This week, we began a new series called, “Is This It?”. Now that we have left the captivity of
Isn’t that how God works sometimes? He shows us the picture of where He wants to
take us but seems to leave out everything in between. That time in between is
the wilderness, and it is an important part of the process. But before we enter
the wilderness, there is a transitional time. In the story of the Israelites,
that transition as the crossing of the Red Sea .
We talked quite a bit about this in the last part of the
Freedom series, but there is still more we need to see. The times of transition
are important in that they prepare us for the next season. Success in the new season requires us to
leave the old season behind. The crossing of the Red Sea
was symbolic of leaving the sin and slavery mentality behind. Those ways of
doing things will not serve you well in the next and other future seasons. You will not succeed in the Promised Land
with sin mentality. This doesn’t mean that you never sin again. It is about a
changing of your heart. You must grasp and accept the grace of God or risk
falling back into Egypt
Paul covers this in Romans 7:15-20. He describes the
separation that must take place in the believer. Are you still going to sin?
Yes. But you must not identify with sin. That is your flesh. But, when you are
born-again, you are actually a spirit being who lives in a fleshly body that
also has a soul. The sin comes from the soul and body fulfilling its desires.
But you are now spirit and are continually learning how to live as such.
Identifying yourself as a sinner will keep you in Egypt
Now, the wilderness is an important part of the growth
process. In Matthew 4, after Jesus is baptized, the Spirit leads Jesus to
the wilderness to be tempted by the enemy. Yes, the Spirit led Him. The
temptation does not come from God, but from the enemy. The Israelites were also
led to the wilderness by a pillar of cloud and pillar of fire (both symbols of
the Holy Spirit in the New Testament). Why
does God lead us to the wilderness? It is a time of learning to trust in Him.
Until we learn to do so, we will not succeed in the Promised Land. If we cannot
trust in God, the enemies in the Promised Land will overpower us.
First, we need to rewind back to the crossing of the Red Sea – that is a symbol of the Jewish Feast of
Atonement (as the exodus was a picture of the Passover Feast). In Leviticus
23:29, God says that those who, during the Feast of Atonement refuse to deny
themselves would be cut off. The King James version says to be afflicted of
soul (mind, will, emotions). You have to deny the soul what it wants to do in
order to truly trust in God. Jesus, upon
entry to the wilderness, fasted for 40 days (denied self). He goes on to say in
Matthew 16:24, that we must deny self and take up our cross and follow Him.
Keep in mind, He hadn’t gone to the cross and those around Him wouldn’t have
had the same image that we do. But the cross is about purpose. It is not our
purpose to go to the cross. But we all do have a God-ordained purpose that we
must deny ourselves, trust in Him (as Jesus had to do) and pursue with all
diligence. That requires a denying of self.
From all of these images we can see that, on the surface,
the wilderness can appear to be a place where God is leading us to defeat. But
nothing is further from the truth. Denying self and remaining obedient during
our time there ensures complete and total victory!
