We shall extrapolate from how God led us in the past to understand how God will lead us into our future with an example from Exodus. We need to acknowledge first how what we believe now is different from what we used to believe.
Then
We believed that we could not keep the law. The law was abolished on account of it and the only requirement was to believe in Jesus to attain eternal life.
Now
We are able to keep the law because God has given us his empowering spirit—the Holy Spirit—as the source of all power to do what the law requires. Jesus did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. Through Jesus we have right-standing with God who now accepts us in the beloved. The blood is the source of our access to God and all the provisions that God desires to give us so that we can be fully equipped and not be hindered on our journey to our promised land. A big entitlement is that now we can each hear the voice of God for our situations and challenges facing our lives. The gifts too are entitlements we need to serve the Body as a whole and to also help us personally.
In the Old Testament, God used his prophets and his priests to reveal his will. God gave the Ten Commandments as the basic requirements for all. The people were required to abide by the law of Moses. We too are required to keep the law through the help of God’s spirit. However we have been made clean by Jesus’ blood and therefore all the requirements of the Law are not binding on us. All the Law has been condensed into two laws—to love our Lord and God with all our heart, being, strength, and mind and to love our neighbor as ourselves:
“‘Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ He replied, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: You must love your neighbor as you love yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.'” – MATTHEW 22:36-40 NIV [emphasis added]
Jesus rejoiced at the thought of returning to the Father because unless He returned, God would not send His Holy Spirit to all those who would believe in Jesus and thus SEE the kingdom of God. To ENTER the kingdom of God, we need to be born of water and spirit. This is the provision given to us in John 3:5. This means we need to overcome both our spiritual enemies which are the powers of the air (Jesus) and our flesh (the Holy Spirit). The body of Jesus is transfigured when He stands in the middle of Moses (the consecration of the flesh) and Elijah (defeating spiritual forces).
The Holy Spirit gives us all insight into the ways of our Lord Jesus and He teaches us like a teacher how to apply them into our lives. Jesus is our source of all knowledge, wisdom and understanding of God’s will, and the Holy Spirit gives expression to what we know. So we are required to obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit. We are given a picture of this in the Old Testament as well when God spoke to Elijah in a still small voice. We are now to depend entirely on the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit knows all things better than anyone else. No one else knows as God knows. He is the best guide in your journey to the promised land.
God has also given us his corporate body so that we can get help and encouragement through the working of the Holy Spirit in the rest of us. In all this, we must discern and test the spirits so that we will not be deceived by Satan who has mastery in deception. We know all his schemes and will not be deceived because God has given us His Word as the wisdom of God to discern good from evil. We must therefore be well-trained in God’s Word to keep deception and malpractices that Satan has taught us from infiltrating us and setting us back.
Symbolism in Exodus
The journey of the Israelites from their land of slavery denotes our previous life before Christ when we were entangled in a life of sin. Satan was the hidden power working in Pharaoh, the wicked ruler, who oppressed God’s people and did not allow them any freedom to pursue God. They were tied up in so much work that they could not spend any time in prayer seeking God and were therefore held hostage to the requirements of the evil one. This went on for a long time, as long as 400 years, until God raised up Moses who is symbolic of Jesus to deliver the people of God from the clutches of Satan.
Satan was not willing to let them go. He opposed the will of God and did his level best to not let them go. But by the Mighty hand of God, the people of God were released from the grasp of Satan. This is exactly what Jesus attained for us on the cross. He fought against all the evil forces that were arrayed against us leading us in triumphant victory in our journey to the promised land. The Israelites plundered their enemies and set them back for good. But the evil powers (because they cannot be destroyed – even Satan cannot be destroyed as he recovers even from fatal wounds – Rev 13:3 and his end is to be tormented (he does not die) in the lake of burning sulphur for ever and ever – Rev 20:10) would not let them go.
Satan fills Pharaoh’s heart again and they try to get the Israelites to return to their evil ways, but God destroys them in the deluge that is symbolic of Jesus’ resurrection through the Holy Spirit (Moses). All the evil in the world could not stop Jesus from being raised Back To Life. The power and authority to do good is given to all believers and the power of evil loses its grip on the believer. What used to be the norm has now become the anomaly. This is the true meaning of righteousness – the power to do good. The power to purge evil from the heart. The desires of our hearts have been made new and we have become of the incorruptible nature of Christ inwardly. It is therefore now easy to live righteously. The people of God were now free of their enemies. But one more enemy remained—their flesh. God thus gave us His Holy Spirit as the means to overcome the lusts of our flesh for the journey that we have to take to the promised land.
The journey was difficult because their comforts were stripped away. They were exposed to the elements and were subjected to a frugal life with only their necessities being met.
The last enemy to be overcome is death because the flesh is contrary to the work of God. No one wants to die. This nature became prevalent as the result of the fall because when Adam sinned everything in creation became corrupt including our own nature. Prior to the fall our nature was in line with God’s nature. After the fall, we became opposed to God. This came about as a result of the disobedience of our forefathers and their hard hearted opposition to the word of God given to them (not to eat the forbidden fruit). As a result God had to take the Israelites (and us) through a journey to purify their flesh (including their souls) and relieve them from all the wrong training that Satan had taught them during their time of slavery in Egypt.
God determined in His heart not to let his people perish. He showed them great signs and wonders and led them in his goodness teaching them to live their life in the spirit versus in the flesh. The Israelites though were so accustomed to living in the flesh that in spite of God trying to train them for 40 years, they failed to be trained. When God signed off on these people because they were too stiff-necked and hard-hearted to perform his will, he decided to destroy them in the desert. He allowed only two people among 6 million who entered the wilderness to enter the promised land. Even Moses was not qualified to enter the promised land because of disobedience. He had not been careful to follow all the heart of God until the last day. So he was only allowed to see the kingdom come from a distance.
We are now in the wilderness as far as our journey is concerned. We are yet to enter the promised land of God’s eternal Kingdom. We have been equipped and taken forward by the Mighty hand of God. We must not die in the wilderness as the Israelites did. We must obey the precepts of our loving God so that we can transition smoothly into all the Promises of God.
We cannot claim that we do not have the strength or that we are not able to perform God’s will because God’s power has been made available to us. The Word is our source of wisdom and light. We have the Father’s hand to protect us from all calamities. We can thus be assured that God is on our side. God will provide for us. He will see us through if we are not obstinate, ignorant and disobedient to not do as He says.
His yoke is easy and his burden is light because He has taken the heavy weight of liberating us from our limitations. We are thus well-equipped now to do the perfect will of God. We must really concern ourselves with the Kingdom of God that is at hand—now that we are in the last hour—and be zealous to do what Jesus has made clear to us so that we will not lose our place in the promised land.