secure his acceptance "';th Pharaoh or with any other sinful or rebellious man. It is rather to secure his acceptance with God, and especially his full enjoyment of all that comes through this acceptance. III. JEHOVAH POTh'TS OUT THE WAY IN WHICH PHARAOH SIIALJ, DE !;:FFF.CTUALLY DROUGHT TO SUBMISSION. 1. In the sight of Pharao!,, Mo.~es is to become a God. In effect Pharaoh bas said that Jehovah is no God, and in his heart he thinks Moses a. pre- sumptuous impostor. Pharaoh is therefore in a state of mind in ,vhich it is impossible t-0 reveal Jehovah to him, but Moses in his own person shall set forth-shall incarnate, so to speak-all that Pharaoh can understand or needs to understand of the Divine power. He shall be compelled. to respect the ever-increasing power of Moses. He ma.y hate it, he may make some attempts to resist it, but at the same time the very force of circumstances will bea.r it in on his mind a.s a tremendous reality. He.shall see how all these successive devastations of his land are connected in some inscrutable way with the presence of Moses and the waving of his rod. Whatever the blindness of his heart so that seeing be does not perceive, he will be obliged to perceive that the strength of Moses does not lie in any visible, terrestrial forces. With all his obduracy, Pharaoh has a certain sense of awe before Moses, and doubtless this is the reason why no·attempt is made to treat the person of Moses with violence. 2. Notice the way in which God hers applies the method of mediation. Moses was not a mediator as from Pharaoh upwards to Jehovah, but he was a mediator from Jehovah downwards to Pharaoh. God thus seizes upon the disposition among the ignorant to venerate inscrutable power. Pharaoh will not listen to Moses speaking, but when the signs begin, and especially when they advance far beyond anything which his own magicians can simulate, he is ready to look on Moses as having something of a Divine nature. God looked for the impressible part in Pharaoh's mind a.nd found it here. The way in which Pharaoh evidently came to regard Moses (God's word in ver. 1 being the voucher for the feeling) is illustrated by the attitude towards Paul a.nd Barnabas of the Lystrans (Acts xiv. 8--13) and towards Paul of the Melitans (Acts mi.ii. 6). 3. .Noti!X! how God lays ewphasis 0'11, Pharaoh's continued indijferen!X! to any verbal message. " Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you." The thoughts of Moses are to be turned away more and more from his own lips or from any other faculty. He is to see that the great antagonists in this contest-even though he is made as a God to Pharaoh-are Jehovah and Pharaoh themselves. It is necessary that Pharaoh should have ample opportunity to show the ex.tent of his passive strength, how long and how stiffly he can resist the constraints of Divine omnipotence. God stoops to a patient struggle wit.h this obdurate monarch that he may thereby present, to all who read the Scriptures, an illustration of the complete way in which his power deals with the most stubborn assertions of human power. The Israelites, even with all their suiferings, had as yet seen only a part of what Pharaoh could do. They had seen him in cruel action ; they had also to see him in stolid endurance. So Moses had seen signs of Divine power ; but he had yet to see that power itself in extensive and awful operation. On the one hand Pharaoh is to be revealed., bringing out all his resources again and again, until at last they are swallowed in the cats.strophe of the Red Sea. Then, he is done with, but the operations of Divine power are only as it were beginning. It is a great matter that we should thus see the powers arrayed against God, working at tbe utmost of their strength; that we may feel how i=easurably the power of God transcends them.-Y. V ers. 9-12.-The rontagi0'11, of despair. I. IsnAEL 8 llEJECTION OF THE PROFFERED CONSOLATION. They hearkened not "for anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage." I. The sympathy of the Word of God. Their case stated not only fairly but with mfinite compassion. 2. Israel's folly. 'l'heir anguish is permitted to stand between them and God their only helper-their sickness between them and the great Physician; multitudes will not hear because they have no sense of need, and multitudes again because their new. is so very great. Israel in their folly typical: (1) The poor- " the lapsed masses." (2) '!'hose passing through heavy triaL (3)-The bereaved, (4) Those battling despairingly with besetting sin. How often ha.ve these no ear for the rich consolations of the promises of God ! IT. THE WEAKNESS OF MosEs. 1. Failure among his own people·•crushes utterly hope of success among strangers and foes. If Israel will not bear, who have everything Ctl, VI, 13-21.) TllE BOOK Olt' EXODUS. 155
to gain, will Pharaoh, who has everything to lose? 2. The old sense of hi8 insuf- ficiency again overpowers him. Deaf ears, unmoved hearts, unconsecrated lives in tho Church, pomlyao the preacher in his appeals to those that are without.-U