Exodus 23:20

To bring thee into the place which I have prepared.

Life’s pilgrimage

The angel, the way, the prepared place. It is the Divine key to the mystery of life. Life is emphatically a way. Not by the way of the sea--a prompt and easy path--but by the way of the wilderness, of old God led His pilgrims. The vision of the angel in the way lights up the wilderness. Consider the suggestion of the text as to--

I. The pilgrim’s condition. God’s children must be pilgrims, because this world is not good enough, not bright enough, not capable of being blessed enough, for the pilgrim in his home. For--

1. The instructed soul sees the touch of essential imperfection and the bounds of close limitation in everything here.

2. There is a constant aching of the heart through memory and hope.

3. Life is a pilgrimage because it is far away from the Friend whom we supremely love.

II. The pilgrim’s guide.

1. God has sent His angel before us in the person of His Son.

2. He sends His angel with us in the person of the Holy Ghost.

III. The pilgrim’s way to the pilgrim’s home.

1. It is a way of purposed toil and difficulty, of wilderness, peril, and night. Suffer we must in the wilderness; the one question is, Shall it be with or without the angel of the Lord?

2. It is a way of stern, uncompromising duty. God asks us now simply to do and to bear, and to wait to see the whole reason and reap the whole fruit on high. We must train ourselves to the habit of righteous action, and leave the results to God and eternity.

3. It is a way of death. God promises to none of us an immunity from death. The shadow hangs round life as a drear monitor to all of us. He only who can eye it steadily and fix its form will see that it is angelic and lustrous with the glory beyond. The grave is but the last step of the way by which the angel leads us to the place which He has prepared. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)

Divine guidance

I. There is a Divine way.

1. Through the wilderness.

2. Beset with enemies.

3. Many privations.

4. Contrary to mere human liking.

God’s way is not our way! Ours may be pleasant at first but bitter at last, but God’s way is the reverse; and yet not exactly, for sweets are graciously mingled with the bitters. There is hunger, but there is manna. There is thirst, but there is clear water from the smitten rock. There is perplexity, but there is an angel to guide and protect.

II. This way leads to Divinely-prepared places. Heaven is a specially prepared place. “I go to prepare a place for you.” A place in the best of all places. A home in the best of homes. A dwelling-place where all the abodes are mansions. A seat where all the seats are thrones. A city where all the citizens are kings. What matters it though the way be long and sometimes dreary, so long as the place is so attractive; and we cannot fail to reach it if we obey Divine directions.

III. The travellers on this way are favoured with a Divine guide. Jesus Christ, the Angel of the new covenant, is fully competent to direct and protect. He has trodden every inch of the way.

IV. Divine promises are contingent on the faithful pursuit of Divine methods (Exodus 23:21). The Divine methods are--Caution, obedience, self-restraint, and the entire destruction of all that has the remotest tendency to damage the moral nature. (W. Burrows, B. A.)

The angel of the covenant

I. His nature was Divine.

1. Equal with God.

(1) Bearing the Divine name; “My name is in Him.” The incommunicable covenant name of Jehovah.

(2) Performing Divine actions; “Mine angel shall go,” etc., “I will cut them off.” So New Testament, “I and My father are one.”

2. Distinct from the personality of the speaker, “I send,” so New Testament, “The Father which sent Me.”

II. His office was to conduct the covenant people to the fulfilment of God’s covenant engagement.

1. Providence. “To keep thee in the way.” So Christ “upholds all things by the word of His power.” “In Him all things consist.” Generally and particularly He preserves those who trust in Him (John 10:28).

2. Redemption. “To bring thee into the place which I have prepared.” Israel’s redemption is only half accomplished as yet. So Christ’s eternal redemption is not complete till the last enemy is destroyed (John 14:2).

III. The proper attitude towards Him.

1. Fear. Carefulness not to displease Him. Christ is the Saviour of those only who believe in Him. To others He is a “savour of death unto death.”

2. Obedience. “Obey His voice.” So says the Father in the New Testament (Matthew 17:5); and Himself (Matthew 28:20). This implies

(1) Trust in His person.

(2) Subjection to His authority.

(3) The prosecution of His commands.

IV. The reward of obedience to Him (Exodus 23:22).

1. Identification and sympathy with us in our cause. “I will be an enemy,” etc.

2. Victory over our foes (1 Corinthians 15:57), world, flesh, devil, death, etc.

3. Inheritance in the promised land.

Learn--

1. (2 Timothy 1:9), That God’s grace has been manifested in Jesus Christ from the beginning of the world.

2. That God’s grace has been, through Jesus Christ, with His people up to the present moment.

3. And will be till the end of the world. (J. W. Burn.)

Christ at the head of the column

It is said when the Duke of Wellington, on one occasion, rode up to his retreating army, a soldier happened to see him first and cried out: “Yonder is the Duke of Wellington; God bless him!” and the retreating army had courage to nerve itself afresh and went forward and drove the enemy away. One has said that the Duke of Wellington was worth more at any time than five thousand men. So it would be if we had the Captain of our salvation in front, we would go forward. How gloriously would this Church contend if Christ were visibly in front of them! But the army was sometimes without the Duke of Wellington. There was a place where he could not be. And if Christ were visibly present, He would be present at the same time, only at one church in one locality; it might be in Philadelphia, but what of the thousand other cities? But an unseen Saviour is at the head of the column everywhere. We know He is there. The Captain of our salvation is where two or three are gathered in His Name to inspire us; and to-day, in every city on the face of this globe, where the columns meet to march, His voice sounds “Onward!” in their ears. (M. Simpson, D. D.)

The angel in life

Laws without angels would turn life into weary drudgery. Life has never been left without some touch of the Divine presence and love. From the very first this has been characteristic of our history. The solemn--the grand, fact is, that in our life there is an angel, a spirit, a presence; a ministry without definite name and altogether without measurableness! a gracious ministry, a most tender and comforting service, always operating upon our life’s necessity and our heart’s pain. Let us rest in that conviction for a moment or two until we see how we can establish it by references to facts, experiences, consciousness against which there can be no witness. See how our life is redeemed from baseness by the assumption that an angel is leading it. Who can believe that an angel has been appointed to conduct a life which must end in the grave? The anticlimax is shocking; the suggestion is charged with the very spirit of profanity. If an angel is leading, us, is he leading us to the grave? What is it within us that detests the grave, that turns away from it with aversion, that will not be sent into so low and mean a prison? It is “the Divinity that stirs within us.” Then again, who could ask an angel to be a guest in a heart given up to evil thoughts and purposes? Given the consciousness that an angel is leading us, and instantly a series of preparations must be set up corresponding with the quality and title of the leading angel of our pilgrimage. We prepare for some guests. According to the quality of the guest is the range and costliness of our preparation. Whom our love expects our love provides for. When we are longing for the coming one, saying, “The presence will make the house the sweeter and the brighter, and the speech will fill our life with new poetry and new hope. Oh, why tarry the chariot wheels?” then we make adequate--that is to say, proportionate--preparation. The touch of love is dainty, the invention of love is fertile, the expenditure of love is without a grudge or a murmur,--another touch must be given to the most delicate arrangement; some addition must be made to the most plentiful accommodation; love must run over the programme just once more to see that every line is worthily written. Then the front door must be opened widely, and the arms and the heart, and the whole being to receive the guest of love. And that is so in the higher regions. If an angel is going to lead me, the angel must have a chamber in my heart prepared worthy of myself. Chamber!--nay, the whole heart must be the guest-room; he must occupy every corner of it, and I must array it with robes of purity and brightness that he may feel himself at home, even though he may have come from heaven to do some service for my poor life. Any appeal that so works upon every kind of faculty, upon imagination, conscience, will, force, must be an appeal that will do the life good. It calls us to perfectness, to preparedness, to a nobility corresponding in some degree with the nobility of the guest whom we entertain. The Divine presence in life, by whatever name we may distinguish it, is pledged to two effects, supposing our spirit and our conduct to be right. God undertakes our cause as against our enemies. Would we could leave our enemies in His hands! I do not now speak altogether of merely human enemies--because where there is enmity between man and man, though it never can be justified, yet it admits of such modification in the system of words as to throw responsibility upon both sides--but I speak of other enemies,--the enmity expressed by evil desire, by the pressure of temptation, by all the array against the soul’s health and weal of the principalities of the power of the air, the princes of darkness, the spirits of evil. Send the angel to fight the angel; let the angel of light fight the angel of darkness. The second effect to which the Divine presence in our life is pledged is that we shall be blessed with the contentment which is riches. Thus we have mysteries amongst us which the common or carnal mind cannot understand. Men asking God’s blessing upon what appears to be unblest poverty--men saying it is enough when we can discover next to nothing in the hand uplifted in recognition of Divine goodness. Thus we hear voices coming from the bed of affliction that have in them the subdued tones of absolute triumph; thus the sick-chamber is turned into the church of the house, and if we would recover from dejection, and repining, and sorrow, we must go to the bedside of affliction and learn there how wondrous is the ministry of God’s angel, how perfecting and ennobling the influence of God’s grace. (J. Parker, D. D.)