Gooding, David: 7 - The Road Beyond Redemption

The book of Exodus, chapter thirteen beginning at verse seventeen. And if you should be thinking, perchance, of doing any homework for Monday's session, if God so will that there be one, then the passage to read would begin at chapter fifteen and verse twenty two. and would end, if you can survive it, un- at the end of chapter sixteen. But tonight we begin by reading chapter thirteen and verse seventeen. And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not by the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt. But God led the people about by the way of the wilderness, by the Red Sea, and the children of Israel went up armed out of the land of Egypt. Chapter fourteen and verse nine: And the Egyptians pursued after them all the horses and chariots of Pharaoh and his horsemen and his army, and overtook them encamping by the sea beside Pi-Hahiroth before Baal Zephon. And when Pharaoh drew nigh, the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians marched after them, and they were sore afraid. And the children of Israel cried out unto the Lord. And they said unto Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us to bring us forth out of Egypt? Is not this the word that we spake unto thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians? For it were better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness. And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you shall see them again no more forever. The Lord shall fight for you, and you shall hold your peace. And the Lord said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me? Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward, and lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thy hand over the sea, and divide it. And the children of Israel shall go into the midst of the sea on dry ground. And I, behold, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians, and they shall go in after them. And I will get me honor upon Pharaoh and upon all his host, upon his chariots and upon his horsemen. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gotten me honor upon Pharaoh, upon his chariots and upon his horsemen. The angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them, and the pillar of the cloud reme- removed from before them and stood behind them, and it came between the camp of Egypt and the camp of Israel. There was the cloud and the darkness, yet gave it light by night, and the one came not near the other all the night. And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all the night, and made the sea dry land and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground, and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left. And the Egyptians pursued and went in after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. And it came to pass in the morning watch that the Lord looked forth upon the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of cloud, and discomfited the host of the Egyptians. And he took off their chariot wheels, that they drave them heavily, so that the Egyptians said, let us flee from the face of Israel, for the Lord fighteth for them against the Egyptians. The Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand over the sea, that the waters may come again upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots and upon their horsemen. And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its strength when the morning appeared, and the Egyptians fled against it, and the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea, and the waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen, even all the host of Pharaoh that went in after them into the sea. There remained not so much as one of them. But the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea, and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left. Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians. Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore. And Israel saw the great work which the Lord did upon the Egyptians, and the people feared the Lord, and they believed in Moses and in the Lord. Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song, and he has become my salvation. This is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a man of war. The Lord is his name. Verse seventeen: thou shalt bring them in and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, the place, O Lord, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, thy sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hand have established. Then we shall take time to read a New Testament commentary upon these verses. Look with me, please, to one Corinthians and chapter ten. uh First epistle of Paul to the Corinthians and chapter ten. Beginning in verse one: for I would not, brethren, have you ignorant how that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and did all eat the same spiritual meat, and did all drink the same spiritual drink, for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. God himself enlighten our understanding of his holy word. It is evident from the passage of the New Testament that we have just read, that the New Testament sees some parallel between Israel's experience at the Red Sea and baptism. Indeed, we might phrase that more exactly. We might observe that the New Testament affirms that for Israel, the experience of passing through the Red Sea was a kind of baptism. They were baptized, we read, unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea. It was a baptism in which they acknowledged not only that Moses had been sent from God to them with a message of salvation, it was a baptism in which they committed themselves unreservedly unto Moses as the captain of their salvation, and proved on that particular occasion the practical reality of the salvation that God had for them, a salvation that God had appointed they should experience through Moses and the captaincy of their lives through that Moses. On hearing this, we, of course, as Christians, prick up our ears. If Israel had a baptism and were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, well, we Christians are not to be outdone, surely. We too have a baptism, and we remember with a certain amount of pride and joy and gladness that we too have been baptized. And if they were baptized to Moses, we have been baptized to Christ. And if Moses was the great apostle and high priest of their profession, then indeed our blessed Lord is the apostle and high priest of our confession. So, as I say, when we hear that Israel had a baptism and were baptized to Moses, we prick up our ears and inevitably start wondering what we may learn from Israel's experience of baptism that may perhaps help us to understand more detailedly our own baptism to Jesus Christ, our Lord. To understand it all, we ought, I suppose, to begin at the elementary level and observe that now we are to be told that in Israel's salvation there were two parts. For Israel, part number one of their salvation was that they were delivered from the wrath of God through the Passover Lamb. On that never to be forgotten night, the angel of destruction stalked through the land of Egypt, executing the wrath of God on all who were not sheltered by the blood of the Passover Lamb. And the Passover, as we have considered on times past, was the divinely appointed means by which Israel should be sheltered and delivered from the wrath of God. And immediately we as Christians perceive that there is that in our salvation. We too have been delivered from the wrath of God. We have been delivered from that wrath by the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, the great Passover lamb. But now we see that Israel had another part to their salvation. It was one thing to be delivered from the wrath of God. It was another thing to be delivered from the power of Pharaoh and all his minions. Now we are to see then this great second part of salvation, how that the people were not only delivered from God's wrath, but delivered from the power of Pharaoh, and they were delivered from that power by this tremendous experience of God that they had at the Red Sea, when Israel were miraculously taken through that sea and brought through to the other side and set upon new ground as free men and women. And the Egyptians, as saying to do the same, were drowned in the Red Sea. You see, Pharaoh eventually recovered, a li- a little thing at least anyway, from the stunning blow that God's judgments in Egypt had dealt him. When indeed the destroying angel destroyed the firstborn, Israel reeled under the shock. And Pharaoh and his hosts were glad to see the back of Israel for a moment. But then Pharaoh recovered himself and began to think, and he said, why should I let my, these people go? Suppose they have been miraculously protected from the wrath of God, and we Egyptians have suffered it. Is that any reason why I should let them go? They have been my slaves these years. Their fathers were always slaves. We Egyptians have always controlled them. Why should I now let them go? I will not let them go. I will reestablish the chains I had on them. I will get them back under my power. I will confirm the inveterate habits that they have, uh, got into here in Egypt. And with a wry smile and smirk on his face, I see him planning the thing, counting on the psychology that now had been set up in the Israelite mind. They had been slaves, you see. For centuries, their nation had been slaves, and this generation had been slaves ever since they knew anything, and they were in the habit of being slaves. Slavery was second nature to them. You might almost say it was first nature to them, and Pharaoh knew it and felt that he only had to show a little bit of his power and terror and the swish of the lash coming down through the air, and habit would prevail, and Israel would go meekly back as his slaves into Egypt. And he determined it should be so. He wasn't going to let them go from his slavery just because they had escaped the wrath of God. And in his thinking, we see an all too realistic picture of that slavery in which we ourselves once were held, when we walked according to the prince of the air, the power that worketh still in the children of disobedience. Yes, indeed, we have redemption from the wrath of God through the blood of our great Passover lamb, but there's another side to this story. Satan and sin are not prepared to see us escape so easily as that. What so if we are delivered from the wrath of God? Satan will do his utmost to maintain the bondage into which he has brought us through inducing in us the habit of sinning. And it is to this side of salvation that now we address ourselves this evening, thanking God that there is this other side to salvation, and that the God who has broken the guilt of our sin and set us free from his wrath against sin is a God who has provided a salvation that can break the power of Satan in our lives and undo the habit of sinning. Well then, how did these Israelites escape, you say? And how shall we escape from the bondage to Satan and to sin? And here, I suppose, for the most of us, there comes a ready answer to mind. You will say, perhaps, Mr. Preacher, that is a simple question. There is a direct answer. We have been delivered from the wrath of God. We have forgiveness of sins through the blood of Christ. Now we have the Holy Spirit, and he will empower us to fight against sin, to struggle against the flesh, to fight our enemies, and as we avail ourselves of the gracious power of the Holy Spirit, so shall we fight our way through to victory. And of course, in a sense, that's a right answer. That is perfectly true. And there are parts of the New Testament that explicitly speak to us of this thing. How that we who have the Holy Spirit become aware of his reality as the Spirit strives against the flesh and lusts against the flesh to stop us doing the things that otherwise we would do. And all of us are long enough in the tooth, I suspect, to realize that this is not an automatic thing, that we who possess the Holy Spirit must be prepared to cooperate with that Holy Spirit and work out our salvation, as God is the one who works in us and through us the doing of his will. All right, that's one kind of an answer. Freed from the wrath of God through the blood of Christ, we now have to fight against sin and the power of the Holy Spirit. But if that, uh, is the answer that comes first to our minds, it's not the answer that we shall learn from our passage this evening. For on this no notable occasion, the text tells us time and again, and yet again, that the Israelites did not do any fighting. Oh yes, later on they fought. As they came out of the Red Sea and began to cross the desert, then there were enemies galore, and oftentimes they were called to fight upon in severe and testing battles, but not now. Oh, let us learn this first lesson. It is of major importance. On this occasion, they did not fight. God fought. And that wasn't by accident. That was of God's deliberate intention. For the very first verses that open this particular section of the book tell us directly. Now, when God brought Israel out of Egypt, he didn't lead them this way, lest they would have encountered fighting that way and war that way, and being totally unprepared to fight. They would have been a taken aback, and they would have lost courage forthwith, and they would have given in and turned tail and gone back to Egypt. Later on they should fight, but for the moment they were quite incapable of fighting, and God himself did not expect them to fight. This time he had a salvation for them, which would require no fighting on their side at all. They were, so to speak, just to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. And what a mercy that is calculated to rejoice our hearts. For pray have a little bit of sympathy with those folks if you can. Forget yourself, that won't do any harm. Forget yourself and your problems for a moment, and consider these folks recently come out of Egypt, their knees still shaking. In the habit of slavery for years. We have heard too well in our own day of what happens to people that live in labor camps and concentration camps. They may put up a bit of resistance at the beginning, but as the weary months add to the long drawn out years, as torture and pain and hard labor become all too real, then bit by bit the bulk of the people give up any hope of trying to escape, give up any hope of resistance. The lash and the thumbscrew are too real for that, and they develop a mentality of giving in. Anything to survive. Cause the least trouble you can and survive. We had better survive as a slave than be killed trying to escape. And here were a nation that had been in bondage and, uh, a slave labor camp for years, and the habit ingrained in them of submitting to the old taskmaster. They didn't even look the wrong way, for if you look the wrong way to an Egyptian taskmaster, you felt his lash on your back, and you didn't answer back, and you did what you were told, and you didn't question it, and you didn't moan, and you didn't groan. You just went on doing it. It wasn't realistic to hope to be free. And how do you suppose, just coming out of his Egypt five minutes, a half an hour down the road, they were any different psychologically than they had been before. And to ask those folks to stand round now and face Pharaoh with all his mass might, his chariots, his horsemen, his warriors, and ask those folk to fight. How unrealistic it would have been. Salvation that depended simply on getting them free from the wrath of God and then asking them to take over and fight the Egyptian would scarce have been a salvation at all. And God, in his mercy, who had set his hand to redeem them and knew their weakness, had, praise his name, a salvation geared to their practical need, a real salvation that could break the bonds of Egypt and set this people free. And do something in their lives that would not only set them free from Egypt, but would set them free to begin to learn how to fight, so that when it became appropriate, they would begin to assert themselves as free men and women and learn to fight the battles of the Lord. And that, I suggest to you, is an encouragement for us. We have been delivered from the wrath of God through the blood and sacrifice of Christ. We surely have the Holy Spirit who will teach us to fight, to strive against the flesh. But in between, so to speak, those two parts of our salvation, there is this other part. That part of our salvation where God has done the fighting, and God has done a something to break the power of sin. And if I may anticipate our findings, I shall describe that part of God's salvation in the words of Romans chapter six: for sin shall not have dominion over you. Sin shall not have dominion over you, because you are not under law, but under grace. Well then, let's take up this interesting story and, uh, picture it in our minds, if we can. And think now of those desperate moments when Israel turned round and to their shock and terror saw the Egyptian hosts are following on behind. What a fearful experience that must have been. In the middle of their newfound joy, their scarce credible good fortune, they were free, were they? It seemed for a moment a dream, and then they looked round. Yes, it was a dream. For here was the reality, the hard iron of those chariot wheels and the prancing of the horses and the clash of the armed soldiers coming up in the rear. And instinctively they cried out, and they cried to God, and they cried to Moses. And I, for one, can't find it in my heart to blame them too much, can you? Moses, they said. Moses, now look what you've gone and done. And that's just what we told you, Moses. You stupid man, Moses. We knew it would come to this. All this talk of getting out of Egypt and being free, you foolish man, Moses. Now here they come, and we shall be taken back. And already some of the men could almost feel the lash coming down on their backs. I say again, they had been so psychologically conditioned. The very sight of an Egyptian would set all sorts of habits and thoughts and emotional reactions a going in their brains. They couldn't help it. Like lightning, the old, uh, electrical circuits in their brain would start the turning over. They could hear the curse of the taskmaster again. They could feel his lash. They knew what it would be in solitary and on bread and water for a few days. What fools we were, ever to think you could break it. Listening to a man like Moses. Moses, it would have been better for us in Egypt, we would at least have survived. Being so unrealistic as to hope we should ever be free, only to perish in this wilderness. You never felt like that? Well, then thank God for it. Some folks have. Ah, perhaps you were a very respectable sinner, and you didn't get involved and tied up with terrible habits. Like what? Well, you say I was never a drunkard, that got no strong pull on me, or smoking, or illicit sex, or anything like that, nothing nasty. You went in for the nice sins, I suppose, just a little bit of pride, I suppose, now and again, and the odd bit of retaliation. Well, watch it, your time is to come, I suspect. I suspect when we turn round us nicer sinners, as men count them, and begin to realize that pride and all those other rather fashionable sins are towering tyrants, and we try to do something about it. And we too shall find and feel, perhaps on time, while other men who have been victims of out- uh, outwardly vicious and socially unacceptable forms of sin have found. Yes, one moment rejoicing in the knowledge that their sins are forgiven, and then suddenly realizing that they've got to go back and face the world and face their old comrades and all the old temptations. And it rises up within them the force of habit so strong that they almost curse themselves for, for ever having attempted to get rid of it. They feel Christian salvation is not for them because, well, how could they possibly stop sinning? I have a good friend who two or three years ago found the Lord and has lived since to prove it. Now, before he got saved, he was a drunkard of the first order. He lived when he was at home in a hovel, a man of some ability, but he could keep down no job. He and his wife lived in utter wretchedness. And then, by the good mercy of God and the help of friends, he came to know the Savior and confessed Jesus Christ as Lord and entered into forgiveness of sins. And then the test came. The man who was most used of God in leading him to the Savior told me himself. He said, you know, when it got round at about a quarter to ten each night, I used to go around to visit our good friend, and me being an innocent, I suppose, I said, why quarter to ten? Now, well, he said, you see, the pubs would soon be shut- shutting, wouldn't they? Oh, he said, I didn't doubt the man's salvation, of course not. But for a man who had been an excessive drinker, an almost alcoholic, as the old hands of the clock came round to the time when the pubs would be shut, the idea that he couldn't now get another drink if he wanted to would stir in his breast such an almost overpowering longing for it. And will you criticize him? No, I hope not any more than you'd criticize these Egyptians. When now they saw these Israelites, when now they saw the Egyptians coming up, and they involuntarily cried out, and felt the whole scheme was useless, and that they had been fools ever to believe Moses. God in his mercy, who knows the human heart and knows its struggles, uh, knew what they were going through and knows what we may be going through. Had ordained that they should come this way, that they should discover a salvation of the Lord. And in discovering the reality of that salvation, should come to believe in God even more than they had done before, and believe in Moses, his servant. Let us therefore think of the elements of this particular part of their salvation. And they are two, are they not? The New Testament tells us, citing its Old Testament very knowledgeably and exactly, that the Israelites were baptized to Moses in the cloud first, and then in the sea. They were all under the cloud, they were all in the sea, they were baptized to Moses in the cloud, then in the sea. And that, of course, is the order of events in this, uh, historic chapter fourteen. The Israelites, first of all, were told to stand still. They wouldn't need to fight. The Lord would fight for them. They were told then to stand still on this particular night when all was so dark and seemingly hopeless. And to watch as the cloud that had gone before them to guide the way, and the angel of the Lord that had gone before them came now and stood behind them, between them and the Egyptians. They were baptized in the clouds, says scripture. Now, please, I want you to observe what this means. It would be so easy, wouldn't it, to underestimate the significance of that cloud, thinking it was a something like the wind that God had blow the next morning. But this cloud was not, uh, just some unusually thick bit of fog, such as we get in Belfast on occasion. It was a cloud that was there as the visible effect of the presence of the angel of the Lord, who otherwise was unseen. It was not just a thick fog, I repeat, that came between the Israelites and the Egyptians. It was none other than the angel of the Lord himself. That holy person that we now in our day know and call the second person of the Trinity. None other than he who has become Jesus, the Word made flesh. But then in his pre-incarnate days, who had come to lead God's people through that wilderness, he, I say, the angel of the Lord, was he, and he came and stood between them and the foe. Oh, what a glorious thing it was. Very basic element of salvation that would, when Pharaoh and his hosts would come to reclaim their prey, the blessed Lord stood in between. And you might think this was enough. Oh, let's pause a moment to rest there. God himself between them and their enemy. How could they be safer? How could they be more assured of victory, by whichever means now it would come? Now between them and their foe, there stood the angel of the Lord. No wonder Paul goes on in his one Corinthians ten and says, of course, they were baptized in the clouds of Moses, you know, and they all ate of that spiritual food, and they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, for the rock was Christ. This is none, no rabbinic hyperbole or foolish imagination. It was Christ. Divine son of God, second person of the Trinity, come down to be his people's savior and to stand between them and the foe. Once he had stood a while earlier in the bush. Moses Moses, wondering wondering how however ever a divine person could get himself all entangled in that thorn bush, nevertheless saw that great miracle of grace, as God presenced himself there on earth in the thorn bush, and he saw it burn, but not consume. Now that same person comes once more to manifest his glory, as he comes to save his people from their Egyptian foe. And I say we do well to rest there. Our salvation. We have not been baptized in a cloud, a literal cloud, but in a sense deeper and profound by far more than anything Israel ever knew. We have not merely our blessed Lord between us and our foe, but we have been baptized into him, and we stand in Christ, for the glory of it, in Christ. Why, if any man be in Christ, there is a new creation. For them that are in Christ, there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ. Oh, hear it how once we were walking according to this world, under the thumb of the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience, and God has done us something. God has raised us and given us life and seated us in the heavenlies in Christ. It's a position that not even death itself shall break. When at last the apostle comes to describe believers that have departed life physically, then he adds this glorious fact and distinction about them. They're not just the dead. They are the dead in Christ. Once in Christ, in him forever must the eternal covenant stand. I give unto my sheep, he says, eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My father that gave them me is greater than all. Come wolf, come bear, come lion. Nothing shall pluck them out of my hand. Oh, Pharaoh, you'll have to drive hard. You'll need to sharpen your sword. You'll need to inspire the breasts of your soldiers with an enormous courage, for do you suppose you will drag again these unfortunate Israelites back to Egypt? Then first must you fight and overcome Israel's God. He stands between you and them. And as far as you're concerned, they're in him. Hm. You can't see anyhow else, can you? What? Through that cloud. It is well that from time to time we go back to Calvary, gaze upon the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, as we see him for our sakes made a curse of God, bearing the curse of the law to set us free from the wrath of God. It is a wonderful thing as well to wake up in the dark night of our trouble and our temptation, to see the glory of God in Christ, living now and victorious and risen again, and we in him. But of course, there was a second part, wasn't there? They were baptized unto Moses in the cloud, but also in the sea. So now that they had security behind their backs, they were asked to take this next adventuresome step. Moses was told to lift up his rod, and as he did so, the waters parted. And it was clearly explained to the Israelites that if they would be free of the tyranny of Pharaoh and Egypt, there was only one thing for it, they must accept the lordship and the captaincy of Moses. I think God did it on purpose, don't you? He generally puts our elementary lessons first. They scarce had begun the wilderness journey. Let's get it straight, says God, shall we, if you don't mind me, just for five minutes, you Israelites. You once were slaves to Pharaoh, now you want to be free from Pharaoh. Just remember a minute, he's the other side of this cloud, is Pharaoh. Yes. You really want to be free from him? Oh, don't forget it, will you? I think, you know, if God had left the lesson till they were some miles or months out into the wilderness, uh, they might have said, Pharaoh, now, what do you mean we weren't all that bad, were we? I mean, were we complete slaves? Uh, ah, but God didn't leave it that long. There was Pharaoh bringing down their necks, and it was this or that. Either the dominion of Pharaoh or the captaincy and lordship of Moses. And not, if you please, just, uh, professing to believe that Moses, uh, had the right message and was a remarkable preacher and did really preach the gospel faithfully. Not just some intellectual consent and assent to the message that Moses had preached of wrath on the Egyptians. But a personal committal to Moses. And some committal too. To commit yourself to this man and walk with him through those watery walls, would you have done it? You say, yes, I would have done it. Would your legs have shaken any? I think mine might. In case the water came back over the top, you know, just before I got out the other side. Well, you say, well, no, it wouldn't, would it? It's a bit of a risk. They've never done it before, had they? What? Commit yourself to Moses like that? And go wherever he leads? And without a murmur, follow still? And do everything he said just because he said it. Like, for instance, even a curious thing and a seemingly foolish thing to walk between these walls of water and risk death. But thus it was. And God couldn't have made it clearer. There was freedom from Pharaoh and his hosts, but not to thereafter to go across the wilderness and please yourself and follow your own nose and walk according to your own ideas and thoughts and plans. There was freedom from Pharaoh on the condition they accepted Moses, Lord and captain of their salvation, and actually committed themselves to him, were baptized to him in the sea. And I think, you know, we might pause just there and get from ourse- get for ourselves a very helpful and practical lesson from this simple matter. There is deliverance for us too from the prince of this world. But it's on these terms that we accept Jesus Christ as Lord. That's why I think, don't you, that we are called upon to be baptized, literally to be baptized, to our blessed Lord. And that normally, right at the outset of our Christian career, let a man confess to put faith in Christ, to put faith in Christ. Then forthwith, the New Testament commands him to be baptized. You'll notice the verb I used, won't you? Command, I said. At least, if Peter had been the apostle that had introduced you to Christ and led you to faith in Christ, wouldn't that be glorious? That isn't too bad getting converted through Mr. Smith, is it? If Mr. Smith would be the preacher. But fancy getting led to Christ via Peter himself? What a privilege, you say. Yes, but if Peter had been the man that had led you to Christ, Peter would not merely have invited you to get baptized if you decided to like the idea. Peter would have done with you what he did with Cornelius. He would have commanded you to be baptized. With all the plenitude of his apostolic authority. Oh, God means business, you know, and he puts the thing there right at the beginning, right at the threshold of Christian life. Here they've been, they've been set free from the wrath of God, not through baptism. You see that, don't you? It wasn't the Red Sea water that kept the avenging angel and the wrath of God from finding them. No, indeed, it wasn't. That was the blood of the Lamb that did that, and only the blood of the Lamb can save us from the wrath of God and bring us forgiveness of sin. We're now redeemed. The road beyond redemption starts here. Baptism to the captain of salvation. I've known it that sometimes some folks, confused maybe by the variant voices of centuries of Christendom, when confronted with God's claim and command that they should be baptized, have said, and genuinely said because they felt it, let them be praised for their honesty and sincerity. But what's the point of it? What's the point of it? Sympathetic as I might be with that kind of remark, but let me just, uh, respond and suppose there weren't any point in it. Suppose it were the emptiest of ceremonies. Yet Christ has commanded it and his apostles commanded it. What then? If Christ commands me to be baptized, shall I turn round to the Lord and say, well, now, Lord, now I d- this is a bit of your teaching that I don't see myself much point in, you see. So I shan't be doing it yet. I come, if it were an ordinary captain in the British Army, and he said to recruit number one, Private Thompson, Thompson, two steps to the right, Thompson. Thompson doesn't say, but I, pardon me, I don't see what the point of going two steps to the right is. Nor shall I go two steps to the right until I see what, um, uh, point there is in need. And I, for one, could sympathize with, uh, Sir, uh, Private Thompson, for not all the army says is always sensible. Now, what would the captain say to Thompson? If Christ, the great captain of my salvation, commands me to be baptized, shall I, on the very threshold of the journey, fresh from having confessed him as Lord, turn round and the very first thing he asked me to do, say no. Because I don't understand the point of it. Oh come. Let me assure you that there'll be a multitude of things we don't understand on our way to glory. Pray, consider what a journey it is that we have to take. From this little planet home to the Father's house. From the circles of time to the glory of eternity. Through the temptations of this life and past the serried ranks of principalities, powers, mights, and dominions. Who shall charter the road that leads us home to glory. For our sakes, God has become incarnate. The very blessed Lord has come down to our planet to redeem me. Now risen from the dead, he offers me his guidance, his captaincy. He knows the road. No man hath ascended up to heaven, save he that came down from heaven, but he knows it. And he stands at the very beginning as God's appointed captain, pointing it out to me that the only way I shall ever get home to glory is really from my heart to accept him as the Lord of life, the veritable captain of my soul. Oh, I shall have many a struggle when my naughty old rebellious flesh rises up within me. I know it well, as well as you do, and better perhaps. But that's no excuse for letting my mind make cahoots with my old wicked flesh and agree with it. Why, if my old flesh within is rebellious, at least let me, with a renewed and regenerate mind, agree with Christ that my flesh is wrong and Christ is right. And pray God's help that I submit to Christ. Baptized to Christ, right at the beginning. It means, doesn't it, that as I go along the journey... I forsake my thoughts... where they run counter to Christ's, and I accept Christ. I take his word, and if it runs counter to my ideas, well, then I let my ideas go. Baptized to Christ. But as you can see, God might have made the point that Israel must be devoted to God's appointed deliverer. They must be baptized to him. God, I say, could have made that point, you might think, some other way, without baptism, without going through the sea. Why did he do it that way? Because he was going to drown the Egyptians and thus break their stranglehold. So that this potential threat that they feared coming up from their rear would be done away with. Otherwise, never mind how far they had gone across the wilderness, they would always potentially have been afraid that one of these days the Egyptians might come up behind and grab them. God was now going to demonstrate that they were free by slaying the Egyptians in front of their eyes. A vivid lesson it was, and it brought home, didn't it, to them the difference between an Israelite now and an Egyptian. For in a sense, the Israelites and the Egyptians both did the same thing. Israel went into the Red Sea. The Egyptians went into the Red Sea. But Israel went into the Red Sea along with Moses, their savior, and they came out again. The Egyptians went into the Red Sea without a savior. They never came out. How shall we apply the lesson? Indeed, may we apply it? I for one think so. If you don't think that we ought to take the Old Testament so typologically, well, perhaps for this last five minutes then, you can genuinely go to sleep, and I'll wake you up at the end of the meeting. It won't be long. But it seems to me there is a correspondence between this Old Testament event and what we read of about our Christian baptism in the sixth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. And if you don't like the typology, yet you sh- will like Romans, of course, so perhaps you better wake up after all. Romans six, of course, is a delightful passage, and as I hinted at the beginning, it tells us of our great deliverance. Romans chapter six says, sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. Here, if ever there was, is a breaking of our bondage. Sin shall not have dominion over you. And we can see directly from this chapter that, uh, the secret of all this is somehow to do with our being identified with Christ. As the Israelites were baptized unto Moses, we have been baptized unto Christ, and being baptized unto Christ, we've been baptized to his death, as the passage tells us explicitly, buried with him by baptism in death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life, dead with him, buried with him, raised with him. Why, this is the thing that our literal water baptism symbolizes, does it not? As a believer is physically baptized in the outward ritual of baptism, he proclaims himself dead with Christ. He is then buried under that literal water and raised out of the literal water to symbolize that he's died with Christ and risen with Christ at the spirit. That much we see. But then if we probe just a little bit deeper, difficulties for many people begin to arise. Unexpected difficulties sometimes. And they come about, if I may speak one for another, they come about somehow like this. There creeps into our mind what looks like a very good interpretation of this chapter, and it seems so obviously good that we take it sometimes without questioning, and we deliberately and carefully try to put it into practice, and it doesn't work. And the idea is this, that our old man was crucified with Christ, as the verse says. And we fall to pondering now, this old man, who's he? Ah, we say, well, that's obvious, you know, that horrible part of me. But when I get up in the morning, somehow, um, you know, isn't very nice and is full of sarcasms and bitternesses and selfishnesses and those nasty things. That's the old man, the nasty part about me. Mm. Now this verse, we say to ourselves, according to our theory, now this verse tells me that our old man, the nasty part of me, has been crucified with Christ, and I'm to reckon it dead. Jolly good, we say. Then along comes a preacher with a vivid imagination, and he says, my good friends, your old man is dead, you know, because the Bible says it's been crucified with Christ. We say, hallelujah. And he, with his vivid imagination, says, now, if anybody is dead, you know, ponder what happens, or rather what doesn't happen. If you saw a dead body in the street and went up to it and kicked it, the dead body wouldn't say anything, it wouldn't retaliate, it's dead, you see. A dead body can't be proud. A dead body can't be hateful, a dead body can't be sarcastic. It can smell a little, but it can't do much else. Now, says the preacher, you're dead, you see. That nasty part of you is dead. Believe it, my brother. And he pour, and he pours out his ret- rhetoric to help us grasp what he feels is such a true fact. And here's me going about my daily work, uh, trying to put it into practice, and away comes some impossible students. I better explain that ninety nine point nine percent of students are delightful folks. There is a one, uh, you know, a point one percent of students that are impossible. And here comes this, uh, point one of a student, and by twelve o'clock in the morning, I'm getting a b- a rather strong feeling that this old man isn't as dead as he ought to be somehow. And I keep on saying, you're yeah, you're you're dead, you're dead, you're dead, you're dead. And the more I say you're dead, the more he says, no, I'm not dead, and if I could get at that student. And in the end, I think, well, what's the good of pretending to myself like this? Oh, it was all right when I sat in that meeting the other night in the holy atmosphere of prayer and hymn singing to tell myself that my old nasty self was dead, it seemed like it then. That's not when I need to know it. I need to know it out in the world, on the factory floor, in this unreasonable world. Then I need to know it. Then, alas, precisely when temptation comes, I find the nasty part, what the Bible calls the flesh, isn't dead. Of course, we have made our own difficulties, haven't we? To start with, the old man isn't the nasty part of us. As though before we were saved, you know, what a curious idea, sometimes we get it in- in- into our heads, do we not? As though before we were saved, there was a nice part and a nasty part. No, sir, there was no nice part. Do you know when God drowned the Egyptians, he didn't drown the nice part, the the nasty parts and leave the nice parts, he drowned the lot. And pray, when you got baptized, which part of you did they baptize? They baptized the nasty part of you, I suppose, didn't they? And left the nice part standing up beside the tank. No, you say, they didn't do that. No, I thought not. They baptized the lot, didn't they? Who is the old man? Why, he's the bit they baptized. The A lot. lot. What I was without Christ. David Gooding, body, soul, and spirit, born into this world, a fallen creature, and going on by my will to sin, and coming before God's holy law to find God's holy law condemn me, not condemn the nasty part of me and let the nice bit go on. No, condemn the lot. Pray what would have happened to me without Christ. Well, I tell you straight what happened to the Egyptians without Moses. They perished, all of them perished. And I should have gone down to hell, not merely the nasty part of me, but the nice part as well, and the whole thing combined, body, soul, and spirit, lost. And then Christ came. And finding me under the sentence of God's law, Christ did that marvelous thing, he came and joined himself to me, allowed me to be joined to him by faith, and I'm in him now. And because he and I have become one, then God's law counts it that what happened to Christ happened to me. When he died, I died then. But God's law no longer sees me separate from Christ. Christ and I have become one. I've been baptized in the cloud, don't you see it? I'm in Christ. Therefore, when he died, God's law counts it that I died. When he was buried, God's law counts it that I was buried, and that's finished as far as God's law is concerned forever. I say it reverently, but if you could climb heaven's stairs tonight and go into the accounting room, where the records are kept of every man and woman, boy and girl, and turn up to the account book where the name David Gooding stands at the head of that particular page of the ledger. Oh, wouldn't you like to do it? Ha ha. Wouldn't you like to do it? Yes, and I tell you, you'd find a lot more there than you ever dreamed of. You'll find such things there as you would say, and now I understand why God's law sentenced him to death. Not just the nice nasty parts, the whole man. I want to tell you what more you'll see. See, so to speak, written across the ledger in the divine handwriting. Account closed. Criminal executed. And you would say, when? When? I saw him around in the Christian church the other day. How does this book say the man is dead and executed? The reply would come back, but you see the man's now in Christ. Therefore, what happened to Christ when Christ died happened to him. What happened to Christ when Christ was buried happened to him. When Christ died, he died to sin once. That finished it. I tell you straight, Christ doesn't sit in heaven saying, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead. It is a fact he died to sin once. He bore the sentence of that law. He's finished it, and he lives now forever, never again to die. I died with him. And he rose, and I've risen in him. And he's given me a new life that I didn't deserve and I didn't merit. He has given me that new life unconditionally. It is his own life. And it is not under law. You say, but pray, what difference does it make? What difference does it make? Let me describe it as briefly as I may, and I will have finished. It makes this difference. Because we are no longer as believers under law, the domination of sin has been broken. Did you hear that verse? Sin shall not have dominion over you. Why not? Uh, some theologians would read it as though it said this: Sin shall not have dominion over you because now you have the Holy Spirit. That isn't what the verse says. The verse says the reason why sin shall not have dominion over you is this, that you are not under law, but under grace. That it is that breaks the fetter and leaves me free. I consider it this way. Here's me, and I have received Christ. Ah. But I wake up one morning, suppose I were still under law. Do you know what kind of thing law is? Law isn't just some advice, you know, some good advice. Law says, thou shalt keep the commandment. You shall keep it one hundred percent or you must perish. Right, there's me. Christian, mark you. I wake up in the morning, and there's the law standing by my bed. Gooding, it says, get up. Get up, Gooding. Now, set about this day, Gooding. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself gooding. And if you don't, if you come one hairbread short, I shall curse you. Or I should say, what, what would you say? Well, to be frank, I should say, well, I shan't get up then, I'm keeping here. And what's the good of my getting up? I should take two steps out of bed, kick my toe on the, on the bottom of the bed, and then for the moment, I shan't be loving the Lord my God with all my heart and mind and soul and strength, I fear. And then you'll curse me. Well, back to square one. Might as well give up. If I were under law, do you not perceive how that even though I am now in Christ, if I were under law, sin would still hold me. I could never get free of it. Because every time I fell and failed and sinned, I should be back under the curse of the law with the sentence of death upon my head. Oh, thank God I'm not under law. I don't mean to sin. But when now as a believer, I fall and fail. I might think for a moment as Satan comes along to tempt me, well, it's now no good. I blotted my copy book. Now look at that. Well, now what's the good? I always thought this Christianity was an impossible thing, and well, now look. That other good man, he was a nice, decent chap, and there's some hope for him to live the Christian life, but me? Ah, well, of course, I've gone and failed now, so what's the good? I might as well give up, I might as well own it that sin is too ingrained in me. I shall never be free of it, so why not give up? And sin would maintain its hold because of the law. My freedom is here. I'm not under law. And should I fail? Well, let me confess it to God and let me seek his forgiveness, but let me know this. I need not despair. I needn't go back. I'm free still, free. Free to get up and go again. I am not under law. Therefore, sin shall not have dominion over you because you are not under law, but under grace. Very convenient, you say, Mr. Preacher. You make it sound then as if now as Christians, well, if we sin, it doesn't really matter after all. In fact, you're saying, shall we not continue in sin? Is that how you feel? Well, that's precisely what they said to Paul when he, uh, preached what I have just preached to you. It was wrong, of course, and in these coming weeks, God's willing, we shall see how wrong it is. Just because a man is free and not under law, that doesn't mean that God, uh, lets him go on and sin just as he pleased. No, indeed it doesn't. But while it doesn't, it is still true that a believer is not under law, but under grave. Therein lies the secret that the chains are broken. Sin shall not have dominion over him. Shall we pray? Now, Lord, we commit to thee thy holy word. We thank thee for these occasions when we can come together to think about thy word. Tomorrow we shall have to practice it. We do pray, O Lord, that thou wilt help us diligently to think, that understanding thy word and understanding thy salvation ever the more clearly and distinctly, we may find its help thus to behave better and to lay hold more clearly and strongly of the great salvation thou has given us. To this end, bless thy word and our meditations thereon, we beseech thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.