Exposition of Exodus 17:1–15
1. A Plea for the Expository Method in Preaching
The one supreme object of the Christian ministry is to preach Christ, and Him crucified. The noble roads, by which the Romans bound the Iron Empire together, travelled from the ends of Europe to converge on the golden milestone in the City of the Seven Hills, and all sermons must culminate and find their loftiest purpose in the Divine Redeemer. We must never forget that, as its ministers, we have been allowed of God to be trusted with the gospel, and to us has been committed the ministry of Reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. In the letter which the late Principal Rainy wrote to the Madras College students he said: “We possess nothing so precious, we value nothing so much; we have no source of good so full, fruitful, and enduring; we have nothing to compare with the Lord Jesus Christ. To Him we bear witness.” “Whom we proclaim,” cried the apostle, “admonishing every man, teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ.” Brethren, let us strive and labour towards the same end! Let our Lord Jesus be the one abiding reality with us, in our innermost thought, our private devotions, our ministry, and our preaching! Let Him be first, and last, and midst, and all-in-all! Let us wake with Him in the morning, walk with Him all day, and lie down to sleep in the quiet sense of His presence! To present Him to men, by life and ministry and written or spoken speech, must be the thread on which are strung all the incidents of our varied experiences!
Our ministry also must be cruciform. The thought that our Master was crucified must never be far from our thoughts. Not primarily as teacher, prophet, wonder-worker, or social reformer, but as having been slain from before the foundations of the everlasting hills! “Christ, and Him crucified,” the apostle said.
All the great churches of Europe are cruciform, and all our living and preaching must bear witness, first of all, to that which we also have received, “how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.”
In this connection we may again and again return to the memorable experience of Dr. Chalmers. If any man could have succeeded by the presentation of the high morality and noble example of Christ in winning the hearts of men, it was he; who was so magnetic in his personality, a torrent of fire in eloquence, and great in every quality of manhood? But what things were gain to him, these he counted loss, when, after reading Wilberforce’s “Practical View,” he began to believe in and preach the great doctrines that centre in the Cross. “I am not sensible,” he says, “that all the vehemence with which I urged the virtues and the proprieties of social life had the weight of a feather on the hearts of my parishioners. And it was not till I got impressed of the utter alienation of the heart, in all its desires and affections, from God; and it was not till reconciliation to Him became the distinct and the prominent object of my ministerial exertions; it was not till I took the Scriptural way of laying the method of reconciliation before them; it was not till the free offer of forgiveness through the blood of Christ was urged upon their acceptance, and the Holy Spirit given through Christ’s mediatorship to all who ask for Him was set before them as the unceasing object of their dependence and their prayers, that even those minor reformations began to appear.” This, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter. There is no way of preaching morality so effective as to set forth the kind of character which springs from the love of the redeemed to the Redeemer. What we need is the old, old story preached by new, new men! Ethics by all means; but the fair temple must have its foundations set deep in the death which destroyed Him that had the power of death, and delivered them who throughout their lives had been subject to bondage.
One other point must be borne in mind: Our ministry is a partnership. We are called into the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, who is the gift of the risen Christ, with whom our Master still cooperates with His servants. “So when the Lord Jesus had spoken unto them, He was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word.”
There are days in men’s lives that come unheralded and unannounced, when the full significance of this majestic co-partnership first breaks on their view. No angel-faces look down from heaven, no angel-voices put us on the alert. But as they look back they realize that these were the turning-points, the watershed of their history. It was thus with Moses. The sun rose as usual; the sheep browsed on the scant herbage or lay panting in the shadows of a great rock; the giant forms of red-sandstone mountains bared themselves to the glare of the scorching heat; when suddenly right before him the Bush began to burn with a glow above the brightness of the sun, and a voice from out of its heart said:
“Certainly I will be with thee.”
Immediately he was transformed. He was no longer even an agent or instrument, but a companion and ally. He had simply to walk with God and do His will. He need no longer to be a servant, because henceforth he was permitted as a friend to know the things that his Lord was doing.
Passing to the extreme distance of time given that august theophany, and with the object of bringing such an experience within the reach of ourselves, whose dwarfed and stunted lives can hardly be compared with that of the great Lawgiver, let us recall that memorable experience of Hudson Taylor, the honoured founder of the China Inland Mission. Whilst that mighty agency was but a seed, as he walked one Sunday morning on the Brighton sea-sands it seemed as though the Almighty said to him:
“Hudson Taylor, I am going to evangelize Inland China, and if you will walk with Me, I will do it through you.”
Was it possible, after that, that any burden should seem heavy? God was with him, working out His own purposes, and making his poor barley loaves and small fish enough and to spare.
Similarly, in preaching, there are two, not one, in every pulpit where the true ideal is realized. As in a saw-pit, the workman on the surface is in collusion with his companion in the depth, and the two, with perfect rhythm, cooperate, lifting and depressing the same saw; so the minister, on whom all eyes are fixed, cooperates with One whom none can see, but who is certainly present.
“It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us!”
“I heard a voice saying …”—and this is the voice of the preacher. “Amen, saith the Spirit …”—this is the affirmative and co-witness of the Paraclete. Church members must walk, and ministers must preach, in the paracletism of the Paraclete.
Our mission to the world is only possible of fulfilment in so far as it represents the union of the human and Divine; of our flesh and blood with Him, who still needs our humanity, as He issues forth to achieve the great purposes of redemption. To realise this co-partnership makes us strong and confident, even when confronted by tasks, compared with which the supreme tasks of modern engineering are child’s play.
Each month seems to witness some fresh achievement of human skill, which our fathers would have ridiculed as beyond the realms of reason. And why! Because we are learning to entrap and bridle the Titanic forces of nature. Our ancestors were content to ride a-pillion, or jog through the country in a coach or caravan, or allow the winds to dictate the speed of their sailing vessels. But with us, the roads are devoured by the automobile; the aviator has chartered the fields of air, and steers his aerial ship as he will, independently of currents; the electric train plunges through the subterranean tunnels of our cities, and we can read in Chicago or London messages borne by wireless telegraphy of events happening in mid-Atlantic. Nothing seems too great to attempt or too hard to conquer. The reason for all this lies, of course, in the fact that man has, by patient observation, mastered the laws and conditions on which the great natural forces operate with undeviating precision; and having learnt them, has so suited his machinery that they must work through it to help him.
These laws are, of course, only the statement of the way in which the power acts, but are not the power. In the ultimate analysis the power would be found to be the working of that mighty Being, who is over all, and through all, and in all. But the same power of the same God is at the disposal of every faithful minister of Christ’s gospel who will set himself to discover the laws and conditions on which it works.
What ordinary men accomplish by allegiance with natural forces, through their intelligence, patience, and exact obedience, religious men can accomplish through their alliance with spiritual forces, through their obedience, patience and faith. The natural and spiritual are one. “Howbeit that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual.” The physical and spiritual are different manifestations of the Divine energy, working appropriately on different levels.
As the same power which thunders with deafening roar over Niagara shines with quiet glory in the streets of Buffalo, so the Divine power that throbs in the lower ranges in the steam-engine or electric flash can, in its higher ranges, move a continent to repentance and change three thousand persons from unbelief to faith in the course of a single address.
Now, it will be readily granted that the scientific man, intent on unravelling the secrets of nature and of the utilization of her resources, must study her processes with the utmost accuracy and care, and must obey them in the smallest particular.
Your machinery may be intricate and costly, ingenious and artistic; but if, in one small detail, you have failed to conform to the inexorable requirements of nature, it will refuse to act, and the cunning powers that you wish to catch and use will evade you. The machinery which was to utilize the power of Niagara seemed well-nigh perfect, but it wouldn’t move an inch, though coaxed and almost prayed to condescend to undertake its Herculean task. Finally a great scientist, summoned to the spot at considerable cost, after a ten-minute survey pointed out one trivial omission. When that was adjusted and righted the whole machinery took up its assigned work and has carried its burden ever since.
The same principle prevails for all who will cooperate with the Spirit of God. Men can command Him concerning the work of His hands, if only they obey Him. If you would receive the cooperation of a Force, you must obey the Law of that force’s operation. But remember, it will not abate one jot or tittle of its exacting demands. Heaven and earth may pass away, but no least detail can be surrendered to our ignorance or indolence. Our great Partner is particular to the minutest particulars. “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.” Wherefore we cannot afford to be disobedient to the heavenly vision.
There are, therefore, certain conditions which must be fulfilled, if a minister is to enjoy the helpful partnership of the Spirit. The apostle speaks of “the law of the Spirit of life.” He acts on precise, regular and ascertainable principles. There is no variableness, nor shadow of turning in the putting forth of His energy. Certainly our Lord compares Him to the wind. But even the wind obeys an unalterable law. What can be more definite and regular than the steady current of the trade-winds, which sailors have trusted from the earliest days, when in their tiny craft they ventured to cross the deep! The weather forecast in the daily press, prognosticating the prevailing winds, attests the same fact.
The apostles received what seemed to be a perfect gale of Pentecostal power because they absolutely and completely submitted to the Divine demands. So will it be in the church of to-day.
But what are those conditions? They appear to be these:
1. We must be spiritual men. The natural man—i. e., the man dominated by an excessive egotism, whether revealing itself in sensual passion or in vanity, self-seeking and pride—cannot expect to be a sharer in spiritual power. The centurion could only issue commands with the certainty of being obeyed because he was himself “a man under authority.” The apostles always insisted that the Holy Spirit was given only to those who obeyed the risen and glorified Lord. We must receive the Holy Ghost as a breath from the lips of Jesus before we can know Him as a cooperating gale.
2. We must seek only the glory of Jesus. The main objective of the Holy Spirit in the present age is to glorify Christ. He withdraws Himself from observation with an infinite modesty (if we may use that word), but as light proceeding from an unseen source He casts its full radiance on the face of “the man, Christ Jesus.” It is not likely, therefore, that He will yield Himself to us unless we also are devoted absolutely and in all simplicity to the same end. There is a sense in which the Spirit is not given, because Jesus is not glorified.
3. But—and this is the most pertinent point for our present purpose, the Holy Spirit’s power proceeds along the line of the Word of God, as the electric message along the wires. It is His sword; the life-giving seed which He has vitalized; the word in which the Word is incarnated. Through long centuries He has been at work communicating to prepared natures the thoughts of God, and naturally He avails Himself of His prerogative. The ministry, therefore, which is most carefully based on Scripture and honours Scripture and saturates itself with Scripture is the ministry which the Spirit of Truth can cooperate with in the most perfect abandonment. It is in harmony with these thoughts that in the monument of Bishop Phillips Brooks in Boston, which represents him standing in his pulpit with uplifted right hand, his left hand is pointing to the open Bible, whilst behind him Christ is standing, in the same pulpit, His hand resting on His servant’s shoulder. It must be always so,—the opened Scripture and the cooperating Lord!
We would not, of course, suggest, even for a moment, that only those who adopt the method of expository preaching can claim that cooperating Presence, or that those who pose as expository preachers always enjoy it. God has put too great honour on men of the most diverse characteristics for us to dare to generalize or dogmatize after that fashion. All we are advancing now is, that the more carefully we keep to Scripture, the more of Scripture there is in our sermons, the more we deal with the whole tenor of the Word of God, the more probable it is that we shall supply the Holy Spirit with those arrows which He knows so well how to use, launching them into the hearts of sinners for their conviction, and the more we shall supply Him with the pure milk of the Word for the feeding of babes and the strong meat for the upbuilding of mature character.
In the following papers we will define and illustrate what we conceive to be the true method of Expository Preaching, and then quote a number of reasons why it should bulk much more largely than it does in the ministry of the present day.
The present writer claims some right to speak to his brethren on this theme, as his own method, for better or for worse, has been almost wholly built on this model. In early life, as assistant minister with Rev. C. M. Birrell, he was able to study this method in one of its noblest exponents, and though he has lagged far behind that notable example, he has never ceased to follow its guiding light. It has been his experience that for a rather slender equipment and talent or learning, nothing serves to give such variety and attractiveness to pulpit work as the unstinting unfolding of Scripture in a series of discourses on a biography or a Book. The slender vine needs strong trelliswork (as the oak does not) to support her fragile stem and display her produce to the touch of sun and air!
Exposition of Exodus 17:1–15
Key-verse: “Then came Amalek and fought with Israel in Rephidim …”
On leaving the seashore, the march turned eastward towards the great Sinaitic mountains. The route is inexpressibly grand. On each side of the narrow pass rise peaks and precipices of every form and colour. Gray, red, brown, green, white, and black are the hues of those entrance-gates of the most august temple in the world. From the earliest vestiges of history the Egyptian government had worked, in this valley, mines of copper and turquoise by convict labour. It is not improbable that there were many Hebrews among those wretched beings; and if so, Moses may have taken this route in order to release them.
On leaving Dophkah and entering the Wady Feirân, the whole camp began to suffer severely, owing to the failure of the water supply. The brook which waters the valley was dry, and the presence of vegetation which showed where it occasionally flowed, made the disappointment still more tantalizing. The word “Rephidim” signifies resting-places, and every one had been buoyed up by the happy expectations thus suggested. Obviously the contrast between the hope of the last two days and the reality was the more exasperating.
“And the people thirsted there for water.” Hunger is bad enough to bear, but it affects only one organ of the body, whereas thirst sets the whole being on fire. It mounts to the brain and burns like fever in the blood. The little children were drooping like flowers; and the cattle, on the verge of exhaustion, lay panting on the ground. The scouts, sent into all neighbouring valleys, returned with the one report that there was no water anywhere.
1. The Tempting of Massah. First the people strove with Moses as having led them into this terrible position, ignoring the fact that their route was determined by the pillar of cloud. Their murmurings then became so threatening that Moses actually feared for his life, and finally they began to question whether Jehovah were among them or not. “They tempted the Lord;” i. e., they questioned His providence, doubted His love and care, and suggested that He had deserted them—and all this because He did not act in the way they had expected. Ignoring the lessons of the plagues, the marvels of the Exodus, the triumphant passage of the Red Sea, they actually questioned whether God were with them at all.
The same mood betrays itself to-day. There are abundant evidences of the existence and providence of God written on the page of creation and the tablets of our moral nature; but turning from these, men point to the hunger and thirst, the poverty and misery, the impurity, cruelty and self-will, which are so patent in our civilization, and cry: “If there be a God, why does He permit such things?” Then, when the heavens are still silent, they infer that there is no God; that the sky is an empty eye-socket, and that there is nothing better than to eat and drink, because death is an eternal sleep.
Has not something of that spirit infected our own peace? We have served God from our youth, have ever kept His Kingdom and honour before our eye, have denied ourselves for His sake, have reckoned that there was a special understanding and alliance between Him and us. Then suddenly we have been brought to our Rephidim, without one drop of water. We have come into some terrible situation of personal or relative suffering, have cried out for help, but there has been no evidence of a response. Then we have been inclined to doubt whether our religious life has not been one long deception. Does God care for me? Does He answer prayer? We ought to have said, God is with me; He is steering my boat; He is leading my pilgrimage; He is adequate for every emergency. It is sad indeed to hear the soul querulously plunged in complaint, instead of buoying itself up on victorious faith. Dare to say: God was with me in my childhood, and He will never desert me, now that I am old and grey-headed; He was with me in six troubles, and cannot fail me in the seventh. He that spared not His own Son will in His own time and way certainly give me all things needed for this life and the next.
2. Still the question arises, Why did God allow His people to suffer thus? Without doubt, as is suggested afterwards, it was necessary to reveal them to themselves, that they might know the evil of their own hearts. “Know therefore,” was the incontestable reproof of their leader in after days, “that the Lord thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness; for thou art a stiff-necked people. Remember, forget thou not, how thou provokest the Lord thy God to wrath in the wilderness, from the day that thou wentest forth out of the land of Egypt.”
This stern discipline was also intended to make them rely on God rather than on Moses or circumstances. He suffered them to thirst, that He might make them know that man doth not live by rains and rivers only, but by God’s providence, however it may come. Take, for instance, the child of wealth, whose estates, stocks, shares and bank-balance are a fourfold wall of iron against the intrusion of want. For such the daily providence of God is a nonentity. It is when all these have ceased to be his, and he is compelled to hang on the daily care of God, with no obvious means of support, that he offers the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer with absolute sincerity.
But there was a deeper reason than these. At the Exodus the Sinaitic peninsula was largely covered by the roving tribe of Amalek. This people was of great antiquity; indeed, Balaam said, “Amalek was the first of the nations.” Driven by Assyria from their early seat by the Persian gulf, they had travelled southwards, until they held the fastnesses of the desert as their own. They did not challenge the hosts of Israel on their arrival from their Egyptian bondage because they understood their destination to be Canaan, the route to which would soon take them out of their territories, or because they had left the seaboard for mountain pastures, clothed at that period in their most attractive dress. But when Israel marched southwards, their progress was eyed with the utmost jealousy and suspicion. It was extremely distasteful to the Amalekite chieftains to learn that these aliens were enjoying the abundant pastures and palm groves of an oasis like Elim. Probably a council of war was held, at which it was unanimously agreed that measures must be concerted for the arrest and turning back of the march. After the manner of the East, messengers had been sent out far and wide to summon all the available forces of the peninsula to the conflict, and until they assembled, orders were issued that light-armed troops should hang on the rear of the Israelites, cutting off its stragglers, pillaging its baggage and doing as much damage as possible. “Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way as ye came forth out of Egypt, and how he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not God.”
As God looked down on the land through which His people were slowly wending their way, He beheld those gathering hosts. He saw them mustering from the rocky fastnesses of Petra, from the rich pasture-grounds of Kadesh, and from the rolling downs, in which the mighty roots of the Lebanon-range end. It may be that at the very hour when this murmuring was rife, these marshalled hosts were within an hour’s march of the camp of Israel. He knew it all and suffered them to thirst that on the background of their pain He might work a supreme miracle of power, which would be their fortress and stronghold in the day of Amalek’s attack.
The composure with which Moses prepared to resist Amalek; the absolute confidence with which Israel fell in with his measures of resistance, and the courage with which these undisciplined troops fought their first fight—would all be inexplicable unless we had had the record of that marvellous interposition which supplied water from the rock on the very eve of their fight.
Is not that the key to much of our own experience? Does not God lead us into sore straits, and deliver us out of them, that we may be prepared for greater troubles which He sees ahead. He smites rocks of granite, to touch which blisters our hands, and makes even these to yield supplies, that when presently we descry the troops of Amalek drawn up to dispute and arrest our progress, we may be of good courage and know that the Lord will fight for us.
3. The Lesson of the Uplifted Rod. We are told that Joshua discomfited Amalek with the edge of the sword, but the edge of the sword would have been unavailing had it not been for that uplifted rod!
At the opening of the battle the great leader was seen by the troops ascending a spur of rock, and first standing, then sitting, with the rod of God in his hand. Hour after hour he remained there with the rod uplifted, and as the afternoon advanced in that long, hard-fought day, it was noticed that on either side a venerable man stayed up his hands until the going down of the sun. That attitude has always been interpreted as significant of intercessory prayer. There are many among us who cannot go down into the battle, but who can sit on their chair or lie on their couch and pray. But prayer is labour. We are told of Epaphras, when far from his people, that he laboured in prayer for the Colossian church. Without doubt prayer of the right kind means strenuous and exhausting labour. Like Moses, the soul that has learnt to travail in prayer needs up-bearing by stalwart friends. And such prayer makes all the difference in our fight against principalities and powers. When the arms of the church are uplifted, her troops prevail; and when let down, they are defeated. Amalek could not connect the two, but Israel connected them. The outside world cannot understand just now why the church is losing her hold on the masses, and her additions are so few; but we know—her arms are sunken to the ground. If only they could be uplifted again, as in the ancient days, the legions of the cross would quickly regain the ground that they have lost.
Why do you fail in your conflict against sin? Because you have ceased to pray. Why does that young Christian prevail? In the first place, he prays for himself; but, also, there are those who love him in distant places, who would think that they sinned if they ceased to pray for him.
This is all true, but there is a further truth. There is no word about prayer in the narrative, and sitting is not precisely the attitude of prayer. Were not that uplifted hand and rod rather the symbols of the presence and help of God? Moses not only prayed that God would help, but affirmed by his attitude that He was helping, and that Amalek was being driven before the Lord and His host. This interpretation is confirmed by the subsequent action of Moses, in building an altar and calling it Jehovah-nissi; i. e., “The Lord is my banner.” The banner used of the ancients was only a pole, with a bright metal ornament at the top. Moses’ rod, therefore, was a banner in the Oriental sense; but a banner for what? For the host of Israel? No; but for that other host, the host of God’s unseen embattled warriors. Well was it that this should be written in a book and rehearsed for Joshua. It was thus that he received the first inkling of the great truth which was fully revealed to him on the plains of Jericho, when the Angel of the Covenant said, “I am come as captain of another host, a third host—the Lord’s!”
This is the key to victory. You may be peevish and petulant to-day because you look only to Moses; i. e., to human strength and help; but directly you look beyond Moses to God, you become strong and glad, and in Rephidim, the name of which you had changed to Meribah or Massah, you shall gain the victory of your life.
4. There is a mystical side to all this. Of course, Israel stands for the church in her warfare against the wicked spirits that rule the darkness of this world. Amalek stands for all that opposes the Kingdom of our God, and which resists the deliverance of the world from the hand of its enemy. “We wrestle, not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers.” The Rock is obviously our Lord Jesus, who was smitten for us and bruised for our sins. Out of His side, pierced by one of the soldiers, issued forth blood and water. “Rock of Ages cleft for me! Let the water and the blood from Thy riven side that flowed.”
The church must drink of that Water. Israel drank of the spiritual Rock, and that Rock was Christ. We without stint may drink of His gift, which is the Holy Ghost. And then will we be able to cope with her spiritual foes. Pentecost preceded the first sufferings and missionary efforts of the church; and it must always be so, both with the individual and the community.
Drink deeply, O children of God, for Amalek will be upon you to-morrow; but he will have no power at all against those who have cleansed themselves in the healing stream of the blood, and have learned to drink of that Living Water.