ATJ
WHEN the Lord visited and redeemed His people, to take them into the land of promise, the land He sware to Abram, Isaac, and Jacob to give to them; when He took them unto Himself to swerve Him only, in the keeping of His holy law, He said, first of all: “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me,” etc. PTUK February 13, 1902, page 100.1
Israel missed God’s call: they believed Him not, and therefore could not enter into His rest. These fell in the wilderness. And the generation that went into the land of Canaan did not in that go into “the land” and the “rest” to which the Lord would have taken the people when they first left Egypt, had they only believed. They drifted further and further away from God until they actually rejected Him, that they might be like the nations. PTUK February 13, 1902, page 100.2
And they became like all the nations. They failed exactly as had their fathers before them. For, in the days of David, the Lord still said: “To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: when your fathers tempted Me, proved Me, and saw My works forty years. Whereupon I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do always err in their heart; and they have not known My ways. So I sware in My wrath, They shall not enter into My rest.” Hebrews 3:8-11; 4:7, 8. PTUK February 13, 1902, page 100.3
But still they hardened their hearts, and went further away from the Lord, until they got into such darkness that it was the very darkness of “the shadow of death,” which is “darkness as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness.” And there the people sat, when there shined unto them a “great light,” even the light of God, in which darkness itself is light. Isaiah 9:2; Job 10:21, 22; Matthew 4:16. PTUK February 13, 1902, page 100.4
Christ came. Again God visited to redeem His people, to make them not simply servants, but sons of God, that we “might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of our life.” And at that time again God said: “Out of Egypt have I called My Son.” PTUK February 13, 1902, page 100.5
Why was it necessary that the infant Jesus should be taken into Egypt at the time of the slaughter of the innocents by Herod? It was not alone to escape the decree of Herod, that Jesus was taken into Egypt; for that decree could have been easily escaped by a much shorter journey. This was done to teach all people for ever the deep spiritual lesson of the true deliverance from Egypt. PTUK February 13, 1902, page 100.6
Jesus came into the world to take the place of man, to be our substitute and surety. Mankind is overwhelmed in the darkness and bondage of sin—Egyptian darkness, a darkness that may be felt. He was made to be sin; upon Him was laid the iniquity of us all; He was numbered with the transgressors; He was made in all things like those who substitute He became. PTUK February 13, 1902, page 100.7
Therefore He was take into Egypt, and was brought out again, “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, “Out of Egypt have I called my Son;” and that by this object lesson there might be emphasised anew, and for ever, the great lesson taught from of old to all people, the great truth that men become the sons of God only by their being called out of Egypt. PTUK February 13, 1902, page 100.8
The Ten Commandments express the whole duty of man. All that ever a man can do, in deed, word, or thought, in righteousness, is covered by the Ten Commandments. All man’s service to God is in the keeping of this His Law. And when it was written of Christ, and it was fulfilled in Christ, as the Example of all mankind, that “out of Egypt have I called My Son,” this was simply speaking anew to all mankind the words which, that great day, God spoke from heaven, as the preamble to the whole Ten Commandments and their keeping: “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” PTUK February 13, 1902, page 100.9
This is the universal lesson: that no man can serve God, that no man can keep a single one of the Ten Commandments, except he is first delivered, by the power of God, from the darkness of Egypt, from the darkness of the shadow of death, from the realm and bondage of sin. PTUK February 13, 1902, page 100.10
This is the lesson of the whole Bible. Look, for instance, at Ephesians 2:1-10: how men are dead in trespasses and sins, in the darkness of this world; walking according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the ruler of the darkness of this world (Ephesians 6:12), the spirit that works in the children of disobedience. But God, who is rich in mercy, has quickened us together with Christ, and has raised us up together with Him, to live and walk with Him. And this He did, not by our works, nor because of our works, but of His own mercy and grace; “for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” Thus is the lesson taught, that no man can do good works except he is created unto it by the power of God. PTUK February 13, 1902, page 100.11
After men have been delivered from this present evil world, into the glorious liberty of the children of God, and are standing fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free,—the liberty by love to serve one another,—filled with the Spirit, so that all the fruits of the Spirit are shining in the life, reflecting the sunshine of righteousness,—only then it is that the generally considered practical things of the Christian life are enjoined. PTUK February 13, 1902, page 100.12
Why is this? It is the same universal, divine lesson, that no man can do good works, no man can possibly do the practical things of the Christian life,” who has not first the Christian life as a practical thing. And, therefore, it is made perfectly plain that deliverance from the darkness and bondage of sin; the finding of the sonship of God; the ability to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free; the receiving of the fulness of the Spirit of God in the life,—these things are the practical things of Christianity, equally with the others. Indeed, in a sense these are the more practical things; because so certainly must these precede the others that, without these, the other practical things of the Christian life can never be seen at all. PTUK February 13, 1902, page 100.13
Therefore when, from Mount Sinai, God would speak, with a voice that shook the earth, the practical things of the life of man, He spoke first of all this original practical thing of the life of man—deliverance from the realm and bondage of sin;— PTUK February 13, 1902, page 100.14
“I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” Exodus 20:2. PTUK February 13, 1902, page 101.1
“Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” PTUK February 13, 1902, page 101.2
Yet this is not the preamble of only the first commandment, but of the whole law. And since, when He sent His only begotten Son to redeem us indeed, He renewed and emphasised this preliminary thought, in the words, “Out of Egypt have I called My Son,” it is as if this were the preamble and the whole law. And all of it—the preamble and the whole law—is expressed in the great thought of the Third Angel’s Message: “Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Revelation 14:12. PTUK February 13, 1902, page 101.3
A. T. JONES.