For in this Passion Week God did that which utterly and perfectly showed forth his glory, as it never has been shown forth before or since. In this week Jesus Christ, the incarnate God, died on the cross for man, and showed that his name, his character, his glory was love—love without bound or end.
It was to teach us this that the special services, lessons, collects, epistles, and gospels of this week were chosen.
The second lesson, the collects, the epistles, the gospel for to-day, all set before us the patience of Christ, the humility of Christ, the love of Christ, the self-sacrifice of Christ, the Lamb without spot, enduring all things that he might save sinful man.
But if so, what does this first lesson—the chapter of Exodus from which my text is taken—what does it teach us concerning God? Does it teach us that his name is love?
At first sight you would think that it did not. At first sight you would fancy that it spoke of God in quite a different tone from the second lesson.
In the second lesson, the words of Jesus the Son of God are all gentleness, patience, tenderness. A quiet sadness hangs over them all. They are the words of one who is come (as he said himself), not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them; not to punish sins, but to wash them away by his own most precious blood.
But in the first lesson how differently he seems to speak. His words there are the words of a stern and awful judge, who can, and who will destroy whatsoever interferes with his will and his purpose.
‘I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and on thy servants, and all thy people, that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth.’ The cattle and sheep shall be destroyed with murrain; man and beast shall be tormented with boils and blains; the crops shall be smitten with hail; the locusts shall eat up every green thing in the land; and at last all the first-born of Egypt shall die in one night, and the land be filled with mourning, horror, and desolation, before the anger of this terrible God, who will destroy and destroy till he makes himself obeyed.
Can this be he who rode into Jerusalem, as on this day, meek and lowly, upon an ass’s colt; who on the night that he was betrayed washed his disciples’ feet, even the feet of Judas who betrayed him? Who prayed for his murderers as he hung upon the cross, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?’
Can these two be the same?