All the hosts of the Lord went out.
The Exodus
I. We cannot treat the Exodus as an isolated fact in history. Egypt is the type of the cunning, careless, wanton world, out of which in all ages God is calling His sons. The Exodus remained a living fact in history. The infant Jesus went down into Egypt, as the infant Israel went down, not to repeat the Exodus, but to illume afresh its fading lines.
1. The Children of Israel were an elect race, because they were of the seed of Abraham: that constituted their distinctity. You are of the race of the second Adam, of the same flesh and blood as Jesus; and all who wear a human form and understand a human voice, God calls forth from Egypt; His voice calls to His sons, “Come forth to freedom, life, and heaven.”
2. You, like the Israelites, are called forth to the desert, the fiery pillar, the manna, the spiritual rock; and while you aim at Canaan, His will, His heart, are on your side.
II. Note the moral features of the Exodus.
1. There was a life in Egypt which had become insupportable to a man. That bondage is the picture of a soul round which the devil’s toils are closing.
2. The Israelites saw the stroke of heaven fall oil all that adorns, enriches, and nourishes a worldly life.
3. They had a Divine leader, a man commissioned and inspired by God. We have the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus, who, in the house and the work in which Moses wrought as a servant, represents God as the Son.
4. We discern a condition of utter dependence on the strength and faithfulness of God. They and we were delivered by a Divine work.
5. Notice, lastly, the freedom of the delivered Israelites; a broad, deep sea flowing between them and the]and of bondage, and the tyrants dead upon the shore. Such is the glorious sense of liberty, of wealth, of life, when the deep sea of Divine forgiving love sweeps over the past and obliterates its shame. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)
The Exodus
I. First, consider the mode of their going out.
1. When the Children of Israel went out of Egypt it is a remarkable thing that they were forced out by the Egyptians. The dove fleeth not to his cote unless the eagle doth pursue it; so sins, like eagles, pursue the timid soul, making it fly into the clefts of the Rock Christ Jesus to hide itself. Once, our sins kept us from Christ; but now every sin drives us to Him for pardon. I had not known Christ if I had not known sin; I had not known a deliverer, if I had not smarted under the Egyptians. The Holy Spirit drives us to Christ, just as the Egyptians drove the people out of Egypt.
2. Again: the Children of Israel went out of Egypt covered with jewels and arranged in their best garments. Ah! that is just how a child of God comes out of Egypt. He does not come out of his bondage with his old garments of self-righteousness on: oh! no; as long as he wears those he will always keep in Egypt; but he marches out with the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ upon him, and adorned with the goodly graces of the Holy Spirit.
3. Note, moreover, that these people obtained their jewels from the Egyptians. God’s people never lose anything by going to the house of bondage. They win their choicest jewels from the Egyptians. “Strangely true it is, sins do me good,” said an old writer once, “because they drive me to the Saviour; and so I get good by them.” Ask the humble Christian where he get his humility, and ten to one he will say that he got it in the furnace of deep sorrow on account of sin. See another who is tender in conscience: where did he get that jewel from? It came from Egypt, I’ll be bound. We get more by being in bondage, under conviction of sin, than we often do by liberty.
4. They came out in haste. I never met with a poor sinner under a sense of sin who was not in haste to get his burden off his back. No man has a broken heart, unless he wants to have it bound up directly. “To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your heart,” says the Holy Ghost; He never says to-morrow; to-day is His continual cry, and every true-born Israelite will pant to get out of Egypt, whenever he has the opportunity.
II. The magnitude of this deliverance. I would have you particularly remember one thing; and that is, that great as this emigration was, and enormous as were the multitudes that quitted Egypt, it was only one Passover that set them all free. One agonizing sacrifice, one death on Calvary, one bloody sweat on Gethsemane, one shriek of “It is finished “ consummated all the work of redemption.
III. The completeness of their deliverance. As Moses said, “Not an hoof shall be left behind.” They were to have all their goods, as well as their persons. What does this teach us? Why, not only that all God’s people shall be saved, but that all that God’s people ever had shall be restored. All that Jacob ever took down to Egypt shall be brought out again. Have I lost a perfect righteousness in Adam? I shall have a perfect righteousness in Christ. Have I lost happiness on earth in Adam? God will give me much happiness here below in Christ. Have I lost heaven in Adam? I shall have heaven in Christ; for Christ came not only to seek and to save the people that were lost, but that which was lost: that is, all the inheritance, as well as the people; all their property.
IV. The time when the israelites came out of Egypt. God had promised to Abraham that His people should be in bondage four hundred and thirty years, and they were not in bondage one day more. As soon as God’s bond became due, though it had been drawn four hundred and thirty years before, He paid the bill; He required no more time to do it in, but He did it at once. Christopher Ness says, they had to tarry for the fulfilment of the promise till the night came; for though He fulfilled it the selfsame day, He made them stay to the end of it, to prove their faith. He was wrong there, because Scripture days begin at night. “The evening and the morning were the second day.” So that God did not make them wait, but paid them at once. As soon as the day came, beginning with our night, as the Jewish day does now, and the Scriptural day always did--as soon as the clock struck--God paid His bond. (C. H. Spurgeon.)