The enemy said.
The enemy’s spirit
Observe the spirit of the enemy of Israel. It was characterized--
1. By great ambition. It was the love of power and dominion. To hold human beings as property is the vilest display of ambition.
2. Great arrogance and pride. I will pursue (rather “repossess”), overtake, divide, etc. What self-confidence! What boasting! What assumption! Pride goeth before destruction.
3. Insatiable avarice. Divide the spoil. Had not Pharaoh enough? An avaricious spirit unceasingly cries, Give! give! What a cursed spirit it is! Well has it been said that nature is content with little, grace with less, but the lust of avarice not even with all things.
4. Reckless malevolence and cruelty. “My lust shall be satisfied, I will draw my sword,” etc. What thirsting for blood! Ambition and avarice render the mind cold and the heart callous. Tears, wailings, groans, mangled bodies and the flowing blood of mankind allay not the fires of human malevolence and lust.
5. Presumptuous confidence and security. I will do, not endeavour, no peradventure. Contingency and doubt have no place. How foolish for the man who puts on the armour to boast. (A. Nevin, D. D.)
God’s Church and her enemies
Israel was a type of the Church, Pharaoh a type of the Church’s enemies in all ages of the world, both of the spiritual enemy Satan, and of the temporal, his instruments. The deliverance was a type of the deliverance that Christ wrought upon the cross by His blood; also of that Christ works upon His throne, the one from the reign of sin, the other from the empire of antichrist. The text is a part of Moses’ song; a song after victory, a panegyric; the praise of God, attended with dancing, at the sight of the Egyptian wrecks (Exodus 15:20).
1. It was then real; the Israelites then sang it.
2. It is typical; the conquerors of antichrist shall again triumph in the same manner (Revelation 15:3).
3. It was an earnest of future deliverance to the Israelites.
General observations.
1. The greatest idolaters are the fiercest enemies against the Church of God. It is the Egyptian is the enemy. No nation had more and more sordid idols.
2. The Church’s enemies are not for her correction, but her destruction: “I will pursue; my hand shall destroy them.”
3. How desperate are sometimes the straits of God’s Israel in the eye of man! How low their spirits before deliverance.
4. God orders the lusts of men for His own praise.
5. The nearer the deliverance of the Church is, the fiercer are God’s judgments on the enemies of it, and the higher the enemies’ rage.
6. All creatures are absolutely under the sovereignty of God, and are acted by His power in all their services.
7. By the same means God saves His people, whereby He destroys His enemies: the one sank, the other passed through. That which makes one balance sink makes the other rise the higher.
8. The strength and glory of a people is more wasted by opposing the interests of the Church than in conflicts with any other enemy.
9. We may take notice of the folly of the Church’s enemies. Former plagues might have warned them of the power of God, they had but burned their own fingers by pinching her, yet they would set their force against almighty power, that so often had worsted them; it is as if men would pull down a steeple with a string.
But the observations I shall treat of are--
1. When the enemies of the Church are in the highest fury and resolution, and the Church in the greatest extremity and dejection, then is the fittest time for God to work her deliverance fully and perfectly. When the enemy said, “I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil,” etc., then “God blowed with His wind,” then “they sank.”
2. God is the author of all the deliverances of the Church, whosoever are the instruments. “Thou didst blow with Thy wind; who is like unto the Lord among the gods.” Uses: How dear is the Church to God!
2. Remember former deliverances in time of straits.
3. Thankfully remember former deliverances. (S. Charnock, B. D.)
Vanity of boasting
When Bonaparte was about to invade Russia, a person who had endeavoured to dissuade him from his purpose, finding he could not prevail, quoted to him the proverb, “Man proposes, but God disposes”; to which he indignantly replied, “I dispose as well as propose.” A Christian lady, on hearing the impious boast, remarked, “I set that down as the turning-point of Bonaparte’s fortunes. God will not suffer a creature with impunity thus to usurp His prerogative.” It happened to Bonaparte just as the lady predicted. His invasion of Russia was the commencement of his fall.
Triumphing before the battle
Nothing can be got, but much may be lost, by triumphing before a battle. When Charles V. invaded France, he lost his generals and a great part of his army by famine and disease; and returned baffled and thoroughly mortified from an enterprize which he began with such confidence of its happy issue, that he desired Paul Jovius, the historian, to make a large provision of paper sufficient to record the victories which he was going to acquire!
Providentially destroyed
During the last summer, at Coblentz, we saw a monument erected to commemorate the French campaign against the Russians in 1812. It was a gigantic failure; 400,000 men set forth for Moscow; 25,000, battered and worn and weary, tattered and half famished, returned. Do you ask how it was done? Not by the timid Alexander’s guns and swords. We read in one place that “the stars in their courses fought against Sisera”; in another, how God has sent an army of locusts to overthrow an army of men; but here the very elements combine to drive the invader back in disgrace. Yes. “He gave snow like wool, He scattered His hoar-frost like ashes, He cast forth His ice like morsels--who can stand before His cold?” Who? Not Napoleon who, with self-sufficient heart, boasted in his own right hand, and sacrificed to his insatiable ambition the blood of myriads of murdered men. No! God blows upon him with His wind out of the north, and, shivering and half-starved, he slinks back in defeat. What a picture! But Alexander had not forgotten to prepare his ways before the Lord and seek the God of Jacob’s aid. And in recognition of the Divine interposition and help, he struck a medal with a legend: “Not to me, not to us, but unto Thy Name.” Thus the lesson taught by ancient and modern history is, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but to the man who prepares his ways before the Lord his God. (Enoch Hall.)