conditions. None of His saints would have it otherwise.
The commandments lay down the moral conditions on which God can be with His people, and from this point of view they are most important.