Jottings

by Miller, J. | Category: Jottings | Jul 1957

The night of the passover for Israel was "a night to be much observed (a night of watching, H.V.M.) unto the Loan for bringing them out of the land of Egypt" (Exodus 12. 42). As the years came and went they were ever to remember what the LORD their God had done for them, in breaking Israel's bonds:

God said

"I removed his shoulder from the burden:

His hands were freed from the basket.

Thou callest in trouble, and I delivered thee

I answered thee in the secret place of thunder"

(Psalm 81.6, 7).

He turned their groan into song; not only did they sing by the Red Sea, but when we reach the days of David, Asaph and others, by that time the song of

Deliverance has reached crescendo. So Asaph in this 81st Psalm wrote "Sing aloud unto God our strength:

Make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob.

Take up the psalm and bring hither the timbrel,

The pleasant harp with the psaltery.

Blow the trumpet in the new moon,

At the full moon on our solemn feast day.

For it is a statute for Israel,

An ordinance of the God of Jacob.

He appointed it in Joseph for a testimony,

When He went out over the land of Egypt" (1-5).

It was no chance fixture that the tabernacle was erected in Shiloh. God had appointed that divine service should be rendered to Him in Joseph, in Shiloh, in the hill country of Ephraim, ere ever Israel had been delivered from Pharaoh's power and hand. Here was the feast of the passover to be kept, "At the full moon, on our solemn feast day." Here the freed nation was ever to shout aloud in joyful noise to the God of Jacob, the tempest-tossed pilgrim and servant of God, whose seed were much like himself. On the fourteenth day of Abib God broke the yoke of Israel's bondage in death, the death of the paschal lamb in their case, and the death of the prince imperial and of all the firstborn of the kings' subjects. On the passover day Israel was ready to march out as soon as the sun was going down. Thus Israel left Egypt at nightfall on the fifteenth day of Abib.

"These are the journeys according to their goings out. And they journeyed from Hameses in the first month; ... on the morrow after the passover the children of Israel went out with a high hand in the sight of the Egyptians, while the Egyptians were burying all their firstborn, which the Lord had smitten among them: upon their gods also the Loan executed judgements" (Numbers 33.2.4). How terse yet how graphic is the description given here! How marvellous must have been the organisation to collect so vast a number of human beings, men, women and children, with their cattle and goods, and set them in orderly array! Such a sight had never been seen. The Egyptians watched their freed slaves go in the clear light of the full moon, at night (Deuteronomy 16.1), but they could do nothing, they were too preoccupied, on into the night, with their dead ones to stop the exodus of Israel; indeed the Egptians were urgent that Israel should go, for they said, "We be all dead men " (Exodus 12.88).

"How well God does His work when men are obedient under a faithful leader, such as Moses was! How well God has wrought redemption for us through the faithfulness and perfect obedience of His Son!

The day of the passion, in Luke 22.7, was vastly different from that of Exodus 12. In the latter, we see Israel united under the leadership of Moses, sbeltered from divine judgement by the blood of the lamb, and ready with shoes on their feet and staff in their hand for their pilgrimage to the promised land. In the former, Israel have chosen another leader, even the Devil himself, and rejected the Divine Deliverer, the blessed Lord, and are surely being drawn into the net to a worse bondage by far than Pharaoh's of old. In the process of the Lord's rejection, Satan had entered into Judas Iscariot, (a fearsome consideration), who was one of the twelve, and he went away and communed with the chief priests and captains, how he might deliver Him unto them (Luke 22.8,4). Soon after he joined the twelve again, perhaps gratified that he had made some money, for, alas, his great sin of the betrayal was rooted in the sin of covetousness. He would enrich himself howsoever the money came. Perhaps, too, he thought, and vainly thought, as many others have done; as the psalmist said,

"He said in his heart, God hath forgotten

He hideth His face ; He wilt never see it

(Psalm 10.11 ; see also Psalm 94.8-9).

The Lord saw every movement of the heart and feet of Judas before be was born. He knew well of this Satanic alliance, and of the price that would be paid for the dastardly act of betrayal (Zechariah 11. 12 Matthew 26. 15 Exodus 21. 32).

When Judas Iscariot joined the others he made his way with them to the upper room under the guidance of the Lord; two of the others had gone on before to prepare the passover for the rest. Their guide was a man carrying a pitcher of water, a sight unique in the city. Judas continued with them throughout the passover and the washing of the feet. He ate well, and dipped often in the Lord's dish; he had his feet washed with the rest, though he was wholly unclean. All the Lord's kindnesses he stamped beneath his feet. Lastly the Lord, deeply troubled in the spirit, for well He knew a man who had companied with Him for these years was passing to his doom, gave him the sop. For the second time Satan entered into him (John 13. 27). He went out straightway, "and it was night." It was the time of the full moon, but he did not go out with a high hand, as Israel from Egypt, he went out a captive bound by Satan with his own sins. Quickly, in obedience to the Lord, he hurries along through streets and lanes, seeking the shadows, perchance, of the moonlit city. What a journey and what an errand! He secures the money he coveted and the armed band, and goes forth to seek Him who loved Him more than tongue can tell, even as He loves all. To Gethsemane he goes - the leader of that throng of evil-doers, to the garden, hallowed for ever by the Redeemer's prayer and bloodlike sweat, the scene of sorrow even unto death. But this is the day of the passion, the beginning of the greater exodus.

And we have known redemption, Lord,

From bondage worse than theirs by far:

Sin held us by a stronger cord,

Yet by Thy mercy free we are."

That day saw the betrayer and the Betrayed separated by the great gulf fixed (Luke 16. 23-26), between Paradise where the Lord was (Luke 23. 43), and the place of fiery torment, where we would have had to go too, but for

wondrous grace!

Miller, J. | Jul 1957
Jottings