THE VANGUARD AND REREWARD OF THE CHURCH
Isaiah 52:12. For ye shall not go out with haste, &c.
God’s salvation is a great salvation, because of its Divine origin, and because of the original dignity of man. It is not a rescue simply, but a deliverance; not an escape, but a victory; sin is not eluded, but destroyed. This has been the grand characteristic of all God’s deliverances.
I. THE ESSENTIALLY SYMBOLIC CHARACTER OF THE CAPTIVITIES AND DELIVERANCES OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE.
The history of Israel is the Divine key to the history of man. The Egyptian bondage has the broadest meaning. Of Christ, of you, of each one, the words are true: “Out of Egypt have I called my son.” There were two great captivities of Israel; they were born in one; the other they earned by sin. These represent our natural bondage, and the self-earned serfdom of the soul. Therefore also two deliverances. There is one Deliverer, and one deliverance from both captivities. In each case the method of His deliverance was the same,—a glorious manifestation of the might of the redeeming arm of God. At first sight, there is a contrast as well as a likeness. One might feel inclined to say that the Exodus was a flight. This contrast was, no doubt, before Isaiah’s mind (Deuteronomy 16:3; Exodus 12:31-39). From Babylon they went forth in orderly array, with the king’s good-will, and by his royal command (Ezra 1) But under the surface the grand features are identical; in neither case did they steal away; they obeyed Jehovah’s will; the angel of His presence guided them, and His judgments were on all who sought to resist their departure. Here it was that Isaiah saw and asserted the likeness, “Jehovah shall go before you,” &c. (Exodus 13:21-22; Exodus 14:19-20).
II. THE GREAT DELIVERANCE WHICH IS FREELY OFFERED IN THE GOSPEL.
1. The reason of our protracted discipline. God will not have us “go out with haste, nor go forth by flight.” Many Christians can look back to some period, and say, “Would God that I had then been taken home!” Others in the hour of trial say, “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.” Not by the short, straight way, but by the long, weary, desert path, God led His pilgrims; a band of trained veterans, they entered at length into Canaan. It is this experience which, at sore cost of pain, God is laying up within us; this patient waiting is a store of power and wisdom, the worth of which will only be manifested as we press the borders of Canaan.
2. “The Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rereward.” The Lord has gone before us; it is this which makes our progress a triumph; it is in Him we find the way to the conqueror’s rest.
(1.) He has gone before us in bearing to the uttermost the penalty of sin.
(2.) He has gone before us in breaking the power of evil (John 14:27; John 16:33). You have but to strive with a beaten foeman.
(3.) He has gone before us in the way of the wilderness, through life’s protracted discipline, to glory (Hebrews 5:7-9). Sorrow is transfigured by the resurrection and glorification of Christ; and He has gone “to prepare a place for you.”
“And the God of Israel shall be your rereward;” He shall gather up the stragglers of the host (Isaiah 40:10-11); the weak ones shall not be downtrodden, nor the halting left hopelessly in the rear (chaps. Isaiah 41:10; Isaiah 43:1-7). The cause is God’s, the power His, and His shall be the glory of the everlasting victory.—J. Baldwin Brown, B.A.: Sermons, pp. 419–427.
The Church of Christ is continually represented under the figure of an army; yet its Captain is the Prince of Peace; its object is the establishment of peace, and its soldiers are men of a peaceful disposition. The spirit of war is at the extremely opposite point to the spirit of the Gospel. Nevertheless, the Church on earth has, and until the second advent must be, the Church militant, the Church armed, warring, conquering. It is in the very order of things that so it must be. Truth could not be truth in this world if it were not a warring thing, and we should at once suspect that it were not true if error were friends with it. It is but a rule of nature that holiness must be at enmity with sin. And every child of God proveth by experience that this is the land of war. Now, how comforting is this text to the believer who recognises himself as a soldier, and the whole Church as an army!
I. The whole Church of God may trust in this great twofold promise.
1. Jehovah will go before you. Has He not gone before His Church in act and deed? Perilous has been the journey of the Church from the day when first it left Paradise even until now. I see the Church going out from Ur of the Chaldees; afterwards going down to the land of the cruel Pharaohs. But now the Church has to come up out of Egypt, and God goes before her still. But why need I go through all the pages of the history of the Church of God in the days of the old dispensation? Hath it not been true from the days of John the Baptist until now? If you read the history of the Church, you will be compelled to confess that whenever she went forward she could discern the footsteps of Jehovah leading the way.
2. “The God of Israel will be your rereward.” The original Hebrew is, “God of Israel shall gather you up.” Armies in the time of war diminish by reason of stragglers, some of whom desert, and others of whom are overcome by fatigue; but the army of God is gathered up; none desert from it if they be real soldiers of the cross, and none drop down upon the road. The Church of Christ has been frequently attacked in the rear. It often happens that the enemy, tired of opposing the onward march by open persecution, attempt to malign the Church concerning something that has either been taught, or revealed, or done in past ages. Now the God of Israel is our rereward. I am never at trouble about the attacks of infidels or heretics, however vigorously they may assault the doctrines of the Gospel. If they must attack the rear, let them fight with Jehovah Himself. Perhaps the later trials of the Church may represent the rereward. It always has been so with the Church—a time of prosperity and then a period of persecution. Can you now conceive the last great day when Jehovah the rereward will gather up His people?
II. The individual believer should lay hold upon this great twofold promise. We are now come to the last Sabbath of the year. Two troubles present themselves, the future and the past. We shall soon launch into another year, and hitherto we have found our years years of trouble, &c. Perhaps we are trembling to go forward. Foreseeing trouble, we know not how we shall be able to endure to the end, &c. Let this sweet morsel now cheer you. The Lord Jehovah will go before you. He has gone before you already. Your future path has all been marked out,—
1. In the great decrees of His predestination. Remember, you are not a child of chance. If you were, you might indeed fear.
2. In the actual preparations of His providence. God always makes a providence beforehand, ready for His people when they get to the place. We do not know how the future lies in the bowels of the past, and how what is to be is the child of that which is. As all men spring from their progenitors, so the providence of to-day springs from the providence of a hundred years past. The events of next year have been forestalled by God in what He has done this year and years before. I am certain of this, that on the road I am to travel during the next year, everything is ready for me. You are not going through a land that God has not prepared for you.
3. In the experience of Christ. As to our future troubles for next year, and the remnant of our days, Jesus Christ has borne them all before. He has conquered every foe.
Now I hear one say, “The future seldom troubles me; it is the past—what I have done and what I have not done; how I have sinned, and how I have not served my Master as I ought, &c. Oh! it is the rereward that is most unsafe. I dread most the sins of the past.” “The God of Israel shall be your rereward.” Notice the different titles. The first is “The Lord,” or properly, JEHOVAH—JEHOVAH will go before you. That is the I AM, full of omniscience and omnipotence. The second title is “the God of Israel,” that is to say, the God of the Covenant. We want the God of the Covenant behind, because it is not in the capacity of the I AM, the Omnipotent, that we require Him to pardon sin, to accept our person, to blot out the past, and to remove iniquity by the blood of Christ. Now let me always think that I have God behind me as well as before me, let not the memories of the past, though they cause me grief, cause me despair.
CONCLUSION.—Are there any here to-day whose hearts God hath touched, who desire to join this great army? The past shall all be blotted out; God shall be thy rereward. And as for the future, thou chief of sinners, if now thou enlistest into the army of Christ by faith, thou shalt find the future shall be strewn with the gold of God’s grace, and the silver of His temporal mercies; thou shalt have enough and to spare from this day forth even to the end, and at the last thou shalt be gathered in by the great arms of God, that constitute the rear-guard of His heavenly army.—C. H. Spurgeon: The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 230.