Exodus 19:3-6 And Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob… The cloud going on before the people from Rephidim, brings them at last to what by pre-eminence is called the mount. The mount, not because it was higher, but because there the burning bush appeared, and there the people were to serve God. Moses goes up to the mount, probably to the very spot where a while ago he had seen the burning bush and received his great commission to Pharaoh. From this scene he had been travelling in a circle, and had now come whence he had started, but not as many travellers in a circle do, returning poor and profitless as they went. Here he is, treading once again the hallowed mountain side; the people whom he has brought are below; God, he knows, is near, for he has just had most gracious experience of him in Rephidim; and now he waits for further revelations and commands. A great deal Moses has to listen to in Sinai from Jehovah; and therefore it is very interesting to notice the words with which Jehovah begins. Consider - I. THE TERMS BY WHICH GOD INDICATES HIS PEOPLE. "The house of Jacob" - "the children of Israel." Thus Jehovah was ever sending the thoughts of his people far back into the past, and making them feel its important and glorious connection with the present. The house of Jacob was the house of him who had known many changes of circumstances, many disappointments and trials. It was the house of one who, born in Canaan, spent some of the best of his time at a distance with Laban, and died at last in Egypt. If he, the great ancestor, had thus been a man of change, what wonder that trying changes came upon the posterity! Then they were also the children of Israel. This was the name Divinely given; and if Israel forgets its purport and the privilege involved, Jehovah himself assuredly did not. Significant names, that would otherwise get hidden in the past, God takes special care to preserve. II. THE WAY IN WHICH GOD DESCRIBES HIS RECENT DEALINGS. To the Israelites all had been very confused, tedious, and trying, in spite of all the miraculous exemptions, escapes, and provisions they had enjoyed. They had not very well known what was being done with them. But now, in the compass of a sweeping verse, the whole course of affairs is presented as one rapid and decisive action. As a bird might snatch its offspring out of captivity and bear it far on high to some safe shelter, so Jehovah has done with Israel. He puts before them, as in a vision, these three things to be considered - 1. The liberation. 2. The consequent journey. 3. The destination. And these three things he describes in a peculiar way. 1. The liberation he indicates by this signification, "what I did unto the Egyptians." He wished the people here to ponder the extent and significance of his terrible dealings in Egypt. The Israelites had gazed on a succession of varied and penetrating calamities coming on the Egyptians. But Jehovah wishes the observers to mark that these things were of his doing. Jehovah's actions are not to be buried in oblivion when once they are past, because they are terrible actions. It is just because they are the terrible acts of a holy and just God that they are to be remembered. There was in them nothing of a tyrant's caprice; they were not wild gusts of power to be ashamed of in calmer moments. There had been due prediction and preparation; there was an orderly, gradual, impressive, instructive mounting to a climax: and if any of the people were inclined to forget the doer in the deeds, the liberator in the liberation, here is a warning that things must not be so thought on. God is ever devising to make us look at events in their connection and continuity. The plagues of Egypt were only the preliminary overturning to carry on the greater plan of God. Egypt had fast hold of Israel; wherefore Israel's God smote Egypt so that he might free his own people and bring them to himself. 2. The journey Jehovah indicates by a peculiarly beautiful and inspiring figure. "I bare you on eagles' wings." This was an appropriate figure for people dwelling in the wilderness. Moses had, doubtless, seen many eagles in his shepherd experiences; and the Israelites would become familiar with them during their wanderings. Thus the eagle's ways would be known; and after this word of Jehovah Moses would study them more and more, and one result of such observation we find in Deuteronomy 32:11. When men exalt themselves as the eagle, and set their nests among the stars, God can bring them down; but when he puts on the eagle's wings, it is to exalt himself into a place which shall be one of perfect safety for his people. One imagines the eaglet thus lying on the parent's wing. It may wriggle about uneasily, wondering at the speed with which it is taken, the shaking it has to undergo and the unfamiliar scenes through which it is passing. But these struggles count for little; they are natural enough, but they do not hinder the eagle in its progress. Patiently, calmly, strongly, it rises towards its secure destination. These unfamiliar scenes are by-and-by to be the frequent path of the now struggling, bewildered eaglet; in due time its own wings will appear in them - Sailing with supreme dominion Through the azure deep of air Paul himself, dazed and shaken to the very depths of his being on his first dealings with Jesus, had known what it was to be borne on eagle's wings, and he lived to render a little of the same sort of ministry to the perplexed and desponding Timothy. The Israelites had been struggling and unbelieving, as at the Red Sea, at Marah, at the time when the manna was given, and at Rephidim; but in spite of all these, the strong eagle wings of God had berne them onward. Our struggles are but a trifle, if only God has us really in charge. Let us think ever of the eagle wings rather than the ignorant offspring carried thereon. 3. The destination. "I brought you unto myself." Just as the eagle brings its young to a place where without distraction or fear of interruption it can attend to their nourishment and growth. How beautifully God thus turns away the thoughts of his people from the desolation of the visible scene! True it was a wilderness; emphasis is laid upon this in vers. 1, 2; but if we are brought to God, this is more than all that may be barren and cheerless in mere circumstances. The place which men do not care about and where they would not come of their own accord, is the place where God reveals himself gloriously and graciously to his own. Israel will now do well to consider, not what carnal comforts they lack, but what dangers they have escaped, and what Divine possessions they are in the way to acquire. To be brought to God in the fullest sense of the word, and to lie comfortably under his protection and nurture, what a great matter! (Romans 8:38, 39). III. So much, then, for what Jehovah has done in the past, and now he turns to the future, making A LARGE PROMISE DEPENDENT ON THE FULFILLING OF STRICT CONDITIONS. He had to bring the people to himself on eagle's wings, because they themselves were helpless to achieve the deliverance and security they needed. And now the time has come for response from them. He has brought them to himself, that being with him they may become his, fully and acceptably. They are put into external conditions such as make it possible for them to obey; therefore Jehovah has a right, and does right, to ask them for obedience. He who speaks about Jacob and Israel, cannot but also speak of the ancient covenant, with respect to which the children of Israel must labour earnestly to fulfil their part. God has already made certain requirements from the people, such as the passover regulations and those concerning the manna. But now his requirements are to flow forth in a great continuing stream. He will go on asking, as if asking were never to be at an end; and therefore it is well to start with a solemn preparatory word. As to the promise itself, we notice that it is a promise to a nation - to a whole people. As we see in the next chapter, the conditions are to be achieved by individual obedience: God comes to the individual with his commandments, and says, "Thou." But the promise is for the nation. It is a promise, too, which seems worded for appreciation in the future rather than in the present, or if in the present, only by a few who had been prepared to understand it. Perhaps it may be most fittingly described as a promise to be the stimulus and stay of truly patriotic hearts. Wherever there is a man who glories in the race from which he sprang and the land where he was born, there is one who may be expected to understand the force of an appeal like this. No nation could really be more to God than another nation, unless it were a better one. Israel had been made free from Egypt that it might then rise into all the fulness of what a nation ought to be; and therefore God sets these great possibilities before the people. All the earth, he said, was his. Be had proved his complete control over one much esteemed tract of territory by the confusions and calamities he had brought into Pharaoh's domains; and there was no nation among men that he could not treat in the same fashion. But, if only men will submit, he can make to himself a peculiar people, testifying to his power, not from among humiliations consequent on despising him, but from the heights of glory and blessedness to which he lifts those who obey him. He mingles in one glorious expression the thought of all those blessings which come from the union of true religion and right government. A kingdom of priests is one where harmony and right dealing will be found running through all relations, because each member is continually serving God with the great, loving, acceptable sacrifice of his own life. God is not really king in any society of men, unless each member of that society is fully a priest towards him. - Y. Parallel Verses KJV: And Moses went up unto God, and the LORD called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel; |
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