"Such is the
picture, dear friends, and it is a true one. There is
no exaggeration about it ; it is a real account of your
heart and my heart, and your life and my life, before we
knew God. And the Israelites in the heathen darkness
of Egypt just represent to us ourselves serving the world,
"serving divers lusts and pleasures." (p. 7)
"The life of the
lamb was that which was accepted instead of the life of the
firstborn of Israel, which were by reason of sin, justly
exposed to the condemnation that fell on the firstborn of
Egypt. When He looked, therefore, at the door-posts,
and saw the blood there, He could tell that death had been
there already. Now, the sentence against the soul that
sinneth is death ; but if death has taken place, what more
sentence is there? "There is NO CONDEMNATION to them
that are in Christ Jesus." They have died, for Christ
died for them." (The Shadow and the Substance, p. 18)
"The first thing
is the blood. Nothing before that. Everything
after it. The feasting on the lamb in the passover,
the great type of redemption, did not precede salvation, but
followed it. The feast was the lamb. There is no
doubt, as I have before remarked, what that signified.
"Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, therefore
let us keep the feast." The feast is Jesus the
Lamb of God." (p. 70)
"Oh, may God
give us all a hungering and a thirsting after Christ, that
we may not be content with merely getting inside the house,
and being saved, as I fear we too often are ; but that we
may seek to glorify God by taking of those rich treasures of
food that are laid up for us in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Ah! how little we seem to get on in that respect. Many
of us, thank God, are able to say, we have "passed from
death unto life" by trusting in the blood ; but how little
appetite is there for heavenly things, for Christ the
substance of them all!" (p. 73)
"Men take up one
part of truth here, and another there, and they say, "That
is the truth." But it is not ; it is only a part of
the truth, Christ." (p. 76)
"And here we
have the Lord's Supper as a type of doctrine.
St. Paul, you know, calls baptism "a form," or, as it is in
the original, "a type, of doctrine," (Rom. vi. 16) that is,
it is a figure which represents certain truths.
Baptism is a type, and it represents what? Death and
resurrection with Christ. So also the Lord's
Supper is a type of doctrine ; the doctrine of union with
Christ by feeding upon Him, and in that sense it is a very
blessed type. It shows forth this - that just as you
eat that bread which, as you read in the Psalms, "strengtheneth
man's heart," and drink that wine which "maketh glad the
heart of man," so by faith do you receive into your souls
the Lord Jesus Christ, not that you receive Him in the
Lord's Supper, but that that Supper is the token of a
reception of Him, which has already taken place. It is
the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual
truth -- the truth that you "feed upon Christ by faith in
your heart with thanksgiving," and that Jesus, being
received into your soul, becomes your life, your strength,
your sustenance ; just as the bread and wine strengthens you
for service and for work, so Jesus received into the heart
strengthens you for the service of God." (p. 92)
"When you feed upon Jesus, you take Him into your soul.
You look at Him, you read about Him in the Word, and thus
you "mark, learn, and inwardly digest" the food which
endureth unto everlasting life." (The Shadow and the Substance, p.
76)