Beginning
„This month shall be unto you the beginning of months - and this day shall be unto you for a memorial”
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Exodus 12:2, 14
This was the month, and this was the day of the month on which God was about to deliver these Israelites out of the hands of Pharaoh and his people. And it was to be to them the beginning of days and the beginning of months. The past was to be reckoned by them as nothing. Henceforth they were to date their life not from the day of their natural birth, but from the day that the Lord delivered them, under the cover of the blood, from the destroying angel, and brought them out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage.
Now, what are we taught by this? Most clearly this truth of God: that while we remain of the world, and in the world, we are in God’s sight dead. It is not until we come out from the world and, led by God’s Spirit, enter through Jesus Christ unto His kingdom, that God considers us to be born at all. Until this new birth takes place, all our works, however apparently excellent in themselves, are dead works, unprofitable to us, dishonouring to God, and partake of the nature of sin. Such is the teaching of the Bible, such is the teaching of the Articles of the Church of England, and such is the teaching of holy men of all denominations, and has been in all ages.
Remember I am not speaking now of an entrance into the visible church of Christ by baptism, but of that new and spiritual life which none but God can give and which our Lord calls „being born again.” A man may have been made the son of God, so far as baptism can make him, and perish, as did the rich man in hell, whom Abraham addressed as ”son”. His sonship, so far from saving him, increased his condemnation. But that man who is once renewed by the Holy Spirit, once born „not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”, has everlasting life and is safe for ever; for Jesus has said of such: „They shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand.”
Now it is this beginning of everlasting days and an entrance into this everlasting kingdom, that I would urge you to seek more, and before all that the world can offer. We are all immortal beings: there was a moment when we came into existence, but there never will come a moment when we shall go out of existence. We have all before us a life of eternal life, or, if I may so call it, a life of eternal death. So long as God is, we shall be, be it in heaven or in hell. And the sixty or seventy years of our sojourn on this earth is all that is allotted to us out of this never-ending, everlasting existence, to prepare our portion for that kingdom in which we are to spend eternity. Oh, it is awful to see how diligent some men are in preparing a rich portion for hell. But it is also solemn and most instructive to consider how much men lose by not preparing a rich portion for heaven.
If this then be the truth -and most surely it is the truth- how more than mad is that man who after he has once heard of Christ, allows any portion of his natural life to pass before he seeks to be born of God, and to get through Jesus an entrance in the kingdom of heaven.
Brownlow North (1810-1875), evangelist in the Free Church of Scotland
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