Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1440
“And you shall say unto Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is My son, even My firstborn: and I say unto you, Let My son go, that he may serve Me.” Exodus 4:22,23.
“Then the Lord said unto Moses, Now shall you see what I will do to Pharaoh.”
Exodus 6:1.
GOD had a people in Egypt. They were His own, the people of His choice. Although they had been grievously oppressed and had sunk into ignominious slavery, His interest in their welfare had in no degree lessened. The Lord’s purpose in sending Moses down into Egypt was that He might fetch out that people from among the nations to make them a separate people to Himself that He might give them an inheritance, even the land which flowed with milk and honey and that they might dwell there as witnesses of His Covenant and keep His Testimonies. Now precisely what God was doing towards His people, Israel, in the land of Ham, He is doing towards His own chosen ones throughout the whole world.
From one point of view the object of the Gospel is to gather out from among the nations a people whom He did foreknow, whom He did predestinate, whom He has redeemed unto Himself to be His peculiar heritage. These are to be fetched out from among others. They are to be made a separate people to be brought into a distinct position and to have a distinct experience. “The people shall dwell alone; they shall not be reckoned among the nations” and they are ultimately to be brought to a prepared place for which they are to be especially prepared that they may abide there and that the Lord may verify the thing that He has predicted of them, “They shall be Mine in that day when I make up My jewels.”
The work of rescuing perishing sinners out of the present evil world is as worthy of God as the work of delivering Israel out of Egypt. The same right hand of Jehovah, glorious in power, which released the sons of Jacob from the thralldom of Pharaoh, is now stretched out to ransom us from the dominion of Satan! The song of praise to Jesus Christ our Redeemer shall be more exultant than that which Miriam and the daughters of Israel lifted up by the Red Sea when they said, “Come let us sing unto the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously.” Indeed, we shall sing at the last, the song of Moses, the servant of God and the song of the Lamb, clearly indicating that the redemption out of Egypt was always meant to be a leading type of the redemption of God’s people from out of the midst of the world, for Christ has a people whom He has redeemed from among men, and there is a Church of which it is written, “Christ loved His Church and gave Himself for it.”
Now, in the process of bringing out these people of God from among the mass of mankind, God sometimes uses instrumentality just as He did in the former case. He may employ an instrument that is apparently as little adapted for the work as Moses felt himself to be. Yet the work is done and to God belongs the honor of accomplishing it. As for those of us whom He uses, we are more than content to yield the honor to Him. We rejoice in His excellency while we feel that we cannot take to ourselves any credit whatever—for we are less than nothing in His sight—and even in our own sight we are weak and worthless, so that unto God, alone, shall the glory redound when redemption’s work is finished and complete!
I invite you to think, first of all, upon the voice of God. According to our text, it is, “Thus says the Lord, Israel is My son, even My firstborn: and I say unto you, Let My son go, that he may serve Me.” When we have dilated a little upon that, we shall need to have a few words upon the voice of man. This was to be the voice of man, “You shall say unto Pharaoh, Thus says the Lord.” What God had spoken was to be repeated by His servant, Moses. Then we shall close by
noticing, in the third place, the power which was to go with this voice of man. “I will be with your mouth and you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh.”
I. Let us endeavor, then, at the outset, to fix our thoughts upon THE VOICE OF GOD which was a real power to bring up His people out of Egypt. That voice was threefold—asserting His proprietorship in them, demanding their freedom and ordaining their destiny. With imperial authority He claims the people as His own. “Thus says the Lord, Israel is My son, even My firstborn.” The Lord knows them that are His and the Lord declared them to be His own with a jealousy of His inalienable right to their allegiance and an assertion of His unfailing interest in their welfare. The children of Israel were, at that time, in a very sordid condition. They were up to their necks in clay, making bricks. They were a band of slaves, degraded, brought down to the lowest condition. They were so spiritless that they submitted to any exaction of the tyrant and when the day of deliverance dawned on them, they could not think emancipation possible, or welcome the joyful change in their prospects.