Exodus 12:51

REFLECTIONS

Reader! you and I can hardly enough contemplate the Lord's goodness to Israel as recorded in this chapter; and never can we sufficiently adore the divine mercy, when we consider our interest in it. Oh! what a night of deliverance did the Lord work for them after the rigorous bondage of four hundred years! What a series of troubles he had supported them under, and brought them through, in defiance of all the oppressions of the enemy! And with what an high hand did he at length carry everything before them, when the moment of his salvation was come. Truly might their leader say, "It is a night much to be observed unto the Lord of all the children of Israel in their generations forever. This month shall be to you the beginning of months, the first month of the year." It is indeed a new month, a new year, new life, new privileges, new enjoyments. And well may everyone that reads the wonderful narration exclaim, What hath God wrought?

But, my Brother! while beholding Israel's emancipation from Egypt, let us seek grace to contemplate a still far greater deliverance, of which this was but the type; even the recovery of our poor fallen nature from under hellish bondage, by the glorious redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the night indeed, ever to be remembered by us, even the night of sin and death, in which we lay, when Jesus our Almighty Passover passed over the houses of his people, and carried ruin and destruction amidst all the enemies which held our souls in vassalage and in misery, Surely, we may well cry out with the Psalmist, O sing unto the Lord a new song: sing unto the Lord all the earth. Sing unto the Lord and praise his name: be telling of his salvation from day to day.

Dearest and ever blessed Jesus! since thou hast condescended to be our Passover, help us by the sweet influences of thine Holy Spirit to keep the feast, not in the old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. And oh! let the blood of the everlasting covenant be sprinkled upon our hearts, that it may be our security from the condemning sentence of the law, and from all the dreadful evils of destruction consequent thereupon. Enable me by precious faith to feed upon thy precious body: and make it to be meat indeed, and thy blood drink indeed, to support and nourish me in my spiritual life. And grant that, like the believing Israelite, I may eat it with my loins girded about with truth, and my feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. And like him also, with my staff in my hand ready to be gone and in haste to depart, that when thou shalt come, whether at midnight, or at cock-crowing, or in the morning, I may be found waiting thy approach, and go up with a high hand out of the spiritual Egypt of sin and death, to the possession of the everlasting Canaan of promise.