March
March / 41 The all-pervading presence of God with us is the one absolutely certain and unchangeable thing amid all that is so doubtful and changeable in this world of ours. Yet very few people realize this. Even Christians will cry out for the Lord to "come" to them, as though he had gone off on a journey or were in the remote realms of space. "How can get into his presence?" they ask with eager longing; when all the while they are already in his presence and cannot by any possibility get out of it, not even if they "make their bed in hell," or if they live in the furthest part of the earth. Even there, wherever it may be, shall hishamd-holdamdleadthem If I say, "Let only darkness cover me, and the light about me be night," / even the darkness is not dark to thee, the night is bright as the day; / for darkness is as light with thee.
(Ps 139:11-12) lam continually with thee;/thou dost hold my right hand.
_../ Whom have | in heaven but thee: / And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides thee. / My fleshand my heart may fail, / but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever. (Ps 73:23-25)
42 / Daily He Leads Me "My flesh and my heart may fail," but the ever-present God still holds us by our right hand, even though we may not realize it; he is our all-sufficient portion for ever.
But some may ask whether there is not such a thing as "coming into" his presence and "leaving" it, being nearer or further off from him. To this I answer that these are only figures of speech which express spiritual states on our part and not any divine facts on God's part. I may be seated close to a person and yet be separated in spirit from that person by thousands of miles. When we speak of nearness or distance regarding God, it is only according to our spirits, not according to the facts. He is always near us, but we are not always near him. In fact, he is so close to us that it isn't even accurate to speak of him as being near. He created us, and if we only knew the facts of the case, it would be as impossible for us to think of ourselves apart from him, as to think of ourselves apart from ourselves.
I feel sure our modes of speech in regard to this subject have led us into great darkness. We pray, "O Lord, come to us," when we ought to pray, "O Lord, make us come!" The "coming" is altogether in our spirits, not in his presence.
When he came to himself he said, "How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; Iam no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants." (Lk 15:17-19)} In all living there is one principal center around which life revolves and for the sake of which it acts. Generally this center is the "T' or self. Everything is calculated with reference to its influence on self; what gain or what improvement to one's personal standing or prospects will come from certain courses of action? How will it affect me? These are the continual underlying questions. The prodigal son is an illustration of this.
The son had no thought of the father's love or sorrow or longing; his only care was to get comfort and food for himself;
March / 43 and his expectations could rise no higher than to be a servant in his father's household, where he would find "food to spare."
This is always the first selfish way of the human heart; we do not consider how our heavenly Father loves us, and longs for us, and grieves over our wandering, and will rejoice at our return; but we ask what we shall get by returning, what personal gain
/ will accrue to us, how much better off we shall be for giving our allegiance to Christ. It is the "I' religion only, that we can
\_comprehend at first.
But the father said to his servants, "Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found." (Lk 15:22-24)
Thus, the prodigal son is welcomed home. He came home because he was starving and because he realized that his father's servants had plenty to eat. He would ask his father to forgive him and to treat him like a hired servant.
In the father's embrace the 'I' religion is swept away, and all thoughts of being a "hired man, with food to spare" vanish before the "best robe," and the "fatted calf,' and the merry feast of welcome over "the son who was dead and is alive."
€~Sooner or later the child of God, if his spiritual life develops as { it ought, comes to this place of insight, where thoughts of self
__ vanish in the wondrous revelation of the Father's heart.
He who is a hireling and not a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf snatches them and scatters them....lam the good shepherd; ... 1 lay down my life for the sheep.
(Jn 10:12, 14-15) It is impossible to imagine a good shepherd forgetting or forsaking his sheep. In fact, it is his duty to stick by them under all circumstances and to watch over them and care for them
44 / Daily He Leads Me every moment. And the God who is thus revealed to us as the Good Shepherd must necessarily be as faithful to his responsibilities as an earthly shepherd is required to be to his. His care of us may bea hidden care, but it is none the less real, and all things in the daily events of our lives are made to serve his gracious purposes towards us. He may seem to have forgotten us or to have neglected us, but it can never be anything but appearances, for it would be impossible for the God who is revealed to us in the face of Jesus Christ to do such a thing.
I 0 If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it. (Lk 9:23-24) The "not !' religion is the religion that denies self, that says to this "I,""Iam a stranger to you and do not wish to have anything to do with you." It denies self, not in the sense of making self miserable, or of setting self on a pinnacle and sticking prongs into it to hurt it; but in the sense of utterly refusing to recognize its claims or even its existence, and of enthroning the Christ-life in its place always and everywhere.
To "take up the cross" does not mean to make this 'I' miserable, as is too often thought. It means to put this "T' to death, to crucify it; not to make it suffer but to kill it outright. It means to lose our own self-life truly and literally and to have the divine life, the life hid with Christ in God, to reign in its stead. i You sit and speak against your brother; / you slander your own mother's son. / These things you have done and I have been silent;/ you thought that I was one like yourself.
/ But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you.
(Ps 50:20-21] Even Christians speak continually, not of God's great goodness, but of their brother's great failures and try to exalt themselves at their brother's expense. Naturally, they transfer the same selfish characteristics to God and think he also is
March / 45 entirely absorbed in the advancement of his own glory, no matter at whose expense.
But true Christianity does just the opposite. It has handed self over bodily to death and has ceased to be interested in it. It has forgotten self in its absorption in God. It expects nothing from self but everything from God; and it demands nothing for self, but seeks to lavish all on the Lord.
I Bi I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer 1 who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh | live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal 2:20) Not only were we made alive in the first place by Christ, but moment by moment we must live in him. When temptations arise, we must no longer try to conquer them ourselves; we must not meet them with our own resolves or our own efforts; we must meet them simply with the Lord. We must hide in him as within the walls of a Gibraltar and make him our "strong refuge."
In the language of one writer, we must say to him, "Lord, thou hast declared that sin shall not have dominion over thy people. I believe this word of thine cannot be broken; and therefore, helpless in myself, I rely upon thy faithfulness to save me from the dominion of the sins which now tempt me. Put forth thy power, O Lord Christ, and get thyself great glory in subduing my flesh, with its affections and lusts." Having thus committed our temptations to him, we must believe that he has decided to deliver us, and we must leave ourselves in his care. We must stand by and let him fight. We shall find, to our unutterable rejoicing, that he does deliver according to his word. The enemy flees from his presence, and the soul is enabled to be "more than conqueror' through him.
I Because you have eaten of the tree / of which I commanded you, / "You shall not eat of it," / cursed is the ground because of you;/in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; / thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you.
(Gn 3:17-18)
46 / Daily He Leads Me The story of man as developed in Genesis is one of repeated and most grievous failure. It has always seemed to me to be a vivid picture of the experience of the awakened soul, seeking to make itself what it ought to be by continually repeated efforts of its own, and ending at last by finding itself in apparently hopeless Egyptian bondage.
All of us, doubtless, know something of this experimentally.
We know what it is to have set ourselves to the work of our own reformation, to have been continually turning over a "new leaf" on our birthdays, or at the start of a new year, thinking always that each renewed effort would surely be successful, and laying the blame for every failure on some fault in our circumstances or surroundings. And we remember well, some of us at least, the final and hopeless disappointment when we discovered, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we were utterly helpless, and then the joy that came, when in our helplessness we threw ourselves upon the mercy of God and found in Christ the redemption our souls had so long sought for in vain. yi None is righteous, no, not one;/no one understands, no one seeks God. / All have turned aside, together they have gone wrong; / no one does good, not even one.
(Rom 3:10-12) In Romans 1, 2, and 3:1-20, man's hopeless and undone condition by nature is declared to us, summed up with a description of our bondage. This bondage must be acknowledged before redemption can be declared. It is only the sinner
— that stands in the Savior's path. It is the lost sheep that the Shepherd goes out to seek. It is in our weakness alone that his strength can be made perfect.
Have you learned this lesson? Or are you still seeking to effect your own redemption by your efforts and resolutions and fondly hoping to turn over at last the final new leaf which shall contain nothing but a record of righteousness? Are you in short trying to save yourselves, or are you letting Christ save you? Only your own hearts can answer these questions, and I pray for your souls' sakes that they may be honestly and speedily answered.
March / 47 I Moses said to the people, "Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be still."
(Ex 14:13-14) Human beings want to do something to deliver themselves, but God puts us where we cannot do anything and then says, "be still" and see what I will do. To stand still and see means simply to believe in God's record of what he has done. I"see" an event in history which I believe on the authority of another, with greater understanding than if I had been actually present at the time.
Thus by faith we may "see" the path made for us out of our bondage, as plainly as the Israelites saw the one made for them.
God tells us, as he told them, to leave the house of bondage and go forward. "Take the deliverance I have provided." Or in other words, "I have put away your sins by the sacrifice of myself. You do not need to ask me to do it, for it is done. Believe it, and reckon yourselves to be free."
Hf Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses ... and they said, "Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses?
Has he not spoken through us also" (Nm 12:1-2) The soul filled with the love of Christ has lost the spirit of judging. The divine charity poured into the heart "thinks no evil." But an inward lack of union with Christ always leads the soul to climb up on the judgment seat and to take upon itself the task of removing the speck out of its brother's eye, regardless of the beam in its own. God deals with all such, however, sooner or later, and sounds in the inmost ear the solemn question, "Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?"
(12:8). And in mercy he reproves and chastens until the sin is acknowledged and the soul restored.
48 / Daily He Leads Me I Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, "Let us
WA go up at once, and occupy it; for we are well able to overcome it." Then the men who had gone up with him said,
"Weare not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we." (Nm 13:30-31) The israelites refused to believe that God could deliver the promised land into their hands. They were overwhelmed by the giants they saw dwelling there. This whole scene is a picture, I think, of a stage of Christian experience, which is only too common. The soul, which has been transferred out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son, is brought face to face with the wonderful promises and blessings of the gospel and longs to go up and possess them. The glorious liberty and triumphs, for instance, of the eighth chapter of Romans confront us, and we ask, "Is it not our privilege to enter into these things now?" But we are met on every hand by "spies," who tell us of the giants in our way and of the difficulties that we shall not be able to overcome; and thus we become so discouraged that we finally give up in despair, as Israel did, afraid to take possession of the very land of promise which the Lord our God declares he has given us, and into which it was the very purpose of our redemption that we should be brought.
I Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day.
(Ex 16:4} The feeding with manna described in Exodus 16 is typical of the soul of the believer feeding on Christ, as is plainly shown us in John 6:31-35. Our food is Christ, and Christ only. Not our frames, nor feelings, nor experiences, but Christ. And to feed on him, and not on them, requires that we should turn away from them wholly and not dwell on them, examine them, or even think about them, but that we should think always and only of him and see nothing but his work and his love.
March / 49 ap The Lord said to Moses, "Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there; and I will give you the tables of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I! have written for their instruction." (Ex 24:12)
The giving of the law comes in chapters 19 to 24 of Exodus, after the people were brought out of Egypt. The place this occupies, following and not preceding redemption, seems very fact only possible where redemption has taken place. Israel in t fal father's laws only after he is born into that father's family. The slave can begin a life of liberty only after he has been set free. To demand from either child or slave the fruits and development of their lives before the life itself is given would be folly indeed. Let us never then say to ourselves or to one another, "You cannot be redeemed until you obey', but let us say instead, "you must obey and you can obey, because you are redeemed."
I use redemption here, of course, in the simple sense of being translated out of the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God's dear Son and beginning the life in that kingdom; and not in the sense of the full salvation from sin that is to follow. The redemption out of Egypt was only the beginning of the full and grand salvation that awaited the children of Israel further on.
But that which followed could not come until this was accomplished. We cannot become followers of God as dear children, until we have first been made "children of God by faith in Christ Jesus."
9, 0 Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. |Ex 40:34)
On the day that the tabernacle was finished the Lord entered in. This coming of the Lord's presence to fill the place prepared
50 / Daily He Leads Me for him by his people, is to me a blessed foreshadowing of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, promised by the Lord Jesus to every believer, given first on the day of Pentecost to the waiting disciples whose hearts were prepared for his coming. I believe that to each one of us individually, the command comes now, as it did to the children of Israel then, to prepare a place for our Lord that he may dwell in our midst. I am sure that many have responded to this call, and have known what it is to have the glory of the Lord so fill the house of the Lord, as to leave room for no other inmate. May we all learn this lesson so quickly that we are brought by rapid stages to its consummating glory and know for ourselves this wondrous indwelling!
Pharoah said, "I will let you go, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness; only you shall not go very far away." (Ex 8:28) When Pharaoh found that he could not induce Moses to remain in the land, he gave up that point, but he added cunningly, "You shall not go very far away." Like Pharaoh, when
Satan sees that he cannot keep us in his kingdom, he tries to persuade us that it is not necessary to go very far away and that the world and the church need not be separated by any great distance after all. He knows well, as Pharaoh knew, that it is very easy to take captive those who dwell in the border land, and that it is just because they do not go very far away, that Christians suffer so much from his assaults. yy And the flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offerings for thanksgiving shall be eaten on the day of his offering: he shall not leave any of it until the morning. (Lv 7:15)
In the peace offering the leading thought is the communion of the worshipper. It was not as in the burnt offering, where the sacrifice was enjoyed exclusively by God, but here the worshipper feasted in communion with God. The offering was
\ shared between the altar, the priest, and the offerer.
( )
March / 51 / In New Testament terms, the picture presented to us here is . of the believer coming to God to be filled with Christ, to have
'his thoughts occupied with Christ and his mouth filled with his { praises. Many souls have access to God who do not have communion. They come full of themselves and their own needs,
_ and all they have to say is about their feelings, their sins, or their ) trials.
It is all self, self, self. But communion means to dwell , upon and delight in that which God dwells upon and delights in.
'And this can never be anything in or about ourselves, but always and only things pertaining to his well-beloved Son.
DP And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins...
The goat shall bear all their iniquities upon him to a solitary land. (Lv 16:21-22) Of all the types of the Lord Jesus, this seems to me one of the most wonderful. The way of access for the sinner into the presence of God is made by his death, and the sins of the sinner are bone away "into a solitary land," cast as it were into the very depths of the sea, to be no more remembered, even by the God against whom they were committed, but who has thus "laid on him the iniquity of us all." ws And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on across.
(Phil 2:8) The cross in connection with Christ always means the death of Christ. The only use of the cross is to put to death, not to keep alive. It may be a suffering death, but it is still sooner or later death. All through the Bible the meaning of the cross is simply and always death. In most cases this is manifest to every one.
Why we have chosen to give it a different meaning in its mystical sense and make it mean not death, but a living in misery, would be hard to explain. When, therefore, our Lord told
52 / Daily He Leads Me his disciples that they could not be his disciples unless they took up the cross, he could not have meant that they were to find it hard to do his will; but he was, I believe, simply expressing in figurative language the fact that they were to be made partakers of his death and resurrection, by having the old man crucified with him and by living only in the new man, or, in other words, in the resurrection life of the Spirit.
2 5 If you obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments which I command you this day, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. ... But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God... then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. (Dt 28:1, 15) In Deuteronomy, we meet continually with the word "if." The blessings of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ are so unconditional and his gifts are so free, that we are apt to think there are no "ifs" to be found in it anywhere and that the introduction of any conditions is always a mistake of legality. But while it is true that forgiveness is a free gift, bestowed without money and without price upon all who need it and will take it, it is also equally true that holiness of heart is a gift with conditions. No 'sick man can be healed by a physician, no matter how skilled, unless he will submit himself to that physician's prescriptions and obey his orders. And no soul can be cured of the dreadful malady of sin, until it is willing to surrender every sin and submit itself to the Lord's commands against it. Conditions do necessarily come in here. Obedience to law has its inevitable blessings, and disobedience its inevitable curses. And the consecration set forth in Deuteronomy is not a legal demand of so much surrender for so much blessing, but it is simply the necessary state in which blessing can be bestowed. bs Whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tent, after that the people of Israel set out; and in the place where the cloud settled down, there the people of Israel encamped. (Nm 9:17)
March / 53 The presence of the pillar of cloud and fire, guiding and protecting the children of Israel in all their journeys (9:15-23), seems to me a very beautiful type of the presence of the Holy
Spirit in the hearts of God's people, guiding them day by day in all the journey of life. There were no roads or guideposts in that great and terrible wilderness and no one who could tell them the way. Yet they journeyed "without carefulness," because the Lord led them at every step. They had none of the care or responsibility of the journey. They had no need to meet and consult about the best paths to take or to send out scouts to choose their route. They had only to watch the pillar of fire and cloud and follow its movements, and all was well. This is a beautiful picture of the believer's absolute dependence upon the blessed guidance of the Holy Spirit and of what ought to be his complete subjection to it.
We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. (Rom 6:6) Many people-seem to think that the only thing proposed in Christianity is to improve the "old man," i.e, the flesh, and that the way to do this is to discipline and punish it until it is compelled to behave. Hence comes the asceticism of the Buddhist and others; and hence, also, comes the idea that the "cross" for Christians consists in the painful struggles of this helpless "old man" to do the will of God, a will which in the very nature of things the flesh cannot understand or love. But a true old man thwarted and made miserable by being compelled to submit to a will it dislikes, but it iga new man, "created in Christ Jesus unto good works," and therefore doing these good works pecan aie new nature, of divine origin, whichis leeacey wih the dane willsand therefore delights to do it.
54 / Daily He Leads Me yy When wasa child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a 8 child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. (1 Cor 13:11) The resurrection life is a matter of faith and development. We trust God for it, and he develops it in us. How do people get delivered from the foolishness _ of childhood? Not by being much as I did, cai there was a it against it. 1 thought this law came into effect at a certain age, and I pitied ali the people who had reached this age and dreaded growing old myself, because the sad time was drawing nearer for me. But when I had reached maturity, I found there was no law needed, for the desire to play was gone; I had outgrown childish things.
2 9 Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers they only hated him the more. He said to them. ... "Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and lo, my sheaf arose and stood upright; and behold, your sheaves gathered round it, and bowed down to my sheaf." (Gn 37:5-7)
Joseph is a wonderful type of the resurrection life. It is a life which, from the first, dreams of victory and dominion over the things of time and sense; but which can only attain this dominion through suffering. In a dream God revealed Joseph's future kingship to him.
His brethren hated him and called him a "dreamer." And souls that have had a sight of this resurrection life and venture to speak of it will often be hated also and called "mystics" and "dreamers", and perhaps not even their brethren in the church will understand them.
Joseph's exaltation and victory were sure to come, for God had declared it; but the road to them was by the way of trial, and suffering, and loss. It led through the pit, and through slavery, and through imprisonment in Egypt.
Through emptying to fullness, through abasement to exaltation, is always the way in this resurrection life. This is a
March / 55 necessity in the very nature of things.
If the butterfly life is to be born, the caterpillar life must die.
The flesh of man must be put to death, if the spirit of man is to live. This is the explanation of the trial and suffering and loss that come to us all as we advance in the divine life.
Joseph's exaltation came at last, and the only road which could have brought him there was through the very trials that had seemed as if they must crush him. God was in them all and made out of each a chariot to carry him onward.
With whom was [God] provoked forty years: Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness: And to whom did he swear that they should never enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient! So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. (Heb 3:17-19)
The New Testament tells us that the cause of the sad failure of the Israelites was unbelief. It was not their own weakness nor the strength of their enemies that hindered their entrance. They were, it is true, "grasshoppers," and their enemies were "giants," and it was indeed manifest that they were not able to overcome.
But the Lord was able. And he it was who was to fight for them and bring them in.
~ Their enemies were as great and they themselves were as weak when they crossed the Red Sea. But God delivered them then. No giants or walled cities can successfully oppose God. It was unbelief, therefore, and unbelief alone that prevented their going in.
For the Lord our God who goes before us, he it is who is to fight for us, and is to bring us in, and plant us in the land of our inheritance. Without him we can do absolutely nothing. With him we can do all things. If we depend on him, we will always be
"more than conquerors' over every enemy. He has blessed us, he declared, "with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ," and i it only remains for us by faith to go up and possess them. If we do not, it will not be because of our weakness or the strength of our 'enemies, but because of unbelief. It will be
56 / Daily He Leads Me because we measure our enemies with ourselves, instead of measuring them with the Lord. We may be, and indeed are,
"grasshoppers" in their sight, but what are they in the sight of God? Truly by the greatness of God's arm they shall all be as nothing before the soul that dares to step out on his promises and trust all to him.
We remember the fish we ate in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at. (Nm 11:6)
Almost at once the evil heart of unbelief showed itself, and the people complained. Seduced by the mixed multitude who accompanied them, the Israelites began to look back longingly to Egypt.
The soul that begins by complaining, soon ends by something worse. It loses its relish for heavenly-food and looks back with Jonging to that which the world gives. And the end is sadly typified by the words of Psalm 106: "He gave them what they asked, / but sent a wasting disease among them."
April I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt.... and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land. (Ex 3:7-8) The deliverance of the chosen people from Egypt is a wonderful picture of the stages by which we are brought to know the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. We seek first of all to redeem ourselves by our own efforts, resolutions, and continual fresh starts, but our failures only grow worse and or gale oe Jast ie und, Ourselves it appateudly popes:
' bondage. When all hope in ourselves is gone and our bondage has become very bitter to us, we cry to the Lord, and he hears and \ delivers us, and our Exodus is accomplished.
The way of our deliverance is wonderfully pictured in this story of the deliverance of the children of Israel.
From beginning to end it was God's work, not theirs. His right hand and his mighty power alone got the victory, and he brought them forth "with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs and wonders.' They were helpless before the power of
58 / Daily He Leads Me Pharaoh, their cruel master, just as we are helpless before the power of our master, Satan, who has bound us in a far worse slavery than theirs and is even more determined than Pharaoh was, not to let us go. Their helplessness was their greatest claim.
Like us, they did not merit t redemption, but they needed it; and the Lord delivered them, not because they were worthy, but because he loved them.
The blood shall be a sign for you, upon the houses where you are; and when| see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt. (Ex 12:13) It brings great comfort to my soul to consider the perfect safety of those who belonged to God and stayed in their bloodsprinkled houses while the angel of the Lord "passed over."
There were no "ifs" or "buts" in the hearts of those Israelites but perfect assurance of safety. "I will pass over you,' was God's word, and they believed it and were at peace. And to us this same word is expressed over and over again in a hundred different ways. Let us then believe him as simply as they did, and our assurance will be as undoubting as theirs.
"For thy sake we are being killed all the day long; / we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." / No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
(Rom 8:36-37) It is only the resurrection life that can be "more than conqueror' in a world like this. And who would not willingly and gladly lose his own self-life in order to find such an allconquering life as this?
Consent then to die. Do not seek to improve or make more beautiful the caterpillar life, for no amount of beauty or improvement can turn the caterpillar into the butterfly. The transition can only come through death. Let the old self-life c die