II. It remains for us to explain, very briefly, the glorious colloquy in the text—the interrogatives of the church, and the answers of Messiah.
How great was the wonder and joy of Mary, when she met the Master at the tomb, clothed in immortality, where she thought to find him shrouded in death! How unspeakable was the astonishment and rapture of the disciples, when their Lord, whom they had so recently buried, came into the house where they were assembled, and said—“Peace be unto you!” Such are the feelings which the church is represented as expressing in this sublime colloquy with the Captain of her salvation. He has travelled into the land of tribulation; he has gone down to the dust of death; but lo, he returns a conqueror, the golden sceptre of love in his left hand, the iron rod of justice in his right, and on his head a crown of many stars. The church beholds him with great amazement and delight. She lately followed him, weeping, to the cross, and mourned over his body in the tomb; but now she beholds him risen indeed, having destroyed death, and him that had the power of death—that is, the devil. She goes forth to meet him with songs of rejoicing, as the daughters of Israel went out to welcome David, when he returned from the valley, with the head of the giant in his hand, and the blood running down upon his raiment. The choir of the church is divided into two bands; which chant to each other in alternate strains. The right hand division begins the glorious colloquy—“Who is this that cometh from Edom?” and the left takes up the interrogative, and repeats it with a variation—“with dyed garments from Bozrah?” “This that is glorious in his apparel?” resumes the right-hand company—“glorious notwithstanding the tribulations he hath endured?” “Travelling in the greatness of his strength?” responds the left—“strength sufficient to unbar the gates of the grave, and liberate the captives of corruption?” The celestial Conqueror pauses, and casts upon the company of the daughters of Zion a look of infinite benignity; and with a voice of angel melody, and more than angel majesty, he replies—“I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save!” Now bursts the song again, like the sound of many waters, from the right—“Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel?” and the response rolls back in melodized thunder from the left—“And thy garments like him that treadeth in the wine-fat?” The Divine hero answers:—“I have trodden the wine-press alone; and of the people there was none with me. Even Peter has left me, with all his courage and affection; and as for John, to talk of love is all that he can do. I have triumphed over principalities and powers. I am wounded, but they are vanquished. Behold the blood which I have lost! behold the spoils which I have won! Now will I mount my white horse, and pursue after Satan, and demolish his kingdom, and send him back to the land of darkness in everlasting chains, and all his allies shall be exiles with him for ever. My own arm, which has gained the victory on Calvary, and brought salvation to all my people from the sepulchre, is still strong enough to wield the golden sceptre of love, and break my foes on the field of Armageddon. I will destroy the works of the devil, and demolish all his hosts; I will dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come. My compassion is stirred for the captives of sin and death; my fury is kindled against the tyrants that oppress them. It is time for me to open the prisons, and break off the fetters. I must gather my people to myself. I must seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away. I must bind up that which was broken, and strengthen that which was weak; but I will destroy the fat and the strong; I will feed them with judgment; I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury, and bring down their strength to the earth, and stain all my raiment with their blood!”
Let us flee from the wrath to come! Behold, the sun is risen high on the day of vengeance! Let us not be found among the enemies of Messiah, lest we fall a sacrifice to his righteous indignation on the field of Armageddon! Let us escape for our lives, for the fire-storm of his anger will burn to the lowest hell! Let us pray for grace to lay hold on the salvation of his redeemed! It is a free, full, perfect, glorious, and eternal salvation. Return, ye ransomed exiles from happiness, return to your forfeited inheritance! Now is the year of jubilee. Come to Jesus, that your debts may be cancelled, your sins forgiven, and your persons justified! Come, for the Conqueror of your foes is on the throne! Come, for the trumpets of mercy are sounding! Come, for all things are now ready!
SERMON III.
THE SMITTEN ROCK.
“For they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.”—1 Cor. x. 4.
In this chapter the apostle solemnly cautions his brethren against apostasy, and consequent shipwreck of their spiritual privileges. His admonitions are educed from important events in the history of the journey of the Israelites from Egypt to the land of Canaan. He speaks of the march of the twelve tribes out of the scene of their bondage, under the uplifted banner of God; of their baptism unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, when Jehovah gloriously displayed his power in preserving their lives between the watery ramparts which shut them in like the solid walls of the sepulchre, while the cloud rested upon them through the deep night, like the marble covering of the tomb; of their safe emerging on the other side of the flood, a type of the resurrection, leaving Pharaoh and his host to sleep in the waters till the morning of the last day, when they shall rise without their chariots and their horses; of their miraculous supply in the wilderness, with bread from heaven, and water from the smitten rock, which he calls spiritual meat and spiritual drink, because of their typical reference to the sacrificial death of Christ, which is the spiritual life of the world; and of their subsequent ingratitude and forgetfulness of God, notwithstanding these great deliverances and mercies, their murmurings, idolatries, fornications, and tempting of Christ, for which they were destroyed by the plague, slain by fiery serpents, smitten by the angel of the Lord, and fell to the number of three and twenty thousand in one day. “Now all these things,” he adds, “happened unto them for ensamples, and are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come; wherefore, let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.” Thus he opens the graves of ancient sinners, and brings before his brethren the carcasses of those “who fell in the wilderness;” brings them into our solemn assemblies, and hangs them up over the pulpit, the baptistery, and the communion-table, terrible warnings against departing from the living God; even as the censers of Korah, Dathan and Abiram were beaten up, and made a covering for the altar, for a perpetual sign and memorial to Israel, to keep them from the sin of those men, that they might not share their fate.
In speaking of the smitten rock, which the apostle authorizes us to regard as a type of Christ, we shall consider:—First, Its smiting by Moses; and Secondly, The consequent flowing of the waters.
I. The smitten rock was a type of Christ. Messiah is the “Rock of Ages” to his church. He is the foundation of her hope, sure and steadfast, and her protection in times of danger and of dread. The armor and the prowess of Egypt constituted no rock like this rock. Edom, and Moab, and Philistia, and the seven nations of Canaan, had their gods and their heroes; but their rock was not able to shelter them from the wrath of Jehovah, when it came upon them like a tempest of hail. The gods that made not the heavens and the earth are far off in the day of trouble; but the God of Israel is “nigh at hand,” and his arm is strong to deliver. He is the rock that stood firm and immovable, for the defence of his people, amid the ragings of the Red Sea. Messiah is the man, who is predicted as “a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest, and the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” He can shield, not only from the scorching sun and the scathing simoom of the desert; but also from the fiery torments of remorse, and the ruinous judgments of heaven. Our Lord is a rock, also, on account of the blessings which flow from him, for the refreshment of his Israel; as “the droppings of honey from the rock;” as “springs of water in a dry place;” as “living streams in the desert,” and “rivers from the mountains of Lebanon.”
There are two accounts of the smiting of the rock; one in the seventeenth chapter of Exodus, and the other in the twentieth chapter of Numbers. From a comparison of these two accounts, it appears that the rock was smitten at two different times; the first, as is supposed, about a year after the egress from Egypt, and the other about a year before the entrance into Canaan; making an intervening period of about thirty-eight years. The war with Amalek succeeded the first; the embassy to Edom followed the second. At the first, Miriam was alive; just before the second is the record of her death.
It seems that the people murmured bitterly against Moses, spoke of their superior fare in Egypt, and accused him of bringing them out into the wilderness to kill them with thirst. This is ever the spirit of backsliding. Those who are under its influence are apt to complain of the burdens imposed upon them by their religion, and the injuries occasioned to them by their brethren; and to speak uncharitably of their spiritual leaders, instead of crying to God for help. To ask, “Is the Lord among us?” when his word and his works, indicating either his pleasure or his displeasure, testify that he is, is tempting God, with a dreadful presumption.