EXODUS 11 AND 12
Everything came to a head in connection with the last — the tenth — plague. Egypt was made to realize that it was under the judgment of God. He “smote Egypt in their firstborn” (Psalm 136: 10). The firstborn was the chief of their strength, “the firstfruits of their vigour” (Psalm 78: 51). The firstborn represents all that man can glory in, all that his hopes and desires centre in, his strength and his pride. The whole strength and life of the world is under the judgment of God.
I have no doubt that all the strength and pride of man will be concentrated in the beast and the antichrist, and all the hopes of man as completely apostate will centre in them. And in the closing scene of the history of this present world — immediately before the glorious deliverance of Israel and their introduction to long-promised blessing — God’s judgment will fall in its terrible power on the strength and pride of man as found in its full vigour there. (See Revelation 19: 19 - 21.)
But, before that final and public issue of things, we may learn from the death of the firstborn in every house that everything on which man prides himself, and on which his hopes are set, is under the judgment of God. If the chiefest and best that man has is under divine judgment, how hopeless and irretrievable is his ruin! But the manifestation of this becomes the occasion for those who fear God to learn His righteousness in the way of grace in a wondrous manner.
The Passover is such an important institution that one would wish to realize its full significance, and the bearing of all that is connected with it. It presents [p. 46] Christ and His death as the sacrificial ground on which alone God could give effect to His promise and covenant, and bring out His people to serve Him in liberty. The whole assembly of the children of Israel must learn the righteousness of God as in their favour through redemption. For it could not be said that Israel were morally better than the Egyptians, or that naturally they could stand in the presence of righteous judgment any more than the Egyptians. We have to learn that there is but one ground on which God can have a people delivered from Egypt to serve Him, and to inherit the land of His purpose. And that ground is CHRIST as having borne the judgment of God and died, so that His blood meets the eye of God with perfect satisfaction as to every claim of His holy throne with regard to that state of sin in which they were found by nature.
If God is to have a people for Himself He must have them in a way that recognizes the truth of the condition in which they were through sin; a way, too, which meets and deals with that condition so that He is justified in all His attributes, while bringing in grace and blessing which glorifies Him as a Redeemer and Saviour God. We have been connected with the world that is under judgment; we were part of it as to our natural state. We have to learn how grace could reach us, and how divine righteousness could be in our favour, and how God could take us as a redeemed people to learn all that He is for us in grace. It is all on the footing of Christ and His death. And Christ is available for every man now; every man may be an Israelite if he will. Provision is made in this chapter for the sojourner to hold the passover with God’s people if he is minded to do so. But he [p. 47] must come with truth in the inward parts; he must accept circumcision — that is, in figure, the cutting off of all confidence in the flesh — so that in the confessed truth of his condition as a lost sinner he avails himself of God’s righteousness in grace to men.
In the book of Exodus we get two distinct years: the first begins with the Passover, the second with the setting up of the Tabernacle. The first year we learn what God is in grace for us, and all His glory and blessedness as Redeemer and Saviour God. The second year we learn what it is to be for God as identified with the Tabernacle of testimony.
It is noticeable that in Exodus 12: 3, 6, we find mention made for the first time of “all the assembly of Israel” and “the whole congregation of the assembly of Israel”. It is suggestive of a people taken out of the world to be God’s assembly. The simplest presentation of the truth of the assembly in the New Testament is that God “visited to take out of the nations a people for his name” (Acts 15: 14). And we learn, too, that “the assembly of Israel” was composed of households, and it is in that way that God’s assembly is formed.
The thought of God is that His deliverance should be known in households, and not simply by individuals. This is an important element in the mind and ways of God, and it reveals the thoughts of His heart. It is blessed to think of tens of thousands of households today where Christ is known as the Passover Lamb! It is, of course, true that Christ is available for each individual, and that each individual even in a christian household must have faith in Christ in order to be secured from the judgment of God. But the type speaks clearly of household blessing — “a lamb for a house” — and it is well for us to look at it just as it stands. God gave the type a household character, and we shall not gain anything by taking it out of its setting. If we individualize it too much we may miss the blessed thought of God that there should be a vast number of households where Christ is known and fed upon, and His blood shelters from judgment. It is the principle of “thou shalt be saved, and thy house”. And the many references to the household both in the Old Testament and the New, and all the household instruction, show what an important place it has in the mind of God.
“All the children of Israel had light in their dwellings”. How blessed to think of the many households that are now illuminated by the light of Christ, and where there is, at least in measure, deliverance from the evil principles which obtain in the world! The exercises connected with the Passover and the feast of unleavened bread were to have household character. The whole congregation of the assembly of Israel was to kill the lamb; the whole assembly stood in the value of it. But it had to be taken up in each separate household.
The firstborn is the best that the household contains; it speaks of all that would naturally be the pride and boast and strength of the house. All that is under judgment with God; the sentence has gone forth, and all — old and young — have to bow to it. In the christian household there is no building up of confidence in the best that nature affords; it is owned as being under death. But in each house the Lamb is introduced. The obedience of faith brings in Christ, and He becomes the subject of contemplation. The lamb was to be kept from the tenth day of the month [p. 49] until the fourteenth that each one might, as it were, become well acquainted with its unblemished perfection and spotlessness. This is necessary in order to get a true sense of Christ’s judgment bearing; His moral perfection and suitability to bear the judgment, and to go into death, must be well considered by each soul. It comes out in much detail in the Gospels. The four days would set forth the Lord’s pathway here before death. God would have Him to be considered in all His perfections by those who have a deep and affectionate interest in Him. For we think of Him as the One sacrificed as our Passover.
God would have thousands of households, the world over, where Christ is maintained before the eyes of all in His moral suitability to be sacrificed, and where His death is seen with deep thankfulness to be the only possible ground of deliverance from judgment, and where that judgment is known on all the hopes and pride of man. The children are all to be instructed in this, and to have their part in it. (see verse 26.) God would set the light of it in every christian household.
Then the blood is put on the door-posts and lintel, and when God sees it He passes over. Where that blood is He will not suffer the destroyer to enter. There cannot be a question on God’s part, for it is His own provision — the blood of His own Lamb, of His spotless Christ. There could never be a shadow of doubt as to the efficacy of that blood. It is the sure token that according to nature I was under judgment, but that the grace of God reached me there through the death of Christ, and that now divine righteousness is in my favour. I submit to the righteousness of God when I see how He has [p. 50] maintained what is due to Himself in relation to sin, but that He has done it in such a way as to secure all who believe from judgment and for blessing.
Then those sheltered must be in accord with what shelters them. So there is not only the blood for the eye of God, and as a token to faith, but the lamb roast with fire for those within the house. There are solemn exercises within. No questions as to security; the blood has settled that. But the judgment is near, and it is felt to be righteously due. Thank God, it has been exhausted by the One who came under it in grace, and He becomes the food of the sheltered household. The affections of all are nourished upon the One who in suffering love bore the judgment. How deeply must each heart be affected that truly eats the Passover! And the type speaks not only of individuals being thus nourished, but of households. As their hearts take in the thought of the love in which He bore the judgment due to them, they are brought into accord with that holy judgment. We get a deep sense through the death of Christ of how everything connected with the world and its life is under judgment with God. But the Passover is the holy ground on which all God’s thoughts of grace towards men, and His purposes of blessing and glory in relation to His people can be carried out.
The bitter herbs speak of self-judgment wrought through grace while feeding on the love that bore the judgment. And unleavened bread has its place. If the best of nature — the firstborn — is under judgment, everything that is of man after the flesh is seen to be displeasing to God. The fact that that man has gone in judgment in the death of Christ, and that [p. 51] divine love has reached us that way, becomes food for us. We cannot as thus nourished go on with the allowance of that which came under judgment in the death of Christ. A new kind of Man must come in, in whom no corrupting or inflating influence has any place. The true character of saints is to be unleavened — to be apart from the corruption and inflation of the flesh, and to be in accord with Christ — nothing allowed that was judged at the cross. The leaven must be practically excluded in the power of those affections which have been nourished by feeding on the Lamb. Holy conditions are thus secured and maintained in christian households.
“Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread: on the very first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses; for whoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day — that soul shall be cut off from Israel ... seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses ... in all your dwellings shall ye eat unleavened bread” (12: 15 - 20). The feast of unleavened bread immediately followed the Passover — indeed the two are identified in the New Testament; “the feast of unleavened bread, which is called the passover” (Luke 22: 1) and it typifies the whole period of our life here as saints. “Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, according as ye are unleavened. For also our passover, Christ, has been sacrificed; so that let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with leaven of malice and wickedness, but with unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians 5: 7, 8).
“Old leaven” is what remains over from one’s former history — the kind of fleshly working which belonged to our unconverted days. The “leaven of malice and wickedness” is the flesh in evil thoughts of others, or in the desire to bring evil on them. This kind of leaven often clothes itself in a religious form. (See Matthew 22: 18; Luke 11: 39.)
The “unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” is only really to be found with those who have eaten the Passover. No doubt we have all felt what an exercise it is, and not by any means easy, to be really sincere and truthful. If believers were truly exercised as to being all that they would wish to appear to be it would lead to wonderful results. We are in danger of keeping up appearances like the world without being genuinely what we appear to be, but there is no keeping the feast of unleavened bread in this. How different is it when Christ really comes before the heart, and one has been inwardly nourished upon the love in which He bore the judgment! Then we get true conditions of fellowship, and can be in vital contact with one another. Keeping the feast goes very much to the root of things, and would set aside all that is a hindrance to fellowship and to spiritual progress. Its importance is very great.
Feeding on the lamb roast with fire is in view of leaving Egypt altogether. “And thus shall ye eat it: your loins shall be girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste; it is Jehovah’s passover” (verse 11). The household is typically brought into moral suitability to God, and prepared to leave the world. If the passover is rightly eaten the affections are nourished, and conditions are brought about which are suited to God.
Christian households should be marked by separation [p. 53] from the world, not by trying to get as near to it as possible. The world would be well pleased for Christians to accredit it by following its fashions and ways, but our whole attitude should be that of a people who are going out from it in the power of God’s salvation. If we could have looked into the house of any Israelite on that memorable night we should have seen them all in marching order; it was obvious they were going out of Egypt. If such was the type, we have to see to it that corresponding features are found with us.
“And ye shall let none of it remain until the morning; and what remaineth of it until the morning ye shall burn with fire” (verse 10). The eating of the lamb was not to be separated from its being sacrificed. To eat it the next day would be to dissociate it from the import of its death and of its being roast with fire. There is to be no weakening in the soul of the sense of what His death and judgment bearing really were. No doubt at Corinth they spoke of the Lord’s death, but they had lost all true sense of what it meant. Even the supper had become their own and not the Lord’s. They had kept things over, as it were, to another day, and weakened their holy associations and import. What they were doing was no longer livingly connected with Christ and His sacrifice, nor was it being taken up in the consciousness of being morally near to that precious sacrifice. Things had lost their holy character, and when they do so they cannot be an occasion of communion; they rather become the subject of judgment.
If the passover and the feast of unleavened bread were kept in the households of the saints there would be nothing to hinder fellowship, and the saints would [p. 54] be in suited conditions to come together happily in assembly, and to take up assembly exercises and privileges. If things are not in suitability to God in the households of the saints, they will not be right in the assembly. The moral foundation of things is in the household. We see this principle in 1 Timothy 3:4,5; 1 Timothy 3:12. I think, for example, that if a man did not pray with his wife and children he would hardly be qualified to pray with his brethren.
How attractive is all this in its moral beauty and perfection! God illuminating the households of His people, and giving them Christ as their Passover! Causing them to feed on Him in the love that bore divine judgment for them, and in the appreciation and appropriation of Christ forming their thoughts and affections in an entirely new character, so that they may be inwardly freed from the working of fleshly leaven, and found practically in the life of Christ! The contemplation of it is delightful to every heart that God has touched. And this is how God works in grace in view of the deliverance of His saints and their households from the world that is under His judgment.
Let us cherish the divine thought that there should be, not only saved individuals, but households, marked by the knowledge of Christ, and of the meaning and value of His death, and by feeding on Him. So that in result they are freed, through holy and affectionate exercises, of all that is leaven in God’s sight. To have this household character of blessing before us is most important in a day when the world is laying itself out more than ever to capture and detain the children of God’s people. Pharaoh said, “Let Jehovah be so with you, as I let you go, and your little ones ... . Not so; go now, ye that are men, and serve Jehovah”
([p. 55] 10: 10, 11). But Jochebed, as a typical “mother in Israel”, saw her son “fair”. If only one of the parents is a believer the children are “holy”, and if so they are too fair in the estimation of faith for the best place that the world could give them. They are to be preserved for God in the light of Christ, and in separation from the world. And their interest in divine things is to be fostered and encouraged, and their questions answered (12: 26). I heard a brother say that nothing he heard in the meetings pulled him up like the questions of his little boy!
God does not fail faith. It is for believing parents to lay hold of the divine thought as to household blessing, and to count upon God to work in the dear children so that they may in early years appreciate and value for themselves the light and blessing of the privileged spot in which they are found. I believe God gives even young children a deep sense of the mercy that has put them in christian households. I know it was so with myself at a very early age. And we have previously noted how at forty years of age Moses came out very distinctly as the product of divine grace and of his parents’ faith.