Hallelujah for the types, figures, and pictures in the Old Testament! They are all showing us in detail how our experience of Christ for the church is, and even the failures of the Old Testament seeking saints / the people of Israel are a type of how we also fail + go on in our walk with the Lord….
One of the greatest types in the Old Testament is the people of Israel – especially as they got out of Egypt and started travelling through the wilderness towards the good land. Our Christian life, just like we see with the people of Israel, is a journey with the Lord, being guided and led by Him.
What is the goal of this journey? Why does this journey take so long when “God can just save us and then rapture us/bring us to heaven to Himself”? Well, just like the people of Israel, even though we have been delivered out of Egypt / the world, we still have the “Egyptian nature/constitution” – we have the worldly constitution in us, which needs to be dealt with.
For the people of Israel, a journey that could have taken less than a month in length(if the itinerary had been a straight line) took 40 years – why did it take so long? Why does it take so long for us also – to be transformed and eventually conformed to the image of Christ?
Because of our sinful and worldly nature, we need to be re-constituted, dealt with, transformed, so that we may become God’s building! This is God’s heart’s desire: to get a building, a dwelling place, where He dwells and can be fully expressed!
I was encouraged to review the journey that the people of Israel took and which we also take while on our way to fulfill God’s goal, the journey from Egypt to mount Sinai, the mountain of God, where we see the revelation of God’s building + we are being built into His dwelling place…. Here are some of the main steps of this journey:
- The way the people of Israel got out of Egypt / we get out of the world is by eating the Passover + having the blood shed&applied! We eat the lamb (Christ as the Lamb of God) and we apply the blood of Christ – we are saved and rescued out of the world, and we are also strengthened to get out of there!
- The crossing of the Red Sea – even though we are saved and we love the Lord / we start following Him, the enemy is still behind us trying to bring us back under his rule: Pharaoh followed the people of Israel. The way to get rid of Pharaoh and his following armies is to simply be baptized! The people of Israel passed through the Red Sea and this was a “baptism” for them, while it was a death trap for Pharaoh and his armies! We also get baptized and Satan with all his armies, all our past and our failures, the grip of the world on us, the old man, the flesh, sin, etc – everything negative and of the old is being buried in the water! Hallelujah, after we’re being baptized, we are released from the enemy’s grip on us and we’re walking in newness of life with Christ!
- In the wilderness, the people of Israel ate the manna and drank of the water from the rock that followed them – as we go on in our Christian life, daily we “gather the manna” by waking up early in the morning to spend time with the Lord and enjoy Him, eat Him, and be nourished by Him, and we daily drink of Christ as the Rock following us – He has been smitten on the cross, and out of Him the Life-Giving Spirit flows to quench our thirst! In this realm – the wilderness – there’s nothing else we have but God! It is here that our lust for “the Egyptian food” – the things of the world, the worldly pleasures and loves – is being exposed and dealt with. We are being re-constituted from those who love the things and the life-style in the world to those who are the people of God filled with God!
- In the wilderness, as we eat the manna and drink the living water daily, we are strengthened and supplied to fight against the flesh (Amalek) – and to conquer it! The flesh will always be with us, but as we eat the Lord and drink Him daily, we are being strengthened to deal with the flesh as it fiercely attacks us, trying to hinder us from fulfilling God’s purpose.
- Eventually, we arrive at the mountain of God, where we can receive the vision of God’s building, His heart’s desire, and we become His dwelling place! Here we’re brought under a clear sky to see God and His heart’s desire, and we’re constituted into what He wants – a home/dwelling place for God. We are happy when God gets what He desires!
Lord, take us all the way in this journey – all the way to see Your desire to have a dwelling place! Gain us for Your building! Build Yourself into us, Lord, and build us into Yourself!
