Too Little for the Lamb
(No. 2937)
A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, MAY 25, 1905.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, APRIL
8, 1875.
"They shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of
their father, a lamb for an house: and if the household is too little
for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next unto his house take it
according to the number of the souls; every man according to his eating
shall make your count for the lamb." Exodus 12:3, 4.
THE paschal lamb was not killed in order to be looked at only, but to
be eaten. And our Lord Jesus Christ has not been slain merely that we
may hear about Him and talk about Him, and think about Him, but that we
may feed upon Him. Everything that has to do with Christ's work is of
real, practical, vital consequence to Believers. He is to be the food
for our souls. Faith is to receive Him. Love is to embrace Him. Hope is
to rejoice in Him!
The lamb of the Passover was not to be eaten in part, some of it to be
left and some of it to be divided at the feast– the whole lamb was to
be eaten. And, in like manner, the whole of Christ is to be spiritually
received by us, whether He is made of God unto us wisdom, or righteous,
or sanctification, or redemption. All that He is and all that He does
should be received by us with an open and grateful heart. There must
not be any picking and choosing among the good things of Christ but all
must be accepted alike. We are all sinners and we all need a
Savior–and we need the whole of that Savior.
So, too, as the whole of the paschal lamb was to be eaten, I think I
may say that all the power to save which is in Christ is meant be
exercised. He is able to save to the uttermost all them that come unto
God by Him–and that uttermost power of His was not intended to lie
idle. He is able to save those who are at the very ends of the
earth–and that power to save the outcasts and the offscourings was not
intended to be left unused. It is our business to stir up the Divine
strength and to pray the Lord to come and save even the vilest of the
vile–and great multitudes of them!
Further, the whole of the lamb was meant to be eaten at once. None of
it was to be kept till morning. As with the manna, there was to be no
laying of it up in store for future use. They were to eat it then and
there and it will be well if the members of Christ's Church will always
look to the present using of Christ and of all that is in Him. I think
we may lawfully delight ourselves in the anticipation of those happier
days of His Millennial Glory which are yet to dawn upon this sin-cursed
earth, but, as a matter of fact, we had better concern ourselves
principally with the needs of the present age–with the soul-hunger of
those among whom we live–the dire necessities of those who are
perishing for lack of the knowledge of Christ. Christ is meant for
present use. Whatever He may do a thousand years hence, it is of more
concern to us to see what He can do today. The principal business of
the Christian is to proclaim Christ today–with this as part of the
proclamation–"Today, if you will hear His voice, harden not your
hearts." Even now He is mighty to save, mighty by His blood to deliver
His people now from the avenging angel and, by His flesh, to be the
continual food of their souls. And we are to see to it that we do not
so project ourselves into a future age as to be negligent of the
present use of the ever-present Savior who is with us always, even to
the end of the age!
The paschal lamb was meant to be eaten, to be all eaten and to be all
eaten then and there–and Christ is meant to be used, meant to be
altogether used and to be used now. May each Believer here be impressed
with these thoughts!
I. Now, coming to our text, it appears to me that IT REMINDS US OF A
PRIMARY PRIVILEGE. The third verse speaks of that privilege in so many
words–"They shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the
house of their fathers, a lamb for an house."
The place for all true religion to begin is at home. Wherever charity
ought or ought not to begin, certainly true religion must begin at
home. It should be a cause of great joy to us if we have Jesus Christ
as our own, according to the paschal ordinance. "They shall take to
them every man a lamb." Are you, dear Friend, searching your heart to
know whether you have to do with Christ, personally, in your own
individuality? It will be a fatal delusion if you fancy that you will
get into Heaven as people sometimes get into this Tabernacle–by being
carried along by the force of the numbers who are pressing to get in!
You must come to Christ personally, by personal repentance and personal
faith, and there must be a personal feeding upon Him if He is to be of
any service to you. It is idle to talk about the neighbor who is next
to you until, first of all, you have seen to it that you, yourself, are
a partaker of the Lord Jesus Christ. I put the question now from the
depths of my soul to my own heart, "Preacher, have you the blood
sprinkled on the lintel and on the side posts of your house? Have you
fed upon Christ?" And when I have answered that question for myself, I
would beseech each one of you to answer it, too. I am not asking about
your parentage, or about your church membership, or about the pious
relations whom you have in your house, but about yourself! How is it
with you, Brothers and Sisters? Even old professors have need to ask
the question, for an old imposture may long be kept up–I fear it may
be preserved throughout life–and perhaps nothing will pull the mask
off some men's eyes until the skeleton hand of death reveals the
terrible truth to them! It is an unspeakable mercy that the Lamb of God
is provided for our Passover and that for the very worst of us–for
those of us who are most conscious that we deserve to perish–there is
still the precious Gospel message, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and you shall be saved." May it be a fact, known to us beyond all
question by the witness of the Holy Spirit within us that Jesus Christ
has been slain for us and fed upon by us!
Then, the next part of this primary privilege is that we should have
Christ for our whole family. There was to be a paschal lamb for all the
members of the Israelite family–"a lamb for an house." They were all
to share in the blessings which that lamb brought. Oh, privileged
beyond compare is that man who has a partner in life who, with himself,
rejoices in Christ and who sees all his children following in his
steps, equally rejoicing in the Lord Jesus Christ! And happier still is
he if all his servants are in the same blessed condition. How is it
with you, Brothers and Sisters? Have you this blessing? I know that
some of you have. Your house ought to be a little Heaven, for you have
a church in your house! Keep the bells always ringing, "Holiness unto
the Lord," and let your hearts be so many harps from which there shall
constantly pour forth floods of music to the praise of Him who has so
highly favored you!
Perhaps your children are as yet only little ones and you are looking
forward with the hope that the Lamb of God may yet be available for
your whole household. In what way can you promote this? There are rules
given you in Scripture. You cannot convert your children–to regenerate
them is altogether beyond your power. It is a Divine work and must be
done by the Holy Spirit. But you have that ancient exhortation, "Train
up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not
depart from it." For the most part, the training of children does
affect their manhood and womanhood. There are some who seem as if we
could not train them–they are like wild vines that will not be trained
and their later life reveals the force of the willfulness which
resisted the training which parents would gladly have given them.
Unhappy are we if we have such children and how sincerely we ought to
sympathize with any who are in such a sad case. But how happy ought we
to be if our children take kindly to the training which, by the Grace
of God, we seek to give them, so that they are like vines fastened up
upon the walls of our houses and do not to tear themselves away from
the fastenings which are for their support and safety. May they bring
forth fruit to God's Glory and to our own comfort in years to come!
We must, however, add something to our training to make it effectual.
There must be constant prayer where training appears to fail, for we
can pray even for those of our children who are past the age in which
we can exercise the influence of training upon them. I do not think
that we shall long plead for our sons and daughters without seeing a
prayer-hearing God stretching out His hand to save them. Or if we do,
we must look upon the delay as a further trial of our faith and we must
intensify our prayer until it becomes an agony–and in that agony we
lay hold upon the Covenant Angel and cry, "I will not let You go unless
You bless me and my seed also." So choice a gift as this may be
reserved for something more earnest than the prayer to which we have
yet attained. And when the Lord shall have flung us upon our
faces–shall have brought us to despair–shall have made us see, in the
rebellious character of our children, a picture of our own
rebelliousness–and made us see, in our own agony, a reflection of the
agony of the heart of Jesus over our
wanderings, then, perhaps He will speedily listen to us, and our
children shall, with us, be sheltered beneath the blood of the Lamb!
With both the training and the prayer we should take care that we
mingle much gracious teaching. Our children should not be left ignorant
concerning the things that make for their peace. I have been surprised
to find how many young people appear to know little or nothing about
Holy Scripture–yet most, if not all of them, had been to a Sunday
school. It is singular how quickly children will forget what they
learn! And that which is merely learned by rote and has not been taught
affectionately is very readily brushed off from the memory. I think
that a boy very seldom forgets the teaching which has been moistened
with a mother's tears. There is, somehow, a wonderful power about a
mother's voice when she talks to her children about Jesus and His love
which stamps itself upon the heart–and the heart it a far better place
for the custody of the Truth of God than ever the brain can become! We
may forget what we only learn with the head, but we shall not forget
what we learn with the heart. Therefore, Christian parents, teach your
children thus–let them, from their youth, know the Holy Scriptures
which are able to make them wise unto salvation–let them be early
acquainted with the precious things of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!
But, above all things, my Brothers and Sisters, if we would have our
household feeding upon Christ we must set them a godly example. I have
known families–I think I know some now–where the training is
certainly severe enough, perhaps too much so, and where the teaching is
as clear as it is cold–but where the example set before the children
is not good. Now, if you pray in one way with your lips and in another
way with your lives, your lives will win the day and your children will
rather be like what you are than what you ask them to be. It is a great
pity when men who seem good at the Prayer Meeting are really bad at
home–when those who show much kindness to their Christian friends seem
to have given away all their honey to comparative strangers outside the
walls of their own house–and have no sweetness left for their own
children! Let us, dear Friends, endeavor always to set such an example
as it will be safe for our sons and daughters to follow. And then I
think there will very rarely be found any instance where training,
teaching, prayer and a good example have gone together, where the
blessing of God has failed to come! God grant to you, Brothers and
Sisters, at any rate, the Grace to attend carefully to all these
matters. And then if, perhaps, you should prove to be the father of an
Ishmael, or the mother of an Ishmael, you will not have to say, "I kept
the vineyards of others, but my own vineyard have I not kept." And then
you will feel that you did use such means as were within your reach,
even though the blessing of God did not come to your children. I pray,
Beloved, that it may the privilege of every one of you to have the Lamb
of God for your whole household and that each member of your family,
from the youngest to the oldest, may joyfully partake of all the
benefits of the common Sacrifice which is provided for all the chosen.
That will suffice for our first point which is that the text reminds us
of a primary privilege.
II. Now, secondly, THE TEXT IS SILENT ABOUT A CERTAIN CONTINGENCY WHICH
WOULD SEEM TO HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE.
You observe that it speaks about what was to be done when the household
was not large enough to eat the lamb, but it says nothing about what
was to occur if the lamb was not sufficiently large to feed the
household. We can often learn much from the silence of Scripture. We
know that it is so in the case of Melchizedek. Since his parentage is
not mentioned, the silence is significant. And so here, the silence
concerning such a contingency as the insufficiency of the paschal lamb
for the household is, I think, meant to teach us an important lesson.
It is probable that the lamb was, literally speaking, never too little
for the household for this reason–the Jews say that the Passover was
not intended to be eaten with a view to feasting, but that frequently
only a small portion was eaten. There were, doubtless, large families,
but there was enough for each one to have a small portion of the
lamb–just as we do not come to the Lord's Supper merely to eat and
drink, but we come there for a religious observance–and a single
portion of bread and a sip of wine suffice us. There may have been as
many as 20 persons in one house who would partake of the lamb and, in
our Lord's case, we know that at the Last Supper, He sat down to the
Passover with the twelve, making 13 with Himself. But the contingency
is not supposed that there should be an insufficient provision in the
lamb for the proper observance of the feast.
And now, using the type spiritually, let us rest assured that it never
can happen that there should not be enough of Jesus Christ to feed all
our families. "Well," says one father, "we are a very numerous
household. Our children need a very large table and when they all sit
down together they make a tribe equal to that of good old Jacob." Yes,
and no doubt some of those Jewish families were as large as that, yet
they all fed upon the paschal lamb. And there is enough in Christ for
all your family–and there would be enough even if it consisted of 25
persons–of even twenty-five thousand! If any of them perished, it
would not be because Christ was not sufficient for them, but because
they had not received Him, had not believed on Him. Do not let the
number in your household restrain your praying or working for them–
and rest not until, by God's good Grace, the whole of them shall know
and trust in Jesus!
"But," says another, "our family is more peculiar than that, for we are
a family of sinners." It happens, sometimes, that a man who in former
times, was a very great offender, is converted, but he is like a
speckled bird to all the rest of his family. His brother is a drunk,
his sister is godless, his father and mother despise religion and as he
looks round upon them, he can only wonder how it was that Sovereign
Grace should ever have selected one out of such a family as his. He
does not remember any of his relations who ever made a profession of
religion. They have been "the devil's own" as far back as he can trace.
Well, beloved Friends, if it is so with any of your families, do not
hesitate for a single moment in your prayers or in your efforts for
them under such a wicked, dishonoring notion as, perhaps, your family
is too bad for Christ to save, their sins too many for His blood to
wash away and their necessities too great for Him to relieve! That
cannot be! You have an All-Sufficient Savior to talk of, to rely upon
and to bring before them! Go to Him in prayer for all your family,
beseeching that all the members of your ungodly family may yet
participate in the blessings procured by the Lamb of God! I do not know
anything in the Bible that ought to check our prayers for our whole
households. The Doctrine of Election may suggest to some ignorant
persons the idea that they cannot pray for all, but let us always
remember that the Doctrine of Election which is a most blessed Truth of
God–is never used in Scripture as a damper to our prayers!
The Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, "I exhort therefore, that first of
all, supplications, prayers, intercessions and giving of thanks be made
for all men," meaning all ranks and conditions of men and all sorts of
men! We are not told concerning anybody that we may not pray for
them–with the one exception that if we knew a man to have committed
the unpardonable sin–which we do not and cannot know–it is written,
"I do not say that he shall pray for it." But, in any other case we may
pray hopefully and I know of nothing in the Scriptures that should
hinder earnest effort for the salvation of our whole households. Never
ought we to look any child of ours in the face and feel, "Well, I never
will speak to that child about Christ, it would be useless–he cannot
be saved." It would be antagonistic to the whole current of Sacred
Scripture for us to imbibe any such notion as that, so may we never
imbibe it! Neither do I know of anything in Scripture that should lead
us to give up hope concerning any who belong to a household in which
some have already been saved. If Christ has saved me, I gather from
that fact, this inference, that He can save anybody! I have never
doubted the possibility of the salvation of anybody since Jesus Christ
saved me, for I feel that He went about as far as He could go then, and
all other sinners must come within the reach of His merciful power!
So plead on, work on, train on, teach on and do not relax your efforts,
or allow your hopes to be dampened till the whole household shall have
been brought to feed upon Jesus Christ, for, rest assured that at the
King's banquet of mercy there was never a failure of food yet! Behold
how the tables groan with the weight of the oxen and the fatlings for
the great Gospel Supper–and the wine and milk are poured out with
unstinted hand! There shall be enough to satisfy the hunger and thirst
of all who shall ever come to that Table as long as time shall last!
And if, as indeed it shall yet be, thousands and tens of thousands and
millions should come flocking to the house of bread, there will always
be found enough and to spare for all who come!
III. But now, thirdly, I come to the very heart of the text where it
mentions, in so many words, A PROBABILITY FOR WHICH IT PROVIDES–"If
the household is too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next
unto his house take it according to the number of the souls."
Brethren, that which was a possibility in Egypt is not only common but
universal with us. My household and my father's household–we can
rejoice to know that they feed upon the Lamb of God, but our households
alone are much too little for the Lamb. If I know that I and my sons
are saved, I cannot feel that we alone would be sufficient to reward
our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for the travail of His soul. You, my
Friend, said that you had a large family, but you could not call your
sons and daughters together and say, "My dear children, now that I see
you saved, I feel that Christ is quite sufficiently rewarded for all
that He has done." Oh, no! It is a very great proof of His Grace and
mercy that He has
saved your children, yet you look upon it almost as a little thing in
comparison with what His Infinite Sacrifice must have bought and His
work and death must deserve as their crown!
Our household is also too little to sing the praises of Jesus, the Lamb
of God. Suppose that in us and in our children all the attributes of
Jesus Christ should be revealed in a very remarkable degree. That will
be something for which to praise Him throughout eternity, but, dear
Friends, merely to have those attributes revealed in father, mother and
five or six children or grandchildren will not suffice–we want Christ
to be revealed in thousands, and tens of thousands, and unnumbered
millions of saved souls! Our household is, indeed, too little to sing
the praises of this blessed Lamb and we do well often to cry–
"Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing My great Redeemer's praise!"
We long to hear ten thousand times ten thousand tongues singing–
"Worthy the Lamb."
Our household is also too little to do all the work that is to be done
for Jesus in proclaiming Him as the Lamb of God. It would be a great
mercy if God gave us the privilege of having many sons who all preached
the Gospel and many daughters who were all eminent in the Church as
teachers, deaconesses, missionaries and the like. It would be a great
privilege to have a whole family all diligently employed in the service
of the Savior. But if a man had 20 sons and they were all preachers,
would he say, "There are now quite enough to do Christ's work"? Oh,
dear no! Our household is too little for the Lamb in all the senses
that I have mentioned–we need more to feed upon Jesus, more to praise
Jesus and more to proclaim Jesus!
There are some Brothers and Sisters who meet in a little building in an
out-of-the-way street who seem to feel that their household is quite
big enough. The new Jerusalem, according to them, was intended to
comprise some little miserable hamlet, bounded on the North and East by
a ditch of strict communion and on the South and West by a rampart of
Hyper-Calvinistic Doctrine. But I like to think of Jesus Christ's
Kingdom as very widely extended, His Throne as high and lifted up and
the loyal subjects over whom He reigns as an enormous multitude whom no
man can number, who shall be given to Him as the reward of the travail
of His soul! This Tabernacle Church, numbering five thousand souls, is
much too little for the Lamb! If we could have the Agricultural Hall
crowded and all there should say that they were converted–and if they
all were really converted–it would still be too little for the Lamb!
And if we had the Agricultural Hall multiplied 20 times over and all of
them full of saved souls, it would still be too little for the Lamb!
And if all in England, Scotland, America and France–and in every
country where Christ is preached, were converted– it would still be
too little for the Lamb! And if we were to have all the inhabitants of
Europe and Asia brought to Jesus, I would still say that it was too
little for the Lamb–and if we could add all in Africa and Australasia,
as long as there was an island of the sea in which the people were not
converted to Christ, our hearts would still cry, "The household is too
little for the Lamb!"–
"Ah, reign wherever man is found, Our Spouse, Beloved and Divine! Then
are we rich, and we abound, When every human heart is Thine!"
But not till then–till over the whole earth the knowledge of the Lord
shall be spread as the waters cover the sea! Until then, we shall still
feel that the household is too little for the Lamb.
What was the Israelite to do to meet the contingency of the household
being too little for the lamb? The provision was, "Let him and his
neighbor next unto his house take it according to the number of the
souls." And the Christian whose household is certainly too little for
the Lamb of God is to call in his neighbor to share the blessing with
him! Brother, if you and all your household are saved, call your
neighbor to the great Gospel feast! I do not mean merely the person who
lives next door to you, for, in London it often happens that there is
nobody further off than the person who lives next door to us. But your
neighbor may be the person sitting next to you in the pew, or the man
who works at the next bench to yours in the shop, or someone with whom
you meet in trade or in the order of God's Providence. Any one of those
people may be the neighbor to join with you in feeding upon the lamb!
God has put him in your way for some reason or other and, certainly,
not that you may be an injury to him! It must be, at least, that you
may endeavor to be of
service to him. We are all more or less dependent upon one another. One
of the obligations of near neighborhood should be that we should seek
our neighbor's good, even as the Commandment says, "You shall love your
neighbor as yourself." And although that relates to all mankind, it
must refer in a very eminent and emphatic sense to the man who is
literally our neighbor.
Look, then, after the man who is near to you. And if you do this, you
will not have so far to go as if you looked after anybody else. God is
a God of economy, so He did not say to the Israelite, "You are to bring
into your house, to make up your company at the Passover, the man who
lives at the furthermost end of Goshen." He saved His people as much
trouble as possible by saying that the man "and his neighbor next unto
his house" were to unite in the celebration. You who live in the South
of London are not commanded to go and tramp six or seven miles in order
to find someone in the North of London to whom you may be useful. You
are first to look after those who live in the street in which you live,
or with whom you come into contact in your daily life. There is a very
good regulation concerning the clearance of snow– that each
householder shall clear the pavement in front of his own house–if that
rule could always be carried out, London would be cleaner than it is
now after a fall of snow! Let us all try to act like that with regard
to the moral and spiritual snow that lies on the pavement opposite to
us. All who live in London will soon be evangelized if each Christian
seeks to win for Christ, "his neighbor next unto his house." And then
if that neighbor seeks to win his next door neighbor, and that one his
neighbor and so on. It will not only be a saving of effort, but it will
be an orderly regulation by which it will be guaranteed that the Truth
of God shall be brought to the notice of all who need it.
Besides, your neighbor is the person who is most likely to be
influenced by you. A total stranger would need more time to introduce
himself, but your neighbor already knows something of you. And if he
sees that you are a consistent Christian, that will materially assist
you in delivering your message to him. If you are living as you ought
to live, your neighbor knows something about the effect which the
Gospel has had upon your life. For you to speak to him, therefore, will
be most fitting, for you are the man who can give the living example as
well as the spoken Word!
Above all, he is the person whom you are especially bid to seek. We are
to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature–but
there is a special obligation upon us to preach that Gospel to the one
who is nearest to us. Dear Brothers and Sisters, do you always attend
to this matter? Do you talk of Jesus Christ to those who live near you,
or with whom you are brought into contact? Some Sundays ago, at the
East London Tabernacle, Mr. Archibald Brown spoke to his people about
this duty and then he stopped and said, "Now we will put into practice
what I have been urging upon you–will every Christian in the
Tabernacle speak to the person who is next to him?" And everybody in
the building was spoken to, then and there, about Christ! It was a good
plan and it resulted in the conversion of a great number of persons,
while there were many others who were brought under conviction of sin
and who will, it is hoped, be led to the Savior through that striking
personal appeal.
I will not stop my sermon and ask you to do that, but I will ask you to
do it every time you come together into this place and as often as you
have a proper opportunity of doing it in your daily calling. Be wise
and prudent as to the time when you make your appeal. Religion is not
to be rammed down people's throats, but watch for a suitable
opportunity of speaking for Christ and that opportunity will come to
you sooner or later. You may do harm if you do not take care to speak
at the right time. The wise man tells us that "to everything there is a
season, and a time to every purpose under the Heaven," so watch for the
occasion of bearing testimony to Christ and then, feeling that your
household is too little for the Lamb of God, try to introduce Him to
others.
I fancy I hear somebody say, "Ah, but they only brought in Israelites
to feed on the paschal lamb. They did not call in the Egyptians." Quite
so, nor will you, so you need not be frightened about that matter. None
but God's elect ones will spiritually feed upon Christ. Some people
seem to be afraid lest we should be the means of saving some of the
non-elect– but that is a fear which never troubles either my head or
my heart, for I know that with all the effort and preaching in the
world, we shall never bring more to Christ than Christ has had given to
Him by His Father! You will never fall into that trouble. Our Savior
has bid us preach the Gospel to every creature. He has not said,
"Preach it only to the elect." And though that might seem to be the
most logical thing for us to do, yet, since He has not been pleased to
stamp the elect on their foreheads, or to put any distinctive mark upon
them, it would be an impossible task for us to perform! Therefore when
we preach the Gospel to every creature, the Gospel makes its own
division and Christ's sheep hear His voice and follow Him. It is
unnecessary to stop the ears of other sheep, or to try to prevent your
voice from travelling where other
sheep are found–only the true sheep of Christ will recognize His voice
in the Gospel message, or be obedient to it. Therefore, let not your
zeal be repressed by any doctrinal views, however sound, for, depend
upon it, sound Doctrine is never inconsistent with obedience to the
command to preach the Gospel to every creature. Sound precept and sound
Doctrine must agree!
IV. The last thing upon which I have to speak is not in my text, yet
THE WHOLE SUBJECT SUGGESTS
THOUGHTS UPON NEIGHBORLY FELLOWSHIP IN THE GOSPEL.
Here is a man whose household is too little for the lamb and he has
called in his next door neighbor to share the feast with him. "Come in,
Friend," he says, "I have a wife and two children, and our household is
too little for the lamb. You have a wife and one child–come in and we
will keep the Passover together."
I know what the result of that invitation would be. First, there would
be sweet fellowship. They would feed upon the same lamb and, in doing
so, they would come to know each other as they had never done before.
They would talk together most gratefully concerning the Divine plan of
sacrifice by which they were being saved while Egypt was being
destroyed. They would talk to each other about that remarkable day when
there was darkness over all the land of Egypt except in the houses of
the Israelites, for they had light in their dwellings. They would talk
about those flies and frogs that came up in swarms over the land and
how the mighty arm of Jehovah had been outstretched on their behalf. I
think that the members of both families would be all the happier after
meeting under one roof and feeding together upon the paschal lamb. It
would be a pleasant time for all of them and I can assure you that if
you are the means of bringing any souls to Jesus Christ, you will find
that those whom you bring to Him, by the power of the Holy Spirit, are
the very best companions you have ever had! You will talk together very
sweetly of all that the Lord has done for you and you will thus warm
each other's hearts. Like two firebrands that might only have smoldered
alone, you will burn and blaze when you are put together!
Then, after the feast was over, there would be pleasant relations
established between those two families. Surely after they had been
together that night, sheltering under the same sprinkled blood,
feasting on the same paschal lamb, partaking of the same bitter herbs
and each one standing with his loins girt and with his staff in his
hand, the members of those families would never be at enmity against
one another. They must always have felt that they were very near akin
to one another and it is a still more blessed kinship that is
established and cemented at the Cross of Christ! Where we love each
other for Christ's sake and love Christ as we see Him revealed in one
another, such love as that will outlast our earthly life and will reach
on into eternity–and be sweet even in Heaven!
I should say, dear Friends, that both those families would have very
pleasant memories of that Passover and out of those memories would grow
future communion. The master of one household, when he met the other,
years afterwards in the wilderness, would say to him, "Do you remember,
Jacob, coming to my house on the Passover night" "Yes, Ephraim," the
other would reply, "I remember it well. Your family was too little for
the lamb, so we joined together for the feast." One would ask, "Will
you ever forget that night?" "No," the other would say, "it was very
solemn, but it was very sweet and I think I liked it all the better
because it was in your house." And the first one would say, "And I am
sure that I enjoyed it all the more because I had you to come in and
share it with me."
So those memories, you see, would beget new communion and they would be
ready to help each other and to cheer each other in the future. They
would often make interchanges of experience–and interchange of
experience is like profitable bracing–it enriches all concerned. They
that fear the Lord, when they speak often, one to another concerning
Him, are sure to be mutually helpful to one another! And I think that
this bringing in of others to increase the family for the observance of
the Passover would be certain to lay the foundation of much mutual
communion and much mutual benefit in the future. And, surely, Brothers
and Sisters, in proportion as, by the Grace of God, we labor
successfully to bring others to Christ and so Christ's family is
increased, we shall be anticipating the joy of Heaven! It will never be
said in Heaven that the household is too little for the Lamb. When
Christ comes in all His Glory and all His redeemed ones come with
Him–when He gathers all who have been redeemed with His precious blood
about Him at the marriage supper of the Lamb–and He Himself drinks the
new wine in the Kingdom of His Father, it will not be said, then, that
the household is too little for the Lamb, for the whole spiritual
household of Israel shall then be gathered together! The complete
company redeemed by blood shall muster at that one "general assembly
and church of the first-born which are
written in Heaven," and Christ shall then "see of the travail of His
soul, and shall be satisfied." Until that glorious gathering shall take
place, Brothers and Sisters, keep on inviting others to the Lamb of
God!
And as for you who have never yet trusted in the blood of Jesus, or
tasted of His Grace, may the Lord, in His Infinite Mercy, bring you to
Him this very hour! And then this shall be the beginning of months for
you–you will reckon your true life as dating from this hour! The Lord
grant it, for Christ's sake! Amen.