Exodus 11:0 - Homiletics

( Exodus 11:9 ). God's wonders are either such as occur in the general course of his providence, or such as are abnormal and extraordinary. It is these last of which Moses especially speaks to us in the Book of Exodus. But the same law which applies to the abnormal wonders, applies also to those which are constant and ordinary. Men's perverseness leads to their multiplication.

I. PARDON OF SIN IS MULTIPLIED THROUGH HUMAN TRANSGRESSION . Nothing is a greater marvel than God's pardon of sin. How "the High and Holy One who inhabiteth eternity"—he who "is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity"—can pardon sin, is one of those mysteries which must ever remain—in this life, at any rate—unfathomable. Man pardons his fellow-sinner without much difficulty, because he is his fellow-sinner—because he feels that he is himself so much in need of forgiveness. But for a perfect Being to pardon what is utterly alien to his own nature, what he must despise and abhor, what in his eyes is vile, base, mean, wicked, despicable, detestable—is a truth which faith may accept, but which reason is quite incompetent to understand. Yet God does pardon. St. Paul must have been pardoned his persecution of the saints, before he was called to be "a chosen vessel." God bids us ask for pardon, and he would not bid us ask for that which he could not or would not give. And the marvel of pardon is being daily augmented, heaped up, multiplied, by the ever-increasing sum of human transgression.

II. GOD THE SPIRIT 'S CONDESCENSION GROWS AND INCREASES THROUGH THE SAME . God the Father declared once upon a time, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man" ( Genesis 6:3 ). Yet near five thousand years have elapsed, and his Spirit strives still. Man turns away from his Spirit, "grieves" him, vexes him, is deaf to his pleadings, sets at nought his counsel, wills none of his reproof ( Proverbs 1:25 )—yet he does not withdraw himself. He "gives us the comfort of his help again"—he "will not leave us, nor forsake us." We may, no doubt, if we persist in evil courses, and set to work determinedly to drive him from us, in course of time cause him to withdraw, alienate him wholly, "quench" him. But, short of such alienation, our sins do but cause him to multiply the wonders of his love and his long-suffering, to be ever more gracious and more merciful, to plead with us more persuasively, more constantly, and save us, as it were, in spite of ourselves.

III. CHRIST 'S PROTECTION OF HIS CHURCH IS SHOWN MORE AND MORE MARVELOUSLY AS ITS ASSAILANTS INCREASE IN POWER AND BOLDNESS . In prosperous times God seems to do little for his Church; but let danger come, let men rise up against it, let Gebal and Ammon and Amalek be confederate together, and raise the cry, "Down with it, down with it, even to the ground," and the wonders which he proceeds to work on its behalf are simply astounding. Arius would corrupt its doctrine with the Court at his back, and Arius is smitten in the dead of the night by a death as silent, sudden, and inscrutable as that which came in the time of Moses on all the first-born of the Egyptians. Julian would crush it by depriving its ministers of support and its members of education, and Julian is cut off in the flower of his age by the javelin of an unknown enemy. Atheism, Agnosticism, Rationalism, Materialism, and often immorality league themselves against it at the present day, and lo! from without evidences are made to rise up out of crumbling heaps of rubbish in Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt; while from within is developed a new life, a new zeal, a new vigour and activity, which give sure promise of triumph over the coalition. Man's opposition to God provokes God to arise and show forth his might, to confound and scatter his foes. So men may be led at last to know that he, whose name is Jehovah, is truly "the Most High over all the earth" ( Psalms 83:18 ).