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SERMON IX.  MOSES

(Fifth Sunday in Lent.)

EXODUS iii. 14.  And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM.

And now, my friends, we are come, on this Sunday, to the most beautiful, and the most important story of the whole Bible—excepting of course, the story of our Lord Jesus Christ—the story of how a family grew to be a great nation.  You remember that I told you that the history of the Jews, had been only, as yet, the history of a family.

Now that family is grown to be a great tribe, a great herd of people, but not yet a nation; one people, with its own God, its own worship, its own laws; but such a mere tribe, or band of tribes as the gipsies are among us now; a herd, but not a nation.

Then the Bible tells us how these tribes, being weak I suppose because they had no laws, nor patriotism, nor fellow-feeling of their own, became slaves, and suffered for hundreds of years under crafty kings and cruel taskmasters.

Then it tells us how God delivered them out of their slavery, and made them free men.  And how God did that (for God in general works by means), by the means of a man, a prophet and a hero, one great, wise, and good man of their race—Moses.

It tells us, too, how God trained Moses, by a very strange education, to be the fit man to deliver his people.

Let us go through the history of Moses; and we shall see how God trained him to do the work for which God wanted him.

Let us read from the account of the Bible itself.  I should be sorry to spoil its noble simplicity by any words of my own: ‘And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them.  Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.  And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land.  Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens.  And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithon and Raamses. . . .  And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.  And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi.  And the woman conceived and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months.  And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein: and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.  And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.  And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river’s side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.  And when she had opened it, she saw the child; and behold the babe wept.  And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews’ children.  Then said his sister to Pharaoh’s daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee?  And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go.  And the maid went and called the child’s mother.  And Pharaoh’s daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages.  And the woman took the child, and nursed it.  And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son.  And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.’

Moses, the child of the water.  St. Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews says that Moses was called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; that is, adopted by her.  We read elsewhere that he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, of which there can be no doubt from his own writings, especially that part called Moses’ law.

So that Moses had from his youth vast advantages.  Brought up in the court of the greatest king of the world, in one of the greatest cities of the world, among the most learned priesthood in the world, he had learned, probably, all statesmanship, all religion, which man could teach him in those old times.

But that would have been little for him.  He might have become merely an officer in Pharaoh’s household, and we might never have heard his name, and he might never have done any good to his own people and to all mankind after them, as he has done, if there had not been something better and nobler in him than all the learning and statesmanship of the Egyptians.

For there was in Moses the spirit of God; the spirit which makes a man believe in God, and trust God.  ‘And therefore,’ says St. Paul, ‘he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; esteeming the reproach of Christ better than all the treasures in Egypt.’

And how did he do that?  In this wise.

The spirit of God and of Christ is also the spirit of justice, the spirit of freedom; the spirit which hates oppression and wrong; which is moved with a noble and Divine indignation at seeing any human being abused and trampled on.

And that spirit broke forth in Moses.  ‘And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren.  And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.’

If he cannot get justice for his people, he will do some sort of rough justice for them himself, when he has an opportunity.

But he will see fair play among his people themselves.  They are, as slaves are likely to be, fallen and base; unjust and quarrelsome among themselves.

‘And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?  And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me as thou killedst the Egyptian?  And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known.  Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses.  But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian’—the wild desert between Egypt and the Holy Land.

So he bore the reproach of Christ; the reproach which is apt to fall on men in bad times, when they try, like our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver the captive, and let the oppressed go free, and execute righteous judgment in the earth.  He had lost all, by trying to do right.  He had been powerful and honoured in Pharaoh’s court.  Now he was an outcast and wanderer in the desert.  He had made his first trial, and failed.  As St. Stephen said of him after, he supposed that his brethren would have understood how God would deliver them by his hand; but they understood not.  Slavish, base, and stupid, they were not fit yet for Moses and his deliverance.

And so forty years went on, and Moses was an old man of eighty years of age.  Yet God had not had mercy on his poor countrymen in Egypt.

It must have been a strange life for him, the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter; brought up in the court of the most powerful and highly civilized country of the old world; learned in all the learning of the Egyptians; and now married into a tribe of wild Arabs, keeping flocks in the lonely desert, year after year: but, no doubt, thinking, thinking, year after year, as he fed his flocks alone.  Thinking over all the learning which he had gained in Egypt, and wondering whether it would ever be of any use to him.  Thinking over the misery of his people in Egypt, and wondering whether he should ever be able to help them.  Thinking, too, and more than all, of God—of God’s promise to Abraham and his children.  Would that ever come true?  Would God help these wretched Jews, even if he could not?  Was God faithful and true, just and merciful?

That Moses thought of God, that he never lost faith in God for that forty years, there can be no doubt.

If he had not thought of God, God would not have revealed himself to him.  If he had lost faith in God, he would not have known that it was God who spoke to him.  If he had lost faith in God, he would not have obeyed God at the risk of his life, and have gone on an errand as desperate, dangerous, hopeless—and, humanly speaking, as wild as ever man went upon.

But Moses never lost faith or patience.  He believed, and he did not make haste.  He waited for God; and he did not wait in vain.  No man will wait in vain.  When the time was ready; when the Jews were ready; when Pharaoh was ready; when Moses himself, trained by forty years’ patient thought, was ready; then God came in his own good time.

And Moses led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.  And there he saw a bush—probably one of the low copses of acacia—burning with fire; and behold the bush was not consumed.  Then out of the bush God spoke to Moses with an audible voice as of a man; so the Bible says plainly, and I see no reason to doubt that it is literally true.

‘Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.  And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.  And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.’

Then followed a strange conversation.  Moses was terrified at the thought of what he had to do, and reasonably: moreover, the Israelites in Egypt had forgotten God.  ‘And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?  And God said unto Moses, I Am that I Am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you.’

I Am; that was the new name by which God revealed himself to Moses.  That message of God to Moses was the greatest Gospel, and good news which was spoken to men, before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Ay, we are feeling now, in our daily life, in our laws and our liberty, our religion and our morals, our peace and prosperity, in the happiness of our homes, and I trust that of our consciences, the blessed effects of that message, which God revealed to Moses in the wilderness thousands of years ago.

And Moses took his wife, and his sons, and set them upon an ass, and returned into the land of Egypt, to say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn, Let my son go that he may serve me, and if thou let not my firstborn go, then I will slay thy firstborn.’

A strange man, on a strange errand.  A poor man, eighty years old, carrying all that he had in the world upon an ass’s back, going down to the great Pharaoh, the greatest king of the old world, the great conqueror, the Child of the Sun (as his name means), one of the greatest Pharaohs who ever sat on the throne of Egypt; in the midst of all his princes and priests, and armies with which he had conquered the nations far and wide; and his great cities, temples, and palaces, on which men may see at this day (so we are told) the face of that very Pharaoh painted again and again, as fresh, in that rainless air, as on the day when the paint was laid on; with the features of a man terrible, proud, and cruel, puffed up by power till he thought himself, and till his people thought him a god on earth.

And to that man was Moses going, to bid him set the children of Israel free; while he himself was one of that very slave-race of the Israelites, which was an abomination to the Egyptians, who held them all as lepers and unclean, and would not eat with them; and an outcast too, who had fled out of Egypt for his life, and who might be killed on the spot, as Pharaoh’s only answer to his bold request.  Certainly, if Moses had not had faith in God, his errand would have seemed that of a madman.  But Moses had faith in God; and of faith it is said, that it can remove mountains, for all things are possible to them who believe.

So by faith Moses went back into Egypt; how he fared there we shall hear next Sunday.

And what sort of man was this great and wonderful Moses, whose name will last as long as man is man?  We know very little.  We know from the Bible and from the old traditions of the Jews that he was a very handsome man; a man of a noble presence, as one can well believe; a man of great bodily vigour; so that when he died at the age of one hundred and twenty, his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.  We know, from his own words, that he was slow of speech; that he had more thought in him than he could find words for—very different from a good many loud talkers, who have more words than thoughts, and who get a great character as politicians and demagogues, simply because they have the art of stringing fine words together, which Moses, the true demagogue, the leader of the people, who led them indeed out of Egypt, had not.  Beyond that we know little.  Of his character one thing only is said: but that is most important.  ‘Now the man Moses was very meek.’

Meek: we know that that cannot mean that he was meek in the sense that he was a poor, cowardly, abject sort of man, who dared not speak his mind, dared not face the truth, and say the truth.  We have seen that that was just what he was not; brave, determined, out-spoken, he seems to have been from his youth.  Indeed, if his had been that base sort of meekness, he never would have dared to come before the great king Pharaoh.  If he had been that sort of man he never would have dared to lead the Jews through the Red Sea by night, or out of Egypt at all.  If he had been that sort of man, indeed, the Jews would never have listened to him.  No; he had—the Bible tells us that he had—to say and do stern things again and again; to act like the general of an army, or the commander of a ship of war, who must be obeyed, even though men’s lives be the forfeit of disobedience.

But the man Moses was very meek.  He had learned to keep his temper.  Indeed, the story seems to say that he never lost his temper really but once; and for that God punished him.  Never man was so tried, save One, even our Lord Jesus Christ, as was Moses.  And yet by patience he conquered.  Eighty years had he spent in learning to keep his temper; and when he had learned to keep his temper, then, and not till then, was he worthy to bring his people out of Egypt.  That was a long schooling, but it was a schooling worth having.

And if we, my friends, spend our whole lives, be they eighty years long, in learning to keep our tempers, then will our lives have been well spent.  For meekness and calmness of temper need not interfere with a man’s courage or justice, or honest indignation against wrong, or power of helping his fellow-men.  Moses’ meekness did not make him a coward or a sluggard.  It helped him to do his work rightly instead of wrongly; it helped him to conquer the pride of Pharaoh, and the faithlessness, cowardice, and rebellion of his brethren, those miserable slavish Jews.  And so meekness, an even temper, and a gracious tongue, will help us to keep our place among our fellow-men with true dignity and independence, and to govern our households, and train our children in such a way that while they obey us they will love and respect us at the same time.

SERMON X.  THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT

(Palm Sunday.)

EXODUS ix. 13, 14.  Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me.  For I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people; that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth.

You will understand, I think, the meaning of the ten plagues of Egypt better, if I explain to you in a few words what kind of a country Egypt is, what kind of people the Egyptians were.  Some of you, doubtless, know as well as I, but some here may not: it is for them I speak.

Egypt is one of the strangest countries in the world; and yet one which can be most simply described.  One long straight strip of rich flat land, many hundred miles long, but only a very few miles broad.  On either side of it, barren rocks and deserts of sand, and running through it from end to end, the great river Nile—‘The River’ of which the Bible speaks.  This river the Egyptians looked on as divine: they worshipped it as a god; for on it depended the whole wealth of Egypt.  Every year it overflows the whole country, leaving behind it a rich coat of mud, which makes Egypt the most inexhaustibly fertile land in the world; and made the Egyptians, from very ancient times, the best farmers of the world, the fathers of agriculture.  Meanwhile, when not in flood, the river water is of the purest in the world; the most delightful to drink; and was supposed in old times to be a cure for all manner of diseases.

To worship this sacred river, the pride of their land, to drink it, to bathe in it, to catch the fish which abound in it, and which formed then, and forms still, the staple food of the Egyptians, was their delight.  And now I have told you enough to show you why the plagues which God sent on Egypt began first by striking the river.

The river, we read, was turned into blood.  What that means—whether it was actual animal blood—what means God employed to work the miracle—are just the questions about which we need not trouble our minds.  We never shall know: and we need not know.  The plain fact is, that the sacred river, pure and life-giving, became a detestable mass of rottenness—and with it all their streams and pools, and drinking water in vessels of wood and stone—for all, remember, came from the Nile, carried by canals and dykes over the whole land.  ‘And the fish that were in the river died, and the river stunk, and there was blood through all the land of Egypt.’

The slightest thought will show us what horror, confusion, and actual want and misery, the loss of the river water, even for a few days or even hours, would cause.

But there is more still in this miracle.  These plagues are a battle between Jehovah, the one true and only God Almighty, and the false gods of Egypt, to prove which of them is master.

Pharaoh answers: ‘Who is Jehovah (the Lord) that I should let Israel go?’  I know not the Jehovah.  I have my own god, whom I worship.  He is my father, and I his child, and he will protect me.  If I obey any one it will be him.

Be it so, says Moses in the name of God.  Thou shalt know that the idols of Egypt are nothing, that they cannot deliver thee nor thy people.

Thus saith Jehovah, Thou shalt know which is master, I or they.  ‘Thou shalt know that I am the Lord.’

So the river was turned into blood.  The sacred river was no god, as they thought.  Jehovah was the Lord and Master of the river on which the very life of Egypt depended.  He could turn it into blood.  All Egypt was at his mercy.

But Pharaoh would not believe that.  ‘The magicians did likewise with their enchantments’—made, we may suppose, water seem to turn to blood by some juggling trick at which the priests in Egypt were but too well practised; and Pharaoh seemed to have made up his mind that Moses’ miracle was only a juggling trick too.  For men will make up their minds to anything, however absurd, when they choose to do so: when their pride, and rage, and obstinacy, and covetousness, draw them one way, no reason will draw them the other way.  They will find reasons, and make reasons to prove, if need be, that there is no sun in the sky.

Then followed a series of plagues, of which we have all often heard.

Learned men have disputed how far these plagues were miracles.  Some of them are said not to be uncommon in Egypt, others to be almost unknown.  But whether they—whether the frogs, for instance, were not produced by natural causes, just as other frogs are; and the lice and the flies likewise; that I know not, my friends, neither need I know.  If they were not, they were miraculous; and if they were, they were miraculous still.  If they came as other vermin come, they would have still been miraculous: God would still have sent them; and it would be a miracle that God should make them come at that particular time in that particular country, to work a truly miraculous effect upon the souls of Pharaoh and the Egyptians on the one hand, and of Moses and the Israelites on the other.  But if they came by some strange means as no vermin ever came before or since, all I can say is—Why not?

And the Lord said unto Moses, ‘Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice throughout all the land of Egypt.’

Whether that was meant only as a sign to the Egyptians, or whether the dust did literally turn into lice, we do not know, and what is more, we need not know; if God chose that it should be so, so it would be.  If you believe at all that God made the world, it is folly to pretend to set any bounds to his power.  As a wise man has said, ‘If you believe in any real God at all, you must believe that miracles can happen.’  He makes you and me and millions of living things out of the dust of the ground continually by certain means.  Why can he not make lice, or anything else out of the dust of the ground, without those means?  I can give no reason, nor any one else either.

We know that God has given all things a law which they cannot break.  We know, too, that God will never break his own laws.  But what are God’s laws by which he makes things?  We do not know.

Miracles may be—indeed must be—only the effect of some higher and deeper laws of God.  We cannot prove that he breaks his law, or disturbs his order by them.  They may seem contrary to some of the very very few laws of God’s earth which we do know.  But they need not be contrary to the very many laws which we do not know.  In fact, we know nothing about the matter, and had best not talk of things that we do not understand.  As for these things being too wonderful to be true—that is an argument which only deserves a smile.  There are so many wonders in the world round us already, all day long, that the man of sense will feel that nothing is too wonderful to be true.

The truth is, that, as a wise man says, Custom is the great enemy of Faith, and of Reason likewise; and one of the worst tricks which custom plays us is, making us fancy that miraculous things cease to be miraculous by becoming common.

What do I mean?

This: which every child in this church can understand.

You think it very wonderful that God should cause frogs to come upon the whole land of Egypt in one day.  But that God should cause frogs to come up every spring in the ditches does not seem wonderful to you at all.  It happens every year; therefore, forsooth, there is nothing wonderful in it.

Ah, my dear friends, it is custom which blinds our eyes to the wisdom of God, and the wonders of God, and the power of God, and the glory of God, and hinders us from believing the message with which he speaks to us from every sunbeam and every shower, every blade of grass and every standing pool.  ‘Is anything too hard for the Lord?’

If any man here says that anything is too hard for the Lord, let him go this day to the nearest standing pool, and look at the frog-spawn therein, and consider it till he confesses his blindness and foolishness.  That spawn seems to you a foul thing, the produce of mean, ugly, contemptible creatures.  Be it so.  Yet it is to the eyes of the wise man a yearly miracle; a thing past understanding, past explaining; one which will make him feel the truth of that great 139th Psalm: ‘Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.  Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?  If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there also.’

That every one of those little black spots should have in it life—What is life?  How did it get into that black spot? or, to speak more carefully, is the life in the black spot at all?  Is not the life in the Spirit of God, who is working on that spot, as I believe?  How has that black spot the power of growing, and of growing on a certain and fixed plan, merely by the quickening power of the sun’s heat, and then of feeding itself, and of changing its shape, as you all know, again and again, till—and if that is not wonderful, what is?—it turns into a frog, exactly like its parent, utterly unlike the black dot at which it began?  Is that no miracle?  Is it no miracle that not one of those black spots ever turns into anything save a frog?  Why should not some of them turn into toads or efts?  Why not even into fishes or serpents?  Why not?  The eggs of all those animals, in their first and earliest stages are exactly alike; the microscope shows no difference.  Ay, even the mere animal and the human being, strange and awful as it may be, seem, under the microscope, to have the same beginning.  And yet one becomes a mere animal, and the other a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.  What causes this but the power of God, making of the same clay one vessel to honour and another to dishonour?  And yet people will not believe in miracles!  Why does each kind turn into its kind?  Answer that.  Because it is a law of nature?  Not so!  There are no laws of nature.  God is a law to nature.  It is his will that things so should be; and when it is his will they will not be so, but otherwise.

Not laws of nature, but the Spirit of God, as the Psalms truly say, gives life and breath to all things.  Of him and by him is all.  As the greatest chemist of our time says, ‘Causes are the acts of God—creation is the will of God.’

And he that is wise and strong enough to create frogs in one way in every ditch at this moment, is he not wise and strong enough to create frogs by some other way, if he should choose, whether in Egypt of old, or now, here, this very day?

Whatsoever means, or no means at all, God used to produce those vermin, the miracle remains the same.  He sent them to do a work, and they did it.  He sent them to teach Egyptian and Israelite alike that he was the Maker, and Lord, and Ruler of the world, and all that therein is; that he would have his way, and that he could have his way.

Intensely painful and disgusting these plagues must have been to the Egyptians, for this reason, that they were the most cleanly of all people.  They had a dislike of dirt, which had become quite a superstition to them.  Their priests (magicians as the Bible calls them) never wore any garments but linen, for fear of their harbouring vermin of any kind.  And this extreme cleanliness of theirs the next plague struck at; they were covered with boils and diseases of skin, and the magicians could not stand before Pharaoh by reason of the boils.  They became unclean and unfit for their office; they could perform no religious ceremonies, and had to flee away in disgrace.

After plagues of thunder, hail, and rain, which seldom or never happen in that rainless land of Egypt; after a plague of locusts, which are very rare there, and have to come many hundred miles if they come at all; of darkness, seemingly impossible in a land where the sun always shines: then came the last and most terrible plague of all.  After solemn warnings of what was coming, the angel of the Lord passed through the land of Egypt, and smote all the first-born in Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh upon his throne to the first-born of the captive in the dungeon; and there arose a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house in which there was not one dead.  A terrible and heart-rending calamity in any case, enough to break the heart of all Egypt; and it did break the heart of Egypt, and the proud heart of Pharaoh himself, and they let the people go.

But this was a religious affliction too.  Most of these first-born children—probably all the first-born of the priests and nobles, and of Pharaoh himself—were consecrated to some god.  They bore the name of the god to whom they belonged; that god was to prosper and protect them, and behold, he could not.  The Lord Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews, was stronger than all the gods of Egypt; none of them could deliver their servants out of his hand.  He was the only Lord of life and death; he had given them life, and he could take it away, in spite of all and every one of the gods of the Egyptians.

So the Lord God showed himself to be the Master and Lord of all things.  The Lord of the sacred river Nile; the Lord of the meanest vermin which crept on the earth; the Lord of the weather—able to bring thunder and hail into a land where thunder and hail was never seen before; the Lord of the locust swarms—able to bring them over the desert and over the sea to devour up every green thing in the land, and then to send a wind off the Mediterranean Sea, and drive the locusts away to the eastward; the Lord of light—who could darken, even in that cloudless land, the very sun, whom Pharaoh worshipped as his god and his ancestor; and lastly, the Lord of human life and death—able to kill whom he chose, when he chose, and as he chose.  The Lord of the earth and all that therein is; before whom all men, even proud Pharaoh, must bow and confess, ‘Is anything too hard for the Lord?’

And now, I always tell you that each fresh portion of the Old Testament reveals to men something fresh concerning the character of God.  You may say, These plagues of Egypt reveal God’s mighty power, but what do they reveal of his character?  They reveal this: that there is in God that which, for want of a better word, we must call anger; a quite awful sternness and severity; not only a power to punish, but a determination to punish, if men will not take his warnings—if men will not obey his will.