(Palm Sunday.)
EXODUS ix. 13, 14. Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let my
people go, that they may serve me. For I will at this time send all
my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy
people; that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the
earth.
You will understand, I think, the meaning of the ten plagues of
Egypt better, if I explain to you in a few words what kind of a
country Egypt is, what kind of people the Egyptians were. Some of
you, doubtless, know as well as I, but some here may not: it is for
them I speak.
Egypt is one of the strangest countries in the world; and yet one
which can be most simply described. One long straight strip of rich
flat land, many hundred miles long, but only a very few miles broad.
On either side of it, barren rocks and deserts of sand, and running
through it from end to end, the great river Nile--'The River' of
which the Bible speaks. This river the Egyptians looked on as
divine: they worshipped it as a god; for on it depended the whole
wealth of Egypt. Every year it overflows the whole country, leaving
behind it a rich coat of mud, which makes Egypt the most
inexhaustibly fertile land in the world; and made the Egyptians,
from very ancient times, the best farmers of the world, the fathers
of agriculture. Meanwhile, when not in flood, the river water is of
the purest in the world; the most delightful to drink; and was
supposed in old times to be a cure for all manner of diseases.
To worship this sacred river, the pride of their land, to drink it,
to bathe in it, to catch the fish which abound in it, and which
formed then, and forms still, the staple food of the Egyptians, was
their delight. And now I have told you enough to show you why the
plagues which God sent on Egypt began first by striking the river.
The river, we read, was turned into blood. What that means--whether
it was actual animal blood--what means God employed to work the
miracle--are just the questions about which we need not trouble our
minds. We never shall know: and we need not know. The plain fact
is, that the sacred river, pure and life-giving, became a detestable
mass of rottenness--and with it all their streams and pools, and
drinking water in vessels of wood and stone--for all, remember, came
from the Nile, carried by canals and dykes over the whole land.
'And the fish that were in the river died, and the river stunk, and
there was blood through all the land of Egypt.'
The slightest thought will show us what horror, confusion, and
actual want and misery, the loss of the river water, even for a few
days or even hours, would cause.
But there is more still in this miracle. These plagues are a battle
between Jehovah, the one true and only God Almighty, and the false
gods of Egypt, to prove which of them is master.
Pharaoh answers: 'Who is Jehovah (the Lord) that I should let
Israel go?' I know not the Jehovah. I have my own god, whom I
worship. He is my father, and I his child, and he will protect me.
If I obey any one it will be him.
Be it so, says Moses in the name of God. Thou shalt know that the
idols of Egypt are nothing, that they cannot deliver thee nor thy
people.
Thus saith Jehovah, Thou shalt know which is master, I or they.
'Thou shalt know that I am the Lord.'
So the river was turned into blood. The sacred river was no god, as
they thought. Jehovah was the Lord and Master of the river on which
the very life of Egypt depended. He could turn it into blood. All
Egypt was at his mercy.
But Pharaoh would not believe that. 'The magicians did likewise
with their enchantments'--made, we may suppose, water seem to turn
to blood by some juggling trick at which the priests in Egypt were
but too well practised; and Pharaoh seemed to have made up his mind
that Moses' miracle was only a juggling trick too. For men will
make up their minds to anything, however absurd, when they choose to
do so: when their pride, and rage, and obstinacy, and covetousness,
draw them one way, no reason will draw them the other way. They
will find reasons, and make reasons to prove, if need be, that there
is no sun in the sky.
Then followed a series of plagues, of which we have all often heard.
Learned men have disputed how far these plagues were miracles. Some
of them are said not to be uncommon in Egypt, others to be almost
unknown. But whether they--whether the frogs, for instance, were
not produced by natural causes, just as other frogs are; and the
lice and the flies likewise; that I know not, my friends, neither
need I know. If they were not, they were miraculous; and if they
were, they were miraculous still. If they came as other vermin
come, they would have still been miraculous: God would still have
sent them; and it would be a miracle that God should make them come
at that particular time in that particular country, to work a truly
miraculous effect upon the souls of Pharaoh and the Egyptians on the
one hand, and of Moses and the Israelites on the other. But if they
came by some strange means as no vermin ever came before or since,
all I can say is--Why not?
And the Lord said unto Moses, 'Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod
and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice throughout
all the land of Egypt.'
Whether that was meant only as a sign to the Egyptians, or whether
the dust did literally turn into lice, we do not know, and what is
more, we need not know; if God chose that it should be so, so it
would be. If you believe at all that God made the world, it is
folly to pretend to set any bounds to his power. As a wise man has
said, 'If you believe in any real God at all, you must believe that
miracles can happen.' He makes you and me and millions of living
things out of the dust of the ground continually by certain means.
Why can he not make lice, or anything else out of the dust of the
ground, without those means? I can give no reason, nor any one else
either.
We know that God has given all things a law which they cannot break.
We know, too, that God will never break his own laws. But what are
God's laws by which he makes things? We do not know.
Miracles may be--indeed must be--only the effect of some higher and
deeper laws of God. We cannot prove that he breaks his law, or
disturbs his order by them. They may seem contrary to some of the
very very few laws of God's earth which we do know. But they need
not be contrary to the very many laws which we do not know. In
fact, we know nothing about the matter, and had best not talk of
things that we do not understand. As for these things being too
wonderful to be true--that is an argument which only deserves a
smile. There are so many wonders in the world round us already, all
day long, that the man of sense will feel that nothing is too
wonderful to be true.
The truth is, that, as a wise man says, CUSTOM is the great enemy of
Faith, and of Reason likewise; and one of the worst tricks which
custom plays us is, making us fancy that miraculous things cease to
be miraculous by becoming common.
What do I mean?
This: which every child in this church can understand.
You think it very wonderful that God should cause frogs to come upon
the whole land of Egypt in one day. But that God should cause frogs
to come up every spring in the ditches does not seem wonderful to
you at all. It happens every year; therefore, forsooth, there is
nothing wonderful in it.
Ah, my dear friends, it is custom which blinds our eyes to the
wisdom of God, and the wonders of God, and the power of God, and the
glory of God, and hinders us from believing the message with which
he speaks to us from every sunbeam and every shower, every blade of
grass and every standing pool. 'Is anything too hard for the Lord?'
If any man here says that anything is too hard for the Lord, let him
go this day to the nearest standing pool, and look at the frog-spawn
therein, and consider it till he confesses his blindness and
foolishness. That spawn seems to you a foul thing, the produce of
mean, ugly, contemptible creatures. Be it so. Yet it is to the
eyes of the wise man a yearly MIRACLE; a thing past understanding,
past explaining; one which will make him feel the truth of that
great 139th Psalm: 'Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid
thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is
high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into
heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art
there also.'
That every one of those little black spots should have in it LIFE--
What is life? How did it get into that black spot? or, to speak
more carefully, is the life IN the black spot at all? Is not the
life in the Spirit of God, who is working on that spot, as I
believe? How has that black spot the power of GROWING, and of
growing on a certain and fixed plan, merely by the quickening power
of the sun's heat, and then of feeding itself, and of changing its
shape, as you all know, again and again, till--and if that is not
wonderful, what is?--it turns into a frog, exactly like its parent,
utterly unlike the black dot at which it began? Is that no miracle?
Is it no miracle that not one of those black spots ever turns into
anything save a frog? Why should not some of them turn into toads
or efts? Why not even into fishes or serpents? Why not? The eggs
of all those animals, in their first and earliest stages are exactly
alike; the microscope shows no difference. Ay, even the mere animal
and the human being, strange and awful as it may be, SEEM, under the
microscope, to have the same beginning. And yet one becomes a mere
animal, and the other a member of Christ, a child of God, and an
inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. What causes this but the power
of God, making of the same clay one vessel to honour and another to
dishonour? And yet people will not believe in miracles! Why does
each kind turn into its kind? Answer that. Because it is a law of
nature? Not so! There are no laws OF nature. God is a law TO
nature. It is his WILL that things so should be; and when it is his
will they will not be so, but otherwise.
Not LAWS of nature, but the SPIRIT of God, as the Psalms truly say,
gives life and breath to all things. Of him and by him is all. As
the greatest chemist of our time says, 'Causes are the acts of God--
creation is the will of God.'
And he that is wise and strong enough to create frogs in one way in
every ditch at this moment, is he not wise and strong enough to
create frogs by some other way, if he should choose, whether in
Egypt of old, or now, here, this very day?
Whatsoever means, or no means at all, God used to produce those
vermin, the miracle remains the same. He sent them to do a work,
and they did it. He sent them to teach Egyptian and Israelite alike
that he was the Maker, and Lord, and Ruler of the world, and all
that therein is; that he would have his way, and that he COULD have
his way.
Intensely painful and disgusting these plagues must have been to the
Egyptians, for this reason, that they were the most cleanly of all
people. They had a dislike of dirt, which had become quite a
superstition to them. Their priests (magicians as the Bible calls
them) never wore any garments but linen, for fear of their
harbouring vermin of any kind. And this extreme cleanliness of
theirs the next plague struck at; they were covered with boils and
diseases of skin, and the magicians could not stand before Pharaoh
by reason of the boils. They became unclean and unfit for their
office; they could perform no religious ceremonies, and had to flee
away in disgrace.
After plagues of thunder, hail, and rain, which seldom or never
happen in that rainless land of Egypt; after a plague of locusts,
which are very rare there, and have to come many hundred miles if
they come at all; of darkness, seemingly impossible in a land where
the sun always shines: then came the last and most terrible plague
of all. After solemn warnings of what was coming, the angel of the
Lord passed through the land of Egypt, and smote all the first-born
in Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh upon his throne to the
first-born of the captive in the dungeon; and there arose a great
cry in Egypt, for there was not a house in which there was not one
dead. A terrible and heart-rending calamity in any case, enough to
break the heart of all Egypt; and it did break the heart of Egypt,
and the proud heart of Pharaoh himself, and they let the people go.
But this was a RELIGIOUS affliction too. Most of these first-born
children--probably all the first-born of the priests and nobles, and
of Pharaoh himself--were consecrated to some god. They bore the
name of the god to whom they belonged; that god was to prosper and
protect them, and behold, he could not. The Lord Jehovah, the God
of the Hebrews, was stronger than all the gods of Egypt; none of
them could deliver their servants out of his hand. He was the only
Lord of life and death; he had given them life, and he could take it
away, in spite of all and every one of the gods of the Egyptians.
So the Lord God showed himself to be the Master and Lord of all
things. The Lord of the sacred river Nile; the Lord of the meanest
vermin which crept on the earth; the Lord of the weather--able to
bring thunder and hail into a land where thunder and hail was never
seen before; the Lord of the locust swarms--able to bring them over
the desert and over the sea to devour up every green thing in the
land, and then to send a wind off the Mediterranean Sea, and drive
the locusts away to the eastward; the Lord of light--who could
darken, even in that cloudless land, the very sun, whom Pharaoh
worshipped as his god and his ancestor; and lastly, the Lord of
human life and death--able to kill whom he chose, when he chose, and
as he chose. The Lord of the earth and all that therein is; before
whom all men, even proud Pharaoh, must bow and confess, 'Is anything
too hard for the Lord?'
And now, I always tell you that each fresh portion of the Old
Testament reveals to men something fresh concerning the character of
God. You may say, These plagues of Egypt reveal God's mighty power,
but what do they reveal of his character? They reveal this: that
there is in God that which, for want of a better word, we must call
anger; a quite awful sternness and severity; not only a power to
punish, but a determination to punish, if men will not take his
warnings--if men will not obey his will.
There is no use trying to hide from ourselves that awful truth--God
is not weakly indulgent. Our God can be, if he will, a consuming
fire. Upon the sinner he will surely rain fire and brimstone, storm
and tempest of some kind or other. This shall be their portion too
surely. Vengeance is his, and vengeance he will take. But upon
whom? On the proud and the tyrannical, on the cruel, the false, the
unjust. So say the Psalms again and again, and so says the history
of these plagues of Egypt. Therefore his anger is a loving anger, a
just auger, a merciful anger, a useful anger, an anger exercised for
the good of mankind. See in this case why did God destroy the crops
of Egypt--even the first-born of Egypt? Merely for the pleasure of
destroying? God forbid. It was to deliver the poor Israelites from
their cruel taskmasters; to force these Egyptians by terrible
lessons, since they were deaf to the voice of justice and humanity--
to force them, I say--to have mercy on their fellow-creatures, and
let the oppressed go free. Therefore God was, even in Egypt, a God
of love, who desired the good of man, who would do justice for those
who were unjustly treated, even though it cost his love a pang; for
none can believe that God is pleased at having to punish, pleased at
having to destroy the works of his own hands, or the creatures which
he has made. No; the Lord was a God of love even when he sent his
sore plagues on Egypt, and therefore we may believe what the Bible
tells us, that that same Lord showed, as on this day, a still
greater proof of his love, when, as on this day, he entered into
Jerusalem, meek and lowly, sitting on an ass, and going, as he well
knew, to certain death. Before the week was over he would be
betrayed, mocked, scourged, crucified by the very people whom he
came to save; and yet he did it, he endured it. Instead of pouring
out on them, as on the Egyptians of old, the cup of wrath and
misery, he put out his hand, took the cup of wrath and misery to
himself, and drank it to its very dregs. Was not that, too, a
miracle? Ay, a greater miracle than all the plagues of Egypt. They
were physical miracles; this a moral miracle. They were miracles of
nature; this of grace. They were miracles of the Lord's power;
these of the Lord's love. Think of that miracle of miracles which
was worked in this Passion Week--the miracle of the Lord Jehovah
stooping to die for sinful man, and say after that there is anything
too hard for the Lord.