So Christ goes as our Companion before us, the true pillar of fire and cloud in which the present Deity abode, and He is with us in real companionship.  Our joyful march through the wilderness is directed, patterned, protected, companioned by Him, and when He ’putteth forth His own sheep,’ blessed be His name, ‘He goeth before them.’

IV.  And now, lastly, there is a final application of this figure which sets forth our Lord as the Breaker for us of the bands of death, and the Forerunner ‘entered for us into the heavens.’

Christ’s resurrection is the only solid proof of a future life.  Christ’s present resurrection life is the power by partaking in which, ’though we were dead, yet shall we live.’

He has trodden that path, too, before us.  He has entered into the great prison-house into which the generations of men have been hounded and hurried; and where they lie in their graves, as in their narrow cells.  He has entered there; with one blow He has struck the gates from their hinges, and has passed out, and no soul can any longer be shut in as for ever into that ruined and opened prison.  Like Samson, He has taken the gates which from of old barred its entrance, and borne them on His strong shoulders to the city on the hill, and now Death’s darts are blunted, his fetters are broken, and his gaol has its doors wide open, and there is nothing for him to do now but to fall upon his sword and to kill himself, for his prisoners are free.  ’Oh, death!  I will be thy plague; oh, grave!  I will be thy destruction.’  ’The Breaker has gone up before us’; therefore it is not possible that we should be holden of the impotent chains that He has broken.

The Forerunner is for us entered and passed through the heavens, and entered into the holiest of all.  We are too closely knit to Him, if we love Him and trust Him, to make it possible that we shall be where He is not, or that He shall be where we are not.  Where He has gone we shall go.  In heaven, blessed be His name!  He will still be the leader of our progress and the captain at the head of our march.  For He crowns all His other work by this, that having broken the prison-house of our sins, and opened for us the way to God, and been the leader and the captain of our march through all the pilgrimage of life, and the opener of the gate of the grave for our joyful resurrection, and the opener of the gate of heaven for our triumphal entrance, He will still as the Lamb that is in the midst of the Throne, go before us, and lead us into green pastures and by the still waters, and this shall be the description of the growing blessedness and power of the saints’ life above, ’These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.’

AS GOD, SO WORSHIPPER

     ’...  All the peoples will walk every one in the name of his god,
     and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and
     ever.’—­MICAH iv. 5 (R.V.).