Buried into Jesus Christ’s death through water baptism…baptized with the gift of the Holy Ghost…endued with Power from on High…raised to walk in newness of life…how marvelous is the love of God. The day of Pentecost…the upper room experience…has become our reality also. We are now saved from sin…the sin that previously held us in bondage, in spiritual darkness, lost without hope, condemned, doomed to burn in the lake of fire. The Spirit of Truth has now come into our lives. The Spirit of Truth has life. It is the light that shines into the world of darkness and will lead us into all truth. We have truly been born again. In the natural we were born of the water and blood, our mothers enduring the pain of childbirth. Symbolically our new birth in Christ is the same. When His side was pierced on the cross, from it flowed water and blood. He suffered the beatings and pain. He tasted death so that we could be reborn into the Spirit of God. As a mother gives herself for the child, He gave Himself for us. Throughout the Bible, Egypt represented the world. The children of Israel were delivered from the bondage of Egypt by the sprinkling of blood and were baptized in the Red Sea. The blood of the lamb over their door posts freed them from plagues and death. God parted the waters of the Red Sea and let them pass through and the armies of Pharaoh and the bondage and sin that they represented were destroyed when they were immersed in the water and drowned. God led their captivity captive. The man Christ Jesus…endued with Power from on High, led our captivity captive. As God led the nation of Israel out of Egypt and separated them unto Himself so are we to come out from the world and be separate. Physically we are in this world but spiritually not of this world. The deliverance of the nation of Israel from Egypt is our pattern for our spiritual growth and finding the will of God in our lives.

God is to be much more to us than just a fire escape. The old adage…you can’t judge a book by it’s cover…is very applicable at this point. Traditionalists have actually made a religion of their own with the stressing of outward change. God is truly faithful to His word. There is power in the Name of Jesus. Power to deliver you from swearing, drinking, tobacco, immoral dress, sinful friends, associations, and drug addictions. I praise God for His deliverance in these areas but standards and codes alone cannot save us. Just being faithful to every service at church can’t save us. It is not the things that we put on or in us, that defile us…but it is the things that come from within our hearts that defile us. It is true that we should find freedom of the above mentioned…but freedom becomes very real when we are freed from within our heart and not because we exercise the standards our particular religion has set forth. We are on our way to complete victory but there is a growth process involved.

In the wilderness God gave the commandments…words hewn in tablets of stone to the children of Israel. In the wilderness He set the Ark of the Covenant in the camp of His people. Today He writes His commandments on the fleshly tables of the heart. The indwelling of His Spirit is the Ark of the Covenant placed within man. Our bodies have become the tabernacle where God resides. The children of Israel received this in the wilderness and we too receive this in our own spiritual wilderness. As they were totally fed and clothed by God like helpless babies so are we spiritually clothed and fed by God. We are helpless without Him. God promised them a land flowing with milk and honey but first they had to endure the wilderness. We are promised the same but we must endure the wilderness also. It is in the wilderness that we mature and find strength. It is there we learn to walk uprightly and grow into adulthood and are able to find the faith and strength in God that it will take to overcome. Contrary to popular teaching, the Promised Land is not a futuristic physical place. We the Church of God…the New Jerusalem…the city that Abraham looked for…are situated in that spiritual Promised Land. Through us God exercises His dominion over the world. God has chosen His people…those called by His name…to overcome the spiritual enemies of the world as the Israelites had to overcome the enemies in the land of Canaan. The Kingdom of Heaven is in full effect now being established in Christ. It was God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Christ is the head …we the Church of the living God are the other essential members of the body. It takes the whole body fitly framed and in harmony with the head to accomplish the reconciliation process.

We have through Jesus shed blood on the cross been given power over sin. The question is…do we truly want to be free or do we want to throw off the physical attributes of Egypt yet yearn for it’s customs in our hearts. Remember it is the residual in our heart that defiles us before God. Moses time and time again instructed the nation of Israel to hearken and obey the commandments of God. He knew that obedience to the commandments would bring victory and life. It would bring blessings not curses. God gave His Sabbaths to Israel in the wilderness…Jesus is our Sabbath in our wilderness. In Him we find our rest. It is in the wilderness that we are refined as precious metals are. It is in the wilderness that we are scourged and purged. It is in the wilderness that we continually are in the hands of God, artfully being reconstructed on the potters’ wheel. The wilderness will either break you or make you. You will either grow into a responsible adult in God or be left to die there as a helpless baby. It is in the wilderness that we set our foundations in God…where we hear and do His word and are built on the rock where the storms that we face in the Promised Land cannot overwhelm us. Israel forgot to praise God in their trials in this desolate place. They continually moaned and groaned and looked back. Praise God in your wilderness. He will not put any more on you than you are able to bear. It is for your own good. Wars are won with fighting men not little boys. No pain…no gain. We enter our wilderness as babes on milk and leave as adults chewing meat. Many are called and few are chosen. Ironically it is our own choice that determines us being chosen. We can take the Land! We have been chosen to Rule!

It is very important not to mistake the similitude of the of the first journey of the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan with the wandering for forty years in the wilderness due to their unbelief that through God they could conquer the land of Promise. Believe in God. Trust in Him. He is able to do exceedingly above anything that we could ask or think. Unbelief and disobedience kept the first generation from entering and they died in the wilderness. Do not make the same mistake . One trip through the wilderness is all we need.