The Kingly Exodus

HiAvnc traced the very evident revelation of our Lord’s consciousness of the coming Cross during the three years of His public ministry, and having endeavoured, moreover, reverently to come as near to that Cross as it is right that we should in contemplation of His suffering, and having stood before the Cross and considered its revelation of sin and grace, we are now to approach it from a new standpoint.

This study is devoted to a consideration of the Cross in relation to the Kingly position of Christ, and in the course of it we shall endeavour to observe Him as He wins the victory which issued in the redemption of His people from the slavery of a false authority, and opened the way into a new land of freedom under government.

The slavery of sin is part of its penalty. When man yielded himself to sin, he became the servant of sin. By the way of the Cross the King made provision by which man could be redeemed from that slavery. In the mystery of His passion, the King led the exodus of all such as following Him, leave for ever behind them the tasks and taskmasters of evil, and pass into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

In Luke’s account of the transfiguration we read, “And behold, there talked with Him two men, who were Moses and Elijah; who appeared in glory, and spake of His decease which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.”* The writer of the letter to the Hebrews says, “By faith Joseph, when his end was nigh, made mention of the decease of the children of Israel.”* The word used by our translators is not the word “decease,” but “departure,” and such translation is undoubtedly correct. The word translated “departure” in Hebrews is the identical word translated “decease” in Luke, and a more literal translation of the Greek word in each case would convey the correct meaning on both occasions, that word being

“Luke 9. 30, 31. *Heb. 11. 22.

exodon. The simplest translation would be in the use of our word exodus. Use the word exodus in both connections, and it will be seen how it perfectly fits each: “Behold, there talked with Him two men, who were Moses and Elijah; who appeared in glory, and spake of His exodus which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” “By faith Joseph, when his end was nigh, made mention of the exodus of the children of Israel.” Peter, in referring to his own approaching end wrote, “Yea, I will give diligence that at every time ye may be able after my departure to call these things to remembrance,”* Here again we have altered the word, for it is translated “decease.” In the alteration on this occasion no incongtuity was discovered. Here again adopt the suggested word, “Yea, I will give diligence that at every time ye may be able after my exodus.” This word exodon only occurs in the New Testament on these three occasions. It is a word which means very literally, a highway out of, and so in use, a going out. This is the word which describes the subject of conversation between Jesus, and Moses and Elijah. The word “decease” is not wrong, always providing that it is understood correctly. It is derived from the Latin word “decessus,” which means a going from, so that the true meaning of the word decease is not death, as cessation of being, but a going out, or liberation of life. This decease is really a word marking the Christian thought of death, although so seldom understood in that way. Upon the mount of transfiguration the heavenly visitors conversed with Jesus of His exodus. Joseph, when his end was nigh, spoke of the exodus of the children of Israel; and Peter, referring to his approaching end, used the word concerning it which our Lord had used of His, on the holy mount, “after My exodus.”

We have occupied so much space with this word in order that we may be brought face to face with this particular aspect of the Cross of Jesus. We have considered our Lord as He passed into the place which was the necessary outcome of His assuming the responsibility of sin. We are now to consider Him as leading the way out from that very place, and so are to consider His death as in the pathway of His exodus. In this exodus He broke down all barriers, and left behind Him open doors through which those

2 Peter 1. 15.

submitted to His Kingship, surrendered to His government, might have their exodus also from the bondage and slavery of sin into the glorious liberty of the children of God. In order to our contemplation of this aspect of the Cross, we shall first make a statement of the case, and then take the supreme illustration of this truth given in the case of the malefactor, who by faith in Jesus, passed with Him along the pathway of His exodus.

I. In stating the case there must first be a remembrance of certain foundation facts. Of this the supreme one is that of the Divine Kingship. God is King. His claim is based upon the fact that He is the Creator, and Sustainer, of all life; and therefore His Proprietorship is based upon this original relationship, and His governmental right is the necessary and logical sequence. From this fact there can be no final escape. The history of human sin is the history of man’s attempt to deny the Divine Kingship, and to resist its claims. In spite of all this terrible history of rebellion and failure, God has not resigned His throne, He has not abandoned His sceptre, He has not yielded the reins of government. He is absolute King in the very nature of the case. His right to rule does not depend upon the vote ofa crowd. He has created, He has sustained, and in these facts lies the right of His Kingship. In the fullness of time God revealed and represented the fact of His Kingship in the Person of His Son..

Let us again revert to the second Psalm, and read it as it bears on our study.

First we have the question of the Psalmist in which we discover the touch of irony:

“Why do the nations rage, And the peoples meditate a vain thing?”* Then follows his description of the attitude of the kings and the rulers of the earth towards God and His anointed, with a declaration of their resolve:

“The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against Jehovah, and against His anointed, saying,
Let us break their bonds asunder,
And cast away their cords from us.”

Psa. 2. I. *Psa. 2. 2, 3.

The next stage in the Psalm reveals the attitude of God towards the kings and the rulers, and declares the words of Jehovah, in answer to the resolve of these kings and rulers:

“He that sitteth in the heavens will laugh:
The Lord will have them in derision.
Then will He speak unto them in His wrath,
And vex them in His sore displeasure:
Yet have I set My King
Upon My holy hill of Zion.”

At this point there is a change, and the Psalmist records the words of the anointed King, in view of the fiat of Jehovah: “I will tell of the decree:

Jehovah said unto Me, Thou art My Son;

This day have I begotten Thee.

Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance,

And the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.

Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron;

Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

And yet once more there is a change. With the ceasing of the voice of the Anointed, the Psalmist addresses the kings, and the rulers of the earth:

“Now therefore be wise, O ye kings:
Be instructed, ye judges of the earth.
Serve Jehovah with fear,
And rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish in the way,
For His wrath will soon be kindled.
Blessed are all they that take refuge in Him.”*

Notice specially the announcement of Jehovah, “I have set My King upon My holy hill of Zion.” Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was the visible representation and revelation in time, of the perpetual inward fact of the Divine Sovereignty. He is God’s anointed King for the accomplishment of certain purposes, for the carrying out of specific work. The eternal and unalterable fact is that of the sovereignty of Jehovah, and looking on over the far and immeasurable distances, I see the point described in the words of the apostle, “Then cometh the end, when He (the Son) shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father.”4 In the Divine economy

1Psa. 2. 4-6. 2Psa. 2. 7-9. 5Psa. 2. 10-12. 47 (Cor, 15: 24:

SHE RINGEY BxXODUS 235

therefore there will finally be restored the actual and immediate Kingship of God. In order to that issue for the carrying out of the wonderful processes which will result therein, the Son is the King anointed, set upon the holy hill of Zion. These facts must be clearly before the mind in the contemplation of the Cross as the exodus of the King.

In certain respects, this fact of the Divine Kingship has become inoperative in human lives. In no human life has it absolutely become inoperative. Every man, woman, and child is under the government of God, and can by no means escape from it. The supreme illustration and proof of this lies in the fact that no man has been able to fix the day of his death. Or if by an act of unreasoning folly man has taken his life, it has been but to discover that he has not escaped from, but has hurried himself into, the consciousness of the supremacy of the Eternal God. Yet in the realm of will, and therefore of certain lines of conduct, the Divine Kingship is not acknowledged, and in that sense has become inoperative. Insomuch as this is true, man has passed under the will’s false authority, and has become its slave. In an earlier study we saw how the will necessarily demands a governing centre, a reason, a because. Will can only be exercised upon the basis of reason, and the reason behind the exercise, is the governing authority of the life. The true reason for the exercise of the will of man is the will of God. Man dethroned God, declined to consider His will as the abiding law, and abandoned by that act the true principle of life. He did not, however, escape from the necessity of a central authority, and a governing principle. In place, however, of the good and perfect and acceptable will of God, he enthroned the foolish, varying, imperfect desires of the flesh and the mind. Instead of continuing to say, I will because God wills, he came to say, I will because I wish. That is the essence of sin, and the issue is obvious. Man yielded to sin, becomes the servant of sin, is oppressed by sin, and is unable to do any other than respond to the mastery of sin. He may catch fair glimpses of that freer life, actuated by the will of God, but being under the dominion of sin, he is not free to obey the Divine Kingship. In the words of the apostle, he has to say, “to me who would do good, evil is present.”! That is the supreme and

‘Rom. 7. 21.

overwhelming degradation of human life. It is, moreover, the whole story of man. Yielded to sin he is the slave of sin, bound hand and foot, bruised and ruined in the whole fact of his life.

The principle of sin expressed itself towards God’s anointed King in His rejection and casting out. The will of man, governed by a wrong reason, acting from a wrong motive, rejected, crucified the One Who revealed the true centre of authority in human life.

The great problems, therefore, facing the King in His work of redeeming man, were those of how he should be freed from the penalty of sin, and delivered from its paralysis. The inevitable issue of sin is death. Sin committed cannot be undone by sorrow, or by promise of amendment. Sowing demands the harvest. It cannot possibly be avoided. Before man can be delivered from the slavery of sin, the penalty of sin must be borne.

The deeper and more terrible problem is that of the paralysis resulting from sin. Sin working death makes obedience impossible. Man as the slave of sin, is paralyzed in all the highest powers of his being, in the whole of which the poison operates with ever increasing and terrific power. These problems are solved in the mystery. of the King’s passion. Having reverently come to the margin of that passion, and observed Him as He passed into a realm where we could by no means follow, we see Him in the Cross emerging from the slavery.

As our previous study has shown, the King in His sinlessness has carried the sin of His people, and having done so has created a value which He did not require for Himself, and which is therefore at the disposal of those in whose place He has suffered. Thus by identification with man in the penalty and paralysis of sin, He brings man into identification with Himself in the pardon and power of His life. Yet when I hear Him saying: “It is finished,”! “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit,’2 I know that He is on the highway of His exodus, Egypt is behind, the power of the oppressor is broken, the mystery of sin is at an end, and as He emerges from the slavery, He sets the door wide open, that those who follow Him by the way of the Cross, may have their exodus also from all that sin means as to penalty. It was, moreover, the pathway of freedom from the paralysis of sin, in virtue of the fact that the life laid down

John 19. 30. *Luke 23. 46.

was taken again, that it might be communicated to the sin-enslaved. This will only be fully dealt with as we pass to the subjects of resurrection and ascension, which are also within the highway of His exodus.

Thus we reverently contemplate the anointed King as He leads His people from the Egypt of their bondage, through a divided sea, towards the place of liberty under the Kingship of Jehovah. Tke King Himself has taken hold upon that which has enslaved man, He has borne its penalty, and broken its power, and thus provided the value of forgiveness for the race, and a dynamic of life for all such as put their trust in Him. We see Him passing by the way of the Cross with the step of a Conqueror, the Leader of the great hosts, who by His victory shall be delivered from the bondage of sin and the bondage of death, into all the spacious freedom of the Kingdom of God.

II. A singularly beautiful illustration of the truth is supplied in the story of the malefactor. Carefully note the setting of that story in the Gospel of Luke. Immediately preceding it is the account of the superscription over His Cross, “Tuts 1s THE KING OF THE JEws.”* Immediately following it is the declaration: “It was now about the sixth hour, and a darkness came over the land until the ninth hour, the sun’s light failing, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst.”*

The superscription expressed the fact that the Hebrew nation did not believe. So far as Pilate was concerned it was undoubtedly an expression of his contempt for the men who had encompassed the death of Jesus. These are the human elements. The Divine fact is that the superscription was written with the finger of God even though Pilate all unconsciously was His penman. As of old He girded Cyrus, though he did not know Him, so He inspired Pilate who was all unconscious. The Jewish nation in the purpose of God was a revelation of His government, a theocracy through which He would express the benefits of His rule to the nations of the world, that they might all share in them by submission. In the economy of God, therefore, the King of the Jews was the Holy One set upon the hill of Zion, King of the whole earth. The

*Luke 23. 38, “Luke 23. 44, 45¢

Hebrew people had their exodus from bondage long centuries before, but it had never been completed. The letter to the Hebrews makes this perfectly clear. They passed over the sea, and yet died in the wilderness. The God-appointed King, talking with Moses who had led that old-time exodus, and yet who himself had failed as the people had failed, spoke of an exodus which He would accomplish. The other exodus was never accomplished. It was begun, but not finished. He had come to accomplish, to finish the exodus, and the superscription marks Him as the King Who is leading His people, and all people who bow to His sceptre in that exodus which is perfect freedom from the bondage of false authority.

At last the hours of darkness are ended, and then it is written, “the veil of the temple was rent in the midst.”! The rent veil was the sign that the exodus so far as the King was concerned, was accomplished. This exodus which has been considered as a going out of, a liberation from the bondage, is now seen as an introduction to relationship with God.

Between this declaration concerning the superscription, and the account of the rent veil, there is the story of the malefactor, and his coming into association with the King, in the process of the exodus. That dying man is a superlative illustration of the slavery of sin. He is suffering the penalty of death, which is the issue of the paralysis of ruined character. In that hopeless condition he becomes conscious of his nearness to the King. There is, as it seems to me, no record of faith in the New Testament so wonderful as that of the dying malefactor. In the very moment of the defeat of Jesus to all human seeming, in the presence of the sign and symbol of His casting out, this man recognises the King moving towards a Kingdom, and he appeals to Him before the exodus is accomplished, before the crowning is reached. His cry is the cry of conscious need as it casts itself in all its helplessness at the feet of supreme authority, “Jesus, remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom.”2 What did the King say to such an appeal 2 He was on His way from Egypt to the land of liberty. He was at the moment grappling with the bonds that bound the race. He, whelmed in the billows of the sea, was yet in infinite power dividing a pathway through its waters, and without hesitation, in a great consciousness of the

*Luke 23. 45. *Luke 23. 42, coming victory, He said, “To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.”! We care nothing for the moment as to discussions concerning the Paradise. “With Me.” That is the word of value. Explain the Paradise as you will. Let it mean for the moment, if you so please, simply the abiding place of disembodied spirits. What matters it 2 The fact remains that the sin-slaved and ruined man is in that abode to be with the King. Abandonment to Him will issue in identification. with Him. If that issue is His defeat, then also will abide the defeat of the man. Yet this is a suggestion ventured only by way of contrast to the glorious fact. The King really said to him, I am going on My exodus, you come with Me. I am passing to the depth of this slavery. I am breaking these bonds. I am liberating the prisoners. Come with Me. From that moment until this He has been leading souls who have trusted Him through the pathway of His passion with all its values, into the place of His victory with all its virtues.

Thus the presence and the plea of the dying malefactor reveals the Cross as the condemnation and death of rebellion and unbelief, and the commendation and life power of loyalty and faith.

So comes the kingdom of God! The King has accomplished the exodus! Are we living in the bondage, or in freedom? The answer to this question will be found in the answer to another. Have we yet come into the place of trusting identification with Him in His Cross? If so, then for us

“Bars are riven,
Foes are driven,”

and our bondage is at an end.

The King accomplished the exodus for all such as put their trust in Him, and these have already passed with Him from darkness to light, from slavery to freedom, from death to life.

*Luke 23. 43.