Again, we see here the possibility of very great intimacy of communion between God and man. As bearing on this point the reader will review the scene between Moses and the Lord at the burning bush; in his mission to Pharaoh; in the special directions given him in regard to the sending of each several plague, and usually as to its removal as well. Did ever earthly Potentate stand on more intimate terms with his prime minister? Or military chieftain with his subordinate officer? If Moses was at any point reluctant, under a conscious sense of capacities unequal to the work and of difficulties he could not surmount, did he not bring the matter before the Lord with at least as much freedom as the case could justify?——Especially when we think of Moses coming so near to Jehovah in his majesty wielding the terrific agencies of flood and storm and fire, of darkness and lightning and the voice of trumpet exceeding loud—Mt. Sinai rocking beneath his feet, and Moses alone drawing near the Awful Presence and talking with God face to face there—what shall we say of the possibilities of communion between man and his Maker? Whatever speculations we may have as to the means and methods by which the thought of God was borne to the mind of Moses and the thought of Moses to the mind of God, the great fact of communion of mind with mind—thought meeting thought—of command from the superior party, received and obeyed by the inferior—is on the outer face of the whole history and admits of no question. God can speak to man so that man shall know the voice to be his and comprehend perfectly its significance. Relations of obedience, confidence, and love on the part of man toward his Maker are established, and God meets them with appropriate manifestations of his favor.
This great fact is one of telling significance in the whole province of Christian experience. Its significance can not terminate with the present life but must pass on to be unfolded far more gloriously in the revelations of the eternal world. “It doth not yet appear” [in all points] “what we shall be”—but it does appear that God has made us capable of exceedingly intimate relationsto himself—as we shall know more perfectly when we shall see as we are seen and know as also we are known.
Yet again; This portion of historic revelation abounds with testimonies to the power of prayer and to its place in the relations of God to man and of man to God. We see these revelations in the history of the plagues on Egypt. So palpably manifest was the power of Moses with God in prayer that even proud Pharaoh saw and recognized it. Over and over again the king besought the prayers of the man of God—apparently with unlimited confidence that God would grant whatever he should ask. Though he never had seen such power in prayer before, the force of the facts was too great to be resisted. For once he became so far a believer in the communion of man with God, and also in the power of God to work wonders which man’s power alone could never reach.
The war scenes with Amalek and the prayer which turned the victory to Israel’s side will be readily recalled. As already suggested, this specimen case, brought out so perfectly in the first national conflict of arms, was well adapted to send down to future ages the great secret of success against their national enemies. How happy for Israel if it had never been forgotten! How well for the Christian world if the lessons of that scene were faithfully transferred and applied in all spiritual conflicts against foes within and foes without which pertain to this ever militant state!
It is scarcely necessary to speak in fuller detail of the revelations of God to man through miracle. Every page of this history teems with miracles. Take the miracles away, and truly there would be nothing left. The revelations of God’s will to Moses; the judgments on Egypt; the redemption of his people from bondage there; the scenes at the Red Sea; the bread and the water for his needy people; the pillar of cloud and of fire; the glories of Sinai and the giving of his law in voice of majesty:—what are all these but miracles—the Great God over-stepping the ordinary course of nature to impress himself, the power of his arm, the mandates of his will—upon human minds? No other such chapter on miracles appears in the Old Testament. Nowhere else do they cluster so grandly; not elsewhere do they so muchsupersede the common laws of nature and give character to the entire course of the divine administration. Most abundantly do they testify that the arm of the Lord is equal to any result which his wisdom may devise. If he has purposes to accomplish he can not lack the means or the power necessary. The age of miracles can be brought round again if so he wills it. But more to our purpose is the inference to the adequacy of his resources in general, whether with or without miracle.——Yet let us not miss the more vital truth that this cluster of miracles aimed to witness to God’s present hand working with Moses, endorsing his mission and accrediting his words from the most High. God was then specially active in “making history” (shall we say?)—making history to put into his Bible. The Bible was growing; the great crisis which developed into the birth of the Hebrew nation was then transpiring; God’s plans for training a people who should be holy to himself—the repository of his truth—the church of the living God—were then rapidly unfolding; and no vital step in this process could spare the agency of miracle.
Yet again; In this portion of sacred history much new light has been thrown upon God’s management of great sinners. Pharaoh was a standard case of this sort. As already suggested, there are many aspects of this management. On one side we see the strong arm, putting his hook into the jaws of Leviathan—curbing his spirit, breaking down his power; burying him and his hosts in the sea. On another side are unfolded the nice relations of even this resistless power to the free moral activities of the great sinner; the wonderful blending of mercies with judgments; the patient waiting—if possibly these manifestations of God’s hand may bring the proud king to real submission; and coupled with this, the steady purpose on God’s part to turn all Pharaoh’s pride and guilt and moral obduracy to best possible account—setting forth his mode of dealing with wicked men in making known his power to save his people and to crush their foes, and his unfailing wisdom in making the wrath of the proudest of mortals evolve his own glory and praise.
The scenes of Sinai were a long and magnificent stepof progress in the revelations of God to men. We may think here not so much of the external surroundings—the bringing into service of all the grandest agencies of nature to impress men with reverence and fear and awe, and so to plant the more deeply in their souls the idea of law as emanating unmistakably from the Infinite One; but we may consider the great fact itself of a revealed law. It is surely a point in the progress of God’s revelations of himself second to nothing that has gone before—second to nothing in all the ages save the greater mission of his Son for the purposes of redemption. God revealing to man a rule of duty; expressing it in terms at once so simple and so comprehensive; including the duties we owe to God on the one hand and to fellow-beings on the other; putting it on permanent record; accompanying it with demonstrations of majesty and glory, endorsing it so surely and so sublimely; adjusting it so nicely in harmony with the intelligent convictions of rational minds, and so commending it to every man’s conscience as intrinsically and eternally right:—truly the promulgation of such a law through such agencies is surpassingly grand and glorious; and, in the line of our present thought, is one of the great epochs in the march of God’s revelations of himself to mortals. We pause before it to take in the value of this revealed law; the new relations into which the race are brought thereby toward their Great Father; and the bearings of this law upon the whole plan of God’s moral administration toward our fallen race.